In a way, in our contemporary world view, it is easy to think that Sciences has come to take the place of God. But, some philosophical problems remain as troubling as ever. Think the problem of free will. This problem has been around for a long time, since before Aristotle in 350BC, Saint Agustin, Saint Tomas Aquinas, these guys all worried about how can be free if God already knows in advance, everything you going to do.
Nowadays, we know that world operates according of some fundamentals Physical Laws. And, these laws govern the behavior of every object in the world. Now, these laws, because they are so trustworthy, they enable incredible technological achievements, but look at your self where just Physical system too, right? We are just complex arrangements of carbon molecules or mostly water. And, our behavior is not going to be an exception to these basic physical laws. So, it is start to looks like whether is God setting things up in advance and knowing everything you going to do or whether it is these basic physical laws governing everything is not a lot of room left for freedom.
So, I am like attempted to just ignore the questions nor the mystery of freewill say ‘Oh ell, it is just a historical anecdote, it is sophomore, it is question of no answer, you know just forget about it. But, the question keeps steering you right in face, Think about the individually for example who you are?
Who you are is mostly a matter of the free choices that you make or take responsibility, you can only be held responsible, you can only found guilty or you can only be admired or respected for things you do of your own freewill. So, the question keeps coming back and we do not really have a solution into it. It starts to look like all your decision are really just a charade. Think about how it happens, there are some electrical activities in your brain. Your neurons fire, they send a signal down into your nervous system, it is passes along down into your muscles fibers they twitch, you might say reach out your arm,
It is looks like a free action in your part, but every one of those every part of that process is actually governed by physical law, chemical laws, electrical laws and so on. Is not jut it looks like the ‘Big Bangs’ is setup the initial conditions and the whole rest of our history, the whole rest of Human History and even been before is really just sort of the playing out of sub-atomic particles according to these basic fundamental physical laws. We think we are special, we think we have some kind of special dignity.
But, that now comes under threat; I mean that is really challenged by this picture. So, you might be saying, “Wait a minute, what about Quantum Mechanics? I know enough contemporary physical theory you know is not really like that it is really like that is really a probabilistic theory, there is room, it is loose is not deterministic. And, that is going to enable us to understand freewill, but if look at the details, it is not really going to help, because what happens is you have some very small quantum particles and their behavior is apparently a bit random, they sort of swerve. Their behavior is absurd in the sense that is unpredictable and we cannot understand it based on anything that came before, it is just does something ‘out of the blue’ according to a probabilistic framework.
But, is that going to help our freedom? I mean should our freedom just be a matter of probabilities, just some random swerving in a chaotic system? That just to seem like it just worst, I would rather be a gear in the big a deterministic physical machine than just some random swerving.
So, We cannot just ignore the problem, we have to find room in our contemporary world view for persons with all that entails, not just bodies but persons. And, that means trying to solve the problem of freedom, finding room for choice and responsibilities and try to understand the individuality.
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