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WAKING LIFE -- ILLUSTRATED SCREENPLAY & SCREENCAP GALLERY |
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Now, these laws, because they're so trustworthy, they enable incredible technological achievements. But look at yourself. We're just physical systems too, right? We're just complex arrangements of carbon molecules.
We're mostly water. And our behavior isn't going to be an exception to these basic physical laws. So it starts to look like whether its God setting things up in advance, and knowing everything you're gonna do, or whether it's these basic physical laws governing everything, there's not a lot of room left for freedom.
So now you might be tempted to just ignore the question, ignore the mystery of free will. Say, "Oh well, it's just an historical anecdote. It's sophomoric. It's a question with no answer, just forget about it." But the question keeps staring you in the face. Think about individuality for example, who you are. Who you are is mostly a matter of the free choices that you make. Or take responsibility. You can only be held responsible, you can only be found guilty, or you can only be admired or respected for things you did of your own free will. So the question keeps coming back, and we don't really have a solution to it. It starts to look like all your decisions are really just a charade.
Think about how it happens. There's some electrical activity in your brain. Your neurons fire. They send a signal down into your nervous system. It passes along down into your muscle fibers. They twitch. You might, say, reach out your arm. Looks like it's a free action on your part, but every one of those -- every part of that process is actually governed by physical law, chemical laws, electrical laws and so on.
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