Why is free will considered to be a good thing? That is the question that has been bothering me lately, and one that I don't have an answer to. But free will is constantly talked of as if its existence is a good, and its nonexistence is an evil. God must have free will, and if we didn't have free will we would not be able to love God or others. I suppose I disagree with the assumptions that God has to have free will and that there is much choice in loving others (even the self-sacrificing sort of love that people rail on about). Regardless, I'm curious about how people talk in these ways as if it is self-evidently good. That is a much more interesting conversation than the one about whether we have free will or not.
The arguments always seem to be, to some degree, dishonest. People don't look at the evidence and decide whether or not free will exists (actually, whether or not to believe that free will exists), they value or don't value free will and move forward accordingly. Additionally, it seems dishonest from the love side, because I don't think anyone starts there. The idea that free will is a good is wrapped into a whole range of assumptions about economics and morality, and how we can treat people. Basically, we want to believe in free will because it allows us to be cruel to others, or at least to see cruelty against others and believe that we are not responsible in some way to alleviate their suffering.
Ah, but if we don't believe in free will why would we believe ourselves responsible?! That is the other problem with the conversation, which supposes that its one or the other, or that the complexity of life can somehow be dropped into nice categories (compatabilist, incompatibilist). It all starts to seem like someone started it out as a joke, and everyone who heard the joke took it seriously, and the rest of us have paid for it ever since.
I suppose the only real good that can come from the conversation is talking about the consequences of believing or not believing in free will, and the values in assuming that it is good or not good. It doesn't really matter whether we have free will or not, just whether or not we believe we do.
I'm not sure that "free-will" ever means very much, but it really doesn't mean anything when applied to God.
2 comments:
I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that God has free will, and it certainly doesn't make any sense to me.
Also, even though I believe in free will, I've never thought of it as a good thing, just as a necessary thing.
"It doesn't really matter whether we have free will or not, just whether or not we believe we do." I think that now, practically, that's true. I'm not sure about the long run.
I like your tags.
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