Imagine a typical day of yours. Since the start of the day, getting up from the bed up until now you have done hundreds of decisions making to give certain outcomes. Tiny decision makings. You have no doubt that you have made those decisions for yourself hence you would blame no-one but yourself if something goes wrong. Would you be surprised if I say some of the philosophers think otherwise? Some of them think, that whatever we think are not really our "free will" in action, but rather determined by the nature. Even before you were born!
What would this so-called determinism do to our way of thinking?
If such determinism is true,
Everything which happened in the past and will happen in the future are pre-determined- there is no point of blaming anyone, not even yourself if something is not working properly.
There is no true will for us. there is no way you can change the outcome. Although you think you are changing the outcome, that is already pre-determined by the laws of the nature.
If we understand the fundamental laws of nature, we should be able to predict the future.
And it appears it is not true at least for most of us. We really feel that we can change the outcome by conscious decision making. Imagine, in a world deterministic theory is considered true. A lawyer can argue his client, killed or raped someone solely because it was determined by the nature for it to happen. And the perpetrator can walk free. Such as society would be insane to live in.
There are some observations in the nature to show that deterministic world may not exist as per se. As an example, in quantum physics the outcomes of a same experiment can be differ each time even if the conditions of the experiment are the same. Outcomes can vary and can be only given as a probability. What determines of these outcomes are not yet known. (some deterministic argue that still there are layers which we haven't explored hence, quantum physics itself doesn't argue that non-deterministic nature of the universe)
Example:
Imagine a physical experiment with certain x conditions are met, the outcome will be only A in a deterministic world.
In a quantum experiment, although the certain x conditions are same, the outcome can be A, B and C with certain probability without clear explanation why that is so.
Determinists (such as Einstein) argue there are certain rules we haven't yet understood to explain outcomes of a quantum experiment.
Let's think that deterministic nature is not true and there is true randomness which effect, the causes and effects of the nature. It seems that when we lean towards non-determinism and true randomness, we can explain some of the phenomena we naturally see. Life seems to be a more of a random walk rather than a deterministic one. Even though some of our life events seems to be disastrous, they may eventually be the best things happened to us and vice versa. It is really unpredictable to determine what happens for you tomorrow depend on what you determine to do today. Yet, deterministic and non-deterministic both of these argue that we cannot have a true will.
Determinists argue that our thoughts and actions are determined by nature.
Non-determinists argue that our thoughts and actions are subjected to randomness.
Both these arguments don't agree with a free will, outside the nature and randomness.
It is chilling to think that there is a possibility that free will may not exist.
What are your thoughts of a free will?
Thank you for reading deterministic world and free will.
You may also like to read the boy the dog and the mathematics
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