The Illusion of Freedom

You don’t have free will. In all likelihood. But hold on, how dare you assert the denial of a truth that is self-evident and wherewith I can demonstrate by expressing my dissent by freely arresting myself from expending attention to this preposterous anathema?

I was more or less in your shoes a year and a half ago, perhaps with more indignation. What of the criminals and the saints strung across history, from the great to the mediocre, who surely deserve their respective share of blame and praise, punishment and reward? What of my relationships, which are built on the presumption and the according treatment that the other person is free and responsible? And what of my efforts, deliberations, and actions with which I fully identify and which empower me to take ownership of my life? Before we investigate such implications, let us first hear the reasons behind the initial declaration.

Our feeling of freedom, of control over what we do or even think involves, plausibly, the ability to do otherwise. While I chose to order Chipotle, I really could have done otherwise and ordered something else. I chose my lunch through my free will. However, determinism is likely true. The position derives its name from its argument that what happens is determined by preceding events, that is, its causes. In other words, every event is the inevitable effect of prior events, akin to an unstopping chain of falling domino pieces that are knocked over by the previous piece. Determinism means that nothing could have been otherwise. It exists at physical, biological, sociocultural, and even theological levels—my decision is the inevitable result of the motion of the particles inside me, the specific way my neurons happened to fire, the kind of foods I had and enjoyed when I was younger, God’s foreknowledge about the facts of the future. Benjamin Libet’s groundbreaking paper in 1985 experimentally demonstrated determinism in neurobiology: 350-400 milliseconds before a motor act, the participants’ neurons achieved a state of ready potential while conscious intention to perform the act occurred only 200 milliseconds before it. In other words, our neuronal activity preceded and likely caused our conscious intention, not the other way around.

Those who are acquainted with quantum indeterminacy, the occurrence of random or probabilistic events at the subatomic level, however, may desire to object. Excluding theological determinism, all the other variants are reducible to physical phenomena, which are sometimes random. Determinism is hence false since the future is not set in stone.

Randomness or probability, however, must not be confused with control. In fact, if something is random or probabilistic, then by definition it is not something one can control. It seems, then, that the notion of free will suffers deep problems. Let me use a thought experiment. I was so tired this morning that even after waking and knowing I would miss class if I slept in, I decided to anyway. But say that we could rewind time and that I was in the exact same scenario: I still had my intense desire to collapse and my competing desire to not miss work; my biochemistry was the same; the positions and velocities of all the particles that constitute me were the same—everything was identical. But this time, I got up and went to school. Under the exact same conditions, I chose differently. Since there can be no reason for the different outcomes—as all prior conditions are the same—the difference is random or probabilistic, and we would say completely arbitrary. This is no different from a coin toss: even though the result seemed like it could be otherwise, none of us would say we had control.

Indeed, claiming the existence of free will is no small order. It cannot just be the ability to do otherwise and freedom from deterministic influence, but also needs to be meaningful and not simply random. In order to have free will, our decision-making needs to be neither deterministic, probabilistic, or random. It requires we be capable of making uncaused choices while, somehow, having control over them.

It is just as impossible, however, to abandon our experience of free will. Talk about a philosophical conundrum. It should be no surprise, then, that philosophers have bent over backward for thousands of years, arguing over its existence and what it means for our criminal justice system, our interpersonal relationships, and the meaning and ownership of our own lives if we didn’t have it. It is worth mentioning that consciousness is just as much a mystery and defies our understanding of the brain—yet it is something, if not the only thing, whose existence we cannot deny. While I contend that free will is not quite as self-evident as consciousness, the latter’s defiance of our understanding of the world does cast doubt on the pessimistic account of free will I’ve painted above. However, I do not want to quibble on what may well lead to a deadlock but move to the richer realm of its consequences. In what follows, I will examine each of these issues and unravel some of the implications of our lack of fundamental freedom.