No, what happened, happened and couldn’t have happened any other way. – Morpheus, The Matrix Reloaded
Stephen Hawking’s new book is generating quite a lot of discussion (http://tiny.cc/selfcreating).
I wouldn’t dare venture into the deep waters of self-creating universes but his comment about free will strikes me as odd because it does not square with reality.
Hawking writes: “Do people have free will?… Though we feel we can choose what we do, our understanding of the molecular basis of biology shows that biological processes are governed by the laws of physics and chemistry and therefore are as determined as the orbits of the planets.
“Recent experiments in neuroscience support the view that it is our physical brain, following the known laws of science, that determines our actions, and not some agency that exists outside those laws.”
This is par for the course for the committed naturalist. It comes from a prior philosophical commitment to naturalism more than anything else.
They know full well that you cannot start with matter and arrive at rational agents capable of choosing.
As James Rachels puts it, “aspects of our behaviour which we previously thought were matters of free choice are really the products of deep, genetically controlled forces….
Humans may fabricate all sorts of reasons for what they do, but these are mere rationalisations.
In reality their conduct is fixed by the territorial imperative built into their genes”. Naturalist philosopher Daniel Dennett goes even further.
He acknowledges that alcoholics and child abusers are equally determined to act as they do by forces outside of their control.
This is unadulterated nonsense. The fact that we bare moral and intellectual responsibility presupposes freedom of the will as a necessary condition.
Or in the words of St Thomas Aquinas, “man has free will: otherwise counsels, exhortations, commands, prohibitions, rewards, and punishments would be in vain”.
ADRIAN SOBERS