Essay:The Free Will Challenge

Do you have free will? Let's take a simple test and find out.

Step one
For the first step, take a few moments to contemplate and familiarize yourself with this picture of a green apple. When you feel that you are familiar enough with this image, and can call it to your memory at will, please hide this step and move to step two.

Step two
Please follow this simple instruction for a period of five minutes. (If you hit the condition for failure, you can move on early.)

DO NOT THINK ABOUT A GREEN APPLE!

Scoring
Minds whose contents are partially unconscious or subconscious can't have free will. The element of control you think you have over your own actions really isn't there. How could it be, if your own mind is doing things you aren't even aware of, and will not obey the simplest of instructions? You can at least tell when your consciousness has a hangover. It is entirely a creature of the dying animal it is somehow attached to, and stymied by its weaknesses. How much more is it doing that escapes your notice entirely? And if your own mind refuses to obey simple instructions, and is doing things behind your back all the time, where exactly is this freedom of decision making supposed to come from?
 * If you successfully banished that image you weren't supposed to think about, then congratulations. You may have free will.  This test may not be enough to establish that you do, of course, but you at least have the same level of voluntary control over the contents of your head that you do over, say, a computer's operating system.  When you tell it to erase a file, it gets erased, or at least made unselectable.  Your mind is that way also.
 * If you failed to banish the thought of that thing you weren't supposed to think about, then I'm terribly sorry. You don't have free will.  You lack voluntary control over the contents of your own head, and if even that eludes your grasp, it's somewhat surprising that you ever imagined  yourself having free will to bother testing it.

Free will suggests that your conscious mind is the boss: and this is only an illusion that appeals because it flatters ourselves. Your conscious mind is really only a figurehead. You've probably just seen it issuing orders and having them ignored.