Aren't you the cheerful one today. Of course, I am not turning on my television because I am terrified of what new travail the news will impose on me. I hate answering the telephone and often don't. I hate opening my mail and often won't. Okay, I am not so cheerful myself.

Rather than leave you empty of comments, I thought I would throw this one in:

You don't have to expand your search for the limits of free will to the range of things that we could do if we were different sorts of creatures from the creatures we are.

I have explained it this way. Life is like a condensing cone, a funnel, if you will, wide at the top and very narrow at the bottom. In the beginning with have endless opportunities. We can be anything we want to be, but each decision we make limits the range of our subsequent decisions.

When I was 16, I could have made the decision to become a doctor. When I was 25, I could still turned my life around and become a doctor, if I were really motivated to do so.

At 62, almost 63, that choice is behind me. It would take more money than I have, and more time than I have left, to complete the training required to become a doctor, so being a doctor is simply no longer an option for me.

And that's what life is like. Each decision we make limits the future range of possible decisions. No decision of which I am aware expands prospects rather than contracts them because life is a process of exclusions rather than inclusions.

I became the universe once, so there's that.

Alan: well, i hoped to make the strong case against the idea of "endless opportunities" as you put it. That's the myth I wanted to debunk. They aren't endless at any age, not even remotely close to "many". They are a finite and predictable set, among which we read subtle differences as highly significant. Consider the Martian POV: these bipeds put on uniforms and go to a building for 8+ hours and fuss over people in beds, run machines, etc. To the Martian, all medical career choices are initially marked by only minor differences. Call it the Caregiver human. Even more so for careers that take us into office buildings. The Martian would see no immediate difference between a risk assessment officer, a secretary, and a human resources director. They would lump them in as "Darks Coats and Goes to a Building" humans. I agree that our choices narrow as we get older, but the differences are not of type but rather of time investment opportunity, or flexibility of our aging brains limitations. The choices remain profoundly predictable and narrowly defined. In fact, your example underscores my point: if they were initially "endless" then a mere 30-40 years would hardly make a dent in them. Finally, to me this has nothing to do with cheerful, though I fully understand why most folks think I am gloomy or constricted in my feeling, or imagination, about human beings. I still feel soaring passion and all manner of Big Feelings. And i have a strong committment to persoanl responsibility and freedom of "choice". But the miniscule scale of our ambitions and abilities seems manifest to me, and the Big Idea – Free Will – has no objective reality or substance. Thanks!

Nanatehay: So that was you! Next time, tell the infinite Greg says 'hey", ok? Thanks.

It was predetermined that you would write this post.

I'm not sure what not being able to choose a non-human activity has to do with anything. We are humans. By definition, what we can do are human activities possible at this moment in time. Consider our very, very distant ancestors. Do we have an ancestor who would be classified as "human," but didn't use tools? At that point, using tools would be a non-human activity. Or take homo erectus. Was homo erectus capable of abstract mathematical thought? I don't know. I barely am myself. A million years ago, the limits of homo erectus were the limits of human activity. That doesn't preclude evolution extending the boundries of humanity. We might get that rhino tusk yet.

Especially if one discounts that concept of humans having a soul, basically our brains are relatively complex electro-chemical processors. If so, we are governed by quantum mechanics. That means probablility, not certainty. It's not the traditional idea of free will, but it's not predetermination either.

Or am I completely missing the point (the probability of such is likely)?

Stim: No, you are right to wonder how this relates. While it is considered one of the more powerful arguments against Free Will, it can seem either obtuse, or at best oblique to our real-world experience of "choosing". But in fact the idea of Free Will has legs or it doesn't, and this argument is an excellent demonstration of the emptiness of the idea.

We grant all manner of supernatural characteristics to Free Will. The idea of endless opportunities is a fanciful idea based on subjective sensation of the infinite, of the siren call in the open-ended cone of time – not to mention the very American idea of endless possibilities. We also grant ourselves great powers, to overcome difficulties, invent brand new things, and imagine startling and unique ideas.

These "magical thinking" ideas are embedded in the concept of Free Will. Each are demonstrably false: very few people become President, the gulf between poor and rich has never been more dramatic and thus limiting to ambition, and almost all ideas are re-working of familiar themes, tropes – and comprised of familiar materials. Stripped of these potent add-ons, Free Will is rather anemic. Even though it's the postulate that we have absolute freedom of choice (which depends on having near-perfect knowledge of all of the choices, and when did that ever happen?), such an absolute is completely alien to day-to-day life. We make contingent choices under limited time frames, with inadequate information.

But even pretending that all conditions are perfect – perfect knowledge, plenty of time to choose, a society that permits almost anything – my case for human behavior/reality as a limiter kicks in, and it's a doozy. If, as I assert, we can only behave as human biology allows, then we are strictly limited in our choices. And the implications are direct, and frightening to people of faith: if we can prove that certain kinds of criminals have a special kind of correctable brain chemistry, then in what sense were they "sinning", that is, responsible for their criminal choices?

In the limited case of local decision-making, sure, they are culpable -- but if a drug takes away their, say, arsonist quality, what is our moral obligation as a society? Put another way, if children are tested for it and given corrective drugs to prevent the need to commit arson, what about those in prison, who are "punished" for chemistry they did not "choose" and could not control, on their own? What are we to make of the whole of the Torah, in this light? What is sin? What is crime?

How about "I am damned well determined to have free will, therefore I can." Doesn't it really all come down to perception? Didn't Mandela, locked in a cage, have more free will over his mind than my daughter does sitting in front of the tube watching America's Next Top Model or True Blood?

It seems you're arguing against the illusion there are no limits to choices, and I would join you in that. But the fact that the illusion is unrealistic shouldn't obviate the choices remaining in the narrow end of Alan's cone, even should the choice come down to being or not being. I guess one could argue that even this choice depends on antecedents such as cultural conditioning, religious or philosophical belief, state of mind or even simply an ability to withstand pain.

I chose to read this post partly because I knew it would be clever and perhaps even brilliant and certainly thought-provoking and...oh, what the hell. I chose to read it because knowing it existed compelled me to.

Matt: and because you are a curious ape, like me. I readily grant the illusion has power, and operational free will is indistinguishable from a genuine, thorough-going, philosophically defensible absolute Free Will, at least on a day-to-day basis. But the fraudulence of that absolute Free Will could not be more serious. As we mature, as a species, our knowledge about the contingent, relativistic aspects of choice will transform our laws, our religions, and our core ethics and morality. In say, about 500 years, maybe. I'm getting a jump start on it, is all.

Could free will just be the choice to try or to not try? Ultimate success or failure may not be the person's choice. Probably in a lot of cases, given the vagaries of fate and skill levels. It seems a sad thing to not try just because your goal has been deemed impossible.

And I get that body slamming a car on the freeway to try and change the laws of physics is a bad idea. I get that pointed out to me a lot.

Phyliss45: Did you get out of the car and body slam them? Very dangerous, methinks. But I agree: always try. Always endeavor to persevere. Always use critical thinking and decide intelligently. We function better inside the illusion if we embrace rationality and the work of figuring things out.

Didn't Skinner get his knuckles rapped for tossing that idea on the table?

The crux of the argument against free will emerges from not how may possibilities there are but what made someone choose one possibility over any other. The act of choosing is conditioned by the the expectation of a particular result and that expectation is conditioned by previous experience and a fixed understanding. The key is that no one would want to make a bad choice and our knowledge of what would be good or bad is fixed. To purposely make a bad choice with an understanding that it is bad is insanity.

Jan: Good point. This is all shaped -- the expectations, the way we make choices as if links in a chain -- by the limits of what we can actually do, what we feel we must do. An ant chooses to go left or right, responds to the stick we put in its path. We can see it hesitate, choose, move on. But do we think an ant has free will? Can an ant do other than what an ant can do? Are we any different?

Even when we make "bad" or "insane" choices, they are chosen from our human possibilities list. The "Free" in Free Will is an uncompromising word. We are no more free to choose a non-human thing than an ant can choose to wash his elephant trunk in stardust.

@Jan - So is creativity an illusion, as well? Isn't creativity choosing a course beyond any known or expected result?

Greg,

At first I thought this was a poetic approach to the age-old question of free will v determinism. but as the thread threads out, I'm thinking, Wow, it's actually a 'refutation of free will'. This quote of yours is a classic example of "begging the question", that is, basing your conclusion on an (untested) premise: "A wide perspective is all it takes to doubt free will. An attempt to do something unique, original, and not-human proves it is illusory." That's like saying the car is upside sown in the ditch because it turned over, begging the question. Of course a human cannot "choose" to fly on his own power to the moon. But, as Aristotle tumbled to, and as we've known for 2500 years, humans, and only humans--not rocks or bears or lemmings--can make Moral Choices. I had a philosophy professor long ago, a student of Wittgenstein, who (playfully) destroyed determinism with this: A bank teller finds himself with a gun to his head, and a demand from the robber to give up the loot. He does. A Determinist wanders onto the scene and says, Aha, Determinist outcome. The bank teller shakes his head and says, "No, that was the most free choice I'll ever make." Humans, and only humans, have a moral sense, and that's where--and ONLY where--the discussion of free will has had a basis since Aristotle. Hitler CHOSE to try to exterminate Jews; Churchill CHOSE to oppose him. You have choices; don't be so glum
Best regards,
Scottie

BadScot: I'm neither glum nor denying that we have choices. Nor is my position begging the question, as I see it.

The blinders we have on are inevitable, given that we have to live our lives. We function as if we can make choices, freely and without limit. But it is illusory, nonetheless. We are not free to do any other than what humans can do. Morality is "real" insofar as it is a social contract between persons, and ethics are "real" insofar as I can decide how I should personally behave, from among my limited choices. I can use criteria based on my good, another's good, and the greater good. Accepting of course that "good" is in itself impossible to define in absolute terms. But the realm in which these choices exist in pathetically small.

All of morality is relative, all ethics are subjective, and there isn't a damn thing we can do about that. If you want to define these things as somehow universal, or having an independent existence, and thus not limited to human culture or biology, you are welcome to do so, but that requires either abstracted Platonic or supernatural "beliefs", and I say no thanks. Those imaginary solutions were sorted out and dismissed by serious thinkers long ago.

It's the "absolute" that I wrestle with here, and the argument I make is based on smarter brains than mine. The term Free Will as philosophy has defined it is close to an absolute, as a construct. Free means just that: freedom, without compromise imposed by pre-defined and arbitrary limits. And it is patent that no such absolute does or can exist.

And we are most certainly not the only moral beings. Preposterous from a logical perspective. Do deer or bats become mass murderers? all animal behavior, like our animal behavior, is proscribed by and defined by an inherent species-specific "morality", whether it conforms to our human version or not. Morality for human beings is arguably the most nuanced, complex, and even noble, but it is also debased, imperfect and too often wholly absent. My theoretical Martian, if sufficiently alien so that it could not immediately relate to fore-brained bipeds, would have to observe all animal life here for a long time to even understand the argument that we had "superior" or "purer" morality than a dog or a bison. And the longer they looked at us the more likely they would deem the dog our moral superior.

And finally, animal behavior studies have shown in the last few decades many species who demonstrate altruism, self-sacrifice, co-operation, bond loyalty, and decisions based on the "less suffering" option. Bonobos and ravens, most notably.

We suffer from the illusion of central position. It's not tragic or depressing. It's just the truth.

@Matt
I paint, I sculpt, I write poetry, I think up interesting devices and new processes, I am an industrial designer, both of my parents were artists, I am 85 years old and I have been doing this for about 82 years. I know about creativity. It is not something mysterious. It is basically pattern making and close observation to discover new patterns, abstracting some essentials and applying them to other areas where this may result in surprises. The choices to do this come from past experience and the experience of others. It is logical and sensible just like any other activity that requires choices.

@BadScot
There is nothing extra special about moral choices. They are usually made out of previous training. They are not given by gods or spooky spirits. If they were inherent in humanity there would be no need for the Ten Commandments since it would be something we could not avoid. It has recently been confirmed (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110808152220.htm) that chimpanzees make socially moral choices. I have no idea what the morality of an octopus, a butterfly, a starfish or a cockroach might consider moral and I cannot say what their social life dictates to them. And neither can you.

Greg

My initial reaction to this post was best summed up in Alan Milner’s first sentence. But then more came and I took started to see the essay as a more serious project.

The blinders we have on are inevitable, given that we have to live our lives. We function as if we can make choices, freely and without limit. But it is illusory, nonetheless. We are not free to do any other than what humans can do.

Just trying to understand this. Been a very long while since college (one of my majors was philosophy) and I am having a bit of trouble.

This quote seems a bit gratuitous to me—in fact, more than just a bit.

I have personally never functioned as though I can make choices freely and without limit; and quite honestly, I cannot think of anyone I know who thinks that way either. I would have a very difficult time identifying with someone who did.

I think it obvious that I can do only those things that humans can reasonably do; I understand and acknowledge that I must “choose” within those constraints; and almost everyone I know seems to be operating within those parameters also.

Your overall argument seems cogent…but obviously I am missing an important ingredient. I’d appreciate it if you would address the specifics of the concerns I just mentioned and we’ll see if that gets me on track.

I'm starting to get irritated by the way this discussion is evolving, so I'll just make this comment and then go away. It seems we're now concerned with definitions, which, as is evidenced by the differences already on display in this thread, are almost as subjective as one man's preference for brunettes over blondes. You say tomay-to, I say tomah-to, somebody else I'm sure, just to assert his or her independence or to demonstrate his or her superior learning by citing some esoteric source as an authority, will say to-my-to. And who is to say who is right. And who, unless some serious chips are at stake, gives a big cahoot?

I say to Greg, OK, maybe it is all an illusion. At least we have the freedom to choose our illusions. Maybe that's why Big Pharma and the drug cartels are doing such a booming business. If you're suggesting there are certain right choices, which would mean really no choices but certain right courses of action -to save the species, for example - then you must agree with Skinner's posit that in order to survive our species will have to take a long hard look at what we now hold sacred as freedom and even personal dignity. And since we can't trust ourselves we'll have to turn the controls over to IRobot. And I don't cotton to science fiction much, so I'll let it go at that.

To Jan, I say no doubt Mozart and Beethoven used every antecedent they had access to in order to compose their music. But it would seem that by your example, anybody with the same access to the same antecedents and possessing the same skill levels could have composed the same music. And you know that's silly.

This may be one reason I get quickly bored with philosophy. Wasn't it Whitehead who said it all comes down to semantics? I've never been quick with puns and other clever language tricks. Maybe I did make the wrong choice coming to this post. But...wait. It wasn't a choice, was it? ;-|

The Buddha has an opinion (he's been hanging around my house a lot lately):

I don’t believe when we say, “everything is illusion” means that nothing exists. I do believe it means we’re living from what our minds have projected and perceived, rather than seeing the way things truly are. Buddhism is very much into seeing the way things are. It seems that Buddha’s understanding of inner awakening was seeing directly the way things are. Buddha taught there are not as many problems in the realm of reality as our mind is tirelessly inventing.--

Ron Rink, http://www.buddhistbelief.com/buddhist-belief/buddhist-belief-everything-is-illusion

@Matt
How would you gauge the common possession of the skills of Beethoven or Mozart? You seem so secure in the belief that they are to be found everywhere but somehow miss a vital element and therefore lost to greatness.

@Kate
How can you know what reality may be? One does not meet with it by rolling one's eyes 180 degrees and contemplating one's fore-brain. We use our very limited senses to grasp as much of the torrent of the input to our senses as we can tolerate without going insane and filter out almost all of it because there is just too much to grasp. Thus, with the tiny bits we can handle we construct our individual realities and the only way we can have any consensus is that evolution has granted each of us with similar systems. But bats and whales and honeybees, to mention just a few, have a totally different way to sense the world and their realities are quite different from ours. And even over the space of a mere century or two human reality has changed radically and no doubt will keep changing at an ever rapid pace (if we manage to survive) so the universe will be quite different in a matter of a few years. There is no final reality. We construct it and revise it continuously.

@Jan - I wouldn't dream of "gauging" anything regarding the music of Mozart or Beethoven. Gauging music? Are you serious? You speak like an engineer: ...pattern making and close observation to discover new patterns, abstracting some essentials and applying them to other areas where this may result in surprises. The choices to do this come from past experience and the experience of others. It is logical and sensible just like any other activity that requires choices.

You say there's nothing mysterious in creativity? As you've taken the liberty to suggest that I "seem so secure" in certain beliefs I'll suggest that you started it. Is music simply "pattern making?" You seem quite secure in that presumption. I've read some of your poems. They've moved me. Interesting patterns may hold my attention, even dazzle me. But it takes heart to move me. Did your creation of your poems involve simply rearranging patterns, or did something else enter into the process? You often take a humble tack, especially about your writing, so I would expect you to respond by saying that, yes, your poetry is simply moving patterns of words around until they seem right. But I feel heart in your poems. If this came about unconsciously then mystery played a hand in its creation, no?

And what's so wrong with mystery, anyway?

I think you're being a little arrogant here, Greg. Guess I should have exercised my glorious free will and read your first OS post instead.

Obviously some here, Greg, have not done the hard work of studying philosophy, such as you, and this zinger from the Fab Finn, San: "@BadScot
There is nothing extra special about moral choices. They are usually made out of previous training." He then offeres the nonest of sequiturs: "I have no idea what the morality of an octopus, a butterfly, a starfish or a cockroach might consider moral and I cannot say what their social life dictates to them. And neither can you."

Duh! That's what I said, although about bears and lemmings and such. People, Humans, and only they, can make MORAL choices. Geez.

Listen to the approaching rumbling of the Stambede of the Ill read.

Jan: I like the tenor of your engagement here.

Frank: and I appreciate the thoughtful comment, Frank. I readily admit the quality of obviousness to the premise that human reality limits us. But when grappling with the enlarged scope of a great and subtle idea as Free Will all essential premises or omissions must be viewed with fresh eyes. What might seem to you and me as a mild mental exercise, examining a banal truth like human limitations, is trouble itself for the majority of our American neighbors, for whom much rests on the question. If human limits are the outer marker, alone, then what need for a god?

But if we can tap into wilder, invisible power – or just imagine that we can, and ascribe all good outcomes to it – then we can exaggerate the sensation of Free Will, as opposed to bland old contingent decision-making, the only kind we really have. The power we give ourselves when we do this might be illusory, but is so effective it is uber-placebo. In fact the only one I know of that suffers not at all from our knowing it's a trick of the mind. That we are not really vikings on the rocks of infinity, able to be and do all, from berserker confidence alone, doesn't stop any of us from convincing ourselves, as the need arises, that we CAN do it, sail our dragon of ambition and desire right up the fjord of obstruction, as it were.

But when all is said and done, we have behaved like humans. Simply bought our own Denny's franchise, composed a symphony, engineered a new metal whatsis, or just held on to the only really good job we ever found. Variety in our choices, of odd and minor types, do not constitute other than end-most cladistic capillaries on the tree of human evolution, no matter how fancy the title or fashionably innovative it is. If we engineer our way to the stars we'll simply be expanding the busy ore smelt, forging and jiggering around we started as the Ur and the Aztec.

This is not sad to me.

Would we want God-like power, to declare quits with this world, to step sideways in time, to sign up for new rules of physics? Hmm, wait, I think I would! But alas I can't have those. Nonetheless, almost certainly, if we don't blow up, burn or poison ourselves to death, we will continue to create ever more interesting and complex things. So what if some aliens might never see us as much more than elaborately manipulative automatons, like termites with whizzing and zizzing metal hives. WE know what it all signifies, right?

Matt: I don't see the connection between my case about Free Will and B.F. Skinner. Just because it is illusory does not mean we have to be less effective at decision-making, Rational evaluation actually helps me. I am more balanced, careful, and humble about the paucity of my knowledge in so many areas. But it's the only way to have a fair and accurate ranking of what I do know, what I have worked at with rigor. In short, recognizing how empty the idealized grandeur of Free Will is liberating, and frees me to keep my head down, and do good work. I assume examining issues and framing cases is going to miss or chafe some people. Too simple, too deep, too polysyllabically expressed, too clumsily supported – I am prone to all of this and more.

It's why I settle for short declarative sentences that move most of my readers from point A to point B. This is a kind of rapidfire polemic in style, but some of the readers will get the telegraphed points and fill in the blanks. From Dennet to Bennet to Harris to Buber to Heraclitus to Russell to Emerson to Spinoza,there are threads of what I write here.

And of course you chose to read it, 'cause we're pals, eh? Raise yer pint!

Kate: A lot of what is telegraphed here is Buddhist, and deep and wide, too. My thesis is that compassion is the topic that bears fruit, not some absolutist, man-on-a-cliff of moral erectitude like Free Will. Lurking behind most serious devotees of Free Will is the Red Queens nervous executioner. Ready to punish terminally those deemed a Bad Chooserer.

Compassion. That's the criteria ultima, the biological imperative for all co-operative societies, the final test of our would-be ethical, divided selves. The monkey mind makes shit up. Shh, quiet mind, listen, observe. Choice, when exercised by the Buddhists here in the Hudson Valley, seems a seamless extension of contemplation and right action. Not some pumped up superpower, prone to sin or sanctification alike. I prefer the steady-on of Buddhists and Buddhism, and it's consistent with careful observation. Careful observation and rational thinking reveals no real evidence for an ultimate Free Will. I can live with that.

Jan: Almost all of art and creativity is some kind of engineering, Deliberate decisions, based on the materials, the audience in mind, the use, the esoteric ideas that interest us, the passion and even frenzy we feel about form and color.

I look at that last, accurate sentence and read nothing but glorious human abilities, maximized, set to purpose. I don't see a diminishing of the infinite or the sacred at all in how we are predictable and limited on some level. I still observe transitory but powerful feelings that some works can engender, to be sure, as simply real feelings, if not as magical business.

Matt: You make a valid point about music transcending mere "pattern-making". This is subjective beauty, the ineffable and terrible beauty that art and manufacture of many kinds can inspire in us. But the pattern-identifying, the deliberate construction and re-working of familiar materials, the engineering of all types are no LESS a part of it, right up to and all the way through our transcendent experience. We can aim transcendence at anything. When it occurs in response to art we can turn it into the mystical or we can resonate reality. I prefer the latter.

OK, this is the spewing of someone who' s never read, let alone contemplated, Aristotelian Moral Philosphy, or Aquinas, Bacon, Locke, Hume, Paine, Madison, etc.: "And we are most certainly not the only moral beings. Preposterous from a logical perspective. Do deer or bats become mass murderers? all animal behavior, like our animal behavior, is proscribed by and defined by an inherent species-specific "morality", whether it conforms to our human version or not."

Nothing here worth discussing from that point on. Good luck. Read some Philosophy for goodness sakes. Enrich your life, rather than complain about your so-called impotence in making a 'free choice'. Do some work.

BadScot: I don't do online fights. We've exchanged ideas, good enough. Thanks.

I'm a sucker for magic. I gladly consciously suspend my critical faculties and my disbelief if the cues suggest I'm in for one helluva show. I know the performance involves tedious drill and practice, because I've been there, done that, but even then, a magic bubbles up during a good performance, and a lot of that has to do with its affect on the audience. Composing is more intuitive. Maybe an analysis of Mozart's brain would reveal intricate scientifically explainable patterns during composition, but that to me would be just as magical as the intuitive contribution.

What's the saying that a physician can't truly appreciate the flush of a maiden's cheeks, as he's apt to shift into diagnostic mode? That flush to a layman such as me can be pure magic, too.

I don't believe the magic comes from Mars or Gawd or the Debbil. But intuition still hold plenty of mystery for me. Did I say I like mysteries, too? Yup. I'm an easy receiver of the arts. Hell, I'm a pushover for a halfway decent artisan.

If art were not out of some inner competence with patterns it would not be repeatable as a creative engine. Obviously there is an identifiable and characteristic style to both Beethoven and Mozart because I can sniff out the author even though I never have heard the piece before. There is nothing "mere" about recognizing and utilizing patterns. We live in creativity by formulating templates and applying them in unusual ways. Mathematics is all patterns. Yes, the damn poetry and music and sculpture and whatever is created out of an active dialogue wherein words and sounds and emotions and the sense of touch and color and materials and rhythm and odd coincidences of integrations take possession of an active mind and somehow create themselves into something wild and strange. Been there, done that. It's still no different than good engineering. Done that too. And it's repeatable. Heart and emotions and whatever the hell you want to call them are patterns as well. I can throw colored inks on wet canvas and discover photographic images of people, cities, landscapes, odd exotic creatures ....all from the same strange shapes and mixed colors. It's a technique I work with I call recognition art and I study these patterns for weeks or months and finally resolve their accidental patterns by wiping away distractions. The illustration for my current blog was made that way. I didn't create the figure of death the harvester. I recognized it from random patterns. But I had to have seen other illustrations of this symbol of death to have made mine. That's the way the mind works. And it has nothing to do with God or extra-dimensional influences. Minds are created through evolution to keep bodies alive and reproducing. And the inner working of all that nervous tangle has consciousness as one of it's minor facets. And that facet, overflowing with hubris, loudly proclaims its supremacy while the rest of the damned thing grins and lets the fool blather and jerks it around with a string through its nose.

Greg, thank you for your response. However, I think that “explanation” may have raised more questions than the original post.

But rather than side-track a thesis you’ve apparently explored in your own mind at great length, let me ask a few direct questions—and if you could respond to them with as much specificity as possible, I would appreciate it.

Your thesis seems to rest on two specific premises:

One: The very, very obvious limitations to what humans can and cannot do physically is NOT apparent to most people. Obviously you are of the opinion that MOST PEOPLE seem to think there are no limitations.

Two: Since we cannot do everything—that means we do not have free-will. You seem to be saying that since we cannot transport ourselves physically to a moon of Saturn, we do not have free-will. You have not made clear why you think that unless we are essentially omnipotent, we cannot be considered to possess free-will.

Obviously, I disagree strongly with both those contentions—which is why my initial post called them “gratuitous and self-serving.”

So—why do you think MOST PEOPLE are oblivious to the physical limitations humans have. Nearly as I can tell, MOST PEOPLE are as aware of those limitations as you or I—and are perfectly willing to acknowledge those limits.

And why do you suppose it necessary for us to be GODS in order to have free-will.

Would it make sense to invent a word called free-will-lite—and use that to mean what humans are able to do within the confines of human limitations?

I do suspect, by the way, that the sub-text of your argument is contained in two comments you offered in your “explanation”:

But if we can tap into wilder, invisible power – or just imagine that we can, and ascribe all good outcomes to it…

…and…

If human limits are the outer marker, alone, then what need for a god?

If your thesis here actually is: Theists overdo the nonsense that we have free-will as an explanations for the often laughable inconsistencies of their theistic scenarios!…

…then I think you should say so.

I could agree with that in spades and without reservation.

Once again, the class clown requests specificity: "and if you could respond to them with as much specificity as possible, . . ."

Why should others have to respond in specificity, when you adamantly refuse to respond in specificity to all request to do so from numerous members of OS, regarding doing the best he can with the cars he's been dealt - excuse me while I regurgitate)?

As you troll the religions boards, did it ever occur to you that you consider yourself THE god above all reproach?

"took started "

frank, could you an atheist/agnostic, possibly be speaking in tongues?

Whatever I might think of Mr Apisa's opinions on other matters I must concur that free will does not imply absolute powers. It does imply the ability to make decisions without being restricted by the consequences of the decision and that strikes me as totally psychotic. I cannot imagine why anybody would find that freedom at all inviting.

I don't think frank is TOTALLY psychotic - I think his problem is a passive-aggresive personality disorder, and that he feels that there should be NO gods before him, but him.

Whatever you say, Jan, is unequivocally true for you, obviously, and not one whit of what I or, I suspect, anyone else might say that in the slightest way deviates from your conclusions would make a dent of the merest sort in any of them. You must feel rather comfortable to have figured it all out. I wish I could envy you that.

The issue of all-powerful is a miscue, for which I am responsible in part. That exercise in my post is to point out how absurd some ideas are when taken to a logical extreme. In the western world, human beings routinely feel their fate is in their hands, that ehy can do what they like. They simply CHOOSE to live predictable, normal lives. It's that actual reality – and how predictable and limited it truly is – I want to look at with fresh eyes. Yes, we have "power" over so much of our immediate time and space; now to understand my point, localize all of that. In other words, all of those "choices" are within a much narrower range than we realize usually. In a meaningful sense they are pre-determined, a fixed set of the human choices. OK, fine, so Free Will is Limited Freedom within an array that makes our choices predictable. At what point does Human become more "free" than Ant? Is it scale? Complexity of choices? or will another creature come along so complex and powerful that they see Ant and Human on a continuum, more or less the same bio automatons?

On the parallel Facebook discussion for this article, Elaine mentioned a twin study recently that showed how twins raised apart ended up making similar choices, to a fine-grained level. That twin study is one of many, of many kinds, that suggest the "rut" we are in. From down in the rut we imagine a rich, complex, anything's-possible life, moving forward. Acquire a new perspective and we are seen as a pattern of life, one that does reliable things: builds cities, moves from those city cores, assembles weekly in circular groups, throws spherical objects, sits for long periods, couples in small wooden structures, repeat, repeat. The twin study reveals intricate behavior can play out over time in similar ways, with different external stimuli, suggesting our biology wants what it wants.

Your mention of the two or three stories put me in mind of something Carl Lindstrom says in Willa Cather's "O Pioneers": "Isn't it queer: there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before." Certainly, a kind of fatalism, a determinism, obscured by forgetting, pervades the novel.

The British philosopher Galen Strawson has argued that there is no free will, and, thus, no moral responsibility. He points out that we did not create the conditions that make us us, that motivate our actions and desires, and that if we do identify such a condition, there would be a prior one--a kind of infinite regression. Still, people willingly sacrifice on behalf of a vision of how things ought to be, even though that vision is susceptible to fallibility. People are willing to exercise self-restraint in order that justice prevails.

I think you are right to distinguish between free will as an operational ability and free will as a truth about the reality of the human condition. But I wonder: isn't an operational ability enough? What difference the purity of the source? The fact is people do assume moral responsibility, do choose perspectives, positions, and attitudes, even if they are driven by hidden emotions or evolutionary imperatives. I guess I'm saying that it's possible that free will is real even if it isn't really real, that people are the efficient causes, anyway, of their actions. To think otherwise is a kind of neo-Calvinism without the hope of saving grace.

I think I'd also say that originality is possible. I understand that, say, the range of what we can do with language is limited by limitations of the phonemes the human articulatory system can produce, and that limits the words we can create, and the parameters of syntax limit the ways we can combine them. But within that limitation originality is possible: No novel like "Moby Dick" was ever written until Melville wrote it; nothing like Walden was written until Thoreau wrote it. These works are sui generis. If I knew art or music better I'd bet I could extend the examples.

Thank you for this post, Greg. You are a stimulating writer as well as a thoroughly accomplished one

Jerry: Thank you for your kind and thoughtful comment. We are on the same page on most of this. I distinguish the operational reality of free will from the important concept of Free Will that is both a legitimate philosophical idea and a cornerstone of deeply flawed theologies.

We act routinely as we have choices because we can. It is the apparent truth. We also experience the recombination of familiar materials and effects as startling, original art. There is such a thing as "new" – but only when we live in the narrower, normal focus of human. When we enlarge our scope we see how repetitive it is, how parochial our lives.

I am certainly no Calvinist. Ugh. To me, the constraints upon us are natural, and require us to understand, and, if we can, surpass them.

And morality is also profoundly natural. The history of human society is the history of co-operaters who survived, berserk annihilators who flamed out. Co-operation is the core of morality; comfort and safety the core of ethics. Our comfort – dare I say happiness? – and safety are better ensured if we co-exist in peace. Mercantile trade increases both as well, requires fairness and justice. Etc. Morality is biological first. We distort it with veneers of magic beings and reward and retribution.

Whew. After a rough stretch of rapids our canoe at last has found serene waters. Jerry's kindly incisive intelligence and apt sourcing always seem to unruffle my feathers, as my awe for his deft and startlingly good wordsmithery humbles my own feeble attempts to articulate what I'm trying to think. And then Greg's harmonic response. It's no wonder I so freely surrender my illusive free will to read these challenging Correll posts when there's always the chance a real conversation will ensue, one as relatively free of ego spin as one can hope to find in this ego-rife community. Am I merely reacting to tone here? Sheesh, I hope not.

@Matt
For some reason you seem quite bitter that I should explain how I work and where my ideas emerge. I would be most interested in how you go about doing a painting or creating a piece of sculpture. I am always anxious to enlarge my capabilities and forge novel pathways in the disciplines. There is nothing in my viewpoint that, in any way, denies originality. But all efforts have their roots, their disciplines, their techniques and each of these came from something real and observable and graspable by someone interested. They all have seeds that were induced to grow with some special personal fertilizer. They may seem to explode on the public scene like a visitor from another universe but when examined they can be found to originate out of native materials. Art does no pop into being like a fart, a smile, a sneeze. There are long hard trials and failures and terrible frustrations and rules and techniques are discovered by rational thinking or by developing unconscious accumulations of strange observations that finally coalesce into something fascinating and worthwhile. But, perhaps you have a different way, something much easier. I'd love to hear about it.

Sounds like this thread is winding down…and it was an interesting discussion despite the fact that there seems to be some loose ends.

I think theists often inject the notion of “free will” as a defense against non-theistic considerations about inconsistencies in theistic thinking. I find those defenses about as compelling as the theistic insistence that “faith” is, and should be, a virtue required by a god. Which is to say, I do not find it compelling in the least. Insofar as theists introduce the concept of free will in that manner, I simply reject it as a logical or convincing argument about the inconsistencies.

That said, however, I certainly think the notion of free will as commonly understood exists. Obviously I think it is limited by the nature of reality; I do not think someone can exercise the free will to do something he/she is incapable of doing. But choices can be made—and I see no reason not to consider making those choices not to be exercising free will.

Anyway, it was refreshing to get away from the heated political discussions for a short while.

Thanks for the thread--and for the diversion, Greg.

I never claimed that choices on the level of capability could not be made. But making choices is not an open doorway to infinite possibilities. The act of making choices is constricted by expectations and understandings and those factors absolutely control which choices are open. They cannot be ignored or dismissed.

Bushwa. Men (& women folk too) move mountains whenever they want to. They are as grains of sand.

And why do they want to?

William Lee: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Prove it. Show me your power to move a mountain whenever you want. Oh, wait, your OS bio quotes Chesterton. Never mind.