My Basic Thought On Free Will

[gedanken]

I think of free will in terms of responsibility. What are we responsible for? That's free will.

Surely we think people should be responsible for their actions. Treat it as a purely functional question. What is the optimal societal reaction to people who exhibit behaviour X? Do we execute, lock up, or treat sociopaths? What are the criteria to choose one solution or the other? You can't just treat all behaviour equally because it is [random|predetermined], that is absurd public policy.

Treat the mind as a black box, and act acording to the output. Don't try to take apart the clockwork and judge the parts, because each part of the clock is no longer a clock, it's just a gear or spring.

Dawkins writes about this in The Selfish Gene. He's a better writer than I am, but I can't find my copy right now. IIRC, he's suggesting that we are finally having to confront the idea of free will, because we're learning enough about the mind to be able to identify causes of behaviour in some cases. The whole notion of a cause that "made" someone do something clashes with our notion of free will, but it needn't. That cause is still part of the person, not a separate entity.



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Ain't no sense worrying about things you got no control over, 'cause if you got no control over them ain't no sense in worrying. And ain't no sense worrying about things you got control over, 'cause if you got control over them, ain't no sense worrying.

--Mickey Rivers

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