Free will

A taste of some
of the questions
that arise.

Dave Shafer
CHJ
Fairfield, Ct.
 We like to think that we have free will and that our be-
havior, choices, and thoughts are not predictable, by anyone.
We want even the mind of God to not know our future.

We know that some of

our personality is
wired in at birth, but
we still think that we
have free will for most
of our choices, espe-
cially those small
ones, like to speak or
not, to stand or sit, to
order out or eat in.
 We are aware
of those parts of
us that are hard-
wired, by biol-
ogy and evolu-
tion, but we feel
that we are free
to decide about
acting on these
impulses, or not.

When choosing between

opposing impulses we feel
that it is not determined in
advance what we will do.
That is what we mean by
free will. But there are
problems with that idea.
We have to decide what
connection there is between
our mind and our brain.
 We know there is some
connection between the
brain and the mind, but it
is not clear what that con-
sists of. They could be
directly linked, in some
Rube Goldberg fashion, if
both are purely physical.
But we don’t think of the
mind as being physical.
If it were, then its
thoughts and decisions
could, in principle, be
just as predetermined as
the motions and changes
of any other purely physi-
cal object or organism
are, given the laws of
physics and a nearly infi-
nite set of data on its
status at any given mo-
ment.

Our mind
and brain
are tied to-
gether, but
how? If the
mind isn’t
physical
then what is
it?
If you think occult powers are so much
bull, then how do you explain that our
mind seems to control our body? But
then why can’t I levitate?
Is our mind imprisoned in
our brain or can it sometimes
escape, like Houdini?
Why can’t my mind control
your body?
Until we understand the limi-
tations of our mind and its
connection to our body we
can’t really know if we have
free will.
We would rather not get bogged down
in philosophical hair-splitting,
but these questions cannot be ignored
and still have a meaningful discussion
of free will.
Spinoza thought that mind and body
were just different aspects of one
thing and that both were controlled by
the laws of physics and hence were, in
principle, predetermined. Hence, for
him, there is no free will and we are
not morally responsible for our ac-
tions.
If you believe in free will then why
isn’t this a sort of supernatural phe-
nomenon, with minds being a kind of
god. If there are these gods then why
not also the old fashioned God up
above? These are hard questions.