Maybe this has come up before, but I still wanted to ask. Lately, I’ve been a bit confused about whether we really have free will or not. I’m not religious and I don’t really believe in metaphysics. I’d probably call myself agnostic. I’ve just been questioning life more than I used to, and this thought keeps popping into my head.
Do we actually have free will? Like, can we really choose things the way religious texts say we can? What made me think about this is how predictable the micro world seems to be—but when you go deeper into the quantum level, things get really chaotic and complex.
On top of that, as people, we’re constantly shaped by what we go through, and it feels like our reactions and choices get more limited over time.
What do you think about all this?
I tend towards Daniel Dennett's views on this. The universe is fundamentally deterministic, but we can act as though we have free will.
Because whether that will is possible or not kinda doesn't matter. Did you make any choices today? Yes, of course you did. But who are you? You're a product of the universe, a complex system of neurons and physics that generate a consciousness that we don't really understand.