[Avodah] Free Will vs. Physics

[Zev Sero]

Cantor Wolberg wrote:
> R' Sero wrote:

>>  I think even a newborn has free will, and decides 
>> whether to cry or not.
> 
> We're talking semantics. A newborn baby has no more free will than the 
> man in the moon. And to say it decides whether to cry or not
> is incorrect. A newborn operates on instinct. True a baby is not a 
> machine, but its responses are reflexive. Obviously, there comes a 
> time when it has free will, but not for a while. 

No, I really don't think so.  Bechira is not itself a rational -- or a
rationally explainable -- process.  We know instinctively that we have
it, but we can't prove it, let alone understand how it works.  But it's
fundamentally different not just from mechanical determinacy but also
from quantum indeterminacy.  It separates us from the mineral and
vegetable kingdoms (I don't know about the animal kingdom; theologically
it would make sense to include it too on the other side of this divide,
but I'm not confident that it's true.  Perhaps animals do have this
level of bechira.)

What we learn as we grow older (and what animals never learn, if they
have this bechira in the first place) is how to *use* it.  I see a baby
as like a person holding the remote control to a TV, one of those
complex remotes with hundreds of buttons and all kinds of functions,
but who has no idea how to use it, or even what it's for.  He just
pushes buttons at random, but he's still *deciding* which ones to push,
although he has no particular reason for that decision.  Eventually he
learns that certain buttons produce certain results, and as a result
his decisions become more rational and planned, but their fundamental
nature hasn't changed.  He is no more in control of the TV now than he
was then, he's just getting better results now that he knows what he's
doing.

-- 
Zev Sero               Something has gone seriously awry with this Court's
zev at sero.name          interpretation of the Constitution.
                       	                          - Clarence Thomas