Oh how you mocked me for my post yesterday about free will. I said a good test of free will is to have a surgeon stimulate the brain and then ask the patient to somehow override that stimulation with free will.
About a hundred or more of you sliced my analogy to bits by making your own analogies to show how ridiculous mine was. One person said my test is like asking a guy with no arms to pick up something. He asked if THAT is a test of free will too.
It would be a good test of free will if anyone believes that free will influences nonexistent arms. But I think everyone believes free will influences brains or happens in the brain. And some of those believers think that something supernatural, perhaps the soul, can influence the physics of the brain. This group thinks that no matter how strong the impulse to do “bad,” you can override it with this supernatural free will. This is the form of free will that my surgeon’s test could discover (but couldn’t rule out). And it’s the only form of free will that makes logical sense because it addresses the cause-and-effect chain of the macro world. Under this line of thinking, something outside that chain must be horning in on the natural world.
The supernatural form of free will is not logically impossible. It’s not even hard to imagine. For example, the concept of freedom is essentially supernatural. Yet it does seem to influence actions somehow by moving itself from the supernatural to a physical change in people’s brains.
The believers in free will that don’t need the supernatural in their view focus on the fact that the brain can make “choices,” and under different conditions and different brain chemistry the brain makes different choices. Therefore, free will exists. But that definition of free will is the same as a toaster’s free will. A different toaster in a different environment will make toast differently.
When challenged, this group retreats to the argument of unpredictability of choice. Toasters are predictable and people are not. Since an observer can’t ever know how someone will act, given the complexity of the brain and the complexity of the environment, then something very untoasterlike is happening with people. And that ability to make “unpredictable choices” is proof that our choices are not predetermined.
But unpredictability is a nonsense argument when it comes to free will. I can’t predict the weather with exactness, but weather doesn’t have free will. It’s simply complicated. Likewise, any argument about the quantum world and its unpredictable affects on the brain simply allows the possibility that our actions are sometimes random – and that is completely different from free will.
Others of you argue backwards, pointing out that society needs the concept of responsibility, therefore free will is both essential and must exist. But don’t worry about losing society’s sense of responsibility if free will doesn’t exist. One commenter here pointed out that even a faulty car suffers from its consequences by getting junked. Likewise people will still go to jail for committing crimes no matter what the judge thinks of free will, precisely because it’s in society’s best interest (and the judge’s best interest). People are hardwired to act “responsibly” most of the time. I don’t believe in free will and I hardly ever rape and kill.