Posting this because I think it’s an interesting examination of the overlap (or lack thereof) between atheists and general skeptics. It’s worth remembering that the term ‘atheism’ only means a rejection of theistic beliefs; non-theistic beliefs that are nonetheless irrational and unsupported by evidence are not relevant to the term. And yet one can easily see why there is an overlap between these two communities and why many atheists scoff at other atheists who profess belief in things like astrology, ghosts, reincarnation, etc.
I’m definitely one of those who doesn’t believe in anything supernatural, but I’ve certainly met atheists who do. It’s worth remembering the two groups aren’t synonymous.
I think that the thing that makes the issue sticky isn’t that believing in ghosts and believing in free will is fundamentally different, it’s that ghosts lie outside the common individuals experience while everyone has at some point or another probably believed that they have free will. One idea is no less magical than the other, there is just as much evidence for ghosts as there is for free will. A decision is like a software black box, information goes in and a result comes out, the process that’s happening in the code is hidden so we ascribe to it the name “Free Will”. But in our case it’s not 30 year old software code that no one understands anymore, the processes that are at work are heuristic. We subconsciously absorb information and that information is filtered through our heuristic biases which are a result of genetics and life experience, then we get our result.
Now let’s say you traveled back in time to redo some fateful decision. The caveat is that you’ll be inhabiting your past body and can’t bring your future memories with you. All the variables that you used to make the decision would be the same, and as a result you would make the same decision.
I’m saying that is what makes them fundamentally different. A ghost is an external phenomenon that we can gather objective evidence about and nothing in our experience intrinsically violates that evidence. By contrast, while we can gather objective evidence about people’s decision-making processes, and in the future may even be able to “see” ourselves making decisions in an MRI machine or its future equivalent, we’re still faced with the existential paradox of experiencing “free will” and having to “submit” to the illusion if that’s all we think it is. That paradoxical experience is a sticking point that makes the question of whether free will exists very different from that of whether ghosts exist.
I managed to recall and find one of the articles I read years ago on this subject that convinced me that the subject of free will was not as simple as I’d thought it was. I want to be clear: I’m still firmly in the determinist camp, but I now appreciate the complexity of the issue on a level that I don’t fault people who maintain a belief in free will on the same or even just similar grounds that I would someone who believed in any other superstition. In fact, I don’t think it’s even appropriate to call belief in free will a superstition; it’s a much more nuanced (at least in those who have bothered to give it the requisite amount of thought) philosophical stance that I happen to disagree with.
I think that people who believe that they have seen ghosts probably experience a similar existential paradox. They too would have the subjective experience that creates dissonance with reality as they know it. So I don’t really think it’s all that different at all, it’s just that you don’t have the interference of that subjective experience. Thank you, I appreciate the link and will read it with interest. I’ve heard many arguments for free will, but they often fall into the same traps as religion. I would also like to thank you for responding so thoughtfully in this thread. This has been a refreshing little discussion.
Fair enough. I appreciate your input as well and am happy to agree to disagree.
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