The Illusion of Free Will...

...and the Proof of Destiny

Before i begin to establish a logical proof for destiny, and set up an arguement for the existence of free will as a mere illusion, i would like to mention that the following proof is based largely on logical reasoning, and in a small part on philosphical grounds. The philosophical aspect is certainly incapable of a deductive proof, but i have found most of my theory to be nevertheless free of logical errors.

It is stated in many philosophies that what is destined will happen no matter what. The corollary to this is that nothing can occur in violation to destiny, which is pre-established. However, there exists an interesting parallel idea, that every individual is the creator of his/her own destiny. These two ideas upon inspection appear to be quite paradoxical. If destiny is preset, how can an individual possibly be in control of it? There does exist one rational, philosophical solution to this conundrum. Going by the theological school of thought that God exists and is the creator of everything (real or abstract) in existence, it is assumed (even vehemently emphasized) that God gave free will to all the souls he created. Before begining their physical lives here in the universe, every soul goes through a preview of their entire life along with God, whereupon they exercise their free will to make all the choices that they would in their lifetime. Once in their physical form, these souls simply 'live out' this scripted life, with the purpose of understanding through experience 'why' they made those choices, and what those choices mean on a larger scale. This hypothesis (which occured to me from the words of the Oracle in The Matrix Reloaded) seems to rationally satisfy both ends of the philosophical paradox introduced at the begining of this post. The trouble is that the solution to this paradox, although logical, is essentially philosophical, and hence cannot be deductively proven. This is similar to the proof of the existence of God, which lies outside the domain of logic (since logic is itself is a creation of, hence subordinate to, God).

Hence my proof for destiny adresses destiny as a non-theological phenomenon. In effect, i refer to destiny as being the course of events (for everything in existence), which is pre-planned and immutable, although since the proof is empirical and rational, it does not refer to God at all. Before i begin, i want to point out the irony, that personally, i do believe in God being the creator of everything in existence (including destiny). Yet, since God lies outside (above) the domain of logic, and since God is the Godel of the universe (explained in my post on Godel's Incompleteness Theorem), it is not possible to construct a deductive proof of destiny with God included. ( I have talked in detail about my view of creation in a seperate post.)

Consider a hypothetical universe with a finite set of laws, a finite number of mutually exclusive possible events, and with each of these events having a finite number of mutually exclusive possible outcomes. It is clear that as the universe kicks into existence (perhaps with the initilization, and the begining of; time), the choice of which event will occur, will depend solely and completely on the sum total of the interaction of each and everyone of the laws. Since the laws are most obviously immutable (hence the term, law) their interaction with the event in question will naturally have a distinct outcome (which can even be predicted provided one has the knowledge of every law, every factor, and every variable involved.) This means that of all the possible events, there is only one which will actually occur. For the outcome that follows, the same logic applies, with the outcome now being treated as a new event under consideration. This goes on inifinitely for every possible even and every possible outcome, with the occurance of every outcome depending completely on the interaction of the laws in place, and the event in question. This oversimplification can be streched out infinitely to see that the outcome of every possible event is already pre-planned, and will occur only in a definitive manner. This also means that if one had the knowledge of every law in place, as well as every factor and every variable in our universe, along with the capability to process all this data, it is theoretically and logically possible to predict with certainity the entire course of events up untill the end of time and the universe (if there exists such a culmination). Inspection of this theory will reveal the foundation of this proof to lie in the premises assumed axiomatic in the begining (as is obvious in accordance to Godel's Incompleteness Theorem). Detractors may attack the proof by stating that the foundation premise assumes the universe to have a finite number of: laws, possible events, and their possible outcomes; whereas this is neither proven, nor may neseccarily be the case. This does not affect the flow of the proof however, since every event is assumed to be mutually exclusive. It follows thus that each possible outcome to each event is neseccarily mutually exclusive (Schroedinger's Cat: either the cat is dead, or it isn't. Proven only upon observation) within any exclusive universe. And since all the laws, every events, and every one of their possible outcomes are open to observation from the vantage point of observing the universe in its entirety, this neseccarily implies the mutual exclusivity of every event under consideration, which is every event that is possible. Hence the premises of a finite number laws and possible events was established in the begining in order to simplify comprehension of the gist of the proof, whereas the proof works just as effectively for a scenario with an infinite number of laws and possible events.

Free will seems to strike any conscious person as an obvious, unchallengable fact of our lives, since it seems so deeply a part of our experience of existence. But even this notion can be challenged aggressively on the basis of the logical and empirical functionality of biochemistry and distributed intelligence. (to be continued...)