Do we have free will, or do we lack any free will, is one of those Big Questions that have perplexed professional philosophers and scientists and the average layperson too for millennia. The rational and objective part of me says we don't have free will; the more personal and subjective part of me wants me to believe I do have free will. I'd like to think I have free will even though I don't think I have free will. Here are a trilogy of short shorts where I try to come to terms with the paradox.
PART ONE: FREE WILL: YES, NO, OR MAYBE?
It's not good enough to just say that free will exists or that you have free will, you need to explain what the actual mechanisms in place are. What are the necessary components that have to be in place that allows that free will?
The real $64,000 question about free will, assuming free will of course, is what is the actual mechanism that operates? What are the physics, the chemistry, and the physiology that allows free will to happen?
You get these dozens and dozens of interviews on Big Question issue websites like "Closer to Truth" that deal with free will, but when all is said and done, there's a lot more said than done. All you really come away with is a lot of philosophical waffle but no real physics, chemistry and physiology. You're not told the actual mechanism(s). Nobody tells you how free will actually works, which doesn't inspire a whole lot of confidence that free will is real. Even if free will is real, it doesn't always amount to a hill of beans.
You may have free will enough to want to be the world's greatest trumpet player, but if you have no innate musical ability, the 'best' you might aspire to be is the world's worst trumpet player.
But do you have free will?
Presumably you didn't have free will when you were in the womb. So when did you acquire your free will? Were you born with free will? If not at birth, then perhaps when you turned one year old; or two years old; or perhaps three years old. In fact, if you do have the capacity for free will, wouldn't it be true that the ability to exercise your free will only comes to the fore when you begin to build up a data-bank of options? So the ability to exercise free will isn't something you're born with. To exercise free will requires knowledge of options, therefore learning / education (not of necessity formal). If the only data point in your food options data-bank is macaroni and cheese, then you have no free will when it comes to deciding on breakfast, lunch and dinner - and TV snacks as well.
Think of all of the occasions when you don't have free will, like when you're asleep, passed out drunk, knocked unconscious, under a general anaesthetic, or dead. What's the common factor? Presumably you 1) aren't aware that there is a decision that needs to be made, and 2) you can't draw off of your memories for options. But what is the mechanism that actually shuts down your awareness, either temporally or permanently? Are there clues to be had when comparing and contrasting your moments of active free will and when your free will is absolutely inactive?
But wait, there's more. Not only don't you have free will when asleep, you don't have free will over your dreams; what you dream; the contents of your dreams. You don't really have free will over any of your basic bodily functions. You have no free will mind-over-matter battling terminal cancer, and probably even less than that over battling the common cold and flu. You have no free will over your brain being suckered in by illusions; optical, tactile, auditory and so on. You seem to have very little if any free will control over your likes and dislikes in food, art, music, TV shows, even people. One often takes an instant liking or disliking to someone they have only just met.
Is free will, again assuming free will, a human condition? You would argue that you have free will and by extension human beings have free will. But then you'd probably have to conclude that all of the primates (apes and monkeys) have free will. The primates can make informed choices. But then probably all mammals have free will, and ditto the birds. Then why not reptiles, amphibians, even fish. A fish can be faced with having to make a decision. What about the invertebrates? You'd probably argue that individual members of the social insects - ants, termites, bees /wasps don't have free will, but what about solitary insects. Can a cockroach make an informed decision? Jellyfish and clams probably don't have free will, but a lobster might and an octopus certainly does. Plants don't have free will, but what about micro-organisms? Can bacterium exhibit free will?
Does free will have a sliding scale into non-free will (instinct)? Humans might have 10% free will and 90% instinct; an octopus 2% free will and 98% instinct; a plant 0% free will and 100% instinct. Is there a sharp demarcation between those with and those without free will, and what clues does that provide about possible mechanisms?
PART TWO: DOES A DETERMINISTIC COSMOS NIX FREE WILL?
Which comes first, the particles, forces and fields which collectively may or may not make for a deterministically cosmos, or the "you" that may or may not have free will? Well obviously the cosmic flotsam and jetsam come first, then that flotsam and jetsam evolves into the "you" and emerges into a property that's your alleged free will.
In proper order, is there firstly absolute determinism, and if so then secondly you can predict events absolutely based on that determinism and then later on down the track, or thirdly, is there or was there an emergent free will that arose out of a deterministic cosmos?
# DETERMINATION FIRST
Let's take it from the top, one step at a time. Once upon a time there was this Ka-Boom which cosmologists (actually the late Sir Fred Hoyle) have labelled the Big Bang event. From that moment on, was a new born cosmos a deterministic cosmos or an iffy, maybe this, maybe that probabilistic cosmos?
Pick a particle, any particle will do. Any one particle will behave in a deterministic fashion when interacting with any other particle or associated force or field as in the electron-positron example given earlier on. [Any particle will also behave in a deterministic fashion even if there are no other particles, forces or fields.] If any one particle has deterministic behaviour, then they all do and thus the entire cosmos is deterministic.
Example One: Every particle with mass has gravity and therefore interacts with every other particle that has mass (even photons) in a deterministic way (even if the calculations are beyond us mortals to perform - the three-body problem and all. It must be frustrating that the particles can 'calculate' to the last decimal place what course of action they must take while we can't perform those calculations, only approximate their values.)
Example Two: Every particle with charge has to react in a deterministic way to all other particles with charge.
Example Three: Every particle with 'spin' reacts in a deterministic way with its clone that has the same or opposite 'spin' (the Pauli Exclusion Principle).
The particles have no memory to draw on; they have no information to draw on; they respond 'instinctively' to what is in their vicinity. The cosmos in and of itself doesn't determine anything. All of the deterministic 'decisions' allegedly made by the cosmos are in fact made by these individual particles that collective make up and populate the cosmos, particles that are operating on 'instinct' but that 'instinct' is absolute and 100% repeatable. Every time an electron meets and greets a positron you get a ka-boom - every time; no exceptions.
In other words, the cosmos isn't a thing; it is comprised of things. The cosmos isn't in itself deterministic; the things within the cosmos; the things that make up the cosmos all exhibit deterministic behaviour. An analogy: the human population isn't a thing; the human population is comprised of things - individual humans.
# PREDICTION SECOND
Let's start by putting "you" into the equation. Whether you can determine hence predict everything or nothing in theory or in actual practice (or combinations thereof) hardly matters since neither option alters what's really happening in actual reality. 1) Maybe you can't find or predict where Heisenberg's electron is in either theory or in actual practice, but that matters not one wit to the electron. 2) You don't know or can you predict what's happening beyond the visible Universe in theory or in actual practice, but that's irrelevant to what is actually happening there. 3) You don't actually have to know any historical or modern person to realize that they weren't composed of antimatter. You can predict or determine from the comfort of your own armchair that there have been no anti-earthling humans - ever. But since antimatter exists, and since theory says an antimatter person is possible, your conclusion, your prediction is just limited to a very small portion of the cosmos.
Your (Royal Your) memory, information, knowledge and associated terms are useful in making predictions or forecasts based on the deterministic properties that the cosmos puts up front and centre. However, that's all ultimately irrelevant to the workings of the cosmos. What will be will be. Tomorrow's weather will be what tomorrow's weather will be regardless whether or not anyone makes a forecast. Planet Earth has had predictable daily weather way before any weather forecaster existed in anyone's philosophy.
Back to local events for the moment, if you are interested in predicting or forecasting this, that or the next thing 24 hours in advance, then you can safely ignore all possible relevant influences greater than one light day away. If you want to sooth-say happenings a year down the track in advance, you can absolutely ignore anything and everything greater than one light year away because light and everything else can't travel to us faster than the speed of light.
Just because you might need a computer-calculator (of whatever shape, manner or form imaginable) to crunch the numbers and make predictions, a computer-calculator that ends up being larger than the cosmos itself, doesn't in itself mean the cosmos isn't a deterministic hence predictable cosmos.
Let's take "you" out of the picture and so divorce the particle from the observer and/or the computer for the moment. Any given particle 'knows' what it must do when in the proximity of any other particle, force, field or whatever. The observer and/or the computer is irrelevant to that 'knowing', but whether or not the observer 'knows' what the particle 'knows', the outcome is the same and that includes the particle responding to the proximity of the observer.
# FREE WILL THIRD
If there is absolute determinism, absolute predictability, there can't be free will since if no fundamental particle has free will, no collection of fundamental particles (i.e. - the brain; therefore you) can have free will.
PART THREE: IS FREE WILL THE EXCEPTION TO THE RULE?
Apparently only an extremely tiny part of the cosmos has free will. That tiny cosmic fraction consists of just living brains on the Third Rock from the Sun. The rule is that most of the cosmos, the cosmos minus living brains, has no free will, so actual free will would be an exception to that rule. The best solution to explaining the exception to the rule phenomenon known as free will is to accept the postulate that there is in fact, no free will, therefore no exception to the rule as I shall hopefully explain.
# PARTICLES, FORCES & FIELDS
Presumably all of the electrons and quark trilogies (protons and neutrons) that make up your brain are standard off the shelf electrons and quarks. There is nothing extra special about them. They are the exact same sorts of electrons and quarks that comprise your big toe (which has no free will). Presumably the electric forces and fields are also standard issue and answer to Maxwell's Equations. Presumably the strong and weak nuclear forces that operate inside the atomic nuclei of all of the atoms that operate inside your brain are standard issue too. Whatever gravity your brain exerts (it has mass, therefore gravity) is standard. There's no 'dark energy' (anti-gravity) inside your brain. Nothing seems anomalous so far.
# CHEMISTRY
Presumably, all of the atoms and molecules that make up your brain's little grey cells are also standard issue and have no extra special unique properties relative to those same chemicals found elsewhere in nature or synthesized in the lab. Those carbon atoms that form part of your brain are the same as the carbon atoms found in coal, graphite or diamonds. Now no individual atom or molecule has free will - to the best of our knowledge.
Now when atoms and molecules interact with other atoms and molecules, well we call that chemistry. There are dozens of types of chemistry in the world like cooking chemistry, soil chemistry and nuclear chemistry. No free will is associated with these chemistries. There are numerous types of chemistries that operate in the human body like digestion. There's blood chemistry and liver chemistry too. None of these chemistries result in building structures with free will. But one kind of chemistry, neurochemistry or brain chemistry appears to have an emergent property we call free will. How so? Why this chemical exception to the rule?
# STRUCTURES
What has free will? The brain has free will. Presumably the only structure on Planet Earth, of all the multi-millions of structures that abound - from the pyramids to the ice cubes in your drink to the trees in your back yard - only the living brain has alleged free will. [I include the brains of the higher animal here as well as the human brain.] So focus, what sets the living brain, and only the living brain apart as having an alleged property called free will? No other part of the body has free will. You can remove and/or replace anything and everything in the body except the living brain and still have free will. Why this exception to the rule?
Consider further that your 3 lb. brain has an alleged property called free will yet hundreds of thousands of other 3 lb. objects, even organic objects, don't. Does a 3 lb. log have free will? Why not a 3 lb. brick? Shouldn't a 3 lb. brick have free will too? Your 3 lb. liver has no free will. A 3 lb. model of the human brain, standard issue in any anatomy department or in the office/lab of any neuroscientist has no free will. Why doesn't your 3 lb. brain have free will after you (and therefore your brain) dies?
The dead brain doesn't have free will. So what's the difference between you alleged free will living brain one minute before your death and your non-free will brain one minute after your death? Three of the four forces are still present and accounted for - the strong, weak and gravitational forces. The electromagnetic force has ceased to operate though, for free will, assuming free will, must somehow be associated with or caused by electromagnetism. Why that exception to the rule?
But free will associated with electromagnetism is odd because the electrical system/wiring in your house doesn't have free will, nor does the entire interconnected electrical grid. A magnet has no free will; ditto the magnetic field surrounding our planet and other planets as well, like Jupiter. The Sun is a seething mass of electromagnetic energy and it doesn't have free will.
# CONCLUSION
Only one structure (the brain); only one chemistry (neurochemistry); only one force (electromagnetism) seems to be associated with only one unique phenomenon - free will. But, and it's a big but, this collective exception to the rule is in accepting that there is a collective exception to the rule. No free will; no exception to the rule; no problem arises that requires explanation.
Science librarian; retired.
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