this post was submitted on 20 May 2025
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By and large, I agree with you: I cannot see how free will fits into a deterministic universe. I still want to make some points for the case that there is some form of free will.
Think about scratching your nose right now, and decide whether or not to do it. It's banal, but I can't help being convinced by that simple act that I do have some form of choice. I can't fathom how someone, even given a perfect model of every cell in my body, could predict whether or not I will scratch my nose within the next minute.
This brings up the second point: We don't need to invoke quantum mechanics to get large-scale uncertainty. It's enough to assume that our mind is a complex, chaotic system. In that case, minute changes in initial conditions or input stimuli can massively change the state of our mind only a short time later. This allows for our mind to be deterministic but functionally impossible to predict (if immeasurably small changes in conditions can cascade to large changes in outcome).
I seem to remember reading that what we interpret as free will is usually our mind justifying our actions after the fact, which would fit well with the "chaotic but deterministic" theory.
so your argument is just personal incredulity?
The issue is not about choice. It is about control. Your next action is purely dependant on the current state of your brain and the stimuli around you. Where is the part that isn't controlled by this system? How did you cause your brain to be exactly how it is right this moment? Was it not a cause of your previous brain state and the stimuli in the previous moment? How can you shown it's not turtles all the way down?
The chaos comment is not really relevant. Chaos isn't choice, I only brought it up to show that at the level of our brains and the interactions we have there isn't anything random. A world rewound would produce the same outcome.
I think you're missing my point: I opened by saying that I definitely believe the world is deterministic. I then went on to problematise the extremely unpredictable nature of the human mind. To the point where an immeasurable amount of historical input goes into determining what number I will say if you ask me to think of one.
Then, I used the argument of a chaotic system to reconcile the determinism of the universe with the apparent impossibility of predicting another persons next thought. A highly chaotic system can be deterministic but still remain functionally unpredictable.
Finally, I floated the idea that what we interpret as free will is in fact our mind justifying the outcome of a highly chaotic process after the fact. I seem to remember there was some research on split-brain patients regarding this.