The Free Will Pill
Taylor A. Dunn asks, if free will were a drug, should you take it?
From Philosophy Now magazine
Here we go again. The part I must be missing. It would seem ultimately pointless to speculate about how we would react to something like this because we could only ever react as we must.
The news would only be construed by particular individuals as good or bad if it was determined that we do in fact possess some measure of free will. In other words, if you want to be convinced that your own generally exhilarating life was of your own making, it’s good news. But if you want to be convinced that your own generally miserable life is beyond your control, it’s bad news.
Right?
Same thing. If we live in a wholly determined universe, developing new ways to alter brain chemistry and designing a “free will pill” could only unfold solely in accordance with the laws of matter.
Then we would be confronted with the mind-boggling reality of nature’s laws having evolved into actual free-will. Which is basically what many free will advocates today suggest has in fact already happened.
Sans God in other words.
And, no, I have no way of demonstrating that this is not in fact the case. But where is the demonstration that it is the case. Where is the definitive proof regarding how the brain [through the evolution of life on Earth] has accomplished this? Again, from my frame of mind, we just don’t know.
Bizarre, exactly. But then the existence of existence itself can be seen as bizarre. Just as the evolution of mindless matter into mindful matter into human consciousness into “I” can be equally beyond being pinned down once and for all.
The crucial fact here still being that until science gets considerably closer to making this thought experiment a reality, you and I are left with taking a “leap of faith” to one set of assumptions or another.