Many believe the discussion of free will is pointless. This is usually because one believes it’s been settled (for the religious who believe God gave it to us) or because one believes it doesn’t matter (for the secular types who believe there is no practical benefit to having the discussion).

I will attempt to convince the second group that their position of apathy is incorrect.

The Concept of “Deserving”

It’s impossible to deserve anything unless there is free will. If there is no free will then nobody deserves praise for becoming rich after years of hard work. Similarly, nobody deserves to be looked down upon for failing to succeed in life.

It is nearly impossible to overstate how important this point is.

It’s true that even those who do believe in free will give room for difficult circumstances, but ultimately they believe that free will allows one to overcome (if they care enough to do so). This places blame and praise right back onto the individual in question.

Society respects the rich and looks down on the poor because we believe, quite simply, that people have the option to go against the grain of whatever life they’ve been handed. Those born into highly prosperous and educated families could end up squandering their good fortune away, and those born in urban welfare homes to single a single mom could end up going to Harvard.

If they choose to.

This belief has subtle but violent repercussions. It means that when that boy from the ghetto doesn’t make it out, he didn’t want it enough. It was his choice, and he didn’t put the work in.

This knight’s move constitutes nothing less than justification for looking down on those that don’t succeed. If you don’t think that’s significant, expand the concept out to groups of people, parts of town, and to entire nations.

The Link to Compassion

Imagine the local homeless person asking for a dollar on the street corner. I know countless deeply religious people who make it a rule to never give these people money. It is my belief that this is because they hold in their minds the conviction that this person chose to fail, and that they are basically refuse that will benefit from their monthly tithing through the church.

They don’t see someone who needs help; they see someone who has failed to help himself.

I, on the other hand, see a person who did not have advantages. Now, who do you think is more likely to be compassionate: the person who believes that he could have willed himself out of his situation, or the person who believes he was unfortunate and unable to escape?

That’s the key: compassion goes down the more you believe the person in the position deserves what they are experiencing. As such, those who believe in free will are naturally prone to be less compassionate.

Politics

This concept permeates the various political platforms. If you permit me the simplification, the right believes strongly in free will and therefore has far less sympathy for those who don’t achieve. The left believes far more in circumstances and variables, and therefore is more sympathetic to those who don’t succeed.

This translates directly to taxation as well. If you “deserve” your money, you shouldn’t have it taken from you. If you were lucky to get it then it should be spread to those who need it. Again, the sides on this debate fall right down the line of left and right.

Summary

No single question matters more in terms of human morality than that of whether not we have free will. To dodge this debate in the name of practicality is intellectual cowardice at this point in our civilization.

Put thought into and determine your position on this topic, and make the effort to ensure that your political views are consistent with it. ::

Image from skeptically.org

I have, over the last few years, put out a number of arguments against the possibility of free will. My most popular so far has been that of my Two-Lever Argument, which can be found here. I now wish to make a separate, distinct argument argument against free will called the Zero-Control argument.

The Zero-Control argument asks one to imagine a world before he was born. Imagine looking down at an earth without you in it. Now ask yourself how much control you have over that world. How much do you consciously affect what goes on in it? I think we can all agree the answer is zero.

Next, consider what happens after your parents have brought about the preconditions for your life. As you sit in the womb, sloshing to and fro as a collection of molecules and cells that you had no input into the organization of, what degree of control or choice do you have regarding your actions? What choices are you able to make that are not fully dependent on inputs from your genetic makeup and your environment? I think most will agree that the answer is still “none”.

The task now is to look at the next milestones of development–say, being a “willful” toddler who terrorizes households and disobeys the commands of parents. If one is to offer that such displays of “will” are now “free”, this raises the obvious question of, “When did that happen?” To be more pointed, at what point did the transition occur between being a simple collection of inputs processed by biological hardware, to being some sort of free being capable of making choices independent of inputs?

The same scenario can be extended to adolescence, or even full adulthood. The burden is on the believer in free will to describe, after admitting that a non-existent human has zero control, and a baby in the womb has pretty much the same amount, how exactly it is that someone switches from being purely deterministic to having free will. ¹ Let’s go from step one to adulthood:

1. You don’t exist. // control 0
2. You are a spermatozoon. // control 0
3. You are a fertilized egg. // control 0
   Up to this point it’s probably pretty clear that we, at this stage, are simply atoms bouncing off of each other. The key is to ask what changes as we progress.
4. You are an embryo in the womb. // control 0
5. You are a newborn. // what are you doing other than responding to your environment given your genetic makeup?
6. You are a toddler. // you now appear to be willful, but what has actually changed?
7. You are an adolescent. // now you have your own opinions, can be creative, etc. But again…same problem.
8. You are an adult. // see above

It seems clear that no transition ever takes place from zero control to more than zero control. We continue to be a collection of atoms bumping into each other, just as we were when we were spermatozoons clearly without free will. The perception of free will that comes as we mature is no different than the perception of intent in complex things like weather. As a primitive species, when we don’t understand something due to it’s complexity and hidden cause, we ascribe a sentient, mystical element to it.

We used to do this in how we described natural disasters and disease (it must be God!), and now we do the same with free will. The more we learn about the brain the more we’ll learn the actual, deterministic causes for the decisions we make.² The mystery will fall away from this just as it has for countless other natural phenomenon in the past. To assume otherwise is nothing less than foolish. ::

Notes

¹ Compatabilists, in my mind, are contorting free will to mean something other than making choices outside of natural inputs, therefore are excluded from the discussion. They’ve changed the definition as most think of it into “practical” free will, which I agree with by the way. See my essay on Absolute vs. Practical Free Will.
² This is already happening. We’re already able to observe “free choices” being made in very predictable fashion prior to the subject feeling they’ve made the choice, and we’re also able to directly influence people to make choices we want them to while the person feels they’re making the choice.

Image from skeptically.org

I write a lot about free will, and I am often asked the reason for this. My answer is invariably that, “it has moral implications”, but I’ve evidently failed to make a complete and/or successful argument on that vector. So here’s an attempt at one.

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My argument is that the belief in free will negatively affects societies that embrace such a belief. This is because beliefs affect behavior. If you believe it’s going to rain today, you bring an umbrella when you leave the house. And if you believe people have the option to do the right thing even when they’re overwhelmingly disadvantaged, this will be reflected clearly in your approach to criminal justice and social programs.

The horrific result of this is that societies which base their criminal justice systems on the belief in free will are less likely to engage in the types of activities that will help reduce the number of people who commit crimes, e.g. building better public schools, and offering health care for its citizens.

Imagine a rich, secluded city somewhere that has very little crime. Everyone in the town is highly educated and nobody lives below the poverty line. But they also believe strongly in free will–as given by God–as the primary factor making someone do a good thing or a bad thing. Consequently, they believe that the reason their city has so little crime is because they’re all so religious.

Now, when someone comes in from out of town and attacks one of them for money (he’s hungry and uneducated, etc, etc.), the reaction from that town’s population and court system will be wrong. Not different. Wrong.

The town’s reaction will be that this person had equal opportunity, given by God, to commit or not commit said crime. As a result, he then DESERVES punishment. It’s not that punishing him would be good for society as a deterrent, but rather that he deserves it for making the wrong choice. The importance of this distinction cannot be overstated.

Most importantly, and to return to my primary point, when it comes time to spend tax dollars, this town will spend its money on building new churches–not on going into poor neighborhoods and improving schools. And again, this will be a failure caused directly by the belief that a human’s choice is more important than his inputs in determining outcomes.

This is a battle-armored example of the belief in free will being morally harmful. It yields an inaccurate understanding of the nature of crime, and, necessarily, an equally flawed understanding of how to reduce it.

To summarize, the embrace of free will leads to the creation of societies that blame the individual for crime, while the the rejection of free will leads to the creation of society in which people understand that poor outcomes are due to poor inputs, and that the only purpose of punishment comes from a consequentialist perspective, and not a retributivist one.

This approach will lead to the adoption of social programs that aim to reduce the variables that cause negative outcomes, which is precisely what we see in secular societies such as Sweden and Denmark. There the penal systems are nearly 100% consequentialist, and it is my contention that this is due to a rejection of choice as a primary factor in negative outcomes.

And what’s the result? The lowest crime rates and the highest education rates in the entire world.

So, no–the discussion of free will is not merely academic or philosophical–it is crucial to the understanding of what causes negative outcomes in our society, and therefore what can be done to reduce those negative outcomes.

That’s why it matters whether or not we have free will. ::

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Thank you.

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