The human mind is a complex biological machine. Much like its anthropogenic mechanical counterparts, if you reproduce it with infinite accuracy, the replica will be infinitely indistinguishable from the original.
In the case of the human mind, if there was a machine to reproduce my body both perfectly and instantaneously, and in which our exit from it was at random ends of a symmetrical room, there would be nothing to distinguish me from my copy. He would be every bit me as I – identical childhood memories, identical views, identical fears, identical speech synchronicities. At that moment in time of our exit from this imaginary contraption, my will would be known in its entirety to the person at the other end of the room.
Now imagine a computer simulation of a brain. My brain to be precise, with its exact genetic makeup stored in its vast data banks. Were you to simulate my life’s events with perfection to this virtual brain, including not just sensory inputs (sight, smells) but chemical influences as well (recreational drugs, hormones) you would also end up with a being that would be indistinguishable from myself in its thoughts. And were you to peek inside of it at any point in time, you would know exactly what I wanted at that time. My will. Were you to simulate all possible future outcomes, one simulated path would yield my will for the rest of my existence.
In fact, were you able to simulate the universe with perfect precision, in its entirety, you would know the will of every individual that inhabits the Earth. Not only that, but you would predict correctly all of their decisions for the rest of their life. And those of their children. And those of their children.
A device that could manage such a thing is impossible, as it would by definition require more matter than that which exists in the universe, but it does illustrate that your will is not open to independent choice. What you decide is entirely predictable and based on your history and those of your surroundings. Not a single person on this planet escapes this predictability, because they are the sum of their parts, organisms consisting of a series of interactions on a variety of scales.
Interactions that are no different at its essence than the gravitational pull that one body exerts on another. The only reason we don’t predict our behaviour with the same ease is because we consist of trillions of interactions from processes not all so clearly understood.
I’ve always defined free will as this idea that we had a choice that was up to us. That were you to relive the history of this planet, the outcome would change every time. This is just not so. And so if we are without a will that has no independence from our personal history, then ascribing a value to choice is futile, for the entirety of our life could be predicted with perfect precision from before its very inception.
As you finish reading my thoughts on the matter, you might take this a number of ways. How you interpret it is going to be partly up to your genetics, upbringing, what you ate that day, and interactions with other people who are subject to the same factors. You may choose to see it as rubbish, but my point is that were I to know you perfectly, I would have been able to tell you that you’d see it that way ahead of time. That you’d see it any differently wasn’t ever truly an option to begin with – which is precisely my point.
Comments
4 responses to “The Myth of Free Will”
Interesting post, Julien. I tend to agree with much of what you’re saying, though the conclusion I reach is very different from yours. I’d say that my definition of free will is in fact quite similar – I would define it as the ability to make choices based solely on our own reason and logic, free from external influences. Where we differ significantly is on our categorization of external and internal influences.
If I’m reading you right – and if I’m not, please correct me – but you ascribe everything from genetic material to personal experiences as an external influence on a given individual’s choices. I find that to be excessively broad. I would that these factors are not only the backbone of an individual’s reason, but are exactly what defines an individual as such, and distinguishes said individual from others – ergo, they are internal influences. If you strip away those factors – genetic material, in particular – you’re left with a lump of matter, indistinguishable from any other living organism or inanimate object. In such a scenario, free will would be an impossibility, because that lump of material would have no rational basis for its decision-making. It is precisely those factors – genetic material, personal experiences – that enable free will, not prohibit it.
As an example, think of a young child standing in front of a hot stove for the first time. There is nothing in that child’s experience that would tell him not to touch the stove, but he likes the way the element turns from black to glowing red. He touches it, out of curiosity, and burns his hand. This is an act of free will. The next time he’s in that same scenario, he may touch the stove again, just to see if that first time was an isolated incident, or he may not, because he remembers the pain from the first time. I would say that whatever choice he makes is free will. Over time, his decision not to touch the hot stove whenever he’s in front of it changes from a conscious to an unconscious choice, but it’s still a choice, and still, I would argue, free will. At any given moment, I could turn on my stove and press my hand against the element until it burns, but I choose not to, because my reason alone tells me that it’s a bad idea. That’s my free will, regardless of whether or not anyone could predict that I would follow such a course of action.
Now, I’m not denying that many (the vast majority, I would argue) of us allow other external factors to influence our decision-making. The opinions and feelings of our peers, our own emotions and basic animal instincts, etc. But while you say free will is impossible, I say it’s possible, albeit difficult to fully achieve on a consistent basis.
I don’t really want to get into the whole issue of “if you rewound the course of time and played it again, it would look the exact same,” because that deals with elements of random chance, which is a whole other debate on its own. I will, however, conclude by addressing your last line. I mostly agree with you there: I don’t think that an individual’s core beliefs are chosen, but are forged instead by the same factors you listed earlier in your post. I don’t extend this to a person’s choices, though. One’s beliefs are yet another internal influence on one’s reason. So, while it may have never been an option that I would disagree with you on the nature of free will, it was my choice to write this rebuttal. If you, or anyone else, could have predicted that I would do so, kudos to you, but that prediction does not rob me of my choice to do so.
I think we now have a ready-made dinner conversation for Tuesday. Looking forward to it!
The point I make is a bit more extreme than your interpretation of it. I’m not stating that factors such as genetics/chemistry/upbringing influence a person’s choice, what I’m saying is that they dictate it very precisely.
Put differently, our decisions are based on the “wiring” of our brain. I include in this the physical alterations to your brain caused by life experiences. Our brain is a machine that given a configuration, will produce a perfectly predictable result.
Same wiring, same decisions every time. There is no way to evade this because doing so would require our brain to operate with something other than its wiring – which is not so. Like any machine, we don’t have the capacity to act outside of the mechanisms provided for us.
As applied to your example of the child, if the child found the glow of the element mesmerizing, it’s because of his genetics, upbringing, etc. Touching that element caused, among other things, pain which translates to alterations to the child’s brain, which dictates future decisions.
The child chose not to touch an element again, sure. But as there was no question that that would be the outcome of any such decision, the presence of other options was just for show to begin with. The kid didn’t really have free will – his will was entirely predictable given his past.
Again, I agree with much of what you’re saying. Every living organism is born into a pre-defined construct, based on genetics. As that organism continues to exist, this construct is constantly being redesigned to accommodate the experiences that befall the organism. It is impossible to escape this construct and still exist, and the omnipresence of this construct means that free will can never be. I agree with that.
Where we differ is that I remove this construct from the equation. I admit that this is a large omission, but I think the following example is a good way to illustrate our difference of opinion:
Think of a gladiator fighting in the Coliseum in Rome. The gladiator, being a slave, is forced into the arena, where his choice is simple: kill or be killed. You would say that because the gladiator is a slave, nothing he does in the arena can truly be considered his choice, because he presumably would not be in the arena in the first place, were it up to him. I would argue that whatever he does in the arena is his choice, or free will, because the circumstances that led to him being in the arena do not matter once he is there. Ergo, we can never escape the way our brains our wired, we can only work with what we have, but the choices we make within that wiring are our own. I tend to view freedom as relative, not absolute. Because there is no possible freer will, basing our choices solely on our own sense of reason is what I call free will.
You might be interested in reading this, and some of the related essays:
http://www.enformy.com/TES-tutorial-01.htm