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Asking when a
child gains it illuminates the
incoherence of the concept of free
will. Before we go into this, I
just want to briefly review why this
matter of human will -- this
question of whether it is causal or
free -- is important. Naturally,
our show’s perspective is that all
evidence, bar none, indicates that
our wills are causal, and that free
will is an illusion.
This question is
important because much of our
behavior depends upon how we view
our human nature. In other words,
when we act under the illusion that
we have a free will, we treat
ourselves and each other differently
– basically more unkindly and less
compassionately – than when we
understand that everything we do is
compelled, and that nothing is
really “up to us.”
Often people will
confuse the term “free will” with
the term “will.” When people say
that they have a free will, they are
actually saying that they have a
will. We make decisions all of the
time. These decisions are based on
reasons, or causes. The notion that
we can make decisions that are not
based on a reason is incoherent.
How can we make a decision not based
on some reason? We can’t, and this
is true whether or not the reason is
unconscious.
If we were to
make a decision, and it was actually
possible that there was no reason
for it, obviously the decision could
not have been freely made. If there
is a reason for it, this brings the
principle of causality into play.
If there’s a reason for the
decision, there is a reason for the
reason, and a reason for that
reason.
This cause and
effect chain of reasons –reasons
always go back in time, and the
reason will always precede the
effect, or decision. If you follow
that chain of causation back, it
extends to before the person making
the decision was born, before the
planet was created, and presumably
before the Big Bang.
Causality is the
fundamental explanation for why our
wills are not free. Again, when
people say that they have a free
will, what they are saying is that
“I can choose whatever I want. What
I do is completely up to me. It is
not up to anything else.” What we
actually have is a causal will. Our
decisions are not really up to us.
They are up to many factors that are
not in our control at all.
One of the ways
that we define free will goes as
follows. If we have a free will,
then that means we’re essentially
responsible for our acts – we’re
fundamentally responsible. It’s not
that we simply hold ourselves
responsible, but that we actually
are responsible. If we have a
causal will, that means that we may
hold ourselves responsible to
preserve our civilization and to
have a certain degree of order, but
that attribution is just a
convention. Perhaps because we
don’t know any better, or for some
other reason, but the fundamental
reality is that we’re not
responsible. The universe, or God,
may be responsible for our actions,
but the prospect emerges that S/He
doesn’t have a free will, but that’s
beyond the scope of this episode.
If being
responsible for our acts is our
definition of free will, then we
have a problem. We all agree that a
one-day-old infant does not have a
free will, in the sense of being
responsible for his or her actions.
You can’t hold a one-day-old
responsible for a moral decision –
for soiling itself, or peeing on
you.
We all agree that
a one-day-old infant is not morally
accountable, and therefore does not
have a free will. Naturally, the
reason infants don’t have a free
will is that they don’t have the
capacity – the experience and brain
development – to make a moral
decision. So, if a one-day-old
doesn’t have a free will, at what
point, at what moment, at what age
-- what would have to happen -- for
that human being that doesn’t have a
free will to suddenly acquire one?
That question is
fraught with contradiction and
confusion. We might say that a
child will develop free will when
the child has gained a certain
amount of knowledge and experience
in the world. Then, all of the
sudden, the child would go from
being a human being that is not
essentially responsible to a human
being that is essentially
responsible. But, if that’s the
case, would that mean that a child
who has acquired much more knowledge
than another child would have more
free will than the more ignorant
child?
That would mean
that some people have more free will
than others, and a person who is
almost completely ignorant would
have almost no free will. Someone
might say that an infant doesn’t
have much intellectual maturity, or
its rational thought processes
haven’t developed much yet. Well,
when might that happen? At what
age? That would, of course, means
that one child would develop a free
will before another child. Asking
those questions invites many
confusions. What about a person who
is brain damaged? It would be
presumed that they don’t have a free
will. What about the mentally and
emotionally challenged?
The intriguing
part of this question relates to the
exact moment that a child would go
from not having a free will to
having one. Again, this relates to
causality because it’s not just
about a child’s intellectual
development, amount of experience,
maturity, etc. Those aren’t the
only things that prevent a child
from having a free will. The other
inescapable prohibition is that the
one-day-old child, like a
five-year-old, or a ten-year-old, or
an adult, lives in a physical
universe that is completely governed
by causality. In science, we
understand that change is the
fundamental process in the
universe. Change means that a
particle, or molecule, is at one
place at one moment, and in another
place the very next moment. The
universe is not static. It changes,
and the fundamental process
explaining this change is
causality. Things cause things to
change, and everything has a cause.
Without causality, there would be no
change.
If we agree that
a one-day-old infant doesn’t have a
free will, and we want to assert
that at a certain age – two, five,
ten, whatever – the infant suddenly
acquires one, we would have to
explain how that infant suddenly
develops the ability to circumvent
this fundamental law of nature that
is cause and effect. It’s simply
impossible for an infant, or a
child, or and adult, or anything at
all – alive or not – to overcome the
causal nature of the universe.
Those of us who
may not accept causality as the
fundamental process that everything
in the universe is governed by may
wish to consider the alternative.
If things were not caused, they
would be random. Randomness
has various definitions. You can
put your hand in a bowl of ping-pong
balls, and pick one out randomly,
but that is just a manner of
speech. You are acting without the
deliberate intention to pick out a
specific ball, but the whole process
of is nevertheless causal.
If things were
not causal, how could they come to
be? If a child’s, or our own,
decision, is not caused – if
anything in the universe is not
caused – how could it have
happened? Nothing happens that
isn’t caused. That’s the salient
understanding here. When you
understand that everything has to
have been caused, including the
causes of causes, then
you understand
how it would be impossible for a
child to go from not having a free
will at one day old to suddenly
having one at the age of five or
ten. It would be as if acquiring
more intelligence, or maturity, or
knowledge, would somehow allow the
child to circumvent this basic law
of nature – the law of causality.
This truth that
human will is causal and unconscious
rather than free represents a leap
in the evolution of the human mind.
Perplexingly, we have been
predetermined by the past that
controls everything to believe that
we have a free will – to get wrong
the most fundamental characteristic
of human will. We didn’t, of our
own accord, decide to get it wrong,
just like we didn’t decide to get
that the Earth is an orb rather than
flat wrong, or that the Earth
revolves around the Sun rather than
visa-versa wrong. For millennia,
we’ve been predetermined to hold
this free will illusion.
Imagine what it
would mean for our world – not just
some philosophers, psychologists,
and physicists – to understand the
causal nature of human will. I
would guess most physicists
understand that free will is
impossible because they understand
that the physical laws of nature
control everything. Sometimes
people will assert that physics
relates to the physical world, but
that thoughts, and feelings, and
decisions are actually spiritual,
and operate outside of physical
law. They do not. In physical
reality, or nature, there is such a
thing as time. As Einstein
demonstrated, it’s more accurately
described as “space-time,” because
time and space are actually one
entity. Space requires time, and
time requires space. You can’t have
one without the other.
Let’s define
spirituality as that which we can’t
detect or measure physically. Now
consider that every decision we
make, however spiritual it might be,
would have to take place within a
specific moment in time. Think
about that. If the decision is
being made within a certain
particular moment, it is clearly
within time. Thus, the spiritual
nature of a decision does not allow
it to circumvent time. So, another
way to understand why our decisions
are not freely willed is to consider
that a spiritual decision cannot
reside outside of the laws of
nature, or outside of space-time.
The most
fundamental way of understanding why
free will is impossible, and why
cause and effect govern everything,
is to consider the universe in its
entirety. When I say the entire
universe, I mean regardless of
whether the universe is finite or
infinite. The universe at one
moment in time completely determines
the universe at the next moment in
time. The state of the universe at
that next moment in time will then
completely determine the state of
the universe at the subsequent
moment. Naturally, this chain of
cause and effect that involves the
entire universe also goes back into
the past. This moment in time is
the complete result of the previous
moment, and the previous moment in
time was the complete result of the
immediately preceding moment. That
chain of causality stretches back in
time at least to the Big Bang.
If a decision
that we describe as spiritual is
taking place within a precise moment
in time in the universe, it can’t
escape causality. The decision
occurs within a universe defined as
everything there is, spiritual or
whatever. If it is occupying a
specific place in the universal
timeline, the decision is determined
by the causality inherent in that
timeline. The decision cannot
escape causality.
This is huge.
John Searle’s statement at the
beginning of each episode to the
effect that demonstrating free will
to be an illusion would be “a bigger
revolution in our thinking than
Einstein, or Copernicus, or Newton,
or Galileo, or Darwin” is true. We
undergo evolution in the sense of
our physical bodies evolving.
People are getting taller. We’re
losing our hair. Our brains are
getting bigger. Some changes happen
over the course of over a million
years, but there are some changes
that occur within decades. There is
also an evolution of our mind. We
are becoming more intelligent as a
species. To move from our
mistakenly perceiving the
fundamental nature of our human will
as free of causality-- free of
reasons, free of any and all factors
not in our control -- to the
accurate understanding that our
wills are causal, and that reality
is essentially like a movie, is
truly revolutionary.
We generally
understand that the universe is
causal. Some people may claim that
particle behavior at the quantum
level is random, in the strongest
sense, but they are thereby claiming
that such particle behavior is
uncaused. That is an absurd
conclusion. It is not founded on
reason. It is not founded on
evidence. How could something that
has happened not have been caused?
At the quantum level, it is
impossible to measure simultaneously
the position and momentum of a
particle. It is therefore
impossible to use Classical, or
Newtonian, physics to accurately
predict the behavior of quantum
phenomena. So, at the quantum
level, physicists rely on
probabilities. Instead of measuring
the movement of one particle, they
measure the movement of groups of
particles. They thereby predict a
single particle’s behavior through
probabilities derived from the
movement of those groups, as opposed
to through the exact, direct
measurement of that particle.
We may not know
the factors that contribute to a
particle’s being in one place at one
moment, and then all of the sudden
being in another
place at the next moment. But such
ignorance of the agents impinging
upon the particle in no way leads to
the rational, scientific conclusion
that the particle’s behavior has not
been caused. Again, the prospect of
a particle’s behavior being uncaused
is incoherent. How could something
not be caused?
Transitioning
from the illusion of free will is a
huge step in the evolution of
humankind. It can generate profound
changes in our civilization. Right
now, everything from our criminal
justice system to how we raise kids,
to how we reward what we do related
to economic activity, is all based
on the mistaken premise that human
beings have a free will. When you
consider that this illusion of free
will leads to people blaming each
other and themselves, you can
understand why there is so much
conflict and so many wars in this
world.
If we’re
mistakenly blaming others and
ourselves for stuff that we have
absolutely no control over, and then
acting on that blame, it’s going to
create a much more aggressive and
hostile world than if we were to
overcome this free will illusion,
and understand that everything we do
is completely compelled.
In summary, if we
ask ourselves how a one-day-old
child, whom we all understand does
not have a free will, could somehow
circumvent the laws of nature, we
can understand why free will is
impossible.
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