No Free Will - or why I didn't have the choice not to write this

From the beginning of time - or at least the beginning of philosophy - people are obsessed with the idea of free will. This obsession is rooted in the desire of human beings to be someone independent and original, a unique individual.

This need of significance is not surprising at all if we consider that we, or much better "I" am the observer of the Universe. Wherever I go I drag the perceived center of this world with me and I'm always nailed to the heart of it. Additionally, I am the one and only human being whose existence is unquestionable to me. (The others may be only images in my mind.)

The idea that this most real creature of this universe has no free will and he is merely a puppet of something or someone... sounds unbearable.

(That's why all religions state that God gave free will to man.
Though, it is a kind of free will a prisoner has in his cell...
He can make push-ups or handstands, he can sing or piss on his bed... he is "free" to do whatever he likes.)

Being emotionally committed to a belief is one of the most serious mistakes a philosopher can make. If we want to get closer to the truth we need to cling to logic supported by objective observations putting beside our personal desires and preferences. And we always have to be prepared to change our opinions in the light of new facts. That's the part that dogmatic (religious) "thinkers" will never be able to do.

Whenever we think or talk about something we have to make sure that at least we understand what we're talking about. That requires a definition of the subject.
It's even more important when we are debating about something. It is shocking how many people are ready to get into quarrels about things they cannot even define.
Without definitions, we cannot be sure that the other person thinks about a concept exactly as we do.

And those differences in definitions will turn the whole debate into a pointless war of religions.

So let's see the case of "free will".

Many people believe that the definition of free will is so evident and obvious to everyone that it's unnecessary to be defined. In my personal experience, the vast majority of people are unable to describe it correctly.

Here is my definition.
Free will is the ability of a system to make autonomous decisions without real-time or delayed external influences in order to achieve a goal.

The expression of free will, by the way, is misleading since there is no such thing as "non-free" will. Even if I'm forced to do something, the final action is "my" decision and if I "freely" deny doing that it is "my" decision to face the consequences.
If someone is so powerful that he can control even my decision-making process (not my actions) then he turns me into a remote-controlled body which (at least temporarily) doesn't have its own will.

The whole idea of free will is that the source of a decision is the sub-system alone (the mind) without external influences. That makes it "free".

In other words: to have a proof of free will we should be able to find
- two perfectly identical systems
- in two perfectly identical universes
- with two perfectly identical histories in those universes
- with perfectly identical inputs
AND they should be able to produce different outcomes.

According to my best knowledge no one has ever observed or created such a logical structure or system.

If cause and effect is the governing rule in this world then such a system is impossible.

I beg you to prove me wrong.

You may wonder what is a "delayed external influence" in my definition of free will.
Let's suppose that an evil God transports you from this Universe into another perfectly empty one, where no external influences can affect you.
Can you prove there that you have a free will? You may think you can. You can clap, pull your ear, say whatever comes to your mind without external forces. Unfortunately, it's not the case. Your mind's inner structure like billions of tiny pendulums was initiated and "began to swing" in an extremely complex manner during the life you have spent in your homeworld. Your Universe has created a cause and effect controlled imprint of its own image in your brain and now it was moved with you into the new world. And that mind's inner working will define all your decisions on a causalitic level.

It is very important to note here that everything I wrote above is happening in cause and effect controlled universes. "Modern" theoretical physics has another model of reality called quantum theory which suggests that all events in the Universe are driven by probabilities (especially on the microscopic level) instead of cause and effect.
I think that theory is based on faulty preconceptions but from the point of free will, it is perfectly irrelevant.

Let me tell you why.
Let's suppose that our Universe is based on cause and effect.
In that case, all elementary particles, molecules, macromolecules, cellular structures, and living creatures are the slaves of cause and effect. So their behavior is always determined.
Unless you can show me an event that is happening without a specific cause, even the most complicated situations (including the decision-making process of a brain) can result in one and only one outcome.

Cause and effect are absolutely everywhere observable in our world, so I do accept them as a fact, but let's suppose that at a certain level probabilistic effects of quantum mechanical sub-systems are influencing our decision-making process, making its outcome more or less unpredictable. Unfortunately, that doesn't help the case of free will either.

Now, instead of being exclusively deterministic our decision-making process becomes partially probabilistic that is anything but a "free" will.

So the working of our brain is either fixed cause and effect process or random and probability-driven - which is just a fancy name for chaotic.
Maybe it's the mixture of both but that sucks too.

- - - - -

Even our despair and hesitations are the result of determined (or probabilistic) events.

Of course, we'll always want to believe that we control our destiny and we prefer living our lives hoping that we make our own choices. It makes us happy and - at least a little bit - we feel to be in charge.

But the Universe doesn't give a damn.