Chapter 5. We Do
Not "Experience" Free Will
The myth, or illusion, that we have
the ability to choose our thoughts
and feelings, and decide what we
want, appears to have been prevalent
at least from the beginning of
civilization. We tend to hold each
other and ourselves responsible for
what we do. When we do that, it
causes harm. When we assume or
attribute responsibility, we often
conclude that if we’ve done
something wrong, we deserve to be
punished. So, we punish each other
and ourselves. When we do wrong, we
often feel the pain of guilt. Aside
from that, considering all of the
evidence that demonstrates that we
don’t have a free will, for our
entire civilization to be structured
on the premise that we do is
bewildering.
The most fundamental reason people
say they have a free will seems to
be that they claim to experience
every thought they have as being
fundamentally up to them. As we’ll
see, that is not actually the case.
Before we get into that, I want to
briefly define what people generally
mean when they say they have a free
will. Free will is generally
accepted to mean that we can decide
whatever we want regardless of our
basic character, our personality,
our unconscious, what we’ve learned
or haven’t learned, our genetic
makeup, and so many other factors
that actually combine to compel our
every thought, feeling and action.
The reality is that we human beings
have causal wills. We have a will,
in the sense that we make decisions,
but all of these decisions are
caused by factors outside of our
control. Causality means that
everything happens according to the
principle of cause and effect. It
means that everything that happens,
including our every thought, feeing
and action, has a cause. And that
cause has a cause, because
everything must have a cause. Events
do not happen in the universe that
are not caused. The universe is
causal, so our human will must be
causal.
Consider that we experience the
world as flat. We do not experience
our world as an orb, which it is.
That a flat world is an illusion
we’ve understood at least since the
time of Columbus in 1492. But that
illusion doesn’t make much of a
difference, unless we want to travel
around the globe, or to the Moon and
back. That kind of illusion does not
impact our everyday life, but the
illusion of free will impacts it
profoundly. When people say they
experience a free will, what they
really mean is that they experience
a will. Let’s distinguish between
the two. The will is synonymous with
volition, or the act of choosing or
deciding. In a certain sense, we
decide all of the time. I decided to
write this book. You’ve decided to
read it. But that is not what people
claim. People claim that these
decisions are free from the
influence of the causal past, and
how their parents raised them, and
their desires, etc. For example, if
a person is given a choice between
an apple and a corn muffin, their
choice is going to be determined to
a great extent by which they prefer,
or which tastes better to them. But,
we don’t get to choose our taste.
There are many ways of describing
the different factors that make free
will impossible. Taste, or our
preferences for different foods, is
one.
Not everyone throughout history
believed in free will. At 7:15 in a
letter to the Romans dated about 58
A.D., Paul writes, “I don’t
understand myself at all, for I
really want to do what is right, but
I can’t.” I do what I don’t want to
– what I hate.” He is actually
describing what this book is about.
If we had a free will, then every
act would be completely up to us.
Every moral decision would be
completely up to us. If Paul had a
free will, he could have been
completely good, and never
transgress his morality. He realizes
he doesn’t, and brings up the issue
of human will in Christianity. It’s
not until about 380 A.D. when
Augustine is grappling with the
question of evil and punishment that
he must have thought to himself
“Wait a minute. If God is all-good,
then we can’t blame God.” Augustine
wrote a book called De Libero
Arbitrio, which is Latin for “On
Free Will.” He apparently coined the
term free will. So, if we do
something wrong, it must be our
fault. This is interesting, because
I was doing some research on good
and evil within the Judeo-Christian
context, and in Isaiah 45:7, God is
quoted as saying “I form the light,
and create darkness: I make peace,
and create evil: I the Lord do all
these things.” Before Augustine,
people certainly did hold each other
responsible, so they did seem to
attribute free will to each other,
but there was no term or doctrine
describing this perspective. Again,
Leucippus in the 5th
century B.C. wrote the first
statement on causality, the logical
extension of which makes free will
impossible. He wrote, “Nothing
happens at random, but everything
for a reason and by necessity.” If
everything happens for a reason,
that of course makes free will
impossible.
Augustine claims that what we do is
completely up to us, because God
granted us a free will, however when
you think about it from a
theological standpoint, there is a
contradiction. On the one hand, the
standard teaching is that God is
all-powerful, and that nothing
happens without God wanting it to
happen. On the other hand, we have
the idea that God is ceding his
power by granting human beings a
free will. The logic there is
clearly inconsistent. The concept of
an all-powerful God is also somewhat
incoherent. There is a question that
illuminates this logical conflict –
If God is all-powerful, can s/he
create a boulder so large that even
s/he can’t lift it? If you think
about that, you will very quickly
realize that the idea of an
all-powerful God is incoherent. You
might ask yourself, “Can God cease
to exist? Can s/he just stop being
God?” I’m not sure, but I don’t
think so. Augustine came up with his
personal solution to blaming God for
the evil in this world. This is
curious also because we’re taught in
Judaism, and Christianity and other
religions that when events go well,
we should thank God. If something
goes right, it is God’s doing, and
we should feel grateful. But, when
something goes wrong, it’s our
fault. The inconsistency here could
not be clearer.
The basic Judeo-Christian-Islamic
teaching is that holding certain
doctrines and beliefs will vastly
improve your likelihood of spending
the rest of eternity in Heaven than
holding opposing doctrines and
beliefs. For example, if you don’t
believe that there is a God, that
disbelief would put you at risk of
eternal damnation. According to
some, your not believing in free
will would also put you at risk.
This probably explains much of why
people say to themselves “of course
I experience free will.” Anyone who
really delves into the question
would more likely than not finally
realize otherwise. It may be because
of this religious insistence on
holding certain beliefs and
rejecting others that we haven’t
explored the matter of human will as
comprehensively as we could.
Let’s explore in a bit more detail
why free will is not what we
experience when we make decisions.
After this taping, I plan to take a
break before doing another taping
this afternoon. I could choose to go
to the nearby White Plains Library
to browse through some art books. I
could also choose to go to the
nearby Galleria Mall and have a cup
of coffee, but let’s say I opt for
the library. If I were to claim that
that was a free choice, I would be
claiming that I made that choice
regardless of, for example, the
strongest motivation acting upon me
at that given time. Part of me would
like to go to the Galleria for a cup
of coffee, and just hang out with
people there. Part of me would like
to browse through art books. I’ve
been going to the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York City
recently – the amazing Egyptian
collection – which may explain why
this is so. My decision is not free
of that. I am faced with two
competing motivations – go to the
mall or to the Library. So, what is
going to happen? The stronger of
those two motives is going to win
out. I’ve actually already made the
decision, but between now and then I
could change my mind. I could at the
last minute say “well, I would
really rather be around people, and
there are probably not many people
at the library.” I could end up
going to the mall for coffee. But if
I were to do that, it would be
because I would be feeling that
prospect as the stronger of the two
motives.
We don’t really experience a free
will. We experience a will. I
experience the will, the decision,
the volition, to go to either the
library or the mall, but I don’t
experience this will free of factors
that compel it. Why might I have the
motivation to go to the library and
browse through books? Years ago, in
college, I was an art major, and I
have an appreciation of art. But we
don’t get to choose what we
appreciate, or desire to do. For
example, being naturally good at
mathematics, or art, or music, or
whatever, is not something we get to
freely choose. We come into this
world with a certain personality,
and our personalities are, in fact,
about fifty percent genetic.
Naturally, if our personality is
half due to our heredity, and our
genes are certainly not something we
can freely control, and the other
half of our personality is due to
environmental factors like how we
were raised, and where we were
raised, and the kinds of unique
experiences we’ve had in our lives,
it’s easy to understand that our
human will is not free of those
compulsions. When we make a
decision, we’re not “experiencing”
that our decision was free of all of
those factors. We’re just
experiencing a decision. If we took
the time to ask ourselves, “Why did
I decide this? What motivated me?
What compelled me to decide this as
opposed to that?” then we would
realize that the decision was not
free from certain factors that lie
beyond our control. To say that we
experience free will is to say that
we experience a will that is free of
even causality, or this process of
cause and effect that governs
everything.
All you have to do is acknowledge to
yourself that if you made a
decision, there must have been a
cause for that decision – there may
be one or several, depending on how
you are defining cause. Every event
must have a cause. We know this from
science and experience. We know that
nothing happens that is not caused.
If there is a cause for our
decision, then there is a cause for
that cause, and there is a cause for
that cause, and a cause for that
cause. We sometimes refer to
causality as cause and effect – the
chain of cause and effect. So, if we
took the time to investigate the
reasons or causes for the decisions
we make, we would see that they are
subject to this chain of cause and
effect. It is important to recognize
that a cause can never come after an
event, so each cause must always
precede its effect. If you have a
chain of causes going further and
further back into the past,
ultimately it is going to stretch
back to before we were born. That
alone tells you that our decisions
are not free. We might want to
explore the reasons for our
decisions. I decided to go to the
library because I’ve been going to
the Met, and have been amazed by the
Egyptian exhibit there. But why did
that exhibit amaze me? It might be
because I have some experience in
art. Was that experience free from
causality, or reasons? No.
Keep in mind that we’re actually
just guessing about all of these
causes. We’re trying to figure out
why we did what we did, and we may
or may not correctly identify its
true cause or causes. But that there
always is a cause is certain.
Sometimes we’ll get to the point
where we must admit that we don’t
know why we feel a certain way. For
example, I don’t know why I’m so
awed by Egyptian art, and find it so
beautiful. If we don’t know what
causes us to make the decisions we
make, certainly we are not
experiencing those decisions as
having been freely made. By this
reasoning, we can understand that 1)
we don’t have a free will and 2) we
don’t even experience our will as
free. The notion that we obviously
“experience” a free will, upon even
a cursory exploration, turns out to
be false. We don’t experience a free
will, we experience a will, and
there is a world of difference
between the two. Why is this so
important? Someone might say that
it’s fine that we don’t have a free
will, but wonder how knowing that
changes anything. Think about it. If
we don’t have a free will, every
single decision we make is compelled
by causes that we’re not in control
of. Everything that any of us thinks
and does, and everything that
happens – because causality is not
limited just to human will; it
applies to the entire universe – is
completely determined by the causal
past. Some people say that particle
behavior at the quantum level is not
determined, but that is actually a
false interpretation of quantum
mechanics. Particle behavior at the
quantum level is actually entirely
causal. There are certainly some
actions going on at that scale that
we don’t understand. For example, we
can’t use the standard causality
model of Newtonian, or classical,
physics to make predictions at the
quantum level, so we rely on
probabilities. Nonetheless, the
essential nature of matter is
causal. The universe is causal. If
it wasn’t, and if our wills were not
causal, how would that possibly
work, and what would that even mean?
How could anything happen that is
not caused? The concept of
randomness in the strongest sense of
events happening without anything
having caused them to happen is
simply incoherent.
The world is like a movie. Actors
are generally given some leeway in
interpreting their characters. We
are like actors who don’t even get
to interpret our roles. It is so
amazing, and that’s one of the
reasons I wrote this book. It is
also amazing that the universe, via
the causal past, has compelled us to
get the second most fundamental
aspect of human nature completely
wrong. Nature has done this to us
before in certain ways, like with
the illusions that the world is
flat, and that the Sun revolves
around the Earth. Another illusion
is that our planet is completely
still and motionless. The reality,
however, is that we’re hurtling
around the Sun at over 60,000 miles
per hour. Nature, or God, or
whatever you want to call the
universe or reality, apparently
likes to have fun with us in this
way. This illusion of free will is a
natural illusion that has led us to
get the fundamental characteristic
of human will completely wrong.
There is more and more evidence
coming out that what we think we
decide freely with our conscious
mind is actually being decided at
the level of our unconscious. This
is becoming a hot research topic in
psychology and neuroscience. My
prediction is that as we understand
that our wills are not free, we will
be much more understanding toward
ourselves and each other when we
invariably do wrong.
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