Free Will
A muddle
The idea is intuitively attractive but it has a couple of problems.
What exactly does 'free' mean in this context?
And what's this 'will' thing?
Free has a connotation of being unrestrained. But we need all sorts of constraints to survive. I don't want to have the freedom to randomly dart into traffic.
I can do things for reasons. I like it when I'm choosing the reasons. More on that later.
When I was young I didn't dream of joining the military because I didn't think I'd prosper under military discipline. I associate the will with that sort of discipline. It was never for me.
Dennett and others have presented ideas about how the body/brain provides interacting modules providing our mental capabilites.
As Fodor once said (IIRC) ". . . there may be all these interacting modules but something has to be in charge and by god it had better be me."
Dawkins developed the idea of the 'selfish gene'. The idea of natural selection is that when you have a replicator and a slight amount of variation among the replicants and a selection then the replicants will evolve to become better and better at meeting the selection pressure.
Dawkins asked: What's the replicator here? and the surprising answer was that its genes that are the replicators. The dogs and cats and flowers and trees are not the replicators - it's the genes within them that are the replicators and that carry on for generation after generation.
The a genotype produces a phenotype; a body. It was an easy step to see that the body is a sort of robot constructed by a genotype to carry it into the future.
There are many successful phenotypes that aren't like us at all. It's like the genotype just generates a zillion little robots and throws them at the wall to see what sticks. Nature isn't red of tooth and claw but nature sure doesn't care for individuals.
Dawkins thought in terms of bodies being like robots that carry genes into the future like a spaceship carries passengers to the moon. The genes are profoundly cut off from reality. They don't themselves have any senses. They leave all of that to the body.
If you are a plant you don't need the sort of senses that an animal needs. And if you are a gnat flitting around in a swarm your robot can just use automatic responses. For many animals the automatic responses are inadequate. Reality is too complicated. The robot needs to be able to decide on it's own what to do in a situation. That is the robot needs to be autonomous.
That autonomy reaches a sort of peak in homo sapiens. It's what we came to call, in English, free will. We can decide what to do in a situation according to our needs and perceptions. We are not automatons.
This is not freedom in the sense of unrestrained. When I'm crossing the road and the approaching car isn't slowing for the crosswalk I sprint out of the way - I'm not given a choice.
But I do have a choice about the best way to get to the store.
What do you think?
I present regular philosophy discussions in a virtual reality called Second Life.
I set a topic and people come as avatars and sit around a virtual table to discuss it.
Each week I write a short essay to set the topic.
I show a selection of them here.