I completely disagree. I came to my current position on free will (that we have none) from purely political and social considerations. How was it, I asked myself, that such inequality exists, especially in America as we have such a relatively robust infrastructure for personal success? As a liberal, I was troubled by conservativism’s main argument for mainataining the status quo: that success is there for those who choose it. But many people don’t choose it, and I began to see patterns.

When broken down by demographics, certain groups have very predictable life experiences. By adjusting variables, you can easily put life outcomes on a scatter plot and they will be highly determined.

At one end of the scale, we might have a white male born into wealth, with highly educated parents who love him and nurture him, push him academically and basically give him an optimal upbringing. On the other, we might have a black male who’s father is in prison, his mother on drugs, whose school is filled with others from similar backgrounds, and he falls farther and farther behind in school.

It is obvious which child stands the better chance of success in life. Yet for all practical purposes, when the first child starts his own business and lives a life of rich luxury, we say it was his own choice – that he earned it. And when the second child drops out of school, begins selling drugs, and commits murder, we say it was his own choice – that he deserved it.

We have enormously complex social policies set up based on exactly that premise – that both of these men had a choice in their lives. Sure, occasionally individuals will perform outside the norm for our crude parameters. But the exception doesn’t prove the rule, it simply calls for a more nuanced and detailed look at what those particular cases involved.

If people did indeed have free choice, we would be unable to come up with predictors for social outcomes. Education, family, neighborhood, income, etc. would have no relationship with outcomes. Every individual would be just as capable of breaking the rule, thus disproving it.

So if we are to truly take a determined view of human social behavior, we must be prepared to radically revision how we structure our society.

The idea is to carry out Newcomb’s paradox in the lab. There are two boxes, Box A and Box B. Box A visibly contains $100 (for example). Box B is opaque and contains either $0 or $200 (the way in which the contents of Box B will be determined will be explained shortly).

There is a clock that counts down to zero. As soon as the clock shows zero, the subject must press one of two buttons—Button 1 or Button 2. If the subject presses Button 1, then the subject earns the contents of both Box A and Box B (i.e., either $100 or $300 depending on what happens to be in Box B). If the subject presses Button 2, then the subject earns the contents of Box B only, and forgoes the $100 in Box A. If the subject does not press either button (or presses both buttons) before the deadline passes, then the subject gets nothing.

Now for the twist. Whether Box B contains $0 or $200 is decided by a machine that, at the instant the clock shows zero, puts $0 into Box B if it predicts that the subject will press Button 1, and puts $200 into Box B if it predicts that the subject will press Button 2.

The tricky part of the setup is to adjust the length of the deadline. It must be long enough that the subject has the impression that he or she is able to make a decision after the clock shows zero, but it must be short enough so that the machine can reliably predict which button the subject is about to press.

I believe that this experiment would be a very powerful contribution to our understanding of voluntary action, and judging from how many papers have been published on Newcomb’s paradox, I’m sure it would be very interesting to philosophers. I tried emailing Patrick Haggard, urging him to perform this experiment, but since I’m a nobody, not surprisingly he ignored my email. If anyone reading this comment knows a scientist who might perform this experiment, I encourage you to pass the idea along.

I’ve had these exact same arguments with various people. At some length and terminological convolution on their part, making these exact same points to them, even that one about the computer program, with little effect… it is the most bizarre thing.

I wonder if it’s a Christian thing. Without free will, God would have no justification punishing sinners. Or more generally a personal responsibility thing, in a society that has personal responsibility for your actions as one of its guiding principles.

This is true.

My contention is that whether it is free will or determinism, it manifests itself as if it were free will to me and everyone (without exception) of whom I have direct knowledge.

As a Jamesian pragmatist and radical empiricist I do reject metaphysical baggage, but I’m not talking here about an overarching system implied by impressions of self-agency, I’m talking bout accepting the impressions themselves as being intrinsic to our natures.

At the risk of wearing out the metaphor: What’s the difference between experiencing the “illusion” of the sun setting and experiencing the sun rotating on its axis into night? There IS no difference, and no illusion. They are the same experience, thought of differently.

It is impossible to believe that we do not have the ability to make choices. While deterministic physical actions could be accompanied by deterministic delusions about choice, we none-the-less cognate, as humans, within a paradigm of free will. Arguing that this is a delusion does not free us from this innate limitation/wisdom.

William James would classify this whole discussion as a semantic paradox or a pragmatic nonsense, since resolving the question either way would have no bearing on our lives.

That doesn’t mean that I disagree with your original post. Neither side can prove their case.

I still don’t know what that means. How would I act if I were acting “as if I do not have the ability to make choices”? When I mull over whether I prefer the soup or the salad, or whether I want to study English or philosophy, am I somehow committed to the proposition that whatever I decide will be an exercise of radical contracausal freedom undetermined by ordinary physical laws? Why?