https://sites.google.com/view/two-minds/blog?authuser=0
My most recent blog post came out on Thursday, but I have been tinkering with this installment for about 6 months. The topic is free will, which may at first seem like one of those late-night-college-dorm topics with no bearing on the real world. However, I think it’s necessary for any theory of behavior to wrestle with this question. Because TMT posits that all behavior arises from unconscious and automatic processes, there is a risk of people rejecting it based on a perceived clash with their Intuitive idea of free will. I respect colleagues who see all human behavior as determined by a combination of genetics and environments, a simple position that fits well within the tradition of the physical sciences. The problem is that I can’t honestly manage to believe that about my own behavior, and I would bet that you can’t either. The fundamental idea of this week’s blog is that TMT is compatible with the idea of free will, and I present an argument to that effect. But if you aren’t already committed to the position that humans have free will, then I also believe that TMT in its current formulation doesn’t specifically require it. At some point maybe the truth of the matter will be known, or (more likely) it will become clear that we were asking the wrong questions. In the meantime this week’s post is intended to clear up misconceptions, and to lay some groundwork for further investigations.
Hi.,
Free will is the idea that we are able to have some choice in how we act and assumes that we are free to choose our behavior, in other words we are self determined. ... According to freewill a person is responsible for their own actions.
Free will might be an illusion created by our brains, scientists might have proved. Humans are convinced that they make conscious choices as they live their lives. But instead it may be that the brain just convinces itself that it made a free choice from the available options after the decision is made..
According to their view, free will is a figment of our imagination. No one has it or ever will. Rather our choices are either determined—necessary outcomes of the events that have happened in the past—or they are random. Our intuitions about free will, however, challenge this nihilistic view.
Thank you for your response. I agree with you about the conflict: It's hard to fit free will into a mechanistic view of the world, and yet intuitively people do have the sense that free will exists. And I agree that one possible resolution of the conflict is to say that people are just mistaken, and that we don't have free will even if we feel like we do. That's Daniel Dennett's position as I understand it. A second possible resolution, which I am arguing for in the blog, is that scientists have _not_ actually proved our choices are determined. Instead, that's a belief based on assumptions underlying traditional science -- that every event is caused by one before it, that there are observable mechanisms of action, etc. Those are assumptions rather than proven facts, and in some cases like quantum physics there is concrete evidence against them. In the blog I quote Mark Balaguer, who argues that the available data don't allow us to draw strong conclusions one way or the other about the existence of free will. And with regard to my own Two Minds Theory, the argument is that free will isn't necessarily negated even though I have proposed that our thoughts don't directly determine our actions.
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