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Toma lo que Quieres, Dice Dios, y Págalo
A few days ago I ran across a quote from one Walter Kubilius, apparently a producer of science fiction from the early part of the glory days of sci fi. I never knowingly heard of him, but he said, it seems:
Free will is an illusion. It is synonymous with incomplete perception.
Well, I could hardly let that just go by.
I have been chewing the metaphysical coding on this issue of free will for a while now. Getting what seem to be useful insights. There seem to be four principal viewpoints, besides the inevitable “couldn’t care less” contingent:
The predestinarian claims that free will is not an issue, since God or Fate has decreed all things.
The determinist says that free will is not an issue, because the state of the universe at any given instant is predetermined by the initial arrangement of the Big Bang and the laws of nature.
The voluntarist chooses to believe that one’s will can determine outcomes.
The volitionalist considers that one’s will can affect outcomes.
Now, of course, the ideal reasoner – that would be me – sees the basic conflict. At the level of the universe, whether you assume natural laws operating on an initial state or a divine entity assumed to be omnipotent and omniscient and outside or above time, you pretty much have to assume that the whole shebang [how feminist physicists refer to the initial event?] is predetermined. You can perhaps allow some wiggle room based on uncertainty, but even if locally I can decide to shift to italic and back again, the universe will slide back into its groove; the stamping butterfly will not affect the shape of the galaxy a billion years hence.
But at the level of the sentient individual, things look different. I can watch the bees in their hive and convince myself that their intricately interlocking behaviors, their comb building and wagging dances and swarming, are all mechanical outcomes of their design and programming, their hardware and software, as it were. Turn the player piano on and sit back, out comes the music, the humming hive, the dance of the galaxies. But from my seat in the cockpit, it feels different. There are the indicator lights, the vibrating steering wheel, the cursor requesting user input. I make a choice, often what certainly feels like a spontaneous decision, choose a response. And my body, the world, seem to respond. In some cases – think of Joseph deciding to go ahead and marry merry Mary [that is a tribute to my grandfather and his speech patterns], or the Buonaparte’s deciding to have another baby – individual decisions have made a noticeable impact on the planet. Maybe I cannot determine the path of this skidding semi that is the universe – mine is not the only will on earth, and there is such a thing as inertia – but my choice seems to be effective. Maybe the effects of the butterfly’s stamp are damped out before they reach Andromeda, but the butterfly might just make a difference to the next Olympic Games.
Of course, it is impossible to determine with certainty how the two sides play out. Whatever the outcome of whatever the experiment, the hardcore determinist can always claim that outcome was preordained. And since we do not know the Big Bang state nor all the natural laws nor the perfect will of God, we must hold our peace. And the hardcore voluntarist can always say, “See, I chose to stick my tongue out at you. Show how that is written in the laws of God and the universe.” And since -again – we do not know the Big Bang state nor all the natural laws nor the perfect will of God, we must hold our peace.
Now neither Almighty God nor the stamping butterfly have given me knowledge of he Big Bang state and all the natural laws and the perfect will of God, but I choose to speak. I have maintained for a little while now that because in this universe there is Time, and because we can see only this small slice of the space-time continuum, we are not omniscient, and we can and will choose. Incomplete perception, as Kubilius states, makes choice – will – possible.
Yet because the timed universe IS in timeless eternity, and known in all its dimensions by eternal sentience, the outcome is in fact determined. Our choice is as determined as its effects. We have Free Will in the universe. But the universe and all in it is predestined.
Like most paradox, this rests simply on a semantic quirk. All that has been claimed by most serious thinkers is free WILL. The punter can go to the races and bet on whatever horse he may choose. His $50 on the nose of Fireplug will not change the outcome of the race. But he chose to make that bet. Who knows, he may win.
Most of us who do not think that long hear “Free Will” and figure that means we pays our money and we takes our choice AND THEN WE GET WHAT WE WANT. Talk about the triumph of hope over experience! I don’t know about you, but I have decided and requested and commanded and prayed – and daily I run up against man proposes, God disposes.
But Kubilius is wrong. There IS free will. He is right. Free will does come from incomplete perception. But what we don’t have is CONTROL – the spirit is willing.
