Jeffrey DeLisle
Jul 10, 2017 · 1 min read

Without free will, how does one claim a superiority of one moral vantage point over another? What constitutes a “better” decision? What does it matter if one is not fair, or if one tortures?

The concept of morality necessitates choice.

Further, it seems to me the scientific experiments you cite, as elegant as they are, get at a basic level of neuroscience. The unproven leap you have implicitly made is that this somehow translates all the way up the chain of your posited “inputs.” Instead I posit that the complexity between those granular neuroscience experiments and the everyday decisions made by humans is infinite and fundamentally incomprehensible to your input machine, and therein lies free will.

I will give up my skepticism on the absence of free will when your experiments can predict actions more complex that stopping a dot. It won’t take 6 or 12 months- just tell me what I am going to buy at the grocery store this week. :)

    Jeffrey DeLisle

    Written by

    enthusiastic dilettante with intellectual pretensions