Free Will

I watched this discussion on Free Will on YouTube on CTT channel.

Here are my thoughts on Free Will.

In discussions of topics like Free Will, consciousness, soul, spirit, god it is important to first establish what the definition of free will is going to be used and even more importantly sticking to it. I have seen situations when the discussions start with agreed upon definition but then people smuggle in different ideas. Of course it is understood that some ideas cannot be fleshed out instantaneously but need to be discussed.

I think you will agree, we come to hear and watch these kinds of discussions with the expectation of discussion on our day to day intuitive meaning of Free Will. So we need to define more precisely what is meant by day to day Free will.

A good example of some of this is what Lawrence Krauss wrote in the book - Something from Nothing. He simply changed the definition of "nothing" and then went on to explain how something can come about from that 'quantum' nothing. Well, but that is not what people mean when they colloquially talk about nothing. IMO such shifting of goals does not help. He could have easily used title like Something from Quantum Nothing and at least it would not have added to the confusion and controversy.

Same is true about our intuitive understanding of free will that we talk about in a day to day discussions. However that intuitive understanding is a little fuzzy. And the problems with that though is that, for formally discussing something a good definition needs to be used. Let me give a starting point of the definition of everyday free will. Basically we mean that some external agent, agency or circumstance did not force use to make a particular choice - we made that choice freely - and that was our Free Will to do so. At the outset this sounds fine. But this does not exclude the fact that our choice came out of our brain, it's structure (where most likely short and long term memories are stored), incoming sensory perceptions (in real time) and the dynamical electro chemical state of the brain. If our brain is damaged will be be making a Free Will choice? If our incoming sensory perceptions are blocked will we make a Free Will choice? If we are drunk or high on drugs will we make free will choice? Another thing to consider is are we taking the decisions that are trivial or can affect us significantly. Thirdly are we making these choices implicitly or explicitly. By implicitly I mean we are not thinking about the "making" of the choice itself, but are thinking about the object of what we are making a choice about. In an experiment, say raise your left hand or right hand - which is trivial and does not make much difference to our life - we could truly make a free choice (actually innie, minnie, miny, mo). However for life changing events, when we make a choice are we making it freely. E.g. should I start running and someday run a marathon or should I study and go to MIT to study physics. Do we make these decisions truly freely? I do not think so. We make these decisions - yes within our brains - but not without the context of our memory, our knowledge of our abilities and what can actually be achieved as permitted by the laws of physics. For example, we cannot make a choice to train for marathon and complete it in 1 second. So most of the time we make free will choices constrained by our memory, our aspirations, our abilities and constraint from external world that we can and cannot affect. And with that consideration are we really making a "free" choice? So, basically, the Free Will choices we make originate in the context of our memories, our abilities, our aspirations, what is good for our future life (unless one is bent on sabotaging that), what are external circumstantial constraints. So is it truly a free will ? Or should we be happy to say that given all those inputs I made a choice by exercising the state and the processes of my brain? All people who are deciding to not mask up making that free will choice or are succumbing to peer pressure and group think - even though they will insist it was their free will? Other question to ask - with whatever definition of free will you want to use - will it be a free will without the context of our memories and what we want to happen which we know before we make the choice. In other words if we turn of our memories will we be able to make Free Will choice?