Andrev Walden feel worried (DN 26/3). Worried that he really is an algorithm, and just imagine that he has such a thing as free will. The science seems so clear-cut: via hjärnscanningar have cognitive science and neuroscience has shown that decisions are taken before the person says that it is a time. In short is the decision-making unconsciously – then informed ”only” the consciousness of this. Walden concludes that the science is on the way to kill the myth of free will, and feel measly.
But what if we are stuck in an unnecessarily polarized dichotomy? We often think that a free will must be completely unaffected by everything else – like a little alien that sits inside the head and governs the rest of the body. And if we do not have such an alien, we draw the conclusion that everything is absolutely predetermined, that we are living in an illusion of being autonomous action creatures.
the dichotomy we’re stuck in is 400 years old and received its clearest formulation in the when René Descartes separated the soul or thinking thing – from the strength of the material. In such a dualism, the thinking is entirely free, independent of everything else. Matter on the other hand, is determined as of external causes, and is in itself passive and measurable.
But when we began to consider the soul as a thing, and began our search for the, we could not find it anywhere. And if it is not seemed to be, why believe in it? Presto, the matter was all there was. Not even by accepting a such a stretched out, matematiserbar and livsdränerad matter, we were able to understand ourselves as something other than algorithms. Ridiculous was the word.
deceived ourselves. Maybe there are other options than to either believe in a completely free will or that we, ourselves, are completely determined. Not least in the sciences. Increasingly, there is talk for example about the difference between complicated and complex systems. The complex systems include many parts and requires several calculations are necessary to be solved. Yet all this complex system is not completely predict – how much we expect. No algorithm can determine how the system will react.
we See in addition to biology, there are those who speak of life as autopoiesis: as självskapande and självformande. What if matter really is självformande, and the acts of consciousness a part of nature, an aspect of the matter? In that case it is strange perhaps not primarily man’s inner alien, but the självformande matter of which we are a part of.
everything is algorithms, it would be no real difference between spilling coffee on someone and pouring coffee on someone. However, the truth is that there is no algorithm for pouring coffee on someone. It is just something that some think because they assume that everything is complicated system of measurable matter. But if life, instead, consists of complex systems of självformande matter has also its structures and order. Ultimately, there is in such systems, the scope for choice between pouring coffee over his colleague or not. But it’s a decision deeply rooted in a range of circumstances that is physically processed.
So dear Andrev, excuse filosofilektionen, but if we are to go to the science, there is no reason to surrender before the supreme power. Decide to eat your bun and allow you to know you’re alive!
