Free will. Some people use those words as the universal "way out," the reason Man is held separate from Beast, why we should be held accountable for our own actions, why our morals even matter. But I have a different definition. I was debating with some friends about it today, and here's what I figured out.
I read in a book on animal behavior that when a bird (seagull) roosts its eggs, it sits on the larger eggs and lets the smaller ones die. In most cases, this makes sense, but to demonstrate instinct, researchers put a white wooden egg the size of a football in the nest. The bird sat on the fake egg at the exclusion of all else, and let its own eggs go to waste.
That is instinct, the antithesis of free will. The inverse. That bird had no choice but to sit on the larger egg, even though it was obvious that the bird never laid it. Even though the egg was artificial.
Humans have instincts just like birds, as is obvious when you think how many metaphors to human society can be made from that bird-egg problem. Instincts are behaviors that don't change no matter what happens. Instincts are when you can't change your behavior based on the situation around you.
A: Instincts B: You can change your behavior based on the surroundings. A -> ~B
Therefore, the ability to change your behavior based on the situation around you is not instinct. Since I have divided all behavior between instinct and free will, not instinct is free will.
Humans have a lot of free will. We can predict, anticipate, assume, worry. People change their behavior when the situation warrants it. Some people even change their behavior simply to prove the existence of free will.
Seagulls, on the other hand, do not have much free will. They have some, but not much. Neither do seals, cats, dogs, rabbits, rats, coatimundi, etc...
The grand majority of animals can perform rudimentary acts of free will, but for the most part they might as well be sleeping even as they go about their lives.
Free will, the ability to change my behavior, is valuable to me, perhaps more than anything else. Through free will I learn, I grow, I experience, and I know. The reason I fear death is that death may be the end of free will; the end of learning; the stopping point and no more.
I fear insects, with so little free will they are like inflexible robots. But insects aside; their world is a completely different universe. I would give insects free will 1000 at at time, because of my earlier comment on why they shouldn't each be given human-level awareness.
I fear retarded people because they are often grotesque monuments to the loss of free will. I admit it. When a man not only cannot communicate, but has nothing inside generating communication, I get completely freaked out. Thankfully most people, except the worst of the worst, are not like that. But it brings to mind the previous story (2/11/2002).
Why do other animals have so little free will? Humans are so isolated in that regard... what poobah of poobahs cursed humans with gobs and gobs of free will then left us without any other species to share it with? You might say we just don't know how to talk right to cats & dogs, but I perceive a fundamental difference in universes between us and animals, basic concepts that prevent us from communication. They just don't think as much as we do! Isn't there something /wrong/ with that?
And sometimes... sometimes I wonder... was it always this way? Humans are such violent creatures. Would we have even been able to coexist with an equal? Perhaps there were things not us that talked and thought, and we simply killed them all. It's not so farfetched: look at what humans have done historically even to their own kind. All it takes is a tiny change in color of skin, or geographic location, or which book you believe in, and people kill each other mercilessly, utterly. How could it have been any different with something so alien, yet so familiar as another sentient species?
It also would explain why we haven't been contacted by extraterrestrial life. Raises my hackles, I swear. *shudder*
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