Free to choose?

As we touched on in our last post, the concept of free will is fraught with difficulties, perhaps most significantly the fact that it seems clearly inconsistent with our central premise that all is physical. However, for some reason this insight is nigh impossible to incorporate into our daily lives. As we said to Inigo the other day: "It's just the logical extension of everything we've been saying (everything is physical), but it feels like a whole new level of strangeness to say the brain decides something before 'we' realize it..."

Thus, we were fascinated to come across this interview with philosopher Galen Strawson where he discusses this exact issue. We highly recommend reading the whole piece, but here is a preview:

"There is an undeniable human tendency to see ourselves as free and morally responsible beings. But there’s a problem. We also believe—most of us anyhow—that our environment and our heredity entirely shape our characters (what else could?). But we aren’t responsible for our environment, and we aren’t responsible for our heredity. So we aren’t responsible for our characters. But then how can we be responsible for acts that arise from our characters?

There’s a simple but extremely unpopular answer to this question: We aren’t. We are not and cannot be ultimately responsible for our behavior. According to this argument, while it may be of great pragmatic value to hold people responsible for their actions, and to employ systems of reward and punishment, no one is really deserving of blame or praise for anything. This answer has been around for more than two thousand years; it is backed by solid arguments with premises that are consistent with how most of us view the world. Yet few today give this position the serious consideration it deserves. The view that free will is a fiction is called counterintuitive, absurd, pessimistic, pernicious and, most commonly, “unacceptable,” even by those who recognize the force of the arguments behind it. Philosophers who reject God, an immaterial soul, and even absolute morality, cannot bring themselves to do the same for the dubious concept of free will—not just in their day-to-day lives, but in books, and articles and extraordinarily complex theories."