JREF Swift Blog

Living Without Free Will

I was going to write this essay. I could not have decided otherwise. I do not mean that if I was laying on the couch that this essay would have written itself, in a fatalistic sense, but given my genetics, my childhood, the experiences I have had and the people I have met, the prior state of the universe and my brain chemistry at this very moment, I was going to write this essay.

After reading Sam Harris’ new book Free Will (you can watch a recent lecture on the book here or buy the book on Amazon here) I can say that I am fairly convinced that our common sense notion of free will does not exist. This idea of free will could be defined as the subjective feeling that your conscious self is the author of your thoughts and actions. If you want to debate this point and argue the specifics, I suggest you read the book first (or watch the lecture) and duke it out in the comments below. My goal here is to generally lay out Harris’ argument against free will and then consider what it has meant for me to live a life without free will. Many of religious faith and an inordinate fondness of free will (as it allows for their eternal punishment of course) should be surprised to hear that it is not much different.

Where is the Freedom in That?

One of the points in Dr. Harris’ book is that free will is an illusion of an illusion. While I admittedly had to read the page on which this quote was located perhaps ten or so times, I believe that I now understand what he meant. Not only does our commonsense notion of free will run counter to what we know about science generally and neurology specifically (making it an illusion), we can realize ourselves, subjectively, that it does not exist (an illusion of an illusion). That is to say, if you simply pay attention to how thoughts and intentions merely pop out of the void and into your mind, through mechanisms that are completely mysterious to you, you realize that your conscious “self” is simply a witness to choices that have already been made. You are not aware of what your thoughts or intentions or wants or desires are until they materialize in consciousness through avenues that you have no control over. In this view, paraphrasing Harris, you are no freer to choose the next thing you think than the next thing I write.

Interestingly, we already dismiss free will for others when certain states of the brain are responsible. We do not typically claim people to be the conscious authors of their thoughts and actions when they have some particular brain state caused by a tumor or some other disorder (e.g., OCD). We then view people as “victims of biology,” quoting Harris. But because we know that all human action is determined by brain states (themselves dependent on factors over which we have no control), why doesn’t this conception of biological determinism extend to all brain states? The same brain functions that force someone count to 47 every time they enter a room, for example, are the same brain functions that make you turn left instead of right down a sidewalk. We are nearsighted in the application of our knowledge about the brain. Once we admit that people are not the causal agents of their thoughts and actions depending on brain states, we have readied the coffin for commonsense free will.

To make the absence of free will subjectively clear, Harris outlines the following thought experiment: Think of a city, any city. There will most likely be a blank period and then names of cities will simply appear in consciousness. Where was your choice? For example, did you choose for only Tokyo and Cairo to occur to you? Tokyo and Cairo may have come into your head and then you deliberated between the two, finally choosing Tokyo. But why? Surely you can come up with some rationalization, but why that particular rationalization? Did you choose that reason? Did you choose to deliberate only between Cairo and Tokyo? What about Dublin? You are probably aware of this city but did not think of it. You are not free to choose that which does not occur to you. There is no free will here. If you closely pay attention to how thoughts, desires, intentions, and wants mysteriously arise in consciousness, through no control of your own, free will disappears right before you. For free will to be true, you would have to choose what you think before you think it. The impossibility of this task makes the conclusion ever clearer: free will is an illusion.

No True Choices

Again, there is much more to this argument, and I highly suggest that you read the book or watch the lecture, but I think the more important discussion is the one that we need to have after we realize that free will is nonexistent. Many people think losing free will would mean losing the ability to punish criminals, or other activities that ascribe willful responsibility. However, as Harris points out, we do not need free will to preserve these institutions. You do not need to ascribe free will to a bear in order to justify keeping it away from small children. The bear’s actions are a result of its genetics, brain chemistry, previous interactions with the world, etc., and does not “choose” to harm people or not, it is just a bear. Realize that you are as beholden to the prior states of the universe as the bear is. We can still lock up dangerous criminals, as we can keep bears away from children, but punishing them for having a certain brain then becomes morally problematic. This view also makes hating (as opposed to fearing) people like psychopaths irrational and encourages compassion towards their predicament (worthy goals for any philosophy).

For me, the realization that we live without free will has been a very personal journey. I have recently transitioned into a field of study that I am not sure is the right fit for me. I am uncertain and hesitant about my future. But knowing that my conscious self is ultimately not the author of my actions, I have eliminated regret from my life. For any personal choice that you may regret making, the absence of free will means that given the state of the universe at the moment you made the decision (your upbringing, experiences, genetics, brain chemistry, parents, etc.) you could not have chosen otherwise. To think you could have chosen otherwise is to either merely think the thought “I could have chosen otherwise,” or to say that the choice could have been different in a different universe. This liberates me. It is also exiting. You and I are fundamentally unaware about what we are going to do or think or say next. The conscious self in this way is along for a very interesting ride.

I no longer bemoan some of my quirkier tendencies and desires. It becomes harder in a world without free will to lament over your failures. You are neither in control of forces outside of yourself (nature, other people, etc.) or the forces inside yourself (your thoughts, beliefs, intentions, etc.). Where can you then lay the blame? Either way you had no choice in the matter, so pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and move on. Removing free will from your life simultaneously eliminates wasteful emotions like regret and harmful beliefs like religious notions of culpability. Knowing what we now know about free will, religious morality takes another hit. What kind of moral system punishes you for all eternity over thoughts or actions you do not control? Why place never-ending blame on something that does not exist?

Imagine the imaginary story of Moses in Egypt. God unleashes a number of plagues upon Egypt when the Pharaoh will not let the Jewish people go. This is not because the Pharaoh is immune to compromise; it is because God had “hardened his heart.” Therefore God is inflicting torment upon a whole city of innocent people based on a choice the Pharaoh made over which the Pharaoh had no control. This is analogous to our discussion about free will. We now know that human thoughts and actions are determined by brain states and prior variables in the universe that we cannot control, much less choose. What kind of moral person would punish another for a choice that has everything to do with their luck in parents, or their genetics, that determine their brain state at any particular time? (The religious idea of “thought crime,” or being punished for “impure” thoughts you think over which you have no control, as Christopher Hitchens likened it to, rests firmly on free will.) Removing free will from our lives does away with harmful religious concoctions like this. It is easy for me to say that the religious notion of free will is not something that should be cherished, as it needlessly contributes to human suffering.

Life without free will is not very much different from one with the illusion of it. If you closely pay attention to how your unauthored thoughts and actions actually morph into choices in your life, you can know this to be true. In acknowledging this we lose detestable religious culpability, unscientific notions of dualism, and irrational moral punishments, and gain a reprieve from regret, an increase in compassion for those who are simply unlucky to have the brain that they do (determining their actions), and an excitement about what we will do or think next. Removing the confined parameters of choice and opening ourselves up to the great machinery of the universe clashes with our fear of uncertainty, but is, counterintuitively, immensely freeing.

Kyle Hill is the JREF research fellow specializing in communication research and human information processing. He writes daily at the Science-Based Life blog and you can follow him on Twitter here.