Q&A: Free Will – Materialism and Dualism
Free Will – Materialism and Dualism
Question
In the discussions on free will, you explained in your book that free will is incompatible with materialism and physicalism because there are no gaps in nature.
But you mentioned (in the introductory remarks, part two—if I understood correctly what was written there) that the connection between free will and materialism is not logically necessary.
Why? After all, even before the question of where freedom could have any effect, without a transcendent “I” (-dualism, or even idealism) there is no entity at all that could be free. And that is a logical necessity.
Answer
Because a material world is conceivable in which there are degrees of freedom that allow free choice. In our world there are certain laws of nature that are deterministic (at least on the macroscopic level), but that is not a logical necessity. It could have been otherwise. Beyond that, even in our world determinism is not perfect (quantum mechanics), and our knowledge about it is also incomplete (maybe we are mistaken about the laws of nature?).
Discussion on Answer
Obviously, but that is not a logical conclusion, only an empirical one (because in quantum theory there is randomness and not choice). The question was not whether it is true, but whether it is a logical necessity.
And if we ignore quantum mechanics and discuss only on the logical level: what is the difference between the two mechanisms (freedom and randomness) if freedom too does not require an “I”?
Maybe the randomness too is produced by an I, or maybe inanimate matter has choice. I’ve completely lost track of this discussion. This is just unnecessary hair-splitting. It is obvious that there is no logical necessity here, and the point is self-evident. I’m done.
The Israel Prize in philosophy for the year 5781 is guaranteed to whoever manages to explain what the words “the randomness is produced by an I” mean, or how it could be that “inanimate matter has choice.”
But seemingly, freedom without an “I” is not freedom but randomness, and in the teachings of our rabbi, may he live long, we learned the fundamental difference between those two mechanisms.