Free Will

Free Will

Everything that happens has a cause and every cause has an effect.

Effect strictly follows cause every time.

This is an necessary logical tool for humans in understanding the

world around them. Because humans understand the concept of time it

means that they can then understand that some things always happen

after other things. Spotting these patterns allows them to then

deliberately cause certain effects by mimicking or instigating the

cause they had previously observed.

If effect did not follow cause reliably each and every time then it

would become very difficult to survive as we learn from repeated

exposure to cause and effect what is likely to happen if we do X.

However, there is an issue with cause and effect. If every effect has

a cause and those causes in turn have their own causes, then surely

you can just keep working back to the point of creation? This implies

that the impulse to write this essay was pre-determined at the time of

the big bang. If what I am doing now was pre-determined, then surely

everything I ever will do and everything that will ever happen was

also pre-determined at that time.

This implies that fate does exist; that we are all just actors in some

vast pre-determined play.

Many people find this a difficult conclusion to accept. One of the

main reasons for this is that it robs life of meaning and robs the

individual of a concept of self. Cause and effect is very mechanistic.

It is great to be able to predict machines' behaviour, but not our

own.

However, we think that cause and effect does apply, we see it and rely

on it every day. Theories that deny cause and effect assum...

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...hese vast numbers of particles

render the system predictable on the macro scale.

In the same way as with our box, our reality can contain predictable

cause and effect at the macro level, but allow for the

counter-intuitive probabilistic world of quantum physics at the very

small scale.

One thing that operates at a very small scale is the human brain,

which depends on the paths of particles to operate. I would like to

assume that the probabilistic nature of physics at the small scale

enables the rule of cause and effect in the human brain to be at least

slightly bent. This slight uncertainty is enough for us not to be

simply following a pre-determined path. Thus, both cause and effect

and individualism are possible simultaneously, in the tradition of

quantum physics this could be termed destiny / choice duality.