In a dark wood

This is the dilemma. We believe in order. Things happen for a reason. The universe, of which we are part, obeys causal laws. This determinism promises us an ordered world, and a comprehensible one. A world that follows natural laws without magic or deities.

And yet our feeling of being free to choose opposes this causal universe. We have the unavoidable experience of choosing. Out from the centre of our selves a choice arises, seemingly uncompelled by history. We experience ourselves as uncaused causers.

Each choice is made by us, and so it feels that it could have been made otherwise. We can’t avoid choosing, and we are compelled to believe that this choosing matters.

John Searle said that even the most hardened determinist, when faced with the restaurant menu, makes a choice - they don’t throw up their hands and say, “There’s no point me choosing between the chicken or the lentils, my decision has already been pre-determined!”

So we feel a contradiction between our belief in a causal universe and our experience of ourselves as making choices. Our choices appear as interventions in the causal flow of the universe. Our choices feel meaningful, and so can’t merely be pre-determined by what happened before.

Our choices seem to contain the magic of our selves.

Things happen for a reason, but surely we are not mere things!

☐ ☐

You stumble upon a map

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