Maybe this has come up before, but I still wanted to ask. Lately, I’ve been a bit confused about whether we really have free will or not. I’m not religious and I don’t really believe in metaphysics. I’d probably call myself agnostic. I’ve just been questioning life more than I used to, and this thought keeps popping into my head.
Do we actually have free will? Like, can we really choose things the way religious texts say we can? What made me think about this is how predictable the micro world seems to be—but when you go deeper into the quantum level, things get really chaotic and complex.
On top of that, as people, we’re constantly shaped by what we go through, and it feels like our reactions and choices get more limited over time.
What do you think about all this?
Kant argues for something similar when he says that as humans, we are citizens of two worlds: the sensible world of phenomena in which we are bound by the laws of nature as well as the intelligible world of noumena, which is subject to reason and, by extension, freedom of will.
I think it’s important to remember that Kant doesn’t see free will in the same way for example St. Augustine or Thomas Aquinas define it — they believe free will to be the capability of arbitrary choice (‘liberum arbitrium’) — but as the product of rational thought. Freedom (autonomy), in the Kantian sense, is being able to make the reasonable, responsible choice.
Edit: Paraphrased and translated from Kaufmann, Arthur. Rechtsphilosophie. C.H. Beck. Munich: 1997. Pp.240-1 (German philosophy of law textbook)