maybe i’m just not smart enough for this, but the idea of free will as a concept has always seemed pretty poorly constructed in the first place. like, what would it even mean to have the will to act freely while existing conditional to your environment? we are placed into chaotic and uncertain circumstances, and have evolved the ability to navigate those circumstances through cognition. simple as that. there is no future that is “pre-determined” for us to follow, just chaos that we must navigate through until we die. i feel like the idea was kind of borrowed from theology and we’ve been ruminating on it ever sense, but its just never been a very compelling thought to me. like, of course our decisions are shaped by our environment and physiology, how else could it possibly work?
i feel like, for the people who argue for free will, its kind of like arguing for the existence of an afterlife. they’re motivated to continue advocating for it because it seems scary not to have it, but nothing about the way we work requires us to be able to make meaningful decisions that are out-of-context to our conditions, just like nothing about how we work indicates we continue to exist outside our physical conditions. if we free willed ourselves to do something that wasn’t constrained by our physical bodies, the stuff we know about the world, and the immediate sensory input we’re receiving, that would look like fucking magic or something, and if it is constrained by that stuff, then its just another word for cognition.