Freedom is subordinated to interest. It is not more free who has more options but who can choose what is best for him.
In an ideal scenario of perfect information, freedom would be unnecessary because there would only be a single better decision. This applies to both selfish and altruistic or mixed perspectives. That is why we take the children to vaccinate against their will. That’s why we pull hard on someone who is about to be run over, while trying to cross the road, clueless with his cell phone, and we do it against his will.
In spite of being something intuitive, free will surely does not exist. Of course, this depends on what definition we are using of free will. In this text, when I speak of freedom, I am pursuing the intuitive idea that, given various possibilities, I make decisions, and these decisions are not determined by my physical makeup (genes and neurons). This approach to defining freedom is different, for example, from that of Brian Tomasik.
When you try to define free will in this way, one realizes that it is an absurd idea, or at least incompatible with our knowledge. Free will implies that there is a non-material entity that has influence in the material world. That is to say, the idea of free will implies to assume the hypothesis that matter does not follow the laws of physics.
We really do not know if free will exists. It may or may not exist, but the hypothesis that matter generates the (illusory) experience of identity and the (illusory) experience of free will, without major consequence, is rationally very plausible, despite being very unintuitive and we should give it a greater consideration. On the other hand, the illusion of free will undoubtedly exists and is very morally relevant.
We hear saying that subjectivity / consciousness implies the existence of a self, of an identity, and that human beings have a freedom, a will, a free will. There is a usual confusion in this sense: Free is not the same as unpredictable.
- Being unpredictable does not imply being free: if we had a random physical system, we would say that it is unpredictable but we would not say that it is free.
- Being free does not imply being unpredictable: I can freely decide to always make the same decision, and others can correctly predict my future action.
At the “macro” level we can consider that “everything has a cause” (genes, environment), but in this matter it does not really matter whether our behavior is determined or not, whether it is predictable or not, whether it is random or not. Freedom consists in having the feeling of being free. It is about having the experience that one is the one who makes the decisions. What we call freedom is really identity: “I am free when I decide.”
We usually associate the word freedom with an immense physical space, without limits or obstacles, and the lack of freedom to a prison. But none of us would like to be taken out of jail to be left in the African savannah at the mercy of predators, or on the surface of the moon without oxygen. Freedom is subordinated to the concept of interest. The one who is offered more alternatives is not more free because that, but the one who can choose what he most desires. Being free consists above all in being able to satisfy one’s own desires and interests.
The desire for freedom is one of the strongest desires that exist, and that is the reason why we must respect it: in general individuals want to be free, they want to have the feeling that they make their own decisions, and in general they would be frustrated if They are not allowed to do it.
Some people ask: “If we are determined by genes + environment, what do we do with all the prisoners? Do we open all the prisons?” The answer is simple: what was the purpose of that prison sentence? According to the different theories, the purpose can be the sanction (compensation, reaction), prevention, amendment, readaptation, etc. Well, this purpose of punishment is not affected by the fact that freedom does not exist in the usual sense of the word, and can equally apply to humans and robots.
So punishment can have an instrumental, preventive value. But not intrinsic. Poetic justice has no intrinsic value.
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