A Dismissal of Free Will
On December 14th, 2012, the elementary school named “Sandy Hook” of Newtown, Connecticut, was terrorized in one of the most horrific acts of humanity to graze the twenty-first century. Adam Lanza, a 20-year-old man, murdered 26 people, 20 of them being children no older than seven years old. Just as the first responders arrived at the elementary school, Lanza took his own life. Upon hearing about such devastation, feelings of anger surface. We ask ourselves how another human could be capable of such a great evil?
Nevertheless, there are better questions to ask. The question should be, “Could a human being choose to act so monstrously?” If the answer is yes, then humanity has the potential to be agents of atrocities by which there is no shortage of imagination. Troubling questions such as these are the motivation for this paper. When the conversation of free will is suggested, most fail to give the objection the time of day. We are agents of our actions; that is all there is. This tenant is central to Our ethical systems, legal/ governmental systems, how we face accountability, and even our understanding of most humans' religious beliefs. Realizing that such a foundation of the human condition may be made of sand is unimaginable for most. As is the case for most involved with metaphysical questions, one realizes that nothing of ontological status is to be taken at face value; whether we have free will is no different.
Defining Free Will (Libertarian)
The word libertarian here has no relation to the more well-known political philosophy. The libertarian view of free will holds that it is incompatible with a deterministic universe (in which all events are ultimately caused by something external to itself). The view itself relies on two assumptions: (1) that we have multiple options for any given choice we make, and (2) that we are the conscious agents of our thoughts and decisions. Libertarians view that human agency rests above the deterministic reality of the universe. Here, humans have full agency over their actions. An example of this definition is: "Today I failed my diet and stopped at Starbucks because I am weak-willed. I have complete control over my decisions, and it is ultimately my fault for failing my diet.” I am sure some complications are already being raised with you. “Does the fact that I was hungry hold no weight in my decision?” or “Shouldn’t we consider the fact that sugar and certain fats are highly addictive? Starbucks contains high levels of both of these in their foods.” “I have a long history of obesity in my family; surely there is more to this than just my lack of control, right?” You see where this is going…
Objections To Libertarian Free Will
To have libertarian free will, we must be aware of everything affecting our decisions. Only if we have a full grasp of what our choices are can, we make a truly free decision. This is why, legally, we do not allow minors to make life-altering decisions (although there are exceptions). Return for a moment to the diet example. For me to indeed be in control of my cravings for Starbucks, I must understand what is making me crave the food, how my mood plays into my craving control, and why I am motivated to lose weight, how my genes and environmental development play into my ability to hold a diet, how does the society I live in influence my want for Starbucks, the list can go on indefinitely. We would have to have a grandiose omniscient understanding of each decision to be truly informed on everything we do. Otherwise, you cannot claim to be genuinely free, as some aspects of your decision-making are impeded.
Another issue here comes from the issue of will itself. There are two reasons why we do anything: one. We are forced to, and two because we want to. When we are forced to do something, it is evident that we are not acting freely; the bank teller being held at gunpoint after witnessing their coworker get shot is not going to be held responsible for providing the robber with the money he is requesting. On the other hand, when we do something because we want to, we are seen as morally accountable for our actions—the robber who chose to hold the bank teller at gunpoint, for example. Although the issue here may not be obvious, it is imperative: We cannot will what we will. Let us return to the example of the diet cheater once more: why did that person want to cheat on their diet? They cannot choose to want to cheat, nor can they choose which desire they have at any given moment outweighs the other. Say this person wants to lose weight for an upcoming pool party. When they are confronted with a Starbucks on the way home from work, they do not choose to want the Starbucks, and they do not choose to want to diet either. Further, they do not choose which of these desires is more prominent at any given moment. Now you may point out that maybe this person can choose to go against their will to eat the Starbucks, and thus free will is saved. But not so fast; even if this decision is made, the person still did not choose to want to go against their desire; they just did.
In his book, the neuroscientist Sam Harris presents a clever example of the issue of our desires controlling us. Harris recounts how his desire to finish writing his book led him to skip a meal, despite feeling hungry. He had no control over this decision. He couldn't explain why his desire to write was stronger than his desire to eat at that moment; it just was. Similarly, he couldn't determine what caused his desire to eat to overcome his desire to write eventually; it just did. Essentially, we can become slaves to our desires, even when we think we're intentionally ignoring them. Furthermore, since we have no control over these desires, we are not truly autonomous. Therefore, "free will" is nothing but an illusion. Even if you tried to deny yourself the fulfillment of a desire to prove that you have control over your decisions, you would still be unsuccessful. The desire to do so is another one you have no control over. You may argue that you are reading this article of your own free will, but in reality, you had no control over how you came to read it. Someone may have shared a link to this paper in an email. Did you have any control over this? Even if you argue that you could have chosen not to open your email, the desire arose from a series of involuntary neurological events that occurred without your consent. This issue or neurological makeup will be discussed in detail later on, but for now, it is important to address a definition of free will conceived to avoid the issues spelled out here.
The Compatibilist Compromise
In order to grapple with these issues raised by determinism for free will, some tried to change the definition to include determinism, hence compatibilism. Compatibilists define free will as the mere freedom to act according to their motivation as long as one is free from any external or internal compulsions that would inhibit them from acting per their desires or intentions. In the case of a person with a failed diet, the mere intention to cheat on your diet is enough to say one has free will. No one forced them to get that frappe; therefore, they freely did so.
Objections to Compatibilism
Although compatibilism seems to save free will from determinism on its face, a deeper look suggests the problem has not changed. For instance, this diet-cheating person (diet-cheating person sounds much more dramatic than it needs to be) still has a history of obesity in their family. Why is this the case? Is it just a coincidence that everyone in that family is making the same mistakes? What about the issue of sugary foods being highly addictive? Isn’t this impeding their internal consciousness and creating a desire they otherwise would not have? If it is not clear what the compatibilist would say here, the fact that the person ultimately decided to get the frappe is enough to demonstrate they have free will. The freedom to act is enough for the compatibilist. The native issue here is that this seems to differ from what most would conceive free will to be.
For another example, take a thought experiment of avoiding a boulder. If I am hiking in the woods one day, and I notice a bolder racing down a hill in my direction, jumping out of the way of said bolder, it seems unclear whether the compatibilist would consider this action free. I may have acted on the internal desire to jump out of the way, but I would not have had this desire had the boulder not been forced upon my judgment. The issue here seems to stem from every issue of life, considering that compatibilists consider determinism valid outside of the quantum level. If determinism is confirmed as the compatibilist says it is, everything in the universe is caused by something preceding it. We, of course are a part of the universe. This then means that if you could hypothetically create a universe precisely the same way ours came into fruition, you would get the exact same universe as the one we believe we are currently in. Free will being compatible with determinism seems to be a contradiction. This returns to the issue of compatibilism being a faulty definition of free will. The problems for free will, however, are much more expansive than philosophy.
Neuroscience Evidence Against Free Will
To go back to the case of the “Sandy Hook” shooting, most would agree that someone capable of such a crime must have something indeed wrong with them, right? The evidence seems to agree. In a 2017 study, researchers Nathan Kolla and Sarah Vinette (2017) found that abnormalities in the MAO-A gene structure and function have been implicated in antisocial personality disorder. The APA (2022) categorizes APD as such,
“People with antisocial personality disorder may repeatedly disregard or violate the rights of others, may lie, deceive, or manipulate others, act impulsively, or disregard their or others’ safety. They may have problems with drug or alcohol use, may violate the law, and typically show no remorse or guilt.”
It is fair to say that this is what most think of when they conceive of what mental issues could result in such a crime. However, would it not then follow from this logic that mental disorders impede our free will? If someone is diagnosed as schizophrenic and makes some extremely offhand remarks to their grandmother at Christmas, it seems unlikely that the majority of people would treat the person with schizophrenia the same way they would treat a neurotypical person. did the person with schizophrenia choose to be afflicted any more than the neurotypical chose not to be? I think the answer here is an obvious no. No one chooses the physical makeup of their brain. Just like no one chooses which family they are born to and which environment they are forced to traverse. We now know through developmental psychology how important a child’s upbringing is to adult life. Study. However, indeed we would not ascribe full agency to children; when we are young, we commit many actions that would be entirely unacceptable for adults, yet we grant them much less punishment. We are aware now that teenagers act delinquently due to their temporal lobe (area of the brain consisting of impulsivity) growing much faster than their prefrontal cortex (area of the brain in which high order functioning and regulatory aspects of abstract thought.) If this is the first you are becoming aware of this fact, many embarrassing teenage actions you cringe upon remembering may make much more sense.
Can we now say that only psychologically healthy (a difficult thing to define) adults are capable of full agency? Even if this answer is yes, the issue of neuroscience goes even deeper. Returning to Sam Harris’s book, Sam explains that it is your brain that makes decisions for you. Everything you feel and do is a result of measurable neurological activity. If we could know the precise conditions of a person’s brain to a sufficient degree of detail, we could, in principle, accurately predict exactly how that person will act in the future with 100% accuracy. Of course, technological limitations make such a quixotic experiment currently impossible, but that does not make it principally impossible. There have, in fact, been similar studies where scientists have shown that our brains make decisions before we are made aware of them. We then are fooled into thinking we are making a decision that has, in fact, already been made. So, imagine we did have the technology to predict a person’s every action before he decides to take it. (I remind you once again that this is an entirely possible future situation.) In such a situation. Is this person truly “free” to act as he chooses, even if he thinks he is?
One of these studies by Benjamin Libet (1983) used an EEG to show that activity in the motor cortex can be detected 300 milliseconds before the person feels that they have decided to move. Another study, one which I believe to be more enticing, used an fMRI to expand upon Libet's research. In this study, subjects were asked to press one of two buttons while watching a clock composed of a random sequence of letters appearing on a screen. The subjects reported which letter was visible at the moment they decided to press one button or the other. The experimenters found two brain regions that contained information about which buttons subjects would press a full 7-10 seconds before the decision was consciously made. (2011) One last study, the most surprising, showed that direct recordings from the cortex displayed that the activity of merely 256 neurons was enough to predict a person’s decision to move 700 milliseconds before they become aware of it with 80 percent accuracy. These findings, along with the philosophical arguments, provide a mountain-sized hurdle to overcoming the issues of belief in free will.
So… What Now?
What now, then? Do we just let all murderers out of their prisons? Should we forgive the Nazis of the Nuremberg trials? Or would it be better if we were to ignore the arguments against free will altogether? These are all extreme claims that need not to be entertained. Even if we do not have the free will, we built our society upon the judicial system need not change. We can still lock up murderers as we are aware that they cannot choose to murder and are, therefore risk to society. We can still offer restitution for the families or victims themselves via punishing the criminals, as whether they chose to or not, they still committed a moral atrocity that would still benefit the victims to have them “pay” for such crimes. Without going too far into utilitarian ethics, it would still provide the best benefit to society to have criminals punished for their wrongdoings. Only now can we relinquish punishment for those doing drugs or other nonaggressive crimes.
Under a society in which free will is not considered, people can ironically become free from the guilt of falling back into the same things they have been ridiculed for their entire lives. Outside of the judicial system, we can move forward toward helping these people fix their problems instead of using draconian humiliation to make examples out of them. So, if the question is normative, I believe the answer is to prescribe a relinquishment of the free-well assumption.
To be clear, relinquishment of free will does not admonish the earlier mentioned Sandy Hook murderer; in fact, with the arguments made here in mind, it is no question that the world is a better place without him in it. Replace sandy hook for any of the manmade atrocities that have plagued our beings since the beginning of civilization. No human can be either a hero or a staunch murderer and choose the latter. This is not to say these things do not require justice; as it’s already been discussed, it will maximize society's happiness if those doing such crimes are brought to justice. We may continue to lose sleep over the horrific actions caused on December 14th, eleven years ago, but may rest and tranquility be brought to us in knowing no one could choose to be so evil.
The arguments have been laid out before you. You will not choose whether you find them convincing or not, just as I have not chosen to have nothing left to say on the matter.