Is free will an illusion, or do we genuinely make independent choices?

By Geoffrey Moore

Author – The Infinite Staircase: What the Universe Tells Us About Life, Ethics, and Mortality

This is the latest in a series of questions philosophers grapple with, fed to me by CoPilot, which is creating the thread of the current series of blogs.  This one comes under the heading of Consciousness and Identity.   

Free will has been the subject of philosophical speculation since time immemorial, which seems odd to say the least.  After all, we are born onto the planet with a compulsion to thrive as best we can.  That can only be accomplished by making a never-ending series of choices, informed by whatever education and experience we may have, which result in gains or losses to our wellbeing.  This is not an illusion.  This is life.

So, what’s with all the “philosophizing”?  Most of it circles around one of two rat holes, either predestination or determinism.  So let’s clear the air there first.  In the Judeo-Christian tradition, there is a philosophical challenge centered around the idea that, since an omniscient God knows all things past, present, and future, all our choices must be predestined, thereby negating any claims we may have to free will.  My take on this is, if you choose to embrace such a belief, accept with it that divine omniscience is beyond your intellect to encompass, and direct your attention back down to Earth, where at least you have some margin of competence.  Then do your best to carry on with as much help from God as you can get.

A different philosophical challenge faces those who embrace a secular worldview.  Here, the intellectual hurdle to clear is determinism.  Its challenge is that, since every effect can always be traced to a specific set of causes, then everything that exists, including all of us, is simply the latest set of effects engaged in the transmission of the next set of causes.  This would seem to put the kibosh on free will, even though we can’t actually say with certainty what comes next. 

My favorite response to this argument is a cartoon I once saw in which two butterflies are sitting at a bar, and one says to the other, “You know that hurricane up North last week?  That was me.”  Butterfly effects are an artifact of chaos theory, and chaos theory puts the kibosh on determinism.  Whenever you have ecologies that are driven by a myriad of positive and negative feedback loops interacting with one another in novel ways at every juncture, you may well be able to discover and forecast future patterns, but you can never predict precise outcomes.  Mechanistic determinism simply does not apply.

Now, having said all that, we should note that in all this philosophizing, nothing has been said about free will itself—how it works, how we experience it, or what role it plays in our strategy for living.  But that’s the only thing we really care about, so let us turn our attention to that now.

My take on free will is that it is anchored in personal narrative.  To put this in context, as humans, we use narratives to explain, well, everything.  We have narratives about ourselves, about our families, our employers, our community, our country, other countries, other communities, other people, and so on.  Additionally, all science is anchored in narratives, as is all history, all literature, all culture.  A personal narrative is simply our story about us, not only our past, but also our present, and our plans for the future. 

As agents, we are normally the protagonist or main character in our story (it is possible that we can get sidelined here, but that is usually due to a pathology).  As the protagonist, we seek to act out our strategy for living in response to whatever circumstances come our way.  The net of all this is our story, the answer that we would give to anyone who asks, “What’s your story?”

Inside the personal narrative, free will takes center stage.  That does not mean we can do whatever we want.  As social animals, we are constrained by our social situation.  There are norms we are expected to follow, even when they go against our wishes, or worse, against our values.  As long as we are not forcibly blocked from doing what we believe is best, the doctrine of free will says, since we chose to act as we did, we must take accountability for whatever outcomes ensue.  When we blame others, even when it is clear they had a material role in the outcome, we are sidestepping the main point.  This is our life, and we need to be the ones in charge, regardless of how empowered or disempowered we may be.

Is this always fair?  Certainly not.  But that doesn’t matter if there are no viable alternatives.  Now, if someone is too young to take responsibility, there is a viable alternative—it’s called parenting.  And if someone is disabled, there is another viable option, which is assisted living.  But for most adults, there is just too much to manage in any given life to think that anyone other than ourselves can be responsible.  On occasion, we may beg to differ, when we truly are, to all appearances, a victim of circumstance or persecution, but it is not clear what that buys us.   At best, friends may step in and lend a helping hand, but free will itself is not friendly.

But set aside extreme conditions for the moment, and examine how we experience free will in everyday life.  Here I want to make a claim that may seem absurd, so please bear with me:  Everyone does the best they can all the time.  Obviously, we don’t perform at our best all the time, but that is not the claim.  The claim is, at any given point in time, if we could have done better, we would have.  In other words, we are wired to do the best we can all the time, even when the results are well below par.  This is free will in action.

Of course, we still have to take responsibility for whatever results unfold.  We cannot wish them away.  But if we go back to the claim, we might ask, what was it that kept us from doing better, and can we do anything to mitigate that in the future?  Now, if your ego is a bit on the defensive side, as is mine, your first response may be, “But it wasn’t my fault!”  The key point is, it is not about fault.  If everyone does the best they can all the time, it can’t be about fault.  What it can be about if failure to succeed.  And if we can free ourselves from the burden of guilt and sidestep the defensiveness of refusal to accept, then we can give ourselves a shot at remediation, if not for past actions, at least for future ones.  That’s not a perfect solution, but at least it is a start.

That’s what I think.  What do you think?

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