Episode 2 (Free Will and Truth)
"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth..."
We’ve all been there, or at least have seen it. You’re a young man second in line at Starbucks, feeling uncertain, anxious. You know what you want but what you order is constrained by what’s actually available to you. Constrained by what others would think about you if you walked up to the cashier and said, “Hi, I’ll have a Venti Double Chocolaty Chip Crème Frappuccino Blended Crème with skim milk and whipped cream as well please.” You want a specific drink, and you have the “freedom” to choose to order it or not, but is it actually freedom? Are you exercising true free will with no influence?
This is free will as a choice. A lack of freedom because of what others have decided before you or a lack of freedom in that our ideas aren’t even our own. We all have likes and dislikes, ambitions and goals, but how do these get decided? How do we decide which sports teams we like or what we like in general? We didn’t decide those things on our own, we didn’t chose to be born in Michigan and thus have an incredible chance of liking either Michigan or Michigan State. We adapted to our happenstance circumstances.
Do we have physical free will?
Is there a difference between self-belief and objective truth?
Let's discuss.