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Before we
consider that we don’t actually
“experience” a free will, let’s go
over I’m doing this show. The myth,
or illusion, that we have the
ability to choose our thoughts and
feelings, and decide what we want,
appears to have been prevalent at
least from the beginning of
civilization.
We tend to hold
each other and ourselves responsible
for what we do. When we do that, it
causes harm. When we assume or
attribute responsibility, we often
conclude that if we’ve done
something wrong, we deserve to be
punished. So, we punish each other
and ourselves. When we do wrong, we
often feel the pain of guilt.
Aside from that,
considering all of the evidence that
demonstrates that we don’t have a
free will, for our whole entire
civilization to be structured on the
premise that we do is bewildering.
I believe and predict that we can
create a more compassionate, more
understanding, and better world
through transcending this illusion.
The most
fundamental reason people say they
have a free will seems to be that
they claim to experience every
thought that they make as being up
to them. As we’ll see, that is not
actually the case. Before we get
into that, I want to briefly define
what people generally mean when they
say they have a free will. Free
will is generally accepted to mean
that we can decide whatever we want
regardless of our basic character,
our personality, our unconscious,
what we’ve learned or haven’t
learned, our genetic makeup, and so
many other things that actually
combine to compel our every thought
action and feeling.
The reality is
that we human beings have causal
wills. We have a will, in the sense
that we make decisions, but all of
these decisions are caused by
factors outside of our control.
Causality means that things happen
according to the principle of cause
and effect. It means that
everything that happens, including
our every thought, feeing and
action, has a cause. And that cause
has a cause, because everything must
have a cause. Things do not happen
in the universe that are not
caused. The universe is causal, so
our human will must be causal.
Consider that we
“experience” the world as flat. We
do not experience our world as an
orb, which it is. That a flat world
is an illusion we’ve understood at
least since the time of Columbus in
1492. But that illusion doesn’t
make much of a difference, unless we
want to travel around the globe, or
to the Moon and back. That kind of
illusion does not impact our
everyday life, but the illusion of
free will impacts it profoundly.
When people say
they experience a free will, what
they really mean is that they
experience a will. Let’s
distinguish between the two. The
will is synonymous with volition, or
the act of choosing or deciding. In
a certain sense, we decide all of
the time. I decided to write this
book. You’ve decided to read it.
But that is not what people claim.
People claim that these decisions
are free from the influence of the
causal past, and how their parents
raised them, and their desires, etc.
For example, if a person is given a
choice between an apple and a corn
muffin, their choice is going to be
determined to a great extent by
which they prefer; which tastes
better to them. But, we don’t get
to choose our taste. There are many
ways of describing the different
factors that make free will
impossible. Taste, or our
preferences for different foods, is
one.
When people say
that they experience a free will,
what they really mean is that they
are experiencing that they do have a
will. I want to explore how people
came to make this kind of mistake in
their evaluation of human will. At
7:15 in a letter to the Romans
dated about 58 A.D., Saint Paul
writes, “I don’t understand myself
at all, for I really want to do what
is right, but I can’t.” I do what I
don’t want to – what I hate.” St.
Paul is actually describing what
this show is about. If we had a
free will, then every act would be
completely up to us. Every moral
decision would be completely up to
us. If St. Paul had a free will,
and wanted to be completely good,
never transgressing his morality, he
could. He realizes he can’t, and
brings up the issue of human will in
Christianity.
It’s not until
about 580 A.D. when St Augustine is
grappling with the question of evil
and punishment that he must have
thought to himself “Wait a minute.
If God is all-good, then we can’t
blame God.” St.
Augustine wrote a book called De
Libero Arbitrio, which is Latin
for “On Free Will.” He apparently
coined the term free will.
So, if we do something wrong, it
must be our fault. This is
interesting, because I was doing
some research on good and evil
within the Judeo-Christian context,
and in Isaiah 45:7, God is quoted as
saying "I form the
light, and create darkness: I make
peace, and create evil: I the Lord
do all these things.
Before Augustine, people certainly
did hold each other responsible, so
they did seem to attribute free will
to each other, but there was no term
or doctrine describing this
perspective. Again, Leucippus in the
5th century B.C. wrote
the first statement on causality,
the logical extension of which makes
free will impossible. He wrote,
“Nothing happens at random, but
everything for a reason and by
necessity.” If everything happens
for a reason, that of course makes
free will impossible.
So, we have St. Augustine saying
that what we do is completely up to
us, because God granted us a free
will. When you think about it from
a theological standpoint, there is a
contradiction. On the one hand, the
standard teaching is that God is
all-powerful, and that nothing
happens without God wanting it to
happen. On the other hand, we have
the idea that God is ceding his
power by granting human beings a
free will. The logic there is
clearly inconsistent.
The concept of an all-powerful God
is also somewhat incoherent. There
is a question that illuminates this
logical conflict -- If God is
all-powerful, can S/He create a
boulder so large that even S/He
can’t lift it? If you think about
that, you will very quickly realize
that the idea of an all-powerful God
is incoherent. You might ask
yourself, “Can God cease to exist?
Can S/He just stop being God?” I’m
not sure, but I don’t think so. St.
Augustine came up with his personal
solution to blaming God for the evil
in this world. This is curious also
because we’re taught in Judaism, and
Christianity and other religions
that when things go well, we should
thank God. If something goes right,
it is God’s doing, and we should
feel grateful. But, when things go
wrong, it’s our fault. The
inconsistency here could not be
clearer.
The basic Judeo-Christian-Islamic
teaching is that holding certain
doctrines and beliefs will vastly
improve your likelihood of spending
the rest of eternity in Heaven than
holding opposing doctrines and
beliefs.
For example, if you don’t believe
that there is a God, that disbelief
would put you at risk of eternal
damnation. According to some, your
not believing in free will would
also put you at risk. This probably
explains much of why people say to
themselves “of course I experience
free will.” Anyone who really
delves into the question would more
likely than not finally realize
otherwise. It may be because of
this religious insistence on holding
certain beliefs and rejecting others
that we haven’t explored the matter
of human will as comprehensively as
we could.
Let’s explore in a bit more detail
why free will is not what we
experience when we make decisions.
After this taping, I plan to take a
break before doing another taping
this afternoon. Let’s say I choose
to go to the nearby White Plains
Library to browse through some art
books. I could also choose to go to
the nearby Galleria Mall and have a
cup of coffee, but let’s say I opt
for the library. If I were to claim
that that was a free choice, I would
be claiming that I made that choice
regardless of, for example, the
strongest motivation acting upon me
at that given time.
Part of me would like to go to the
Galleria for a cup of coffee, and
just hang out with people there.
Part of me would like to browse
through art books. I’ve been going
to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in
New York City recently – the amazing
Egyptian collection – which may
explain why this is so. My decision
is not free of that. I am faced
with two competing motivations – go
to the mall or to the Library.
So, what is going to happen? The
stronger of those two motives is
going to win out.
I’ve actually already made the
decision, but between now and then I
could change my mind. I could at
the last minute say “well, I would
really rather be around people, and
there are probably not many people
at the library.” I could end up
going to the mall for coffee. But
if I were to do that, it would be
because I would be feeling that
prospect as the stronger of the two
motives.
We don’t really experience a free
will. We experience a will. I
experience the will, the decision,
the volition, to go to either the
library or the mall, but it’s not
free of factors that compel it. Why
might I have the motivation to go to
the library and browse through
books? Years ago, in college, I was
an art major, and I have an
appreciation of art. But we don’t
get to choose what we appreciate, or
desire to do. For example, one
being good at mathematics, or art,
or music, or whatever, is not
something we get to freely choose.
We come into this world with a
certain personality, and our
personalities are, in fact, about
fifty percent genetic. Naturally,
if our personality is half due to
our heredity, and our genes are
certainly not something we can
freely control, and the other half
of our personality is due to
environmental factors like how we
were raised, and where we were
raised, and the kinds of unique
experiences we’ve had in our lives,
it’s easy to understand that our
human will is not free of those
compulsions.
When we make a decision, we’re not
“experiencing” that our decision was
free of all of that stuff. We’re
just experiencing a decision. If we
took the time to ask ourselves, “Why
did I decide this? What motivated
me? What compelled me to decide
this as opposed to that?” then we
would realize that the decision was
not free from these various
factors. To say that we experience
free will is to say that we
experience a will that is free of
even causality, or this process of
cause and effect that governs
everything.
All you have to do is acknowledge to
yourself that if you made a
decision, there was a cause for that
decision -- there may be one or
several, depending on how you are
defining cause. Okay, every event
has a cause. We know this from
science and experience. We know
that nothing happens that is not
caused. If there is a cause for our
decision, then there is a cause for
that cause, and there is a cause for
that cause, and a cause for that
cause. We sometimes refer to
causality as cause and effect – the
chain of cause and effect. So, if
we took the time to investigate the
reasons or causes for the decisions
we make, we would see that they are
subject to this chain of cause and
effect.
It is important to recognize that a
cause can never come after an event,
so each cause must always precede
its effect. If you have a chain of
causes going further and further
back into the past, ultimately it is
going to stretch back to before we
were born. That alone tells you
that our decisions are not free. We
might want to explore the reasons
for our decisions. I decided to go
to the library because I’ve been
going to the Met, and have been
amazed by the Egyptian exhibit
there. But why did that exhibit
amaze me? It might be because I
have some experience in art. Was
that experience free from causality,
or reasons? No.
Keep in mind that we’re actually
just guessing about all of these
causes. We’re trying to figure out
why we did what we did, and we may
or may not correctly identify its
true cause or causes. But that
there always is a cause is certain.
Sometimes we’ll get to the point
where we must admit that we don’t
know why we feel a certain way. For
example, I don’t know why I’m so
awed by Egyptian art, and find it so
beautiful. If we don’t know what
causes us to make the decisions we
make, certainly we are not
experiencing those decisions as
having been freely made.
By this reasoning, we can understand
that 1) we don’t have a free will
and 2) we don’t even experience our
will as free. This idea that we so
obviously “experience” free will,
upon even a cursory exploration,
turns out to be false. We don’t
experience free will, we experience
will, and there is a world of
difference between the two.
Why is this so important? Someone
might say that it’s fine that we
don’t have a free will, but wonder
how knowing that changes anything.
Think about it. If we don’t have a
free will, every single decision we
make is compelled by causes that
we’re not in control of. Everything
that any of us thinks and does, and
everything that happens - because
causality is not limited just to
human will; it applies to the entire
universe - is completely determined
by the causal past.
Some people say that particle
behavior at the quantum level is not
determined, but that is actually a
false interpretation of quantum
mechanics. Particle behavior at the
quantum level is actually entirely
causal. There are certainly some
things going on at that scale that
we don’t understand. For example,
we can’t use the standard causality
model of Newtonian, or classical,
physics to make predictions at the
quantum level, so we rely on
probabilities. Nonetheless, the
essential nature of matter is
causal. The universe is causal. If
it wasn’t, and if our wills were not
causal, how would that possibly
work, and what would that even
mean? How could anything happen
that is not caused? The concept of
randomness, in the strongest sense
of things happening without anything
causing them to happen, is simply
incoherent.
The world is like a movie. Actors
are generally given some leeway in
interpreting their characters. We
are like actors who don’t even get
to interpret our roles. It’s
amazing, and that’s one of the
reasons I’m doing this show. It is
so bewilderingly amazing that the
universe, via the causal past, has
compelled
us to get the second most
fundamental aspect of human nature
completely wrong. Nature has done
this to us before in certain ways,
like with the illusion that the
world is flat, or that the Sun
revolves around the Earth. Another
illusion is that our planet is
completely still and motionless.
The reality, however, is that we’re
hurtling around the Sun at over
600,000 miles per hour. Nature, or
God, or whatever you want to call
the universe or reality, apparently
likes to have fun with us in this
way. This illusion of free will is
a natural illusion that has led us
to get the fundamental
characteristic of human will
completely wrong.
There is more and more evidence
coming out that the things we think
we decide freely with our conscious
mind are actually being decided at
the level of our unconscious. This
is becoming a hot research topic in
psychology and neuroscience. My
prediction is that as we understand
that our wills are not free, we will
be much more understanding toward
ourselves and each other when we
invariably do wrong. We will not
blame each other and ourselves when
things go wrong.
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