The question of whether we have free will or not is one of the most important and most confusing
today. You’ve probably watched videos or read articles stating that even if one were not to
have any free will and the universe is fully deterministic, we shouldn’t worry about it.
Those arguments couldn’t be more incorrect. If free will can be proven not to exist
in any form or philosophy, which I’m going to take a look at in this video,
it would have drastic ethical consequences for society.
Part of the confusion regarding the free will vs. determinism debate is that many experts,
philosophers, physicists, and others don’t clearly understand the question’s semantics,
what we even mean by free will vs. determinism.
Before attempting to answer the question,
let’s first go over what we mean by free will and determinism.
First, there are different types of determinism in philosophy. The type of
determinism ’ll be focusing on in this video is called causal determinism, also referred to as
nomological determinism, which states that events within a given paradigm are bound by causality
in such a way that prior states completely determine any state (of an object or event).
Simply put, the state of the universe right
now determines what happens next regardless of our will.
Note that causal determinism is not necessarily the same thing as
predeterminism. Predeterminism states that all events are determined far in advance.
Keep this in mind as we go forward, as it’s a source of much confusion.
Free will is the ability to choose between different possible courses of action unimpeded.
Specifically (i) in the sense that one can choose otherwise, or at minimum that one is able not
to choose or act as one does, and (ii) in the sense that one is the source of one’s action.
Many people think determinism is in full contrast with free will,
but this is not the case as in some theories, the two are compatible.
Theories of determinism and free will can either be compatibilist or incompatibilist.
Incompatibilism is the position that free will and determinism are logically incompatible.
If one exists, the other can not exist.
Compatibilism is the position that determinism is compatible with free will.
The philosopher Galen Strawson outlined all the possible deterministic vs. free will theories
using the following table where T = the philosophy is true, F= false, and ? is fully unknowable.
The correct answer to the free will question,
or at least the best answer that describes reality at this time, is one of these possible answers.
Ok, so which is it? Well, to give you the answer, we have to do two things.
First, we have to find out if causal determinism is a real thing and is logical. Then,
decide if it’s compatible with the definition of free will I gave above.
So, what exactly is causal determinism in philosophy?
French scholar Pierre Simon Laplace gave one of the earliest and most straightforward
examples of what we mean by determinism; an idea now referred to as Laplace’s Demon.
In 1814 Laplace imagined a vast intellect, later renamed to ‘demon’ by his contemporaries,
that knew the positions and velocities of all particles and understood all the forces of nature
and computational power. Theoretically, this demon would know exactly what would happen next in any
given situation as it could do the calculations needed to predict where each thing would end up.
If you believe our minds are made up of atoms and are a part of nature just like everything
else in the universe, Laplace's Demon will know precisely what you will do or think next,
no matter how much you try to trick it or will it away.
Of course, nothing like Laplace's demon exists today, and such a thing may not even be possible.
The important thing to understand is that if such a thing could exist and that all events
in the present determine the next subsequent event, then causal determinism is true.
Today it’s accepted that quantum mechanics is a better description of matter and energy than the
Newtonian physics of Laplace's time. In quantum mechanics, the study of energy at small scales,
there’s no velocity, position, and certainty is never absolute. Therefore, some experts argue,
causal determinism can’t be true since energy and matter are just
distributions of probability with particles fluctuating randomly in and out of existence.
First, I want to point out that what these experts seem to be arguing against
is predeterminism, the idea that all events are already predetermined
and that one could predict the future, not causal determinism itself.
Even if aspects of the universe at a small scale are entirely unknowable
causal determinism can still exist. In fact, one needs not even explore
the different interpretations of quantum mechanics or even wait around for a grand
unification theory of all matter and energy to conclude causal determinism and free will.
Just because something is random doesn’t mean that human choice or behavior influenced it in any way.
Our human will and ability to choose things don’t affect the randomness of quantum fluctuations.
The law of conservation of energy states that no new energy or information can be created
out of nothing, so technically, there is nothing new fluctuating into existence.
Yes, perhaps a Laplace’s Demon-type entity will never be able to predict
the future with complete accuracy due to quantum indeterminacy. But
that doesn’t mean we’re no longer bound by cause and effect and rigid laws of nature.
For causal determinism to be false, it would appear that one would need to break the laws of
nature or come up with an entirely new coherent, logical description of how reality works. This new
description of reality would go against centuries worth of scientific tests and analysis.
Glanen Stawson, the philosopher, mentioned at the top of the video, lays out this a priori argument:
If one is responsible for what one does in a given situation,
then one must be responsible for the way one is in certain mental respects. But it is impossible
for one to be responsible for the way one is in any respect. This is because to be responsible
in some situation S, one must have been responsible for the way one was at S−1.
To be responsible for the way one was at S−1, one must have been responsible for the way one was at
S−2, and so on. At some point in the chain, there must have been an act of origination of a new
causal chain. But this is impossible. Man cannot create himself or his mental states ex nihilo.
It appears that causal determinism is true in our best description of reality
and how it works. What about question two? Does causal determinism fully negate free
will then? Again, there’s confusion because some experts think it automatically does
when it may not. According to the definition of free will I outlined at the start,
it certainly seems so. Still, I’ll be exploring if there are any compatiblism solutions, again
meaning that we can have free will despite the universe being deterministic, in another video.
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