**6. Implications for free will**

Another contribution in the same volume is "The Illusion of Free Will and its Acceptance" by Giuseppe Trautteur ([15], pp. 191-203). The purpose of the article is argue for what he calls "double feel" ([15], p. 199), the apparent truth that people can be both convinced that they have free choice and realize theoretically that there is no evidence for free will. He talks at length about the scientific evidence for free will and concludes it is not there. He even cites the experiments published by Kornhuber and Deecke which showed that neural commands initiating action precede our conscious awareness of making decisions ([15], p. 194). While he is aware of the indeterminacy of microscopic quantum events, he is convinced that macroscopic events are strictly determined by natural law ([15], p. 193).

Trautteur expresses a great deal of sorrow about this and says it cannot help but undermine ethics and religion ([15], p. 200). Why are we creatures that seem to insist on this illusion? Trautteur entertains the proposals of Clore and Damasio that we are born with "markers" for "cognitive feelings" such as the sense of volition ([15], p. 198).

To respond to this I would like to go back to something I mentioned at the beginning. Peirce criticized necessitarianism for denying that there is any increase in diversity in nature. Natural laws just rearrange the preexisting diversity. He thought this idea was intolerable for any view of the world that attempted to understand creativity in any sense. Firstness is manifested in the variety of the world, and perhaps one could even argue that "internet addiction" is somehow dependent on it. To borrow a phrase from Dreyfus, a person addicted to online content is not "detached and computer-like" ([7], p. 33). Our ability to get addicted appears to depend on computers showing us interesting things, and this depends on diversity. Without Firstness, the internet would be a bore. Especially with the development of the World Wide Web, digital computers can convey analog information like sights and sounds. They are not just for number crunching or word processing.

Peirce's theory was that lawfulness (Thirdness) was growing in the universe. As he says:

*At present, the course of events is approximately determined by law. In the past that approximation was less perfect; in the future it will be more perfect. The tendency to obey laws has always been and always will be growing. ([1], p. 358).*

Perhaps we can move away from a focus on proving what determines each of our actions and consider the possibility that creativity itself is the best evidence of indeterminacy. Purely "free" choices do not have to happen constantly as long as they *can* happen at times.
