Free Will

I’d say it was luck, but it’s not. These events corresponded to make me. I am the happy effect of these causes. There is no “could”; it happened this way. There was no other way for it to happen, because this is the way it happened. We can argue about the “how it happened” for a millennium, because we can’t relive moments with a billion ways to scientifically record the data. In the end, it doesn’t matter all that much. I am here. I’m sitting on a couch, typing. The battery of my laptop is slowly dying. My friend is texting me, and I set aside the computer to answer her back, and I was struck by this thought, which I struggle to put to words.

What is free will? The most instant answer that popped to mind is “The ability to make decisions that aren't controlled by outside forces.” Every decision we make on our own then is exercising our free will. But there is a fatal flaw in this definition.

Could influences that result in poor judgment or seemingly abnormal judgment and decision making be considered the lack of free will? “Driving Under the Influence” and “Criminally Insane” come to mind as examples of this. These particular ideas seem to be based on the idea that free will can be compromised. What about advertisements then? Could they not be considered taking away our free will by influencing our minds into buy their products or services? What about peer pressure? Mob mentality? Hunger? All of these things are outside influences on our decisions.

But, what does that mean?

Nothing. Free will is irrelevant. Claiming to have or not have free will is redundant at best, superfluous at worst. Our wills are the products of our current environment juxtaposed against our past environments and a healthy dose of our personality. What goes into weighing our choices – the criteria and the weights that we assign them – means that our decisions are not random and therefore not “free”, and are always under the influence of something.

For example: my choice to not eat ice cream during my lunch break isn’t because I don’t like ice cream. In fact, I love ice cream. But, I’m lactose intolerant and eating ice cream would make me sick without taking medication before hand. So, (using Optimality Theory because I’m a linguistics nerd) I’ve made a little chart to help explain this.

	Lactose Intolerance	Stinginess	Love of Ice Cream
Eat Ice Cream with Lactade		*!
Eat Ice Cream	*!
→Don’t Eat Ice Cream			*

If you don't know Optimality Theory then I'll explain this chart for you: (*) means "violation". (*!) means "fatal violation". The constraints on the top are listed by importance, from left to right. (→) means "winner". (Normally it's a little hand, but I don't know the HTML for it, so I went with a little arrow instead.)

It doesn’t matter if there is or isn’t free will. Our wills and decision making processes don't work that way, so the idea isn't applicable to reality.

But, that we have will is very important. It keeps us breathing, working jobs, struggling through boring classes, and drives us to achieve great things.

Did I just disprove Free Will with Optimality Theory?