Free Will

The search for free will has been perhaps the biggest intellectual struggle of my adolescent's and in a very real fashion my acceptance of fatalism marks my advancement to intellectual adulthood. I am a determinist; I do not believe you have the ability to choose between options. There is only one future. Why do I believe this? Certainly not for the reason most people choose their beliefs (that reason being that it appeals to me at a base level). I find fatalism repugnant... yet see no solution to the problem I will outline below.

Allow us to assume, as a rational scientific examination of man must, that the brain is responsible for our decisions. Could the brain give you free will? How? Your brain operates on a basis of causality, that is it is subject to the laws of cause and effect. The reason you do what you do is because of a complex web of nature and nurture... who you were before you were born and what has happened to you since, essentially. The rules that govern who you begin are complex... some we are starting to understand for the first time; none the less they are there.

Let us take another thought experiment for a moment. Imagine a world that is the exact same, to every degree, as our world. In world A I lift up my bottle of water and take a sip. World B is the exact same; do I have a choice in whether or not I lift up the bottle and take sip?

It's a frightening thought. If a murderer had no choice in his murder, who are we to cast judgement on him? We might as well judge the sea for drowning a sailor... I almost reject determinism out of hand, on the basis that it prevents such a frightening reality but the world being a frightening place is no reason to cower in a corner and hide.