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child grows up in poverty, their father absent, mother a drug
addict. Riots break out and the child defends the local convenience
store. Another child born on the same road, but from a better
background, loots the store and is arrested. This scene played out on
the streets of London during the summer of 2011, but similar incidents
happen all across the world. People choose different moral paths; one
person makes a good decision; the other, a bad one. Did they make these
decisions freely or was their behavior inevitable, dictated at the dawn of
time?
Free will is at the heart of our justice system. It requires a crime to
be intentionally committed by a person of sound mind. If I kill you in
an accident or because I am mentally incapacitated, I am innocent. Of
course, if I mentally incapacitate myself with alcohol I would be guilty of
manslaughter, perhaps even murder.
Our justice system requires a crime to be intentionally committed
by a person of sound mind. Whenever we see something bad in the world
we trace the events back to the thought processes which led up to it. It
seems we punish the decisions in our brains leading to a crime, not the
crime itself. But, in a deterministic Universe my thoughts could never be
at fault. They are inevitable. “The Universe made me do it!”
You need not worry about the fabric of society falling apart in a
deterministic Universe. The whole of existence will play out according to
a predetermined script, complete with lawyers, trials, drama and pathos.
The judge, jury and executioner would also have no free will. It would
look as if you paid the price for the choices you made, but this would
be an illusion. The whole thing would be like one enormous screenplay.
The concept of determinism goes against our conscious experience.
We all have a strong sense of free will. I certainly think I have it! And this
presents a problem, because the classical laws of physics say our Universe
is entirely deterministic, and that free will is an illusion.
I should briefly mention ‘compatibilism, a branch of philosophy
that claims determinism is not at odds with free will. It argues that if
I feel free and my actions do not appear constrained, then I am free
even though my future might be inevitable: a sensation of freedom is
sufficient. This seems rather feeble. I am seeking an explanation for
how we might be truly free to choose our actions, not some linguistic
trick to argue freedom is subjective. I believe true free will is a physical
principle with observable effects on the Universe that would not be seen
in a determined one.
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