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Certainly it is with the kind of theological view of freewill I mentioned.
For sake of clarity, I suggest we forget randomness and focus on causation.
You are, at least in the parlance of some philosophers.
Although I have nothing better to do, but thanks for your warning. Saved me from the trouble of going through them.Warning! Posts are long! Only proceed if you've nothing better to do.
It has certainly been used there, not least to excuse God from having any obligations to do anything practical on the ground that [he]'s withdrawn so that our will can be freely exercised. As as routinely been pointed out in reply, respect for the free will of the criminal is by its very nature disrespect for the freewill of the criminal's victims, but the notion doesn't seem to have altogether gone away.
The first one I mentioned can only arise within a particular kind of theology, one with an omnipotent omniscient perfect God. A theology without such a God would not have a problem of that kind.
The cosmos, like the humans in it, is made of matter and energy. The future states of the cosmos (from what we know at this particular time) will depend on the power of quantum randomness to interfere with relevant chains of strict cause and effect. Beyond that I can't say, though others closer to the game may have a clearer view.
Future depends on so many things. On the movement of magma beneath the surface of earth, on the size of asteroids that impact the earth. There is not much that we can do about it.
If we had enough information, we could trace all our choices back to the Big Bang, So, if one defines "free will" as an uncaused event, it doesn't exist. But what does the prisoner lose when he's put into solitary?
The universe is non deterministic in two ways. First through quantum randomness and second through chaos. I think you are vaguely familiar with quantum randomness, aren't you?
@vulcanlogician
Part 2
If there is an element of randomness to the cosmos and the future is not inevitably pre-determined by past events, what role may this play in our ability to exercise Free Will? One way this element of randomness may effect us, we human beings, is in the way biology and prior events shape who we are at any specific moment. Consider identical twins, both starting as single fertilized eggs in the same mothers womb. We know from experience that no two identical twins are exactly the same, either physically or mentally. Yes, they may share many similarities but they are quite distinct. You may object and say that even though the two fertilized eggs ostensibly have the same genetic material, there is always the possibility that even at the single cell stage, there is some difference, they are not molecule for molecule identical. I think this is a valid point and I assume to be exactly the case. But even still, whether they are 99.9999 percent identical or 99.99 percent identical, I would suspect that we would see stronger physiological duplication if some element of randomness was not injected into the development process. This is my conjecture and I could be completely wrong. However, my conclusion is that randomness of the cosmos plays a role in our development and our existence on the whole such that our futures are not pre-determined. Not by biology, nor by our cumulative experiences, or the causal chain of the cosmos.
So now the question becomes, if the future is not set, are we able to make an unimpeded choice in this random universe, a choice not strictly dictated by previous events. To test this, I have devised a thought experiment. Let's imagine that we have a maze of rooms. Each room is identical in dimension, material, and color. Each room has an entrance door in the middle of one wall, and five identical doors in appearance on the wall opposite the entrance door. Each door leads to another room that is identical to all others. Once entering a room, you cannot go back, but must choose to remain in the current room, or choose one of the five doors to exit. Once a door is opened, all other doors lock and are no longer an option. Lets run an imagined experiment through the maze with ourselves as the test subject. We are tasked with entering the maze and traversing through 1,000 rooms (lets put aside biological needs during the test, it is an imaginary test after all
So here we have a test of choice where we are presented with a series of 1,000 identical choices. Imagine that we were able to run the experiment multiple times, such that we could reset initial conditions, go back in time if you will, and the subject (ourselves in this case) had no knowledge of repeating, that each run was experienced as being the first. Do we expect each run of a thousand choices to be exactly the same? Even if we start out with some system of choice, say starting from left to right, first room we choose is farthest left door, next room we choose the one to the right of farthest left, and so on. How long would we keep this up? Would we begin to mix it up? Would we get bored eventually and start always choosing the same door just to get the experiment over? At what iteration of rooms would these changes to attacking the problem occur? If, on the first run we hold the pattern of left to right choice for 20 rooms, for each run of the experiment, will we always end the pattern on the 20th room? Will we always start with that particular pattern? What iteration of room do we become bored? The 50th? The 173rd? Will our boredom arrive at the exact same point for each run of the experiment? My guess is no, they will not. Each run of the experiment will result in a different pattern of choices for the 1,000 rooms, even starting at identical initial conditions. I would suggest, that the mere time involved in considering our options, weighing our choices, playing things our in our mind before action is taken, all this delay, this amount of time, allows the randomness of the cosmos to exert some influence. If the choice is identical, we have an expanded ability in which we can choose freely.
We can play with this setup. We can make it such that for the 3 most left doors, there is always something unpleasant in the room beyond, and for every 2 most right doors, there is always something pleasant. Over time, we will realize this pattern and I expect this experience will influence our choices such that (for some of us anyway) we begin to only select the 2 most right doors. This would be an example of how past events influence choice even though we have freedom of choice. I can also imagine that given a long enough period of going through rooms, we might become curious as to whether the pattern of unpleasant rooms and pleasant rooms still holds. We may take a chance and pick one of the 3 left side doors. We find that it is unpleasant and it confirms in us that the pattern has not yet changed. At what iteration of rooms do we take that chance of exploring the 3 left doors again? In multiple runs of the experiment, will we take that chance at exactly the same iteration? On some runs may we never take that chance? My guess is that it will be different for each run of the experiment, to include some runs where the choice to chance the left doors again never comes.
If no two runs in both types of experiments will result in identical patterns of choice, does this indicate that there is at least some freedom to choose? I would say yes. I would say that we human beings do not have complete freedom of choice whereby any presented choice is in no way influenced by past events and experiences. I would posit that we have a limited or restricted capacity to exercise our will. Our unique neural patterns of our central nervous system creates limits, or more precisely, influences upon how we will decide any given choice. Past experience certainly influences how we decide any given choice. Of course, the choices we are even presented are dictated by all causal events leading up to the present choice. But despite all those factors narrowing and limiting how we might choose in any given circumstance, I feel that there can still be some serendipity, some expression of whim, in the exercising of some choices, and I based that idea on the speculations presented in the thought experiment. We, I surmise, are not going to do the very exact same thing, every single time, dictated strictly upon all previous causal chains.
I have one other idea as well. I think our capacity to imagine breaks causal chains. The fact that we can know that past causes lead to current events allows us to realize that changing conditions will impact future events. Our imagination however can create events within the rules of nature that are possible, yet have never happened. We can also mix and match our past experiences in a way to imagine things that are not probable or even possible. If we are making choices about our future actions, and those choices are informed by imagination instead of the present state of affairs, are we not making free choices in that instance? Certainly our past experience has influence, yet I see us as inventing choices to a degree as opposed to simply reacting to current conditions. This seems another possible expression of free will.
What do you think? Have I made a case for some modicum of free will? At the very least, I think I have a good argument to claim that the future is not set in stone. Would you agree?