From Derek Bolton
I accept Francis Crick’s suggestion that we “are nothing but a pack of neurons” and that free will is an illusion, as mentioned in New Scientist‘s feature (16 April, p 32), yet I do hold people morally responsible for their actions.
This is because I care not so much about what free will means philosophically, as about practical consequences. If someone is considered not responsible then you do not punish them, yet punishment makes sense even without free will. Threats of punishment, reasoned argument and promised rewards are all inputs to the automaton that is the human mind. They can and do alter behaviour.
A society that relinquishes belief in free will can still justify its systems of law and order.
Roger Taylor
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The universe is patently deterministic, though that knowledge gets us nowhere as the “chain” of cause and effect – including such “unfinished business” gems as the causes of quantum uncertainty – goes back to the big bang, or whatever it was.
Plus, chaos theory being what it is, we will have to know everything about every fundamental particle in the universe in order to predict its future state, so let’s hope there isn’t a solitary pi or root 2 knocking about anywhere.
So, while the universe is deterministic, free will is a good working approximation.
Wirral, UK
Iain Petrie
As far as I’m concerned, even when neuroscientists fully understand the function of every neuron in a brain and can explain and predict every firing and map every connection to every other neuron, we would still have no idea how consciousness is created. At present science cannot explain qualia, our subjective experience of colours, sounds, sensations. The workings of consciousness remain a mystery.
Only when neuroscience can tackle the hard problem of consciousness will its deterministic suppositions be even a remote threat to our understanding of free will.
Hatfield, Hertfordshire, UK
Sydney, Australia
