More On Free Will Meets Absolute Determinism

I've been considering more conclusions of free will being an aspect of expectation and prediction. Will falls away when anticipation becomes memory, what we know as experiencing the present.

Free will is a property of false perception of possibility. Consider a 6-sided dice. We may think that the odds of rolling a particular number is 1 in 6, but in truth the odds are 100% for the actual number rolled and zero for the other five. Before the roll, our feeling that other outcomes are possible is what we think of as free will. If we were to slow down a film of the rolling dice, there would probably be a time when we can see which numbers are more likely than others, and ultimately we could determine which number will actually be rolled before the dice settles. This analogy shows that the 'present' is variable and fuzzy.

There are many implications of this.

First, that will of this sort can be observed in non-humans. Rutting stags, for example, must use their judgement to predict if they would win a contest against another male. If they knew the outcome for certain, they would not need to battle. With this argument we can show that stags have free will as we know it. With a similar argument we can show that any universal actor which makes a predictive judgement can be shown to have freewill. What a predictive judgement is, is a different question.

A second implication is the definitive end of ideas of an infinite (or any) number of possible universes which contain all outcomes from each event. There is only one universe; this one. Any beliefs of more than one universe, more than one outcome to any event, stem from false beliefs in other impossible outcomes. Like the dice prediction, these beliefs are a property of will (a delusion, a fantasy, a false prediction), rather than a reflection of the actual universe.

Will here implies control over the future. Control over our memories or the transmission of information could also be considered part of free will; and with that we can extend will over the past. Consider that we exist at the end of the universe and ask which universes may be 'possible'? We are at the end, so we could clearly say that this is/was the only one, but we have limited knowledge of what is there (we can never know all of the universe, we would need a brain as big as the universe for that). The limited knowledge creates gaps which can be filled with guesses, predictions, fantasy; and thus false beliefs, a 'will' over past events, would emerge. As with predictive will, the inaccuracy of these predictions would increase with distance.

When time is relative, we actors have different pasts, and our perception of the present is personal. If we revisit Schrödinger's cat, we can split the present. If one person sees the alive/dead status of the cat in the box, but doesn't tell his colleague, then the cat is in the 'past' for the observer, but in the uncertain future for the unknowing colleague.

It is the personal relatively of time which grants us individuality because the flow of time gives us information. Information determines belief, and allows prediction; and prediction, imagination emerges as will.

Mark Sheeky, 13 July 2024