"Do Humans Have Free Will ?"

by Pooya Forghani

You are reading a sentence! Do you think you had a choice over reading the sentence you just read? Do you think human beings have free will? The topic of 'free will' has engaged my mind as well as the minds of many philosophers over the past decades and centuries. In my opinion, 'free will' is the ability to choose or decide among several alternatives at a given time. As a result, an agent with free will, at any given time is free to act or choose, as long as no obstacle is preventing it. In fact, this definition, is one that is widely accepted among today's philosophers (Campbell 419). Thus, in order to examine free will, we must examine how humans act or make decisions, and to examine whether they are free in their acting and decision making. In this essay, I will analyze how humans make decisions, and examine whether they are free in their decision-making or not. After providing a formulation to the free will problem, I will address a few of the opposing ideas.

As Campbell points out, formulation of a solution to a problem such as the free will problem requires a long journey. (Campbell 417) Thus, In order to make my formulation more coherent, I will be using a few tools to reason and explain my theory. Even though, these tools are in themselves great philosophical topics, and might be controversial, proving these concepts is beyond the scope of this essay. One of these tools, is the concept of naturalism, and in particular materialistic naturalism. More specifically, I believe that “all events, find their adequate explanation within nature itself” (Catholic Encyclopedia). As a result in my analysis, I will not consider things such as dualism of the mind and body, existence of the soul or metaphysical existence of a 'guilty conscience'. Another tool, which is somehow related to naturalism, is the concept of universal causal laws. I believe that, these laws apply to humans, as much as they apply to every physical object in the universe (Taylor 437), and thus I will be using this as a precondition in my analysis.

Now that I have the necessary tools in place, I will start my formulation by introducing the two major factors in human decision making which are heredity and environment. Based on research, "out of the 30 [human] attitudes studied, 26 of them appeared to be under some genetic influence" (BBC Online). This result, demonstrates the importance of the role of heredity in human behavior. In fact, it seems that most philosophers standing on either side of the free will argument, agree on the importance of heredity in decision making. Moreover, some of those who believe humans poses free will, including Campbell, have come to believe that the source of this ability lies within that domain of human nature that is not affected by heredity or environment (Campbell 421). However, even though heredity does not pinpoint us forcefully in to a particular behavior or decision, we must not underestimate the fact that over 85% of our attitudes are influenced by it.

Secondly, I move to the role of environment in influencing our minds and in turn our acts and decisions. We know that when a healthy human child is born, his or her 5 senses are functioning. At every moment us humans, gather an enormous amount of data (stimuli) from our surroundings. "The stimuli are sub-consciously filtered, causing [us] to focus on some stimuli and ignore others. Those selected stimuli are sent to the brain for processing, where they are linked to prior knowledge, evaluated against your beliefs, and stored in memory (Foundations for Success 31). As a result, at any moment, we are constantly learning from our environment. Although, we may partially control what we receive through our senses to a certain extent, a great deal of information is received involuntarily and subconsciously. For example, when I pickup a classical music CD and play it in my walkman, my ears are receiving what I have chosen. But, when I am walking to school and suddenly see a dead squirrel, receiving that particular image is not part of my voluntary decision. Thus, we gather some information from our surroundings that are not based on our choices, but are rather fed to our senses as a result of us being at a particular place at a particular time. Moreover, what we receive voluntarily is also compared and linked to prior knowledge. So we must understand, how those voluntary decisions are made.

As Taylor suggests, the universe including all humans, at a given moment, is free of any vagueness and looseness (Taylor 437). At a given moment, the state of our minds, including all the information in it, as well as our characteristics and genetics are determinate. When a decision is to be made or an act performed, many of the relevant information stored by our brain up to that particular moment is recalled. Thus, our decision making is based on the several (maybe hundreds or even thousands) of factors that we have learned throughout the span of our lives. However, each of these factors, though some more important than other, act like causal factors. Each, are reasons for us to behave in a particular manner. Each time we want to choose something, we refer to what we know from the past. In order to make this clearer, I will provide the following two examples.

When someone chooses to go to work, he will consider –perhaps sometimes subconsciously or habitually- all of the reasons why he has to go to work. For example, the major reasons might be to keep his current job, to make money, to be useful for society, etc. However, there are several other more transparent factors that contribute to this decision. For example, he feels good about his job, he is doing what his family is used to him be doing everyday, he has a news he wants to tell his co-worker, etc. On the other hand, he might have reasons for not going to work, which are not as important, for example, his work place might be too far. Moreover, he does not have good enough reasons not to go to work. By this, I mean that a preventing factor that is of major importance has not happened. For example, if his wife had passed away the day before, he would most probably not be going to work. I say most probably, because there are still other factors, that are consciously or subconsciously considered which may be of higher or lesser importance to him, when he makes his decision. Thus if he still chooses to go to work despite his wife's death, then perhaps this is not a good enough reason for this particular man to decide not to go to work.

A second example; imagine that you are given three balls with three different colors; red, green and blue. You are then asked to choose one of them and return the other two. How would you choose one ball out of three? Do you choose the ball which has your favorite color? Do you choose the ball based on its shape and characteristics? Do you choose a ball at random? In each case, you are able to break down the reason behind your decision in terms of your past learning and experience. Your favorite color could be based on your genes, or the color of the appealing objects or their resemblance in your mind. A choice based on characteristics of the ball, is compared against the factors in your mind that are important. (For example, a soft ball is less bouncier than a hard ball, and a bouncy ball is more appealing to you). Even when you choose something randomly, you are using a learned technique. For example you might start counting the three balls over and over, stopping at a particular ball and then choosing it.

What I am trying to establish is that, our decision making is based on our past experiences and behavior, which we also know is highly influenced by our genes. But how does this contribute to the problem of free will? I think, the relevance should be clear by now. If we have been able to establish that each act and decision is based on our past state of the mind (which includes our learned experience and the influence of our genes) then we can trace it back to the moment we were born. Clearly, when we are born, we come to this world with a set of characteristics inherited from our parents, and then while we don't have any choice over where and when we are born, our senses start learning from the environment. This helpless learning process which continues to a certain early age in childhood, is beyond our control. As a result, our very first decisions are based on what we have gathered up to that particular moment. From that point on, each decision becomes the pedestal for other decisions, forming our brain and our life alike. This is the same idea as the one Taylor mentions that "what happens at any time is the only thing that can then happen, given all that precedes it" (Taylor 447). That our sex, age and character as well as our inner thoughts, feelings and ideas, are based on what has happened before, and those factors have been the pedestals, the reasons and the causes to compile what now is, at this moment.

Despite introducing this analysis of decision making, one might still say that when it comes to each decision, "I am able to do otherwise". For example, today I can freely choose to go to work, or not to go work and rest at home. In order to answer this issue, I will use the same analysis as explained before. Let us consider this particular example: going to work, or not going to work. I have previously provided the several reasons why a person would choose to go to work, but now that this person claims that he can do otherwise, I will ask him why don't you want to go to work? The person might reply, because I am free to decide. But if this is the reason, that he doesn't want to go to work, then proving that he is free to decide, itself, becomes the strong factor preventing him from not going to work, ruling out all the other factors that encourage him to go to work. But again, what caused him to go about proving his belief? And what made his belief in 'free will' such a strong one? If I had not asked him this question, and during his life, he had not obtained such great faith in 'free will' would he still avoid going to work? If yes, what would be his reasons? And could these reasons come from no where? Thus, the causal train of events created this particular strong factor, and if it wasn't created, based on the given explanation, other factors would hold, contributing to a different outcome. (viz. going to work)

Campbell, in his support for freedom of will, uses what I believe to be a rather awkward approach. I will address the two most important factors that in my opinion lead to fallacies in his reasoning. One is the use of the concept of moral responsibility in his reasoning, and the second one is the "self" being the agent of free will.

Firstly, it is clear that the idea of moral responsibility is tightly affected by the free will problem. Because, one might say: “how can there be a moral responsibility if we are not free to act?” However, the converse is not true. That is, the free will problem is not affected and cannot be solved by the concept of moral responsibility or the morals and ethics of society. Thus we will have to deal with it after we have solved the free will problem. However, since this is a major factor in Campbell's proof, I will address it as follows. Campbell states that: ...in moral effort we have something for which a man is responsible without qualification, something that is not affected by heredity and environment but depends solely upon the self itself" (Campbell 421). But what are morals? How do we distinguish between a moral and an immoral act? Aren't morals simply the values and the norms of the society that we have learned throughout our lives? Killing an innocent person for pleasure seems to be much more morally wrong now, than it was when Romans watched innocent people get slaughtered in the Coliseum. Thus, not only the "moral effort" Campbell refers to varies from person to person, and from time to time, but also, it is based on our learning, and is not outside the set influenced by heredity and environment as explained before.

The second fallacy arises from the use of "self" as the agent of freewill. Campbell believes that there exists a "self" in us humans that is able to bring out acts of free will, and is not part of our inherited character or learned behavior (Campbell). Even through the suggested medium of one’s inner viewpoint, on what logical ground can such an existence be supported? Moreover, in the universal world of cause and effect, how can something produce an outcome without a cause? In fact, if we wipe the delusion of free will from our inner viewpoint, we clearly see that this “self” is nothing but the state of our brain. This self, is the big, overall, projection of the set of inherited characteristics, and gathered information. It is to this unique set that we attach the name "self". It this same unique set of factors, that makes each and every one of us unique, and there is no reason for us to imply that it has the ability to escape the universal causal system.

Given the proposed analysis, and addressee of opposing viewpoints, I am now able to reach a summarized conclusion. Decisions, attitudes and acts of all humans, are determined by a combination of inherited genes and the set of learned experiences that start at birth. These factors which together make up the state of our minds are assembled in such a fashion which is beyond our control. Moreover, our mind is a natural feature of humans, and being part of this universe, it is not exempt from the universal causal laws. Each decision and each act is exactly determined by preceding factors. As a result, 'free will' in its generally conceived interpretation is non existent.

Importance of ethics and moral responsibility

I stated that moral responsibility is tightly bound to the free will problem and should be considered after a solution is given. Thus, I will briefly point out one of the aspects of the solution, which might lead to ambiguity and/or controversies.

I would like to point out that not having free will does not mean that we are not to be held responsible for our acts in the society. Let us not forget that ethics, and social liabilities are of great importance in survival of societies. But why should there be so many laws, rules, and religions encouraging people to do what is best, if they are not free? Such a question might arise due to a misinterpretation of the formulation. Laws, rules, regulations and even punishments exist to guide us humans in our decision making. These factors exist to give us the reasons or the causes for creating those outcomes that are best for us as well as the society as a whole. If these were non existent, human beings would perhaps act on several other reasons such as their instincts, which might be of an inferior value, leading to disasters in our societies. Thus, we cannot rule out factors as important as those mentioned above by an oversimplification that humans are imprisoned robots that are bound to a certain fate and ethics and norms of the society are of no good to them. Future, is being composed second by second and there are virtually infinite, yet determinate factors influencing its composition. Perhaps, the number of these factors is as infinite as the universe itself.

Works Cited

BBC Online http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1390375.stm

Catholic Encyclopedia http://www.newadvent.org/cathen

Campbell, C.A. “Has the Self “Free Will”?

Foundations for Success http://www.rotc.monroe.army.mil/jrotc/documents/Curriculum/Unit_3/u3c1l6.pdf

Taylor, Richard “Freedom and Determinism”