Free Will

I read dilbertblog fairly regularly. It's a blog written by Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert. It's normally pretty interesting, but that's irrelevant to this post. What is relevant is the constant debates over whether or not free will exists that take place in the comments for the blog.

Adams is a firm believer that free will is a collective illusion: we do not have any power to choose an option, we're simply "moist robots" whose conditioning and genetics control all of our choices.

The most common argument against him is very flawed: If free will doesn't exist, then why do we have prisons? Why do we punish children who do wrong? They have no control over their actions. The obvious retort is that prisons and other forms of punishment are a form of conditioning: even though the children don't actually make the choice, they won't misbehave in the future because they've been conditioned to value doing the right thing out of fear of punishment, or because they've been convinced that doing the right thing is what's important.

The argument made by the detractors shows a fairly gross understanding of what Adams defines as free will. He doesn't argue our lack of free will equates to a world where nothing anyone does will make a difference since the choices we'll make are set in stone...in fact, his definition of free will is nothing like that. Adams free will is, put quite simply, that there is a reason for every choice we make. When we are faced with a choice we will always do what our brain tells us to do.

When the viewpoint is stated plainly, it's fairly difficult to furnish an effective argument. If free will is the capacity to choose something we don't want to choose, free will can't exist. For example, right now I have no desire to slap myself in the face. Slapping myself in the face doesn't prove I have free will, just that I had a desire to slap myself for whatever reason (perhaps to prove the existence of free will, perhaps to show that I have power over my actions, or perhaps because of a hidden masochistic tendency). I'd only hit myself in the face if I wanted to hit myself in the face. This is a pretty simple experiment that you can try right now. I guarantee that you won't hit yourself unless you decide you want to: try it as many times as you want.

I don't know why Adams likes to define free will in this manner - normally, it will just inspire argument. It's like saying, "The earth isn't round!" and letting people argue while all the while all you're really saying is that it's spherical -- amusing, but counterproductive.

The real question of free will (by Adams definition) is not whether we have any power over our choices but instead over the conditions that cause us to make our choices. We can't choose to be hungry, but do we have the power to choose whether or not to eat? Is there a choice or is it merely a complex calculation?

My opinion: of course there's a choice. But you don't get to hear my argument, as I have to get to work. While you make your own decision, ponder this: "How could someone as smart as Aaron be wrong?" =)