Today I among many others received an e-mail from a Portuguese colleague, with an interesting article by Stephen Hawking about if the universe is random or predictive on the following weblink:
http://www.hawking.org.uk/does-god-play-dice.html
This article makes an excellent background for the ongoing discussion where we may ask ourselves if free will really does exist or if it’s merely an illusion of free will we’re experiencing? Are coincidences (chance, probability) or destiny (fate, predictability) controlling the laws of nature and the processes in the universe including the human brain?
If a person makes a choice or decision following serious reflection about the pros and cons of the available alternatives and based on a judgment about that that is clear headed and sound, would that count as chance or destiny as you set them out? Would either possibility be such as to undermine the suggestion that such choice could be arrived at rationally? or render the rationality of the choice irrelevant to whether we should consider it to have been freely made?
Daniel Dennett's Elbow Room is certainly worth reading on this issue (while not providing a persuasive handling of every philosophical worry about whether determinism is compatible with free will). Regarding the possibility that our experiences of acting and deciding freely might be illusory if determinism were true, you might look at chapter four of my Freedom and Experience: Self-determination without Illusions (Book Freedom and Experience: Self-Determination without Illusions
), in which I try to show that there are reasons we don't experience deliberation about what to decide as necessitated and also why don't experience our own actions as caused by anything other than ourselves, but that those reasons would be unaffected by ether the truth or falsity of determinism.
The same question was asked here, with alot of interesting answers:
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Heisenbergs_Uncertainity_VS_Laplaces_Demon
See also at ResearchGate:
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Do_physicists_who_reject_free_will_have_any_ideas_about_what_governs_outcomes_Ie_if_everything_has_already_happened_how_was_this_destiny_determined
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