With an Account of How Freedom Might Sometimes Be Possible for Some
By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.
The problem of free will has been described as ‘the most difficult and pressing problem in all of philosophy’—so I suggest you take your time over this essay.
In philosophy, so-called libertarians defend the kind of free will that the vast majority of people take for granted, that is, the kind of free will that makes us responsible for our choices, and thus for our lives, in a deep and meaningful sense.
However, libertarians are a minority among philosophers, who, for the most part, believe that this kind of free will is not possible or even intelligible, and that, like myth or magic (which is, in a sense, unfettered free will), it has no place in our modern, rational-scientific picture of the universe.
How could something that is so deeply ingrained in our psyche and that pervades every aspect of our lives be nothing more than a product of our minds? As the writer Isaac Singer (d. 1991) once quipped, ‘We must believe in free will—we have no other choice.’ Be this as it may, can a belief in free will, that is, in libertarian free will, be justified on rational grounds?
From the outset, it is important to distinguish the libertarian in matters of free will from the libertarian in matters of politics, who believes, broadly, that the role of government ought to be circumscribed to protecting individual liberties, at least insofar as those liberties do not conflict with the liberties of others. Although the free will libertarian need not share in the political libertarian’s ideal of society (many do not), there is a clear sense in which the political libertarian relies upon the existence of libertarian free will, which he or she, at least implicitly, takes for a given. Thus, if a belief in libertarian free will cannot be justified on rational grounds, neither can a belief in libertarian politics, or for that matter criminal justice, divine retribution, and much else besides.
Determinism
Given its importance to ordinary life, you’d expect libertarian free will to be popular among philosophers—but it isn’t, and this is why.
Given the physical state of the universe at any given point in time, and given the laws of physics which are universal and constant, it is impossible for the history of the universe to be any other than it is. In other words, all past and future events are written into the very fabric of the universe, which is merely ‘playing itself out’, albeit on a grand, cosmic scale.
Some 200 years ago, the polymath the marquis de Laplace transmogrified this concept of ‘causal determinism’ into a super-intelligent demon who could accurately predict the future, first, by knowing every physical fact about the universe, and, second, by applying Newton’s Laws to those facts.
Of course, Newtonian physics has since been superseded by quantum mechanics, which allows for indeterminism in the behaviour of elementary particles. Even so, quantum mechanics has not put paid to the initial concerns about causal determinism because (a) even if quantum mechanics is not itself to be superseded by a more comprehensive deterministic theory, indeterminism in the behaviour of elementary particles need not translate into indeterminism in human behaviour, and, (b) even if it did, the behaviour that resulted would be random and chaotic rather than free and responsible.
Compatibilism
A widespread response to the problem posed by determinism is ‘compatibilism’, according to which freedom amounts to (1) being able to do something, and (2) not being prevented from doing that thing. Thus, I am free to run away if (1) I am able to run away, and (2) I am not prevented from doing so, for instance, by being held at gunpoint or locked up in a dungeon. According to the compatibilist philosopher Thomas Hobbes (d. 1679), a person is free when ‘he finds no stop in doing what he has the will, desire, or inclination to do’. If this is freedom, then a person is free even if what he has the will to do happens to have been determined.
Many eminent philosophers, from Aristotle to Schopenhauer, might be said to support compatibilism.
Children and the lower animals as well as men are capable of voluntary action, but not of choice. —Aristotle
Man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills. —Schopenhauer
But surely, you might say, freedom involves not only the ability to do something, but also the ability to do otherwise. The compatibilist’s response to this objection is to define ‘the ability to do otherwise’ in the same way that they defined freedom. ‘The ability to do otherwise’ amounts to (1) being able to do otherwise, and (2) not being prevented from doing otherwise. Had I wanted to do otherwise than run away, nothing would have prevented me from doing so. However, I did not want to do otherwise than run away (because what I wanted to do was determined), and, in this sense, I acted freely.
Still, even if the compatibilist account is able to capture surface freedoms involving the ability to do or not do something, it does not seem to capture the deep freedom of choice that most people associate with free will. When you and I talk about free will, we do not mean merely ‘unconstrained choice’, but also control over that choice. But the compatibilist would insist that this sort of strong, libertarian free will is simply incoherent: the same past cannot lead to more than one possible future, basta, un point c’est tout, end of the story.
Imagine that Emma, in her final year at college, is deliberating between careers: teaching on the one hand and investment banking on the other. After due consideration, she ‘chooses’ to go into investment banking. Given the same past—the same upbringing, the same beliefs and desires, the same thought processes—how could she possibly have ‘chosen’ otherwise? Emma could only have chosen otherwise if her past, that is, the past, had been different—but, of course, the past could not have been different for the simple reason that there is only ever one past. Even if she could have chosen otherwise, such a choice would seem inexplicable, and therefore arbitrary, in light of her upbringing, her beliefs and desires, and so on.
In essence, says the compatibilist, people have a confused notion not just of freedom, but also of determinism, which they associate with constraint or compulsion. Clearing up this confusion does not usually bring them round to compatibilism, because what they actually believe is that determinism is in itself incompatible with free will. In other words, they are incompatibilists.
Indeterminism
It gets even thornier for the incompatibilists, in that their idea of free will is incompatible not only with determinism but also with indeterminism!
If undetermined events like quantum leaps occur by chance, and if free actions are undetermined events, it seems that free actions also occur by chance. But this is a contradiction in terms, since free and responsible actions cannot, by definition, occur by chance. If my actions are the result of undetermined events in my brain, they are random and chaotic, and undermine rather than enable my freedom.
Imagine that I am deliberating between fast food and a healthier but more time-consuming home-cooked meal, and that, at the outcome of this deliberation, I opt for the home-cooked meal. If my choices are undetermined, I might at this point, despite the process of deliberation that I have just undergone, suddenly and inexplicably ‘change my mind’ and plump for fast food. You might argue, along with the idealist philosopher GW Leibniz (d. 1716), that prior reasons merely ‘incline without necessitating’. But it is precisely because prior reasons inclined me towards the garden risotto that I chose it over the cheeseburger. Had I instead gone for the cheeseburger, this ‘choice’ would not truly have been my own.
Or, imagine that I have an exact counterpart, Neel*, who lives in another possible world which is in all respects identical to this one. One day, I succumb to the temptation to steal a bicycle, whereas Neel* resists this temptation—even though both of us have had exactly the same past up to that point. In the words of the philosopher Alfred Mele (b. 1951), ‘If there is nothing about the agents’ powers, capacities, states of mind, moral character and the like that explains this difference in outcome … the difference is just a matter of luck.’
Mind, Soul, and the Causa Sui
If they are to hold that free will is compatible with indeterminism, libertarians need to provide an account of how we might be able to act and act otherwise without it seeming completely arbitrary. After Descartes, who distinguished the immaterial mind from the material body, a common libertarian move has been to posit an additional factor such as the mind or soul that is not bound by the laws of physics. Although the mind or soul exists outside the material realm, it is able to intervene in the material realm to influence events—possibly by exploiting the indeterminism in the brain.
Some libertarians believe that such a Cartesian dualism of mind and body is the only possible solution to the problem of free will. But, putting aside traditional concerns about mind-body dualism, it is not at all clear that mind-body dualism is an effective response to the threat of indeterminism. If Emma’s decision to go into banking is no longer determined by the prior activity of her brain, then it is determined by the prior activity of her disembodied mind or soul. In other words, all that mind-body dualism achieves is to shift the problem to one remove, that is, from the brain to a (hypothetical) mind or soul.
All that remains to dualist libertarians is to appeal to mystery and claim that disembodied minds or souls exist in a realm that is beyond reason or science. This was, more or less, the line adopted by Immanuel Kant (d. 1804), who argued that free will is presupposed by our practical and moral lives. Although reason and science can tell us about how things appear in the world (‘phenomena’), they cannot tell us about how they are in themselves (‘noumena’). Our noumenal selves, which govern our practical and moral lives, lie beyond the material realm of reason and science, and cannot be apprehended in those terms.
Another ‘additional factor’ strategy, the agent-causal strategy, consists in arguing that Emma’s choices are determined, not by prior events (determinism), nor by chance (indeterminism), but by Emma herself. This kind of ‘immanent’ causation brought about by the agent herself differs from the ‘transeunt’ causation brought about by events in that it involves a ‘prime mover unmoved’—in other words, an entity, at least in this respect, akin to God. But, of course, immanent causation is no less mysterious than Cartesian mind-body dualism or Kantian noumenal selves, and, like them, merely shifts the problem to one remove, in this case, to a prime mover unmoved, uncaused cause, or causa sui (Latin, ‘cause of itself’).
For Nietzsche (d. 1900):
The causa sui is the best self-contradiction that has been conceived so far; it is a sort of rape and perversion of logic. But the extravagant pride of man has managed to entangle itself… with just this nonsense. The desire for ‘freedom of the will’ in the superlative metaphysical sense, which still holds sway, unfortunately, in the minds of the half-educated—the desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for one’s actions oneself, and to absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance, and society—involves nothing less than to be precisely this causa sui and, with more than Baron Munchausen’s audacity, to pull oneself up into existence by the hair, out of the swamps of nothingness.
A Possible Way Out
The real challenge for libertarians is to furnish an account of free will that does not rely on mysterious forms of agency, but sits comfortably with our modern, rational-scientific picture of the universe.
The idea that freedom might lie in the control of attention is an ancient one. In the Indian tradition, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras locate liberation in mastery of the mind through concentration and meditation. Much later, in his Philosophy of Physiology (1779), the twenty-year-old medical student Friedrich Schiller argued that freedom lies in attention. More than a century later, William James developed a similar account in terms of an ‘effort of attention’.
So one more modern possibility is this. Neurotransmission, that is, electrical signalling in the brain, may be subject to quantum indeterminacies of a kind that could provide the leeway or ‘point of engagement’ for the exercise of free will. As demonstrated by Edward Lorenz (d. 2008), small changes in the initial conditions of a chaotic system can, through a snowball effect, result in much larger, if unpredictable, changes in that system’s behaviour. Potentially, the flap of a butterfly wing in Kyoto could result in a thunderstorm in Paris. Similarly, an effort of thought or concentration could sway or shepherd random and chaotic patterns of neurological activity so as to culminate in an undetermined action that is free in the strong, libertarian sense.
Most of the time, a person’s actions and corresponding brain activity would be determined by past events and the cumulative effects of those past events on the person’s patterns of thought. Most of the time, in fact, almost all of the time, the person’s actions would be determined by a commixture of neuroses, obsessions, learnt behaviours, socialisation, enculturation, and so on. But on certain occasions, such as when the person was genuinely torn between two competing choices, the degree of indeterminacy in their brain would rise to such a degree as to permit an undetermined action.
Such a window of freedom would be rare, but even a single free action (or non-action) could impact on all subsequent actions and completely alter the course of a life, and the lives affected by that life, and the lives affected by those lives… If Emma had freely decided to go into teaching instead of banking, she would have had a different set of colleagues and friends. She would have married someone whom she would not otherwise have met. Together, they would have had ‘other’ children, almost certainly in another house, and so on.
Are Some People Freer Than Others?
A corollary of this ‘effort of thought’ theory of free will is that some people are freer than others. First, people who are more imaginative, more independent, or more rebellious are freer than people who fall into conventional patterns of thought. Most people would not know possibility if it slapped them in the face; but a few actively seek to disturb fixed patterns of thought, thereby increasing the indeterminacy in their brain and so their latitude for freedom. Second, people who can ‘see into the future’, that is, people who have a high degree of insight into the potential ramifications of their choices, are freer than people who are unable or unwilling to project. Third, people who cultivate attention and concentration ought also to be freer. Indeed, this, and not bendiness, was the historical purpose of yoga.
Of course, there is overlap between those who are mired in convention and those who are unable to see into the future (and who therefore lack intuition), since both conditions are mutually reinforcing, and both arise from the same ultimate source, namely, fear or cowardice. Conversely, there is a high degree of overlap between free thinkers and visionaries. Courage underpins both freedom of thought and freedom of action. In life as in chess, the best players are those who can see several steps ahead, and who can respond to ever changing circumstances with the boldest and most original moves.
Maybe you are not convinced by the ‘effort of thought’ theory, but if we are to rescue free will, which is essential if we are to take seriously the possibility of changing ourselves and our lives, it is probably the best we have to go on.
Continue Exploring
If this essay spoke to you, you might look into The Art of Failure: The Anti Self-Help Guide.
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