Searle's Concept Of Free Will

Free Will

The concept of free will, as well as the debate surrounding it, is and has always been exceptionally convoluted. Just as an Ignostic wouldn’t even consider engaging in a theological discussion prior to establishing agreed upon terms to discuss, Searle tackles the problem of free will in a similar manner. Searle defines the problem explicitly: Are all of our decisions and actions preceded by causally sufficient conditions, conditions sufficient to determine that those decisions and actions will occur? In other words, does the occurrence of event P mean that Q and only Q may occur, in the logical form of “If P then Q.” The discussion of free will is often represented as a dichotomy between determinists and its negation (indeterminism).
Taking on this apparent dichotomy, compatibilists believe that both free will and determinism are logically consistent with each other. Although, admittedly, there is no clear consensus for either case (just as none exist for any theological debate), the reasonability of each can be discussed. Compatibilists share a component with each school of thought. Such as the determinists, compatibilists believe that all actions have antecedently sufficient conditions. When compatibilists talk about an action as being free, that does not mean it does not have antecedently sufficient conditions; rather, those conditions are our rational thought processes, biases, etc. For a compatibilists "Any talk of alternatives is strictly hypothetical. If the compatibilist says "I may visit tomorrow, or I may not", he is not making a metaphysical claim that there are multiple possible futures. He is saying he does not know what the determined future will be." Ultimately, all actions are determined to a degree, but the causation is what makes it free or not. If you were to raise your arm to answer a question in class, the action of you raising your arm would have been “free”. If
Rather, it questions if psychological states (beliefs, awareness of obligations, commitments) are sufficient to determine a person’s decisions and actions. A very key distinction must be made here whether or not we are acting based on psychological freedom or compulsion. Such as the case of hypnosis, we are given an illusion of freedom when our action is in fact determined. While cases such as this exist, they do not appear to conclude a person’s actions can be determined on a psychological level. But to make a conclusion about a person’s actions as it relates to their psychological state, what can be said about their neurobiology, considering a person’s state of consciousness’s is dependent upon their neurobiology? Given that the psychological is simply the neurobiological at a higher level, then for freedom to be real this “gap” must be manifested at a neurological level. No such gap exists in the brain. The hypothesis of determinism and the mechanical brain suggests our brains function similar to a computer program, and the illusion of free will exists via randomization or unpredictable elements. For example, a computer program may be written that when you press a key stroke it generates a number between one and fifty. Even though it is given a sense of randomness, the entirety of the system is ultimately