Originally published on Medium on Apr 2, 2019.
Some background — this is one of two essays I wrote for my philosophy course at the University of British Columbia (PHIL 101). This second one is about free will, the first deals with theism.
I don’t know about you, but free will seems like one of the most interesting — and at the same time one of the most frightening — topics in philosophy. In this piece I’m going to lay out my understanding of free will, why I feel that it’s important to tackle the issue head-on, as well as my personal take on it. I’m pulling from Life Is a Coin With One Side (This American Life podcast #662, Act 2) as well as from common philosophical stances on the topic. I’ve noticed that for many, the concept itself is easy enough to grasp, but fully internalizing it with all of its implications can be a challenge. I hope that this piece can shed more light on the topic of free will and present it in an accessible way.
Even the very definition of free will is a topic of much debate in philosophic circles. It basically boils down to two stances — ‘absolute’ free will and ‘self-control’ free will.
The ‘absolute’ free will debate concerns the very foundations on which our universe was built. People who advocate for this kind of free will usually invoke some form of what they call agent causation — the notion that agents (i.e. living things) have special powers. In this view, agents can impact the universe irrespective of the cascade of causes and effects that make it up. There are, of course, many thinkers who counter this view. They state that invoking any explanation outside of our known universe goes against our scientific models as we know them today.
Participants in the other major wing of this debate — the ‘self control’ wing— assert that it is much more interesting to shift the discussion towards mental self control. Patricia Churchland, for example:
“I suggest that free will, as traditionally understood, needs modification… I suggest we first shift the debate way from the puzzling metaphysics of causal vacuums to the neurobiology of self control.”
There is definitely a sharper focus on intent if the discussion is shifted. For example — did Charles Whitman intend to shoot all those people at the University of Texas in 1966, or was his tumor to blame? While it’s perhaps the more practical discussion to have — with potential impacts on the legal system and other societal organs — , I do find it less interesting than the “puzzling metaphysics” discussion. The grander discussion of free will and causality seems to get down at the bedrock nature of our universe, and prompts profound existential questions.
Puzzling metaphysics is exactly what David Kestenbaum and Robert Sapolsky talk about on This American Life. They both take up the pessimistic view — I’m using this term technically — in that regardless of whether the world is deterministic* or random, our current understanding of physics leaves no room for free will. Sapolsky goes into this view deeper in his book Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst. He analyses all of the inputs that go into human choice-making, and explains that both our biological urges and our capacity for self-control are part of the same physical world. Quote (pg. 569):
“Here are just a few of the things we’ve seen in this book that can influence [self control]: blood glucose levels; the socioeconomic status of your family of birth; a concussive head injury; sleep quality and quantity; prenatal environment; stress and glucocorticoid levels; whether you’re in pain; if you have Parkinson’s disease and which medication you’ve been prescribed; perinatal hypoxia; your dopamine D4 receptor gene variant; if you have had a stroke in your frontal cortex; if you suffered childhood abuse; how much of a cognitive load you’ve borne in the last few minutes; your MAO-A gene variant; if you’re infected with a particular parasite; if you have the gene for Huntington’s disease; lead levels in your tap water when you were a kid; if you live in an individualist or a collectivist culture; if you’re a heterosexual male and there’s an attractive woman around; if you’ve been smelling the sweat of someone who is frightened. On and on.”
The sheer number of different inputs make all actions unique — but it doesn’t make them free. Sapolsky demonstrates that any thought or action is a byproduct of an intricate system of cause and effect. To suggest, as Churchland has, that the exercise of self control is free will is misguided in Sapolsky’s view (pg. 569):
“Of all the stances of mitigated free will, the one that assigns aptitude to biology and effort to free will, or impulse to biology and resisting it to free will, is the most permeating and destructive. “You must have worked so hard” is as much a property of the physical universe and the biology that emerged from it as is “You must be so smart.””
What Churchland defines as (‘self-control’) free will, Sapolsky would simply categorize as behavior — an outcome that is a function of myriad inputs. In addition, as Sapolsky sees it, if there is a cause behind every effect, and the universe if governed by the laws of physics, and we, as humans are part of the universe, then there is no such thing as agent causation and therefore no ‘absolute’ free will. Can’t win either way, hence the pessimist stance.
Let’s go back and look at how life first formed on earth to get a better sense of what “no such thing as agent causation” means. At some point — exactly why remains unclear — atoms began forming into larger clusters called molecules, and later groupings of molecules. Later still, these clusters developed the ability to replicate. Complexity further increased, and the world witnessed life evolve from molecules to single-celled organisms, and later to the diversity of plants and animals we see today. During the early stages of life, the only organisms around had behaviors that were as simple as can get. Take an organism, for example, that propels itself forwards or backwards, towards greater nutrient concentration. That’s the only thing it does. If we could write out its behavior in pseudocode, it would look something like this:
if (change in nutrient concentration < 0)
go backward;
else
go forward;
The organism, then, is making a basic choice — it takes in information from the environment, processes it, and produces an outcome. The organism can go forwards or backwards, and it “decides” which way based on the information presented to it. Also keep in mind that — regardless of whether the universe is deterministic* or not — this organism can only make one choice based on the variables it’s fed. It’s faced with other particles and organisms going on their own paths through the intricate web of causation. In a sense, it’s just reacting to the world around it.
Now if we ramp up the complexity, we get to humans, with our countless cultures, practices, values, technologies and social institutions. From this perspective, there’s nothing special about us — at least not in the way that a pro-free will person would argue. We don’t have “agent causation”, as far as we can tell. We are not entities separate from and observing the universe. We are the universe observing itself. As such, we are subject to whatever laws set this elaborate Rube Goldberg machine in motion.
Of course, my conscience wouldn’t be clean if I didn’t mention that it’s always best to be cautious of scientism creeping in — we should always question scientific conclusions. We don’t truly know the answer to the free will question, even if science points towards the notion that free is an illusion. Although unlikely, it’s nevertheless possible that our intuitions about free will are correct, and that contemporary science just does not have an adequate explanation for the phenomenon. Like visualizing 4D space, perhaps the true nature of free will is out of our reach. Since we are a firmly embedded part of our universe, it’s possible that we lack a certain ‘bird’s-eye view’ perspective from outside our experienced reality. Possibly. To quote Kahneman: what you see is all there is.
So while the jury’s still out, I’m of the opinion that it is best to act as though we have free will, even though it seems like we don’t. After all, we’re wired to think in free will terms anyways, and maybe we shouldn’t fight biology on this one. Assuming that we have free will raises the stakes on your life, and consequently leads to greater success. Therefore it’s possible that those who have the illusion of free will are selected for though natural selection. At the same time, it is somewhat relieving to realize that perhaps there is nothing special about us. We can develop an understanding of ourselves in a similar manner to all other objects in the universe since we too, like all other things, are combinations of atoms and the information encoded in them. As Sapolsky said (pg. 569): “To think otherwise is little more than folk psychology.”
Now let’s put this free will subject in a box and never talk about it again, it kind of freaks me out.
Image Credits
The image on the cover is a ribozyme. Its discovery “demonstrated that RNA can be both genetic material (like DNA) and a biological catalyst (like protein enzymes), and contributed to the RNA world hypothesis, which suggests that RNA may have been important in the evolution of prebiotic self-replicating systems” (Wikipedia, 2019).
*Determinism
A brief explanation of determinism that did not fit nicely into the main essay: In 1814, renowned scholar Pierre-Simon Laplace presented the world with a thought experiment. If you had a demon who knew the exact location and momentum of every particle in the universe, could he know the future? This is Laplacian determinism. Of course, the indeterminist answer to this question is a resounding no — the world is inherently probabilistic. Regardless, you can see how this has no bearing on our discussion. You can only make one choice based on the variables you’re faced with at any given moment. Indeterminism does not imply free will.
Hey Sav, do you have any tips on writing essays? I am continuously impressed by your clarity and understanding in writing. I would love to emulate that in my own work.
Thanks, Jordan