Does Free Will Matter? Or, does Matter Free Will?

I've been engaged in a marathon session of free-will-jitsu at the BrothersJudd Blog with the ever-unpindownable Orrin Judd and a cast of many, including DailyDuck regular Jeff Guinn. Check it out. I'm not sure what the final count of comments was, but I believe that it exceeded the BroJudd's previous record for a single posting of 250 or so.

I had posted my own view on free will on the October 17th edition of the DailyDuck, and this go-round allowed me a chance to hone my view to a more concise statement. Here is the short version of my earlier argument, from the BrothersJudd blog:

If we are entirely materialistic beings, then we can be modeled. If we can be modeled, then we don't have free will.

We are modeled, insurance companies and marketers do it all the time. They aren't perfect models, they can't predict what you or I will do at every instance, but at an aggregate, statistical level they are pretty good.

Before you respond, I would note that the two most common responses don't work. "Complexity" is just a way of saying that our models aren't there yet, but will be soon.

That's what they said 30 years ago about artificial intelligence and weather forecasting. You're misinterpreting what the theory of Complexity says. Models are appriximations, they apply rules to a subset of the data variables that make up a system, and they give a rough approximation of the behavior of the system, but it is based on linear thinking. If you take into account 50% of the variables, you should be able to model the system within 50% accuracy, or so. But Compexity throws those sort of assumptions out the window, tiny changes in a few variables can lead to massive changes in the behavior of the system. Don't count on human behavoir being exactly modeled anytime soon.

But you are right, in theory, that you should be able to model a physical system with a physical system. You just need a physical system that is of equal complexity and state to the system you are modeling. You'd need an exact duplicate of you to model you. You are your own model.

Other people try to say that our brains incorporate a quantum computer capable of true randomness. This might be the only argument on which Occams' Razor cuts in favor of G-d.

Is randomness really the attribute that you want to equate with freedom? So the more random a person's behavior is, the more free will he possesses? People who act that way in our society tend to get locked up in an asylum. We don't judge personal and mental advancement by randomness, but by predictability. To have an identity, to be human is to be predictable.

I understand how you are defining free will, and based on that definition, I agree with you that material beings don't have free will. But my point is that that definition of freedom, based on randomness and perfect unpredictability, is a ridiculous and non-sensical definition. It is a case of wanting to have your metaphysical cake and eating it too.

To have a will, or even a personality, implies that there is a somewhat permanent, fixed component to your being, a non-random component. A will is a fixed set of goals and desires that a being uses to direct its behavior. In order to have a discernible will, a being has to be limited, its freedom constricted. It can't act to circumstances in a purely random fashion. But based on that will, if it has the freedom to pursue actions to realize the goals of that will regardless of other physical factors and obstacles, then it is a free will.

Think of it this way. You are free to do what you want. But are you free to want what you want?

It is fascinating how worked up people will get over this question, which has haunted philosophers for ages, without solution. It stirs so much passion because it gets at the very root of our identity. Are we "just" matter, or are we more than that? I put "just" in quotes because it continues to baffle me why believers so denigrate this stuff we call matter, if it can perform all the wonderful feats of magic that we see unfold before us in the vast expanse of space, on the land and in the oceans, and in our bodies and our minds. Materialism doesn't mean we have to devalue man to the status of matter, we have to elevate matter to the status it deserves as the stuff of life. Of course, it spells the limits of man. A material man does not live in eternity. But again, this question gets at the root of how we think of ourselves. Again, from the BrothersJudd blog discussion (italicized text is by other participants) :

What is faith? "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." That's how the New Testament answers it. There's universal truth and applicability to these words. Whether its faith that "in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" or that somehow natural processes just came together and evolved (or even believe that that extra-terrestrials foundedlife here), it's all about faith.

This definition of faith doesn't totally suffice. Does it allow room for everything hoped for? I think not, otherwise we would all have faith that God will grant us eternal paradise irregardless of our conduct on earth or on what we believe. Faith is subject to a reality check on the part of the believer, based on his view of reality, or "meta-reality" in the case of metaphysics.

And our take on meta-reality is an extension of our take on reality, our experience of things seen. We expect there to be some continuity between the two, at least at the level of basic principles. We don't expect bad to be good and good to be bad when we arrive there, noone imagines that the world beyond is a bizarro world.

This is where I parted company with the traditional Christian view of the next world. A world where the population of souls is split between a group that will experience eternal unremitting bliss, and a group that will experience eternal unremitting misery is just such a bizarro world. Even if you eliminate Hell, and just try to imagine human souls existing in a state of infinite bliss, it doesn't survive a serious examination.

Such a world is stasis. The infinite experience of a single emotion is timeless, there would be no sense of time, no sense of change. I would argue that there would be no sense of anything. Conscousness is an experience of change, of alternating states of pleasure, pain, boredom, wonder, excitement, calm. Our personality, our identity, our sense of existence relies on time and change. Our sense of pleasure is dependent on the existence of pain, our sense of hope requires an experience of despair. There is no consciousness without it.

Also, our sense of identity, our "me-ness" is tied up in our bodies, and the particular nature that the unique configuration that our mental neurons gives each of us. Without the body, without the limitations and quirks that our individual make-up gives us, in what sense do we have an identity? Given there is some spirit of me that survives the destruction of my body, and given that it ascends to some state of eternal, timeless bliss, in what sense is it "me"?

I don't think I won any converts, but a good time was had by all.