Free Will
On inevitability, possible worlds, propositions and their truth values, identity, causality, and responsibility.
1. The Problem of Free Will
In any exploration of a widely contested concept, it is useful to begin by asking what is affirmed about the world when it is said to exist and what is denied when it is said not to exist. These questions yield a set of claims, by assessing which progress can be made. From the long history of discussions on free will, we can reduce the affirmations and denials about this concept to two kinds of claims: those that are true by definition and those that are empirical. We will examine each in turn.
2. Conceptual Necessities
A principal claim can be formulated as follows: Free will cannot exist if the choices we make are inevitable. It is the case that all events, including the choices we make, are inevitable. Therefore, we do not have free will.
Let us assess this claim first.
One way to categorize propositions is on the basis of whether they are true by definition. Claims that are true by definition simply affirm the law of contradiction through some concept. Take, for example, the proposition “all bachelors are men”. Since it would lead to a contradiction, based on our concept of a bachelor, to suggest that not all bachelors are men, we simply affirm the law of contradiction through this concept that we have formed when we assert that all bachelors are men.
To the extent that we cannot imagine the law of contradiction being violated, we cannot conceive of propositions that merely affirm this law through a concept as false. This gives such propositions a sense of certainty and timelessness. We cannot imagine any new experience that would make a bachelor cease being a man.
In contrast, consider the proposition “bachelors exist”. Since no contradiction arises if bachelors do not exist, given our concept of a bachelor, we do not merely affirm the law of contradiction through this concept when we assert that bachelors exist. We can imagine how this proposition could be false. For this reason, it lacks the sense of certainty and timelessness that characterizes propositions like “all bachelors are men”.
When we consider the nature of the claim “all events are inevitable” and ask whether it is more like “all bachelors are men” or “bachelors exist”, we find that it resembles the former. This is evident from the sense of certainty and timelessness it conveys: we cannot conceive of how it could be false. Let us illustrate this with an example.
Suppose you hear that a friend failed to survive an arduous journey, and you claim that this outcome was inevitable—just as all events are. Later, it is revealed to you that your friend is, in fact, alive. Would this disprove the claim that all events are inevitable? After all, you might say, “I was merely mistaken about the details, which has more to do with my knowledge of the world than with how the world actually is. My ignorance of events does not alter their predetermined nature. It was his survival that was inevitable. He could not have done otherwise in any case”. We cannot imagine any event that could falsify the claim that all events are inevitable.
At this point, it is worth considering an interpretation of Gottfried Leibniz on actuality, necessity, and possibility, which leads to the conclusion that all true propositions are of the same nature as “all bachelors are men”. That is, all true propositions are necessarily true.
We often find ourselves say, of some event that did not occur, that it was possible. In the actual world, I am sitting right now, and the proposition “I am sitting right now” is true. But we can imagine a world in which I did not take a sit and am standing instead. In that world, the proposition “I am standing right now” would be true. These different scenarios represent possible worlds. A world is possible if it does not lead to a violation of the law of contradiction. In a world where I were both sitting and standing at the same time, there would be a violation of this law. Such a world, therefore, would be impossible.
The proposition “all bachelors are men” is true in all possible worlds, as its contrary would imply a contradiction. Such a truth is necessary. In contrast, the proposition “bachelors exist”, while true in the actual world, can be false without contradiction. It is, therefore, contingent.
According to Leibniz, if we possessed sufficient knowledge to have a complete concept of a subject, then all true propositions about that subject, deducible from that knowledge, would be such that their contrary would imply a contradiction. In the case of your friend, if you had sufficient knowledge to have a complete concept of him, which would include all the events in his life, you would have been able to deduce from that concept alone that he survived his journey. You would also have known that the contrary proposition—that he did not survive his journey—would imply a contradiction, much like the contrary of the proposition “all bachelors are men” implies a contradiction given the concept of a bachelor. It was merely your ignorance that led you to initially believe that he did not survive.
If not for our ignorance, we would see all true propositions as necessary, even those that, in the absence of complete knowledge, appear contingent. If all truths are necessary, it follows that nothing in the actual world could be otherwise, and indeed, as Baruch Spinoza recognized, that the actual world is the only possible world.
Let us take a step back and ask how any concept is formed in the first place. More precisely, defining a concept as a set of related propositions, how is any proposition formed? By “proposition”, I mean that which imparts meaning to expressions. Whether regarding what is actual, what is necessary, or what is possible, so far as we are concerned with truth and falsehood, it is propositions that we are concerned with. What are the ingredients that a proposition is made of?
“All our thoughts and concepts,” Albert Einstein observed, “are called up by sense-experiences and have a meaning only in reference to these sense-experiences.” When we examine any proposition, we find that we were only able to form it after becoming equipped through some experience with its constituents. This holds true even for propositions about things not found in nature and existing only in our imagination. For example, the proposition “unicorns have four legs” was only possible for me to form after I had become equipped, from encounters with horns and animals, exposure to artistic representations of unicorns, or some such experiences, with the constituents of this proposition. Without these constituents, my capacity to form knowledge would never yield any significance to allow an object to which truth values can be attributed, just as my culinary skills would never yield a dish if I had no ingredients.
While we can affirm the law of contradiction through a concept or compare one concept with another, in order to be able to do so the concept must be formed first. This formation never occurs in the absence of some material that is obtained through experience. Thus, it is the material obtained through experience, which we can call “data”, that constitutes the ingredients of all propositions. Since it is to propositions that the qualities of truth and falsehood are attributed, and since propositions are constituted by data, it follows that there is no notion of truth value independent of data, nor any knowledge of the world that exists independently of data.
Regarding the data that has yet to become available to us at any given point, all that we can say is reflected in our predictions. The data available to us that is synthesized to form a proposition, along with all the data that agree with the predictions that synthesis allows us to make, constitute all the data accounted for by that proposition.
A proposition can account for at least as much data as another, in which case they can be compared with respect to truth value. If one of them accounts for more data, then it can be described as “truer” than the other. The theory of gravitational force of Isaac Newton, for example, accounts for a certain amount of data available to us and, through the successful predictions it allows us to make, a certain amount of data yet to become available. The theory of general relativity of Einstein accounts for all the data Newton’s theory does, as well as the data Newton’s theory fails to account for. It allows us to make more predictions that are successful. It is, therefore, truer.
With these preliminaries in place, we can now consider the three types of propositions relevant to our current discussion, those concerning actuality, necessity, and possibility.
The discovery of what is actual consists in the identification of propositions about what occurs. What occurs refers to states of affairs that exist. It is these occurrences which constitute the world. This follows from modern physics, according to which, as Bertrand Russell put it, “events, not particles, must be the ‘stuff’ of physics ... ‘matter’ is not part of the ultimate material of the world, but merely a convenient way of collecting events into bundles”. Consequently, propositions that describe what occurs illuminate the world in proportion to their truth. Whatever tools we employ to discover such propositions hold only instrumental value. We may, for example, use the law of contradiction—itself identified from data—to eliminate certain events to arrive at propositions about the events that occur. It is this end attained through various tools that constitutes what is actual.
Suppose we have formed some propositions, based on a synthesis of some data, that allows us to state that such and such events have occurred in the past and such and such events will occur in the future, whether correctly or incorrectly. Now what more do we add, in terms of the data accounted for, when we add that some of the events are necessary—that they cannot be otherwise—and others contingent—that they can be otherwise? Once we have arrived, through whatever tools, at a set of occurrences, what additional predictions can we make about what occurs by designating some occurrences as necessary and others as contingent? In a word, none.
This superfluousness of the notions of necessity and contingency regarding occurrences can be better understood through other similar concepts from the history of ideas. Consider the notion of substance. “A substance,” to quote Russell again, this time from an assessment of Aristotle, “is supposed to be the subject of properties, and to be something distinct from all its properties. But when we take away the properties, and try to imagine the substance by itself, we find that there is nothing left.” If we take a certain number of propositions about properties—such as having a particular visual shape, being hard, and so forth—and group them together, we obtain the concept of an object: a table. When we establish its existence by specifying a location in spacetime, it becomes a part of the actual world—a table that exists. But what more do we add, in terms of the data accounted for, when we claim that the table is a substance? What predictions can we make about occurrences with this addition that we could not make before? None.
Or take the notion of causation. We can identify a proposition such as “whenever one ball strikes another, the second ball moves” and predict that when a particular ball strikes another, the second ball will move. To arrive at this proposition, we might have used various tools, such as certain rules of logic, considerations of counterfactual circumstances, a mechanical approach to inquiry rather than a teleological one, and a particular conception of objectivity over another. We can account for more data than what this proposition accounts for through a truer proposition, which would allow us to make more successful predictions. But what additional data do we account for when we add that the first ball’s hitting the second involved a causal power or force that brought about the second ball’s movement? What predictions are we able to make about occurrences with this addition that we could not make before? As David Hume recognized, none.
We thus see the superfluousness of the notions of necessity and contingency with regard to what occurs. But what about possibility? When I say “if I had not taken a sit, I would be standing right now”, in what sense can this proposition be true or false?
Because what occurs constitutes the world, among the things that are possible, only those that occur are part of what is real. What is possible but not actual refers to the occurrences in which what occurs involves what is possible but not actual.
One way in which what occurs may involve what is possible but not actual is when possibility serves as a tool of discovery. In such cases, what occurs—the process of forming knowledge in humans, or “thinking”—involves considerations of what is possible as a means of discovering what is actual. In this context, the notion of possibility is no different from the other tools previously mentioned.
Another way in which what occurs may involve what is possible but not actual is when possibility is used as a form of description that elaborates on what is actual. For example, we can refer to a particular occurrence, such as “I am sitting right now”, by describing it through a list of events that do not occur, such as “I am not standing right now” or “I am not walking right now”. The truth of these latter propositions depends on the fact that I am sitting right now, which is what they elaborate. In such a description, we can also employ general propositions, such as logical or physical laws, along with all the occurrences for which they hold true, as in “if I had not taken a sit, I would be standing right now” or “a thousand years ago, if someone had built a telescope and observed the heavens, he would have seen the moons of Jupiter”.
We may say that past events are close to alternative possibilities, while future events remain open, or we may suggest that both are equally close. In no case do our sentences represent any knowledge of the world beyond what they convey about what occurs, as derived from the data we have accounted for. This can be measured through the predictions we are able to make, as we have seen. Based on what is revealed from the predictions it allows us to make, the claim “all events are inevitable” is merely the law of contradiction affirmed through the concept of an event. It states that the events that occur, occur, and the events that do not occur, do not occur. There is nothing we can imagine that a new experience could bring that would make an event that occurs not be an event that occurs, or an event that does not occur not be an event that does not occur.
The method of relying on predictions to assess the presence of knowledge is valuable for any claim we encounter. If someone asserts that the sun will not rise tomorrow, he should be able to make predictions that differ from those of someone who believes it will rise. If he fails to provide any different prediction, then we must conclude that, to the extent that we can compare knowledge between two people, there is no difference in their knowledge of the world on this point; the apparent difference in their claims is merely verbal. The same applies to a person who says that free will does not exist and another who asserts that it does. Do they differ in what they know about the world, or are their differences merely verbal?
Any claim regarding free will that can be reduced to a version of the claim “all events are inevitable”—a mere affirmation of the law of contradiction through a concept—can be addressed with what has already been said. Any remaining claim would be like “bachelors exist”, where we can imagine how it could be false. We will now consider claims of this latter kind.
3. The World of Facts
Claims about free will that are empirical can be expressed through various contrasts: fate versus chance, manipulation versus spontaneity, disability versus ability, lack of control versus control, lack of consciousness versus consciousness, and unfreedom versus freedom. A principal claim common across these contrasts is about responsibility in general, which can be stated as follows: Free will exists in us only to the extent that we are responsible for our actions. It is the case that no one is truly responsible for his actions. Therefore, we do not have free will. Furthermore, since we can only be justly rewarded or punished for an occurrence if we are truly responsible for it, no one can be justly rewarded or punished for his actions.
To evaluate this claim, we need to understand the nature of responsibility. The concept of responsibility has multiple meanings, some of which are not relevant to the claim at hand. For example, responsibility can sometimes refer to obligations, as when we say a mother is responsible for her child’s health. It can also denote a virtue, as in the case of a leader taking responsibility for the actions of his subordinates. To understand the notion of responsibility that we are concerned with, we must address three fundamental questions: To what sort of thing can responsibility be assigned? What is entailed when a thing is held responsible for an occurrence? And why do we assign responsibility?
To answer the first question, consider a person, me, pressing a button to turn a light on. To what can we assign the responsibility for the occurrence of the light turning on? Is it the person, me, or is it my pressing the button? We previously considered the notion of substance and found it to be superfluous. By “me”, therefore, we mean a certain set of occurrences grouped together to form the concept of me. But this concept includes many propositions about occurrences not relevant to the event in question. I press the button, but I also go for walks, read, lift weights. I engage in other activities after pressing the button. Consequently, it is more accurate to hold the occurrence my pressing the button as responsible for the occurrence the light’s turning on. In other words, the thing to which responsibility can be assigned for an occurrence is another occurrence.
One might mention the power or lack of power to materialize a particular occurrence, and it can be observed that the relationship described above is what we would refer to as a causal relationship. We could say that my pressing the button was the cause of which the light’s turning on was the effect, and that I, as a whole, had the power to bring about this effect. However, as we found previously, the notion of causal power or force, like the notion of substance, is also superfluous. The proposition “I pressed the button and the light turned on” might or might not be true, or there may exist a truer proposition that we could identify, such as “the filament heated up and the light turned on”. But nothing is added when we claim that my pressing the button involved a causal power or force which brought about the light’s turning on as its effect. What is entailed when an occurrence is held responsible for another occurrence is a relationship of precedence and succession between them, as described in propositions with varying degrees of truth. If one were to say that a particular occurrence would not have occurred if another had not occurred, one would be invoking possibility, whose nature and relation to actuality we have already discussed.
It can also be seen that no distinction needs to be made between different kinds of occurrences when establishing responsibility. When correctly understood, the process of establishing responsibility for an event involving a person and his behavior reveals itself to be an instance of the same process of forming knowledge of the world as that for an event involving a celestial body and its trajectory. In both cases, responsibility is established by accounting for data. In both cases, we either possess knowledge or we do not. In both cases, what is responsible for an occurrence is another occurrence, and what is entailed in responsibility is a relationship of precedence and succession between them. Questions regarding the facts of responsibility must be separated from our moral judgments, just as questions about the trajectory of a celestial body must be divorced from human aesthetic preferences. When establishing responsibility, all occurrences are, in this sense, equal.
From all this, it follows that if there is a distinction between real and false responsibility, it can only be based on the truth value of propositions that establish responsibility. A truer proposition about responsibility, as a manifestation of greater knowledge, also allows us to make more successful predictions, and herein we find the key to the third question, regarding why we assign responsibility. Having established that the filament’s getting heated, rather than my pressing the button, is actually responsible for the light’s turning on, I make different predictions about how to produce light compared to before.
As all occurrences are equal when establishing responsibility, this holds true for all occurrences, including those that involve moral aspects. Consider how, having established that another person’s feeling fear, rather than assuming impunity, is actually responsible for that person’s attacking him, a person might determine that allaying that person’s fears is a better course of action than retaliating. To take another example, having established that fulfilling his duties, rather than practicing self-indulgence, is actually responsible for producing certain levels of happiness, a person might determine that fulfilling those duties is a better course of action than practicing self-indulgence. To take a third example, having established that a particular microorganism, rather than a malevolent spirit, is actually responsible for a body developing a specific disease, a person might determine that taking measures to eliminate the microorganism is a better course of action than attempting to rid the body of the spirit’s influence.
Let us now briefly consider how the notion of responsibility we have explored applies to the various contrasts mentioned at the beginning of this section. In all cases, we will illustrate the application using representative examples.
The notion of fate suggests that all the occurrences in the world are structured like the occurrences in a book. What we perceive as events unfolding is better understood as turning to a page and finding words that were already written. In so far as the notion of responsibility is intelligible under such a scenario, responsibility relations would still hold, in the sense that one occurrence could still be held responsible for another occurrence in a relationship of precedence and succession, and real responsibility could still be distinguished from false responsibility based on the truth value of propositions. However, to the extent that this claim fails to lead to any prediction—direct or indirect—whose success or failure can be tested, it falls into a particular category of propositions. This category also includes its opposite: that the occurrences in the world are not structured like the occurrences in a book. For propositions in this category, which we can imagine being false, we can evaluate what data they account for and whether truer propositions could be discovered. We can wait until testing their predictions becomes feasible. We can also examine the kind of data whose synthesis may have led us to these ideas, much like the ancient philosophers who wondered why the gods possessed the same characteristics as the humans who worshiped them.
The idea of manipulation belongs to the same category as fate in so far as it implies an intelligence that intervenes in the world but remains undetectable. An example of this can be found in the deceiver imagined by René Descartes, who creates a simulation indistinguishable from the real world. However, there is another, more familiar sense of manipulation that can be experienced, which does not fall into this category. It is best illustrated by the example of lying. If someone lies to me to influence my selection of a particular course of action, it can be said that I was manipulated. His lying to me was responsible for my forming the judgment I did, which, in turn, was responsible for the choice I made. This could provide a true description of what occurred. Our emotional response to this fact, and what terms we use to describe it, would be independent of the responsibility relation itself, just as in any other case of responsibility.
It is worth noting that choices are made to attain certain ends, and there are instances where we can imagine a lie leading to better choices than the truth, such as when parents lie to their children to prevent harm. Similarly, because choices aim at achieving certain ends, the choice to adhere to particular legal characterizations regarding such notions as the individual, consent, and manipulation might serve a community better than alternative interpretations. Indeed, it is rules, of which laws are just one example, which represent knowledge about the effectiveness of choices derived from them, against which particular actions are judged as just or unjust.
A person can be influenced by disabilities in the choices he makes. This simply means that true responsibility relations for certain occurrences involving individuals with disabilities would differ compared to those without disabilities under otherwise similar conditions, as when a blind person collides with someone versus when a sighted person does.
By control, we mean the ability to regulate something either according to a teleological pattern or according to one’s conscious intention. In the first sense, we say, for example, that the sphincters in the bladder and urethra control the outflow of urine. When they malfunction, they fail to fulfill their purpose and thereby fail to exert control. In the second sense, we say, for example, that a person has control over his bladder because his conscious intentions align with his ability to regulate the release of urine. To the extent that he lacks awareness of his intentions or is unable to regulate the release of urine according to those intentions, he lacks control over his bladder. In the world, we find that people have varying degrees of control over different things at different times. A person driving a vehicle may have control over its speed and direction at one moment but lose it later due to such factors as a vehicle malfunction, a muscle spasm, falling asleep, or dissociation. After being introduced to a particular invention, a person’s control over his environment may increase, while the implementation of certain economic policies may reduce his control over his possessions.
Control in the second sense, because it depends on consciousness, comes into existence at a certain point—namely, after we become conscious. But what does it mean to be conscious? By “consciousness”, we do not mean merely the state of being active or experiencing emotions without knowledge. John Locke defined consciousness as “the perception of what passes in a man’s own mind”. To the extent that our senses are not involved in synthesizing data, they are pure manifestations of the body’s creative processes, like the pumping of the heart, and are not involved in forming any knowledge. Perception, therefore, implies knowledge, making consciousness a form of knowledge. If it is a type of knowledge, it is attained in the same way as all knowledge—by accounting for data—and is, in principle, accessible to any entity that can acquire knowledge, regardless of whether that entity is human or capable of experiencing emotions. While it may be that the data synthesized to develop the kind of knowledge implied in consciousness is only available to the entity that develops that knowledge, it still constitutes a form of knowledge. Consequently, to say that an entity is conscious is to say that it possesses certain knowledge that an entity lacking consciousness does not, with the implication that this additional knowledge may yield the advantages of successful predictions mentioned earlier.
Finally, if we conceive free will as the ability to act according to one’s desires with the aim of realizing a particular internal state, then this state can be interpreted as the end for which we adopt choices and against whose materialization choices are compared as better or worse. In this view, just as whatever tools we use to discover propositions that describe what occurs have only instrumental value, so too do the courses of action we adopt to achieve this end—which we can refer to as “freedom” or “happiness”—hold only instrumental value. A person in the state of freedom experiences unconditionality and acceptance, while a person who is not in this state, unless he is in the state of inertia or mindlessness, experiences its opposite: conditionality and resistance, a state we can call “unfreedom” or “dissatisfaction”.
The idea that all occurrences are inevitable, the discovery of being manipulated, and the constraints imposed by impairment often lead to unfreedom. While having control over something can produce freedom, in some instances freedom can also arise from the realization that we lack control—such as when a person in hopeless circumstances finds solace in surrendering to fate, or when someone in love experiences joy in the loss of inhibitions. Liberty can be understood as certain external conditions that facilitate the extension of an individual’s freedom. However, because liberty and freedom are not the same, the ability to act according to one’s desires does not always equate to freedom. An imprisoned person who cannot move as he wishes may still experience transcendence, while another, despite having all conceivable liberties, might feel discontent. We may say that discovering which occurrences are responsible for the extension of the state of freedom constitutes the ultimate aim of ethics.
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