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I've always said we have free will, because I have direct experience with it every waking moment. And I've never heard anyone say they do not feel it. Even people who argue against it say the feeling is an illusion; they don't say they don't feel it. Something that I feel so obviously and that is felt universally must be real. No reason to think it's a universally felt illusion. And it doesn't make more sense for a universally felt illusion of free will to have evolved than for free will to have evolved.
But I couldn't just declare "Yes, there is free will!", and pretend any victory. I couldn't even fool myself into thinking I was on sure ground. I needed to understand what I was talking about. I needed specifics. So I tried to figure out exactly where free will could be found.
I've often pointed out things where I do not have free will. I took piano lessons for many years as a kid, and in college, where I got my BA in Music History. Mozart was the most common composer I was taught on the piano. It was not until college that I was given my first Bach piece to play, in the same semester I started learning about the Baroque era in a music history class. I was shaken to the core! Mozart had always been pleasant, and technically challenging. But it never moved me. Bach made me feel things I never imagined. I didn't choose to feel this way. Other people have the opposite opinion, and they didn't choose it, either. I had no idea who Bach was, and wasn't expecting to learn that his music could be so very different than Mozart's. Whatever it is in me responds to/resonates with Bach.
I did not choose to not believe in any creator/god/God. I grew up going to Presbyterian Sunday School and church, assuming it was all fact, because that's how it was presented to me. I had not conceived of the notion that there was another kind of belief. Then, one day, when I was maybe ten or eleven, I heard about atheism. It occurred to me that I knew the stories and lessons, but I didn't feel them. Nothing in me said it was true. Over the decades since, I've been mystified at many things in the universe, and wondered how it could possibly have come about accidentally, on its own. I've even made some threads here about these things. Sometimes thinking there must be a creator, because logic told me there must; sometimes just taking that position. But I still never felt anything that told me there was a God, or anything supernatural whatsoever. I can't choose to believe, despite what some here have said. It is not a part of me.
I'm not a heterosexual by choice. The thought that I could choose to be a homosexual is laughable.
I also didn't choose to prefer chocolate desserts to strawberry, by about a thousand times. I didn't choose blue as my favorite color; it just seems perfect, and I usually think of it as a separate category. There's blue, and then there's all the other colors.
So there are some really important, and some less important, areas where I don't have free will. Kind of funny, I think. If I don't get to make a decision about these kinds of things, where do I have free will?? It must be in regards to smaller things. We were celebrating with some of my wife's family last night, and went to a restaurant. There were at least three excellent choices on the dessert tray. After a few minutes, I chose. But why??? Why did I choose the chocolate lava-filled cookie instead of the candy bar cake? Here are the two possibilities that I can see:
1) Various, many many various, factors go into the decision. We probably won't ever be able to figure out what all the factors are, much less calculate the choice ahead of time. How long has it been since I had the opportunity to eat this kind of thing? Have I been on a kick lately, eating as much of this kind of thing as I can get my hands on? (And what caused such kicks? Salted caramel things have been SOOOOO enticing lately!) Am I more predisposed to some aspect of it than I am to another? Did something seemingly meaningless, like the color of the walls or someone's perfume, make one option seem better or worse than another? Etc etc etc. How many variables? How strong is each variable? Which variable usually pulls me stronger than the others? Etc etc etc.
The thing is, if these variables are why I chose what I chose, then it is not free will. It is cause & effect.
2) The variables don't make the decision. These variables certainly exist. But maybe there are so many that there's no way for one thing to come out on top. So it's not cause & effect. Meaning the choice is random. A flip of a coin. And a flip of a coin is not free will, either.
Fact is, I can't come up with a description of what free will is. How does it work? What's the mechanism? If there is a mechanism, how is it not cause & effect? If there is no mechanism, how is it not a random choice?
Have I set up a false dichotomy? Is there a definition I'm not seeing? Help me out, folks!