This post has been inspired by the following video, where Noam Chomsky expresses his opinion on free will. He just despises the idea of absence of free will. He quotes William James "if you don't believe in the idea of free will why even bother presenting an argument."
My stand is that humans are state machines, they gobble up input from senses, saves a part of them as memory and takes predictable actions based on that memory. There may be uncertainty in the Heisenberg sense in prediction, but overall there is no external force that helps humans take the "free" decision, it is just your past memory along will your genes/body that completely determines your every "free" decision which again determines the input to your senses and recursively your "free" decision.
I may be wrong and experiments may suggest otherwise in future, but for now no experiments suggest otherwise and the theory of state machines fits perfectly to evolution and psychological evidences and theories.
Noam Chomsky asserts that we can't explain free will, but it is central to our beliefs. I agree it is central to our beliefs, but I don't agree that we can't explain it. The explanation is just that belief of free will is just an illusion. I agree it is a pretty provocative statement but why else explains psychological diseases, concussions and experiments that show people justifying independent decision taken by their left and right brain.
Let's get back to the question that was initially asked to Noam Chomsky, "How does morality fits in the idea of determinism and materialism?" The answer lies in accepting morality not as a personal concept but as a social concept which trains people to think on a social level rather than personal level. The common counter argument is that isn't it unfair to punish a person who is not responsible for his own crimes. I would say it is unfair but who said that life is meant to be fair. We need to punish criminals to discourage future criminals because knowledge that you will be punished for your crimes is part of the deterministic decision machine that we so lovingly want to call free will.
My stand is that humans are state machines, they gobble up input from senses, saves a part of them as memory and takes predictable actions based on that memory. There may be uncertainty in the Heisenberg sense in prediction, but overall there is no external force that helps humans take the "free" decision, it is just your past memory along will your genes/body that completely determines your every "free" decision which again determines the input to your senses and recursively your "free" decision.
I may be wrong and experiments may suggest otherwise in future, but for now no experiments suggest otherwise and the theory of state machines fits perfectly to evolution and psychological evidences and theories.
Noam Chomsky asserts that we can't explain free will, but it is central to our beliefs. I agree it is central to our beliefs, but I don't agree that we can't explain it. The explanation is just that belief of free will is just an illusion. I agree it is a pretty provocative statement but why else explains psychological diseases, concussions and experiments that show people justifying independent decision taken by their left and right brain.
Let's get back to the question that was initially asked to Noam Chomsky, "How does morality fits in the idea of determinism and materialism?" The answer lies in accepting morality not as a personal concept but as a social concept which trains people to think on a social level rather than personal level. The common counter argument is that isn't it unfair to punish a person who is not responsible for his own crimes. I would say it is unfair but who said that life is meant to be fair. We need to punish criminals to discourage future criminals because knowledge that you will be punished for your crimes is part of the deterministic decision machine that we so lovingly want to call free will.
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