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Let’s talk about
why the concept of free will is
actually incoherent, in that it is
logically and internally
inconsistent – it just doesn’t make
sense as a rational construct.
Our world is
virtually completely deluded about
the fundamental nature of our human
will. We’re completely deluded
about who we are as individuals, and
as a humanity. This has been the
case for several thousand years.
We’ve structured our entire
civilization – our criminal justice
system, our socio-economic system,
our interpersonal relations, and our
relation to ourselves -- on an
illusion. For us to be guided by
the truth of who we are, and the
truth of why we do what we do, has
to be a wiser, and better, way of
conducting ourselves in our world
than by living under the illusion
that we have a free will.
When we say we
have a free will, we generally mean
that what we do, and think, and say,
and feel is completely up to us. In
other words, nothing that is not in
our control is either making these
decisions for us, or taking part in
the decisions. When you look at it
logically, you quickly realize that
such a free will is impossible. We
have an unconscious that is the
storehouse for all of the words we
draw on when we think things, and
say things, and make decisions.
Obviously, we can’t have a will that
is free from that unconscious. The
unconscious must be part of every
decision because it contains what we
base our decisions on.
If our
unconscious is not something we’re
in control of -- because by
definition it is unconscious -- that
very clearly demonstrates why we
don’t have a free will. There are
other ways to demonstrate this, but
for now let’s focus on why the very
concept of free will is simply
incoherent.
To have a free
will would mean that our decisions
would be completely free of
anything. For example, how could
our decisions be free of our
memories – of what we’ve done in the
past? When we make a decision,
whatever the decision is, we have to
base it on something. Sometimes
we’ll say that we can make a
completely intuitive decision that
we don’t at all think about. We
just make it. But, when we make a
decision like that, there is a
reason for it. It’s happening at
the level of the unconscious.
Let’s explore
this. Let’s say there was such a
thing as reasonless intuition. You
want to make a decision that is not
based on anything. That decision
could not be a freely willed,
according to what we mean when we
assert that we have a free will.
When we say we have a free will, we
mean that it’s something we can take
pride in, and for which we will hold
ourselves and other people
accountable.
Let’s consider
morality. We are, ironically,
hard-wired to seek to do good. We
have a moral imperative, and that is
one reason we don’t have a free
will. But, if our moral decisions
were not based on moral lessons we
must obviously have learned, how can
we reasonably say that these
decisions are ours completely?
The concept of
free will is something that evades
and ignores, and chooses not to
consider, the very fundamental
process in nature. When we say we
have a free will, what we’re saying
is that our will is free of
causality. To say we have a free
will is to say that what we decide
is free of a cause. Since every
cause has a cause, the cause of our
decision would have a cause, and
suddenly we find we have a causal
chain stretching back to before we
were born. That’s why the concept
of free will is incoherent. You
can’t have things that happen
without a cause.
For the sake of
discussion and exploration, let’s
say that something can actually
happen without having been caused.
If that something was not caused,
there is only one other option.
The decision must be random, or
indeterministic. It has no cause at
all; it just happens. If our
decisions are just happening for no
cause, or reason, that is not what
we mean when we say that our
decisions are freely willed.
When we claim
that we have a free will, we are
claiming that we can take pride in,
and are truly accountable for, our
decisions. If our decisions are
uncaused – if they are just random –
they are not up to us. By strongest
definition, randomness means that
something is not up to anything.
The reality, however, is that
everything must have a cause.
How did we come
up with this concept of free will?
In the West, we didn’t always have
it as a clearly defined construct.
The term “free will” is actually
Christian, although the concept has
its counterparts in other
non-Christian parts of the world.
In Romans 7:15, the apostle Paul
writes that he wants to do what is
right and good, but he finds that he
sometimes can’t. This is the first
statement in Christianity that
questions the notion of a free
will. Paul is asking -- wait a
minute -- if I want to obey God’s
laws and be moral, and I find that I
can’t, what’s going on?
It’s not until
about 380 A.D., when Saint Augustine
of Hippo begins to grapple with the
question of who’s responsible for
the evil we do that Christianity
adopts the doctrine that if God is
defined as all-good, then the evil
we humans do must be up to us, and
not God. Augustine actually wrote a
book back then titled De Libero
Arbitrio, which translate as
On Free Will. He coined the
term free will to explain how any
evil in the world would have to be
up to human beings, and could not
possibly be God’s doing. That’s how
the idea of free will in
Christianity came to be. It was an
explanation for the existence of
evil in the world. If God is
all-good, then all evil must be our
fault. But the belief in free will
is also a point of contention in
Christianity because there is a
phrase in Isaiah 45:7 where God
says, “I form the light, and create
darkness: I make peace, and create
evil: I the Lord do all these
things. Augustine was apparently
discounting, or ignoring, that
particular passage.
As incoherent and
illogical as the concept of free
will is, its origin within
Christianity may explain why it
hasn’t been successfully challenged
until now. Many Christians believe
that when we die we may go to a
place of eternal suffering and
damnation. According to
Christianity and some other
religions, what we believe may
determine where we go in the
afterlife. Naturally, when people
are faced with the contradiction of
decisions free of the past, and
memories, and how we were raised –
things that we cannot control – many
of them choose not to explore this
problem because of their fear of
spending the rest of eternity in
hell.
We’re now in a
world where many of us believe in
God, but far fewer of us believe
that, for example, the first woman
was taken from the rib of the first
man, or that our world is less than
6,000 years old, as the Biblical
chronology asserts. We’re now
living in a world with the Internet,
and relatively free exchange of
information. We can now easily
download from the Internet papers by
scientists that demonstrate, for
example, that decisions we believe
we are freely making are actually
made by our unconscious. Through
the process of priming, researchers
can make us behave in certain ways,
and make certain decisions, without
our even being aware of the
experimental manipulation.
Advertisers do
this to us all of the time. When
you see the same commercial on TV,
that’s exactly what they’re doing.
They understand that we don’t have a
free will, and they condition us to
behave in ways they would prefer.
This is another reason why this
issue of human will is important.
Conditioning by marketers is real,
and advertisers have refined this
science to a scary, Orwellian
degree. They really can make large
portions of the population behave in
various ways, in a way that is also
unconscious to those consumers.
If you believe in
free will, you will say to yourself
“no, advertisers cannot control our
buying habits and choice of products
because we have a will that can
over-ride all of that
conditioning.” When you understand
that we don’t have a free will, and
that what we do, and what we buy or
don’t buy, is based on the
information we have, and how we
acquired it, then you’ll understand
why it’s important for us to
understand that free will is an
illusion. It’s important to
understand the forces that mold us,
and lead us to do what we do, if we
allow them.
The concept of
free will, when you think about it,
is internally inconsistent. It’s
not logical. If you define the will
as volition, or that part of our
mind or self that makes decisions,
and you say that volition is free of
things that it can’t control – free
of causality, free of our memories,
free of how we’re conditioned. This
claim just doesn’t make sense.
Essentially, the term free will
means that we are doing what we’re
doing, and saying what we’re saying,
and thinking what we’re thinking,
completely of our own accord. By
logical extension, that belief leads
to the conclusion that we do all of
what we do for no reason. As soon
as you say “I made this decision of
my own free will because, for
example, it was the right decision,
or because I wanted to be a
good person, you’ve introduced a
cause. You’ve introduced the chain
of cause and effect. Once you say
you’ve made a decision because of
something – because of anything –
then you must also acknowledge that
that cause has a cause, and that
cause has a cause, etc.
A good way to
understand cause and effect is to
look at the state of the entire
universe. Consider everything -
which means every particle, every
person, every planet, and every
galaxy -- that exists at this very
moment. It has to be the complete
result of the state of the universe
at the previous moment. The
universe evolves from state to state
through time. The universe is in a
certain state during one moment, and
through the process of change, or
cause and effect, it evolves to its
state at the next moment. It can’t
but do that.
If the universe
is all there is, the universe is the
only explanation for every next
moment of the universe. You can
only explain the state of the
universe at one moment by
understanding that the previous
moment is the complete cause of it.
There is nothing else to cause it.
The universe is a singularity.
There is only one. If you claim you
are making what you consider to be a
freely willed decision, and you’re
making it at a certain moment in
time, but the state of the universe
at the previous moment is completely
determining the state of the
universe at the moment you make your
decision, then that previous state
is obviously determining your
decision.
The
moment-by-moment states of the
universe form a chain of cause and
effect that stretches back in time
to before our planet was created,
and before the Sun was created, and
presumably, to the Big Bang about
13.7 billion years ago. By
understanding that our universe
evolves in a moment-by-moment
fashion, according to its state
during each previous moment, you can
understand that our human will
cannot possibly be free from that
causal progression.
Why is this
important? Our world right now is
facing a very challenging era that
will likely last decades. Much of
what we face is about climate
change. There is one international
scientific body or institution that
is responsible for compiling and
analyzing all of the research on
global warming and other
manifestations of climate change.
It’s called the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change, (IPCC) and
this United Nations organization is
comprised of over 3,000 scientists
from over 100 countries. Their last
major report was published in 2007,
but if you saw Al Gore’s 2006
documentary, An Inconvenient
Truth, you have some idea of
what we’re up against.
The very
challenging part of all of this is
that back in 2007 when the IPCC
published their most recent
findings, scientists had concluded
that the level of carbon dioxide
concentration in our atmosphere that
we must be under by the year 2050 in
order to avoid catastrophic, and
very likely irreversible,
consequences was 450 parts per
million, (ppm). A few years later,
however, these same scientists
realized that their assessment was
far too optimistic, and that the
actual level of carbon dioxide in
the atmosphere that we need to
remain under to remain relatively
safe is 350 ppm.
The scary thing
about that is that we’re already at
391 ppm, and the carbon dioxide
concentration is rising by over 2.7
ppm each year. We face a monumental
challenge. As an optimist, I would
expect our human race to rise to it,
but as a scientist and a thinker, I
understand that we will not have a
chance of meeting that 350-ppm
target unless we profoundly, and
dramatically, change the nature of
our civilization.
It’s actually
more serious. In 2007 when the IPCC
made that assessment, they did not
consider the effects of the melting
of the polar ice caps, or the
methane that is currently in the
permafrost, and gets converted to
carbon dioxide and released into the
atmosphere as this frozen layer of
ground thaws. There is apparently
more carbon dioxide in the
permafrost – which covers vast areas
in Alaska and Russia among other
places – than has already
accumulated in our atmosphere.
If we want to
address those challenges, we will
need to stop competing with each
other, and we will need to stop
thinking that we deserve so much
because we did so many great
things. We need to start working
together. There is absolutely no
way that we can adequately address
the threat of climate change unless
we work together. For example, if
China, India, Brazil and Europe were
to do their part, but we in the
United States did not do our part,
we would not be doing nearly
enough. If we in the United States
did our part, but those other
countries did not do their part, we
would not be doing nearly enough.
It must be a global effort.
There are other
reasons why I think this issue of
human will is important, but climate
change will remain a supremely
important reason for at least the
next several decades.
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