The Necessity of Free Will

Eric Hanson, ArtAsiaPacific Magazine, Mar/Apr 2013

by Thomas Scarborough

I propose to solve the problem of free will.

The problem is, quite simply, the view that we live in a world where causality reigns supreme. If causality reigns supreme, then there can be no free will. And if we admit quantum indeterminacy to the picture, neither is indeterminacy free will.

I propose that the problem rests on an ancient conceptual dichotomy: the things-relations distinction. I propose, too, that this distinction is illusory. Aristotle called it the features-dispositions distinction. Wittgenstein called it the objects-arrangements distinction. We find it, too, in language (the nouns-verbs distinction), and in maths (variables-operators).

The alternative is obvious: there is no such distinction, but rather a fusion of things.  The philosopher Mel Thompson describes our world as ‘a seamless web of causality that goes forwards and backward in time and outwards in space’. ‘Seamless’, if we take it to mean exactly that, implies that there are no seams; there is no separation between things; therefore there is no relation between them.

Our reality has been variously described as an undifferentiated stream of experience, a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions, a swirling cloud without determinate shape. To make sense of this, then, we need to separate it into sounds and sights, surfaces and motions—which is individual things. We take aspects of a seamless whole, and we isolate them from the whole. Once done, we are able to trace relations between them.

With this, we have the basis of causality.  But in a seamless reality, where there is a fusion of things, all things cause all things. Even the language which we speak has an urge towards such fusion. There is an ‘evil’, wrote the philosopher and statesman Francis Bacon, in defining natural and material things.  ‘Definitions themselves consist of words, and those words beget others’.  Ultimately, our words reach into everything.

In the midst of an undifferentiated expanse, therefore, we create things, and we create causes. We isolate causes from the seamless whole—and with them, effects. But these causes must always strip something off.  This is why our thinking in terms of causality—which is supremely embodied in the modern scientific method—must bring about unwanted side effects of all kinds, through stripped-off relations.

When we say that A causes B we are, as it were, placing our drawing compass on the seamless web of causality and demarcating a circle in the midst of it: 'A'.  Outside of this circle lies the entire, seamless universe, and this knows no 'things'—until we create them in its midst. And when we create them, we create the intractable problem as to what a relation actually is.  A property?  An attribute?

Someone might object. Even if we have no things, no objects, no features (and so on) with which to create causality, we still have a reality which is bound by the laws of the universe. There is therefore some kind of something which is not free. Yet every scientific law is about A causes B. Whatever is out there, it has nothing in common with such a scheme—that we can know of anyway.

One more step is required to prove free will. Every cause that I identify is a creation of my own mind, in that it is freely chosen.  I am free to create it—which is, to demarcate the circle with the drawing compass. When I say that A caused B, I omit C, D, E, and every other possible cause, with the exception of what I want to create.  This is a choice without any kind of necessity.

I fire a shot at a clay pigeon. I choose the cause, and with the cause I choose the effect, and the pigeon shatters in the sky.  Now I see a nearby church bell.   I choose the cause, and I choose the effect, and an entire village awakes from its slumbers on a drowsy afternoon.   In this lies free will.  Cause and effect might seem iron clad—yet it is itself freely chosen.

But did I not cause my causes to be created?  Are not the causes and effects we invent themselves caused in some way?  This possibility is excluded.  We would need to readmit A’s and B’s to our scheme before we could claim cause.

David Bohm wrote that quantum theory is ‘the dropping of the notion of analysis of the world into relatively autonomous parts, separately existent but in interaction’.  In fact, this applies in every sphere.  Causality is illusory.  Not only that, but to say that any such illusion is caused is to admit causality through the back door.  There is no back door. 

The Impossibility of Determinism

Posted by Thomas Scarborough

Indeed, free will and determinism. It is a classic problem of metaphysics. No matter what we may think about it, we know that we have a problem. We know that things are physically determined. I line up dominos in a row, and topple the first of them with my finger. It is certain that the whole row of dominos will fall.

Are people then subject to the same kind of determinism? Are we just so many powerless humanoid shapes waiting to be knocked down by circumstances? Or perhaps, to what extent are we subject to such determinism? Is it possible for us to escape our own inner person? Our own history? Our own future? Are we even free to choose our own thoughts—much less our actions? Are we even free to believe? Each of these questions would seem to present us with a range of mightily confusing answers.

I suggest that it may be helpful to try to view the question from a broader perspective—the particular one that comes from consideration of the phenomenon of cause and effect. If I am controlled by indomitable causes, then I am not free. Yet if I am (freely) the cause of my own thoughts and actions, then I am free. Which then is it? Once we understand the dynamics of cause and effect, we should be in a better position to understand free will and determinism.

What is cause and effect?

In our everyday descriptions of our world, we say that, to paraphrase Simon Blackburn, causation is the relation between two events. It holds when, given that one event occurs, ‘it produces, or brings forth, or necessitates the second’. The burrowing aardvark caused the dam to burst; the lightning strike caused the thatch to burn; the medicine caused the patient to rally, and so on. Yet we notice in this something that is immediately problematic—which is that in order to say that there is causality, we need to have carefully defined events before and after.

But such definition is a problem. The philosopher-statesman Francis Bacon wrote of the ‘evil’ we find in defining natural and material things. ‘The definitions themselves consist of words, and those words beget others.’ Aristotle wrote that words consist of features (say, the features of a house), and those features must stand in a certain relation to one another (rubble, say, is not a house). Therefore, not only do we have words within words, but features and relations, too.

Where does it all end? It all ends nowhere. It is an endless regress. Bacon’s ‘evil’ means that our definitions dissipate into the universe. It seems much like having money in a bank, which has its money in another bank, which has its money in another bank, and so on. It is not hard to see that one will never find the money. Full definitions ultimately reach into the void.

If we want to be consistent about it, there are no events. In order to obtain events, we need to set artificial limits to our words—and artificial limits to reality itself, by excluding unwanted influences on our various constructions. But that is not the way the world really is in its totality. More than this, these unwanted influences always seem to enter the picture again somewhere along the line. This is a big part of the problem in our world today.

Of course, cause and effect quite simply work: he lit the fire; I broke the urn; they split the atom. This is good as far as it goes—yet again, such explanations work because we define before and after—and that very definition strips away a lot of what is really going on.

Where does this leave us? It leaves us without a reason to believe in cause and effect—even if we are naturally disposed to thinking that way. There is no rational framework to support it.

Someone might object. Even if we have no befores and afters, we still have a reality which is bound by the laws of the universe. There is therefore some kind of something which is not free. Yet every scientific law is about events before and after. Whatever is out there, it has nothing in common—that we can know of anyway—with such a scheme.

This may be a new way of putting it, but it is not a new idea. Albert Einstein, as an example, said that determinism is a feature of theories, rather than any aspect of the world directly. While, at the end of this post, we cannot prove free will, we can state that notions of determinism are out of the question, in the world as we know it. The world is something else, which we have not yet understood.

The Silence of God

Posted by Eugene Alper

Perhaps God is so silent with us for a reason.  If He were to answer, if He were to respond to even one question or one plea, this would spell the end of our free will.

For once we knew His preferences for us, once we could sense His approval or disapproval, we would no longer exercise our own preferences, we would not choose our actions.  We would be like children again, led by His hand.  Perhaps He did not want this.  Perhaps He did not create us to be perpetual children.  Perhaps He designed the world so we could think about it and choose our actions freely.

But mentioning free will and God's design in the same sentence presents a predicament—these two ideas need to be somehow reconciled.  For if we believe that God designed the world in a certain way, and the world includes us and our free will, its design has to be flexible enough for us to exercise our free will within it.  We should be able to choose to participate in the design or not, and if so, to which degree.  Should we choose to do something with our life—however small our contribution may be—maybe to improve the design itself, or at least to try to tinker with it, we should be able to do so.  Should we choose to stay away from participating and become hermits, for example, we should be able to do so too.  Or should we choose to participate only partially, every third Tuesday of the month, we should be free to do so as well.

This thinking smacks of being childish.  We want God's design to be there and not to be there at the same time.  We want God to be a loving father who is not overly strict.  This is how we created His image in the Old Testament: God is occasionally stern—to the point of destroying almost the entire humankind—but loving and caring the rest of the time.  This is how we created His image in the New Testament, too: God so loved the world that He sent His own Son to redeem it.  Maybe all we really want is a father again; whatever beings we imagine as our gods, we want the familiar features of our parents.  Maybe we are perpetual children after all.  We want to play in our sandbox—freely and without supervision—and build whatever we want out of sand, yet we want our father nearby for comfort and protection.

There is no need to reconcile anything.  This is how it works.  Our free will fits within God's design so well because it is free only to a degree.  Time and space are our bounds.  We have only so much time until we are gone, and we have only so much energy until it runs out.  Gravity will assure that we can jump, but not too high, that we can fly, but not too far.  We cannot cause too much damage.  Sitting in the sand, we can fight with other players, we can even kick them out, we can build our own castles or destroy theirs, but we cannot destroy the sandbox itself.  Maybe this is the secret of the design. 

Free Will: Has Philosophy Been Eclipsed by Neuroscience?

Norton Junction. With acknowledgement to Adrian the Rock

By Keith Tidman

We make decisions before we are consciously aware of making them. These are the findings of the latest neuroscientific research. Has neuroscience therefore eclipsed philosophy? Has it taken the lead? Does philosophy have anything left to say?

In a much-publicised experiment, a neuroscientist placed people into a ‘functional magnetic resonance imaging’ (fMRI) machine. The aim was to observe brain activity as test subjects performed an activity. The neuroscientist instructed the subjects to press a button either with their right hand or their left hand – but to pay close attention to when they took the decision as to which hand to use. The results surprised the worlds of both philosophy and neuroscience. The scanner revealed brain activity—the brain unconsciously deciding to press the button—a remarkable seven seconds before the test subjects consciously opted to press it. That is, the subjects’ brains committed to decisions before the subjects became aware of making them.

Why should this be important? Why does it matter?

We assume that free will is fundamental to our humanity. Assumptions about free will—conscious agency—engage people on pragmatic levels. In fact those assumptions are the keystone for society’s notions of responsibility. Codes of morality and law necessarily rest—rightly or wrongly—on free will’s existence. Institutions, from government bodies to systems of justice to religions, are built on that keystone. In the absence of an alternative model that ensures order in society, such rules-based institutions hold people accountable for their actions. Human conduct is judged, and responses—praise and reward, or condemnation and punishment—are rendered accordingly. Society assumes that a person may be held responsible only if that person is a ‘morally responsible agent’, in conscious, intentional control of behaviour.

The cautious conclusion to the fMRI experiment was that consciousness may play no role in what a person decides. Other neuroscientists concur in this, based on the results of different tests. But are our conclusions too hasty? Are the results ironclad?

In the context of conscious control, what does the fMRI test really tell us about free will? Is free will an illusion, a tricked brain, misled intuition—and even just a convenience for society to function? The question typically appears something like this: “At the moment a person decides, could she willingly and freely have decided otherwise?” And if we do not enjoy unbridled (‘libertarian’) free will, do we at least have contingent free will? If free will is an illusion, is that so for only those choices made hastily and with minimal thought? Or does free will describe all our decisions? Philosophers have grappled with free will for millennia, of course. But the role of neuroscience in this arena is more recent—and arguably indispensable. This dual track of philosophers and neuroscientists makes it necessary to delineate what unique competencies each field brings to free will. But what are they? And do they each have a role?

By and large, both philosophers and neuroscientists today acknowledge the  cause-and-effect nature of brain activity (the physics, chemistry, biology) and decisions—mind-brain dualism long since having been discarded. Yet our considerations do not end here.

Philosophers, for their part, collaborating with psychologists and anthropologists and others, bring a deep understanding of human behavior. This understanding exists in the context of the roles of institutions and culture in society, informing the ways people make decisions, including whether freely or mechanistically. Philosophers also contribute an understanding of the centuries-long history of conceptualising free will and its alternatives, especially how some of the most brilliant minds have described and debated free will and determinism and the concepts’ variants. This process includes placing those historical notions of free will to the litmus test of analytical logic, to assess soundness. All this vitally informs the science—outside the standard domain of scientists—to ensure that the science remains conceptually and historically grounded.

For their part, neuroscientists, collaborating with physicists and biologists, structure hypotheses and bring increasingly sophisticated technologies and rigorous methodologies to understand cognitive brain function. They correlate those functions to the brain as it makes a decision and the person subsequently is aware of the decision. The aim is to explore—tangibly record and measure through technology—what is happening at the unconscious and conscious levels, and to do so involving more complex decision-making. Independent scientists must duplicate test results. For neuroscientists, this unique framing of the free will-versus-determinism puzzle takes into account diverse factors.  These include the neurons and synapses firing in different regions of the brain, perceptions of reality, people’s genetic makeup, the environment influencing genes’ expression (epigenetics), psychological states, and others. How these factors bear on outcomes of science’s take on free will remains to be explored.

Allowing for the distinctly separate competencies of philosophers and neuroscientists, tackling free choice can best be accomplished jointly: defining the problem, examining alternative models, conjuring hypotheses, developing methods, describing initial conditions, teasing out empirical data, interpreting results. Wherein, it seems, lies the best hope of resolving the free-will debate. Philosophy is far from eclipsed.