# Lack of Freewill doesn't mean lack of choice

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lack-of-freewill-doesnt-mean-lack-of-choice/954128>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [November 10, 2021, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lack-of-freewill-doesnt-mean-lack-of-choice/954128 "2021-11-10T15:31:47Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 92

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**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\
**Post date:** [December 2, 2021, 10:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lack-of-freewill-doesnt-mean-lack-of-choice/954128/92 "2021-12-02T10:03:25Z")

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> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#):
>
> Again, that’s just one of the possible interpretations of indeterminacy—that the universe goes and flips a coin, so to speak, determining the outcome of every ‘undetermined’ situation for you.

Sure, but that’s irrelevant to the point I was making.  
The point is, when confronted with the prospect of a decision being a random coin flip, proponents of “free will” tend to immediately reject it as a free action, which is quite telling for what they implicitly have in mind for a free action.  
(it’s also quite telling that they rarely elucidate _why_ it doesn’t count, it’s usually just words to the effect of “That could hardly be free will, now could it?”. Because an explicit description of _why_ it doesn’t count would mean acknowledging that by “choice” we mean a _determination_, and so bring down the whole house of cards.)

> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#):
>
> You propose that at such point, some black-box mechanism flips a coin or rolls a die, but that’s a metaphysical hypothesis on your part.

For clarity: I don’t claim that quantum indeterminancy is necessarily random coin flips, and FTR I also make no claim about whether the universe is Deterministic (I suspect it \*isn’t\* but it’s just a suspicion, I don’t think the data is clear enough yet).

> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#):
>
> The will, of course. Now, you might say: but then, the will itself is either determined, or set by chance. But again, that just pushes the question back one step. Somebody intent on defending free will won’t disagree on that—the disagreement is where things bottom out, so to speak.

We could do a similar “push back” with Vitalism and claim that that hasn’t been ruled out either.  
At a certain point, we have to ask ourselves why we brought up the concept in the first place and what explanatory power it has.

And I would argue that “free will” has pretty much the worst record for explanatory power of any concept ever, because it actually does the exact opposite. It takes many things that aren’t particularly problematic for science, and purports to show they are _really_ mysterious. And leads to many people jumping to odd conclusions like Fatalistic ideas, or that free actions must be causally disconnected.

No progress will be possible until there is an acknowledgement that “free will” is, at best, a poorly-defined concept.  
Or rather: progress on the human mind \*is\* possible, and is happening, it’s just largely happening _in spite of_ the free will tangent that so many people unfortunately waste their time with.

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