u/MarvinBEdwards01

Free will has two definitions. The first is simply a voluntary, unforced choice. The second definition is freedom from physical causation, the causal chains that make every event, including every choice, causally necessary.

Definition 2 is paradoxical. Therefore it must be rejected as a serious definition of anything.

Here's the paradox. Every freedom we have, to do anything at all, involves us reliably causing some effect. And we cannot be free from that which freedom itself requires. Thus the paradox.

For example, we can set a bird free from its cage, and now it is free to fly away. But if we were to set it free from causality, then flapping its wings would cause no effect, and its freedom to fly would be gone.

So, "freedom from causal necessity" can be dismissed as an absurdity. And it cannot be used as the definition of anything.

Fortunately, free will is not limited to that absurd definition, but has another simpler definition, as a voluntary, unforced choice, which is not an absurdity, but a meaningful and relevant notion. The notion that nearly everyone understands and correctly applies when assessing a person's responsibility for their actions. This is the operational definition of free will.

Unfortunately, when philosophers try to redefine free will as freedom from causal necessity, they destroy the meaningful and relevant notion of free will. And they introduce a paradox, which results in an interminable debate, and a waste of everyone's time.

A father buys two ice cream cones. He brings them to his daughter and tells her, “I wasn’t sure whether you liked strawberry or chocolate best, so I bought both. You can choose either one and I’ll take the other”. His daughter says, “I will have the strawberry”. So the father takes the chocolate.

The father then tells his daughter, “Did you know that you could not have chosen the chocolate?” His daughter responds, “You just told me a moment ago that I could choose the chocolate. And now you’re telling me that I couldn’t."

"Are you lying now or were you lying then?”. That’s cognitive dissonance. And she’s right, of course.

But suppose the father tells his daughter, “Did you know that you would not have chosen the chocolate?” His daughter responds, “Of course I would not have chosen the chocolate. I like strawberry best!”. No cognitive dissonance.

And it is this same cognitive dissonance that people experience when the hard determinist tries to convince them that they “could not have done otherwise”. The cognitive dissonance occurs because it makes no sense to claim they “could not” do something when they know with absolute logical certainty that they could. But the claim that they “would not have done otherwise” is consistent with both determinism and common sense.

Causal determinism can safely assert that we would not have done otherwise, but it cannot logically assert that we could not have done otherwise. If “I can do x” is true at any point in time, then “I could have done x” will be forever true when referring back to that same point in time. It is a simple matter of present tense and past tense. It is the logic built into the language.

The ability to choose the single thing that we WILL do, from among two or more different things that we CAN do, has provided our species with a critical survival advantage.

It would be a shame to break it.

Causal Determinism tells us that every event is both an effect of prior events and the cause of new events. Thus, every event is said to be “causally necessary”, in that it must happen where and when it happens, exactly as it does happen. But, what else would anyone expect?

We’re all used to the notion of cause and effect, and we take it for granted in everything that happens and in everything that we do. Causal necessity weaves these simple instances of cause and effect into a chain of events. One thing leads to the next, and so on, as far back in time, or as far forward, as anyone can imagine.

What are we to make of this? Well, nothing really. It is simply the way things happen. We open the restaurant menu and encounter a list of possibilities, the many things we can order for dinner. We consider these options in terms of our own desires and our own dietary goals. And our own reasoning causally determines what we will order for dinner.

It was always going to happen exactly as it did happen, with us in control of what we would have for dinner.

But some people look at the causal chain and suggest to us that, if our choice was causally necessary, from any prior point in time, then “it is AS IF we never had a choice at all.” That’s a “figurative” statement. We often use metaphors, similes, personification, hyperbole and other figures of speech in our communication. But figurative statements share one serious problem: Every figurative statement is literally false.

Take the statement “it is as if we never had a choice at all”. It suggests that, because our choice was inevitable, we were not really making a choice. But we literally (actually, objectively, empirically) did make a choice. In fact, had we not made a choice, the waiter would have never brought us our dinner.

So, figurative statements may be colorful and rhetorical, but they cannot be taken literally, without distorting the truth.

Thus, causal necessity, through figurative usage, acquired many implications that are simply false. When we remove these many false suggestions, causal determinism once again becomes simple cause and effect, and not some monstrosity trying to rob us of our freedom and control.

Compatibilism asserts that free will remains a meaningful concept even within a world of perfectly reliable cause and effect. There is no conflict between the notion that my choice was causally necessary from any prior point in time (determinism) and the notion that it was me that actually did the choosing (free will).

The only way that determinism and free will become contradictory is by bad definitions. For example, if we define determinism as “the absence of free will”, or, if we define free will as “the absence of determinism”, then obviously they would be incompatible. So, let’s not do that.

Determinism asserts that every event is the reliable result of prior events. It derives this from the presumption that we live in a world of perfectly reliable cause and effect. Our choices, for example, are reliably caused by our choosing, and our choosing is reliably caused by our encountering a situation where we are faced with multiple options and must make a choice. The choosing operation is a deterministic event. It inputs two or more options, applies some criteria of comparative evaluation, and, based on that evaluation, outputs a single choice. The choice is usually in the form of an “I will X”, where X is what we have decided we will do. This chosen intent then motivates and directs our subsequent actions.

Free will is literally a freely chosen “I will”. The question is: What is it that our choice is expected to be “free of”? Operationally, free will is when we decide for ourselves what we will do while “free of coercion and undue influence“.

Coercion is when someone forces their will upon us by threatening harm. For example, the bank robber pointing a gun at the bank teller, saying “Fill this bag with money or I’ll shoot you.”

Undue influence includes things like a significant mental illness, one that distorts our view of reality with hallucinations or delusions, or that impairs the ability of the brain to reason, or that imposes upon us an irresistible impulse. Undue influence would also include things like hypnosis, or the influence of those exercising some control over us, such as between a parent and child, or a doctor and patient, or a commander and soldier. It can also include other forms of manipulation that are either too subtle or too strong to resist. These are all influences that can be reasonably said to remove our control of our choices.

The operational definition of free will is used when assessing someone’s moral or legal responsibility for their actions.

Note that free will is not “free from causal necessity” (reliable cause and effect). It is simply free from coercion and undue influence.

So, there is no contradiction between a choice being causally necessitated by past events, and, that the most meaningful and relevant of these past events is the person making the choice.

Therefore, determinism and free will are compatible notions.

In 2013, the Tsarnaev brothers set off home-made explosives at the Boston Marathon, killing several people and injuring many others. They planned to set off the rest of their devices in New York city. To do this, they hijacked a car, driven by a college student, and forced him at gunpoint to assist their escape from Boston to New York.

On the way, they stopped for gas. While one of the brothers was inside the store and the other was distracted by the GPS, the student bounded from the car and ran across the road to another service station. There he called the police and described his vehicle. The police chased the bombers, capturing one and killing the other.

Although the student initially gave assistance to the bombers, he was not charged with “aiding and abetting”, because he was not acting of his own free will. He was forced, at gunpoint, to assist in their escape. The surviving bomber was held responsible for his actions, because he had acted deliberately, of his own free will.

A person’s will is their specific intent for the immediate or distant future. A person usually chooses what they will do. The choice sets their intent, and their intent motivates and directs their subsequent actions.

Free will is when this choice is made free of coercion and undue influence. The student’s decision to assist the bombers’ escape was coerced. It was not freely chosen.

Coercion can be a literal “gun to the head”, or any other threat of harm sufficient to compel one person to subordinate their will to the will of another.

Undue influence is any extraordinary condition that effectively removes a person’s control of their choice. Certain mental illnesses can distort a person’s perception of reality by hallucinations or delusions. Other brain impairments can  directly damage the ability to reason. Yet another form may subject them to an irresistible compulsion. Hypnosis would be an undue influence. Authoritative command, as exercised by a parent over a child, an officer over a soldier, or a doctor over a patient, is another. Any of these special circumstances may remove a person’s control over their choices.

Why Do We Care About Free Will?

Responsibility for the benefit or harm of an action is assigned to the most meaningful and relevant causes. A cause is meaningful if it efficiently explains why an event happened. A cause is relevant if we can do something about it.

The means of correction is determined by the nature of the cause: (a) If the person is forced at gunpoint to commit a crime, then all that is needed to correct his or her behavior is to remove that threat. (b) If a person’s choice is unduly influenced by mental illness, then correction will require psychiatric treatment. (c) If a person is of sound mind and deliberately chooses to commit the act for their own profit, then correction requires changing how they think about such choices in the future.

In all these cases, society’s interest is to prevent future harm. And it is the harm that justifies taking appropriate action. Until the offender’s behavior is corrected, society protects itself from further injury by securing the offender, usually in a prison or mental institution, as appropriate.

So, the role of free will, in questions of moral and legal responsibility, is to distinguish between deliberate acts versus acts caused by coercion or undue influence. This distinction guides our approach to correction and prevention.

Free will makes the empirical distinction between a person autonomously choosing for themselves versus a choice imposed upon them by someone or something else.

Possibilities exist solely within the imagination. We cannot walk across a possible bridge. We can only walk across an actual bridge. But this does not mean that possibilities are useless figments of our imagination. Possibilities are very important, because we can never build an actual bridge without first imagining a possible bridge.

In the safe sandbox of the imagination, we can run through many bridge design choices, estimate the likely outcomes of each, and choose the one we think is best. In the imagination we can lay out a plan of action, test it in our minds before we test it in the field, to see what steps must come in what order to successfully construct our bridge. Only then are we prepared to build a real bridge.

Uncertainty Necessitates Possibilities

If we were omniscient, and already knew every detail of what would happen in the future, then we would have no need for the notion of possibilities. We would never use words like “can”, “might”, or “may”, because we would always know exactly what “will” happen.

But, of course, we are not all-knowing. Quite often, we only have clues as to what will happen, clues that only tell us with certainty what “can” happen, but not what “will” happen. Special words, like “can”, “might”, or “may”, shift us from the context of actuality to the context of possibilities. And whenever we do not know for certain what “will” happen, we imagine what “can” happen, to better prepare for what does happen.

From Many to One

Whenever we must make a choice, there will be two or more options, and we must select one. Each option is a possible future. Some choices are small things, that affect our immediate future. Will we wear the white shirt or the blue shirt today? Will we have cereal or pancakes for breakfast? Other choices are major things that determine the course of our lives. Which college will we attend? What career will we pursue? Will we buy a house now or later?

Each choice selects a single actual future from among the possible futures available to us. From among the many things that we can do, it is up to us to select the single thing that we will do.

Within the domain of our influence (things we can make happen if we choose to), the single inevitable future will be chosen by us from among the many possible futures we will imagine.

By convention, we call the result, of the mental process of choosing what we will do, a “freely chosen will”, or simply “free will”. The word “free” means that the choice was our own, as opposed to a one imposed upon us by external coercion or some other undue influence.

In all cases of a freely chosen will, two facts are simultaneously true:

(A) We have made our choice according to our own purpose and our own reasons, therefore it was made of our own free will.

(B) We have made our choice according to our own purpose and our own reasons, therefore it was causally determined.

So where do we find ourselves in this deterministic universe? We are physical objects, living organisms, and an intelligent species. As such we are capable of physical, purposeful, and deliberate causation. We can imagine different methods to achieve a goal, estimate their likely outcomes, and then choose what we will do. When we act upon this chosen will, we are forces of nature. We clear forests, build cities and cars, and even raise the temperature of the planet.

But determinism, unlike us, is neither an object nor a force. It is simply the belief that our behavior can be fully explained, in terms of some specific combination of physical, biological, and rational causation.

We must conclude, then, that any version of determinism that bypasses or excludes human causal agency, in cases where it is clearly involved, would be invalid.

“Determinism is deeply connected with our understanding of the physical sciences and their explanatory ambitions…” (SEP)

We observe that material objects behave differently according to their level of organization as follows:

(1) Inanimate objects behave passively, responding to physical forces so reliably that it is as if they were following “unbreakable laws of Nature”. These natural laws are described by the physical sciences, like Physics and Chemistry. A ball on a slope will always roll downhill. Its behavior is governed by the force of gravity.

(2) Living organisms are animated by a biological drive to survive, thrive, and reproduce. They behave purposefully according to natural laws described by the life sciences: Biology, Genetics, Physiology, and so on. A squirrel on a slope will either go uphill or downhill depending upon where he expects to find the next acorn. While still affected by gravity, the squirrel is no longer governed by it. It is governed instead by its own biological drives.

(3) Intelligent species have evolved a neurology capable of imagination, evaluation, and choosing. They can behave deliberately, by calculation and by choice, according to natural laws described by the social sciences, like Psychology and Sociology, as well as the social laws that they create for themselves. While still affected by gravity and biological drives, an intelligent species is no longer governed by them, but is instead governed by its own choices.

So, we have three unique causal mechanisms, that each operate in a different way, by their own set of rules. We may even speculate that quantum events, with their own unique organization of matter into a variety of quarks, operates by its own unique set of rules.

A naïve Physics professor may suggest that, “Everything can be explained by the laws of physics”. But it can’t. A science discovers its natural laws by observation, and Physics does not observe living organisms, much less intelligent species.

Physics, for example, cannot explain why a car stops at a red traffic light. This is because the laws governing that event are created by society. While the red light is physical, and the foot pressing the brake pedal is physical, between these two physical events we find the biological need for survival and the calculation that the best way to survive is to stop at the light.

It is impossible to explain this event without addressing the purpose and the reasoning of the living object that is driving the car. This requires nothing that is supernatural. Both purpose and intelligence are processes running on the physical platform of the body’s neurology. But it is the process, not the platform, that causally determines what happens next.

We must conclude then, that any version of determinism that excludes purpose or reason as causes, would be invalid. There is no way to explain the behavior of intelligent species without taking purpose and reason into account.