The Metaphysical Problem of Free Will
By: Kanishk Kalra
Tags: Free Will, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Mind

Introduction

Libertarianism or Libertarian Free will is a metaphysical concept which asserts that human consciousness is not predetermined and that we are in complete control of our actions.[1] At first glance, this seems to be obvious and self-evident but when you look closer, a huge problem stares right back at you. In this essay, I’ll seek to elucidate why free will does not exist and its metaphysical and ethical implications.

The concept of free will has been debated and discussed in scholarly philosophical circles since Plato, Aristotle, and so on to theologians such as Aquinas. It has also been a part of debate in early Chinese and Indian philosophical traditions. But the popular belief in free will has not been affected ever since. In fact, all the building blocks of our society, our justice system, our approach to education, our political systems are designed around the idea that we have libertarian free will. Religion (especially organized Abrahamic religions) has long appropriated this concept, although there are a few sects who are religious determinists (those who believe that everything is pre-determined). [2]

The Philosophical case against Free Will

Consider a simple thought experiment. This is loosely taken from Sam Harris’ book “Free Will”. Let us consider the case of a rapist who has been found guilty and is doing his term in prison. What could be the reasons of him committing rape? Could he have chosen otherwise? Of course he could have. He could have just not acted on his animalistic desires (an interesting food for thought — do animals have free will?). Now suppose two days after his sentence, he has extreme headache and the doctor says that he has a tumor in the Frontal lobe of his brain. Frontal lobe is the decision maker of our brain. It is almost certain that this tumor is the reason that this person has not been able to think clearly leading him to commit rape. His “will” to rape an innocent human being was not “free”.

Now, what is tumor anyway? They are very simply the cells of our body which have gone wrong due to some reason. Now suppose instead of the tumor, it is found out that the man has been suffering from psychological issues due to not having a job and his marriage about to end. Surely in this situation too, he was not in the right mind to make proper decisions because of his deteriorating psychological health. [3]

Now imagine a case where the man was forced to commit the rape at gunpoint. Was he free this time?

What if this man was born with the genes that make him pre-disposed towards violence? Or maybe this man had a tragic childhood without parents having deep mental impact on his day to day life. Surely, he has no control over what genes have been passed onto him. Nobody in this world has any control over what genes have been passed onto him. Does that make your consciousness free?

Recently, there has been a movement on social media against saying that a person committed suicide. People want to change it to saying that the person died by suicide explaining that nobody chooses to commit suicide but are compelled to because of other factors and situations. I would like to submit that no person “chooses” to do anything at all, let alone suicide.

The above experiment shows that whatever we do, at least in part, is determined by factors external to us or those over which we have no control. Now let us consider an example as regular as ordering food at a restaurant. You have a craving for Thai food today so you decide to order Thai. Did you have any control over your craving? You might again come around and say that at least you would be free to choose whatever Thai food you want. But you see how your circle of freedom is gradually diminishing. Suppose you ordered a Thai Phad Noodles. What choice did “you” have in choosing to order noodles instead of say a Thai Green Curry? You say that you wanted to eat noodles and you had noodles, is this not freedom? But did you “choose to want” noodles?

Human beings have no control over their wants and desires. We are all free to act according to our desires but we are not free to choose what we desire. Your desires are dependent on other preceding events in your life and you have no control over them. A rapist’s desire to rape maybe comes from his incapacity to have a normal social life which might be caused by his unfortunate childhood which might be caused by his parents’ incompetence and so on up to the beginning of the universe. Everything that happens is a long chain of cause and effect originating from the beginning of the universe. [4]

How do Physicalism and Dualism fare against Free Will?

I submit that if you are a physicalist, you must agree that free will does not exist. A physicalist believes that everything in the world is physical, i.e., mental phenomenon are all physical properties of our brains. Now if we have complete knowledge of the laws of physics and the initial properties of all particles such as their initial positions, velocities, accelerations, forces, wave functions, etc. and we have infinite computational power, we can correctly determine the state of the universe at any instant in the future. Even if we account for random quantum events that are non-deterministic, they still don’t give us free will as randomness by definition means that we have no control over it. Surely of we can determine everything, there is no free will.

Dualists on the other hand maintain that mental phenomena have fundamentally nonphysical natures, so to account for minds we must assume the existence of nonphysical substances or properties. Now I have already shown above that even of we consider mental phenomenon to be nonphysical, they are eventually caused by events that are either external to us or those that we do not have any control over. So, our will is not “free”. An important point to note here is that I have not proved here that that whatever we do is caused “only” by factors that we have no control over. I am just trying to explain that absence of free will is totally compatible with Dualism. Now, a dualist might come around and say that some nonphysical substances that give us our mental properties might give us free will. But I have shown above that any decision is always, partially or completely, dependent on some previous factor, therefore our wills can not be totally free. Also, to postulate some nonphysical entity to explain free will is not useful as you would need to explain that entity first.

Science and Free Will

In 1983, the pioneering scientist Benjamin Libet conducted a study in which he wired up subjects to an EEG machine to measure their brain activity. He then put a timer in front of the, asked them to consciously decide to make a hand movement and then report the exact time they had made the conscious decision and the results were extremely fascinating. He found that “the onset of cerebral activity clearly preceded by at least several hundred milliseconds the reported time of conscious intention to act” [5]. This means that the subjects’ brain had already initiated the movement long before the subject consciously decides to move his hand. Another study conducted in 2008 “found that the outcome of a decision can be encoded in brain activity of prefrontal and parietal cortex up to 10 s before it enters awareness”. This delay presumably reflects the operation of a network of high-level control areas that begin to prepare an upcoming decision long before it enters awareness” [6]. If we are able to predict what you are going to do even before you have made conscious decision, then your consciousness is evidently not free and therefore, your conscious decisions are not free. Hence, your free will is an illusion. You simply do not have the freedom that you think you have. [7]

There have been wide range of neuroscientific studies that have all pointed to the absence of free will. There is an overwhelming metaphysical and scientific evidence that free will does not exist.

Implications

I would like to briefly mention here the implications of the view that free will does not exist before I close this essay. I imagine I must have come across as some sympathetic apologist for rapists and murderers in this essay. But I do have pity and sympathy for them as in my view, they have been the victims of bad genes, bad childhood, and bad situations. I am not advocating for a complete change in our justice system, I am just advocating for a change in the philosophical basis of the justice system. The purpose of justice system should not be retribution, but rehabilitation. Some people might also point out this view might lead to nihilism and goes against our theories of ethics. But again, I would like to point out that if this is true (which it most likely is), then we need to come up with ethical theories that are compatible to this. This view would completely throw God out of the picture. Moreover, there are ethical theories such as those based on the principle of Utility put forward by Jeremy Bentham and JS Mill are compatible with the absence of Free Will. [8]

References

[1] O’Connor, Timothy and Christopher Franklin, “Free Will”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2020 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2020/entries/freewill/>.

[2] Burge, Tyler. “Philosophy of Mind: 1950–1990.” Philosophical Review 101 (1992): 3–51, URL = < https://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2185043>

[3] Harris, S. (2012). Free will. Free Press

[4] CosmicSkeptic. 2018, April 1. Why Free Will Doesn’t Exist [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwaXqep-bpk&t=262s&ab_channel=CosmicSkeptic

[5] Libet B, Gleason CA, Wright EW, Pearl DK. Time of conscious intention to act in relation to onset of cerebral activity (readiness-potential). The unconscious initiation of a freely voluntary act. Brain. 1983 Sep;106 (Pt 3):623–42. doi: 10.1093/brain/106.3.623. PMID: 6640273.

[6] Soon CS, Brass M, Heinze HJ, Haynes JD. Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain. Nat Neurosci. 2008 May;11(5):543–5. doi: 10.1038/nn.2112. Epub 2008 Apr 13. PMID: 18408715.

[7] Rationality Rules. 2017, November 17. Free Will — Debunked [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4Oyi1T-HmU&ab_channel=RationalityRules

[8] Rationality Rules. 2017, June 30. Everyday Life Without Free Will — Alex J O’Connor (Cosmic Skeptic) [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lks1MfZ8gQU&ab_channel=RationalityRules

[9] Bode, S., He, A. H., Soon, C. S., Trampel, R., Turner, R., & Haynes, J. D. (2011). Tracking the unconscious generation of free decisions using ultra-high field fMRI. PloS one, 6(6), e21612. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0021612

[10] Rescorla, Michael, “The Computational Theory of Mind”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2020 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2020/entries/computational-mind/

[11] Fried I, Mukamel R, Kreiman G. Internally generated preactivation of single neurons in human medial frontal cortex predicts volition. Neuron. 2011 Feb 10;69(3):548–62. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2010.11.045. PMID: 21315264; PMCID: PMC3052770.