The structure of free will and self fulfilling prophecies

(Written Oct 2024)

It’s a common trope to argue (discuss) whether free will exists in the framework of a deterministic world. In short, it doesn’t, but it doesn’t matter. Determinism is an objective framework of the world which assumes there is a way to look at it in an omniscience manner (at least purporting it is meaningful to discuss whether we can compute future states given full knowledge of the current one). Free will is a proposition from a subjective perspective where we don’t know all the relevant states of the world we are in.

From such a perspective, the description of free will is simple. Before we make a decision we don’t know what it is. The decision is knowing what we will do.

Then there is the issue of the subjective “feeling” of freedom. When somebody points a gun at me asking for money and I decide to hand over my wallet, I don’t feel like it is a “free will” decision. But one must revisit the definition above to understand how it is applied. Once decisions are truly made you do not have the “freedom” to decide again. Knowing something makes you unable to know the exact same thing as something else. The proper construction of the robbery scenario is not that one is deprived of freedom per se, but that the person has already mostly decided what to do — one’s life is more important than money in the wallet. The feeling of being trapped often comes from not being fully conscious of prior decisions made, in this case deciding to value one’s life over petty possessions. The great thing about free will is that you can make decisions, and the consequence of making a decision is that you cannot make it again.

But of course you always can. You can decide that you want to risk your life to fight the robber. It may be brave, it may be stupid, it may be noble… but at that point it is undeniable that one is “free”.

In a generalized sense, free will does not involve freedom per se but knowledge. Knowing is deciding. Knowing is deciding.

The other situation about decisions do not feel “free” is how it does not feel like “I” made them. In the common sense of self, we imagine we are bodies where the boundaries between me and the external world is delineated by the skin. Decisions are not necessarily made within skins, or in brains.