hypothesis - 4:20 p.m. 03.10.2003
We, as people, are apt to ascribe the terms random/chaos/probability to anything we don't quite understand, or too complex to describe in one simple law. This is a way to maintain that we are flawless/the best and know it all. For example, slot machines and coin tosses. The set of throws in general has a random, but probabalistic outcome. But one individual throw, given enough information about what will happen during it (impacts, friction, initial speed and energy) can entirely be predicted through physics. Weather too has laws; too complex yet to explain, but there nonetheless. The very fact that we can retrospectively determine causes for weather, etc, means that causes were there in advance. To say causes were not there and prediction was, in fact, impossible is ridiculous when causes are proven to have been there. The laws are just too complex to yet understand. I believe strongly that this type of physical, mathematical determinism applys directly to almost every form of event. However, if all things do follow this kind of determinism, do humans, animals, and all living beings in general as well? If we say that all actions and events are solely determined by past causes and events, except for the human species', this is just some kind of chauvanism and not, I think, supported by any proof. Though humans are clearly more intelligent than other animals and capable of more, we cannot confuse this intelligence with more free will. So, then, if you want to believe that free will exists (and I do), something sets the living apart from other consciously inert matter. Decisions and thoughts are not simple physical effects or responses. What then allows this super-physical freedom? What allows us to break seemingly real and and constant laws? The brain is composed of protons, neutrons, and electrons like all other matter and must therefore follow the chemical, physical, and reactionary laws of nature and physics. Where, then, does that freedom come from if not embodied in something physical? For lack of a better word, a soul, or something analogosly supernatural must exist. In living beings and people at least. There must exist some intangable thing that transcends nature itself and lives within each of us. And we know all of this already, somehow, just as we know that killing a cat or person is somehow more wrong than breaking a rock of cabinet. The wrong isn't destroying the vessel, but losing that something (holy?) sealed inside. Belief in free will almost necesitates belief in the soul or the holy. Something there must set us apart.
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