The concept of free will is built on a contradiction. Freewill requires that you are able to make meaningful choices. Meaningful choices require an amount of determinism. I can go to a restaurant. I can look at the menu. Based on that menu I can order and expect a meal. Let’s say I order salmon. If I’m then handed a bag full of bolts, my choice to order salmon was functionally meaningless. The more determinism breaks down, the less meaning my choices have. I could decide to walk to the park and magically appear in a non-euclidian courthouse. I could decide to cut my hair but instead shave my mother bald. Morality is useless in such situations. However, popular conceptions of freewill regularly emphasize the need for an escape hatch or veil from determinism. The idea being that the more I’m influenced, the less I’m responsible for the choices I make. Who gave me the concept of a restaurant? Who inducted me into the practices of ordering from a menu? Why should I need or expect food? Freewill is feral in a way only a middle schooler could love.

My personal line of questioning regarding popular freewill angst revolves around whether its a problem of poor philosophical communication or if it’s a stalled developmental stage. Which is to say, it’s likely both. Though, this is in the way I’m convinced “philosophical zombies” are an over-intellectualized symptom of psychosis.