Just My Soul Responding.

Chapter VII: Thinking about Free Will.

My alarm beside me is ringing it is 7 a.m. I opened my eyes, got up, stretched my back and my arms, walked to the bathroom and washed my face. After that, I sat on the cushion and did a short meditation. It really calms me down, it makes me more focused on the things I need to do. I walked to the kitchen, switched on my radio I put my usual morning station Radio El Behdja and I poured myself a cup of coffee in my favorite red mug where the words of Joey from friends written all over it ''HOW YOU DOIN''. I immediately started to think that every morning for the past two years and a half I have been doing the same routine without even realizing it. It is like every morning I am on autopilot. I do realize that this is part of the human brain process and this is just the works of a habit, but this realization made me feel like I don't have a choice anymore when it comes to the things I do in the morning.

'Boy! You started early today.'

'I know but this is hitting me really hard, damn. I have been thinking about this for a while now and to be honest this constant realization about it is not allowing me to think straight. This is terrifying for me because if I cannot think clearly I can't do the things I want to do, I can't be present in my experiences and throughout the day. Do you think that what I am experiencing is the infamous brain fog? I know it is a very complex multi-layered topic that almost certainly touches biology, diet, emotional well-being, psychology...So I can't just blame it on those thoughts I am having. I am feeling to be honest that I am consuming too much input and being pinned down trying to process all of it, you know?'

'Yeah I know what you mean, I think taking a rest is vital and judging by your short hours of sleep your brain is in vital need for rest. But I am glad that you are taking sleep in a serious matter and I am happy to see you lately trying to fix your sleeping habits.'

'You are right. After reading an old book ''Why Do We Sleep'' by Mathew Walker and hearing what you said I really started to try to change my bad sleeping habits. But back to the issue in hand here like I said I have been having a lot of thoughts popping up about this morning routine actions and questions like are we really in charge of our brains? Or do we even have free will? All those hard questions it driving me crazy. Since I read about Determinism and started really to think about the illusions of free will those thoughts have been overwhelming. Do we have free will or not? Or everything is just a pure chance? Or what?'

'Philosophers have been struggling to find an answer to questions like this all their lives, and various theories have been discussed. So you cannot be serious and expect me to provide an answer about those questions, once again all I am going to do is try to mock you like always, give you my understanding about those things and remind you of stuff you might overlooked.'

So are we free? I mean, on one hand, most of us have the clear sense that we are. I certainly feel free, I feel like I make all sort of decisions that lead to both beliefs and actions that are of my own choosing. I mean I am drinking coffee without sugar because I am feeling like it, I could have put sugar but I choose not to.'

'Yeah interesting. I know where you are going with this. Well a lot of us indeed figure that our thoughts and actions are free. This view that humans are capable of doing free actions is known as Libertarian free will the belief that most human actions are freely chosen. But the weird thing is that most of us also believe that every effect has a cause, and that everything that happens now in the present is the necessary result of events that occurred in the past. I mean for example trees when winter approaches they start to lose leaves until one day the last one falls. I mean the falling didn't happen spontaneously, there are all sort of causes like the wind, gravity, humans... In other words, those causes necessitated the leaf falling so because they had happened the leaf had to fall, so until the conditions were right the leaf couldn't fall and at that moment when the conditions were right the leaf in some way had to fall not before. In other ways, we can predict when something like this can take place, even the decisions we think we make can actually be very easily influenced by certain things which will make us think in a certain way. Noble prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman talks greatly and beautifully about this in his timeless book "Thinking Fast and Slow". Presumably also the same is true for the motion of the planets, the weather, the tides... you can see where I am going with this. This view is known as Determinism.'