Some Thoughts about Thoughts
Even within the context of religion, understanding free will and our ability to have our own thoughts and choose our own actions accordingly can be a difficult thing. However, after reading a set of discussions between some friends of a friend a few weeks ago, I started thinking about how our free will and our thought could fit in within a merely naturalist universe (basically an atheistic one in which everything ends up boiling down to physics). After discussing it with a philosopher/law professor I was recently introduced to, I've pretty much concluded that naturalistic atheism does not allow for any sort of freedom of choice that could be meaningful. At least nothing that can relate to our own real experience on this earth. Here's a bit of what we talked about in a couple of emails:Ertandberni:
Basically, wouldn't it be the case that if naturalism is true, there would
really be no space for free will? What I mean by this is that since everything must have a cause, if naturalism is true and it all boils down to physics then we should theoretically be able to trace every single one of our present thoughts (or the physical states underlying those mental states) down an unimaginably long line of causes all the way to some sort of ridiculously complex "primordial equation" from which everything spurng. Isn't this true? And if that is the case, doesn't that mean that a hypothetical "super mathematician" at the beginning of time could have been able to tell us everything that was ever going to happen, much in the way one could supposedly know the exact trajectory that a series of marbles hitting each other would all have, even before the first two collided, if one could take into account all the existing information?
Philosopher Guy:
This is an easy one. Your analysis is correct: if something like naturalism is true, then, yes, the entire course of the universe from the big bang to the final big freeze (or whatever it may be), is entirely determined, and someone in possession of the appropriate information and enough computing power could indeed determine the entire history, past and future, of the whole universe. BTW, this is non-controversial. Philosophers across the ideological spectrum agree on this.
Whether or not this conclusion is compatible with human free will, however, is not so simple a question. In this regard, people talk about "hard determinism" and "soft determinism." Hard determinism says that the universe is deterministic, and this indeed means that there is no free will. Soft determinism holds that, although the universe is deterministic, this is compatible with there being free will (this view is also called compatibilism). The locus classicus for compatibilism is Hume, Treatise on Human Nature, II.III.1-2. The question is a real one because the terms "necessity" and "free" admit of a lot of interpretation. Hume's own account, for example, turns very much on his own (now clearly seen to be inadequate) understanding of the key terms necessity, cause, liberty, etc. The third major position is some form of voluntarism, the idea that the universe (or at least human behavior) is not deterministic.
So, long story short, yes, you're right that if naturalism is true, the universe is deterministic, but as for what this says about human free will, the issue is controversial.
Me Again:
I need to look into this soft-determinism thing, but it seems a little too much like wanting to have it both ways.
So for now, it appears to me that if atheism is true, then no one ever really chose (or will choose) what to believe. Even the atheists.
P.S.: And you never really chose to discard or accept my opinion either.
posted by ertandberni @ 1:21 PM
<< Home