If causality is an essential element of how the universe works, how are we to prove that our conscious sense of free will is genuine? We will likely never have the chance to prove that we could have decided otherwise in a past event. The sequence of events leading to a moment in time cannot be reset to play out an alternative future. However, what if there was a way to simulate an environment where a precise instant can be replicated and repeated ad infinitum? Could we show that when presented with the exact conditions of an instance with multiple choices for a second time, we can choose differently? Luckily, we live in a world where such an experiment is possible through computer simulation, such as video games. Similar to our physical bodies, electronic simulations are dependent on the rules of causality to function. However, like our consciousness, they produce contextual realities that transcends their medium and provides evidence for human free will.
Computers, and by relation video games, rely on the laws of nature to operate. Let's take Mario example: electricity powers game console, the program code is loaded to memory, game processing begins, and video and sound are output to a display. Similarly, the player’s interactions involve basic physical motor functions and use of three senses; sight, hearing, and touch. The physical interactions of playing a video game are purely mechanical and provide no insight as to the purpose of the process. However, during the act of play, a contextual reality is formed between the player and the current instance of the game world. Though the player and game console follow a line of causality continuing through space and time at all moments, the contextual reality of the game world can start over to an exact replica of a previous momement. While playing Super Mario Brothers, one can reset the instance of the game world to stage 1-1 with the same starting conditions. Doing so provides the contextual reality and perspective, however simple it may be, to exercise our freedom of will with repeatable scenarios.
At this point, you may be wondering how this proves anything at all. If we are bound by causality at all times, then playing video games is included the actions that could be determined by unseen elemental forces acting upon sub-atomic particles, right? Possibly, but let us suppose for a moment that human free will is genuine. If a free choice is a part of the causal chain, in no way does its appearance or involvement in the sequence negate a choice’s authenticity. Our free will, then, may not governed by causality, but rather is a force acting within the sequence; a cause or effect. The great philosopher Immanuel Kant states this concept best in his Critique of Pure Reason, “Now of course the action must be possible under natural conditions if the ought [possible action] is directed to it; but these natural conditions do not concern the determination of the power of choice itself, but only its effects and result in appearance.”
Once a video game is running, it has its own unique line of causality separate from our own in everything but that it relies on physical interactions in our world for sustainment. In their unique way to simulate reality and repeatable scenarios, video games provide us some small proof that our sense of free will is genuine.
