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Chapter 12. Why
the Concept of Free Will is
Incoherent
Let’s talk about why the concept of
free will is actually incoherent, in
that it is logically and internally
inconsistent – it just doesn’t make
sense as a rational construct. Our
world is virtually completely
deluded about the fundamental nature
of our human will. We’re completely
deluded about who we are as
individuals, and as a humanity. This
has been the case for several
thousand years. We’ve structured our
entire civilization – our criminal
justice system, our socio-economic
system, our interpersonal relations,
and our relation to ourselves – on
an illusion. For us to be guided by
the truth of who we are, and the
truth of why we do what we do, has
to be a wiser, and better, way of
conducting ourselves in our world
than by living under the illusion
that we have a free will. When we
say we have a free will, we
generally mean that what we do, and
think, and say, and feel is
completely up to us. In other words,
nothing that is not in our control
is either making these decisions for
us, or taking part in the decisions.
When you look at it logically, you
quickly realize that such a free
will is impossible. We have an
unconscious that is the storehouse
for all of the words we draw on when
we think and speak and make
decisions. Obviously, we can’t have
a will that is free from that
unconscious. The unconscious must be
part of every decision because it
contains what we base our decisions
on. If our unconscious is not
something we’re in control of –
because by definition it is
unconscious – that very clearly
demonstrates why we don’t have a
free will. There are other ways to
demonstrate this, but for now let’s
focus on why the very concept of
free will is simply incoherent.
To have a free will would mean that
our decisions would be completely
free of anything. For example, how
could our decisions be free of our
memories – of what we’ve done in the
past? When we make a decision,
whatever the decision is, we have to
base it on something. Sometimes
we’ll say that we can make a
completely intuitive decision that
we don’t at all think about. We just
make it. But, when we make a
decision like that, there is a
reason for it. It’s happening at the
level of the unconscious. Let’s
explore this. Let’s say there was
such a thing as reasonless
intuition. You want to make a
decision that is not based on
anything. That decision could not be
freely willed, according to what we
mean when we assert that we have a
free will. When we say we have a
free will, we mean that it’s
something we can take pride in, and
for which we will hold ourselves and
other people accountable. Let’s
consider morality. We are hard-wired
to seek to do good. We have a moral
imperative, and that is one reason
we don’t have a free will. But, if
our moral decisions were not based
on moral lessons we must obviously
have learned, how can we reasonably
say that these decisions are ours
completely?
The concept of free will is
something that evades and ignores,
and chooses not to consider, the
very fundamental process in nature.
When we say we have a free will,
what we’re saying is that our will
is free of causality. To say we have
a free will is to say that what we
decide is free of a cause. Since
every cause has a cause, the cause
of our decision would have a cause,
and suddenly we find we have a
causal chain stretching back to
before we were born. That’s why the
concept of free will is incoherent.
You can’t have things that happen
without a cause. For the sake of
discussion and exploration, let’s
say that something can actually
happen without having been caused.
If that something was not caused,
there is only one other option. The
decision must be random, or
indeterministic in their strongest
sense of being uncaused. It has no
cause at all; it just happens. If
our decisions are just happening for
no cause, or reason, that is not
what we mean when we say that our
decisions are freely willed. When we
claim that we have a free will, we
are claiming that we can take pride
in, and are truly accountable for,
our decisions. If our decisions are
uncaused – if they are just random –
they are not up to us. By its
strongest definition, randomness
means that something is not up to
anything. The reality, however, is
that everything must have a cause.
How did we come up with this concept
of free will? In the West, we didn’t
always have it as a clearly defined
construct. The term “free will” is
actually Christian, although the
concept has its counterparts in
other non-Christian parts of the
world. In Romans 7:15, the apostle
Paul writes that he wants to do what
is right and good, but he finds that
he sometimes can’t. This is the
first statement in Christianity that
questions the notion of a free will.
Paul is asking – wait a minute – if
I want to obey God’s laws and be
moral, and I find that I can’t,
what’s going on? It’s not until
about 380 A.D., when Augustine of
Hippo begins to grapple with the
question of who’s responsible for
the evil we do that Christianity
adopts the doctrine that if God is
defined as all-good, then the evil
we humans do must be up to us, and
not God. Augustine actually wrote a
book back then titled De Libero
Arbitrio, which translates as
On Free Will. He coined the term
free will to explain how any evil in
the world would have to be up to
human beings, and could not possibly
be God’s doing. That’s how the idea
of free will in Christianity came to
be. It was an explanation for the
existence of evil in the world. If
God is all-good, then all evil must
be our fault. But the belief in free
will is also a point of contention
in Christianity because there is a
phrase in Isaiah 45:7 where God
says, “I form the light, and create
darkness: I make peace, and create
evil: I the Lord do all these
things.” Augustine was apparently
discounting or ignoring that
particular passage.
As incoherent and illogical as the
concept of free will is, its origin
within Christianity may explain why
it hasn’t been successfully
challenged until now. Many
Christians believe that when we die
we may go to a place of eternal
suffering and damnation. According
to Christianity and some other
religions, what we believe may
determine where we go in the
afterlife. Naturally, when people
are faced with the contradiction of
decisions free of the past, and
memories, and how we were raised –
factors that we cannot control –
many of them choose not to explore
this problem because of their fear
of spending the rest of eternity in
hell. We’re now in a world where
many of us believe in God, but far
fewer of us believe that, for
example, the first woman was taken
from the rib of the first man, or
that our world is less than 6,000
years old, as the Biblical
chronology asserts. We’re now living
in a world with the Internet, and
relatively free exchange of
information. We can now easily
download from the Internet papers by
scientists that demonstrate, for
example, that decisions we believe
we are freely making are actually
made by our unconscious. Through the
process of priming, researchers can
make us behave in certain ways, and
make certain decisions, without our
even being aware of the experimental
manipulation.
Advertisers do this to us all of the
time. When you see the same
commercial on TV, that’s exactly
what they’re doing. They understand
that we don’t have a free will, and
they condition us to behave in ways
they would prefer. This is another
reason why this issue of human will
is important. Conditioning by
marketers is real, and advertisers
have refined this science to a
scary, Orwellian degree. They really
can make large portions of the
population behave in various ways,
in a way that is also unconscious to
those consumers. If you believe in
free will, you will say to yourself
“no, advertisers cannot control our
buying habits and choice of products
because we have a will that can
over-ride all of that conditioning.”
When you understand that we don’t
have a free will, and that what we
do, and what we buy or don’t buy, is
based on the information we have,
and how we acquired it, then you’ll
understand why it’s important for us
to appreciate that free will is an
illusion. It’s important to
acknowledge the forces that mold us,
and lead us to do what we do, if we
allow them. The concept of free
will, when you think about it, is
internally inconsistent. It’s not
logical. If you define the will as
volition, or that part of our mind
or self that makes decisions, and
you say that volition is free of
what it can’t control – free of
causality, free of our memories,
free of how we’re conditioned. The
definition just doesn’t make sense.
Essentially, the term free will
means that we are doing what we’re
doing, and saying what we’re saying,
and thinking what we’re thinking,
completely of our own accord. By
logical extension, that belief leads
to the conclusion that we do all of
what we do for no reason. As soon as
you say “I made this decision of my
own free will because, for
example, it was the right decision,
or because I wanted to be a
good person, you’ve introduced a
cause. You’ve introduced the chain
of cause and effect. Once you say
you’ve made a decision because of
something – because of anything –
then you must acknowledge that that
cause has a cause, and that cause
has a cause, etc.
A good way to understand cause and
effect is to look at the state of
the entire universe. Consider
everything - which means every
particle, every person, every
planet, and every galaxy – that
exists at this very moment. It has
to be the complete result of the
state of the universe at the
previous moment. The universe
evolves from state to state through
time. The universe is in a certain
state during one moment, and through
the process of change, or cause and
effect, it evolves to its state at
the next moment. It can’t but do
that. If the universe is all there
is, the universe is the only
explanation for every next moment of
the universe. You can only explain
the state of the universe at one
moment by understanding that the
previous moment is the complete
cause of it. There is nothing else
to cause it. The universe is a
singularity. There is only one. If
you claim you are making what you
consider to be a freely willed
decision, and you’re making it at a
certain moment in time, but the
state of the universe at the
previous moment is completely
determining the state of the
universe at the moment you make your
decision, then that previous state
is obviously determining your
decision. The moment-by-moment
states of the universe form a chain
of cause and effect that stretches
back in time to before our planet
was created, and before the Sun was
created, and presumably, to the Big
Bang about 13.7 billion years ago.
By understanding that our universe
evolves in a moment-by-moment
fashion, according to its state
during each previous moment, you can
understand that our human will
cannot possibly be free from that
causal progression.
Why is this important? Our world
right now is facing a very
challenging era that will last
decades. Much of what we face is
about climate change. There is one
international scientific body or
institution that is responsible for
compiling and analyzing all of the
research on global warming and other
manifestations of climate change.
It’s called the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change, (IPCC) and
this United Nations organization is
comprised of over 3,000 scientists
from over 100 countries. Their last
major report was published in 2007,
but if you saw Al Gore’s 2006
documentary, An Inconvenient
Truth, you have some idea of
what we’re up against. The very
challenging part of all of this is
that back in 2007 when the IPCC
published their most recent
findings, scientists had concluded
that the level of carbon dioxide
concentration in our atmosphere that
we must be under by the year 2050 in
order to avoid catastrophic, and
very likely irreversible,
consequences was 450 parts per
million, (ppm). A few years later,
however, some scientists realized
that this assessment was far too
optimistic, and that the actual
level of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere that we need to remain
under to remain relatively safe is
350 ppm. What is scary is that we’re
already over 400 ppm, and the carbon
dioxide concentration is rising by
over 2.7 ppm each year. We face a
monumental challenge. As an
optimist, I would expect our human
race to rise to it, but as a
scientist and a thinker, I
understand that we will not have a
chance of meeting that 350-ppm
target unless we profoundly, and
dramatically, change the nature of
our civilization. It’s actually more
serious. In 2007 when the IPCC made
that assessment, they did not
consider the effects of the melting
of the polar ice caps, or the
methane that is currently in the
permafrost, and gets converted to
carbon dioxide and released into the
atmosphere as this frozen layer of
ground thaws. There is apparently
more carbon dioxide in the
permafrost – which covers vast areas
in Alaska and Russia among other
places – than has already
accumulated in our atmosphere.
If we want to address those
challenges, we will need to stop
competing with each other, and we
will need to stop thinking that we
deserve so much because we did so
many great things. We need to start
working together. There is
absolutely no way that we can
adequately address the threat of
climate change unless we work
together. For example, if China,
India, Brazil and Europe were to do
their part, but we in the United
States did not do our part, we would
not be doing nearly enough. If we in
the United States did our part, but
those other countries did not do
their part, we would not be doing
nearly enough. It must be a global
effort. There are other reasons why
I think this issue of human will is
important, but climate change will
remain a supremely important reason
for at least the next several
decades.
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