Do we have freewill?

HS #16  2016.11.1

 Do we have freewill?

One of my favorite hours of the week is 7-8 am on Sunday morning. I lie in bed and listen to “On Being” with Krista Tippett on Michigan Radio at FM 104.1.  She interviews a broad collection of influential thinkers on topics in religion and science.

A recent interview involved the veracity of the statement, “I have freewill.”

I claim it is true, but my explanation may trouble you. The most slippery word in the statement is “I.” What does “I” mean? Let’s unpack it a bit.

What’s the difference between the game of tic tack toe and the game of chess? Likely you learned to play tic tack toe as a child, and stopped playing it about three days later. Why? Because when players have gained the ability to imagine three or four moves ahead, they won’t lose.  Thus two experienced opponents will always play to a draw. Not much fun.

Now consider chess.  As a logical game, chess is no different from tic tack toe. Two players with the ability to think about 40 moves ahead would find it just as boring because again each game would end in a draw.  However, since even grand masters can typically visualize only about eight moves in advance, we experience the two games as vastly different. Said another way, tic tack toe and chess are qualitatively the same, but since they are so different quantitatively, they FEEL qualitatively different.

Hold that thought and consider another.  Imagine a Roomba, the robotic carpet sweeper advertised on TV. They move ahead until they bump into something. Then they back up a bit, pivot to a slightly different direction, and then move ahead again. Eventually, if you’re lucky, they may sweep the entire floor.

My question: Does a Roomba have free will? Your first impulse may be “Of course not, it’s just a machine,” but ponder a bit. The Roomba is doing exactly as it wants. It “wants” to move forward, and when it bumps into something, it wants to pivot. Does the fact that we know what it will want to do change the fact that it is doing as it wishes? Does the fact that it was programed to make those choices change the fact that it is doing as it chooses? I think not.  From its point of view – not being aware of its own circuitry, it is just doing as it pleases.

Now, in the same way that chess feels different from tic tack toe just because it is so much more complicated, so also we humans may well be essentially the same as the Roomba. We just seem different because the circuitry of our brains is so much more extensive.  But in the same way that tic tack toe and chess SEEM qualitatively different but in fact are not, perhaps we humans are very complicated Roombas. (I told you that you weren’t going to like this.)

If so, then we have free will just like the Roomba – we are free to do as we wish. It’s just that “what we wish” could be determined and predicted (in principle) by looking at the circuitry of our brains, just as the engineer who made the Roomba circuit board will know what it will want.

Now, knowing just a little about how your brain is wired, I can predict how you might be responding: “You are talking nonsense!  Of course I’m not just a complicated Roomba!”  My reply,  “How do you know?”  There is certainly nothing from your experience to which you could turn for a counter argument.  Even our self-awareness, for example, might just be the result of the more extensive circuitry.

Does the meaning of “I” change if we bring God into the picture? To my knowledge, there is one biblical passage that treats the topic of freewill in depth. I’m referring to Paul’s letter to the Romans – chapter 9.

With lawyerly precision, Paul wrestles with the question of human free will and divine sovereignty. By asking honest questions, Paul backs himself into a corner.  God made us and determines our freewill, just as Roomba’s engineer made it and determines its freewill. This leads to the inevitable question: How can God then hold us humans responsible for our actions? Paul’s answer?  He punts! -  We are the created, who are we to question God!  Surprisingly then, Paul’s explanation is not inconsistent with us being Roombas.

Troubled?   Of course – that’s the way you are made.