Are we a clock now without choices?
Taking what I was saying as the basis on which to answer this, the word "choice" would the process by which we eliminate certain options we could pursue, but that, after processing them through our neurologically based algorithms, we do pursue (in favor of some other alternative). If "choice" is the elimination of those unpursued options, then there still is choice. The illusion is in thinking that the alternative on which we choose to act is "willed" by us freely, rather than being the one selected by complex system of neurological algorithms.
Does it matter what choices we make? Does it matter what we do?
I think these are two different questions, in that case. Since choices are the unpursued options, in most cases those don't matter (though they could be relevant still in making later decisions, since the results obtained this go-around cause the same algorithms to, potentially, select a different option next time we are confronted with similar circumstances.
What we do "matters" in the sense that our actions impact others and the actions they take (again, just as choosing to advance a pawn forward in a game of chess can affect the rest of the game in a meaningful way). One might argue in that case that we cannot actively shape our fates, that in fact the actions do not "matter." I wouldn't contradict that directly (since it is a subjective assessment), but I would suggest that a play can still "matter" even if all the actors follow the script.
Is my life some completely planned out and fixed now that what I do doesn't make any difference to how it will turn out? Am I "free" to just coast now, since it's all set up for me? Am I now going to be fine or starve, one or the other regardless of what I do?
Even if there were no free will, the nature of the species has not changed. I, at least, would not say that if we were to find free will is an illusion, then humanity is worthless and that our continued existence or extinction somehow becomes a meaningless distinction.
If my childhood home burned down, I would (presumably because of algorithms in my brain) find that event meaningful, even though a house is an inanimate object. It's destruction would doubtlessly alter my future behavior in some way, and if the outcome of those mental processes is sensitive to initial conditions, then the loss of that inanimate object would affect the whole of the future course of my life. That seems meaningful to me.
I do not think that "We should give up and die" is a logically necessary conclusion one draws from "Free will is an illusion." Once could permissibly draw that conclusion, but again one might as well conclude that a play is not worth watching because the ending has already been written.
You could still enjoy your life the sensation it brings and for the joy of the journey itself. It is clear that human behavior is complex, and even without free will, there would be countless twists and turns a life could take. That complexity and tumult could be seen as beautiful even without each of us being the master of his or her own fate.
Besides, if all that is correct, one really has no "choice" about whether to lay down and starve. Our brains, in that case, might opt for that, or they may settle on a different course, and we would just be along for the ride. Since it is well established that bodily preservation is strong in the species (and under this view of the world the desire for survival would be a key subroutine embedded in our neural architecture), it is unlikely that many people would lie down and starve even if they became convinced this view of things was correct. In the case of most people, the algorithms wouldn't allow it.
Test the importance of predetermination tomorrow.
This view does not require strict predetermination. It is possible here that there is true chance that plays a role in shaping final options selected in the brain. That doesn't save free will, of course, but at some point random events that occur in nature will shape our actions, and because the part of the relevant input is generated by some random process, the ultimate outcomes will eventually become fundamentally unpredictable.
You know what you normal day is going to be like. You know what your responsibilities are. Don't worry, it's all predetermined, you are going to turn out however you were going to turn out from the beginning of time (another impossible concept) so what are the consequences of this for you? Stay in bed. Blow off work. Skip class. Don't eat. Relax, it's all predetermined. What you do can't change anything. It's fixed. Immutable. The future is going to be the same NO MATTER WHAT.
Even ignoring random chance, that is definitely not the case. Think about both cases. Suppose I take you seriously, and I stay home. *If* that happens under this view it only happens because I read your post, processed it, and decided to stay home. That is obviously a very different outcome from the one in which I read your post, reject it and go to work.
Not to strain the analogy (he says as he strains the analogy), but chess is a very much deterministic game. Let's assume you have two players (both computers, Hal vs. K.I.T.T. ) and neither plays a mixed strategy. In a real sense, the out come of each game is determined in advance. Both computers have a set of algorithms that each will strictly adhere to. One might well say that the outcome is "predetermined" (though unknown).
Let's say Hal is predetermined to win the game. What you are saying, above, seems similar to saying that it does not matter if Hal makes any moves, because he will win no matter what K.I.T.T. does. But that is clearly not the case. Hal is only the predetermined winner because both Hal and K.I.T.T. will make the moves, in sequence (and in response to one another) that will ultimately result in Hal's victory. Each move that Hal makes is instrumental in prompting K.I.T.T.'s next move.
I can stay home in bed, certainly, but that will lead to a very different outcome than if I go to work. It's possible that my choice is predetermined even now, but it's definitely not the case that my actions tomorrow won't affect anything. I think that is true whether I freely will myself to take those actions or not. Or, because this is my post of strained analogies, if Hamlet decided to stay in bed through the whole play, that would have a serious impact on the action and enjoyability of the rest of the play, even though Hamlet has no free will.
Being "predetermined" apparently doesn't control anything about our lives. The outcome of our life depends on our will.
Again, it is not clear that will is involved (though it's fair to believe that will is involved). What we do does matter, I agree, because what we do affects the subsequent shape of the world (and that affects physical processes and the actions of others is a complex way).
It's of course true that actions that occur between inanimate objects also shape the future, every bit as much as human action, even though those could not (I presume) be "willed". The action of the Sun on the Earth is an easy example. A "will" is clearly not needed for an action to have a persistent, significant effect on the course of future events. More mundanely, if the server at my work were to malfunction right now and could be repaired, that will have a significant impact on me and my co-workers in the morning (far more significant than my staying home would have)...yet I think we could both concede that if such a malfunction were to occur, there would (very likely) be a strictly causal chain of events that led to the malfunction.
So, even in a strictly deterministic universe, events that occur (or do not occur) matter because subsequent events unfold from prior ones. It doesn't matter whether the "actor" is animate or inanimate, organic or inorganic, or whether the actions were willed or not. In the grand scheme of things, my staying home is a smaller event than a server meltdown.
Apparently being predetermined doesn't keep me from doing a single thing, nor does it cause me to do a single thing.
But that's not correct. If your actions are predetermined, then they are predetermined. We all have to concede that you will consider alternatives prior to acting, but if your ultimate actions were predetermined, then it was equally predetermined that you would reject those alternatives. It's possible that what you imagine as a freedom to do other things, to have acted according to those alternatives, is a counterfactual that you impose on the past because you can recall the process of rejecting those alternatives. There is nothing logically inconsistent in the belief that, under those *exact* prior circumstances, with the same information, the signals in your brain that prompted you to act as you did, would always prompt you to act in that one way, without any ability (absent some change in the circumstances or information) to vary that "choice".
What is true for that past decision would then likely be true for each and every decision in the past, now, and in the future.
In order for that to work, it would have to be that the algorithms used by the brain to eliminate the irrelevant alternatives would need to be complex and (to mirror observed human behavior) they would have to be sensitive to initial conditions, but those are true of water moving around a rock in a creek bed, so it's not difficult to believe that those would be true for the human brain.
Again, just to be clear, that is not proof there is no free will either; it's just to say that there is no way (at present, at least known to human philosophy) to definitively establish or disprove the existence of free will.
It is looking more and more likely that I will have to skip work, given the hour. I blame you.
