This is how much of a nerd I secretly am – the reward I was going to give myself for doing my tortuous taxes was an indulgent meditation around the idea that we don’t have free will and what this means for us. Like I was deeply excited to think about this, lol.
This wasn’t just a make-work intellectual indulgence for me. My preoccupation was based on this premise: if someone lacks free will to make alternative choices, how can we judge them for behaving the way they did?
Initially I had been thinking about this in terms of how this could cause us to reframe experiences with others: that thing that person said or did, the resentment you are holding onto, that thing you struggle to forgive, that asshole that cut you off in traffic. I mean you can be mad about it, I guess. But at some point you’re simply going to have to let it go. Because if there is no free will what choice did they have? How could you be anything but compassionate towards yourself and others?
But there are huge implications in believing this. I haven’t really even explored the negative issues that could result from thinking we don’t have it. And the whole subject in general begs for something much more in depth and a lot more researched than a half baked, half understood, meandering blog post. But hey, you don’t need to read it, I just need to write it. This is my platform so here we go.
What is Free Will
So to be clear my view on free will means that we have a conscious choice over what we choose to do. This is slightly different than assuming someone doesn’t have responsibility for what they do – so from my perspective, someone still has authorship. In other words, an asshole can still be an asshole. But I acknowledge that it’s a fine line in double think here.
I don’t want to speak for people, but I imagine many people hold the idea that some things we do might be out of our general control, but from a big picture perspective, even these things not quite under our control are all still part of a more conscious direction we choose for ourselves.
For example, there are people in this world who I do not view through a compassionate and empathic lens. Not only am I aware of this choice, I am okay with it, too. So maybe a micro expression of contempt shows in my face when the subject of that person comes up. Letting my feeling leak out may have not be entirely intentional, so maybe I didn’t consciously choose to reveal that. However the decision to not frame that person through a compassionate and empathic lens could be considered an act of free because I know I could have worked to see them differently. So it could be that free will is a matter of degree.
But I wanted to emphasize consciousness in free will because that implies awareness. We think of ants acting only in service of the ant colony, however they do demonstrate self-control (i.e. the ability to choose a large delayed reward over a small immediate one). From an ant’s perspective people might find it easier to imagine that the choices might be a bit more instinctual than conscious free will. But we can’t assume that because they can demonstrate self-control that consciously making a “choice”.
So in this way the concept of free will might actually be a discussion about consciousness. And consciousness is something that still remains a mystery to us.
Compelling Evidence There is No Free Will
Despite feeling that the belief that we don’t actually have free will could lead us to greater compassion for other, on deeply some level it’s a disturbing concept. We deeply want to feel we have control over the choices we make.
However, from a psychological level and a neuroscience level, the evidence that supports the idea that we don’t have free will is pretty compelling.
Let’s look at some ideas. The first is an idea in physics (and I am not even competent on any kind of level of physics so just bear with me) that suggests that the current state of the universe is dictated by it’s past, suggesting determinism. That is, if someone had the intellect to know the exact position and momentum of every atom, it would be possible to calculate the past and future with precision.
It’s at this stage in my musings that I want to argue for emergence – emergence being the idea that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and it (quite literally) takes on a life of it’s own.
But logically speaking, that an atom becomes a chemical, and a chemical becomes a molecule, it’s easy to imagine that everything that emerges from that is predictable. However, when we think about a sphere of influence, does consciously making a choice affect the behavior of atoms? Physicists understand more than I do about the different forces. But in consciously choosing, what force acts on those atoms, then?
Then there was this other idea that got me excited for a bit, that chaos on the quantum level suggests that nothing is predetermined. In fact there are some theories that maybe this is where consciousness lives (based on what I can tell, this is based on absolutely nothing but an idea and maybe the fact that we don’t really understand quantum mechanisms).
But I understand that at the sub atomic level of particles we have no evidence that anything in the past dictates the behavior of particles, and that there is randomness. This is quite compelling (even if I my brain hurts when trying to learn about quantum mechanics and theories)!
But MIT physicist Max Tegmark mathematically ruled this out because there is such a scale difference between subatomic particles and a molecule. He calculated 23 orders of magnitude in the, if I got this right, scale differences.
And for us non-mathy types, 23 orders of magnitude means 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. That’s how much the subatomic effect would have to scale up to influence a molecule. And I hadn’t thought about this, but of course what this mean is that any randomness subatomic level would be reduced to averages before they could influence the behavior of a molecule.
But then Neil deGrasse Tyson and Robert Sapolsky argue that even if you could argue the behavior of a molecule has random influence, then that’s randomness. Maybe it rules out determinism. But It still doesn’t indicate that we have any more control.
But because I have probably done more reading on the brain, the most compelling evidence to me are the studies in which fMRIs show there is activity in our brain before we are conscious of making decisions or intending to do a voluntary act. 1
So damn.
Why do we Feel Like We Are Making Choices
I simply can’t ignore the highly sophisticated, complex, amazing biological ways in which our bodies operate. This resulted in a philosophy around this idea that there is a biological utility that underpins our various human qualities, including our emotions and motivations. I believe these qualities have been useful for our survival and evolution as a species.
So, naturally the sticking point for me is: if we truly have no free will, why do we feel so strongly that we do?? Why do we feel it’s so important to have the freedom to choose? There must be some point to it.
Studies suggest that when we are exposed to the idea that our behavior is predetermined, we are more likely to cheat, steal, act aggressively or otherwise act in ways that is not in societies best interests. 2 3 4 It’s quite a fascinating phenomena. It implies that we are prone to succumbing to our worst impulses if we don’t believe we have a sense of agency over the outcome.
Why have the feeling at all? Why not just have our decision and actions built into our subconscious or unconscious and simply have this running in the background?
I thought perhaps if we believe we all have agency, then this leads us into applying pressures on those around us to behave in certain ways. My judgement will trigger your guilt and/or shame and vice versa and together we will modify our behavior accordingly. As a result we will all be a little less likely to do things that serves our self-interest at the expense of the group.
But then why didn’t our biological evolution (or God, or the Universe, random survival of the fittest, or whatever you think is responsible for our highly sophisticated biological processes) create a being then just simply serves the group (this was how I found myself reading academic papers on ants, lol)?
Based on the lens in which I view things, I can only assume our survival sometimes needed to depend on our ability to step into our lesser selves. In some cases we need to prioritize our own well being over others. Clearly we need to be influenced by those around us and act in the best interests of the group, and yet at times, act in our own best interests.
But it still doesn’t quite get to the answer of why we need to feel we are free to make a decision and how the feeling of freedom to decide is so important.
The Feeling of Free Will, More Than Social Control
The feeling of agency is critical for us, and even dictates the level of stress we experience in certain circumstances. If the free will was only about morals (i.e. our belief that we have free will prevents us from simply giving into to to the idea nothing we do matters), I can’t help but wonder the feeling of agency bleeds into other areas of our human experience like how we handle stress.
Studies have repeatedly shown that we feel we have some control, we can handle stressful experiences much better. Studies of learned helplessness have also indicated that when we learn that nothing we do can influence the outcome of a repeated negative event, we eventually give up and do nothing even when escape later could be possible.
Additionally, people experience psychological reactance when we perceive certain freedoms are being threatened, or our choices are being limited. Psychological reactance is the phenomena of being motivated to regain a freedom after it’s been lost or threatened. When our freedom is threatened, it is usually accompanied by resistance, the feeling of discomfort or even hostility. We frequently see this in marriages, work environments and families.
We just don’t want to be pressured or compelled to do something by someone or something else. Just think about those times when someone has tried to manipulate or compel you to do something or think a certain way. We resist. It explains why the “hard sell” so often fails. It explains why teenagers rebel only to later conform to the rules once they have moved into full independence.
Either way, it’s clear that feeling like we have the free will to choose and the ability to make our own decisions whether its behalf of our selves or others, is incredibly important to us. Why? How does that serve us?
Can We Even Live It?
In that particular interview with Robert Sapolsky, the thing that stick with me the most at the moment is how Robert hasn’t believed we have free will since he’s been 14. And yet says something to the effect that he is only able to fully experience the idea of this for maybe 3 minutes a month (don’t quote me on the exact numbers here, but enough to say for only a tiny fraction of time).
If someone compliments him, he still feels good. He still experiences road rage. Like the ego will still be the ego. This is significant. The concept we don;t have free will is so powerful that it can only influence our experiences and only to a small degree.
So damn again. If he can’t do it, then perhaps this rabbit hole for the search of easy compassion really is just an intellectual indulgence of mine.
I asked myself before I went down this rabbit hole: why not just adopt the idea we have no free will if it means I will be more compassionate with others and even myself? It’s the the first time I have encounter the idea that we don’t have free will. Why not just act as if. Look how knowing that we are not always responsible for certain outcomes have lead to greater compassion in our society (schizophrenia, homosexuality, etc.).
Just act as if. The question lead me down a path of how I feel I can’t just adopt something I don’t entirely believe in. I need to feel there is a basis of rightness and truth (even while understanding how hypocritical that is given the human tendency towards bias and rationalization and so on). Even while exploring the different ideas and concepts, I’ve been asking myself – you really have enough evidence, why not just act as if?
The real question around free will that is the impetus behind all this: Why get worked up by anything anyone else does? Why not just let go of things I am still holding on to? Those old resentments that we all have. The frustrations and aggravations. Deeper down: those self-recriminations, the little guilts, the buried shame, why not just learn to forgive yourself?
All the way skimming right by the realization that I can’t even think in a way to assume I don’t have free will.
Before I wrote about this, I felt my life snapping back to exactly what it was only moments later. After I spent some time really thinking about this, I thought it would be easier. Sure. I thought about free will and the lack of it, and how to be truly compassionate and all that. For brief moments at a time. Then snap. There it is. The distraction of regular life. People are still annoying.
Clearly this is a practice.
How to Move Foward
I suppose that when all is said and done, the best I can hope for is to have an intellectual framework, that after I catch myself judging, being angry, being guilty, being full of myself, taking credit, not giving myself credit, blaming, perhaps a second thought will come and remind me that none of us could have written a single line of the past any differently.
There is something real to the idea that there is no point wishing things could have been different. If it was going to turn out differently it would have. If I was meant to have a different present it would have turned out that way. We did the best we could, with what we knew and had available to us at the time. A lesson I keep having to relearn over and over.
Moving forward, I think the concept of determinism can be incredibly useful to forgive the past and to encourage compassion towards others. And for sure, we are not nearly as much in control of things as we think we are. That maybe we just build this in as a practice every time we need it to regain our perspective, to make a better choice (if we can – there I go again!).
But when it comes to thinking about the future, and the impulse to make a choice, the truth is we don’t actually know where the limits of our free will lie.
At the end of the day, as adaptable as we are, we are also incredibly habitual. There is a reason why the school and university systems exist. Like with anything, any kind of change takes a system in which the things around change are introduced to us constantly and consistently, over and over. You want change in your life,? It might help to build a curriculum for yourself. Learn it, study it, turn up for it. And you’ll see, if you don’t really want change, you’ll have all sort of excuses. “I can’t dedicate the time, there are other things I have to deal with right now…, this is not a top priority right now…” Ok. You do you. I’ll do me.
But then again, maybe you have no choice.
Footnotes
- Are the mental experiences of will and self-control significant for the performance of a voluntary act? ↩︎
- The Value of Believing in Free Will: Encouraging a Belief in Determinism Increases Cheating ↩︎
- Addiction and free will ↩︎
- Does Encouraging a Belief in Determinism Increase Cheating? Reconsidering the Value of Believing in Free Will ↩︎