Maybe this has come up before, but I still wanted to ask. Lately, I’ve been a bit confused about whether we really have free will or not. I’m not religious and I don’t really believe in metaphysics. I’d probably call myself agnostic. I’ve just been questioning life more than I used to, and this thought keeps popping into my head.
Do we actually have free will? Like, can we really choose things the way religious texts say we can? What made me think about this is how predictable the micro world seems to be—but when you go deeper into the quantum level, things get really chaotic and complex.
On top of that, as people, we’re constantly shaped by what we go through, and it feels like our reactions and choices get more limited over time.
What do you think about all this?
I've never really understood any argument for free will, because I've never really understood exactly what they mean by 'free will'. Take me through it, exactly what does it mean if you 'make a choice'?
As free will, we can handle any choice you make. At least that's what I mean. Everything you choose in life, whether you brush your teeth this morning, whether you drink tea or coffee. More broadly, your ideologies, your reactions in life, whether you choose to be a "bad person" as a result of bad experiences. The holy books say we can choose these things. That we can determine our destiny by these decisions and that it is up to us to choose between heaven or hell. I think this is wrong and I wanted to ask you all my opinion. There will always be certain criteria and certain limits when we make choices. But what I am curious about is the predictability of our choices.
All those things are cultural. Humans are social creatures that mimic other humans to form a kinship. Whether you drink tea because that is what British people do, that is cultural. You put a human baby with a chimpanzee, they will mimic the chimpanzee. Feral children raised by dogs mimic the dogs they grew up with. Christianity does not indefinitely say we have free will. It is a debate, not a consensus. Calvinism sides with predestination as an example. The Qur'an is very heavy on predestination - a holy book to Muslims which is steeped in Judeo-Christian tradition.
Good and evil, or good versus evil is dualism that Judeo-Christian tradition inherited from the Persians when Jews were ruled by the Persians. Again, it is a cultural concept that is not universal, but contingent on what is taught generationally, and taken for granted as being a truth. The fact you take dualism seriously, shows that you are influenced by cultural assumptions made up, and passed up to the present day by distinct cultures. In reality, there is no good versus evil, or good or evil in a universal, absolute sense.
I understand what you mean, but rather than culture and phenomenon, I'm curious about the limits of our will. For example, except in the case of dogs or chimpanzees, would two identical children, living exactly the same life (same life, same food, same family, same traumas, same friends, same events, and even all the little reactions and actions that we don't define as events) make the same decisions? Would they do the same things every day, at the same time, at the same second? Or would we still see a difference? Could one be good and one bad? Would one listen to a different band?