I have this conviction that writing is the best way to communicate ideas. Written manuscripts cannot, of course, be interrogated. This particular drawback should, however, only remind a writer to be careful not to leave out details and at the same time to maintain a sense of relevance while writing. I will try to adhere to these two principles. Since I think of anyone who might get curious enough to read this article after just seeing the title highly, though, I will write to you, my reader, regarding you not as a dummy or someone already hopelessly prejudiced but as a companion thinker. This is not a defense of my stand nor is it a lecture intended to instruct you but a thought experiment, you and me being the lab scientists, if I am allowed to put it that way. I have loved this method so much. It’s my hope that you will come to love it as well. So now shall I get started?
The subject of free will has been the subject of heated debates in scientific, religious and, of course, philosophical spheres. Why do we act the way we do? Is there an external influence that makes us act in one way and not another? We may think we are free to choose among all the alternatives that life seems to offer but how sure can we be of that judgment? These are the main themes around which I have chosen the contents of my article to revolve. I will try to handle the issue assuming a neutral stance. Because what we are going to do is start from a scratch and work our way through to a conclusion, a conclusion which you and me do not know yet (I know what I am up to, of course, it’s just how things are meant to be put in the method I have assumed!) We only have premises and the faculty of reason at our disposal. I only want you to watch me not to abuse any of these two. If I ever happen to reason incorrectly or make claims beyond the available data, simply take a pause and see if you can develop your own line of thought different from that of mine. Philosophical discussions should be as liberal as much as they could get! At the end if you think I have reasoned correctly but still feel uncomfortable with the final conclusions we’ve arrived at, that will, at least, simply make me regard this discussion a successful experimental adventure.
Let’s start with the simplest case scenario where the issue of free will comes into play. A person, let’s suppose, is brought to choose from three alternatives, say, A, B and C. Whatever the three letters represent the fact that they represent choices of any nature will do to serve our purpose. The person then happens to choose A rejecting the remaining two. Did he choose out of free will then? (No gun was pointed at him, of course!) One way of looking at the situation is to say that he chose out of free will because no one ever got to intimidate him to choose what he chose. This would have settled the discussion had it not been possible to bring up another aspect of the situation into perspective. Is it not possible that the person has previously been conditioned or influenced by his previous experiences to prioritize an option over another? Perhaps why he made a particular choice and not another could be explained by delving into the neurological events that just preceded his action. So, at least in a sense, doesn’t that still make him a slave to something beyond his control? No matter how strongly convicted the person might be of the freedom of choice he experienced can’t that feeling itself be traceable to definite physiological phenomena inside the brain. The answer to all the questions entertained, I concede, is an emphatic yes. The person obviously is influenced one way or the other. Let me propose a third alternative though. I need you to watch me carefully now because this is where I think I can possibly be controverted.
Let’s accept the fact that his psychological states were responsible for his action. He chose the way he did but his choice simply represents a precipitate of his character, personality, preconditioning and current emotional states. Up to this point facts are only being stated while their relevance to the whole issue at hand is subtly left out. How far should we strip the person of his psychological states for us to accept that he actually acted out of free choice? Put differently; what is the final state that we want the person to bring into in order for us to give free will a pass, so to say. Take a pause and think for a moment! Let’s strip the person off of all his psychological hiccups and just for arguments sake assume that we have brought him into a neutral state, whatever that might mean. Even then, however, we can’t accept whatever choices he made as being free. Because we will still be able to explain his mental “neutral” state in neurological terms, so shall it follow from that, that he still is controlled by something and hence not free. We rejected the possibility of free will in the second alternative simply because we can understand, or at least begin to, and interpret his action in terms of the underlying neurological phenomena. For our despair, however, we also found out that we still can do just that even when the person is in his neutral state. All this boils down to one point. Does or should the fact that a decision taken by someone is explainable fails it from being considered as free? Simply because we can explain human action does that really make us ‘unfree’? Additionally what could that ‘neutral’ state possibly be if it were going to exist at all? The best it could be is robotic in nature. I brought the idea of neutralism because that’s the only state in which a person can be said uninfluenced. Even robots, though, emotionally neutral are governed by physical principles. So being neutral, I think, comes at the expense of losing being human altogether. Let me explain (I feel like interjecting here.)
Our psychological states, no matter how conditioned and influenced they might get by experiences, are attributes of us. Being conditioned comes with the package of being human. Think of it this way. Remove all the psychological inclinations people borrow from culture, their good and bad learned behaviors, and their prejudices and soon all you will succeed at is creating zombies. Thinking of our psychological attributes as controllers of our actions is misleading. It’s like saying that a house is controlled by its building bricks while the correct way to think of the bricks is as things out of which it is made. We are, for better or for worse, a totality of our mental states. That is what we are made of. Without it we simply cease to exist. The idea of controlling and being controlled has meaning only at a societal level. When used to express the nonexistent dichotomy between us and our psychology it simply fails to represent reality and ends up being just poetic.
Back to you, if you are convinced by the above paragraph it means we can go to the ultimate problem of freewill. Now that we have equated being human with being a mind in general, the question of freewill will either hold to be true or just a contradiction in terms. Let’s see how it is so.
BUT FIRST! Let me relate to you what my biggest reason for rejecting the existence of free will was. No matter how free I think I am, since in the first place I did not choose to be created (or come into existence somehow), there is no free will. The fact that I am created just puts the subject of free will off the hook. That doesn’t make any difference if god created me or not. Simply the fact that I happened to just show up takes all my free will currency. Now all this is rubbish to me.
The biggest problem with the issue of free will is the way the question is framed in the first place. Choosing to be created is a contradiction in terms. Even god couldn’t have chosen to exist! You know why? Because the very notion of being able to choose requires being alive. In other words, life precedes free will. So saying that one must have chosen to exist is committing a logical fallacy. The rest you calculate.
We have stepwise managed to arrive here. First we created a simple scenario where one was set to choose from alternatives. Then we came up with the idea that treating man’s psychological stance as his controller completely disregards what it means to be human. Lastly we saw that it is logically absurd of me to have ever expected to choose to be alive, assuming that could have granted me free will. So on final analysis what should we say? Does free will exist?
It’s my view that the whole discussion of free will suffers from fatal logical fallacies. For me it’s like searching a diamond in the light that you actually lost in the dark. One of the fallacies, I think, is evident in the fact that we have confused explicability for inevitability. The fact that you can explain why you acted in a certain way does not rule other possibilities out. Even if our sense of free will has a neurological counterpart, that doesn’t make it the ultimate controller of us because it is nothing but “us.” We are not separate from our physiology. But if we are then fatalism will be the only remaining option.
So I believe the concept of free will to be so subjective that we tend to end up confusing words and their meanings. For me free will is nothing than a healthy feeling, or perhaps not feeling being restrained, to act one way instead of another. Or the discussion of the subject should be limited within the limits of these circles and not outside.
GLOOMY ISN’T IT?
