Definition of free will
When a person thinks about free will, he must hope to achieve some kind of freedom on his own. If everyone is not free, and you alone are free, can you live? How do you relate to the world? From the perspective of all mankind, the results are still the same. If human groups are free, will freedom still exist?
The basic setting of free will
In search of free will, first of all, we can't avoid a topic, the basic setting of the world:
causality
Causality or causation is the relationship of action between one event ("cause") and a second event ("effect"), where the latter event is considered the result of the previous event.
In general, an event is the result of a combination of many causes, and the causes all occur on an earlier timeline, and the event can be the cause of other events.
What we are looking for here is not superstitious cause and effect: imagine why Xiao Hei couldn't go to the market at 4:00 driving an electric motorcycle to the market to pull kiwi fruit when he went to work on metro line 2 at 7:00. Because there is no intersection between time and space, and the causal relationship is determined by time and space, causality is the basis law of matter. If Xiao Hei is fundamentally restrained from time and space, none of the things he wants to do can succeed.
For example, it's Little Black again, he wants to eat salmon at home, he doesn't want to go to the desert to eat salmon. Unless he had brought his own salmon to the desert, he wouldn't have been able to get salmon. But we can store salmon in the refrigerator at home and salmon in the supermarket. Compared to Xiao Hei, we have more reasons to eat salmon. Because the spatial constraints on us are lifted, the refrigerator delays the restrictions on us in time.
So the question is, can I skip salmon, do I have free will? Of course not, you don't eat salmon because you want to eat salmon and can't eat it, and you are forced by causal constraints to choose not to eat it. If you don't want to eat salmon in the first place, you have to think of something else, so it's the same thing. Even if you don't want anything, of course it's impossible. But it is true that even if you don't think about anything, the causal nature does not exist or disappear because of the subjective will you want to or not.
The Laws of Quantum Mechanics and Causality
I believe that now everyone is not very familiar with quantum mechanics, Schrödinger's cat has become a household name, and the collapse and superposition of quantum will not be elaborated. If you are interested in learning, you can check the information yourself.
In general, cause and effect can also refer to the relationship between a series of factors (causes) and a phenomenon (effects). Any event that affects an outcome is a factor in that outcome. Direct factors are factors that directly affect the outcome, i.e. there is no need for any intervening factors (intervening factors are sometimes referred to as intermediary factors). From this point of view, the relationship between cause and effect can also be called a causal relationship.
I'm not going to talk about conventional causality here, we all know that a cause cause creates an outcome. But here you will find that there is something very similar to the uncertainty of the quantum, the contingency of cause and effect.
What is the contingency of cause and effect? I summarize it as follows: when the cause of one thing intervenes in the causal chain of other events, this cause has the potential to replace the result of other events, and such a result is called contingency.
For example, if I get punched in the face when I open the door, can you say that I was punched because I opened the door?
Definitely not, because opening the door has nothing to do with a punch. But someone was about to hit my door is a causal event, I was preparing to open the door to go out is also a causal event, and then the person who was about to open the door hit me, the two causal events overlapped, I was punched as a result of the other party wanting to hit my door, which is completely accidental.
This is very similar to quantum uncertainty, and I think human free will is hidden here. That is, assuming that I have done something I want to do, but I will cause some unexpected results, then I indirectly affect the laws of the world, and this event that breaks the laws of operation is reflected on personal values, which is equivalent to the value of my freedom through chance, that is, free will.
On the contingency of freedom
From an individual point of view, human beings have no free will. For example, your personality, which can be subordinated to dopamine, biological functions, the role of microorganisms and bacteria, the family environment, education, social norms, and so on. These acts on the human body, which is what we call the self, the experience of the self. Then the actions you do are empirically traceable, so a lot of things will play a deterministic role. Because the behavior you roughly make is along the trajectory of your own personality, subconsciously passively running.
But when you fly a roll of tissue, you just want to fly it. But the result of the hand paper being blown away was accompanied:
The force of the handpaper is driven by the air through the air flow of the flight trajectory; the cup on the table that the paper knocks down when it hits the ground; the paper is wet with the water spilled from the cup; these three results are not what you want, but they happen exactly, and because of them, your actions break through the rules.
Then the interaction of molecules in the air, the effect of cups falling on the floor, and the three consequences of wet paper sticking on the table continue as a cause to begin their expression of the world, and the effect of this change makes you an indispensable factor in it.
If you only stand in the individual's point of view, then this is the personal self-will, that is, you expressed that you participated in the changes in the objective world.
Discussion of the results
The problem comes again, so I push back from the last three material phenomena, and everything is still decided to happen! That's right, because if you always look at the past from the perspective of the future, everything is deterministic. Thinking about the future is just a form of our brain deducing future variables through reason, and the result you expect may not really be shown in the form of such a result, because the complexity of the participating factors and the above-mentioned accidental participation cannot make people truly grasp the result itself.
Thinking itself is also conditioned by causality, but will the content of thinking be? Thinking is the behavior of human beings, the content of thinking is the content of human production, can it be said that human beings have no free will at all? Damage to the frontal lobe, removal of the cerebellum, and the end of death all constrain the behavior of thinking and indirectly eliminate the content of thinking, but it cannot deny that you have thought seriously.