Maybe this has come up before, but I still wanted to ask. Lately, I’ve been a bit confused about whether we really have free will or not. I’m not religious and I don’t really believe in metaphysics. I’d probably call myself agnostic. I’ve just been questioning life more than I used to, and this thought keeps popping into my head.
Do we actually have free will? Like, can we really choose things the way religious texts say we can? What made me think about this is how predictable the micro world seems to be—but when you go deeper into the quantum level, things get really chaotic and complex.
On top of that, as people, we’re constantly shaped by what we go through, and it feels like our reactions and choices get more limited over time.
What do you think about all this?
I suspect we don’t know enough about the mechanics of consciousness yet to determine what free will really means. We certainly know enough about psychology to understand predispositions to make certain choices and humans as a group are fairly predictable.