(For previous posts in this series, see here.)

The possibility of the existence of Lucretian random swerves that destroy determinism received a boost in the early twentieth century with the advent of quantum mechanics and its associated uncertainty principle that eliminated strict classical determinism.

Believers in free will seized on the inherent randomness built into these newly discovered laws of nature to argue that free will could exist and manifest itself at the quantum level. However, as our understanding of quantum mechanics has increased, few scientists seriously accept this possibility anymore because of the many problems such a model has. After all, random processes are, well, random, meaning that they are not subject to being controlled. If indeterminancy at the quantum level is what undermines determinism, what we would have is not free will but what we might call ‘random will’, in the sense that we would be acting according to the random outcomes of quantum level phenomena over which we have no control. Furthermore, while individual quantum events may be completely indeterminate, they do obey laws that enable us to accurately predict statistical outcomes, so these events cannot be truly free. Free will as popularly conceived does not consist of random or statistically predictable behavior but of the ability to deliberate and determine specific outcomes. No mechanism has been proposed to suggest how that might occur.
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(For previous posts in this series, see here.)

Defining what is meant by free will is not easy. In a loose sense it implies a denial of strict determinism, in which all our actions are completely determined by the past and the immediate environment we find ourselves in. The philosopher John Searle describes free will as the belief “that we could often have done otherwise than we in fact did.” In other words, although I am currently sitting at my desk typing, I think I could just as easily stand up and sing or hop around the room or do any other seemingly spontaneous act. My decision to not do so and continue typing seems like a conscious, freely chosen decision that is not entirely pre-ordained. The catch is that it is hard to reject the alternative hypothesis that all the options I considered were already determined by my history and the external stimuli of the moment, as was also my decision as to which option to choose.
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(For previous posts in this series, see here.)

The philosopher Gilbert Ryle (1900-1976) didn’t think much of Rene Descartes’ idea of a disembodied mind, using its free will, acting as some kind of captain of the body, and coined the derogatory term ‘the Ghost in the Machine’ for it.

There is a doctrine about the nature and place of minds which is so prevalent among theorists and even among laymen that it deserves to be described as the official theory… The official doctrine, which hails chiefly from Descartes, is something like this. With the doubtful exception of idiots and infants in arms every human being has both a body and a mind. Some would prefer to say that every human being is both a body and a mind. His body and his mind are ordinarily harnessed together, but after the death of the body his mind may continue to exist and function. Human bodies are in space and are subject to mechanical laws which govern all other bodies in space… But minds are not in space, nor are their operations subject to mechanical laws…

…Such in outline is the official theory. I shall often speak of it, with deliberate abusiveness, as “the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine.” (quoted by Stephen Pinker, The Blank Slate, p. 9)

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It’s been awhile since I inflicted on this blog’s readers a long multi-part series of posts but I have decided to look at the question of free will, something that I have not addressed before, and this is such a weighty and controversial subject that it requires a somewhat lengthy discussion.

It used to be thought that what distinguished living things from inanimate matter was the presence of some mysterious life force, an élan vital. Modern biology has dispelled that myth of a vital essence, replacing it with the understanding that biological systems are nothing more than the working out of the laws of physics and chemistry on atoms and molecules. But there are some forms of vitalistic thinking that are still extant because people tend to want to cling on to the idea that there is something special about living things, especially human beings.
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