 Complex FreedomDavor Pecnjak ()
Interdisciplinary Description of Complex Systems - scientific journal, 2009, vol. 7, issue 1, 14-21 Abstract: We have a very strong intuition and a very strong feeling that we, as human beings, generally have freedom of the will and freedom of the action. It seems that in most situations we can do this or that; namely, we can do action A or we can refrain from doing action A under the same conditions. The view which argues that this is not an illusion and that we have genuine freedom is the libertarian view. I would like to examine could that view be plausible under scientific understanding of the world. It seems that physical sciences strongly support determinism. Chaos theory and indeterminism in quantum mechanics could not save freedom because chaos is a deterministic theory and indeterminate events in quantum mechanics happen by pure chance. Pure chance is not something we want as freedom. But, perhaps, we can have freedom reconciled (although maybe in a restricted form) if actions or decisions can be described by equations which allow more than one solution and if these solutions can be interpreted as refering to different contents of the will or to different actions. Keywords: free will; determinism; libertarianism; chaos theory; complexity (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zna:indecs:v:7:y:2009:i:1:p:14-21 Access Statistics for this article More articles in Interdisciplinary Description of Complex Systems - scientific journal from Croatian Interdisciplinary Society Provider Homepage: http://indecs.eu |
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