Do we actually have free will? This is one of the most important questions of our time. On the one hand, free will seems obvious. Every waking moment I have an incredibly large number of actions that I can choose to take, or not. But some our most influential thinkers argue that free will does not exist. Even many everyday people, including a close member of my family, have decided it is a fiction. So what are some of the arguments against free will?
Yuval Harari, the well known historian, argues against the existence of free will his 2018 Guardian article, the myth of freedom. He argues against it in other places too, but for now I’ll focus on the Guardian article. He describes free will as a myth that was created by Christian theologians and Enlightenment thinkers. Yes, Christian theologians (not all of them) have generally promoted free will. But it is positively not their invention. I am quite sure it is a belief that is common to all times and places, throughout the world. There have always been a few cranks who argued against it, such as the Determinists, but for most people it has seemed too obvious to argue over. It would be like arguing over whether we breathe air or not.
Harari’s case against free will boils down to this: We cannot control our feelings or predilections, or what thoughts pop into our head, and further, we are highly manipulable; therefore, we do not have free will. But he has confused things. Feeling and will are two different things. Saying that I don’t have free will because I can’t control my feelings is like arguing that I don’t have free will because I cannot control the number of hairs that grow on head; well of course I can’t, that is a bodily process, and it has very little to do with my will.
And the will actually can control the feelings to some degree. For those who practice diligently, anger can be controlled. If we are sad, there are actions we can take to cheer ourselves up. Conversely, it is obvious that feeling does have a huge influence on will. It is very difficult to will myself to do a task that I feel a great loathing for. Does this prove that I have not free will? No, that would be a ridiculous conclusion. It only proves what is already obvious, that feeling influences will. It is also clear that if my will were stronger, the influence of my emotions would be less, and I could get to the unpleasant task with less struggle. We already know some of the things that weaken it: drugs, bingeing on screen time, exhaustion. There must be will-strengtheners out there. We should find them, and build a science of making the making the will stronger. (By the way, the definition of “science,” from the ancient Greek, is nothing more than an “organized body of knowledge”).
Now let’s talk about thinking. The argument goes that since we can’t control the thoughts that pop into our heads, we don’t have free will. Like the last one, this argument is so flimsy that it falls to pieces under just a bare glance. Yes it is true that for most of us, random thoughts pop into our heads, and we cannot control their entry. But once they are there, even the weakest-willed among us can decide what to do with them.
Suppose it pops into my head that my neighbor is a jerk. Now I can decide to grab onto that thought, and stew on it all day, feeding it and strengthening it. Or I can decide to let it go, and think about something more productive. I can decide to think about work, or think about school, or think about my wife. Through my own observation I can see that my thinking content is controlled to some degree by my will. If my will had no control over my thoughts, then perhaps it could be said that my will is not free. But to the extent that it does, it clearly is. And with regular practice, it is possible for the will to control the thinking even more.
All of us are plagued at times by negative-thought feedback loops. But we do not have be helpless victims to them. When I talk to people are active in a 12 step program, many of them describe ways that they have found to drive out the bad thoughts with good ones. (Yes, “good” and “bad” do apply to thoughts). This is just one example out of an almost infinite number, of will controlling thought.
The third argument is that since we are manipulable, we do not have free will. Ok, suppose a friend of mine is manipulated by someone - does this prove he has no free will? Of course not. It only proves that he is manipulable, just like everyone else is, to a greater or lesser degree; a stronger will being generally less manipulable than a weaker one.
Or suppose millions of people are being manipulated by propagandists, marketers, and social media algorithms. Does this prove they have no free will? No. But it does remind us that to whatever extent we unconsciously act according to sly outside pressures, to that extent our freedom is reduced. But remember that very often we should act in accordance with outside influence, after due consideration. If my wife needs me to stop at the grocery store on the way home, I will do it. The important thing is that I am acting consciously, out of a free choice, not as a mindless slave.
Harari’s argument basically hinges on the commonly accepted reality that our human will is subject to influence, both from external sources, and from our own feelings and predelictions. But that is where his fallacy comes in. You cannot prove a thing doesn’t exist merely by showing that it is influenced by other things. Imagine if I said grass doesn’t exist because it is influenced by how much sun and rain it gets.
Now of course free will is not a binary, but a continuum. There are degrees of freedom. If I were a total slave to every passing whim and emotion, every external command or suggestion, then it could be argued that I had no free will. But even in that extreme case, it could not be said that I had no will at all. My will would still be there. It would still have the potential to be free. It would just need to find a way to strengthen itself, and throw off undue influences.
Probably Harari’s most fundamental mistake shows itself where he has concluded that since the will is not perfectly free, it therefore has no freedom at all. It would be hard to find a clearer logical fallacy. That would be like arguing that since I have not perfect wealth, I have no wealth at all. Or perfect happiness, no happiness at all.
Harari goes even further to state plainly that a belief in free will is dangerous. Because, he says, if we delude ourselves that we have free will, then we will mindlessly fall prey to the many entities that want secretly manipulate us. He is right that highly sophisticated techno-manipulation is a very serious threat. But his response is totally and absolutely wrong. He suggests that we should first admit we are nothing more hackable animals with no will of our own, and then put ourselves under the care of an AI babysitter who can learn our weaknesses and kindly block harmful content from us, before we have chance to get manipulated by it.
Now I can actually see the benefit of an AI content blocker, but in a much more limited capacity than what he has in mind. For example, pornography is a major scourge. It is totally horrifying and I think criminal that most children see digital pornography by the time they are twelve, and not just once, but many times. I don’t know if anyone knows the true number, but probably tens of millions of men are addicted to porn because they were exposed to it as children, and it is ubiquitously available. An AI that was narrowly programmed to totally prevent any pornographic image from appearing on any device it was installed on, would be extremely helpful, for protecting both children and adults.
HoweverI think the wide application of AI babysitters is a terrible idea. If we were to deputize a machine (or anyone) to decide what sort of information is good for us, whether political, religious, spiritual, scientific, medical, or cultural - we would infantilize ourselves. We would shove ourselves backwards in time, severely damaging the free will that has been so carefully made for us.
One final note in closing: On a practical level, Harari does not believe his own beliefs. At the beginning of his article, he describes how he thought very carefully about whether he ought to reveal publicly his opinions on this subject. He took into account the social and political conditions of out times, as well as both short and long term ramifications that his decision might have. In other words, he consulted with his intellect, in order to use his will to make a decision that he hoped would be wise - kinda sounds like he has a free will after all! Now he would probably argue that actually he only has the illusion of a free will, and that in reality his decision was entirely determined by his genetics, his upbringing and his education, his social environment, and what he had for lunch that day. But that explanation would violate Occam’s scientific law of parsimony, which tells us that the simplest explanation that is also adequate is usually closest to the truth. The explanation of free will is far simpler, and conforms to obvious everyday experience. Why invoke a tortured and labyrinthine explanation, when you have a simple and obvious explanation directly at hand?Other factors such as background and environment may inform or decisions, but they do not make our decisions.
There are other arguments against free will that have not been addressed in this article. Perhaps I will address them in future.