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Free Will is Possible Because Wild Nature Tries Everything
The emergence of minds, civilizations, and liberated social classes
Whether we have free will or not is one of those hoary philosophical questions that have been overanalyzed so that we have difficulty recognizing the truth’s obviousness.
If we’re not free, says the determinist, we’re puppets of causality. Whatever we think or do would be forced by a chain of events, linked by patterns that we model by positing causes and effects. That is, we could explain any of our decisions or actions by appealing to a patchwork of models from psychology, sociology, economics, and even biology, chemistry, and physics. Science would explain why we had to think or act as we did because nature is an ordered place, and we’re part of nature. Just as stars, rocks, and plants aren’t free from causality, people are part of nature’s tapestry. So free will is impossible.
Free will in that metaphysical sense would amount to a supernatural power, and this is indeed how free will was formulated for centuries, thanks to the influence of organized religions. The idea was that our immaterial spirit affords us the miraculous power of being able to counteract natural causality, including all those scientific models that chart the comings and goings of the natural order. As the…
