Brian Greene Denies Free Will (I Guess He Had To)

I recently came across a short reel by Brian Greene, the very well-known and very successful science author and expert in string theory, explaining why he thinks we have no free will.  What I really admire about this explanation, even though I strongly disagree with it, is its effort to be clear and concise.  Here is a transcript of the reel in its entirety:

“I’m pretty confident that we don’t have free will, regardless of how much our intuition and experience suggest that we do.  Why is that?  Very simply, you and I, we are collections of particles, well organized collections, but those particles, their movement is all guided by physical law.  When we make a decision, when we undertake an action, it’s simply particles coursing through our bodies and brains, and the motion of those particles is fully determined by mathematical decree, by the laws of physics.  We have no opportunity to intercede in the lawful progression of those particles, and so if have no opportunity to intercede in those particle motions, we don’t have any opportunity to play a role in the motion of those particles.  We don’t have any opportunity to choose what those particles do.  And that’s why we don’t have any free will.” (emphasis mine)

The explanation is 144 words.  I thought it would be fun to challenge myself to come up with a 144-word refutation of the argument.  So here goes

Brian Greene assumes that the laws of physics are blueprints of reality rather than maps.  A map of a river does not describe the flow of the water, nor the actions of fish in the river.  The reality of the river is not exhausted by its course.  Likewise, the fullness of reality is not exhausted by descriptions of particle paths and so is not “fully determined” by the maps of the particles.  Reality includes what particles are made of and the dynamical systems that emerge from the interactions of structures composed of those particles.  If the laws of particles do not determine in advance which outcome of a system will occur, while all outcomes remain consistent with those laws, then reality is indeterminate and not determined.  Freedom is the ability to encourage one indeterminate outcome rather than another.  Freedom makes history, maps do not.

How did I do?  If Brian Greene is correct, neither of us actually had anything to do with composing either set of words.  The laws of physics did it all.  I think careful thinking leads one to conclude otherwise.