I make no promises regarding the frequency or reliability of the following posts. But I need to say something, and this is what is on my mind.
I’ve been having a lot of discussions regarding free will recently. These discussions are challenging most of the time because, I think, what all participants think of when they utter “free will” is slightly different. Sometimes, not so slightly.
Alfred Mele, in his book A Dialogue on Free Will and Science, suggests several ways to interpret free will. The simplest, as I think most would agree, is the view of free will known as Compatibilism. In this view, free will is not some mystical, spiritual thing that is unmeasurable or unknowable. As I will describe it, it is simply the suggestion that individuals have more than one live option.
A live option, on my account, is the idea that when faced with a choice or decision, there is an option that is feasible or available that one could select. For example, if I am at the counter in an ice cream shop about to tell the proprietor which flavour of ice cream I would like to be served, my live options would include those flavours of ice cream the proprietor has available. If vanilla is available for me to select, then vanilla is a live option. However, if he happens to be out of a particular flavour, say chocolate, then selecting chocolate is not a live option. Even if I were to tell the proprietor that I would like to select chocolate, he would be unable to satisfy that request. No amount of coersion or brute force will suddenly produce the desired flavour of ice cream.
The significance of a live option is simple: if I could reasonably expect to make the choice and produce the desired outcome, then it is a live option. In cases where I am unable to produce the desired outcome, there is no live option. There is also no live option when I am unable to select that option either. For example, if in the above example my friend stands beside me and is telling the proprietor what flavour of ice cream I will receive, and if that friend has decided I shall have vanilla, regardless of anything I might say to change his mind, then I am left with no choice regarding the flavour of ice cream I will receive. My friend has removed my choice, which leaves me with virtually no live options. It could be argued that the vanilla my friend selects is a live option, despite there being no other obvious options, however, then my only real other option would be to decline the ice cream altogether. And if I really want ice cream, perhaps the declining of ice cream isn’t really an option for me.
In the above example, it may seem a bit silly to speak of things in this way. After all, ice cream and whether I can consume it or not is pretty trivial. However, it is simply an example. In my life, there are many situations I encounter where others make decisions for me, removing my options and taking this version of my free will away from me. This version of free will is not considering other aspects that many might want to include in the idea of free will, such as the idea of predictability.
For most of the people I talk to, this idea of predictability is very important to them. They want to tell me that free will is unpredictable. However, Compatibilism does not take predictability into account. In fact, because Compatibilism is compatible with determinism (the idea that everything is related through cause-effect relationships), determinism will suggest to us that this version of free will is predictable. That is, as all things are related by causes and effects, then which flavour of ice cream I select will be related to an incredibly complex matrix of my personal history, past experiences, genetics, and the environment. If I had vanilla ice cream last time I had ice cream, I may want something different this time. If I have a craving for chocolate, I may lean toward chocolate. If I am allergic to strawberries, I may not select strawberry ice cream.
It may not be easy or even feasible for me to acquire all the knowledge and information required for me to determine your selection, however, I argue that if I somehow were able to acquire sufficient information, I could predict the choice you will make. In fact, this is precisely what modern advertising tries to do, through the use of various artificial intelligences that we have generated in this modern world of ours. It is true, there is also a significant amount of advertising that works to make choices for us as well, influencing our decision making process, however, the influencing of decisions is also a part of the prediction process. Many large companies are banking on the idea that this version of free will is what we possess, and nothing more.
I think many people (outside these large companies), would prefer to believe that we humans possess something more. A free will of an unpredictable nature. This is what many around me try to argue. That no matter how much information I acquire about them, I will still be unable to predict their decisions. For this to be true, there would need to be something more to free will, something incompatible with determinism. After all, if determinism is all that exists in our world, then everything that happens is caused by preceding events, including our very decisions. In my next post, I will discuss alternative views of free will.