You Must Nothing (On the uncertainty of Belief in Free Will as the only rebellion)
“Man, what are you talking about? Me in chains? You may fetter my leg but my will, not even Zeus himself can overpower.”
Epictetus
My message to you is this: pretend that you have free will. It’s essential that you behave as if your decisions matter, even though you know they don’t. The reality isn’t important: what’s important is your belief, and believing the lie is the only way to avoid a waking coma. Civilization now depends on self-deception. Perhaps it always has.
TED CHIANG
(Stories of Your Life and Others)
1. Buridan’s ass
A French philosopher in the 14th century that went by the name of Jean Buridan gave us one of the most iconic, ironic, fascinating, and ultimately frustrating thought experiments.
Named after him, Buridan’s ass (or donkey) is an illustration of a paradox in which given the premise that a donkey will always choose that which is closest and given that he is both hungry and thirsty equivalently and both water and hay are positioned at the same distance, the donkey will be unable to choose and so dies of thirst and hunger.
A satire indeed aimed as a straight arrow to ridicule the idea of free will in a determined universe.
Free will is one of those thorny issues that suffer both from an overindulgence from the part of the philosophers brave enough to tackle it and simultaneously from an under evaluation of the state of affairs of the universe.
It is not my intention here to bore deeply into the history of the idea and conceptualization of free will but to point only to what to my mind is a way out of the apparent conundrum.
When I think of free will I come back to Buridan’s ass, an example that to my perception appears completely sensical if possibly irrational. However, I do not belong to the class of hyper rationalists, au contraire, I maintain the idea that the universe we exist in is only partially and intermittently rational and in fact so are we, humans. Being part and parcel of the same universe.
The question of free will seems as deep as the oceans, however when perceived simply the question is fundamentally a question of mindset (let it be clear that I do not at present deal with the question of freedom of action but the concept of free will as it appears in our minds- the sense of free will we carry).
A question of mindset implies two issues: primarily the one of state (the state of mind of the speaker) and secondly the circumstances of that same speaker. It is not a question that can or should be addressed in what is erroneously called objective manner. The reason for that being that existing in a relational interconnected universe, our minds being embodied, and embedded cognitive systems cannot in any (rational) fashion speak objectively of anything.
We can choose to define given contexts and imply that within that given context there exists a high enough probability of constants remaining constants (and objective) for a long enough period to make sense for usage and manipulation (of matter).
The subject matter here is that minds are storytelling simulation machines, organic machines that demand a continuous rationale to maintain a coherence in perception and behavior. (it is a given that said coherence is always an approximation).
The issue at play is one of playfulness within the realm of mindsets.
Storytelling the many wills of freedom
“What, then, should we choose to believe — that everything has been determined, or that we are free to make decisions? I believe that the appropriate answer is obvious if, like mathematicians, we introduce certain premises before attempting to reach conclusions. Let our premise be that we should believe what is true even if it hurts, rather than what is false even if that makes us happy. We must then wholeheartedly believe in free will. If free will is a reality, we shall have made the correct choice. If it is not, we shall still not have made an incorrect choice, because we shall not have made any choice at all, not having a free will to do so.”
(The Essence of Chaos, 1993, p.160). The mathematician Edward Lorenz, on the side of free will.
The Many wills interpretation
We are dynamic events of mind, operating as organic, embedded, embodied cognitive multiplicities.
The main point of the above description is that the mind maintains a flow of multiple ‘wills’. Each of these wills can be said in this description to represent a particular mindset, a given strength (or emotional capacity) and a given rhythm (yes our minds have rhythms as well).
Given that we are a multiplicity, an event happening simultaneously on many dimensions, our minds must continuously adapt and transform. Changing both direction and shape. Taking into consideration the nature of the individual, her circumstances and timing, our wills compete. It is an evolutionary adaptation that allows multiple wills to coexist simultaneously, the crucial point is that not all of our wills incline towards freedom, some do and some don’t.
Wills are fickle creatures like that.
We are as a modern species quite obsessed with the idea of free will (wills) the reason being is that our belief in free will (wills) is the foundation of our conceptualization of both agency and action. From these stems our concept of identity and eventually the culture we have constructed and the resulting civilization.
To my mind, the many wills interpretation is possibly the most reasonable approach to the conundrum between determinism and free will.
The belief in free wills is a necessary condition of the Mind, at least in as much as we are agents endowed with conscious awareness.
To the question of what we shall do if so, allowing that a belief in free wills is a necessary condition (even if said free will may not exist at all), the answer is uncertainty and ambiguity.
We must nothing indeed, because of that very uncertainty. However, on the same token I believe (that pesky word again!) that a conscious aware embodied agency such as we are can (though not necessarily) choose to choose, in the process creating oneself as a free entity.
What to choose is not the point (one can choose reasonably whatsoever one desires to believe indeed). The very act of choice is a sort of rebellion.
Thank you for reading
