Fra 'letter of the week' på badreligion.com:
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Hello Greg,
In my mid teen years, I came into a copy of Stranger Than Fiction, and it has been one of Bad Religion's many records that has accompanied me well in life. The sheer energy and conviction of the record pushed me to inquire about the world that surrounded me -- instead of continuing as an apathetic solipsist. That year, I read Billions and Billions by Carl Sagan, and realized just how good it is to be here -- and just how fascinating life is. I am unabashed to say that I cried when I read the epilogue written by Ann Druyan after Carl's death. Few things in life have moved me to tears like that.
If this is the case, I don't see how human behaviour could be an exception (I believe the formal term for this philosophy is 'determinism'). It is unsettling to me to think that even my writing this e-mail could be the result of quantum particle interactions eons ago and not of my own volition. Perhaps I am polarizing the issue too much, but it seems that if free will does exist, it would have to be from some other source (but transcendant order i not a likely possibility, in my mind). So, the rift seems to exist: how can free will exist if all things are the result of antecedant causes? My atheist and scientific beliefs are in a fist fight with my notion of free will. I'm hoping that there's a way that they can both win the match. Any insight you can offer would be greatly appreciated, as I weigh your intellectual opinion heavily.
I eagerly await your response.
From Russell Hatch.
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William Provine (Greg Graffin's Ph.D. advisor at Cornell University) Replies:
Dear Russ,
Greg was kind enough to send on your thoughful email to me. Human free will is about the most difficult idea I have ever considered. Like you, I first became an atheist, and then worried about human free will for a long time, more than 10 years, before becoming confident that it is a pernicious and destructive social myth.
Perhaps you have given yourself a tough problem by contrasting universal determinism with human free will. Universal determinism cannot be settled with our current understanding. Some processes at the quantum level seem clearly undetermined, though later we may come to understand them as determined. But universal determinism is basically irrelevant to human free will.
What is clearly important, is local determinism of biological organisms. Heredity, environment, and their interactions are all that determine an organism. Environment is just as deterministic as heredity. So to me, the contrast is between local determinism and human free will. From a scientific view, human free will makes no sense, or as philosophers say, unintelligible.
The wide belief in human free will feeds feelings of retribution and revenge whenever a person is wronged by others. I think our society here in the USA is deeply fixed in a "free will -- revenge" syndrome that really drags society down. For many years, I have taught a summer seminar on free will, and always give a annual "free will" lecture in my evolution course.
The literature on human free is enormous. Five new books have already come out this year, and about the same number appeared last year. Keeping up with this literature is almost impossible. You might wish to check out this website,
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/dfwIntroIndex.htm , because it has many different views about free will.
--William Provine
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Konseptet 'fri vilje' blir dermed vanskelig å diskutere, uavhengig av hvorvidt våre handlinger styres direkte av rent fysiske prosesser. Det er likevel ikke slik at jeg går rundt og føler meg fullstendig desillusjonert. Kanskje man en gang i fremtiden kan komme til å slippe straff for forbrytelser, ettersom handlingen man gjorde var resultatet av en fysisk prosess man ikke kunne stoppe.
