Free Will

[netmouse]

In the comments on yellowmouser's journal here and here I engage the question of whether or not free will is an illusion (I think not). Updated to add: J argues against me here.

What are your thoughts on the question? Is it an interesting question or purely a polemic debate?

Comments

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

Paul Graham wrote an excellent essay about philosophy, in which he pointed out that the reason these discussions so often end up fruitless is that words break if you push them too far. This is asking for way too much mileage from the words "free will is/is not an illusion".

yellowmouser starts out saying "free will" in the first post. Then, without seeming to notice he's changed the subject, he slides into talking about the environment constraining the output of the internal freedom to want this or want that. As if you must have infinite freedom or you have zero freedom.

As debating points go, I find "What are we responsible for?" to be vague but less vague than talking about free will. That seems to be what yellowmouser is really getting at anyway. I am a set of deterministic dominos, except to the degree that the dominos are influenced by randomness at the quantum level; but I am that system. The dominos and dice are me. Blaming that system is blaming me.