From Tim Johnson
Barry Chapman, in his letter disputing the existence of free will, writes that the firing of a neuron “will have a cause and that cause will have another cause, all the way down” (29 June, p 31). But this is not a law of science. Events on the quantum scale obey the laws of probability not causality.
If living things can “harness chance”, as Peter Ulric Tse puts it (8 June, p 28), then they can move the odds a bit in favour of free will.
I read Tse’s take on free will with interest, but I don’t see how his ideas solve anything. His claim is that we have free will because consciousness can freely adjust neuronal weightings, affecting the way they fire in the future.
But how does this reweighting happen? All the usual philosophical problems apply, such as what is the nature of this free consciousness? All Tse has actually achieved is to find another way to sweep the issue under the ontological carpet.
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