Free Will Either Doesn't Exist or Poorly Defined You can disprove the possibility of free will with the basic school math done over a few axioms everyone can agree upon.
Definitions:
1. Free will - "the ability to make choices independently, without being constrained by external forces or predetermined conditions." Most common definition, found on Wikipedia and generated by ChatGPT. Although one may argue on the border between internal and external forces.
2. Free entity - an entity which is supposed to possess free will. Our definition, since no common name for such entities exist.
Axioms (call them common sense axioms):
1. Human being - an entity composed of physical matter, which is subject to all kinds of external physical forces. I think that is a reasonable assumption.
2. Multiple different free entities can exist at the same time. ChatGPT claims it is a commonly accepted fact. A few solipsists do insist that free will is unilateral and the world exists just for a single free entity, but such teleological view is uncommon.
3. Two human beings are considered different if they have different spatial configurations. For example, they are at different locations in some city. I.e. there is no multiverse. That is the most controversial axiom, but most people will agree that any two physical objects can never occupy the same space at the same time.
To prove the existence of free will we need to prove that human beings form a subset of free entities.
I.e. that "an entity composed of matter, which is subject to all kinds of external physical forces" has "the ability to make choices independently, without being constrained by external forces or predetermined conditions."
Here we already face an issue: since all the internal constraints are subject to external forces, such as weather or the availability of food or the genetics of the parents or the inheritance they left the human being. To be generous, we just ignore this issue.
Instead we consider two human beings A and B. A can't move into the spatial configuration of B, since that would by axiom 3 make human being A equal to B. Therefore A's free will is constrained by B's existence. Therefor A is not a free entity by the definition of free entity and free will.
Therefore the notion of free will for human beings (as it is commonly understood) is in complete conflict with common sense. So one may wonder why would anyone even argue about free will or introduce this concept at all. One theory is that free will was introduced to make it easier to place blame on someone. I.e. free will is a form of scapegoating, where collective guilt is eliminated by picking some person to be responsible for the common failure. Say when an impoverished person is forced to do shoplifting, that isn't the society's fault, but the shoplifter's fault.
A trans girl can't function as a man? That is the trans girl's fault to man-up! Free will is probably one of the most toxic concepts ever conceived, since it is at the root of most social problems. Until humanity learns to accept the absence of free will, the progress will be slow.
Current Mood: contemplativeCurrent Music: Hitoshi Sakimoto - Fate