Free Will
Notes
This is not really a scriptural topic, but a philosophical one.
A good definition of free will does not seem to be in standard usage. Perhaps the most precise that one can get about the concept, while maintaining agreement between all parties, is that for a person to have free will, they must have the ability to choose their actions.
Some consider that a belief in free will or agency necessarily presupposes a denial of determinism, generally under the assumption that if the universe is deterministic in nature, then one's choices are also deterministic, and therefore, not independently free. Reasoning thus, free will under such a system might be considered an illusion. I would counter-argue, that if determinism is denied, and our choices have a fundamentally probabilistic nature, then this does not make the exercise of our wills any more free, so denying determinism does not actually resolve the issue it is intended to resolve. I would suggest instead that the problem itself only arises because of a flaw in the way that some have defined free will.
I would propose that for one to have free will, one must merely have a will, and be free to exercise it. By being free, I mean that it is possible to do something or to change one’s state. When I write software, it does things and is generally free to do those things so long as I allow it. It does what it does in a fairly deterministic fashion. A robot might similarly be made that does things. That software, and that robot have no will, but so long as they have the power to do things and to change their state, even if mechanistically, they have freedom. The quality of the mechanism can be judged by how it reacts to stimuli, and then destroyed or saved based upon the value that we judge it to have, because the mechanism is free to operate. If we do not allow the mechanism to operate or respond to stimuli, we cannot judge its worth or value in any meaningful way.
As a physicist by training, I derive my definition, in part from the definition of freedom used in physics. In physics, freedom is measured in degrees, and a degree of freedom is some dimension over which a system has the power to position itself. A single fundamental particle in free space has very little freedom. In a fundamental way, it can be said to have no freedom. There is nothing to measure its position against, so it can’t really be said to go anywhere, because there is no where. There is also no discernible size, distance, direction, or orientation. The system has only one state, which requires no description. Hence the particle will always be in that state and cannot change its state or do anything.
Add another particle, and suddenly freedom emerges; one degree of freedom. Depending on the properties of the particles, it is now possible for a distance to be measured between the particles, and depending upon whether the particles react to one another, they may work to close that distance, or separate. Potential energy becomes a possible quantity that can be measured as a function of that distance. There are now infinite states available to the particles, which can be described with a single real number. The system can become dynamic, and if the particles react to each other, (and, considering gravity, we conclude that they must react to each other) they will become dynamic, and never stop.
If, however, we introduce many particles and use them to create an energy well confining the first particle, then it will no longer be able to change state. It can do nothing. It is no longer free.
If I was playing chess, I might measure my freedom in the number of moves available to me, and checkmate would be defined as the elimination of freedom.
Considering these examples, then, I propose that to have free will, we must have a will, and be capable of doing something (i.e. changing state). I also propose that our freedom is not an all or nothing thing, but can be measured. Determinism, and indeterminism may relate to the nature of the will, (something even more vague than free will), but not to the nature of freedom, so under this definition, determinism cannot be said to destroy free will by destroying freedom.