Will Freely

The entire debate about free will seems to rest on shaky ground. It is possibly one of the most ill-defined concepts of the modern age, and branches into almost every scientific faculty thinkable (physics, biology, neuroscience, statistics) but let's go about some philosophy bashing first. My argument is with myself, as I've found reasons to believe that free will is existent, and reasons for why it isn't plausible at all. Let me share them with you.

To say you choose not to choose is contradictory.

Is it theoretically viable to consider ourselves in a world that is both deterministic and chaotic?
See, Chaos Theory actually doesn't defend the concept of free will in the slightest. Even though chaotic systems are unpredictable, their behaviour is considered deterministic in that despite their movements being far too complex to be calculable, they still are determinable.

Perhaps free will is illusory. To believe in free will means to imply that my thought processes act outside of my environment, i.e. not a reaction to stimuli. But the truth is, I can only react. If the universe is deterministic, it means that everything we have done or will do stems from long lines of causation that extend beyond a single individual, from before we can even be born.

In order for free will to exist, we’d have to get rid of both determinism and indeterminism, which by then we would have nothing left. The rules of chance say that an event could happen or it could not happen. There is no in between. There is a Latin term that describes people who exist outside the rules of all we know: 'causa sui', it means 'creators of their own cause'. None of them exist.

What's a scientific discussion without some God thrown in, eh?
Theists believe that God awards them free will. Yet they also believe that God knows the future. They demonstrate free will cannot exist simply by believing it does. If God fails to know the future, He'd lose his godlike nature. Free will's existence would contradict the very idea of an all knowing 'God'.

 Does this mean that life is meaningless? Not at all. It means that although I don’t have any choice in the matter, I am able to experience life, beauty, variety, a slice of unpredictability and love - which makes life worth living.

But maybe we can live in a deterministic world and still have something that resembles free will...

Perhaps the notion of free will is truly subjective and depends on from where in spacetime you look at the bigger picture. If we accept that the universe operates in either a deterministic or indeterministic way, we essentially understand that this means the future (in principle) is fixed. But this future is only knowable from the outside, if the past can be evaluated simultaneously with the present. From where we are - imbedded within spacetime - we cannot know the future. The future always appears unpredictable from our stance, and this is what creates the illusion of an open future. Of free will.


We are slaves to the butterfly effect.

Human and Haunting

This holiday, I read a non-fiction book titled ‘Children of the Holocaust’ by Helen Epstein. It details the unexplored plight of the first generation born of Holocaust survivors. It is an interesting perspective to consider – what were the effects on their children? What must it feel like to know that your parents were part of some atrocious act that is the subject of so many history books?

Reading accounts from this generation has enabled me to better understand the human psyche. Each one of those children could relate to the need to do something about the holes in their lives that were a result of having lost a part of their parents to a war they could not fathom.

In some sense, I feel as if I am a part of this clique. We all are children of survivors. I’ve grown up hearing my parents’ somewhat morbid stories of their childhood, everything that determined who they became. My father would always conclude these stories by telling us that his children are now his life, and he’d never want for us to go through the things he has. As would any parent.

But this left me with more questions than answers, more uneasiness about how I wanted my life to develop. Does it disappoint my father when I take food for granted after having heard his experiences of not having had food for days? Of course it does. But I feel as if I’d lost the carelessness generally awarded with childhood. I sometimes feel as if my life is the replacement of my father’s misplaced one, and that I must take advantage of every moment to be happy, in his stead. This is burdensome.

The effort is like trying to graft a foreign branch to a native tree. The graft would not take. Sometimes I need to be sad.

My life is little less than a cosmic blip on the universe’s radar, fading before it can even be seen. This life of mine is so tiny in the greater scheme of things; but I still would like the chance to live it as I see fit, instead of living within the boundaries that are forced upon me. Do I consider the expectations of others, or do I disregard them in the name of individuality? Is the real me lost between the yellowed pages of my parents’ past?

The truth is that we have only one lifetime to live, and we cannot spend it searching through the past for ourselves, because we’re not there. We’re here. My parents were different people before I came to be, and I’ve come to respect that. In the same manner, they ought to respect that my lifetime is mine. I need to make my own mistakes.

I do not want to live just because I happen to be alive. Routine bothers me. I want to be alive so that I may live.

It’s just, no one gives me time. Time to discover who I am right now so that I have an idea of who I want to someday be.