Free Will

There’s an interesting article in today’s New York Times on free will.  It seems that the scientific evidence is starting to build up showing that we don’t really consciously make our decisions, more likely they are made by the brain in the subconcsious somewhere and then our consiousness is informed of it.  This has led to a debate over what free will is and whether we have it.  In my earlier post I said that although our decisions may be made by deterministic processes and the brain and could be predicted if we understood it, since it is our brain making those decisions, isn’t that still free will?  In the article there are some interesting mathematical discussions of Godel’s theorem and how even if our decisions are made through a deterministic process in the brain, it may remain too complex for us to ever predict what decisions we’ll make.

One Response to “Free Will”

  1. Holly Says:

    Hmm. The issue of free will seems to me to be one of Rick’s primary issues with existentialism, which I like a lot. Bringing it up seems very valid to me though - existentialism, particularly a la Sartre, seems very based on the assumption of free will. If free will doesn’t exist in actuality, what parts of existentialism survive? It’s so much about choice, it seems it would be rather absurd if we don’t actually have free will. That would be too bad, because I find the optimism of choice that is exposited in Sartre’s existentialism to be very encouraging.