On the Dubious Proposition of Free Will

On the literary and the philosophical side of things, this debate is about the question of free will, about the relation between human choice and the idea of fate. So many of the old stories are about fate being fulfilled or frustrated. It has always been an intense human fascination, how much freedom we have and whether we have any at all. I remember at a poetry reading in San Francisco once, during the question and answer period, an earnest young woman she was quite pregnant, I remember raised her hand and asked if there was such a thing as free will. The old poet Kenneth Rexroth looked at her as if he were a little ashamed of himself for having given the impression that he could answer such a question, and then said, very kindly, “We cant know, and we have to act as if there is.” I thought that was a good answer.

Thus spake EO Wilson: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/06/17/the-poetic-species-wilson-hass/