Free will is a puzzling subject for both scientists and philosophers. On the one hand, us, as individuals, feel pretty free in our actions and choices, and this has led to the development of most of our political ideas and theory. We study many phenomena, such as economics or psychology, from the basis that humans are free individuals capable of making free choices. On the other hand, however, more and more evidence piles up in the direction of deterministic views on the subject, suggesting more and more firmly that our actions are simply a consequence of the biochemical processes inside our bodies, a totally deterministic process, yet too complex for us to make exact predictions for now.

Regardless of whether free will actually exists, or if it is no more than an illusion, being that our actions feel free, and we feel capable of making choices of our own, let’s assume that we can make such decisions freely, whether it is as purely free actions or as an illusion due to the enormous complexity behind them. Taking that as a hypothesis, is it within our reach not to be free?

The question seems dumb: “of course!” one may say, “weren’t slaves, and prisioners denied their freedom?”. Indeed, we associate those people to denial of freedom, yet even given their oppression, those remained invariably individuals, still capable of making their very own decisions just as their imprisioning masters. They kept the might and ability to reject orders, attending to the consequences, or to simply obey. If we assume that we are free as capable of making decisions autonomously and behaving accordingly, then slaves never stopped being free at all, nor prisioners, nor serfs.

In asking this question, I was once answered that “freedom relied on the capability of fully carrying out those actions”. In those examples, those people could not choose to do else when given orders, without implying a punishment or simply being blocked: when locked in jail, one can’t simply walk away into the woods, he is denied that action, thus he’s not free. This “freedom through action”, however, is very limiting, as we clearly are limited physically by the laws of nature: I can’t simply choose to fly waving my arms or to become metallic as I please, therefore I am not free at all ever, at least in the Universe we live in.

Some refine this freedom through action by introducing the condition “all actions within the bounds of nature”. Yet ruling out the preposterous examples I proposed earlier, this restriction does not eliminate the question: prisioners can’t escape because there is a physical boundary between them and the outside, which, given the laws of nature, he can’t cross, therefore, he is free, as what limits his actions is clearly natural. In fact, everything is natural, as a part of nature everything in the Universe, including ourselves, our constructions are all natural, and really, nothing we experience can not be such a thing. The boundaries between artificial and natural aren’t at all clear: is selective breeding natural? Is the gas we breathe out artificial, as it was synthetised by a human body? Are our buildings and crafts natural when left to become ruins and a pile of rubble?

In short, freedom as we generally understand it is quickly limited to our capacity of choice, our ability to make independent decisions ourselves, rather than having our actions guided by the thoughts of other agents. In this sense of freedom, both slaves and prisioners were clearly free. One of the few situations one loses his free will is that of hypnosis, and those are questionably true. In conclusion, we’re permanently free, free to make choices autonomously, as soon as we’re conscious.

Can one choose not to be free? Can one freely decide to give up his free will? At first, the answer must be no. In chosing to remove my freedom, I’m consciouly putting myself under the orders of some other agent, person or inert, and I can decide to withdraw such position at any moment I decide. Again, just as in the example of a slave, one is not forced to obey those orders, but instead threatened with punishment in case of disobeying. The choice of rebellion remains untouched from the perspective of the slave, and here happens the same. In this sense, that is a choice that, apparently, one is not capable of making.

However, if we take into account the loss of consciousness for the elimination of our free will, such as in the use of certain drugs, the question opens up. As we said earlier, the only real way to rule out our free decision making is through the complete removal of our conscience, and sedation, for example, is a process commonly used in that particular direction, often as part of a choice by the patient (though not always, of course). In this case, we suffer of a temporary loss of conscience, during which it is impossible to make choices or decisions at all; in short, a period of time during which we are not free. Nevertheless, we must put an emphasys on the temporary character of this loss of conscience. Notice, if the loss was permanent, we’d say we’re dead, which of course excludes the matter of free will altogether.

This leads us to conclude that in doing drugs, in particular those that cause hallucinations and similar effects, such as LSD or mushrooms, one is effectively rejecting to be free for a brief period of time, experiencing a time during which one does not make free choices but is guided by the chemical agents in our brain. In this line, what’s the limit for this “chemical-based elimination of freedom” we’ve constructed? Do weaker drugs produce a loss of free will too? Do caffeine or sugar as well? In fact, our neurological processes (and physiological more broadly) are all conveyed by chemical and electrical agents, such as hormones, which dictate our response to stimuli of all kinds. These follow the same laws as drugs; they are drugs themselves, or rather, drugs take part in the same processes as these other agents. Are those limiting our free will too? Don’t they manipulate our thoughts (and therefore choices) just as anesthesia does?

This is the paradox arising from the supposition that our choices are free, a contradiction. We find that, ironically, all the traditional senses of lack of freedom (imprisonment, etc.) really aren’t such a thing, and the biological processes guiding our very actions really aren’t. In summary, in supposing that we are free, we find that we hardly aren’t, deeply in our bodies. Such contradiction implies, clearly, that free will can’t be, at least as we have defined it, given what we know about the world today. Perhaps freedom really isn’t a natural concept to define at all, and more of a human construct to model our perception of rights and obligations within a social order. After all, the only context in which freedom makes sense is that of social interaction, hence being, not a natural part of the individual, but instead a social attibute. We really aren’t free ourselves, but free in relation to others around us.