Proposals
In addition to our monologue and audio, we had to write a proposal that explained how our titular problem could be solve. My proposal is as follows:
Nicholas Jennings
SShakespearean Proposal Essay
One problem discussed in Shakespeare that has transitioned very well to the modern age is the issue of fate and freewill (The primary question being: do either of them exist?). In Macbeth these issues are explored through the prophecies the witches give, but in modern times we have a lot more tools we can use to explore these concept. Time travel, for example, is a literary set piece that’s only become popular in recent years, and is a really nifty tool to explore prophecies in an interesting way. Many stories (that don’t dodge these questions by using alternate universes) choose to explain time travel by saying that you can’t change the past because you had already gone there (The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy), or because the universe somehow has built in mechanisms to stop you from changing things (The Twilight Zone). Both of these ways of thinking, as well as (relatively) recent discoveries in the fields of neuroscience and quantum mechanics have re-sparked the conversation about fate and free will.
Ultimately, there’s only two answers to this question, either you have free will, or you don’t. The interesting part is the reasoning behind the answer. One such instance is the explanation that we don’t have free will because the brain is essentially a very complex computer. Where a shakespearian solution along the same lines would go something like: “God has a plan for everything, and everything goes according to his plan. You can’t go against God’s plan, therefore you have no free will”, we can give a more scientific solution. The brain is just a collection of neuron sending signals to each other, and to date we haven’t found some special neuron that outputs different signals when given the same input signals, so a modern explanation would go something like: “Your brain is made of neurons. each neuron has a function that it follow, with no random elements. If every input produces one output for each neuron, then you brain must always give outputs based on its outside inputs. You cannot change these inputs therefore you have no free will”.
A modern counter-argument to that also involves (relatively) new ways of thinking about the universe. Where the “neuron argument” (Probably not the official name of the argument) focuses on interactions between small things, the “Quantum Probability” argument (once again, probably not the official name) focuses on even smaller objects. The field of quantum mechanics has told us a lot about how extremely microscopic, molecular, atomic, and nuclear objects react with each other. While most of these discoveries got us to rethink our world in some way, the bit that’s important for this argument is the realization that, at a quantum level, things actually are random. A good example would be electrons, which can exist in multiple places at once until you try to observe them, and observing the same electron the same way multiple times can yield different results. Overall the argument would look something like “The smallest objects in our universe behave in random ways, and these objects make up everything in the universe. If something is made of random stuff, it will behave in a somewhat random way. Therefor, the brain may act differently to two identical inputs, and our observation of this is what we call choice” Admittedly, this solution isn’t any less depressing than the previous. For a genuinely upbeat solution, we’d have to go with something like “Not having free will is a sad way to live your life, if you choose to believe in free will you will be happier and no one can tell you you're wrong because you were clearly just functioning on the inputs given to you”, although this could be viewed as dodging the question.
Overall, rather than answer the question of free will, modern arguments have shown us that we might be asking the wrong questions. Due to recent additions to the information we have to work with, the question has gone from “do we have free will?” to “Is the universe fundamentally random?”. The fact that we’ve generalized this question suggests that we are beginning to understand it better, and regardless of what you think the true answer to be, that’s really exciting.
Nicholas Jennings
SShakespearean Proposal Essay
One problem discussed in Shakespeare that has transitioned very well to the modern age is the issue of fate and freewill (The primary question being: do either of them exist?). In Macbeth these issues are explored through the prophecies the witches give, but in modern times we have a lot more tools we can use to explore these concept. Time travel, for example, is a literary set piece that’s only become popular in recent years, and is a really nifty tool to explore prophecies in an interesting way. Many stories (that don’t dodge these questions by using alternate universes) choose to explain time travel by saying that you can’t change the past because you had already gone there (The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy), or because the universe somehow has built in mechanisms to stop you from changing things (The Twilight Zone). Both of these ways of thinking, as well as (relatively) recent discoveries in the fields of neuroscience and quantum mechanics have re-sparked the conversation about fate and free will.
Ultimately, there’s only two answers to this question, either you have free will, or you don’t. The interesting part is the reasoning behind the answer. One such instance is the explanation that we don’t have free will because the brain is essentially a very complex computer. Where a shakespearian solution along the same lines would go something like: “God has a plan for everything, and everything goes according to his plan. You can’t go against God’s plan, therefore you have no free will”, we can give a more scientific solution. The brain is just a collection of neuron sending signals to each other, and to date we haven’t found some special neuron that outputs different signals when given the same input signals, so a modern explanation would go something like: “Your brain is made of neurons. each neuron has a function that it follow, with no random elements. If every input produces one output for each neuron, then you brain must always give outputs based on its outside inputs. You cannot change these inputs therefore you have no free will”.
A modern counter-argument to that also involves (relatively) new ways of thinking about the universe. Where the “neuron argument” (Probably not the official name of the argument) focuses on interactions between small things, the “Quantum Probability” argument (once again, probably not the official name) focuses on even smaller objects. The field of quantum mechanics has told us a lot about how extremely microscopic, molecular, atomic, and nuclear objects react with each other. While most of these discoveries got us to rethink our world in some way, the bit that’s important for this argument is the realization that, at a quantum level, things actually are random. A good example would be electrons, which can exist in multiple places at once until you try to observe them, and observing the same electron the same way multiple times can yield different results. Overall the argument would look something like “The smallest objects in our universe behave in random ways, and these objects make up everything in the universe. If something is made of random stuff, it will behave in a somewhat random way. Therefor, the brain may act differently to two identical inputs, and our observation of this is what we call choice” Admittedly, this solution isn’t any less depressing than the previous. For a genuinely upbeat solution, we’d have to go with something like “Not having free will is a sad way to live your life, if you choose to believe in free will you will be happier and no one can tell you you're wrong because you were clearly just functioning on the inputs given to you”, although this could be viewed as dodging the question.
Overall, rather than answer the question of free will, modern arguments have shown us that we might be asking the wrong questions. Due to recent additions to the information we have to work with, the question has gone from “do we have free will?” to “Is the universe fundamentally random?”. The fact that we’ve generalized this question suggests that we are beginning to understand it better, and regardless of what you think the true answer to be, that’s really exciting.