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, and 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 something we do might be out of our general control, but from a big picture perspective, even these slips of control are all 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 and not only am I aware of this choice, I am okay with it, too. Maybe a micro expression of contempt shows in my face when the subject of that person some up. Letting my feeling leak out may have not be entirely intentional, but the fact I have made a decision 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.
But I wanted to emphasize consciousness because ants for example who are considered to act only in service of the group, do demonstrate self-control (i.e. the ability to choose a large delayed reward over a small immediate one). From an ants perspective people might find it easier to image that the choices might be a bit more instinctual. But we can’t assume from this ants are consciously making a “choice”.
So in this way 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 that feeling that we don’t actually have free will could lead to greater compassion, on deeply some level it’s a disturbing concept. But from a psychological level and a neuroscience level, 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 – the idea that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and it (quite literally) take on a life of it’s own. I guess that it could still be argued that it doesn’t at all rule out determinism.
But logically speaking, that an atom becomes a chemical, and a chemical becomes a molecule does not suggest that all of it could not have been predicted. 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, this 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 an Robert Sapolsky argue, that even if you could argue it’s random, then it’s randomness. 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 intending to do a voluntary act. 1
So damn.
Why do we Feel Like We Are Making Choices
I realize that much of my personal reality is shaped by the idea that everything that we are or have the potential to be, originates from a biological utility. This including our emotions and motivations. That biological logic is based on the idea that our various human qualities are useful for our survival and evolution as a species. This is because I can’t ignore the highly sophisticated, complex biological ways in which our bodies operate.
So naturally the sticking point for me if we truly have no free will, why do we feel so strongly that we do?? And 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 concept. It implies that we are prone to succumbing to our worst impulses if it weren’t or a sense of agency over the outcome.
Why have the feeling at all? Why not just have this built into our subconscious or unconscious and 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 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.
So why not create a being then just simply serves the group (this was how I found myself reading academic papers on ants, lol)? Based on lens in which I view things, I can only assume our survival sometimes needs 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 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 have made a decision and how the feeling itself is important.
The Feeling of Free Will, More Than Society 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 can’t help but wonder why it bleeds into other area of our human experience.
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 and usually accompanies resistance, feeling uncomfortable or even hostile. 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. It explains why the “hard sell” so often fails. Why teenagers rebel only to later to fall in line once they have move 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.
How to Move Forward
In that particular interview the thing that stick with me the most at the moment though, is how Robert Sapolsky 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 knowledge and only affect the experience only to a degree.
So damn again. If he can’t do it, then perhaps this rabbit hole really is just an intellectual indulgence.
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 does? Why not just let go of things I am still holding on to? Why not just 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.
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 full of myself, taking credit, blaming, is 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 feeling 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 at the time.
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.
But when it comes to think 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.
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 ↩︎