I have never shied away from taking on the Big Questions, so why stop now? Let us try examining the issue of Free Will. If you have read my prior posts it should come as no surprise that I reject the idea that everything is the result of quantum fluctuations over billions of years and that therefore Free Will is an illusion. Some proponents of that view seem to feel that all existence is just the result of a glorified and obscure version of 2 + 2 = 4 filtered through sacred formulas that they have either already discovered or will someday, and which they will then declare to be the Truth (consistent – no doubt – with the ramblings of The Prophet Einstein.) I reject that as more reductionist foolishness; and would respond with their own mantra, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.” So far I am not aware that they have offered any proof.
Having left that aside, my most recent attempt to deal with the topic has concerned whether one can reconcile Free Will with Fate. Can one have Free Will in a situation where there is something that is acting to ensure that certain results happen? I believe I may have developed a model that shows that both can be valid.
Let us presume that you sit down to play chess with a truly superb Grandmaster, played by Fate, and that you are a player of at least minimal (but not exceptional) skill. (No, this is not like the movie of Death and the knight.) Your goal is to avoid checkmate and attempt to checkmate your opponent. Unknown to you, Fate’s goal is to get your king to move to a particular one of the 64 squares on the board. (Presumably someplace other than your original square or the ones right beside it, since Fate wants some challenge, after all.) You begin with the standard pieces and layout. You can make any legitimate move with any piece you have on the board. Fate – also using only legitimate moves – easily fends off your attacks and steadily eliminates your pieces and applies pressure that results in the eventual outcome of you moving your king to the square that Fate selected. This is not predestination; it is influence and intention. You have had the ability to choose any piece and make any available move throughout the game. (Although admittedly that range of choices will decrease as a result of the play.) Fate simply adjusted its strategy every time you moved. Even if you figured out that Fate’s goal was something different than usual and maybe even got so far as to determine what that might be, you would have no way of knowing what square Fate had chosen. You have had free will and freedom of choice until Fate achieved its goal, and that end was inevitable although the path to it was not preordained or predictable.
I came to this line of reasoning through my own experience. Nearly 40 years ago I had an occasion when I recognized at that time that if I spoke one word – any word – to a certain other person that I did not know and had not met it would change the entire course of my life. (And I am not speaking of something as dramatic as assenting to or preventing a crime.) I kept silent and have made many other choices since that instant. And yet, a couple of years ago it became clear to me that in a very relevant way I am precisely at the point where Fate wants me to be and that I would undoubtedly have arrived here even if I had spoken decades earlier and followed that different path. All those free choices and yet here I stand on the square that Fate had in mind. I will add that it seems to me that Fate seldom raises its hand and points the way; it has no need to do so. Its actions only appear in hindsight.
Just so there is a record somewhere of these thoughts I will venture just a little farther into unexplained and unexplainable territory. I have been told by what I consider an unimpeachable source that Free Will is the only thing that is real. The implication was that existence itself is the result of an act of Free Will. Make of that what you will. On the other hand, if – as I said in a different essay – life is the universe attempting to understand itself then Fate might well be a tool of the multiverse’s attempt to understand itself.
Gort, berenga.