What's the deal with free will?

We all think we make our own choices. We choose to wake up in the morning, we choose to brush our teeth, we choose to eat the cereal that we chose in the grocery store, and we choose to go to the job we chose to apply for. We all assume everything that we do is our own conscious choice. However, there is much controversy over whether or not this is actually the case. We may or may not actually make our own choices according to various philosophers, neuroscientists, and psychologists. Everyone has a different opinion on the matter, each justification in accordance with his/her own discipline. The question of whether or not we have free will is perhaps one of the most hotly debated in philosophy. And for good reason. A conclusive, definite answer to this question may change the entire meaning of life as we know it, and the trajectory of the future. Do we actually control our choices? What even are choices? Are we just pawns in an invisible game? As nice as it would be to get a simple “yes” or “no”, the answer may not be so straightforward. It may lie in the gray area somewhere between these two points, and be much more complex than originally thought. It is at this point, where ideology and science converge and try to solve this age-old riddle.

It is accepted as fact in some religions and philosophies that we do indeed have free will. Free will, in this context, is the absolute freedom to make choices that are not the result of necessity and are not fated to happen. Namely, according to the Roman Catholic denomination of Christianity, our ability to will and make choices is at the very core of our being, and is served as proof that we are indeed made in the image of God. This is seen as common sense, for it is obvious that we have an ability to make choices. Scientific disciplines other than neuroscience also would concur, saying that scientific theory goes against determinism, or the theory that future events are preset by external factors and happen due to causes unrelated to one’s choices. The belief in determinism goes against scientific theory which states that future events are direct consequences of the events that precede it. Following this logic, we must have free will because the consequences are an effect of what we choose, and thus those consequences were not determined before they were made to happen (Fallacies 74).

There are ideologies that uphold the principle of determinism. Calvinism, for example, is a sect of Protestantism which claims that from the moment we are conceived, our futures and even the afterlife has already been determined, and our choices are nothing more than us trying to look for signs that we were meant to go to heaven. This idea is called predestination, meaning where the human soul is destined to go after death (heaven or hell) is pre-decided by God and not the individual him/herself (theologian-theology.com). For this idea to make sense it must also be believed that we do not have free will. This means that each choice a person makes is already planned to happen, and were not chosen by the individual at the time the choice was thought to be made. It is a perplexing idea at first, but after some deeper consideration, there is also an arguable case for this point of view. Let us take, for example, a drug addict. It is easy to say this person chose to engage with the substance, but at a closer glance, there may be some deeper psychological and external factors at play. The individual’s place of birth, upbringing, genetic dispositions, innate personality traits, socioeconomic status, and other environmental factors may have influenced this person’s decision. Note as well how many of these factors were not decided by the individual, for things such as genes and circumstances surrounding early life cannot be consciously willed by a person. Considering this, it is perhaps not outlandish to say that in many ways, our free will is inhibited and possibly may not even exist.

Theoretically speaking, we must be able to affect the outside world by the actions that flow from our will, because if not then the whole trajectory of the future is already in place. And if that is truly the case, then what is it held in place by? According to Gilbert N. Lewis of University of California Berkeley, “No one science alone, but several sciences, physics, chemistry, geology and astronomy, assume as their very first postulate that the future of any isolated system is completely determined by its past. Among all these sciences we know no single fact which contradicts this rule.”(Morley 124). In other words, all theories of science accept and base their conclusions on the idea that the actions of the past directly cause the events of the future. For this reason, it seems like a perfectly logical thing to believe in free will, but this explanation does not address all aspects of this issue. This does not answer where the idea of biases, previous experience, and psychological factors may fit into the definition of free will. The only thing that such scientific theories may prove is that determinism is illogical. It seems as though science makes a strong argument as to how our actions, which flow from our will, do affect the future and not vice versa. This does not prove though, that our choices are necessarily always made from our own discretion and not external and neurological factors.

Neuroscience, or the science of the brain, has no agenda or reason it may want to push a certain view on this. There is little room for bias behind cold, hard factual evidence. People discriminate based on individual purposes, but facts do not. That is precisely why it is important to see what neuroscientists and their experiments suggest regarding this topic. Interestingly, many studies have concluded that we in fact, do not make conscious choices much of the time. Choices such as brushing one’s teeth or choosing cereal at the grocery store are not actually as free as they seem. One justification for this is that many of our actions are habitual, and thus these actions come from a chemical trigger response in the brain and almost happen automatically, with minimal decision-making (Evidentiating 93). An experiment was conducted by a PhD candidate at Yale where people had to quickly choose among five circles before a random one turned red. An improbably high amount of people just happened to choose the red circle. Then, the participants were given ample time to choose a circle, and as a result, those who picked the red circle dropped to its statistically correct percentage of around 20%. What this implies is that the participants thought they made the choice of circles both times, yet the first round of the experiment showed some people to be most likely influenced by the color of the circle, given it changed to red very quickly. The participants were unaware of how high they scored the first round, and given the statistics of the second, it seems unlikely that they lied about choosing the correct circle (scientificamerican.com). This goes to show that the participants legitimately felt they were making a choice, when in fact they probably were not. This experiment along with others shows that our memory or perception of choice may be influenced by the outcome, thus proving we are not entirely free to choose all the time. Bear’s explanation of this goes as follows: “This pattern of responding suggests that participants’ minds had sometimes swapped the order of events in conscious awareness, creating an illusion that a choice had preceded the color change when, in fact, it was biased by it.”(scientificamerican.com). In essence, he claims that our brains confuse the timeline of the choices we make, and for this reason it is impossible to be making a free choice. He makes the case that a choice cannot be considered “free” if the individual cannot even correctly remember when it was made. This may make sense when it applies to habitual decisions, but for conscious and hard choices, such as a student choosing a college, or a person deciding to end a relationship with a significant other, the person is most definitely aware he/she is making a choice. This does not answer all aspects of free will, and all types of biases that may be more deeply rooted in the psyche of all humans.

An instance where prior experience and inherent bias conflicts with free will would be giving a random group of people the choice between an unnecessary surgery and one million dollars. If the choice were free, common sense would suggest that statistically, there should be an even distribution of people who picked either choice (Evidentiating 93). However due to what we colloquially refer to as “common sense”, most likely given this choice, an overwhelmingly high percentage of people would choose the million dollars. This is because given the faculties of the mind that apply prior experience to the making of our decisions, we have a strong bias against the surgery and for the million dollars. Our prior experience triggers a positive reaction in the brain when confronted with large amounts of money, and a negative one when confronted with the idea of surgery. Considering this, it can be argued that our experiences alter the brain and insert biases that inhibit total freedom of the will.

Implicit, or unconscious bias is the way that the human brain processes information and forms beliefs based on such information. This process begins in the region of the brain known as the amygdala, which is responsible for emotional and fear responses, namely the “fight or flight” reaction when a person has a heightened perception of a situation in order to make a logical decision when faced with a threat. The responses to external stimuli created by the amygdala create a “profile” in the human subconscious to help people classify objects, ideas, and other people, into categories such as “safe” or “unsafe”. According to “Brain stuff: The Neuroscience Behind Implicit Bias”, “For example, you only need to be burned by a flame once, to develop a quick instinctual reaction to fire. These emotional reactions are due to the amygdala’s survival instinct.”(spectradiversity.com). This unconscious method of categorizing means that we as humans have positive and negative biases towards certain things, and the decisions we make concerning such things are tied to these biases. Our opinions—and decisions that flow from them—are in part decided by these biases from simple things such as our preference of ice-cream flavors to larger issues like racism.

However, it is important to note that if these chemical processes did not exist, then there would be no basis to make choices in the first place. In other words, if there was no bias or reasons as to why we make certain choices, then we possibly would not even be able to make them at all. Evolution slowly formed a population of modern humans who are able to take prior knowledge and apply it to present situations. For this reason, we are able to live our day-to-day lives without having to constantly make decisions about small things such as whether or not to sit down on a chair, reason being from prior knowledge, we are able to safely assume the chair is safe to sit on. This in turn makes it possible to have the headspace to make more serious logical decisions such as planning for the future (Evidentiating 101). It is scary to think that some unknown faculty controls our decisions, but this may not actually be a bad thing. This is perhaps the whole entire reason we are able to make intelligent, logical decisions.

It would seem as though the true disagreement between those who argue firmly one way or the other comes mainly from an individual’s subjective definition of the word “free”. Even some ideologies that have a set opinion regarding this topic do tend to refer to this technicality in justification of their point of view. As aforementioned, Calvinists are said not to believe in free will, but as stated by Matthew Barrett, “If by freedom one means, as Pighius argues, that man’s will is in no way determined but that man has the self-power to will good or evil toward God (what is today titled libertarian freedom), so that by his own strength he can equally will either, then free will is rejected by Calvin. But if by free will one means, as Augustine maintained, that man wills out of voluntary necessity (not coercion) then willful choice can be affirmed.”(thegospelcoalition.org). No person has equal good and bad biases towards every decision they make, and so in this sense, individuals are not free to make whatever choice they want because their mental state pulls them towards a specific decision. However, people are free in the sense that technically, external coercion virtually never happens. Even in extreme cases such as someone being held at gunpoint and told to do something, that person can still technically choose to refuse the person who has the gun. They most likely will obey the aggressor, due to the unequally proportioned bias of the victim to want to live, but strictly speaking, that person does have a choice. The argument against bias thwarting free will is often that bias can affect what the person wills to do, but not that he/she can will in the first place.

A thought-provoking reason as to why a conclusive answer regarding the existence of free will has not been found yet is fear. The idea that we as humans have no tangible control over our choices or lack thereof, breeds more questions that infringe on our norms and life as we know it. As mentioned by a reader of Stephen Cave’s article in The Atlantic magazine, “There’s No Such Thing as Free Will: But we’re better off believing in it anyway.”, “One thing to remember about the lack of free will is that if it really doesn’t exist, it implies much, much more than mere lack of choice. Remember that we are talking about the idea of reduction of the mind to a mere machine—a complex machine, but no more than that.”(theatlantic.com). The follow-up article “Does Free Will Really Exist?”, discusses all of the different ramifications that a confirmed absence of free will would introduce. Essentially, the claim that we do not have free will means that our meaning and purpose in life could be completely null and void and we would never know. If this were indisputably proven to be the case, then perhaps some form of nihilism would be adopted by the population and pervade global culture. We fear that our lives mean nothing, and for this reason, by virtue of believing we have free will, we actually grant meaning upon ourselves. Perhaps we do actually endow ourselves with a purpose in order to be able to survive and so our brains play a wicked little trick on us and make us think we have a choice.

If we do indeed have no control over our own behaviors, then criminals and those who commit horrible acts cannot be held responsible for them by virtue of supposedly having no choice. A lack of free will means that a person’s decisions are not his or her fault, for it is merely the result of external and unconscious factors that served as a platform for such behaviors. Therefore, culpability cannot be placed upon the person for the reason that his or her brain was biased towards the behavior, thus suggesting there was no deliberate effort to do anything harmful. Saying free will does not exist begs the question as to how a society should properly handle those who commit atrocities, being that these people consequently cannot be considered malicious because they did not have ill will, or any will at all for that matter. Stephen J. Morse of University of Pennsylvania claims that the existence of free will is actually irrelevant to the current law system which holds individuals responsible for their actions. He claims, “The legal view of the person does not hold that people must always reason or consistently behave rationally according to some preordained, normative notion of rationality. Rather, the law’s view is that people are capable of acting for reasons and are capable of minimal rationality according to predominantly conventional, socially constructed standards.” (Morse 256). Essentially, the law does not take into account pre-existing biases of criminals that may influence their actions in the first place. The law rules that either the person did or did not behave in a way inappropriate with the standards of society, thus making the individual fit or unfit to be in the general public, regardless of any underlying reason. Extreme cases such as coercion or mental illness clearly limit the culpability of an individual and are taken into account when serving legal punishment, because in these cases it is extremely likely the person would not have committed the crime otherwise, and thus do not deserve punishment (Morse 260). The justice system does not apply the idea of free will to the general public in the first place, and so even if we were definitively proven not to possess it, our actions would likely not be viewed much differently in the context of the law.

Most likely if the age-old question of free will were to officially be answered in a sudden manner, the world would fall into a state of chaos and confusion, for people would suddenly question every choice they have made thus far, and society would fall into a state of disarray, confused as to how to behave with one another. Through this realization, however, the world could possibly over time become a more compassionate place, brought into a sense of community with a deeper understanding of one another. With all of the great minds that have existed, it seems that if the answer was as conclusive as many would like it to be, the question would have been answered. It has been widely agreed upon that the way the human brain was wired forces it not to be totally free, or having equal desire to make one choice or the other without inclination towards or against either way of behaving. However, the question still remains if such partiality on the part of the brain does actually nullify the idea that we have any true ability to will at all. As stated by Emerson M. Pugh, “If the brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn’t”(quoteinvestigator.com). The message of this quote perfectly captures the essence of a topic so complex and requiring of such deep introspection not only of individuals themselves but of the world as a whole. It is almost dangerous to answer, but for some reason or another, it is the human condition to believe in purpose, and if by the chance that there is no purpose to our choices, it is still a commendable accomplishment on the part of the human race that we were able to push past our physical brain’s supposed limitations and create such a beautiful yet ugly, large yet small, complex world for ourselves.

Sources

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