Strega am wishing you a speedy recovery.
“Top form as always, Jake. But if some part of the mind were not free, doesn’t that make all your poetry and all your tomes on these subjects all for naught?”
Thanks Enco. By any fair definition of free will i am of opinion it is just not possible. On other hand i don’t pretend to understand consciousness. Nail in coffin of free will for me is Sapolsky in Determined. A really good read and lots of interesting ideas conveyed beyond the issues of free will.
To answer your question…a fully determined universe gives our lives no greater meaning than attends the particles, waves and phenomena of the cosmos all of which is presumably sans any form of consciousness. On other hand it is the one area in which our feeling free (most of the time) is a beneficial artifice. After all the value of our life really comes down to nothing more complicated than how we feel.
I grew up an atheist. The one semi-religious idea i held was free will. Not the free will the Christians conceived to excuse the big guy’s bad behavior or poor craftsmanship, rather the simple feeling of autonomy. If the consequences of its absence mean all for naught then that is one interpretation but it is not the exclusive takeaway. And for that matter many theists seem to rationalize belief in god and afterlife by asking what life means without a personal creator or savior or afterlife. Consequences follow as they may and our wishes are only wishes.
You want to talk about hitting the lottery? Just contemplate how the universe had to unfold precisely as it has right up to conception, pregnancy and delivery for Enco et al. to experience life. And while our lives are a brief passage and mixture of grief, pain, despair, depression…Stop here Jake…our lives are also intensely satisfying, engaging, wondrous and interesting. Yes, interesting, we live in the most interesting time in human history. It appears to be on the precipice and about to collide with an immovable object and yet the sweetness of life can be enhanced as it has for so many soldiers in those pensive yet transcendental and existential moments. The advent of unimaginable (just a few centuries ago) insane technology, scientific discoveries and AI exploding onto scene and the curiosity about the universe and the outcome of so much conflict and so many existential issues. Consider how comparitively dull, yes dull, life had been century after quotidian century.
And the thing about the realization of no free will is the humility that emerges. A bit of a blow perhaps for the driven and successful individual whose accomplishments are no greater than the failings of the neerdowell. All of us can take some comfort in grasping the role of luck in our lives and the degree of control that we thought we had but never really did.
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