I start with the question: Should I believe in free will or not? Sounds like I need to make a decision, which means the appropriate approach is decision theory. The classic approach to this (ignoring things like prospect theory for now) is to determine what possible outcomes will result from my decision, the probabilities that each of these outcomes will occur and the value (or cost) associated with each of these outcomes.
So, I guess I need to start with determining the possible outcomes. This may be hard. First, “there is free will”:
- people will be held responsible for their actions
- people can be convinced to change their minds and resultant actions
It occurred to me that while a person’s future is indeterminate that would also be true without free will since their future is affected by outside events, some of which are random.
How about the opposite decision: “There is no free will”?
- our actions are determined by external events and stochastic chemical processes within their own bodies
One issue that comes up right now is to what degree is free will associated with consciousness and “self” or “soul”. The first thought is that with no free will, there is no self, and so, by some obscure misapplied logical syllogism, with free will there may be a self/soul. However, I think both of these are wrong. As to the first, why can’t you have a self/soul that is created at birth or however even though it can’t make a free choice? As to the second, just because I have opposing concepts, consequences flowing from them are independent and the truth or falsity of one set of consequences does not necessarily affect the other set.
So trying to proceed within the constraints of decision theory, it looks like the best I can do is that free will implies people are responsible for their actions. What does that entail? If people are responsible, then society should strive to influence how people think. If they are not, then society should try to arrange external events to maximize behavior that supports that society.
How to influence how people think? Most recently, we would have to acknowledge that the Soviet Union and China seem most committed to that. A common characteristic is their dedication to societal structures that encourage “right” behavior based on “right” thinking. Does that mean that they are committed to the notion that we have free will? Communism, as implemented currently, does have a strong connection to philosophical ideals (Hegel, Marx) which implies that they favor a “rational” basis to society. Is there a connection between free will and rationalism?
If, on the other hand, you believe that there is no free will, then it would be a good policy to structure society so that as many people as possible were in environments that encourage certain behaviors. Proceeding then to the other aspects of decision theory, we have to look at the costs of each decision. Influencing people’s thinking would seem to be relatively cheap compared to the alternative of providing good environments. In other words, speeches and billboards are much cheaper than schools, healthcare, jobs, etc.
If I can conclude this very cursory application of decision theory to free will, then I would say it is much easier to assume that people have free will. Otherwise, you need to devote many resources and do many studies to see how each of those resources affect behavior. This does seem to be our current situation in the U.S. The Chinese model has been very successful for the past 60 years or so, but seems to be changing now, cf. Hong Kong. Maybe they are realizing that people don’t have free will?
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