Do We Have Free Will?

What career do you choose? How many children do you decide to have? Will you mow the lawn now or some other day? Every waking moment of every day we make hundreds of decisions about what to do and what not to do. But are they really our decisions, or are they made for us by our environment, our society, and our genes? Do we get to choose our futures, or is everything already set? This is the question of free will, and for most people the way we think about the answer has a huge impact on our senses of self-worth, autonomy, security, and many other things. For some, believing that things are decided, that all will turn out well in the end, is a huge comfort. For others, including myself, believing that our choices can have life-altering consequences motivates us to work hard and push for the best possible future.

With one’s belief about choice and fate being a major source of motivation in their life, we might ask whether it is wise to search for the truth about this topic. After all, there can only be one true answer, and whatever it turns out to be, it looks like some number of people will be left feeling helpless, either at the overwhelming freedom and responsibility they have, or as a prisoner inside their mind, held by the strings of fate. The things I talk about in this discussion might be upsetting to some people, so I won’t hold it against you if you stop reading now. Still, to me, the search for truth is always more valueable than the answer, and I have found that the process of learning to accept and live with the truth no matter what it turns out to be, or even uncertainty if the truth is beyond our grasp, is worth it.

Traditionally, there are two philosophical options: free will, the idea that through our choices we can make the future or change it from what it would have been; and determinism, the idea that the entire future of the universe is already set down to the smallest particle. There is also a third option, called compatibilism, which suggests that even if determinism is true, we still have free will. Compatibilism may seem contradictory, but as we will see, the topic is a lot more complex than it looks at first glance.

It certainly feels like we have free will. Everyone has decisions that they have had to face over and over again, and sometimes they choose differently than before. For instance, we have each woken up thousands of times, and sometimes stayed in bed longer than others. But even though the circumstances might seem exactly the same, they are really different. For starters, every air molecule in your room is in a different place morning to morning, mixed with air from outside and around the world. More importantly, your brain has changed. If you truly were in the exact same situation twice, an exact copy of the scene down to the last molecule, the last neuron firing in your brain, then suddenly it seems much less likely that you really could make a different choice after all.

According to classical physics, the study of the motion of everything larger than small molecules, everything goes according to cause and effect. Every object, every particle, every piece of anything, has a present state, which means it has properties like position, velocity, and energy. When it interacts with something, they will exchange properties in a predictable way, resulting in a new state. In other words, time goes by and things happen. In this view, if we know the state of everything right now, we can calculate what the state of everything will be one second from now, one minute from now, and on and on until the end of time. We can also work backwards and figure out what happened in the past one second ago, one minute ago, and on and on until the beginning of time.

In a classical universe, then, everything is determined. But you may have noticed that I said classical physics only applies to things larger than small molecules. For smaller things, classical physics no longer works, and we have to turn to quantum physics. Now there is a myth that quantum physics is the study of consciousness. That is false. Quantum physics is merely the study of the motion of everything smaller than large molecules. At this level, things happen that seem unrealistic, which our classically-adapted brains struggle to comprehend. One aspect of this is that two systems that are set up exactly the same—same particle, same energy, same position, etc.—can lead to different outcomes. But we can still calculate the probability of any specific outcome. To many experts, this suggests that quantum physics is probabilistic rather than deterministic, but there is still debate, and the question is far from settled.

There is also debate about whether the brain uses quantum physics in its processing, or if the mechanisms of the brain are completely classical. But even if our decisions are made partially by quantum processes, and even if quantum physics is fundamentally probabilistic rather than deterministic, that still does not allow for complete free agency. After all, we want to make our own decisions; determination by mechanism or determination by roll of the dice, it is still determinism. In fact, any way you look at decision making, there is going to be a set of causal chain mail you can follow backwards until the big bang. The only alternative left would be spontaneity, things happening literally for no reason, and even that does not sound like free will to me.

Right now, it doesn’t look good for free will. But maybe we are forgetting something. So far, I have presented a case that determinism is almost definitely true, but I have actually said very little about free will. Let’s go back and examine what we mean by “free will.” What do we really want when we ask the question? Free will would allow us to make our own choices because of reasons, ideally good reasons. We also want to be able to choose our reasons. But the decisions to choose our reasons must be based on deeper reasons, which in turn must be based on deeper reasons. Here we run into a problem: if we want to choose our reasons for choosing, we find an infinite regress. It would seem that the very idea of free will is logically incoherent.

But perhaps we are looking at this the wrong way. Perhaps free will doesn’t have anything to do with how events happen in the universe. Let’s go back and examine why we are asking the question in the first place. Why do we want to know whether we have free will? For me, it is because I want to know that what I do affects the world. That if I push myself, I can accomplish more and affect more people, and can leave a mark on society. I don’t mean that I want to be able to push myself for no reason; the reason just doesn’t matter to me, except in so far as I can cultivate it to push myself more. My efforts playing a part in the causal chain would be enough for me.

Let me introduce the idea of effort. “Effort” is a common word, so all English speakers have an intuitive understanding of what it means. But when I talk about it I have a particular meaning in mind. As intelligent animals, we have behavioral systems put in place by our DNA, including instincts, gut reactions, and the ability to form habits. But we also have the ability to break from these things. When we do, we get an uncomfortable feeling that leaves us tired. This specific feeling is what I mean when I talk about effort.

For an example, let’s walk through the beginning of a hypothetical daily routine. You wake up, and get up either because you feel like it or because you know you have to in order to get to work on time. You brush your teeth, eat breakfast, drink coffee, and all the things you always do in the morning. Then you go out the door and start walking to work. Actually you probably drive, but I walk, so imagine you’re walking. Your legs are set on autopilot, taking you down the sidewalk. You wait for clear intersections and turn corners, your mind thinking about whatever your stream of consciousness takes it to, your body taking you where you need to go. In every part of this routine so far, it has been as if you were an observer, passively watching as the environment guided your body and mind through the motions of life. But then, ahead of you you see someone else coming toward you, right in your path. Your autopilot wants to keep going straight, but if you do, you will run into this person. Your mind goes into problem solving mode, projecting possible futures. What will happen if I step this way, or that? And then you break from your pre-established program and step to the side so that you will pass the other person without touching.

That step, that subtle adjustment of direction, is one of the most difficult things you have done all day. It was harder than stopping for cars, harder than taking 90 degree turns, even though it took less physical work. It may have even been harder than getting out of bed. It was harder because everything else was taken care of by your pre-programmed routine, and this time you had to think and act at a higher level. That feeling of “this is hard, and I’m bringing it upon myself,” is what effort feels like.

Effort is not only possible as a reaction to unexpected events, but you can inject it into your behavior at any time. You might choose one day to say no to coffee, or get up on a weekend even though you are still tired. While writing this, I got up and went to the refrigerator to pour myself a glass of water, my body and mind set on autopilot. When it was full, I took a step toward my computer before realizing I had left the pitcher on the counter instead of in the fridge. The natural course would have been to walk out to my desk and set the cup down before walking back, putting the pitcher in the fridge, and then pacing the width of the room a third time to get back to my laptop. Instead, I chose to expend effort, and retracted my step and put the pitcher in the fridge before taking my cup to my desk. By taking the “harder” option, I saved time.

When we talk about using effort with a goal in mind, it ties back to free will. When I wonder if I have free will, what I am really asking is if my efforts make a difference to the outcome of what I am trying to do. To me, the opposite of free will is not determinism, but fate. Are events set in stone, that no matter how hard we struggle, how much effort we give, whatever choices we make, there is nothing we can do or fail to do that will change where we end up in a year from now? I think not. Experiments and statistics show us that our actions really do have consequences, and that we have at least some control over those consequences by the things we do. Sure, perhaps the reason we are motivated to make effort because we have thought about the topic, and we thought about the topic because we read and heard people speak about it here and there throughout our lives, but to me that doesn’t matter. What matters is that the results are different from what they would have been if we hadn’t made effort. Whether the universe is deterministic or not, this gives me everything I want from free will. When I expend effort, it makes a difference, and that is compatabilism enough for me.