The illusoriness of free will is as certain a fact as the truth of evolution,
And unlike evolution, understanding this truth about the human mind
has the potential to change our sense of moral goodness
and what it would mean to create a just society.
The question of free will touches nearly everything people care about.
Religion, public policy, politics, the legal system, feelings of personal accomplishment,
emotions like guilt and pride, and remorse, …
So much of human life seems to depend on our viewing one another
as conscience agents capable of free choice.
So if the scientific community were ever to declare free will an illusion,
as I think we eventually must.
I think it would precipitate a cultural war far more acrimony than the one that have been held on the subject of evolution.
Now, i hope you do two things in this talk.
I hope to convince you that free will is an illusion.
And it is worst than an illusion. It is actually a total incoherent idea.
Which is to say it is impossible to describe the universe which it could be true.
Not only is it untrue, it's hard to even make sense of what have been claimed to be true.
And i also hope to convince you that understanding this truth about the human mind actually matters,
and it can change the way we view morality and questions of justice.
Now, the popular conception of 'free will' seems to rest on two assumptions.
The first is that each of us was free to behave differently that we did in the past.
You choose chocolate but you could have chosen vanilla.
It certainly seems like this is the world we living in.
The second assumption is that we are the conscious source of our thoughts and actions.
So your experience of wanting to do something is in fact the proximate cause of you doing that something.
You feel that you want to move… and then you move.
You are doing it. You, the conscious witness of your life.
Now unfortunately we know that both of these assumptions are just untrue.
The first problem is that we live in a world of cause and effect
and there’s no way of thinking about cause and effect that allows us to say that the buck stops here.
The Buck never stops.
Either our wills are determined by prior causes,
a long chain of prior causes, and “we’re not responsible for them,”
or they’re the product of chance, and we’re not responsible for them,
or they’re some combination of chance and determinism,
but no combination seems to give you the free will that people cherish.
Where is the freedom in doing what one wants
when one’s wants are the product of prior causes
which one cannot inspect and therefore could not choose.
and one had absolutely no hand in creating?
Nobody picks there parents, or the society in which they were born.
Nobody picks the life influences that shape the development of their nervous system.
You are no more responsible for the microstructure of your brain at this moment
than you are for your height,
Are you making red blood cells at this moment?
Hopefully your body is, but if it decided to stop,
you wouldn't be responsible for that change,
you'd be a victim of that change.
To say that you are responsible for everything that goes on inside your own skin
because it's all you
is to make a claim that bears absolutely no relationship to the actual experience
that has made "free will" a problem for philosophy.
The truth is we feel and presume an authorship over our own thoughts and actions
that is illusory.
Once we recognize that even the most terrifying people
are in some basic sense unlucky to be who they are,
the logic of hating them
as opposed to merely fearing them... goes away.
So, one consequence of viewing the world this way is that it reduces hatred,
which i think all things being equal is a very good thing.
It also Increases empathy and compassion.
You as the conscious witness of your inner life are not making these decisions.
You can only witness these decisions.
How can we be free as conscious agents
if everything we consciously intend was caused by events in our brain which we did not intend
was caused by events in our brain which we did not intend
and over which we had no control?
We can't.
So what does this mean?
Well, first this is what it doesn't mean.
The fact that our choices depend on prior causes
does not mean that choice doesn't matter.
To sit back and see what happens is also a choice that has its own consequences.
So, the choices we make in life are as important as people think,
but the next choice you make
will come out of a wilderness of prior causes
that you cannot see and did not bring into being.
You didn't pick the interactions
or the effects they had upon you
of every event and conversation,
and exposure of ideas you had in life.
Where is the freedom in this?
Yes. You are free to do what you want even now,
but where do your wants come from?
Now some of you might think this sounds very depressing.
It seems to take something away from us.
It does. It takes away an egocentric view of life.
But i think this could be tremendously liberating.
We are not truly separate.
We are linked to each other,
and to our past, and to history.
We are part of a system. And there for, what we do matters.
You can’t take credit for your talents,
but it matters that you use them.
You can really be blamed for your weaknesses,
but it matters that you correct them.
…So pride and shame don't make a lot of sense in the final analysis.
But they weren't much fun anyway.
These are isolated emotions.
What does make sense is a commitment to wellbeing
and to improving your lives and the lives of others.
Love and compassion makes sense.
But the idea that we as conscious beings
are deeply responsible for the character of our own minds
is just impossible to map onto reality.
And if we want to be guided by reality
rather than by the fantasy life of our ancestors,
I think our views on this topic have to change.