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Chapter 11. The
Absurdity of Varying Degrees of Free
Will
Let’s consider the absurdity of the
claim that we humans have varying
degrees of free will. Some
philosophers and psychologists
assert that while we may not have a
completely free will, we have a free
will in certain respects. We’ll be
exploring that assertion, but before
we do, I want to go through a brief
description of what we generally
mean when we say we have a free
will. In essence, what we mean by
free will is that our decisions are
completely up to us. Nothing that we
cannot control is compelling our
decisions. Nothing that is not under
our control would be either taking
part in our decisions, or making
them completely for us. Right from
the start, we can understand that
because we have an unconscious that
is always awake and active, free
will is impossible. If the
unconscious is taking part in a
decision, that decision is not free
from its participation. Again, if
the unconscious is making the
decision completely – which is the
most accurate description for how
all of our decisions are made – that
decision cannot have been freely
willed.
Some philosophers and scientists
understand why we can’t have a
completely free will. For example,
they understand that fifty percent
of our personality is genetic. But,
they will assert that we have a
certain amount of free will, or a
partially free will. There are two
types of partial free will that they
wrongly conclude are possible. The
first is the idea that while not all
of our decisions are up to us, some
of them are. The second type of
partial free will they claim we have
is that the decisions we make are
partly up to us. They claim that
those decisions may be partly up to
other factors, but they are also
partly up to us. Let’s examine these
two claims in detail to see whether
or not they make sense, and have any
evidence to support them. Let’s
begin with the first one that not
all of our decisions are freely
made, but some of them are. Here’s
where the unconscious comes in.
We’ve talked about this before, and
it’s the answer to why even a
partially free will is not possible.
Our unconscious is always active.
There is a part of our unconscious
that controls our bodily actions
like breathing, circulation, and all
of our internal organs. Part of our
unconscious is constantly awake
controlling all of that biology.
Because our unconscious is also
awake while we are sleeping, it is
actually more a part of our
experience than is our
consciousness, which is active only
while we’re awake.
As far back as Freud and the
hypnotists, we have empirically
understood that there is an
unconscious. We have understood that
this unconscious is really
responsible for many of the
decisions – most precisely, all of
the decisions – we generally
attribute to our conscious will. In
neuroscience and psychology today,
researchers are demonstrating this
with more and more hard evidence.
Before this, a researcher would
hypnotize a person, and give them a
post hypnotic suggestion. When the
person was no longer under hypnosis,
s/he would perform the post-hypnotic
suggestion. The way researchers
determined that the post-hypnotic
action was done by the unconscious,
rather than by the person’s
conscious will, was to ask the
person “why did you do that?” The
person would then confabulate some
kind of reason, but the reason would
not reveal the understanding that
they did what they did because of
the post-hypnotic suggestion while
under hypnosis. Other experiments
reveal our unconscious will through
priming. Subjects in an experiment
are given words that will cause
their unconscious mind to focus on a
certain kind of behavior, and they
are evaluated, or they perform a
task while primed with those words.
It turns out that the priming is
responsible for what they do or
don’t do.
When we say what we say, or decide
what we decide, we have to rely on
memories. We can’t make a decision
with no data upon which to draw on.
We can’t say anything without there
being a collection of words in our
unconscious memory bank from which
to draw for our sentences and
paragraphs, etc. Remember, the term
free will means that we would be
able to make our decisions
completely free of anything that
is not in our control. Think about
it. We have an unconscious that is
the storehouse of all of our
memories – all of the words that we
know, our reasoning processes, and
our morality. Because this
unconscious is something that we’re
not, by definition, even aware of,
we’re obviously not in control of
it. There is no way for us to, in
real time, control our unconscious.
So, to make every decision we make,
we have to draw on an unconscious
part of us that we can’t control.
The words that I’m saying right now
are just coming out of me. My
unconscious is leading me to say
what I say. My conscious mind then
becomes aware of what I’m saying,
and, to the extent I’ve been
conditioned to believe in free will,
wrongly concludes that it made the
decision. Whether we see the
unconscious as controlling the very
decision itself, as many experiments
in hypnosis have demonstrated, or as
taking part in the decision, we
can’t, therefore, have a free will.
Especially since Freud popularized
it, we’ve come to understand that
part of our mind is unconscious and
is not, therefore, in our control.
That seems a very easy way for us to
understand the logic of why we don’t
have a free will. But, the
fundamental reason we don’t have a
free will is the law of cause and
effect. Everything that happens has
a cause. Nothing can happen without
a cause. This has been known since
Leucippus, who at about 500 B.C.,
wrote, “Nothing happens at random,
but everything for a reason and by
necessity.” If everything has to
have a cause, this means that every
one of our decisions has to have a
cause. It doesn’t stop there because
if everything has a cause, then the
cause of every one of our decisions
must have a cause, and the cause of
that cause must have a cause. What
results is a chain of cause and
effect that spans back to before we
were born. Things that happened
before we were born, and before the
planet was created, determine what’s
happening at this exact moment, and
what will happen in the future. How
does all this apply to the claim
that some of our decisions are
freely made? To answer a question
with a question, how could it be
that some of our decisions are
subject to this law of causality,
and others aren’t? That’s why I say
that the notion of varying degrees
of free will is absurd.
Let’s further explore the second
claim, that part of every decision
we make is in our control, and thus,
freely willed. Imagine yourself
writing a report, raking leaves,
doing dishes, or whatever you’re
doing. There is a part of your mind,
namely your unconscious, that
insists on both taking part in your
decision, and in the actual doing.
If that is the case, you can’t
rightfully say that either the
decision to do something, or the
doing of it, is the result of a free
will. A part of your mind that you
can’t control is insisting on
participating. The unconscious never
sleeps. To the extent that it is not
making the decision completely (it
actually is, as we’re just beginning
to demonstrate in neuroscience and
psychology) the unconscious is
certainly taking part. If we have to
draw on our unconscious for the
concepts – the building blocks, the
words, the memories – upon which
we’re going to make our decision,
then obviously that unconscious is
going to, at the very least, take
part in every decision we make. You
may want to conclude that part of
our decisions is up to us, and part
of them is up to something else.
However, the part of any decision
that was up to us would have causes.
It couldn’t escape that law of
causality that governs everything.
If we claim that part of our
decisions was up to us, we confront
the following kinds of questions:
What was the reason for that
decision? What caused us to have
that reason? It’s not that we can
always know completely what the
causes are, especially once you go
back three or four steps in this
chain of cause and effect. We’re
usually just guessing at what the
causes are. We start out with the
fact that everything must have a
cause because things can’t happen
uncaused. Think about what it would
mean if some of our decisions were
uncaused, and not subject to this
law of causality that governs
everything. Clearly, if a decision
of ours is not caused – if it is
random or indeterminate – it can’t
have been the result of anything,
including a free will.
When we say free will, what we mean
is that our decisions are be up to
us, and we can take pride in, and
feel accountable for, them. A free
will decision is presumably one for
which there would be our own
autonomous reasons. Asserting that
we have a free will is akin to
asserting that our will is free of
causality, free of any kind of
reason, and free of the self. It’s
easy to see how the term “free will”
is incoherent, and doesn’t really
make sense. Whether philosophers,
psychologists and other thinkers
make the assertion that some of our
decisions are freely willed, or that
some parts of our decisions are
freely willed, because we have an
unconscious, and because our world
works according to cause and effect,
these assertions are simply
mistaken. Let’s say we understand
and accept this inescapable truth
that free will is impossible. What
does that mean to our world? Many of
us genuinely understand the science
and logic of the conclusion that
free will is impossible. But, we’re
sometimes reluctant to accept it, in
part because we’re all, very
ironically, conditioned by the
causal past to believe we have a
free will, and to take pride in this
notion. We’ve been conditioned to
not want to relinquish this belief
so easily. Some of us are reluctant
to live our lives and restructure
our civilization according to the
truth of our causal and unconscious
human will. We fear that if we all
understood that free will is an
illusion, and everything is truly
fated – that we’re instruments of
God, doing the will of God, or more
secularly, that we’re robots, or
computers, doing exactly what we’re
programmed to do – civilization
would collapse because many of us
would say to ourselves, “if I’m not
morally responsible for anything,
then I can do anything, and can’t
justly be held accountable.”
That’s really not something we need
to fear because one of the ways
nature has conditioned us is that we
are hedonic creatures. We seek
pleasure and avoid pain. That is an
imperative that, incidentally,
controls every decision we make. A
second imperative we’re hard-wired
for is that, at the time we’re doing
anything, we consider it to be the
most moral of our available choices.
In hindsight, or to others, it may
clearly seem wrong. Our moral
imperative always compels us to do
the greater of two or more goods, or
the lesser of two or more evils. We
as individuals and we as a planet –
would not allow anarchy to reign
just because we understand that we
humans do not have a free will. For
example, let’s consider that
everyone in our family and everyone
we know completely understood that
free will is an illusion. Everything
is a movie and we’re all programmed.
We’ve obviously been programmed to
occasionally upset or hurt one
another – to say or do what is
offensive, aggressive, or
threatening, to each other. If we
really had a free will, we’d all be
perfect angels, and we wouldn’t be
aggressing against anyone as a
result of having blamed them for
something. But to the extent that
reality, or fate, or God, compels us
to see free will as an illusion, and
understand that everything is
actually predetermined, we wouldn’t
have a logical reason for blaming
others for anything. We would begin
to explore why fate is doing this to
us, understanding that our blaming
or aggression is really an offense
by fate against both the blamer
and the blamed.
Under the notion of free will, we
are all competing with and against
each other as adversaries. But when
we understand that free will is an
illusion – that everything is fated
– then all of the sudden our friends
and we are on the same side. We’re
no longer competitors; we’re
cooperators in trying to find an
answer to why fate is disturbing our
relations. If you want to look at
this from a theological standpoint,
there’s the idea of Satan, who is
responsible for creating unnecessary
problems for us on the planet. From
this perspective, the notion that we
humans have a free will is probably
one of his prime strategies for
advancing his agenda. If Satan has
everyone at each other, accusing
ourselves and each other for what
we’re not responsible, then we’re
not going to be as focused as we
would otherwise be on solving the
issue at hand in the best, and most
intelligent, way. Think for a minute
about how amazing it is that our
civilization – humankind – is so
completely confused about the second
most fundamental aspect of being a
human being, (the first aspect being
that we exist). This second aspect
is the matter of why we do what we
do. Who is all of that that up to?
For us to conclude that it’s up to
us rather than the causal past, or
God, or all of these influences that
come together completely independent
of our control, is bewildering.
To the extent that we see free will
as an illusion, I would hope that we
can create a much more intelligent
world. Consider how much harm our
world is subject to because we blame
each other and ourselves, and how
profoundly our world could change
through our understanding the true
nature of reality and human will. It
would be unprecedented. It would
arguably be the biggest change ever
in human history. We’ve had
democracy, and various religions,
but this evolution of our
consciousness would be much grander
and influential. It would be change
on a scale that humanity has never
before experienced. Life is, and can
continue to be, wonderful with our
continuing to hold the belief that
we have a free will. But to the
extent that we understand that
everything is really a movie – that
what I’m saying right now, and what
you’re reading right now, and what
you did earlier today, and plan to
do tomorrow, and everything we ever
do is completely predetermined –
that understanding can make our
lives so much more wonderful, in the
most literal sense meaning full of
wonder.
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