Free will
In our series of
reflections
we have reached the
point of
examining human mental activity.
Here we have a new
element
that deserves our
special attention.
Not because it has
some special
significance for the
World
but because it is of great
importance for us.
We know very little
yet about the
functioning of our
brains.
We do not know what the
mechanism of thought is,
how an inspiration emerges,
how we take a decision.
But since we are
not examining the involvement
of extra-natural forces,
we must accept that
in our brain cells some biological processes
are taking place which ultimately can be
reduced to simple physicochemical phenomena
which have their origin on a molecular level.
Phenomena which obey the same laws
as the rest of the Cosmos.
In the case of our
painter
we have a whole series of
actions
whose mechanism we know little about.
·
He
studies the picture critically.
·
He
brings his left hand to his beard.
·
He
takes two steps back.
·
He
tries to find out what is missing in the picture.
·
He
has the idea to paint another boat on the canvas.
·
He
is not sure what colour he should use.
·
He
decides on red.
We cannot say in
detail
which cells in the
brain of our painter,
under which internal molecular processes
and after which interactions between them,
led to the decision to make the boat red.
Certainly this decision
was not independent
of elements affecting
his brain:
·
His
experience from images of nature or of
other painters.
·
The
colours already used in this picture and
his sense of balance of colours in a painting.
·
The
light, the temperature and the relative
humidity inside the studio.
·
His
mental state.
·
The
proper functioning of his liver at the time.
A complex series
of deterministic
sequences were
influencing him.
A number of constraints
which he probably
didn’t realize at
the time
he made his decision.
If our assumption about the
absolute
accuracy in the determination
of the
Natural Law is true, then this is the case.
Only that the painter did not know it.
He believes that
he freely decided
that he should
add a boat to the almost
finished seascape, and justifiably spent
some time trying to decide whether he
should make the boat yellow or red.
He did not know that,
just as for everything that happens
in the universe, the
decision about whether the
boat would be yellow or red had been made long before.
It had been made in the
moment of the Big Bang.
At that time
the list of successive
events
(more precisely the long chain of collisions)
was specified in every detail. Events which
led to what he considers as a decision of
his own free will about the colour of the boat.
Just as at the moment
of the Big Bang it was determined
that the person
who is writing these lines would use
the example of the painter to refer to free will.
The poor man!
He believed he had
made a free choice,
when he decided to use artistic creation
as an example of free will.
It seems that these ideas have
got us into really very deep water.