Free Will is not an Illusion

 

Free Will is Not Just an Illusion

by Craig Willms

It's probably right up there with 'the meaning of life' and the other eternal question 'why is there something rather than nothing', the notion of free will can be a contentious and difficult topic wherever it is raised.  Clearly no one possesses the definitive answer. Since it is so difficult to define it's entirely possible we will never know the answer. 

Countless intellectuals, atheists and scientists claim there is no such thing as free will. The claim: what seems like free will is just an illusion, the inevitability of an outcome in any circumstance is the result of quasi-predetermined events bounded by minimal choice, innate instinct or predilections informed by past behavior patterns and social conditioning. Decisions you believe you've made were actually made for you in the subconscious, without any input by reason or intentional thought, thus it's an illusion of your will. While that may be true when you are reacting to an unexpected threat against your person, those instincts, those reactionary impulses do not interdict in your considered, thoughtful decisions. In other words, one does not supersede the other. Scientific testing using in brain scans while subjects are being tested will show brain activity significantly precedes the subjects' action. They say this proves that physiology actually makes the decision before the conscious mind has even taken it all in. Just because they say it doesn't make it true. The subconscious mind is informed by your past experiences and thoughts, your thoughts.

I myself do not think that this science tells the whole story, because it can't. Just calling so-called free will an illusion is condescending, lazy and dismissive. The intellectual answer skirts what we all sense, what we all figure out at a fairly young age. Of course, our will is constrained, this is clear, we can't do whatever we want or act on anything we think we desire. We have limited choices at different times in our lives, there is no arguing that, but within the bounds of those constraints we do have choices and decisions to make, decisions that have real consequences. I would argue free will lives in those choices. The fact that those choices may have consequences that are likely force our hands is not a refutation of free will. Anyone who has ever dealt with an obstinate child can attest to that.

Free will is not total freedom, it never has been, and no one claims that. Atheists and materialists try to quash any notion of free will with mechanistic biological processes and other physical certitudes, dismissing any suggestion of internal spirit and self-directed determination. This is a mistake, and most people know it intuitively. 

 

I'm not a scientist so my opinion is meaningless scientifically, I do however have intuition and awareness - and experience. So do you. What else are we going to call it when we choose to go this way and not that way. Or we change our major in college or quit our jobs to start our own business. Have we not made a free choice, are we not exerting our free will? What is it when we decide to change an ingrained behavioral pattern? When I chose to stop drinking alcohol 30+ years ago was that not of my own free will? That choice stunned everyone I know, so tell me how that was not my free will. 

I'm listening...

Even if the choice we have before us is binary it's still a choice. Every day we make choices that for all intents and purposes are consequential depending on what follows. If you want to call it fate, you can. Those choices, big and small require free will at some level. 

We all know people who have accomplished great things through the sheer force of their will. Call it determination, stubbornness, persuasiveness, perseverance, the power of personality or luck. Again, none of these descriptors negate a person's free will. Along the line the choices presented could have gone a different way, and at each crossroad the opportunity to exert the will is just so obvious.

Ultimately, what difference does it make. Science can make the argument that your every thought and action is determined by everything that came before you all the way back to the beginning of the universe, that it can be no other way. Every decision and thought that all your ancestors ever had force your hand without any input from you. Fine, you can believe that, but does it make any difference for you in the here and now when you are judged by your contemporaries? Your great, great, great grandfather is not being judged; you are.

Our human societies accept free will as fact, that's inarguable. We imprison people who violate others based on actions they took of their own free will. For example, you can argue that a mass murderer programmed by the luck of biology and socialization was pre-destined to engage in a murder spree. Fine, you can assert that all day long, but the authorities are still going to put that person in prison. If the criminal has no free will to murder or not to murder, then why punish them at all? Clearly it was not their fault. Wrong, and everybody knows it. That's what makes free will so obviously real, everybody knows it intuitively. 

There is also the final frontier, the human mind. I am free to think, ponder, consider, believe and make choices of my own free will. Just because these thoughts and beliefs are locked in my consciousness being doesn't make them any less real. They are still my choices, and I would be free to think otherwise. There's an axiom that says the only thing you have 100% control over is your attitude. It's true, and that alone is free will in a nutshell. To continue to assert that free will is an illusion only begs the question; is then all reality an illusion? Is it?