This is a quote from Stephen Hawking.



Hawking's argument breaks down at one point.

There is a carbon dioxide molecule right beside me. I have innumerable carbon dioxide molecules in me.

I see something desirable in a distance -- a sexy woman beconing me, or a wiener schnitzel meal singing praises of how nice it would be for it to be eaten by me.

I hyperbolzied. But it's true: I would move toward the source of the desirable.

If you look at my constitution scientifically, you can't pinpoint why I have the urge to move toward the desirable.

And if you go down to the molecular level, and examine the atoms, the carbon atoms are exactly the same as the carbon atom beside me in the carobn dioxide molecule.

Yet my carbon atoms move toward what I find desireable, and the single carbon dioxide molecule beside me does not move.

There is absolutely no difference between the outside carbon atom, and a lot of the carbon atoms inside of me. (Of either isotopic state.)

So there is something that is different for the carbon atom in me than for the carbon atom witout me.

And the difference is? Is the million dollar question.

Is desire a function of complexity? Yes, maybe, no. We don't know.

Is desire a funciton of a soul, a non-matter medium? Yes, maybe, no.

Which of us is qualified to say it's one or the other? I say that nobody has a qualification higher-ranking than any other person to decide this question.

But this is aside from the question, or maybe a small part of it.

You see, maybe not all of my carbon atoms will desire to move, but only a few, and those few will mobilize all my body, since no part can detach itself and move independently.

So a lot of my carbon atoms will move by default only. This would indicate that there are differences between carbon atoms, by situation and function, inside of me. Some are so situated, that they can exert wish and desire.

There is no assurance at all, whatsoever, that it's carbon atoms or their complex chemical states with other elemental atoms that makes me move. Because, frankly, the same physical laws apply to ALL carbon atoms. They behave the same way when the situation around them is the same. By situation I mean physical variables: temperature, electricity passing through, electormagnetic and gravitatinal space-fields, their electron-path based valences, and the attachment of them to other elements ... once you get to the next carbon atom in a long molecule, it's a different ballgame already, because there will be always atoms that have the same state as the carbon atom in the carbon dioxide molecule, and in reality all carbon atoms experience the same laws acting upon them.


So what gives. Why would I want to move closer to a wiener schnitzel, and why a lot of carbon atoms around me do not want to.

This is one fallacy in Hawking's proof. He attributes the feeling of attraction to matter, to material hookups of atoms to each other. This he has no righ to say, since his axiom, the scientific axiom, says that this is how it is. Science rejects hypotheses of the supernatural, and bases all observations on a knowability plateau and on a repeatability plateau. So he says that matter only exerts the will, because only matter alone exerts the will. This is not even circular reasoning - or maybe it is. It is just saying that green is green, because we agree that something is green if it's green.

He has no right to reject the metaphysical explanation of soul, perception, and will, because he has done so in his axioms of science. An axiom is never caused -- an axiom is accepted as undisputable truth. and it is handled as such, as long as all concerned know that axioms are, in the most part, agreed-upon truths, axioms are the product of concensus. Axioms can be changed, since they are not directly related to reality, but related to theories, that is, related to intuitively understandable explanations. Science also knows that all its explanations are approximations. And the approximations are only as accurate as the logic that manipulates the axioms are precise, and the axioms themselves right on, a complete match to reality. Most often neither is the case. Then science adjusts its equations, and may even adjust its axioms.

So since axioms are not actual truths of the physical world, but human's concensus of common ground of basic infrastructure's intransmutable elements, there is alway the chance to change the axioms.

Since axioms of science are not absolute, it follows that truths derived from one axiom, to arrive at the truth that is identical to the axiom, is not truth, but an approximation; and since it lacks perfection, it runs the risk of getting discarded any time.

So if we accept the axiom that in the material world all elements and manipulators are material, then if the contrary is evidenced, then the axiom will be thrown out.

In this sense Hawking pegs the truth of matter-based feelings of desires to matter based feelings of desires, which is risking the theory's survial if the axiom is changed. In other words, Hawking pegs his truth, which can't be proven anyway, to a peg which is rooted only in the matter-world, and he is willing to wager agaisnt the odds that this will be changed done day.

I'm falling asleep so I'll continue tomorrow or another time different from tomorrow.

But let me just finish this one thought: one axiomatic truth has already been dethroned: That all identical carbon atoms in identical circumstances will behave the same one and the same way. This is not true, when I walk toward a desired wiener schnitzel with an immense amount of carbon atoms in me, while carbon atoms around me, in the same state and in the same circumstances as mine, will not move.

One atom moves, the other does not, yet their individal circumstanes are identical.

This goes agains the axiom of repeatability, which states that in an identical situation two non-distinguishable agens will behave identically, no matter how few or how many times the situation comes up.

We choose to have sex and if we don't want the 'natural' conclusions to follow - we use protection (that's just not 'natural')

Free will obviously seems to be an expression that people take at face value as if we either have total and unobstructed freedom to follow will alone or we don’t.

Consider the “Caenorhabditis elegans—a simple creature made of only 959 cells”; a creature whose freedom faces severe limitations. It requires temperate soil environments and it feeds on certain bacteria found on decaying vegetable matter. Most are hermaphrodites, and their insemination processes seems to be automatic, not controlled (at will). They only live a few weeks. How much freedom of will is possible with such a creature? Perhaps there is some, perhaps not.

Moving up the evolutionary chain, stories abound and are often well documented about wild animals overcoming what should be instinctive behavior to befriend a mortal enemy, or save a human life, or nurture a natural enemy when it is sick. Either instinct is not well understood, or free will may have a part in such drama.

Then we get to what could arguably be the top most level of current evolutionary refinement; humans. I think free will has always existed, just as it exists within the limitations of any other mobile life form. We developed in warm climates, until we learned how to protect ourselves against the elements – more freedom. We learned how to tend herds, so that meat, milk, bones for tools, and wool and leather were easier to come by and then agriculture so that our food was wherever we needed it to be – more freedom. We learned to sail the oceans, to fly in the sky, and we learned how to make the necessities of life convenient, gaining more freedom to spread our will all along the way.

We made some big mistakes too, as we were using that free will, and we find ourselves in predicaments through which we are losing much of the freedom we had gained. We find our freedom to act at will obstructed by the destruction we have left in wake of our scourge to total freedom.

We have still to learn that we are not ever totally free to act at will because our actions have consequences. Unfortunately, there are still those who refuse to accept the limitations of being a life form that is dependent on so many other aspects of our environment. In a last ditch effort to assert free will, some will go so far as to totally deny instinct and starve themselves to death in a gesture protest some oppressive force or another. But the only oppression such great effort of will succeeds over, are the oppressive forces of being a life form dependent on so many factors outside of our control.

Free will coexists with life it is not a this or that proposition. (In my opinion).

The whole notion of free will is confused at the very start. Why?

Because it is framed from the perspective of cause and effect, and that the free part means not determined by prior causal factors. Nonsense from the get go.

Its a non-starter.

I prefer the idea of free wont vs free will.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKLAbWFCh1E

In fact the word instinct is also a non-starter, but for the opposite reason, because we dismiss all higher level cognition we may miss the fact that many different layers of cognition are involved in all kinds of behavioral responses.

The better term is autonomic response, but even these can be effected by higher cognition so it illustrates how the idea of instincts glosses over the complexity of higher cognition.

Free will framed from at the level of causation is too specific to be useful, and instinct framed in such a generalized way leaves out any possibility of a mixed channel response with some elements being conscious, and others being subconscious.

The brain uses parallel processing, and is a neural network, not a single function device. Speaking in terms of causal interaction is far too complex to discuss, and speaking in terms of one kind of neural function (subconscious) is not enough.

Science is descriptive, not proscriptive. I see this mistake of focus occurring often when laymen discuss science. We observe choices being made by animals with larger brains. What influences these choices is a complex topic NOT broken down into the binary of free or not free, trying to frame it from this perspective gains you NOTHING.

Determinism is part of the problem. Physicists are really to blame for this confusion. Even smart people are easy to fool into making poor arguments.

The better way to frame this is to ask, do we get to make choices? Are these choices personal? Can we NOT do something?

Free wont in a nutshell.
We are good avoiders, we have evolved to avoid things. We cannot know every single thing that may or may not happen to us, so we evolve some autonomic responses to certain kinds of stimulus.

ex. If I throw a brick at your head, your reflexive response is to duck.

Can you not duck? If you knew the gent throwing the brick was loaded, and a person holding a video recorder was on the other side of the street could you NOT duck because you have reasoned that a law suit would better benefit your bank account?

We have evolved to be good avoiders, but we have also evolved reasoned responses to reflexive behaviors.

This is far more granular than any discussion about free will vs determinism. We can also learn something from it when we abandon the nonsense of acausal choice, and instead focus on ideas such as fuzzy logic, or observe the brains responses and overrides to such situations described above.

Frankly, I'm somewhat amazed hawking would have said that…He must be "slipping." While I agree that we are biological machines, and even that a sense of "self" is merely an illusion, I cannot agree that free will is just an illusion, since the very existence of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle guarantees that the universe is non-Newtonian and therefore that determinism is only valid at larger scales in the statistical sense, not fundamentally so.

Since the universe is not Newtonian/deterministic, free will must exist.

Where in the discovery of knowledge have we ever made progress by defining a term, then seeking out if it exists or not?

Cart before horse.

Free will defined by its lack of causal interaction is a non-starter. So why do it?

Starting with such a notion ends with the conclusion that choices are acausal, come from literally nowhere, and are unaffected by the very universe we are a part of and exist within. Pure nonsense.

I cannot fathom anyone really thinking that is a good place to start, or even possible to learn anything from such a baseline.

It would be like us making up a new term, lets call it craptonite. Then we set criteria for its existence that is absurd, lets say that Craptonite only exists where nothing can interact with it, NOTHING, not space, not time, not energy, NOTHING.

Then we say that craptonite is the source of all flatulence.

That is the level of discourse when free will is predicated on a lack of causal interaction.

I call craptonite.

Certainty, or uncertainty is an epistemic notion. NOT ONTOLOGICAL. It also deals with interactions at scales which are not relevant to neural networks.

Any time anyone says something like, "since the very existence of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle guarantees that the universe is non-Newtonian and therefore that determinism is only valid at larger scales in the statistical sense, not fundamentally so"

I want to break this down what you said.

Uncertainty guaranteed for the universe.
Determinism Valid at Large Scales.

What scale does the universe exist at?

Right . . .

Throwing around words like fundamental does not fix generalizations of scale. Intermingling epistemic concerns with ontological causative origins does not a logical argument make.

I call craptonite on that. Seeing as how the entire universe is essentially built on quanta, I dare say it forms the foundation of the universe's very existence. As you must know, to exist is to BE, so how is quantum uncertainty, an inherent property of quanta, NOT ontological?


Neither does the erroneous implication of a false dichotomy. QT imposes epistemological limits on knowledge; it also provides a framework for ontologies.


Relative to what?

I strongly suspect that the universe is a chaotic blend of order and randomness that could be termed fractal. This is of course only my opinion and i won't bother to go into my arguments regarding chaos and free will. However, you might find this to be interesting reading:

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/35391/title/Do_subatomic_particles_have_free_will%3F

Fixed link (I hope).

Certainty is entirely epistemic. Why? Because it deals with knowledge. What we know deals with how certain we are or are not. The uncertainty principle deals with our knowledge of momentum or trajectory for measurements of particles interacting. Some people are certain an invisible sky daddy listens to there first world problems in the total absence of any ontological factors to support that conclusion.

So first you are making an epistemic claim about an ontological set of mental states. What we can know about the individual momentum or trajectory of particles has little to do with making choices. These two things live at very different scales, one involved a handful of particles at the quantum level of EPR, Tunneling, and spectra absorption. The other at the scale of billions of neurons involved in thousands of connections per cycle. This is called an error of scale. Basically you are applying a property of particle interactions to the universe as a whole, all the while admitting that at large scales determinism rules. Your contradiction that I tried to point out.

My point is that reducing mental states to individual particle interactions looses the very emergent properties one is trying to examine when one talks about free will making the exercise futile.

Then on top of that we have the misunderstandings of the limitations of epistemic vs ontologic. No concept could be more confused from the get go than free will with these two errors involved.

The link you cited makes the same exact mistakes as you are making, which when smart people make this mistake I cringe either because they are programed by society, or they just want to publish a paper which will get a popular science column article written on it because all of the laymen idiots out there cant follow along but will read anything about free will.

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/948/1/HiddenDeterminismus.pdf
If you are not a physicist this may be way over your head, but it deals with determinism and explains the errors made when reflecting upon free will from a particle interaction scale, it also explains that often fundamental parts of QM are deterministic(Schrodinger equation is an example), and we can also parse causal factors from indeterminate metrics, which shows us that under it all truly acausal influences are not possible really, or if they do occur there is no way they are responsible for cognition or choice (rarity).

Indeterminate =/= Acausal is one of the biggest things to take away.

It baffles me when smart people set themselves up for failure, or spend a lot of time working out the physics and maths of cause and effect only to realize . . . if free will exists then it must be acausal, or conversely if free will exists we must give up determinism.

Sigh . . . as if we didn't know this the second we define free will as being something other than determined by causal relationships within our spacetime.

All I can say is . . . well duh.

Choice is what we should investigate and science is descriptive, NOT proscriptive, so when we find out that it is entirely determined we can then either redefine free will if your in love with the term, or we can start talking about choices, and emergent properties, and chaos theory instead of these tired old QM vs determinism vs free will conversations which are essentially a tautology of idiocy.

Just my .50 cents.



Here I will translate for you.

It is entirely inappropriate to use the tools of QM to analyze freedom of choice.

Also when you see the phrase strict statistical laws, you should be reading . . . NOT acausal. An interaction causes the collapse of the wave function, making it a strict statistical equation regarding probability distribution. The probability is what we KNOW, or can KNOW, however a cause was determined, even when it is time-invariant.

I think one of the problems that perpetuates this discussion is that really two different definitions exist for determinism. One which is entirely ontological, its often called Causal Determinism, (causes have effects), the other mixes ontology and epistemology and is the source of all this drama (damn philosophers), and the source of the word itself, determined a very epistemic word. It saddens me when other physicists use the later, or worse equivocate between them as we see the authors of that article you posted. (A couple of mathematicians, well par for course [no offense to anyone out there], but physicists should know better)

Figured Id address this head on . . . Yes, to the first part, it does pose limits on our ability to know what is going on, No, to the second part. QM says NOTHING about the underlying ontology, that is why when it was first developed you had so many interpretations. Interpretations are not needed when a theory develops an ontological framework. Also what does an ontological framework mean if not a way to DETERMINE cause and effect? Ontology: what happens, framework: system of organizing information.

A system for organizing information about what happens. Yup, a way to determine cause and effect, nope it does not do that.

QM is a collection of tools which are useful in providing probabilities which when done exhaustively give good boundaries for interactions.

Not the same thing at all and EXACTLY why interpretations are so often talked about.

What "emergent properties?"

ONLY if things are probabilistic at some level (like the quantum level) can we say that the larger scale physical events (like synapse) could not have been predicted based on mathematically certain causes of the system state.


Please clarify and expand on this. What categorical errors am I making? My argument for free will is entirely based in epistemology. I make no ontological argument beyond my claim (which I consider proved by the probabilistic nature of QFT, at least until all the "hidden variables" turn up, but even if they do, I'd say that Bell's Theorem will still hold) that free will exists.

Notwithstanding all that, perhaps our working definitions are not consistent with one another. These are the definitions I'm working from:
"free will"…freedom of choice (if a cause is not determinable, the effect is unknowable except in terms of probability)
"determinism"… no freedom of choice (If a cause is determinable, the effect is determinable and therefore inevitable such that no other possibility or choice exists)


I disagree (obviously). The only tools I need from QM are the experimentally verified mathematics that imply the ontological reality to be probabilistic.



Please note that Hans Primas' argument chases the red herring of causality. While i don't concede causality as a "done deal", whether or not it is has NOTHING to do with my argument, which is based on probability (knowability), NOT causality. In suggesting that my argument hinges on causality, you are trying to create a strawman.


A non-sequitur based on your strawman.


Interpretations ARE ontological frameworks (theories or models). Which of the prevailing models in QFT is "real", Cramer's Model, the Copenhagen Interpretation, the "many worlds" Model, etc.?


How about a means of explaining observed phenomena in terms of what might be "really happening" (without regard to cause/effect)?



It is those probabilistic boundaries that define the amount of freedom of choice. Where there is freedom of choice, by (my) definition, there is free will.

I have to make a correction to some parenthetic comments I made:

It should have read:
free will"…freedom of choice (if an event is not determinable, it and its effect(s) can only be known in terms of probability)
"determinism"… no freedom of choice (If an event is determinable, it and its effect(s) must be inevitable such that no other possibility or choice exists)

Sometimes. For example:

Higgs' Bosom.

Relativity.

Curved space.

Neutrons.

Black holes and Chinese Geishas.

Space travel.

The globularity of Earth.

Martians.

Moonians.

Hollow geodesic balls made of carbon atoms.

Let's say our world is so determistic, that free will does not exist. That is, a will that will make a person act totally randomly, because freedom means independence, and in a world where things are determined, freedom, or independence, can only be acted on independence of causes. Causes that cause things to happen or stop them from happening.

So we do things that are cause for us to do. We avoid crime, because it would cause us to got to jail, and we eat food to quell our hunger. If free will existed, we would commit crimes, and eat sand, and fully expect to not go to jail and not get sick from eating sand.

There is a lot of nitty-gritty arguments that I wish to prevent. Yes, people do commit crimes, and an argument exists that this is out of their free will, but other arguments exist that refute those arguments. One, for instance, that I know I will go to jail, why I commit crime? Must be free will. But no, because ideate that not every criminal gets caught, and if I commit a crime, I will not get caught. So there is no free will here. Etc. Lots of arguments can be brought up, but

I wish to allude to an action by free will, which has no cause and makes a person act against the effect of other causes that are known to exist.

This presupposes that free will is capable to make men act irrationally, which is not irrational behaviour due to bad judgement, impaired judgment, insanity or brain damage.

Irrational behaviour is just one sign of free will. But rational behaviour is also a sign of free will. Free will will make us behave rationally, and behave according to how other causes effect us to behave. There is no argument against it, but it does not prove free will exits, only that it is possible to exist.

So free will can be proven to exist if a person acts in a way that is countereffected by the sum total of the behaviour vectors that act on him.

Is this possible to happen? Maybe yes, maybe no. We don't know.

There are other instances when we don't know. For instances, one wonderer walks down a road, into country he does not know. He comes to a fork in the road. One path goes left, one path goes right. The two paths are identical, their probable continuation is not indicated as different. Totally the same. This is a reality, not a philosophical thought experiment.

Which way will the wanderer go? He has no aim, he has noone to visit, nowhere in particular to go, he has no motivation at all whatsoever to give preference to either paths. He does not want to stay there, either, for eternity. So he goes down one of the paths.

If free will did not exist, he could not have chosen. He would have been frozen in his spot, not moving, because according to the doctrine of determinism, he needs an impetus to choose one over the other. But he has none. Yet he chooses one. I say this is a choice by free will, because his will is not effected by any priorly existing and effecting cause.

His choice is totally random, a random choice of two paths. He does not choose. He does not decide. He would need reasons to decide, and yet no reasons are available to him to choose.

Yet he walks down on one of the two paths.

This is a choice of random order, and therefore nothing but his free will could have exercised an effect on him to motivate him to take one path or the other.

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Sun 09/09/12 09:03 AMLet's say our world is so determistic, that free will does not exist. That is, a will that will make a person act totally randomly, because freedom means independence, and in a world where things are determined, freedom, or independence, can only be acted on independence of causes. Causes that cause things to happen or stop them from happening.

So we do things that are cause for us to do. We avoid crime, because it would cause us to got to jail, and we eat food to quell our hunger. If free will existed, we would commit crimes, and eat sand, and fully expect to not go to jail and not get sick from eating sand.

There is a lot of nitty-gritty arguments that I wish to prevent. Yes, people do commit crimes, and an argument exists that this is out of their free will, but other arguments exist that refute those arguments. One, for instance, that I know I will go to jail, why I commit crime? Must be free will. But no, because ideate that not every criminal gets caught, and if I commit a crime, I will not get caught. So there is no free will here. Etc. Lots of arguments can be brought up, but

A man will avoid crime in order to avoid punishment. So far, so good. No free will.

He avoids punishment, and he does not do crime. The question of "does he do crime" never comes up. Because we know that just like each two molecules when they bump into each other, will depart at predetermined angles and speed and direction and rotation, they never falter from it,

and because we know that humans will never deter from acting according to their will which has effects making the will to decide by choices that are never going to be different, just like two balls will always bounce off each other the same way, as long as the balls are unchanged,

there is a picture now in front of us of molecules colliding and people acting in a way that is not only not up to free will, but not up to any will. No man ever makes a choice. He can't. His choices that he makes are conceivably determined some time prior, by way of events leading up to an event will always happen the same way, and the final event will happen only the one way that it can.

So the man makes no choice, he does not steal or kill anyone. The causes are leading up to every moment in his life only one way, and he can only act one way, since there is no free will that would make him act differently.

So... in effect since he has no choice, his CHOICES are non-existent for him. His behaviour is not an outcome of his choices, because his choices are predermined: the law and its threat predetermines his choice to not commit crime. He is already made to choose. He has no choice in the matter.

If he has no choice, then choice is superfluous. Choice may exist, but just like free will, which we dismiss as existing, even if free will will help us will to do things that determined causes motivate us to do, then we can, in fact must, dismiss choice that is made as an effect of causes. Choice may or may not exist, it does not matter.

If choice is an illusion, or can be handled as such, then choice can be taken out of the equation of caused or motivated actions. "I will never choose, because choices are not an option." This statement becomes true in this set of logical setup of the status quo.

If I am not making choices, then there is no need for things to affect my choices. If the world of men and other animals and things that act on impulses that are causes and motivating forces is a world that can ignore the motivating considerations, and the forces that would otherwise make us make choices, then these motivating considerations can be ignored, or discounted, or denied certainty of existence, just like we allowed free will, and choices to exist, but with the understanding that there is no need for them to exist, they can be totally ignored and things would happen just the same way, except not according to will, to choices, or to influencing considerations or causes.

Things would happen, and our behaviour would happen, without causes then, is a valid way to look at, as long as we allow that it's also valid to look at our behaviour as caused, but that is not a NECESSARY fact, not a necessary thing to exist or happen, much the same way as choices may be real but not at all necessary to exist, and will and free will are real, but not necessary to exist.

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I just showed that if we discount free will as "perhaps real, perhaps not, but it's a useless concept", then we must also discount choices, determined will, and causation in our world much the same way.

Does this prove or disprove the existence or non-existence of free will or determined will? Not at all. But it does point it out that if we completely discount free will, then we must likewise discount the existence of effect, caused will, and choices.

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If the world operates randomly, which at this point in the reasoning is at fifty percent likely, and fifty percent unlikely, then we can say that the randomness excludes causes, and determination. The randomness still depends on the world to change, and therefore the changes are happnening to a pattern of total randomness, which is influenced only by a freely, or independently, occurring causation, and which has a special case, this random causation, which is free will.

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This is a conclusion that proves that if we reject the notion of free will, and we can only reject it on the grounds that it has no effect; then we must reject the notion that effects, caused effects exist; that caused will exist; and it leads to the conclusion that if we reject the notion of free will, then the only thing that we have left to think of as that which effects change, is free will itself.

This means that if we reject the notion of free will as a real motivator, then the only real motivator must necessarily be free will.

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I don't know where to publish this.

This is an interesting debate among philosophers of science. The classical physicists' understanding of motion suggests that the universe is deterministic. Modern physics suggests, for the most part, that the universe is not deterministic. So, from what I've learned about this subject so far, it's still debatable.

Anarchy is the life of freedom.

I'm still up in the air about this, but Sam Harris wrote a book, Free Will, and it basically says that our minds and bodies are subconsciously reacting as much as 10 seconds faster than our consciousness in the decision we make, which he feels negates the religious view, at least, of free will.

Free Will was a followup to The Moral Landscape, and like I said, I'm still on the fence about it, since he basically says that punishing someone may actually be wrong, since they're not consciously deciding to go off the deep end and slaughter someone.

any person place thing or other that has a "need" has no "Free Will"

"need" cancels out "Free Will"

if you are forced to eat food or drink water or have shelter in order to live ....you have no "Free Will"

if you are forced to follow the laws of physics then you have no "Free Will"

making decisions isn't "Free Will"

because one has the ability to make decisions doesn't mean they have the ability or the Free Will to carry out that decision

the need to make a decision cancels out "Free Will"

http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/free_will.html

Free Will

¶

That which you call your soul or spirit is your consciousness, and that which you call “free will” is your mind’s freedom to think or not, the only will you have, your only freedom, the choice that controls all the choices you make and determines your life and your character.


To think is an act of choice. The key to what you so recklessly call “human nature,” the open secret you live with, yet dread to name, is the fact that man is a being of volitional consciousness. Reason does not work automatically; thinking is not a mechanical process; the connections of logic are not made by instinct. The function of your stomach, lungs or heart is automatic; the function of your mind is not. In any hour and issue of your life, you are free to think or to evade that effort. But you are not free to escape from your nature, from the fact that reason is your means of survival—so that for you, who are a human being, the question “to be or not to be” is the question “to think or not to think.”

A being of volitional consciousness has no automatic course of behavior. He needs a code of values to guide his actions.

Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof. - Galbraith's Law