Question

Do you believe we have free will, and why? If you don’t believe in free will, why not? And if you believe we have free will, are you then a “strong compatibilist” like Leibniz and Kant?

Answer 1

• Yes, I believe in the illusion of free will. If free will mean we can make our interior choices with no one outside forcing us, its certainly true. However free will isn't really free. We make our interior choices based on who we are and what we think and feel; and these are shaped both by our genes and our environment.
• Even when environment or genetic modification is our choice, we make that choice based on who we are and what we think and feel, which is determined by genes and previous environment.
• In a practical sense, we have free will. We may be deterministic biological machines, but we somehow have a degree of manual control over our behaviors and thoughts. Under certain situations,we do make choices on our own.
• For example, say I want to go and buy a pint of milk for my cereal, and the shop is open, and I can get there, and I have money. For a compatibilist I have free will if I can choose to go, or, alternatively, not go. The fact that I do actually go mainly because I’m hungry and want to eat cereal doesn’t necessarily mean that I didn’t have the choice not to go.