this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2023
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The definition of "free" and "will" are to shady to be scientific.
So there is no scientific arguing about it, just philosophical.
I like this take, but it also makes me feel like I could do a better job describing the intent of my question in more scientific terms. I hope to do so, here.
If one were to have sufficiently advanced technology akin to future MRI machines that could image the state of the human brain at Planck time resolution, my argument is that the very process of "a decision" (act, choice, idea, etc.) could be quantified. And if that is the case, then there must be chemical triggers and causal events that could have predicted that state of the matter and energy. And if that's the case, then we must really be products of our environment in an (currently) incomprehensibly large chemistry equation.
If any one decision could be quantized, reverse engineered, and then predicted through such means, then it stands to reason every decision can be. And if that's the case, free will cannot exist.
I agree with the other poster that you need to define what you even mean when you say free will. IMO, strict determinism is not incompatible with free will. It only provides the mechanism. I posted this in another thread where this came up:
The implications of quantum mechanics just reframes what it means to not have free will.
In classical physics, given the exact same setup you make the exact same choice every time.
In Quantum mechanics, given the same exact setup, you make the same choice some percentage of the time.
One is you being an automaton while the other is you being a flipped coin. Neither of those really feel like free will.
Except.
We are looking at this through an implied assumption that the brain is some mechanism, separate from "us", which we are forced to think "through". That the mechanisms of the brain are somehow distorting or restricting what the underlying self can do.
But there is no deeper "self". We are the brain. We are the chemical cascade bouncing around through the neurons. We are the kinetic billiard balls of classical physics and the probability curves of quantum mechanics. It doesn't matter if the universe is deterministic and we would always have the same response to the same input or if it's statistical and we just have a baked "likelihood" of that response.
The way we respond or the biases that inform that likelihood is still us making a choice, because we are that underlying mechanism. Whether it's deterministic or not it's just an implementation detail of free will, not a counterargument.
That was poetic and beautifully described.
Fascinating. ๐
Well-put