Freewill

People are controlled by pink unicorns in space. At least, that's the discussion I'd like to start with.

Now, without further explanation of my assertion of the pink space unicorns, I suppose most of you would reject out of hand my idea, so I add one more detail: most people are totally convinced that they're controlled by pink unicorns in space. There, now it's reasonable to believe that people are indeed controlled by pink unicorns in space. Right? No? You're shaking your head. You still don't believe that people are controlled by pink unicorns in space even though most people really, really feel that way? You reject the subjective evidence they provide?

If you've followed my logic so far, please, then, explain to me your defense of a belief in freewill. This is, of course, assuming that you, like most people, believe in freewill. The only evidence for freewill is subjective: people really, really feel like they're making choices and operating with non-deterministic autonomy. But choices and non-deterministic autonomy are just pink unicorns in space in that we have no objective evidence to support their existence, and, furthermore, we have established a strong track record of using determinism to explain a large and growing number of phenomena. That most people really, really feel the opposite way on the matter of freewill should be given less credit than it has been.

Like Douglas Hofstadter and others, I'm deeply suspicious of this idea of freewill whereby people are choosing things via a process that lies outside material determinism, outside physical law. Here's how I look at it: as a competition between the two best explanations we have.

• The human mind, which rests atop a substrate of plain-old organic molecules, either through some unexplained and unknown property of its aggregation or else by some as yet unknown “life force&rdquo, is itself not materially deterministic. In other words, freewill is real. We choose.

• The human mind, like the particles of its substrate, is materially deterministic but necessarily patterns itself into (most of the time) believing that it is not materially deterministic. In other words, freewill is an illusion “hard-wired in” to the brain.

Explanation number one fails Occam's Razor. It's not the simpler answer. It requires new physical laws or at least a new, radical understanding of existing laws. It is unsupported by objective evidence; it is pink unicorns in space.

Explanation number two is the simpler answer. It fits with our current model despite most people believing in freewill and not wanting to disbelieve freewill. This explanation doesn't require a line to be drawn between the animate and the inanimate, the thinking and the unthinking, the conscious and the unconscious, a line that is made awkward and possibly even self-defeating by phenomena such as severe mental retardation, Alzheimer's disease, physical trauma, chimpanzees, two-year old children, etc. And it makes qualitative sense how, in light of how mathematical systems become paradoxical precisely when they increase in expressive power, that the human mind, with its extraordinary power of expression, would be riddled through and through with paradoxical notions about its own operation and mechanics.