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Chapter 18. Why
Humans Cannot Circumvent Natural Law
to Gain a Free Will
For this book’s final chapter, let’s
talk about why human beings cannot
circumvent natural law to gain a
free will. Some philosophers concede
that everything has a cause; they
concede that nature is causal. These
philosophers concede that nature,
particles, matter – everything – has
a cause, but they believe that we
human beings are different. They say
that it is because we are different
that we have a free will, but when
we explore that contention, we find
that it’s wrong on two counts.
Firstly, by all appearances, we are
matter. We are physical, and we’re
bound by the physical laws. Even if
we were to claim that our decisions
were not “physical,” and that they
were, in fact, “spiritual,” we must
understand that every decision we
make is made at a moment in time. We
can’t escape this fundamental
understanding that whether the
decision is defined as physical or
spiritual, the decision is made at a
precise moment in time. Thus,
because our decision resides within
time, it is subject to the physical
laws. We no longer understand time
as an entity separate from space.
It’s best understood as space-time.
This is one of the results of
Einstein’s special relativity. Time
cannot exist without space. Space
cannot exist without time. If the
universe is made of space-time –
particles, energy, matter,
mass-energy interacting in
space-time, – and you have a
spiritual decision occurring in
time, such a decision must be
completely determined by the causal
laws. Some philosophers contend that
we human beings are special, and can
circumvent natural law to have a
free will. This contention asserts
that causality doesn’t apply to us,
and that we can make a decision of
our own free will. But what does
that mean? Does that mean that our
decision is made without a cause?
Think about this. By definition,
randomness means without order or
purpose. Its strongest meaning is
that something is actually uncaused.
If a decision is made without a
cause, then it must be random. If a
decision is random, certainly we
can’t take credit for it, or assign
it to a free will.
Let’s consider decisions relative to
morality. Morality is a key concept
in this question of human will. To
understand that we don’t have a free
will is to understand that,
essentially and most fundamentally,
we’re not morally responsible. We
might want to blame, or hold
accountable, the universe for
whatever it compels us to do. But
since we’re agents, or instruments,
of the past, and since our decisions
are not up to us, we are not
fundamentally personally morally
responsible. From that perspective,
if we could make a “freely willed
decision,” and our decision had no
causal past, this would mean that
the decision would also have no
moral reason. We see that such a
morality-based concept of a free
will is simply incoherent. There is
no evidence for the contention that
we human beings can somehow
circumvent natural law. I’ll explain
this in terms of quantum mechanics,
and the physical nature of reality.
Back in the mid 1920s, Warner
Heisenberg published a paper showing
that at the quantum level, our
knowledge of particle behavior is
“uncertain.” In other words, in
classical mechanics – the mechanics
of Isaac Newton, and the mechanics
physicists relied on to make
predictions before quantum physics –
we could simultaneously measure the
position and momentum of an object
accurately enough to make a
successful prediction. At the
quantum level, however, such
classical measurement and prediction
is not possible. Imagine we fire a
photon at another particle to
measure its position and momentum.
The problem here is that the act of
firing the photon at the target
particle interferes with the
trajectory, or the momentum, of that
particle. Hence, physicists cannot
simultaneously achieve an accurate
measure of the particle’s position
and momentum. At the macro level of
an everyday object like a
grapefruit, the difference between a
measuring particle like a photon and
the grapefruit is so great that the
photon would not, for practical
purposes, interfere with the
measuring process.
Some philosophers claim that this
Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
demonstrates that matter, at its
most fundamental level, is random.
Again, there is no logic behind this
assertion. The term randomness is
incoherent because randomness means
that things happen without causes.
Try to imagine anything happening
without a cause. What would that
even mean? Our science all points to
the very strong conclusion that
everything is caused, that
everything has a causal past.
Because of that, free will is
impossible. If I make a decision
right now, and there is a cause for
that decision, and there’s a cause
for that cause, and a cause for that
cause, again we can see how that
chain will go back to before I was
born, and to before the Planet was
created. One of the factors that
lead to claims that we human beings
can somehow circumvent natural law
to gain a free will is that life
would have no meaning without a free
will. They say “If we’re instruments
of God, and if we’re not the authors
of our acts, and if we’re just the
actors, and we don’t get the
opportunity to even interpret our
roles, then what’s the point of
anything?” This concern has some
cogency, but, it’s somewhat like
asking “What’s the point of our life
at all, since we’re here only about
eighty years with an eternity on
either side of us?” I tend to
believe in an afterlife, because I
try to have beliefs that increase
happiness and diminish unhappiness.
Existing seems, for whatever reason,
like a more pleasant belief than not
existing.
We may not have a free will, but we
still experience life. We human
beings don’t decide; we experience.
What I’m saying right now, what we
all feel and do, is all real.
Meaning in life has to do to a great
extent with emotion. We’re hedonic
creatures. We seek pleasure. We
avoid pain. Meaning is valuable
because it is a pleasant experience.
It makes us feel good to value
things, and give them meaning. But
life can have sufficient meaning
without our falsely believing that
we are the authors of our thoughts.
Let’s say we attribute our thoughts
to a deity or god. Let’s say God is
responsible for our thoughts. We
could also say this scientifically –
that it is the causal past or our
unconscious that is responsible. If
we attribute all of this to God, we
could ask ourselves “Whom would we
want deciding what we do, we with
our limited experience and
knowledge, or a God who presumably
knows everything?”
This is admittedly not completely
satisfying because if we had a free
will, who among us would choose to
not feel happy all of the time – to
not feel blissful all of the time?
Who among us, if we had a free will,
would choose to feel negative
feelings? Who among us would choose
to do what is wrong – to make
mistakes? From that perspective, if
we had a free will, we would be in
paradise. It’s because we don’t have
a free will that we’re not there
yet. That’s not to say that we can’t
eventually live within a paradise,
understanding fully that our world
and human will are causal. We can
glean great meaning from life while
understanding that free will is, in
fact, an illusion. We’re obviously
fated to succeed at some tasks and
fail at others, but it’s all
predetermined. You have to ask
yourself “why in the world would
fate cause us to fail at anything,”
because who likes to fail? Also,
fate creates us as beings that find
displeasure from failure, but,
nonetheless, compels us to fail
sometimes, and feel the sting of
defeat. It doesn’t make sense, but
it’s kind of like asking why there’s
pain in the universe. Without pain,
the universe would be completely
blissful. So, the answer is, “Who
knows?” Who knows why things are
like that, but they absolutely have
to be like that because we don’t
have a free will. It’s curious and
interesting that we’ve been fated to
believe that we’re the authors of
our thoughts, when the exact
opposite is the case. Now, for
whatever reason, fate has determined
that it is time for us to understand
the true nature of our human will.
By that, hopefully we’ll be fated to
create a much better world as a
result.
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