For as long as we can think the question of "do we have free will" has been debated by many scientists, philosophers and "common folk" alike. And if you would expect a lengthy and well researched article to give justice to this age-old conundrum, you would not be wrong.
picture by Nick Youngson - source: The Blue Diamond Gallery
But right now I don't have the time for that and I don't think it is a question worthy of trying to answer, really, and I'll try to explain why. And I'll keep it short because there's ultimately not that much to say on the matter.
The question is wrong and therefore a right answer will elude anyone trying to tackle it. Of cause there is free will. There has to be free will. If there were no free will no one could ever be held (morally) responsible for their actions. Without free will there would be no concept of responsibility, guilt, sin or any other concepts that require freedom of choice.
But there is a limit to the freedom we have in making choices and this limit differs from human to human ad from moment to moment. When someone is determined to be mentally ill we all agree that his or her actions cannot be judged as the result of free will, they can't be held responsible for their actions and therefore won't be punished but be sent to a mental hospital in an attempt to cure them or to prevent them doing society harm again. When someone commits a violent crime in a fit of rage or under the influence of drugs, those are considered to be mitigating circumstances and it's understood, in almost every culture, that these limit your ability to freely choose your actions.
The most recent breed of scientists to mingle in the debate about free will are neuropsychologists. Much of their research classifies free will as an illusion of the mind that comes in only after electro-chemical reactions in the brain already made the decision fractions of a second before. They are the ultimate determinists that believe even moral choices are completely determined by previously existing causes.
If free will is a fantasy, a trick of our minds played on our deterministic brains, that only proves to me that the brain is not the same as the mind, or the soul, or consciousness. And my mind tells me that you get the point.
The question is not if we have free will, but rather how much of it do we have in any given circumstance, and how do we maximize the amount of it. Freedom, therefore, grows when we create circumstances that maximize our ability to rationally choose our actions, in full knowledge and awareness of the effects those actions may have. This is why knowledge sets you free: it enables you to take responsibility for your actions. It is why freedom equals responsibility and why none of them exist absolutely, only in gradients.
Sam Harris on the Illusion of Free Will (sorry Sam, you're wrong, you're asking the wrong question!)
If you've listened to Sam Harris in the video above, I hope you noticed that he used the question of free will for his constant war against religion. Also that he acted like the pompous peacock he described the Rabbi to be, while giving the description. That he thinks himself more knowledgeable than the universe and God combined in a futile attempt to explain away free will as important, but ultimately non-existent. Sorry Sam, there is no conflict between free will and the laws of cause and effect, as there is also no conflict between the Newtonian universe and quantum mechanics. If free will is an illusion, I believe it's save to say that it's a necessary illusion. Also, the entire model of the world as it's represented in our mind is an illusion; we see only the model of reality that's conducive to our survival and who knows how that model looks like in the brain of a bat of a mosquito. There has to be free will, or at least we need to act like there is. And we can leave it at that.
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