How are we to regard ourselves and the manner in which we live our lives if we accept the fact that everything we are and everything we do is simply the result of mechanistic physical processes over which we have no control?
01 If there’s one thing people hate about philosophers, it’s their irritating habit of issuing lofty proclamations that run directly counter to lived experience. Perhaps the best example of this is the smug assertion that “free will is an illusion,” which tempts non-metaphysicians to offer a swift rebuttal in the form of a willfully delivered punch in the face. Such a concise response might be highly satisfying, but alas, it won’t win the argument, for the condescending claim is true.
02 How can this be? The presence of free will — or at least our free will — seems so obvious. Just now I picked up my coffee mug and took a sip. I decided to do that. No one forced me to; nothing made me do it. I was not under any compulsion or duress. I could have just as easily chosen to take that sip a minute earlier, or a minute later, or not at all. I’m calling the shots. That’s free will, isn’t it?
03 If I really wanted to drive the point home, I could deliberately do something much more unlikely and unpredictable, something totally irrational and contrary to my own interests, like suddenly fling out the contents of my mug across the room, splattering coffee everywhere. Who could assert that such a spontaneous, detrimental act, which I’ve never done before in my entire life, and which never would have even occurred to me to do until the moment before I did it, solely for dramatic effect, was somehow preordained? Somehow inevitable? It sounds preposterous. Yet contrary to my deep intuition, this supposedly “impromptu” demonstrative event, like all others, would have simply followed from the set of predicate conditions that existed immediately before it occurred. Thus, it would have had to happen, and it was always going to happen, just the way it did.
04 The best way to understand this is by following the chain of causation “backward” as far as you can go. Using my example above, imagine me sitting in my office with splattered coffee all over the walls and furniture after my memorable display of free will. What caused this messy situation? I’d assuredly answer, I did. But let’s break it down, step-by-step. (1) What most directly and proximately caused the splattering? The coffee flying out of my mug. (2) What caused the coffee to fly out of the mug? The coordinated motions of my hand, wrist, and arm. (3) What caused those physical movements? Electrical signals conveyed to the particular muscles involved. (4) What caused those signals to be sent? A dynamic network of millions of excited neurons firing in complex sequences, transmitting discrete packets of information across synapses in my brain. (5) What caused this intricate cerebral activity? Um … I did?
05 But who, or what, is “I”? Here’s where we run into trouble. As soon as we posit, as a first (or “causeless”) cause, a controlling agent — a supervisory “self” — that is not the same thing as a brain, but is somehow separate and apart from it, and able to operate upon it, as an instrumentality, we are interposing a non-physical entity in a physical system; a ghost in the machine. We are conjuring this invisible spirit out of the thin air. Where did it come from? Where is it located? How can it transcend its immateriality to exert influence on material substances and processes? There are no answers to these questions because such an actor does not exist. We’ve made it up (see Article 6).
06 In actuality, the chain of causation just keeps going back without us. Those firing neurons behind all of “our” thoughts and actions are activated by various electrical, chemical, and other stimuli, which are in turn triggered by sensory inputs, which are in turn prompted by ever-changing external conditions. In other words, everything we think and do ultimately is dictated by impersonal forces outside of us, governed by the laws of physics, and nothing else.
07 Thus, in theory, if all of the myriad influences on my neural networks were known in advance, it would be possible to predict, with total certainty, whether I would fling my coffee across the room, or not fling my coffee across the room, or act or refrain from acting in any other manner — not just right beforehand, but all the way back to the beginning of the universe. At the very instant of the Big Bang, it could have been ascertained whether or not I will type another word on this screen in the next second, and what that word will be. Under the principle of strict determinism, every “decision” I think I’m making now actually was compelled by an initial cosmic event that took place 13.7 billion years ago (see Article 2).
08 The only wild card at play here is quantum mechanics, which suggests that at the most fundamental level of reality, in the rarified realm of exotic subatomic particles, conditional states are strangely indeterminate, dependent on making an observation, and that there’s an element of pure randomness involved in the way events unfold. If this is so, then it may mean that while our actions are highly predictable, especially close in time to when they are taken, they are not absolutely predetermined. A stray neuron may go off-script every once in a while, creating a butterfly effect that alters measurable outcomes. However, this doesn’t open the door to free will. Even if all of our actions can’t be foretold, even if chance plays a role, at the margins, in directing the course of our lives, we’re still not deciding anything. Our bustling brains are just generating action potentials that produce what we call thoughts in accordance with whatever quantum or non-quantum rules apply.
09 Accordingly, when we reflect on the way we act with respect to other humans and our general environment, it becomes apparent that we — that is, our physical bodies, the things that do the acting — are not like puppets, because no one is pulling the strings, not even us. Instead, we’re more like robots — intelligent, internally-powered machines programmed by nature to operate as if we’re mindful, autonomous beings in order to facilitate the only task we were created to perform: replication. Specifically, to stretch the analogy further, replication of our software, i.e., our genetic code. To be successful, we must continue to function — in biological terms, survive — and out-compete “determined” rivals trying to make copies of different genetic codes, until our reproductive years, and perhaps a bit longer, if it increases the likelihood of our offspring, the next generation of our current model, lasting until their reproductive years (see Article 5).
10 It may be objected that many people (including the author) “opt out” of the aforementioned program, defiantly thumbing their noses at nature by refusing to have children, despite otherwise being able to, while others take actions which lower or nullify their odds of reproductive success, up to and including suicide at a young age. Aren’t these the ultimate examples of free will? No. From nature’s standpoint, anything we do that deviates from the overarching goal of imprinting copies of our genes into the bodies of new humans before we die is not a feature; it’s a bug. Just being robots doesn’t make us flawless robots. Our sophisticated mental processing has evolved because it generally fosters survival, competition, and reproduction; but it comes with significant tradeoffs. The sensitive and impressionable brains we possess are prone to numerous and frequently conflicting impulses that can override innate biological imperatives and lead us to abandon our genes. We don’t have free will; we’re just neurologically buffeted by the fraught and chaotic world in which we live.
11 Why is the idea of not having free will so offensive? Primarily because it interferes with our sense of pride (in the good things we do) and assignment of blame (for the bad things others do); with our cherished concepts of reward and punishment. It’s vital to our understanding of the relationship between individuals and society that people be deemed responsible for actions that (we insist) they chose to take. Otherwise, it is widely believed, there is no justification for throwing a serial killer in jail — after all, if they have no free will, it’s not their fault they killed someone, or even that they might well kill someone again. How could we endorse such an absurdity?
12 We don’t have to. All we have to do is take retribution out of the analysis. Although most would find the notion strange or even appalling, due to the absence of free will, there is no justification for locking up a serial killer, or anyone else, for the purpose of punishing them for their transgressions. However, there are other valid reasons to do so — namely, to prevent them from inflicting further harm, to attempt to rehabilitate them, and to deter others from engaging in similar misconduct. If an inanimate object, which also lacks free will, harms or threatens to harm someone, we don’t punish it; we try to fix it. If we can’t fix it, we strive to reduce or eliminate its ability to cause injury by incapacitating it in some way or preventing it from coming into contact with those who may be injured by it, warning of its dangerous nature or, if necessary, physically removing it. As a last resort, we might destroy the object — but this is only reasonable if it has no prospect of being of some use in the future and no discernible value in its present condition. The same standards should apply to criminals.
13 There is a danger, of course, in treating people like faulty toasters. We may share the status of objects, but we are clearly not inanimate objects — that is to say, we’re alive (though that’s a more nebulous distinction than one might imagine). We’re also conscious, which means that we experience things and feel things, emotionally. This is why deterrence was left out of the discussion of objects above. Even without free will, people can be deterred by the perceived experiences of others; but toasters can’t. Moreover, all human beings, given the extraordinary plasticity of their minds and their ability to adopt new perspectives, are never completely “irreparable”; nor do they ever lack any value. For these reasons, the death penalty is never warranted.
14 Putting aside matters of criminal justice, how does the nonexistence of free will, once we’re “willing” to acknowledge it, change the way we think about ourselves and our approach to life? On an everyday basis, not much. The illusion of free will is part and parcel of the human enterprise; a fundamental aspect of our conscious viewpoint. It is simply impossible to resist — nor should we want to, for involuntarily maintaining it confers numerous advantages. Yet it is an illusion just the same. The best we can do, perhaps, is to try to be cognizant of that fact when we’re inclined to praise effusively, or judge harshly. People do things that we deem “good” or “bad” not because they’re moral or immoral, responsible or irresponsible, hardworking or lazy, or any other pair of contrasting character traits we’re so eager to attribute to them. People do things because when x, y, and z occur, that’s what they do. Celebrating or condemning these constrained behavioral results makes no more sense than cheering or cursing gravity. What happens happens because it has to happen, whether we like it or not.
