An article at Mind Matters a few years ago lists and discusses four questions concerning free will that often arise in conversations on the topic.
Here are the four with a brief summary of the discussion. For the complete discussion see the article:
1. Has psychology shown that free will does not really exist? No, in fact the experiments of Benjamin Libet (1916-2007) show just the opposite. We've discussed these experiments on VP in the past, for instance here.
2. Is free will a logical idea? Yes, in fact denying it is often illogical. If all our decisions and beliefs are determined then our denial of free will is the inevitable product of our genes and childhood influences of which we may be only dimly, if at all, aware. We may think we have good reasons to disbelieve in free will, but whatever those reasons are they likely play a very minor role in our disbelief.
3. Would a world without free will be a better place? No, it'd be a dystopia in which there's no guilt, no moral obligation, no human dignity and in which people would inevitably come under the tyranny of totalitarian "controllers."
4. Are there science concepts that support free will? Yes, the concept of information is one. Check out the original article to see why.
It's interesting that the conviction that we're free seems almost inescapable. Even people who are determinists can't shake it.
Philosopher John Searle, for example, writes that, "We can't give up our conviction of our own freedom, even though there's no ground for it."
John Horgan, a writer for Scientific American, states that, "No matter what my intellect decides, I'm compelled to believe in free will."
So why do many people deny that we're free? Perhaps the overriding reason is that they have embraced a metaphysical materialism that eliminates from their noetic structure anything that can't be explained in terms of the laws of physics. Since those laws are strictly deterministic (setting aside the laws governing quantum mechanics), our intuition that we're free must be an illusion.
The next question we might ponder is why should anyone embrace materialism? Perhaps the answer to that is that the alternative, the belief that there are immaterial substances such as minds, puts one on a slippery slope which too easily leads to belief in supernatural entities like God and that belief is just not tolerable for many moderns.
Better to deny that we have free will, the thinking goes, than to open the door of our ontology to supernatural entities, especially God.
