FREE WILL

Free will is an illusion. Our free will is simply not of our own making. Thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control. We do not have the freedom we think we have. These findings are difficult to reconcile with the sense that we are the conscious authors of our actions. One fact now seems indesputable: some moments before you are aware of what you will do next-- a time in which you subjectively appear to have complete freedom to behave however you please- your brain has already determined what you will do. You then become conscious of this decision and believe that you are in the process of making it. The phrase free will therefore describes what it feels like to identify with certain mental states as they arise in consciousness-and our freedom constitutes nothing more than this illusory feeling of control. We are the mere conscious witnesses to decisions that, deep in our brains, have already been made. Thus, free will is an inherently flawed and incoherent concept. Free will is a figament of our imagination. No one ever has it or ever will. Rather our choices are either determined- necessary outcomes of the events that have happened in the past-or they are random.