The stone what makes free will free

Does it stop you feeling entirely morally responsible? I very much doubt it. Should it stop us? Well, it might not be a good thing if it did. But the logic seems irresistible …. It may be that we stand condemned by Nietzsche:. 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 profoundly and frightfully with just this nonsense.

Is there any reply? We also might want to put him in jail as a means of reforming him, essentially reprogramming him to not burglarize. Further, putting Joe in jail is another way of expressing our vengeance and anger at what Joe did.

While vengeance and anger are not the noblest reasons for punishment, they are undeniable elements. Yes, Joe may have been predetermined to burglarize, but we are nevertheless justified in punishing him.

We recognize that Bob was victimized when being kidnapped and brainwashed, and this will give us sympathy for him. Rather than throw him in jail, we will want to de-program him through more gentle means. Our reaction to Joe, though, will be different: he was not victimized like Bob, and thus we will feel morally justified in punishing Joe by putting him in jail. In this way, the determinist can make sense of the notion of moral responsibility without the assistance of the idea of free will.

A third argument is that the idea of human dignity rests on the ability to make free choices. What would life be worth if all my actions are mechanically pre-established? I would be no different than animals that cannot act beyond their instincts. Worse yet, I would be no better than a mechanical robot that is restricted by its programming. The uniqueness of human existence hinges on our ability to break free of constraints and build our own distinctive worlds.

In contemporary times, Jean Paul Sartre built his entire philosophy around this point. His theory, called existentialism, is the view that people are entirely free and therefore responsible for what they make of themselves. In the following, Sartre explains the unbreakable link between human dignity and free will:. This theory [of existentialism] alone is compatible with the dignity of man, it is the only one which does not make man into an object.

All kinds of materialism lead one to treat every man including oneself as an object — that is, as a set of pre-determined reactions, in no way different from the patterns of qualities and phenomena which constitute a table, or a chair or a stone. What is at the very heart and center of existentialism, is the absolute character of the free commitment, by which every man realizes himself in realizing a type of humanity.

Materialistic determinism, according to Sartre, reduces people to the level of objects, and is incapable of giving us our uniquely human dignity. Rather, our dignity requires the capacity to act freely and take responsibility for it.

The argument from dignity, then, is this:. If I act with human dignity, then I must have genuinely free control over those actions. Does human dignity demand the ability to make truly free choices? According to the determinist, the question once again rests on an especially vague term, in this case, what we mean by "dignity" and what counts as a dignified life.

Suppose that you jotted down all the actions that you made in a single day from the moment you awoke in the morning until you fell asleep at night. The list may contain upwards of , actions. We have morning routines, work routines, socializing routines, educational routines, meal routines, entertainment routines, and evening routines. Even the free will advocate would admit that much of our behavior throughout the day occurs when we are running on autopilot.

Suppose, now, that you go an entire week running only on autopilot. During that time you work hard at your job, are loving to your family, and decent to other people, and all the while acting from sheer habit.

Could I accuse you of being an undignified animal or robot? Certainly not. Your conduct during that time might even exemplify what we mean by human dignity. Suppose next that you went your entire life on autopilot, without making a single choice of the sort that free will advocates cherish. As a child you are imprinted with routines from your parents, and you carry those with you through life.

Even when you add new routines, you do so while on autopilot by mechanically adapting routines that you already have. Throughout this time your behavior is as virtuous as can be. Could I accuse you of living a sub-human existence? Again, certainly not. The point is that there is enough merit in our autopilot existence to give us dignity, even if free will does not exist.

A fourth argument for genuine free will stems from our ability to radically transform our lives in crisis situations. But, as mechanical as we are with our reactions, don't we all at least occasionally experience major events that defy our habitual programming and force us to break new ground? This is especially so with traumatic situations of suffering and conflict.

In these cases, we feel helpless to the overwhelming forces outside of us, and in that state of despair we break free of our ordinary habits and explore new ways of looking at the world. Joe was an avid outdoorsman and he lived for the weekends when he could go hunting, fishing, hiking, or camping. On one excursion he fell from a ten-foot elevated hunting platform, broke his back and became paralyzed from his waist down.

His identity as an outdoorsman was instantly taken away from him, and for weeks all that he could think about was dying. But after a few months he made the conscious decision to accept his condition and try to move beyond it. He enrolled in college, acquired new skills and interests, and essentially redefined his identity. Karl Jaspers — calls these life-transforming experiences boundary situations , which he describes here:.

I must die, I must suffer, I must struggle, I am subject to chance, I am entangled with guilt. These fundamental situations of our existence we call boundary situations.

That is, they are situations that we cannot alter or change. In our ordinary lives we typically avoid them by closing our eyes and living as if they were not there. We forget that we have to die, forget our guilt, and forget our vulnerability to chance. In boundary situations, however, we respond by either covering them up or, if we really grasp them, we respond through despair and recovery: we become ourselves by transforming our consciousness of being.

For Jaspers, we typically go through life ignoring our deep vulnerabilities. But in boundary situations we are forced to confront them, and, in that state of crisis, human freedom gives us the opportunity to transform ourselves. In short, yes, we live in a mechanically-determined world, and are even part of it. But when overwhelming situations arise that challenge our identities, we reshape ourselves through the exercise of genuine free will.

The argument for freewill from boundary situations, then, is this:. If there are special circumstances in which we can dramatically transform beyond our purely automatic and habitual life activities, then in at least some circumstances we have a genuinely free will. There are such special circumstances, such as with boundary situations. Therefore, in at least some circumstances we have a genuinely free will. Typical stressful events are job loss, relationship conflict, terminal illness, and death of a loved one.

For Joe, it was a major disability. When we cannot remove the stressful event, then we must develop new coping strategies that reshape our patterns of thinking. For defenders of free will such as Jaspers, these coping strategies involve genuinely free choice.

But clinical psychology makes no such assumption, and, like other social sciences, it assumes determinism. On this view, people are stimulus-response machines, where therapy is the stimulus that results in emotional recovery.

Clinical psychology and its deterministic model may not have the story completely right. But it does offer a plausible alternative explanation for how people in crisis situations can break old habits and form new ones, without relying on free will.

A fifth argument for genuine free will stems from the principle of indeterminacy which was discovered by physicists in the early twentieth-century. When investigating the way that electrons zip around the nucleus of an atom, physicists realized that they could not determine with certainty where an electron would be at any given moment.

It was not because their scientific equipment was too primitive. Rather, it is because the electrons themselves are by nature indeterminable. It is as though electrons exist in a cloud of potentiality around a nucleus, and their specific locations in space become actualized only when we take measurements of them. The best that we can do is to calculate the probability of where it might be at that point in time. This is the basis of our unconstrained free choices.

If electrons are indeterminable, then some natural events are not determined. If some natural events are not determined, then some actions might be the result of genuine free will. Therefore, if electrons are interminable, then some actions might be the result of genuine free will. There are two ways in which subatomic indeterminacy might bolster the theory of free will.

First, the principle of indeterminacy rewrites the book on how the physical world around us operates. We can no longer say that the world is just a giant cause-effect machine with each link in the causal chain obeying rigid laws. Second, it could be that the indeterminacy of electrons themselves at the subatomic level trigger a chain of bio-chemical reactions in my body that result in a freely chosen action.

For example, when I select chocolate ice cream instead of vanilla, my thoughts and neurological activity build upon deeper and deeper biochemical events, which might ultimately trace back to the indeterminacy of electrons.

There are two common criticisms that determinists make against this argument from indeterminacy. First, even if things are indeterminable at the level of subatomic particles, the physical world is still governed by rigid natural laws at higher levels of chemical molecules and biological cells.

There is a natural barrier that separates the quantum world from everything higher up. Chemists have confidence that the substances they work with follow strict chemical laws. Biochemists have the same confidence that the living cells they study follow strict biological laws. At these higher levels, the causal machinery of the world is intact, regardless of what happens at the subatomic level. Whatever choices we make as human beings, these originate within our brains, which follow chemical and biological laws.

The indeterminacy of electrons does not just jump up to these higher levels. A second criticism of the indeterminacy argument is that it does not allow for the type of human choices that free will advocates need. The indeterminacy of electrons is a random thing, but genuinely free choices cannot be random: they are thoughtful and meaningful actions.

If I am deciding between buying chocolate ice cream and vanilla and I randomly flip a coin to decide, that is an arbitrary action, not a free action. If in fact all of our actions were indeterminate in the way that electrons are, we would have nonstop spasms and convulsions, not meaningfully chosen actions. Rather than selecting either the chocolate ice cream or vanilla, I would start quivering like I am having a seizure.

Thus, subatomic indeterminacy is no real help to the free will advocate. For decades these two criticisms were assumed to be decisive refutations of the argument for free will from indeterminacy, but recent advances in science challenge this.

First, regarding the barrier between the quantum world and higher levels of reality, computer scientists have created quantum computers that indeed reach down into the subatomic level and tap into quantum phenomena. Quantum computers are obviously human-created devices, but now many biologists maintain that biological organisms might similarly draw on subatomic phenomena. Photosynthesis might involve a quantum-level process that enables light photons to land on a chlorophyll molecule with maximum efficiency.

Similarly, vision might involve a quantum process where an incoming photon triggers a light receptor in the eye with maximum efficiency. There is even a suggestion that brain neurons contain microtubes that reach down into the quantum level. Much of this is theoretical, and it is possible that quantum explanations are more like miraculous solutions to complex biological puzzles that are currently beyond the reach of traditional science.

Nevertheless, these theories raise the serious possibility that evolution has bridged the barrier between the quantum world and biology. If so, then it's at least theoretically possible that our brains are capable of genuinely free human choices that reach deep within our biology into the subatomic realm.

Second, regarding the contention that indeterminacy will only produce random actions, this is not necessarily the case. Quantum computers do not result in arbitrary events, like memory chips catching on fire, or printers printing out gibberish. So too with quantum biology: the results are biological processes that perform highly complex tasks with great efficiency, such as global detection, vision, and photosynthesis.

If evolution has in fact tied brain activity to quantum phenomena, it is reasonable to assume that it would similarly facilitate an important biological process with great efficiency. None of this proves the existence of free will through indeterminacy, but it at least offers a scientifically-respectable theory for how nature might have implanted within our brains the ability to have done otherwise. So far, while genuine free will might be a theoretical possibility, most of the common arguments for it are weak.

Even so, it is difficult to abandon the concept of free choice which we so regularly rely on in our daily lives. It also seems to be at the heart of the language we use when talking about personal responsibility, artistic creativity, true friendship and scores of other human values, all of which seem to involve breaking free of restrictive social expectations. Can we just throw this away and surrender to the idea that we are only pre-programmed robots? Even determinists recognize that ideas of freedom are embedded in our thinking and that we all use the notion of free choice in ordinary conversation.

Perhaps the solution is to come up with a different definition of freedom that is more compatible with determinism. Consider the definition of genuine free will that we have been working with so far;.

This is an extreme position that requires us to defy known laws of nature when acting freely. That is, if I could reverse the hands of time and act differently the second time around, I would have to break free of the causal chain of events that led up to my action the first time. That is an unrealistically high standard to set for any theory.

But there are alternative notions of freedom that are more modest, and aim to fit neatly with determinism. A popular compatiblist approach among many philosophers is a weaker conception of human freedom known as freedom of action :. According to this concept, I draw a circle around myself and say that if an action originates from causes within that circle, such as my DNA or my brain activity, then that action is free. I ultimately am the source of that action, and not some force outside of the circle that is imposing itself on me.

The action is free because it is mine. When I select chocolate ice cream instead of vanilla, that choice emerges from inside of me given how I am.

This rather modest conception of freedom does not require that I have the magical ability to have done otherwise. It also fully accepts the theory of determinism and is completely compatible with it. Even though my actions are determined, I can still take comfort in the fact that the decision process is uniquely mine, and is generated by mechanical psychological processes within me specifically. The biggest challenge for defenders of freedom of action is to tell us precisely how our free actions differ from our unfree ones.

If all actions are ultimately caused by laws of nature, what exactly is the point of distinction between the free and unfree ones? There are two explanations offered by advocates of freedom of action. The first one, which we can call the dotted outline theory, maintains that there is something like a dotted line around us where the internal programming within the line count as "free", but the conduct that is compelled by coercive forces outside the line is "unfree".

On this view, we should assume that most of our actions are free, including those done while on autopilot, since they originate from within us. If a robber makes me hand over my wallet at gunpoint, I cannot reasonably choose to keep my wallet in my pocket.

If I am sitting in a wheel chair paralyzed from the neck down from an accident, I cannot choose to get up and walk around. Returning to the earlier example of the two burglars, we would all normally say that Joe freely chooses to burglarize houses, but poor brainwashed Bob does not burglarize by choice. What is the difference between the two? The answer is that Joe burglarizes freely since there are no serious constraints on his actions.

This distinction between free and unfree actions initially looks plausible: free actions are those that emerge from within the dotted line of our own psychological programming, and unfree ones are externally coerced thereby seriously impairing our normal actions. But something is missing from this explanation, since sometimes even what goes on within my dotted line can be as coercive to me as an unwanted force outside the line.

A second explanation of how free and unfree actions differ was offered by American philosopher Harry Frankfurt b. He asks us to distinguish between two kinds of desires that we have. Take, for example, the internal conflict I experience with my ice cream addiction. I have a strong desire for ice cream and go buy some, but at the same time I resent the fact that I have that desire and cannot control it. Free actions, according to Frankfurt, are those in which our first and second order desires line up, whereas unfree actions occur when first and second order desires conflict.

Non-dieters, though, may desire ice cream, and desire to have that desire. For them, the purchase of the ice cream would indeed be free. Even if my first and second order desires line up, as when I desire to desire ice cream, the cause of my desires at both levels strictly follow mechanical laws of nature. Frankfurt's theory has the advantage of helping us distinguish between the free choices that humans make, and the not-so-free ones made by animals.

Some higher animals such as chimpanzees may have decision-making processes that resemble ours. Still, we would like to think that human choice is qualitatively better than the choice of a lower animal like a chicken.

But what solution can determinists offer regarding freedom of action? According to Frankfurt, having second-order desires is a uniquely human thing.

Animals like chickens do not go on diets, and then resent the fact that they desire to gorge themselves with chicken feed. The chicken's desires are limited to first-order ones. What should we think of the freedom of action alternative? Even if we can make general distinctions between free and unfree actions as Frankfurt suggests, is it really a viable conception of freedom?

All of my actions are indeed determined by my genetics, my environment, and my brain activity, but at least it is my genetics, my environment, and my brain activity. Because of this I can say that I am not merely a puppet being controlled by outside forces; I am not merely a cog in the larger machinery of the universe.

Instead, my choices are the result of my own history. Some people think that quantum mechanics shows that determinism is false, and so holds out a hope that we can be ultimately responsible for what we do.

The answer to this question is easy. And yet There's a certain frivolousness to all these eloquent arguments over free will. The fact is, we are deeply wired to believe in our freedom. We feel like willful creatures, blessed with elbow room and endowed with the capacity to pick our own breakfast cereal. Furthermore, there's probably a very good reason why this belief is so universal. They gave a few dozen subjects a short passage from The Astonishing Hypothesis , a popular science book by Francis Crick.

Half of the participants read a paragraph insisting that free will is a romantic illusion:. You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.

Who you are is nothing but a pack of neurons. There was nothing about the will. Here's where things get interesting. After reading the passages, the subjects were then told to complete twenty arithmetic problems that would appear on the computer screen. The experiments show that, prior to the moment of conscious choice, there are correlated brain events that allow scientists to predict, with 60 to 80 percent probability, what the choice will be.

Of course this might mean that the choices are partially determined by the brain events but still ultimately free. But suppose later experiments predict our choices with percent probability?

How could a choice be free if a scientist could predict it with certainty? But my wife might be percent certain that, given a choice between chicken livers and strip steak for dinner, I will choose steak. How could a choice that is caused be free? On the other hand, how could a choice that was not caused be free? If a choice has no cause at all, it is simply a random event, something that just occurred out of the blue.