Free Will
Free will, what is it and do we have it?
What is Free will?
Before trying to understand whether free will exists, we should understand what we mean by free will. It cannot simply be the ability of an individual to perform any action they desire as they are limited by physical constraints. Indeed, searching on Google for 'what is free will' we see that free will is "the power of acting without constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's discretion".
However, this still holds some ambiguity as it is not clear whether the perception of having the ability to do something and not do it, is the same as possessing the ability to do something. For example, consider a time before Einstein discovered that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Now some individuals living in this time may have the desire to travel at a speed faster than the speed of light, but choose not to as they cannot build a vehicle to do so as they are busy doing other things. Therefore, can one say that this individual chose not to travel faster than the speed of light? From the perspective of the individual, they made this choice, however, from the perspective of physics there was no choice to be made as nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.
Despite this, we will, for discussion, suppose that free will is the ability to act on our desires which we will assume will be executable desires.
Determinism and Free Will
Determinism is the idea that the future state of the universe can, in principle, be computed from the current state of the universe using the laws of physics. That is, the laws of physics are not random but deterministic. Currently, our understanding of the quantum world is inherently probabilistic, and thus this may lead us to believe that the universe is not deterministic but random. However, our probabilistic understanding of the quantum world may just be an abstraction that we have made to make sense of the quantum world. It is entirely plausible that at a more fundamental level, we discover these quantum processes are governed by deterministic laws.
For example, consider this stream of data.
By Eouw0o83hf - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0.
It may appear random at first, but once you understand that it was generated by the rule 90 cellular automaton you realise that it is a completely deterministic process.
Where determinism is the antithesis of randomness, we should understand that determinism is not the antithesis of free will. It is entirely plausible that we live in a deterministic universe and also possess free will. Randomness cannot be free will since it is governed by the law of probability. Random systems have long-term dynamics that can be predicted. For example, if one were to repeatedly flip a coin, then in the long run one would expect to obtain the same, or very similar, number of heads and tails. Therefore, even though the coin flip is supposedly random, we would not say that the coin chooses to be heads or tails. Hence, if the universe were driven by a random process, it does not follow that the things within that universe possess free will. Although, from the perspective of the things inside the universe it may seem that they have free will, where in reality their actions are dictated by a universal equivalent of flipping a coin.
The distinction between free will and determinism arises as they operate at different scales. Determinism refers to the laws of physics governing the fundamental units of the universe. Whereas free will is an emergent phenomenon at the level of organisms.
The Perception of Free Will
Despite having a desire to do something we may be inadvertently constrained by social pressures to not carry out these desires. This social pressure may be implicit and be developed by our time operating in social environments. However, the pressure may be explicit, we may forced not to do something as evolution has made us reluctant to be subject to the social ramifications. In which case, have we chosen not to do something or has society forced us not to do so? After all, if society was structured or functioned differently we may even be encouraged to execute our desires. Better Angels of Our Nature, by Steven Pinker, identifies many instances of this. For example, there was a time when many gathered at the Coliseum to witness deathly battles. An individual in this scenario may be inclined to clap and cheer at the death of a man. However, in modern society, such behaviour would be greatly condemned and thus the modern individual will not be inclined to celebrate the death of another man.
The Physics of Free Will
One can take a physics-based approach to free will to try and circumvent ambiguities relating to perception.
In a podcast with Lex Fridman, Lee Cronin utilises the fundamentality of time to explore the concept of free will. More specifically, Lee Cronin explains that to have free will time must be fundamental. That is, the process by which events unfold is a fundamental aspect of our universe. For if time were not fundamental, then it would be driven by an external force that would rid you of your free will. Lee Cronin then goes on to make an interesting argument for why time must be fundamental. However, note that this does not then imply that we have free will, as it is conceivable that we do not have free will and time is fundamental. Lee Cronin's argument for why time must be fundamental is the idea that the universe is not large enough to contain its future. That is, the structure of the universe at present cannot contain all the necessary information to describe the future states of the universe. Note how this is not the same as the universe being deterministic. Indeed, the universe can be deterministic and not be large enough to contain all the information regarding the future. This links to the ideas of Stephen Wolfram regarding computational irreducible, who explains that although some systems are driven by explicit rules, evolving the system to a future state necessarily requires computing all intermediary states.
Lee Cronin makes this idea explicit by referring to the law of excluded middle. The law of excluded middle states that every statement is true or false. For events that have occurred in the past, we can apply the law of excluded middle as we can say with certainty whether an event has occurred or has not occurred. However, we cannot apply the law to events in the future as there is uncertainty, from our perspective, as to whether they will occur. Therefore, from our perspective, the universe is too large to contain itself as we cannot apply the law of the excluded middle to events in the future.
Similarly, Sean Carrol argues that since we cannot predict the future, the universe is too complex to contain itself and therefore it must be driven forward through our decisions. Sean Carroll distinguishes varieties of free will. Libertarian free will posits that our decisions cannot be explained by the laws of physics. That is, free will is incompatible with a deterministic universe. On the other hand, there is compatibilist free will which understands that we are made of atoms that follow the laws of physics, however, we have an emergent capacity to make our own decisions. This resonates with the distinction between determinism and free will made previously. Indeed Sean Carroll is on the side of compatibilist free will and argues that since the universe is too large to contain itself, we will never have the capacity to determine the future using the laws of physics.
For me it is unclear whether the universe being too large to contain itself is an inherent property of the universe, or reflects our incapacity to ponder the universe and its entirety. Observe how we are consistently developing technology to access more intricate details of our universe. In 2023 the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to a group of scientists who developed methods to generate light pulses at the attosecond level. Such methods allow us to take measurements of the universe at time intervals of one-millionth of a millionth of a millionth of a second. If progress in these methods continues, then what is to say that we cannot eventually reach a point where we know all there is to know about the universe and thus predict its future? Answering such questions will not help answer the question of free will, it merely eliminates libertarian free will, whereas compatibilist free will remains plausible since compatibilist free will is an emergent property.
The Conscious and Unconscious Mind
The compatibilist view of free will distinguishes between the atomic and human scale. It understands that at the atomic scale, everything is driven by the, not necessarily deterministic, laws of physics and thus free will is not present, however, at the human scale free will emerges. Thus we are left questioning whether free will is a uniquely human phenomenon. Is there a Goldilocks scale at which free will can exist? Indeed, at the scale of planets and the cosmos, there does not appear to be any evidence of free will.
Here we explore this human-centric view of free will and determine whether investigations of the human mind indicate that there exists a phenomena akin to free will.
In an Andrew Huberman podcast, Dr Paul Conti emphasises that the human mind is structured like an iceberg. With the unconscious mind consuming most of the brain's functionality, and the conscious mind only accounting for a minor portion of the activity. This seems to suggest that the majority of our decision-making is driven by processes in the unconscious mind. However, from a personal perspective, it seems as though I am consciously making decisions all the time. Indeed, I accept some of my actions occur unconsciously, such as darting my hand away from a hot surface I accidentally touched. However, I feel as though I consciously chose to write this blog post about free will, rather than being unconsciously driven to do so. It may be the case that unconsciously I make decisions all the time, however, when my unconscious mind is undecided it appeals to the conscious made to make the final call.
The question now is whether this conscious decision-making experience is free will or just the perception of free will. Is my unconscious brain giving me these choices to make, or has it already decided on the action I am to take? On the one hand, it may just seem wasteful for the brain to expend energy on providing already-answered questions for conscious consideration. On the other hand, the unconscious brain may do this to elicit the conscious experience in the organism it inhabits. The conscious experience is beneficial to the organisms for it provides an added dimension to the sensory information it is perceiving. It helps the organism to arrive at a more complete picture of the world which can then help the decision-making process. Thus, the conscious experience may just be an evolutionary advantageous property of organisms that is ignited by the unconscious mind through constructing a perception of free will.
Is there any way that we can alter the unconscious mind to then implicitly drive our decision-making processes? If so, then it is plausible that we have free will, otherwise, our unconscious mind drives all our decision making and we are just passengers. Robert Sapolsky argues that we are all moulded by our experiences and the environment. Our actions are merely a collective consequence of these experiences, and thus we have no free will. He supports these claims with experimental evidence that shows our unconscious brain to engage before the conscious brain registers a stimulus. Therefore, our response to a stimulus is dictated by the reaction of the unconscious brain. However, just as compatibilist free will recognises there is a spatial scale at which free will emerges, is there also a temporal scale at which free will emerges? It may be the case that immediate reactions to stimuli are initially recognised in the unconscious brain, but what about reactions over longer time scales?
The Implications of Free Will
Why do we need to determine if we have free will or not? Well, it can help settle some important moral conundrums. For example, if we do not have free will then it seems immoral to punish someone for crimes they committed, as ultimately they did not choose to commit the crime. Instead, we should offer criminals an environment to change and rehabilitate their unconscious minds such that their reactions are not criminal.
In any case, I feel as if I have free will. Even if it is an illusion displayed by my unconscious mind or an emergent phenomenon from the physical universe, I still choose to live my life as if I have free will as it fills me with purpose and determination.