The role of free will in social complexity–does it exist?

Posted by  Shawn Callahan —January 16, 2005
Filed in Collaboration

Dave Snowden frequently says: “Humans are not ants. We have ‘free will’ and can impose order on an otherwise complex system.” This sounded like a sound statement to me and I happened to mention the idea to Sue Blackmore while at a meeting of complexity scientists (and a ring-in like myself) in Canberra—we were considering how the theories of complexity and memetics might be combined. Sue scoffed at the idea and questioned whether human actually possess free will. BTW this link to Sue’s short statement on ‘free will’ is in response to a question by the Edge: “What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?” Some of the world’s great minds have made contributions (eg. Richard Dawkins, Stuart Kauffman, Daniel C. Dennett, Paul Davies, Howard Gardiner—120 in all). Sue has also address the topic in her latest book on consciousness .

Regard ‘free will’, I’m still not in a position to decide one way or the other, but the following thought rattles around in my head. Gary Klein has shown that many of our decisions are made without weighing the options (Sources of Power). Rather, when faced with a decision we match the situation with patterns from our experience, do a quick mental test to see whether they action might work, and if it makes sense, we take action. This doesn’t sound like free will.

Do you think we have free will?

About  Shawn Callahan

Shawn, author of Putting Stories to Work, is one of the world's leading business storytelling consultants. He helps executive teams find and tell the story of their strategy. When he is not working on strategy communication, Shawn is helping leaders find and tell business stories to engage, to influence and to inspire. Shawn works with Global 1000 companies including Shell, IBM, SAP, Bayer, Microsoft & Danone. Connect with Shawn on:

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