for our first meeting Laura wanted to discuss free will. If everything has a cause, how can there be a kind of action we can choose that has not been in some sense determined by preceding events. To accept free will is to deny cause and effect and to deny free will is to ignore the definite feeling we have that we can freely choose one of many actions in many different situations. Plus the notion of moral responsibiilty presupposes that humans have the ability to choose between two courses of actions. But I will let Laura speak for herself. (I have added a section mark (§) so we can respoins to one section at a time.) Here is what Laura wrote:
[§ 1] I think I am ok accepting that we may not have free will as long as I know I am one only (unique) individual that will act exactly as I do at any given "fork in the road." I prefer there to be free will, but as you say, it may be a linguistic deficiency in the human mindset to even discuss free will. (determinism and free will may be just a priori mental constructs that we need to experience the world, but that does not mean that are Real in any objective sense. Kant)
[§ 2] I am not comfortable accepting that we have free will just because we need it for moral responsibility. (circular reasoning?)
[§ 3] I like Mill's Emergence idea: The unpredictability of the emerging behavior from deterministic processes leads to a perception of free will, even though free will as an ontological entity is assumed not to exist. In this picture, even if the behavior could be computed ahead of time, no way of doing so will be simpler than just observing the outcome of the brain's own computations
[§ 4] I also like Sartre's ideas of thinking into the unmade future and acting on these possibilities, because they allow us to stay within the materialistic realm and still think of free action as possible. Sartre: we experience ourselves as conscious, so we are free. We project from present into unknown future so we can stand apart from the world and conceive and be moved by what does not yet exist; no other creature can do this to our degree. To the degree any creature can do this, it is free. We conceive and are moved by non-being. That is free will. We could act according to DNA and conditions, but we can also deliberate and act otherwise.
[§ 5] My ideas in a nutshell (and I would love feedback): Free will is the ability of the physical/chemical/neurological (aka material brain processes) to actually affect the very thing that created them in the first place. Free will is a sum that is greater than its component parts (the material processes) and which has surpassed the actual processes and is able to influence the very processes that made free will exist in the first place.
[§ 6] Here’s my main idea restated in other words: Just like a collaborative effort yields more than the sum of its parts, the brain (due to its complexity in chemical and neurological functioning) has yielded end results which are more than the sum of its parts- and we dub them: self-awareness, rationality, and free will. These end results have the ability to affect the very processes that create them. Physical processes, once complex enough, create ends that influence the beginning physical processes. Or: brain processes "created" free will which then affects the brain processes.
[§ 7] The self does not have to be anything more that the material (physical/chemical and neurological brain processes) being it is to fully allow for the concept of free will.
