Theo at work, he reads law documents
“Free will, determinism, quantum theory and statistical fluctuation: a physicist take” says Carlo Rovelli, an Italian theoretical physicist. “Any attempt to link this discussion to moral, ethical or legal issues, as is often been done, is pure nonsense” he adds to it. But that is what we are doing. We are fascinated with the question if we have free choice in our life or forget the whole thing, our dinner was decided at the moment of Big Bang.
The philosophers pick up the question, stepping over the physicists. Very much so regular people in every day life are also interested in their destiny, of course they want to know what their chances are. Free will means in philosophical terms that you can make choices not limited by any factors of any kind. My opinion is that this is almost impossible, certainly for me, most of my choices in my life were limited by certain factors of different kind. I am more on the other side being close to be a determinist. Well, absolute free will and total determinism are the wide extreme ends of the same issue. Extreme views never attracted me, so even being more like a determinists I would rather not go back to the Big Bang, I still can say pasta over chicken on my long intercontinental flight.
Zsolt Boldogkői leading Hungarian geneticist and popular writer asks the question: How can we act free when physical and biological laws control our mind? He and others suggest to adopt compatibilism. Compatibilism means that free will and determinism are not antagonistic, you can believe in both, they could be consistent with each other. Modern compatibilists believe that free will is more like that we follow our dreams, we follow our motivations. I like what Arthur Schopenhauer famously said: “Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills”. In other words, although a person may often be free to act according to a motive, the nature of that motive is determined.
Personally, I would define myself as a genetic determinist, using the scientific definition. Based on genetic determinism theory, genes together with environmental factors determine morphological and behavioral phenotypes. So isn’t this true, genes, our genotype, our pre-determined susceptibility factors act together with the environment? Yes, and the environment includes us, our experience, our will, desire and motivation.
After all, I do have a little compatible free will, I have desire and motivation to follow. Let see how much of my desire and motivation that is limited by time and space would help me to conduct my daily life. First, I get up in the morning and if I slept well for at least eight hours I feel good enough to follow my morning routine, here I do not have too much free will, desire and motivation, I follow the rule of nature. The next 8-10 hours I work. Professionally, I am very lucky, because here at least I have some free will, lots of desire and motivation, but only because I can work with my lovely genome, otherwise, I would not have any choice regarding the necessity of work, I need to earn money, pay the rent and get the food because I need to survive every day for my pure existence. By the evening I am hungry again, need to prepare food, follow my evening routine, similar to the morning routine, the day is almost gone and if I do well, I might have done something else than just satisfy half of my physical-chemical-biological obligations, to maintain my pure existence. Well, I still need to maintain my species, to satisfy the other half of my physical-chemical-biological obligations, my desire and motivation is still there, with less free choice on my side, depending on my wife.
And why is Theo the bra master? What kind of free will does he have? Theodore is a Pug. Dogs are generally lovely creatures, they share not just happiness but also their microbiota world with us, making the whole family healthier. Dogs were bred to accompany us humans, they became so dependent on us, they need our food and care, so they can not even live on their own any more. Pug is a small dog, he was bred to live in the house, play with us and sit in our lap, never got bored of it. Pug is very needy, all the time he wants to spend with us. Pug farts and snores. We need to clean his ass and eyes. Pug always wants to eat, Pug is fat. Pug will not accompany me on my evening run, Pug does not even like the evening stroll for some educated pooping. Pug enjoys chewing on toys so much that he becomes very excited and sometimes I believe he is in some passionate fight. Pug likes to lick, pug loves children. Pug is smart and difficult to train. Pug loves us and Pug owns us. Pug chooses the boss, the head of the family. Pug chooses my wife. Well, he loves me and he plays with me, as a matter of fact I am happy that at least he accepts me as equal.
Our Pug has a strange habit, he likes to dig into the laundry, in the mess we have sometimes he can get access to the dirty laundry. He repeatedly picks up bras of different shapes, colors and variations but always my wife’s bras. Not other clothing and not any other family member’s clothing. No socks, no panties of any origin. Our Theo the Pug is four months young, he is a baby, not toilet trained yet. His behavior is nothing to do with free choice, nothing to do with Theo’s desire and motivation. It is his genetically determined instinct to ask for care from the person he loves and trusts most. Or looking at Theo’s strange obsession with my wife’s bras, I start wondering if an inbred dog with all the genetic restrictions and predisposed diseases, he can not help, not even aware of, makes a choice who he loves and trusts the most.
Boldogkői writes: “ Today, what we can do for our well being is to eat all variety of healthy food in total balance, we try to avoid stress, sleep enough, exercise our body and challenge our mind.” I am asking, is it possible, when we obey to all laws of nature, when we successfully maintain our existence and extend our species, we might sit back for a moment in peace and harmony and take that moment to make some educated free choices, once in a while?
Theodore at serious ownership
Tibor Gyuris
Personal Genomics Blogger
2013. October 31
“Knowledge is always good and certainly always better than ignorance.”–Sergey Brin
“Possideo genes ergo sum”—Anonymous Roman Philosopher
….can fruit fly choose sexual orientation….
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