The question of whether or not free will really exists has been around for a long time, but it seems as though it's being brought up a lot more in recent times as people turn away from religious explanations for things (and thus are not satisfied by invented concepts such as souls to answer the question), and because technologies such as fMRI scanners are allowing us to probe the behaviour of the human mind in ways never before possible, and in ways that call in to question the assumed relationship between conscious decisions and actions.
I think everyone is naturally averse to the concept that free will doesn't actually exist. I've read enough on the subject and thought about it enough to be satisfied that it is, in fact, an illusion, and that in most cases it doesn't really change at all our day to day lives. There are certainly big issues like the punishment of criminals that become very interesting in light of this, but at the end of the day, we mostly have no choice but to behave as though we have free will whether or not we really do, because (ironically?) we cannot do anything else!
I don't really want to discuss the arguments for free will being an illusion here, and would simply refer people to the excellent short book by Sam Harris on the topic. There are many other books I could suggest, but this is a concise, well written book that gives a modern discussion of the issue. Or you could watch a talk given by Harris for a summary of his arguments:
What I want to talk about here is the fact that I think people accept free will being an illusion far more than they realize. And what made me appreciate this was a recent rewatching of Groundhog Day.
Groundhog Day Makes Sense To Us
Some of the funniest parts of Groundhog Day are when Phil makes use of his ability to relive the same day to figure out how to achieve goals via trial and error. We see him try out a line, watch how it is received, and then modify it the next day. Or he will gain some information and then reuse that information to give a better response the next day:
All very scientific, but what is so striking about these scenes is how the repetition of everyone else's behaviour is so easily accepted by us, the viewers. We don't find it jarring that if Phil performs the same actions each day, the behaviour of everyone else is completely predictable! This is just a movie, of course, but if people suddenly started flying around the room in it, we would be pulled out of the narrative immediately. The fact is, we intuitively expect other people to be predictable to some degree, and would in fact find it far more unusual if this wasn't the case.
If the movie actually showed people behaving a little different each day, completely independent of Phil's actions, we would probably find it confusing. We would want an explanation. I think we intuitively understand that people change over time, being affected and growing as a result of our experiences, but if you could take the clone of a person and run them through absolutely identical life experiences, if you presented them with the same choice at the same point in time, they would make the same decision.
Rationalizing Behaviour With Outside Influences
We are also very prone to looking for reasons for other people's behaviour. When someone commits a crime, we ask, "what made him do it?". We will reference their childhood and upbringing, pressure from their peers, and so on. We find it baffling if someone appears to have committed a crime 'for no reason'.
If you meet someone with a phobia, or with any particular hang up that they can't properly rationalize, it's not uncommon for them to refer to something in their past, an incident in their childhood. Hell, some people will even fall back on their astrological sign: "He's like that because he's a Leo". How could such a sentence even make sense if people weren't predictable?
But this is the exact opposite of free will. The more we think people should be predictable based on their past, the less room we leave for free will. Where is the space for free will to act if everything is the sum of our past?
I think that, in the end, people are actually fairly comfortable with the notion that other people are predictable, that, in effect, other people don't have free will. It's only when applied to ourselves that we so strongly reject the idea, because we feel that we have it. But maybe we simply have no choice but to feel that way. Maybe it's just an illusion that is necessary for our brains to function correctly, and there is simply no way we can imagine how it must be to not have free will, in the same way that we can't see through an optical illusion even when we know it's an illusion.
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