I've always been on the fence on this issue due to two concerns I always saw as conflicting until recently:
* Causality
* Perception of free will
In my mind, it always made sense that I couldn't have free will with causality as then my brain is really just an insanely complex chaotic system that only appears to be random. Allowing for freewill in something like that would appear to warrant the idea of magic.
But then my friend remarked that instead of the universe being driven based on causation why not imagine it all being correlation based? Any scientific experiment really only proves correlation to a mathematical model. Unlike pure math you can't prove a hypothesis using anything nearly as rigorous as induction (since the infinite is out of our reach).
By not taking that extra step of saying science proves causation of certain phenomena and just leaving it at correlation I think ideas such as freewill and the odd uncertainty of quantum mechanics can mesh with our macro level view of the universe.
What you say here reminds me a bit of Hume. Hume attacked cause and effect by noting that all we ultimately have access to are our perceptions, and that we can never perceive "cause." We may see the hammer flying through the air, then the window shattering, but we don't see any "cause" here. Just event A followed by event B. For Hume, our mind naturally correlates these events, and we call it cause and effect.
Kant then followed by saying that this account was incomplete and that cause and effect are more like a type of lens through which we organize our perceptions, without which, we couldn't make sense of the world.
*Vastly oversimplifying huge swaths of 18th century philosophy here, so don't take this very seriously.
In my mind, it always made sense that I couldn't have free will with causality as then my brain is really just an insanely complex chaotic system that only appears to be random. Allowing for freewill in something like that would appear to warrant the idea of magic.
But then my friend remarked that instead of the universe being driven based on causation why not imagine it all being correlation based? Any scientific experiment really only proves correlation to a mathematical model. Unlike pure math you can't prove a hypothesis using anything nearly as rigorous as induction (since the infinite is out of our reach).
By not taking that extra step of saying science proves causation of certain phenomena and just leaving it at correlation I think ideas such as freewill and the odd uncertainty of quantum mechanics can mesh with our macro level view of the universe.
shrugs I thought it was interesting at least. :)