Great philosophical musings Adam! To add another stick to the fire of the unanswerable; the "many worlds" theory says that there are an infinite number of parallel universes and that every time you take a decision (or choose not to take a decision), an entire new universe is spawned for each of the possible decisions.
You could argue that in this model that there is no free will, we are all perceiving only boundaries of one universe at a time, pre-determined merely by existing in this particular universe of the multiverse. Or perhaps another interpretation would be to say that we have never had free will (we have been "branched off" into a particular universe defined by countless decisions since the big bang), but that for precisely the next one decision we do have free will. Is it free will if every decision we could make we do make, even the mutually exclusive ones are played out in a different universe?
All of these assume of course that time does move linearly, or more precisely that we move linearly through time in a single direction (the "Arrow of Time" theory). If everything that happens is merely an event in timespace, then are we doomed to have already made all our decisions and performed all our actions but because we only ever move through timespace in one direction, we only perceive the future as undetermined because we haven't got to that part of the continuum yet.
I love philosophy. I do feel strongly that debate of such topics almost always benefits from the imbibing of at least some alcohol to appropriately relax the mind and stimulate our, more accurately my true potential to talk complete nonsense :)
Thanks, Paul. I've always struggled with the modal realism presented by Lewis. It seemed too anthropocentric a way to reconcile freedom of choice with what appears to be a determined reality. If you're into considering such things over a beer, I can highly recommend Dean Buonomano's Your Brain is a Time Machine. It comes at things from a different angle, but reaches some interesting conclusions about perception and reality. Glad to know it's not just me who enjoys pondering such things...
Great philosophical musings Adam! To add another stick to the fire of the unanswerable; the "many worlds" theory says that there are an infinite number of parallel universes and that every time you take a decision (or choose not to take a decision), an entire new universe is spawned for each of the possible decisions.
You could argue that in this model that there is no free will, we are all perceiving only boundaries of one universe at a time, pre-determined merely by existing in this particular universe of the multiverse. Or perhaps another interpretation would be to say that we have never had free will (we have been "branched off" into a particular universe defined by countless decisions since the big bang), but that for precisely the next one decision we do have free will. Is it free will if every decision we could make we do make, even the mutually exclusive ones are played out in a different universe?
All of these assume of course that time does move linearly, or more precisely that we move linearly through time in a single direction (the "Arrow of Time" theory). If everything that happens is merely an event in timespace, then are we doomed to have already made all our decisions and performed all our actions but because we only ever move through timespace in one direction, we only perceive the future as undetermined because we haven't got to that part of the continuum yet.
I love philosophy. I do feel strongly that debate of such topics almost always benefits from the imbibing of at least some alcohol to appropriately relax the mind and stimulate our, more accurately my true potential to talk complete nonsense :)
Thanks, Paul. I've always struggled with the modal realism presented by Lewis. It seemed too anthropocentric a way to reconcile freedom of choice with what appears to be a determined reality. If you're into considering such things over a beer, I can highly recommend Dean Buonomano's Your Brain is a Time Machine. It comes at things from a different angle, but reaches some interesting conclusions about perception and reality. Glad to know it's not just me who enjoys pondering such things...