You have no free will; free will is the greatest illusion known to all of mankind.
Yeah, that’s right. I said you have no free will. Heck, I didn’t even have free will as to whether or not I would write this column.
Last month in the Chronicles of Higher Education, six academians wrote articles on whether or not free will exists. Four of the six academians wrote that free will does not exist; the other two argued that free will does exist.
Hilary Bok, an associate professor of philosophy at John Hopkins University, argued that free will is compatible with the knowledge gained from recent advances in neuroscience. She claims that if determinism is indeed correct, we as humans still have a need to make decisions.
Since we still have to make decisions, we have to weigh “alternatives,” which Bok defines as “an action that is physically possible.” She said a person is free, according to most philosophers, if “she can make a reasoned choice among various alternatives and act on her decision; in short, only if she has the capacity for self-government.”
Bok thinks neuroscience can’t definitively answer questions concerning the relationship between free will and determinism.
“Neuroscience can explain what happens in our brains: how we perceive and think, how we weigh conflicting considerations and make choices, and so forth,” Bok wrote. “But the question of whether freedom and moral responsibility are compatible with free will is not a scientific one, and we should not expect scientists to answer it.”
Bok is correct that neuroscience can’t “definitively” prove the relationship between free will and determinism. Science can never prove anything definitively. That is the nature of science; it is always being improved and refined.
At any moment, a scientific theory can be replaced and disproven by another. As Albert Einstein once said, “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.”
At the moment, I believe advances in science, even advances in philosophical thought, disprove the notion of free will.
I would define free will the same way Jerry Coyne, professor at the University of Chicago, defines it. He writes, “at the moment when you have to decide among alternatives, you have free will if you could have chosen otherwise.”
Free will is an illusion. We live in a deterministic world. The universe is governed by universal laws. The universe is governed by the laws of physics. All things that have been and will be are governed by these laws. We are constrained by these laws. This is what makes us human; we are limited.
Humans obviously are limited by physical laws of nature. I don’t have the ability to change the chemical structure of my body and make all my atoms oxygen. This seems simple enough.
But if every action and event that has ever occurred must follow the laws of physics, the actions of people were already determined by other factors which they couldn’t control.
I’ll use myself as an example of why free will doesn’t exist. The Big Bang started the expansion of the universe, which is expanding as you read this. The expansion of the universe allowed the formation of galaxies, star systems and planets. The formation of these planets allowed for the creation of human life, including my own life today.
Each event depended on the other. Determinism adheres to the belief that every event and action is dependent on other earlier and interconnected events. If free will truly existed, at the moment when a person makes a choice, that person must have actually had the “ability” to have chosen otherwise.
That’s the thing though; a person doesn’t have the “ability” to choose a different course of action. This “ability” is an illusion. When I wrote this column, it seemed like I was making a free choice, but I wasn’t.
When my decision to write this column is taken into account, along with all the other factors in the universe, past and present, my decision was not free. My decision was dependent on and coerced by other events.
Did you see that my column is in English? I bet you did. Why is it in English? Why isn’t it in French instead? That is because I was born in the United States to English-speaking parents.
If I was born in another country, my native language would probably be different and I would have a different perspective on life; this column might not even exist.
Free will can’t exist because we never have a choice as to whether we want to come into this world or not.
At the moment of birth, your life is already determined by other forces.
It is up to you to find out what choices you were determined to make.
Agnetta • Sep 22, 2014 at 8:22 pm
It is amazing how young people, maybe young”science people” know about The wisdom of humanity, and how they miss any kind of humble spirit!
For those, so sure about their free will(hahaha), the Life will teach you The truth.
You have free will??
Really?!hahaha
valentina • May 2, 2012 at 10:12 am
So why am I reading and writing in English when my first language is Italian?
Mike • Apr 22, 2012 at 6:05 pm
“Free will is an illusion. We live in a deterministic world. The universe is governed by universal laws. The universe is governed by the laws of physics. All things that have been and will be are governed by these laws. We are constrained by these laws. This is what makes us human; we are limited.”
A very derisive statement, and not very convincing to me for several reasons: 1. the relationship between precept and concept cannot happen without what we call “thinking.” so the first and foremost question, in my opinion is, “what is thinking?”because we use thinking to determine whether or not we are free. Nero-science and other fields can tell us about their findings, but there’s still a lot we don’t know in the area. 2. Dark Matter. It keeps galaxies from flying apart but we have no idea really what it is. 3. Quantum mechanics, where the “laws of physics” begin to break down.
Interesting article. I’d say your free to believe that your not free, if that floats your boat…:)
Anon • Apr 18, 2012 at 5:44 pm
Is consciousness an effect of a physical subset of out brain or is it a relationship with what cannot be limited? If the former, how could we ever understand let alone communicate the complexity of deterministic relationships? There is no way if our system is closed. So, it is a waste of energy to even discuss this. Our brains have evolved the service of inference for survival, not entertainment. Let’s restrain our abilities to that end.
Funkenstone • Apr 15, 2012 at 9:47 am
Surely April 1st was a better date for publication of this column. To quote George Orwell, “One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that; no ordinary man could be such a fool.” Certainly our futures can be shaped by external events, much like your future will be affected by the after effects of the fiscal time bomb set to explode within the US Treasury. There’s nothing you can do about that, just as there’s nothing you can do about the way your DNA affects your brain chemistry. Our brains aren’t fully developed until our mid 20s. That’s why your car insurance rates are so high right now. Believe me, I know. I was a young, ideologically liberal college student once too. Fortunately I got better. You want to be a lawyer. Events beyond your control may force you to become a defense attorney. I would love to be there for the jury’s verdict when your defense was, “My client had no choice but to rob the gas station and shoot the clerk. She had no free will because of physics.”
Thomas Smith • Apr 13, 2012 at 11:39 am
If you felieve that physics shows we have no free will, then you simply do not understand enough about phyiscs. A predictive world does not remove the aspect of free will, it simply changes its location. As tests are proving, the decisions that the universe makes are influenced by many things, including future events. So, yes, your future ma ybe known and ready to begin at birth, however, that path is decided (at least in part), by your future decisions.
Don Wilkie • Apr 13, 2012 at 10:44 am
The “we have no free will” philosophy, whether based on God, genetics, physics, or any other deterministic factor, is merely a convenient way for people to abrogate their responsibility for their own actions.
Wendell Wiggins • Apr 13, 2012 at 8:42 am
We do have free will. That doesn’t mean that we act randomly. It means that we have the ability to act based on the things we value.
We are not deterministically constrained because of several factors. One important physical circumstance is that complex systems (we are certainly complex) exhibit the variability and freedom from past states described by “Chaos Theory.” Another point is that high-level functions such as our consciousness are “emergent phenomena.” That means that they arise out of the simpler elements of physics but are able to control the simpler elements that make them.
A good book dealing with this is Michael Gazzaniga’s “Who’s in Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain.”
Note that free will has no spiritual component. It happens strictly by the physics of our universe.
Enjoy your freedom!
12-gauge Boson • Apr 13, 2012 at 5:27 am
One problem with this new dogma of the young organized science religion is, of course, that if my decision this morning to scratch my nose with my left hand instead of my right hand – if indeed my decision yesterday night to check out that waitress’ mammaries instead of her glutei was predetermined the moment of the big bang, that means that it would be entirely within the realm of the possible to take any random bit of matter such as my pants and use it to infer the day you die as well as find out Hitler’s favorite color because both were predetermined. No room for error if done right because there is only one possible course of events: the predetermined course.
A gross oversimplification, no doubt, but still a grain of truth at its core. Another great relief is that I can now murder anyone I want and argue before court that it wasn’t my fault at all – I had to do it because it was predetermined. I had no choice in the matter. It was always going to happen this way from the moment of creation. So why incarcerate me? I didn’t do anything wrong!
Denying Free Will on causes of determinism is just like using the ontological argument to “prove” the existence of God. It’s fun, it proves your point very eloquently, and best of all, it can’t be falsified! That’s great, until it isn’t.
And before you bash me for writing this: it’s not my fault. I didn’t WANT to write this. The universe forced me to do it.
Jeff K • Apr 13, 2012 at 1:31 am
No, this is simply not true. What you are saying is that some alien force could see all of your life and know everything about it before it happened if they had all the information about the starting conditions. There are several things wrong with this.
First, no one can ever have ALL the information. Quantum physics and, I think one could argue, general relativity forbid it. In quantum physics you can’t know the position and momentum at the same time. So you can’t know how the system is going to evolve perfectly. Plus the more complicated a system is the more difficult it is to predict. Think about chaos theory.
So in effect, no human or alien could ever know the choice someone will make before they make it. So you have no way of knowing whether the choice is the “free” choice or whether it is the “un-free” choice. So in effect, only the one who made the choice, makes the choice.
Also, choices are effected by more than just what we are presented with. The fact that you believe that you don’t have free will alters how you will choose.
Next I’d like to say the following. This kind of misuse of physics and science is the reason that people don’t trust scientists. They say “who do you think you are telling me I don’t have free will.”
BobG • Apr 13, 2012 at 1:01 am
Free will consists in being consciouss enough to choose whether, for example to react or not react to a stimulus. Only people who have worked at this for many years are able to manifest in this way. Liiewise, only people who have practiced for many years can play a difficult piano concerto, win a PGA tournament, or argue a case before the Supreme Court. Will is also something that can be learned. Theoretically any mammal with a complex enough nervous system can achieve this. But even though free will may not happen for most people does not mean that there is any kind of determinism in the universe. There is always some level of uncertainty, and there is always some degree of chaos due to an almost infinite number of variables; in other words, the future is always indeterminate. That is what physics really tells us!
Cobb • Apr 13, 2012 at 12:43 am
I would hope that Quantum Physics would have something deeper to propose to the long held argument between Free Will and Determinism. To say that “if we knew the direction and velocity of every particle in the whole universe we could map out time infinitely” ignores the fact that we literally cannot ever know the position and velocity of every particle in nature. Wave-Particle duality, as far as my limited understanding of the subject goes, seems to show this. There are so many “universal laws” of the universe that we haven’t even begun to comprehend.
dhr • Apr 13, 2012 at 12:20 am
We have free will due to quantum physics uncertainty principle. Nature is not deterministic. All probabilities exist simultaneously. The electron exists in an infinite number of potential states until we observe it. This gives a great deal of leeway at the molecular level, and our brain is electrical = quantum mechanical = not determined. (well, everything is quantum mechanical, technically speaking. Classical laws are the averaging of the quantum mechanical probabilities. It’s possible that your car will suddenly disappear and reappear a mile away. vastly miniscule probability, but non-zero.) This was quite a surprise to physicists, including Einstein. but totally accepted now.
Gerald Beckman • Apr 13, 2012 at 12:08 am
There is an argument favoring the no-free-will position, but this writer failed to make it.
JonRed • Apr 12, 2012 at 11:32 pm
Zero Free Will requires a Deterministic universe, such as 19th C. theorists postulated. Newtonian billiard-ball physics! A deterministic universe requires that one set initial conditions. Go ahead. Give it a shot. Good luck!
MT • Apr 12, 2012 at 9:38 pm
Physicists have known the world we live in is non-deterministic for about 100 years now. Quantum mechanics shows us that future outcomes are not only determined by the past, but instead there are many possible outcomes, each with its own probability of occurring. We have no way of definitively predicting the future, the best we can do is say that one outcome is likely and another is not. Every time a measurement is conducted there is a plethora of states the object could assume while still obeying physical laws, yet for some mysterious reason it picks one. This mysterious ability of subatomic particles to choose to occupy one state or another prevents the universe from being deterministic in nature. Its as if the laws of nature are recommendations that on average are followed.
novyj23 • Apr 12, 2012 at 9:18 pm
I decided to not read till the end of that,… blablabla.
That is my free will!
Paul • Apr 12, 2012 at 8:45 pm
This is a bad argument– both bad science and bad philosophy. A) A fully deterministic view of physics is pretty antiquated. Pierre-Simon Laplace was cutting edge in the early 18th century; now, not so much. This isn’t to say of course that quantum phenomena play a meaningful role in mental processes — they might or they might not. Certain extremely prominent quantum physicists have argued that they do (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orch-OR), but there isn’t a consensus. Nevertheless, your argument assumes that they definitely do not — a highly unjustified assumption. B) Let’s suppose (incorrectly) a very deterministic physical model. Your argument is built upon semantic equivocation. “You have free will if you could have chosen otherwise,” but you never defined what it means to say that you “could have chosen” otherwise. Determinism excludes randomness, and entails that you could accurately predict future states based on perfect knowledge of present states. So there is one outcome and that outcome is predictable, so it would be possible to know which alternative you will choose if you had perfect knowledge of the universe. Simply because you can predict something accurately doesn’t mean there wasn’t a choice — you predicted the outcome of a *choice*. The deterministic causes of that choice include thought processes, reflection, emotional states, etc. etc. *That* is the essence of free will, that the outcomes of your choices depend upon mental causes in which you considered both options, thought of reasons for both, and ratified one set of those reasons. Whether or not the outcome of that process is perfectly predictable under impossible ideal conditions doesn’t falsify “could have chosen otherwise” unless you choose to interpret that phrase in a way that removes its face validity as a definition. At best, even if you did disprove “free will,” you disproved it in a way that it totally irrelevent b/c it doesn’t speak to any of the meanings we attach to free will (like the reasonableness of making moral evaluations of the decisions of other human beings). To paraphrase Gorgias, you have no case, and even if you had a case, it couldn’t be supported, and even if it could be supported, it would be useless.
preali • Apr 12, 2012 at 8:40 pm
I think the article is superficial and doesn’t really understand what is meant by free will. The fact that the universe was created in the big bang and that our atoms were created in stars that went Nova billions of years ago and life evolved from these elements has nothing to do with the choice of whether George Zimmerman would kill Trayvon Martin [as an example] is the kind of decision where we could examine if a person has free will. I think where the real issue is if we can make decisions that are outside our realm of experience. We make decisions based on sets of ideas or memories which are contained in the neurons of our brain. When we make a choice many factors come into play. [1] do we have all the information [2] how many choices are available to us [3[ can we act against our fears or our basic beliefs[4] Can we control our emotions[which are triggered by emotions and memory] [5] since the amount of storage in the brain is gigantic but still finite, can we really do anything novel that isn’t already a consequence of the interaction of this stored information.
In the field of computation, we can define a system with finite memory as a finite state machine. A finite state machine can have almost infinite states. It can be shown mathematically that over a sufficiently large period of time that states will eventually repeat.
I would argue that the brain is a finite state machine and behavior the outcome of particular states that the brain is entering of leaving. We are not conscious of this process as thoughts and decisions are for the most part spontaneous and unconscious. When we make a decision many factors that are involved are also unconscious and so our decisions are limited by these unconscious factors. A big one would be fear triggered by past memories or prejudice. A prejudiced person can no longer control his prejudice that Ghandi could be given the choice of shooting a government official. Certain choices are beyond the capacity for people to choose. Thus all possibility of choice is very limited and hence not completely free. If we had free will nobody would have a problem drugs or staying on a diet, they would make the decision to loose weight and move on. Hence I argue that we have limited free will. conditioned by our experiences and aptitudes to take on new information.
Chris • Apr 12, 2012 at 8:20 pm
Your argument for the lack of free will employs the same catch-22 used by creationists to explain the origins of life – the explanation itself is the sole proof of the explanation’s correctness. It’s not enough to simply say any time someone chooses one among several options, they were destined to have made that choice all along, and therefore, free will doesn’t exist. You justify that argument by stating that all *matter* in the universe obeys certain laws, but you don’t explain how choice is governed by those same laws. Simply because electrons may be the carriers of that choice doesn’t prove that the choice itself is bound by the same laws governing it’s carriers.
Quantum physics theorizes a layer of randomness at the quantum scale. If we are to believe your explanation that free will doesn’t exist because every single piece of matter in the universe is simply playing out an unchangeable, prearranged story, we would have to disbelieve quantum physics in it’s entirety.
Another example of the shaky ground your argument is built upon is your comment on what makes us human – “All things that have been and will be are governed by these laws. We are constrained by these laws. This is what makes us human; we are limited.” If your sole determining factor of what makes a human a human the fact that we’re limited by the fundamental laws of nature, then everything in the universe is also human, since everything is likewise governed by those same laws.
Yet another argument proffered is that free will doesn’t exist because we don’t have a choice of being born, but here again, the explanation itself is the only proof of it’s own validity. You make no attempt to explain how the lack of choice of being born limits any choice throughout the entire remainder of the subject’s life.
It’s an interesting topic to be sure, and like the origins of life and consciousness, it may be beyond the ability of science to conclusively explain, at least at the current time. Nonetheless, the exercise is always worth the effort, but it should be an honest exercise. If you’re only proof of the validity of your argument is your argument itself, you’ve taken the easy way out and proved nothing.
Scott Cline • Apr 12, 2012 at 7:35 pm
He doesn’t have a choice, George!
george osburn • Apr 12, 2012 at 7:20 pm
let’s say one makes a decision. is that decision made without prior knowledge or genetic influence? probably not. now retrace prior knowledge on back to the time of ones birth. new knowledge is added. that new knowledge may or may not reshape prior knwledge. the IMPORTANT POINT is that the accumulation of knowledge through time cannot be foreseen. nor can the INFLUENCE it can have on our mind. with MRI technology it seems decisions are made and the knowledge we keep are made without our conscious awareness. looks like Marvin Minsky is right – no one is in control.
John W. Bales • Apr 12, 2012 at 5:52 pm
The idea that the law of physics are incompatible with free will is usually a result of taking a ‘billiard ball’ view of causality–the idea that all actions are the result of prior actions. This is in contra-distinction to the Aristotelian view that entities cause actions: What an entity is determines what it can do. In this view, free will may be explained as an emergent capacity resulting from our rational self-awareness. Our free will is part of our nature and a first cause. We are capable of setting the billiard balls in motion.
This also avoids the obvious conumdrum that, if we have no free will, we cannot claim to know it–we can only believe what we are compelled to believe.
E. Svensson • Apr 12, 2012 at 5:49 pm
Aaron,
Would you say that the worst individuals in history (Pol Pot, Hitler, Stalin, etc.) were not responsible for their actions? Or that our favorite people (i.e. Brad Pitt, Abraham Lincoln, St. Francis, etc.) are no more praiseworthy than Steve Buscemi, Jimmy Carter, and Pat Robertson?
Your reasoning is good, but I believe that human history contains clear counter-examples of the absence of free will.
M. • Apr 12, 2012 at 5:43 pm
LOVE IT! DO WE TRULY HAVE FREEDOM? FREEWILL?
Best article I’ve seen in a year!
George Ortega • Apr 12, 2012 at 3:42 pm
Great article. Would you consider doing a piece on my show Exploring the Illusion of Free Will?