Free will vs determinism

The ironic thing about free will vs determinism is that if humans have no control over our actions, we will judge people on their actions allowing them lack of accountability, whereas with free will and control over our actions, we will judge harshly and ruthlessly.

For example, if someone drinks too much and takes drugs which hamper the physical and cognitive goals in their life as well as impacting other peoples lives; you can judge them harshly in that they made their choices, or pity them and attribute what had occurred in their life to date caused those unhealthy decisions and habits and enable the omission of any ‘will-power’ to change.

Soft determinism states that there is both a determined component and a free will component to decisions.

Our biology, experiences and learnings are represented by neuronal pathways and connections in our (note, ever-changing) brain. Determined information is stored in the brain and body and is the place where the determined component of our decisions comes from.

Our pre-frontal cortex and other structures in the brain enable the ingestion of new information on the fly and neuro-plasticity enables the brain to change. Neuro-plasticity itself is influenced by activity such as play vs danger, neurotransmitter interactions, external drugs, and hormones. Our brain enables the rapid evaluation of new information and produces probabilities of different outcomes for a range of decisions. It would seem that we have an opportunity for ‘free will’. While scientists cannot fully understand the brain yet, nor do we understand the entirety of the universe, the uncertainty of free will still remains.

If we think about it this way; if we knew every single variable that existed as a factor at the very beginning and birth of the universe, we could correctly determine all properties of any individual particle at any point in time. however, quantum mechanics has shown that measuring particles can change their behaviour. So perhaps we only ever have probabilities of what can happen.

Assuming a component of our decision making is from a form of free will, it follows that we can still influence our own situation willingly despite our prior experiences. By orchestrating events in our lives in order to provide the highest probability of opportunity for a choice at a certain point in time, we can optimise for outcomes we want.