There are philosophical ideas that run headlong into the scientific method that generate strange debates. Not the fruitful kind, but ones that feel more like semantics and equivocation. The best example is the zombie debate between free will vs. determinism. Really? This again? I can’t wrap my head around it. Are there philosophers still asserting that there is something intrinsically non-physical about human agency? At a certain point, we coarse-grain the distinction away. I have agency. I can reach for the pen, or not. This is not free in the sense that an absurd number of causal factors went in to constitute my ability to make that decision (evolving from a single cell organism to a fully constituted human being with arms, fingers, an opposable thumb, nerves, spinal cord, and a brain). Nor is it against my will (God, or Jigsaw, is not forcing a gun to my head demanding a hard choice). The choice is to all extent and purposes superfluous, for Natural Selection gave me the power to choose and will ultimately decide whether my choice was a wise one. Is this free will? No, it’s an intentional act, it’s agency. Physical systems have evolved to allow some things (me, you, alive things) to be able to perform intentional acts. The mystery is why anyone thinks there is a metaphysical mystery.

The other side of the debate sometimes pushes the line too far. In an attempt to assert the undeniable fact that humans are governed by the same laws of physics as rocks (yawn), a hard determinism attempts to deny intentional acts. Wait? I thought we were debating free will? Are we now denying the existence of volition in general? Oh please. No one seriously believes this. When the waiter gives me my choices to drink “coffee, tea, or water” and I say coffee, am I supposed to curse an evil God who secretly programmed me to make the decision he alone wanted? What kind of madness is this? Push that line of thinking and you’ve not elevated determinism. You’ve simply elided a key distinction between life and non-life. One of the reasons I am able to distinguish rocks from life (a key differentiator) is an ability to produce a complex range of directed, purpose-driven behavior. The choices are the environment, life negotiates that space. And we call this agency, intention. That’s not a rejection of determinism, hard or soft. It’s just not instructive, not instrumental to a discussion of what is happening. It’s akin to the waiter saying “Coffee it is, but what is the point? In the end we are all dead.” Technically, it’s not even true. But philosophically, it’s non-severable.

If we say a complete physical description is impossible by a strict reductionist method, that there is some secret sauce that is needed to explain intentional acts and in particular consciousness, surely we are not committing to the idea that this special sauce must be non-physical? Is free will merely an attempt to smuggle magic back into our world? Why? The world, governed by physical laws grasped by mathematical equations, is quite magical to behold. You don’t need to smuggle anything. Or better still, as artists would say, there is a magical way in which Hobbits and Elves do inhabit and exist in the world regardless that no fossil record of their physical existence will likely be found. The universe is always much larger than we initially are led to believe. The greatest act of freedom is the power of our imagination.