Friday, September 27, 2019

free will bechira - What makes the choice to do good or evil?


I understand some of bechira but this has always puzzled me: If we are equally inclined to do good or evil, what is it that makes the final choice?



Answer




Not so much an answer as much as why I think it's impossible to give you one:


Free Will lives in a region between algorithm and randomness. (See Metahalakhah, by R/Dr Moshe Koppel, ch. 2-3, for an actual information theory treatment of this topic.) If our decisions were an algorithm, then we'd be robots, with a given history of inputs causing our decisions inevitably. No freedom. If we were random, our "decisions" would be mere rolls of the dice, and not really caused by anything within us either. No will. Nor would we be morally accountable for anything we did in either case -- the algorithm can't be blamed for following its programming, and the die cannot be blamed for which way it falls.


But what this means is that Free Will is also ineffable. If we could pin what we're doing down into words, it would mean that Free Will is an algorithm. If we would claim there is nothing needing description, we would be reducing decision-making to randomness -- the decision has no cause.


I think this is what led @Loewian and @user3714808 to their rather terse answers. We all know what Free Will is, we just can't describe it. All we can say is, "Your free will is the factor that determines the final outcome."


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