Does Free Will Exist?
The question in title has been in discussion among philosophers since centuries, the notion dating back to around 4th century BCE. It is very tempting to think that we have free will, that we are free to make choices and it is not determined by past events or any external influence.
But you are not free in your choices. If you drank tea today, instead of coffee or any other drink, or choose not to have anything, was that choice entirely free? Either you could've run out of any ingredient or you simply wanted to have tea. Free will of course doesn't exist in the first case and in the second, did you choose your want to have tea? Did you choose to like tea more than any other suitable substitute?
“A man can surely do what he wills to do, but cannot determine what he wills.” Arthur Schopenhauer
Now if we have no free will, how can you hold people accountable for their acts? Importantly, wouldn't criminals be just a victim of their biology or bad past of which they had no control of? And wouldn't this idea be undermining our morality?
And answering questions such as these is what the 2012 book authored by Sam Harris does, and this article will mainly be in reference to it.
Now first of all, lets go over some definitions:
Determinism says that all events, including moral choices, are completely determined by previously existing causes.
Free will, in humans, the power or capacity to choose among alternatives or to act in certain situations independently of natural, social, or divine restraints.
Compatibilism claims that free will is compatible with the truth of determinism.
Compatibilism seems to be quite an attractive idea, proponents of it including Daniel Dennett. It argues that though what we do and think are decided by factors which we don’t decide, the thoughts in our brain are our thoughts- that “anything that our brains do or decide, whether consciously or not, is
something that we have done or decided.” This is just saying that we are coterminous with everything that happens inside us, whether we are aware of it or not. But are ‘we’ responsible for our heart pumping blood and all the functions organs perform? This has no relation to the moral agency that claims we have free will.
Now if you are to say ‘I have no free will, so I’ll just lay around and wait with open arms for my fate’ , try doing that. You will be engulfed by a feeling impossible to resist to get up and do something. Determinism is not fatalism.
Decisions, intentions, efforts, goals, willpower, etc., are causal states of the brain, leading to specific behaviors, and behaviors lead to outcomes in the world. Human choice, therefore, is as important as fanciers of free will believe. But the next choice you make will come out of the darkness of prior causes that you, the conscious witness of your experience, did not bring into being. — Sam Harris
And about human choice, if, during the pandemic you followed a healthy diet and did work-out, took an online course in a foreign language or acquired a new skill. Looking back, it might feel as your decision. But there are obvious factors influencing why this option became more desirable to ‘you’ now than before. “So it’s not that willpower isn’t important or that it is destined to be
undermined by biology. Willpower is itself a biological phenomenon. You can
change your life, and yourself, through effort and discipline — but you have
whatever capacity for effort and discipline you have in this moment, and not a
scintilla more (or less). You are either lucky in this department or you aren’t — and you cannot make your own luck.”
Suppose something sad happened — you did not pass for a job interview. You can either be depressed about it and quit trying or you can see where you need to improve and do better another time. We are free to interpret it in any way, but the choice you make is just a consequence of prior events, on which you had no control. And you are, free to interpret the meaning of your life.
Even if you are convinced that free will is an illusion you may ask, isn't it better to be in that illusion? It does question and threaten many things we considered fundamental. And what about our system of justice? Are we to consider a murderer or a rapist a victim of bad luck or unfortunate childhood?
Harris explains it clearly by drawing out examples- 5 cases where a young woman is dead. One, by accident, by a 4-year old . Then a 12 year old-boy with bad past, intentionally because she teased him. 25, abusive childhood, killed a girl because she left him. 25, a pleasant childhood, intentionally killed for fun. And at last, 25 year old, pleasant childhood, intentionally killed for fun; but later it was found the presence of tumor in his prefrontal cortex.
The outcome is same in all, but our response is different to each. There are varying degrees of guilt in each case. But we don’t need to assume free will to determine that some of them are dangerous. The feeling or need to intentionally cause suffering to others should be condemned. If someone commits a planned murder, they have a mind which is dangerous to the society, and should be prevented from further heinous acts. And in the first and last cases, we need not label them as evil. “Our system of justice should reflect an understanding that any of us could have been dealt a very different hand in life. In fact, it seems immoral not to recognize just how much luck is involved in morality itself.”
Furthermore, accepting that we do not have free will can make us more compassionate towards life. Rather than seeing yourself as the product of your actions, and your achievements as something you deserved, it is better to see ourselves as mere beneficiaries of the chance of life.
And you can try and set frameworks in a way if you need change. “It may seem paradoxical to hold people responsible for what happens in their corner of the universe, but once we break the spell of free will, we can do this precisely to the degree that it is useful. Where people can change, we can demand that they do so. Where change is impossible, or unresponsive to demands, we can chart some other course. In improving ourselves and society, we are working directly with the forces of nature, for there is nothing but nature itself to work with.”
- As mentioned earlier, most points in this writing is in reference to this book. It is a highly recommended read. The arguments are clear and compelling and explained most eloquently.
- https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/13814
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dqj32jxOC0Y
- https://youtu.be/vCGtkDzELAI
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Freedom_of_the_Will#:~:text=On%20the%20Freedom%20of%20the%20Will%20(German%3A%20Ueber%20die%20Freiheit,%2Dconsciousness%3F%22%20It%20is%20one