Free Will

"He sat a long time and he thought about his life and how little of it he could ever have foreseen and he wondered for all his will and all his intent how much of it was his doing."
— Cormac McCarthy (Cities of the Plain)

"We gallop through our lives like circus performers balancing on two speeding side-by-side horses--one foot is on the horse called "fate," the other on the horse called "free will." And the question you have to ask every day is--which horse is which? Which horse do I need to stop worrying about because it's not under my control, and which do I need to steer with concentrated effort?"
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)

"Reflect, then on you adult life and pick a truly bad moment, as bad a moment as you can bear to contemplate in suffocating detail. . . Now, so what? In the larger of things, what is the meaning of your regret? Does it count for anything, or is it just a sort a sort on involuntary hiccup, a meaningless spasm provoked by a meaningless world? Do we live in a universe in which striving and hoping, regretting, blaming, promising, trying to do better, condemning and praising make sense? Or are they all part of a vast illusion, honored by tradition, but overdue for exposure?"
-- Daniel Dennett (Freedom Evolves)

Well, Big Frank is chewing on this one. How much control is it that we can exert on ourselves, our experience, our thoughts, our feelings, or the world around us. How much of this control is freely exercised by us? I grew up believing, as still mostly do (remember, I'm chewing on it and so some doubt has entered otherwise I wouldn't have to chew - just swallow) that I have free will. Starting from some religious upbringing: God has us all here in this moral laboratory where our actions will be noted and if they are good ones heaven awaits us and if they are really bad ones we go to hell. I was told this was just and that God wanted it to be totally up to me - exercise my free will and reap the reward or pay the price. Of course, this is all speculative nonsense and nobody can prove it. So scratch that rationale, and remove theology from this discussion. The immutable laws of nature then dictate that we have no fee will; everything that happens is caused by some previous action etc. etc. This applies as much, from a determinist's view point, to a rock dropped, as to an apple seed planted, to animal locomotion, and to all human thoughts and subsequent actions. That seems to make sense and much of it can be proven; however, the bit on thoughts cannot. There is no evidence that Big Frank is aware of that can trace thoughts to actions of atoms or molecules. So Big Frank thinks that he does have control of himself, and acts like he does, but does he? What about the unconscious urges we are not aware of, or genetic predispositions, or of early incidents in life, or a thousand other variables? Big Frank doesn't know.