Determinism and Back To The Future
I've had a thought bouncing in my head today and I want to give it some air and let you folks at it to see where it takes on water.
The theory is that there's a contradiction, or misalignment maybe, between how most people feel about the philosophical concept of free will and how time travel and time loops are portrayed in media. Here's the premises I've landed on to arrive at that:
(1) The vast majority of people believe in some form of free will. (Fairly non contentious, I hope. A lot of resources back this up.)
(2) For free will to exist, if a person is repeatedly prompted to make some sort of decision under the exact same circumstances (time, place, people, etc) there must be a non-zero amount of times that they will arrive at a decision different from their initial one. For example... lets suppose you walk into the room and ask me what I want for dinner. I chew on some options for a moment then decide "chicken and rice". Then my memory is wiped and we repeat this over and over. After a few repeats of this I end up settling on a steak burrito instead. This is the only way free will could work imo because the opposite result, if given the same input you always arrive at the same output, is no different than determinism. Plus it implies, much like the time loop/travel media show, that from the start of the day we can know exactly where we will end up at the end if nothing is changed- which leaves no wiggle room for free will.
(3) The people in time travel / time loop media who are not your faithful protagonist or otherwise aware of the time based shenanigans going on always do the exact same thing every time (at least, in the ones I've seen). It's only the ones who are aware of how events have already unfolded who can make new decisions, everyone and everything else plays out the same.
Thus, virtually all media portray time travel/loops in a way that doesn't jive with how the vast majority of people perceive free will.
So, what do you think- Do you agree with the conclusion? Do you disagree on the definition of free will? Should I have gone with my alternate title? (12 Deterministic Monkeys starring Bruce Free Willis)
I believe in compatibilism, or the idea that free will and determinism are not mutually exclusive and its not a contradiction to have both.
If you could rewind time and asked me what my favorite flavor of ice cream is a million different times, erasing my memory every time Memento style, Im going to say chocolate ever single time. Thats not a lack of free will, thats just having a consistent personality. Maybe every one in a billion times I have a stroke at just the right moment and blurt out vanilla instead, but thats not really a true representation of my opinion, and Im not really choosing to do it in that case.
Doing stuff completely at random would be just as much a nonchoice as doing stuff the same way as making the same choice every single time, but neither of those I think are a good way of thinking about the concept of a choice to begin with.
The idea that "free will" needs to mean that a choice cant be explained deterministically I believe is derivative of the Christian idea that God exists and has absolute control everything, but at the same time humans can defy Gods will, which requires that humanity have some special ability to choose that transcends natural law. It needs to be the case that Free Will cannot follow any consistency, because otherwise you could conceive of a form of Free Will where everyone still somehow consistently chooses to be good every time, and therefore there is an apparent paradox of why a benevolent God wouldnt do this.
But if you dont believe in a perfectly benevolent omnipotent God, then this particular conception of free will doesnt need to be the case, because there are other ways to explain the existence of Evil.
I think the idea you captured from movies on time travel actually do square better with most peoples ideas of free will than how you explained free will. Most people would say that they exercise some degree of reason in the exercise of their free will. If the circumstances are the same for each time they make the decision, I don't think many would argue against the idea that they would make the same decision, since the reasons for doing so would also be the same. I don't believe that many would argue that having reasons for our decisions is an argument against free will, so I would conclude that these two things; namely free will and rational decision making, are not in conflict in most peoples understanding of the two.