Feb 11, 2020, 2:26 PM
—“Could you say then that free will is a sort of emergent property of determinism?”—Andy Lunn
Maybe I don’t understand that question enough.
We have will. That’s a fact.
We evolved for graceful failure in exercise of our will – so that is what we interpret as somtimes lacking free will.
We evolved for incremental improvement of our knowledge, and then our will as a consequence.
The degree to which we develop our will (ability) into agency (successful application) depends on ability, experience, training and general knowledge.
So the question isn’t do we have free will, it’s that we evolved will and the capacity to develop agency with it. But we are limited by our knowledge. We do not appear to be otherwise limited simply because we are so good at building tools that extend our sense, perception and action.
Now, within that context, if you mean, that without a deterministic universe (the scientific definition of determinism, not the sophomoric and philosophical definition), then yes, we could never develop agency because there would be no regularity, and without regularity no use for memory, and without memory there would be no use for will reason, or agency.
So in that sense, yes. But only in that sense.