I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with the Pascal’s wager, but maybe not in the way you think you have

Implicit in your hypothesis is that “acting as if I don’t have free will” is:

a) Possible
b) Recognizably different from “acting as if I do have free will” (btw, in that situation, nobody would suggest they are “acting”)
c) A cause of bad or unpleasant results

What if one or more of those options are not true?

BTW, you can fit 8 angels on a pin and it takes 3 licks to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop.

But we do agree that this is largely irrelevant as it has no meaningful impact on our daily life *unless* we let it. We could certainly spend a lot of time dithering over it the same way we worry about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. But otherwise, I suggest that a variant of Pascal’s Wager applies. If I act as if I have free will and I don’t, nothing’s lost. If I act as if I don’t have free will, but I do, then I’ve surrendered my ability to use that free will. (the other two variants are left as an exercise to the reader). The net result is that I’m better off assuming I have free will than assuming I don’t.

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=103

While I agree that a linear time vector is one aspect of free-will/determinism, it’s not the only one.

A second, necessary for determinism, is the notion that cause and effect are purely Newtonian (i.e. that with identical initial conditions, the identical final condition will always recur).

A third, necessary only if you want to predict final conditions, is the ability to identify initial conditions with 100% accuracy (and I’m sure you know that Chaos Theory is all about our inability to do so).

A fourth, necessary only if we believe in free-will, is that some aspects of reality are NOT subject to physical laws but can act on physical components. That is, thoughts are things — a thought is independent from and not merely the result of biological processes but can, somehow, alter physical processes.

And I agree, since we can’t do something different, including become “unstuck” from time and going back and doing it differently, all of this is conjecture. And I further agree that even if we found out that we are 100% robots, I’m currently leaning in the direction that this knowledge would have no impact on our daily life.

I picked Hamlet intentionally for the theatrical element (and because I love Jasper Fforde’s novels). In the moment that Hamlet on stage (played by your favorite actor) is opining “To be or not to be”–the remaining scenes have yet to play out. So if you are an audience member, ignorant of how the play finishes, would you say that Hamlet has free will?

What I’m pointing out is that ‘free will’ and ‘determinism’ are clearly functions of linear vector time. You say that ‘it’s written’ and therefore like a childhood. Err, yeah, but if I could become ‘unstuck in time’, who’s to say I couldn’t go back and relive the childhood again? Perhaps even changing things? Or to put the creative process directly into it–when Shakespeare was writing Act III, he certainly had in his head how Act V would go. Is that therefore ‘determined’? Or is it only determined when the words hit the page, like in the film Stranger than Fiction?

As for the alternatives–I think the jump to predeterminism is directly a function of this linear vector time. We can extrapolate to a point ahead of the current moment and imagine looking back at ‘now’ the way we look back at the past. Therefore, it’s easy to imagine things already being ‘fixed’ in the way our past is fixed (though it really isn’t, but that’s a different topic). We may recognize that our ability to predict the future is horrible, implying that it may not be fixed, and therefore granting us free will. But in both discussions, we’re still on the vector.

Now this may be a moot discussion, because we can’t exactly get off the vector, therefore making it impossible and irrelevant in general to consider what that’s like. Considering string theory, for example, doesn’t help us decide on breakfast. But I personally like to consider “God” to be ‘off the vector.’ But that may simply because I like the idea of any Divine being something we truly cannot understand.

Clearly the question “Does Hamlet have free will?” is as valid as “Does Hamlet have 18?”

Since his (fictional) life, in its entirety, is narrated (which is, in a way, another way to say “Already passed”) free will has no relevance.

The idea that Hamlet could have been different is like asking you to go back and have a different childhood.

But, again, notice how your question takes “no free will” and leaps immediately to “determinism.”

Now, for all I know it IS all determined and we are not different than Hamlet. I don’t know. I just find it interesting how that’s the default alternate position to “free will.”

And, I like how you highlight the dithering over choices! Given how decisions seem to work — they show up when they do, not a moment sooner or later, and not of our own volition — it seems to undermine the value of all our rational consideration.

In “On Being Certain”, Burton suggests that the “feeling of knowing” is what stops our mental ping pong game and allows a “decision” to arise… and in “Stumbling on Happiness,” Gilbert is great at pointing out how inaccurate our decisions tend to be, and how we rarely consider how inaccurate they are (if we really paid attention to how bad we are at predicting the future, we may cut ourselves some slack and do less of it).

Determinism or no, free will or no, all that “back and forth” doesn’t seem to be helpful… as if we had the choice to not do it

Many people (I’m not saying you do this) suggest that a “lack of free will” equals predeterminism, but there’s no reason to think that lacking a will means our entire future is somehow written in the past. Chaos theory demonstrates clearly how small changes can lead to big effects, and there are so many factors in our lives, free will or no, that amount to small changes.

Think of it this way, if you repeatedly pour water or sand from a pitcher, it will never form the exact same pattern as it pours… so why would we think that without free will, everything is somehow determined?

Or, another angle on this: At the Quantum level, we see particles behaving in ways that are non-Newtonian, that seem to defy our notion of “cause”. Let’s extrapolate micro Quantum effects into our macro Newtonian experience. This is something I typically avoid, but in this case can be relevant: What if the non-causal activity of a single electron is all it takes to create one thought rather than another?

If something like that could occur, we have an argument against determinism as well as an alternate explanation for the motivating force other than “God.”

Your question points out one of my favorite cognitive biases — when we reach a question that we find, literally, unfathomable, we’ll fathom/create/invent an answer, any answer, to resolve the tension of being unable to know.

So, without a need for determinism, there’s no need to wonder whether we can change the script. No script is needed.

Tim — I get a sense of relief as well, along with the thought “Ah, good, there’s no way to screw it up, then!”

The question people want to know is: Does this sense of relief bring with it irresponsible action, abject laziness, or any manner of socially impolite or impolitic activity? (since they fear all of those in the wake of “no free will”)

T