In the Dr. Who story Inferno, the Doctor’s malfunctioning TARDIS console sends him to a parallel universe populated by counterparts of people from his reality. Ever philosophical, the Doctor responds to his discovery by engaging in this reasoning: “An infinity of universes. Ergo an infinite number of choices. So free will is not an illusion after all. The pattern can be changed.”
While the Doctor does not go into detail about his inference, his reasoning seems to be that since the one parallel universe he ended up in is different from his own in many ways (the United Kingdom is a fascist state in that universe and the Brigadier has an eye patch), it follows that at least some of the differences are due to different choices and this entails that free will is real.
While the idea of being able to empirically confirm free will is appealing, the Doctor’s inference is flawed: the existence of an infinite number of universes and differences between at least some would not show that free will is real. And not just because Dr. Who is fiction. This is because the existence of differences between different universes would be consistent with an absence of free will.
One possibility is that determinism is true, but different universes are, well, different. That is, each universe is a deterministic universe with no free will, yet they are not identical. This would seem to make sense. After allm, two planets could be completely deterministic, yet different. As such, the people of Dr. Who’s original universe were determined to be the way they are, while the people of the parallel universe were determined to be the way they are. And they are different.
It could be objected that all (or at least some) universes are initially identical and hence any difference between them must be explained by metaphysical free will. However, even if it is granted, for the sake of argument, that all (or some) universes start out identical to each other, it still does not follow that the explanation for differences between them is due to free will.
An obvious alternative explanation is that randomness is a determining factor, and each universe is random rather than deterministic. In this case, universes could differ from each other without free will. In support of this, the fact that dice rolls differ from each other does not require that dice have free will. Random chance would suffice. In this case, the people of the Doctor’s universe turned out as they did because of chance and the same is true of their counterparts—only the dice rolls were a bit different, so their England was fascist and their Brigadier had an eye patch.
If the Doctor had ended up in a universe just like his own (which he might—after all, there would be no way to tell the difference), this would not have disproved free will. While it is unlikely that all the choices made in the two universes would be the same, given an infinity of universes it would not be impossible. As such, differences between universes or a lack thereof would prove nothing about free will.
My position, as always, is that I should believe in free will. If I am right, then it is the right thing to believe. If I am wrong, then I could not have done otherwise or perhaps it was just the result of randomness. Either way, I would have no choice. That, I think, is about all that can be sensibly said about metaphysical free will.
”..This is because the existence of differences between different universes would be consistent with an absence of free will.”. Yes. A significant thought: commonly people don’t have such a thought. They go around like children believing the illusion they so much want to believe.
But even if there were millions of parallel universes, a theory that in itself is pretty ridiculous since there’s absolutely no indication of such a thing existing, no more or less than believing that there little green people living in the woods, none of these universes would be shaped exactly as I’d wish, and this cannot be defined free will. That a different parallel universe exists, would only mean that is different, not that it stemmed from my free will: for I have never designed such a universe. But even if I could have done that, and I’d suddenly live in it, I would still have to follow its own restrictions, unless not only I could create my own worlds, but also shape them at any time according to my liking.
Schopenhauer in his essay on free will (at least, what I have understood from it) explained that there’s no such a thing, for one is bound to make a choice nevertheless, and this at most from a number of choices. To call this free will is a piece of sophistry, akin to Dr Who calling it free will simply because this universe is different from another one. It’s just a different one, nothing more.
As I see it, I have no choice whatsoever about things that are the most important ones, such as how long I’ll live, whether I’ll be free from disease, whether I can avoid someone mugging and stabbing me on the street, how long the people I know will live, whether I can stop a war, whether I’ll avoid poverty, whether the US is going to be lead by whom, etc etc etc.
But I seem to have free will about making ‘surface level’ choices: I can choose, when I get hungry, to have a cheeseburger or a tuna sandwich. But I must still eat, and I must choose. And I must choose from these two options (or three, or seven, etc).
To call this ‘free will’, seems a very big stretch, or even entirely laughable. Thank you for your essay.
Ultimately, whom of us would have the free will to be born at all, if each of us knew how our lives would turn out, OR, if it was entirely an unknown for us? This is NOT to say that ‘life is meaningless’ or that ‘it’s not worth living’. These points are moot: the fact is that we are living, so might as well live as best as possible. It’s as if we were ashore and dry and having no need to swim in the cold ocean in turmoil and being abandoned there. Few would be dumb enough to take the plunge. But if we were tossed in it, we might as well swim and try not to drown. But from this to saying that it was good for us in any ways, seems a strange idea.
And yet, I see even philosophers saying, as old men with almost their teeth falling out: ‘It was worth it, and I’d do it again’. Such an example was Brian Magee. And he was even a major Schopenhauer scholar. But even if one can say to have lived a really good life, i.e. a very rare exception or someone who’s mad, the same hasn’t been true of countless others, such as victims of the Holocaust (or even the ‘survivors’), etc etc….
Some things about this really strange world, I’ll never understand.