For thousands of years, it’s been believed that our ability to think and overcome basic
instincts is what sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. Humans can communicate
in ways no other animal does, we can build and use tools, write, invent, and make informed
decisions. But are we just deluding ourselves? This is Unveiled, and today we’re answering the
extraordinary question; what’s the REAL reason that you don’t have free will?
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Philosophers have been interested in the concept of “free will” for millennia. The earliest
examples we have date back to Ancient Greece, when leading minds pondered the significance of fate,
asking; if our fates are divinely decreed, then what control do we have over our lives? This was
especially relevant in a world where the gods were thought to regularly use humans as pawns in their
schemes. The capricious deities of Ancient Greece were always working their own angles,
often selfishly, and manipulating humans from afar, sometimes for no reason other than to cause
mischief and sow chaos! How do you know whether you’ve done something because you wanted to do it,
or because the gods made you? That was the question that concerned the Ancient Greeks.
But today, neuroscientists investigating free will have different qualms with the idea,
and have been conducting research for decades to try to decipher how it really works. Or,
if it even exists at all. From a scientific perspective,
the question about free will centers on consciousness versus subconsciousness.
Has your brain, on a far deeper level than anyone could be aware of, already made up
its mind before you make a conscious decision? A handful of philosophers and psychologists over
the years have drawn conclusions from this, saying that your brain only tricks you into
thinking you’re making a conscious decision. Really, you’re not free to make any choice
other than the one you do. Your subconscious has already chosen for you. And even if you go
back and change your decision, well, that could still be your subconscious at work,
too! Perhaps you were just fighting against its initial decision until you couldn’t fight anymore.
One of the most famous experiments in the field was neuroscientist Benjamin Libet’s,
in 1983. Libet found that when subjects moved their wrists, unconscious brain activity preceded
their conscious decision to do so. Studies have also found that people’s brains will
retroactively trick them into thinking they made a ‘correct’ choice in simple questions,
regardless of the actual answer. And this isn’t quite the “false memory” phenomenon,
either; as it’s been shown to occur immediately after an event.
The controversial philosopher and neuroscientist Sam Harris agrees with this, saying that the
free will of an individual is an illusion, and that people’s choices are determined by myriad,
uncontrollable factors, both internal and external. We’re being made to think we have
freedom when, really, experiments have shown the brain often makes decisions long before we’re
consciously aware of them. For example, humans all have reflexes, and you may react to an event
before your conscious brain can make sense of it. Reflexes are often characterized as “involuntary”,
and are things we do to protect ourselves from harm. If an ancient caveman, for instance,
was getting attacked by a wild animal, he wouldn’t have time to think everything
through. He’d just have to react, without making a conscious decision, to save his own
life. THIS is what neurologists are getting at when they say free will is an illusion,
that our reactions are determined by physical, often unconscious processes. But this is an area
of science that’s proven very tricky to study. It’s hard to pinpoint which parts of the brain
are responsible for these processes, making it difficult for scientists to examine them.
Another academic, Professor Peter Tse, disagrees with Harris’s assessment,
and has released books saying that, of COURSE humans have free will,
the evidence of that is all around us. Tse emphasizes people’s ability to resist base
impulses – like when you really want to order an unhealthy takeout, but stick to
your decision not to. He also points out the abilities we have to convert to vegetarianism,
to pick up a new hobby, or to reinvent ourselves in any other way, if we so desire.
From another perspective, society also has a role in what people are able to decide for themselves.
In most countries, for instance, you can’t really just choose whether or not to get a job. If you
DON’T get a job to earn money, the consequences could be dire. It could then be argued that the
fact that everyone apparently must get a job - and often one that isn’t personally fulfilling - is
an erosion of an individual’s free will. And also of their quality of life. Furthermore,
any one person might desire to buy expensive things or to get involved in a costly hobby,
but if they don’t have the financial means to do that… then arguably their free will is again
being limited. Maybe your free will is to buy a new instrument and learn how to play it… but
if you’re unable to buy the instrument itself, then you can’t enact this. So,
free will is an even more complex problem from a purely sociological perspective.
There are non-neurological ways to study this question, too. As mentioned at the top of this
video, the Ancient Greeks wanted to know how free will factored into fate and their pantheon of
machinating gods. Today, people wonder the same thing in relation to our modern-day concept of
divinity. A big debate between theists and atheists is why evil exists in the world.
Called the “logical problem of evil”, it’s often used as a reason why God cannot exist by atheist
philosophers, who argue that if God DID exist and was all-loving, He wouldn’t allow evil in
the world. The “free will defense”, however, is something religious believers use to counter
the atheist perspective on evil, saying that God imbued humans with free will when He created us,
and it’s not up to Him what humans choose to do with that. Some perpetrate horrific
acts against others, because it’s their free will to do so. In this model, free will itself
is so important that it’s ‘worth’ the evils that ensue. What this tells us about humans
is just how much we DO value free will, or at least, the illusion of free will, if we place
so much importance on it that we’re willing to accept terrible things as a consequence.
Another question about free will arises from the religious belief in God’s foreknowledge of events
to come. If God is omniscient (all-knowing), and can see the future - including the paths
we will choose, ourselves - doesn’t that mean that we can’t actually choose otherwise? One
response to this is to see God as outside time, looking at complete lifetimes,
with all their choices and consequences. The idea of free will can be more challenging to reconcile
with other conceptions of God’s omnipotence and omniscience however. Calvinism, for instance,
an early branch of Christian Protestantism, has a doctrine of “predestination”, meaning
that even before we’re born, God chooses who will go to hell and who to heaven.
It's not all about religion, though. Philosophers and scientists are also interested in ideas of
predestination, or rather, determinism – the idea that all events, including our choices,
are determined by previous causes. According to this view, the brain state that leads us to
a ‘choice’ was just the physical result of the brain state that came before it,
and so on. An associated idea is ‘fatalism’, or the idea that future events are inevitable,
and we should resign ourselves to our predetermined destiny. In a sense,
we must all live with a sense of fatalism, because even if we believe we can make free
choices in the future, we can’t go back and change the choices we already have made.
One of the most famous thought experiments touching on this issue is the grandfather
paradox. If you could go back in time, and had the chance to kill your grandfather
before he had your father or mother, could you? You’re standing there, finger on the trigger,
with nothing physically constraining you. Doing so would result in a paradox however,
because you would have never been born to travel back in time to kill him in the first
place. So it must be impossible. Yet, not being able to do so seems to violate our
basic idea of free will. It could be argued however that in this situation, the future,
which is now our past, has already taken into account what we will decide to do.
There are various other alternatives to fatalism, too. Some thinkers believe that
free will and determinism are compatible, for example, provided we define free will in the
right way. Many compatibilists believe that, as long as someone had the freedom to act in
accordance with their own motivations, they can always be said to have chosen freely.
Ultimately, whether or not humans have free will is something you need to decide as an
individual – that is, if you’re “free” to do so in the first place. All in all,
it’s certainly a mind-bending subject… but that’s the real reason you might not have free will.
What do you think? Is there anything we missed? Let us know in the comments, check out these other
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