Q&A: Dreams as a Weakening of Your Argument for Free Will
Dreams as a Weakening of Your Argument for Free Will
Question
In a dream I feel that I am choosing freely. But obviously I am not choosing anything, and these are only broadcasts of the brain during sleep.
So why not conclude that the strong intuition I feel of choosing when I am awake is also an illusion?
Answer
Correct. In a dream too you think you see, so why not conclude that everything you see during your waking hours is also an illusion?
Discussion on Answer
My sight in the real world I can test objectively and know whether it is an illusion or not.
For example, by sampling other people who see what I see.
The feeling of free choice, not only can I not test it objectively, but I also know that there is no evidence for its existence, and science has never found anything that points to free choice. More strongly still—from within physics itself there is no room for free choice, according to some scientists.
I still feel that the dream argument I raised is a good argument against the argument from the “intuition of free choice.”
Is there another, stronger example you can think of besides sight?
There is, but I won’t give it because there’s no need. The example is excellent and shows that your question does not exist.
Now you are raising other questions, and they too do not get off the ground. The feeling of choice is shared by all of us just as various sights are shared by all of us. On the contrary, choice is what we experience in the clearest and most immediate way. Of course one can cast doubt on anything, and skeptical claims have no answer, nor do they need one. I have written at length about all this in my book The Science of Freedom. There too I showed that choice is the only mechanism that we experience directly—not causality and not randomness.
I didn’t understand how your example is good if I explained exactly why sight is something objective that I can always judge in the most rational / logical / scientific way. I can’t understand what is unclear here, that your example simply is not a good one.
Everyone also experiences free choice in a dream, and when we wake up it is clear to all of us that nobody chooses in a dream at all.
Therefore one cannot conclude from the fact that even if all of us experience free choice in reality (not in a dream), that does not mean it necessarily exists.
With this level of misunderstanding, it is hard for me to discuss this. I suggest ending here.
Go ahead and conclude it—what’s stopping you? After all, anyone can draw a different conclusion. What’s the problem?