Does Free Will Exist?

People like to argue about whether Free Will exists. Psychological studies have shown that our own belief that we have an ability to choose may well be an illusion. I’ve spent some time pondering this question and concluded that it doesn’t matter.

The case where free will exists is pretty well familiar to all of us, so I won’t spend much time on it. It’s the foundation of things like our systems of reward and punishment, love and trust. We generally believe that people have the freedom to choose their actions and respond as though those choices represent that person’s values.

Here’s where it gets interesting. Suppose for a moment that free will does not exist. In that case, our actions are nothing more than a function of our current personal state and the future stimuli to which we are exposed. Could society hold a person responsible for their actions if they do not have free will? Absolutely!

If an individual’s actions are immoral or dangerous now, they are likely to continue to be so in the future. As such, our treatment of that person as a society or as a member of a relationship are no different than the case where the person has free will. Actions still reflect each person’s mental state and are a bellwether for future behaviors. Love, friendship, criminal punishment, or attempts to correct someone’s mental stability are all still a very reasonable response to a demonstrations of a person’s behavior.

So far as I can tell, whether “Free Will” is truly free (whatever that’s supposed to mean) has absolutely no practical bearing on the outcome.