What's obvious about free will?

PUBLISHER:

redshirt

Shaun Johnston:
In modern times we've made two revolutionary discoveries. One is, how changes in physical matter can be accounted for in terms of physical laws that can predict precisely what will happen next. Having given rise to science (how this can be studied) and industry (how it can be applied) this revolution is well under way.

The second revolution is, how emergence of species of living creatures can be accounted for in terms of them evolving from one another. This revolution, despite its promise of how much it could tell us about ourselves, remains stillborn through the mistaken application to it of principles coming out of the first revolution--reductive physicalism.

For this second revolution to advance it should be taken from under the wing of science and studied on its own terms. Tip: one recent product of evolution is creatures with minds. Minds are better studied through methods of the humanities than through those of science. Tell me, does this interest you?

Details: Written by Shaun Johnston Shaun Johnston; Published: January 27, 2012 January 27, 2012; Hits: 3326 3326

Let’s roll back the age-old debate on whether we have free will and start again, this time knowing we evolved.

What’s obvious?

First, we have to believe we’ve conscious free will. When we’re asked to make a considered choice or decision we become aware we’re free to choose between options that appear in consciousness. If we reject all such options as if we had no free will we can’t give a considered answer. And if we want a considered response from someone else most of us want that person to arrive at it through conscious mental operations. If they say, “That isn’t my conscious response, just a knee-jerk reaction,” we may say, “No, I want your considered opinion”—we assume they can manage the conscious mental operations of coming up with options, weighing those options, arriving at a conclusion, and expressing that conclusion in words. All philosophizing aside, the simple truth is we can’t function together without assuming we all have free will. Believing we don’t isn’t a practical option.

It’s also obvious that evolution is capable of “dealing in” the kind of intelligence, consciousness, creativity and free will we as a species possess. Non-living matter doesn’t display those capabilities. And merely being alive can’t account for them; other living creatures don’t seem to have them to the degree we do. The platform required for the exercise of those capabilities took hundreds of millions of years to develop. They evolved. Evolution can “deal in” conscious mental operations.

The best grounds for discussing free will therefore lie not in logic, nor in material science, but in figuring out what it means that evolution can "deal in" mental operations.

Why are our conscious mental capabilities so little dealt with in thinking about evolution? Does Positivism still proscribe reference to volition of any kind? If so, our evolutionary theories will remain divorced from common sense.