Free Will. Do You Have it?
A closer look at the dynamics of free will. What physics can tell us about the topic.
You had the hunger. After graduating from college at the top of your class, Harvard Law School was your next destination. It took three years, but you got that degree, passed the bar, and scored a dream job at a top law firm in DC. Did you stop there? Hell no! You kept going, rising through the ranks to become one of the youngest partners in the firm’s history. After a long career, you retire to your mansion and ten cars, satisfied that you have done it the right way. In the long days of retirement, you read philosophy with a bit more intent. It was a subject that interested you in college, but you were always too busy. One day in the middle of your reading, you cross paths with one of the most contentious ideas in human history — free will is an illusion! Could it be that everything you are, the success, the drive, and ambition, are all factors beyond your control? It might have been determined to be this way all along did you ever have a say? Maybe.
Philosophers have long debated the realness of free will and moral agency. While the topic of free will as an illusion has long been contained safely inside the domain of philosophy, science now has something to say. It’s a strange assertion — free will does not exist and all notions to the contrary are illusions. The answer to the question of free will has implications for morality and personal autonomy. How will we punish wrongdoers and hold people accountable for actions that might not be of their own volition?
While we don’t have a conclusive answer about the true nature of free will, we know that informing someone that free will may not exist can alter their behavior.
Recent research has also shown that when people are told that science shows free will is an illusion, it temporarily influences their behavior, for instance, leading them to cheat more, help less, act meaner, exert less self-control, think less about alternatives, and make less punitive judgements.
What might this mean?
The practical implications are clear: telling someone they don’t have free will makes them a worse human. It follows that we should be as informed as possible before making declarative statements that can affect how people live their lives. We should look to align popular conceptions about free will to their scientific realities.
There is an argument making the rounds at TED talks and coffee shops. The argument posits that free will does not exist because our brain instantiates decisions before we are aware of it doing so, and we experience the outcome as conscious reality. But is this sound science? It is important to know that we are talking about the same thing.
Most people conceive of free will as a dualistic concept, meaning that there is a division between the mind and physical brain. It is this distinction that drives many of the disparities in how the concept of free will’s efficacy and how the notion is perceived by the public.
Most people believe free will to be our innate capacity to choose what direction our lives will take. This also includes the ability to make choices alternative to ones that have already been made. You might choose to get some work done, but you watched a movie.
You could have chosen otherwise and been more productive instead. It turns out that people closely identify with this idea.
What free will means to humanity
“Free will is the close cousin to the idea of the soul — the concept that you, your thoughts and feelings, derive from an entity that is separate and distinct from the physical mechanisms that make up your body…”
It’s this commonplace definition of free will that most people refer to when they think of what free will is and how it functions in their lives. There is a difference between the academic conception of what free will is and what most people understand it to be.
This becomes relevant when considering consciousness as something that can be altered or toyed with. It turns out that the scientific notion of free will gives rise to dualism, the understanding that the mind and the brain are separate entities. But we know that consuming alcohol can alter the way you think or conscious perception of the world. That getting drunk alters your perception is a huge problem for dualism.
Physics begs to differ
Quantum mechanics has provided evidence that suggests we can never really know the position of particles, even if we account for their starting conditions. All we can do is come up with a series of probabilities that predict the location of matter in space and time. Quantum mechanics contends that a particle only becomes measurable once it is observed by an observer/human. Yes, it is the act of measuring the matter at hand that breaks it out of a superposition. Strange.
What does this have to do with free will?
Glad you asked. If an observer brings matter into existence in the world of quantum physics, then the implications for a free will could be far reaching. It could be — and this is only speculation — that we will things into existence with our observation of them and their location in space-time. Sounds insane, right? But quantum physics does not rule out the possibility for free will to exist. If it really does operate in this manner, it could be far more powerful than anyone previously thought.
This is all very interesting, but it does not account for what is doing the observation. Who is the director telling the camera where to pan and focus? I’m afraid that exceeds this little essay. For our purposes, know that free will is still entirely possible!
This brings us to probabilities. By definition, probability accounts for randomness in systems. It can only predict the outcome of an event with so much accuracy: all else is subject to randomness. It is this randomness that gives free will a fighting chance. If determinism is valid, then it should be able to accept all potential outcomes of a system.
Because we now know that at the quantum level, there is still room for random occurrences, free will might persist as a valid element of reality. If you remember our discussion of our ability to do otherwise, that is definitional to our understanding of free will, then randomness is the playing field where otherwise occurs.
Because more than one outcome of an elected action can come from a single state of the universe, the power to do otherwise remains intact. Thus free will still can exist.
Final thoughts
It just might be the case that quantum physics validates those choices you made years ago, and that, according to its edicts, you did indeed make the “right” choices for your life. Free will is a sticky little subject. So much of who we are revolves around our ability to make choices and bear the brunt of responsibility for those choices. Free will is a foundational element for what makes us human. As shown above, we need not worry about if society will become more psychopathic because of people believing that free will does not exist. Physics shows us that even at the quantum level, it is totally possible for agency to still exist, and for individuals to bear the responsibility for their actions.
