Amor fati.
“Free will” is one of a small handful of “popular” topics in philosophy that actually carry a lot of weight in the real-world.
It is inevitably tied to our intuitions about justice, morality, sense of purpose, short- vs long-term planning and, even more critically, to the way we design policies, draft laws and decide medical guidelines.
Even though the “question of free will” has been discussed for millennia[1], there seems to be little to no consensus[2] regarding its resolution, so instead of adding to an ever increasing ocean of verbosity around the subject, I’ll do my best to write down my views as succinctly as possible.
The coherence dilemma-
At any given moment, there are only two possibilities:
Either something behaves in accordance with some rules or it doesn’t.
Note that this has nothing to do with the usual claims laypeople (but often also philosophers and scientists) like to throw around, more specifically, there is no mention of either physics or neurology. This statement is UNIVERSALLY true.
Assume I am wrong and there is a thing that behaves neither in a rule-like manner nor in a rule-less manner, what would that behavior be?
If it is something I can understand, anticipate and model, then whatever model I am using IS an approximation of some rule. If I can’t, then (at least from my perspective) the behavior is random[3], which means exactly the same thing as not behaving in accordance with some rules.
So there is indeed no third option.
Iron rusts? either followed some rule(s) or random
A tree fell? either followed some rule(s) or random
30,303,030,303,030,301 is prime?[4] either followed some rule(s) or random
You feel hungry? either followed some rule(s) or random
You read this text from left-to-right? either followed some rule(s) or random
You disagree with the content of this text? either followed some rule(s) or random
This means that no matter how you choose to define the term “free will”, for your definition to be coherent, it can not contradict this dichotomy.
It plays absolutely no role if you include in your definition things like internal factors, external factors, genetics, memetics, the laws of physics, facts about neurology etc. as long as you do not violate this basic “master statement”:
(★) if something exists, it exhibits certain behaviors and those behaviors are, at any point in time, either rule-like or random.
Note that these might be very boring ones like those of a rock.
We humans have “volition” in the sense of being aware that our bodies initiate a sequence of movements, but the fact that we choose to execute the actions that we do in a specific manner, in a specific context, the effect (or failure) it achieves and the consequences of those actions, all either follow (or at the very least approximate) some set of rules or are random.
If I am being honest, it seems rather silly that so many words have been written on this topic, since there is literally nothing more to it.
Philosophers like to argue about things like “agent causation”[5] and “could have done otherwise”[6], but regardless of the form of obfuscation one might engage in, it can not contradict the reality that any coherent account of whatever it is they choose to call “free will” has to respect the fact that humans, like EVERYTHING ELSE, either behave according to some rules or randomly. No third alternative.
It then raises the question:
“why does anyone even care?”
which has a simple answer:
no one actually cares about how you define “free will” or if humans lack it or not, the discussion is really about assigning responsibility and blame.
The point of punishment-
Imagine the following scenario:
Two perpetrators A,B commit some offence, the circumstances of which are virtually identical with the single non-negligible difference that A is “punish-responsive”, meaning,
there exists some form of negative feedback (i.e. punishment) that, after receiving it, will cause A to change their ways and avoid recidivism, whereas B is “punish-unresponsive”, meaning,
NO FORM of negative feedback* will have an effect on B’s chances of recidivism.
Does it make sense to punish B?
Well, if we are vengeful, then it makes sense only if the (sadistic) satisfaction one would get out of it is greater than the investment (time, resources) required to inflict the punishment.
If we are not vengeful, and instead care only about recidivism, then clearly punishing B is a waste.
I would neither discuss here what SHOULD be done instead with a punish-unresponsive individual nor if “locking them up” as means of protecting the general population “just in case” makes sense, but I personally think this is a serious problem that currently has no good solutions IF WE ALSO WANT TO MINIMIZE VENGEFULNESS.
But note that at no point did I mention “free will”, “volition” or “intention”, then why do we, as a society, keep insisting that those terms matter for blameworthiness?
Unless we are sadistic and/or vengeful, the point of punishment and negative feedback is to try and mitigate some behavior from reoccurring in the future. I can reprimand the weather until I am blue in the face, but it is not going to change anything since the weather is as punish-unresponsive as it gets and therefore not culpable.
A perpetrator, like everything else in existence, is behaving in a way that either approximates a set of rules or is random, so if no reasonable amount of efforts on our behalf will EVER suffice to “tweak” said behavior in a way we would find more appropriate, then what is the point?
In other words, pragmatically:
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an agent can be said to be “responsible”/”culpable”/”blameworthy” if and only if they are “punish-responsive”
On some level, this is something we all know.
Colloquially, one TAKES responsibility, and no amount of thinking/believing/wanting/wishing/feeling someone is responsible will actually force them to own up to their behavior and do something about it.
*- Or at the very least, no form that we are willing to inflict.
In reality, the space of all possible negative feedbacks is enormous, most of which are outside what we would consider reasonable, moral or proportional.
A word about “Emergence”-
Since we either follow/approximate rules or act randomly, it means our intentions can’t possibly have the power we normally think they do because, like everything else, they too arise either in accordance with some rules or haphazardly.
To paraphrase the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer[7]:
we can intend to do something (and either succeed or fail), but we can not intend to intend.
This means our lives can be seen, in some sense, as happening automatically.
I am the way that I am because every single constituent of my being, be it atoms, cells, organs, personality traits, moods, social circles, etc. is, at any given moment, either following some natural laws or behaving arbitrarily/irregularly.
Despite this, an argument that seems to be increasingly popular for the existence of an otherworldly third alternative is, what I would call, “appeal to emergence”[8]. The general idea can be summarized roughly as follows:
I. “Emergence” is based on an observation that sometimes as we “scale up” from the building blocks of the universe, systems seem to exhibit new laws, behaviors and properties. Ones that, seemingly, can not be straightforwardly predicted from the behaviors and properties of the smaller components[9]. A common example is how the vast diversity of living organisms EMERGES from chemistry.
II. This is then taken a step further to conclude that the behavior of complex agents (such as humans) can not be fully reduced to the law-like behavior of particles/cells/organs etc. (or to their lawlessness) and/or that it is pointless to describe said behavior in those terms.
III. Therefore, there is a sense in which humans can be said to be “free”.
Even without trying to argue against “strong emergence”[10] (which deserves a separate analysis), not only can it not contradict the master statement (★), it is actually directly confirming it;
“gauge theory”[11] might not be an efficient or humanly-meaningful way of describing human behavior, but the laws of evolutionary psychology, sociology, economy, neurology, etc.[12][13][14] are such ways, all of which ARE STILL LAWS.
It is like saying that chess pieces can be said to be “free”, since their movement is best understood via the lens of the rules of chess instead of the laws of physics.
A different, more precise form of limitation is still a limitation.
The way we choose (or are capable) to describe ourselves does not change the fact that such a description will either assign some cause and effect, which can be seen as an “if X, then Y”-rule, to our behavior or, when those usual correlations are violated, will deem them to be, essentially random, irregularities.
Conclusion-
Every behavior, at every given moment, is either rule-following or random, with complex behaviors often being some combination over a long enough period of time (you do not choose to make mistakes, they just happen).
Humans are no exception.
Yes, our behavior is very complex and is better explained in more abstract terms, but it can not change the fact that, at least in principle, it CAN STILL BE EXPLAINED.
“Free will” (or lack thereof), however you may define it, plays no role in assigning responsibility to our actions, so maybe instead of trying to come up with rationalizations for it in the face of logical impossibility, it is instead time to change the focus of the debate to more productive questions such as:
“what behaviors do we want to see less of?”
“what behaviors do we want to see more of?”
“how can we design policies that reinforce those behaviors?”
“how can we reduce recidivism without overstepping?”
“what could be done about ‘punish-unresponsiveness’?”
and so on.
References-
[1]- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will_in_antiquity
[2]- philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl
[3]- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmically_random_sequence
[4]- wolframalpha.com/input?i=FACTOR+30303030303030301
[5]- academic.oup.com/book/9149/chapter/155760583
[6]- plato.stanford.edu/entries/alternative-possibilities/
[7]- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Freedom_of_the_Will
[8]- youtube.com/watch?v=UebSfjmQNvs
[9]- plato.stanford.edu/entries/properties-emergent/
[10]- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence#Strong_and_weak_emergence
[11]- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_gauge_theory
[12]- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_psychology
[13]- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_choice_theory
[14]- thedecisionlab.com/biases
