The debate over free will typically runs to extremes. On one side, free will informs everything we do. On the other side, free will does not exist and any impression to the contrary is nothing more than an illusion. I refer to these positions as "free will = 1" and "free will = 0", meaning "100% free will" and "0% free will" respectively.
A story was published on Thursday, claiming that free will "is a myth," meaning that it does not exist. You can find that story here:
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/5/5/1523639/-2-Darwin-Freud-and-Einstein-knew-free-will-is-a-myth-it-s-important-we-progressives-know-this-too
The author is to be congratulated for stirring up a lively discussion that ran to nearly 300 comments. But his arguement that free will does not exist, was flawed on a number of grounds. This is not a "call-out" story, it's the first part of a rebuttal to and refutation of the preceding author's arguement.
To cut to the chase, I will argue 1) that free will is greater than 0 and less than 1. 2) That it exists but is hardly as pervasive as we traditionally think it is. 3) That its scope can be increased through education and practice. And 4) that the preceding three positions form the most consistent basis, empirically, logically, and morally, for addressing the question of free will in progressive policy positions.
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Scientific method and subjective experiences:
By canonical definition, a scientific hypothesis must be falsifiable: it must be possible to perform an experiment in which one of the possible outcomes is that the resulting data demonstrate that the hypothesis is not correct. This is part of the Zen of science: you don't want to design your experiments to show that you're right, you want to design them to find the possible mistakes in your thinking. Experiments that are obviously set up to show that the experimenter is correct, are recognized as being biased and unreliable.
The term "proof" refers to logical proof as in mathematics (true and always true for all possible cases), not to the outcome of empirical experiments. Instead, the results of experiments "support" or "falsify" the hypothesis being tested (true or false as far as we can test). With sufficient support we can reasonably say that a hypothesis has been confirmed, and we can add it to a larger body of knowledge that we call a "theory." A theory can generate hypotheses; and a collection of hypotheses (both supported and falsified) can together point toward a theory.
Here I should also mention that in the sciences, a "fact" is a measurement of some kind, for example the rest mass of an object, its velocity, its temperature, a photon's polarization, a chemical's reactivity with another chemical, a sequence of amino acids, a person's heart rate, the percentage of voters voting for a candidate, etc.
When dealing with anything in the cognitive, behavioral, or social sciences, some of the elements are necessarily subjective: perceptions, experiences, beliefs, etc. But to perform science, we must a) have some variables that are empirical, meaning that they can be measured objectively, and b) find ways to translate the subjective variables to reasonably reliable objective measures.
For example we might hypothesize that a certain type of subjective experience that occurs in meditation, correlates with a distinct pattern of brain activity. We can measure the electrical activity of the brain objectively with the EEG. We can ask meditators to press a button when that experience occurs, thereby translating a subjective experience into a basic objective measurement. (An EEG record is a measurement, therefore a fact, and a button-press at a specific time is another measurement or fact.)
Then we can examine the EEG records from a number of meditators, to ascertain if there is or isn't a consistent and distinct pattern of brain activity during the experience in question. If there is, then we can reasonably conclude that this type of subjective experience correlates with this particular EEG pattern. Our conclusion might help us generate further testable hypotheses about the effects of meditation.
Free will, a definition:
"The ability of an organism to make measurable choices or exhibit behaviors that cannot be predicted accurately by an external observer."
Notice what I did there: I took out all of the subjective factors of "the feeling of freedom or absence thereof" and reduced this to two objective variables: one person's measurable choices or behaviors, and another person's prediction of those choices or behaviors. I used the terms "organism" and "observer" to generalize the definition, so it can also be used for other animals, for automated methods of predicting and recording, etc.
Now we have something testable. This stands in sharp contrast to the usual way of arguing this: "I feel that I'm free to choose," "No you aren't, your choices are all predetermined and your feeling is an illusion," etc.
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Prevailing beliefs about free will:
The traditional belief in our culture is that free will is pervasive: all choices are freely made unless someone is subject to force or fraud such as in an armed robbery or a scam.
Historically this goes back to the roots of the Abrahamic religions, in which the deity creates humans (or influences evolution to produce humans), and gives us free will as a means of exercising moral choices and improving our lives. In Asian religious traditions, the will of individuals is substantially influenced by karma (cause and effect between successive lives), maya (the state of illusion in normal consciousness), and so on, but individuals are still free to seek to overcome those factors.
We also experience ourselves making choices: we do this countless times every day. Our direct experience is that we choose freely, and when we are prevented from making a choice that is important to us (such as by discriminatory laws), we feel that we are being oppressed. I will not be arguing that the subjective feeling of freedom is conclusive evidence for free will, only that it is a fact of experience similar to the perception of color or of music.
Causal determinism:
The traditional belief in the sciences is that all events are "causally determined." If an event occurs, it must have a cause, and by tracing those causes back as far as possible, we can understand the fundamental nature of things. Logically, if we have a set of facts about objects, and the laws of the relevant domain of science (this is often abbreviated as "the facts and the laws"), we believe that we can ascertain the status of those objects at any point in time. We can predict their future behavior, and we can "retrodict" their past behavior.
When causal determinism is applied to the behavior of matter and energy, the first things we get are the laws of classical physics. Thereby, we can launch a rocket toward Jupiter and predict successfully when it will arrive, to within about 1/2 hour. Classical physics has its limits: At velocities close to c (light speed), general relativity is more accurate. For objects on the scale from subatomic to molecular, quantum mechanics is more accurate. None the less, for most objects with which humans are usually concerned, classical physics, and classically-consistent theories in chemistry, biology, etc., are all we need to predict the outcomes of events, design useful technologies, and so on.
Causal determinism in the form of classical physics (and general relativity, which Einstein developed as an extension of classical physics) has been so successful in describing our world and creating useful technologies, that it has become part of our metaphysics: the implied larger rule-set within which physics operates, including rules that are beyond those that are directly testable. (Whether our universe is the only universe, or whether it is part of a multiverse, is at present a metaphysical question.)
If we extrapolate causal determinism as far as possible, we conclude that, if every event has a cause, then in theory we can follow those causes all the way back to the beginning of the universe. Thereby we can reach back 13.8 billion years to infer the Big Bang from measurements made today. Further, we can also follow the causal trail forward to any desired point in the future. We can predict, from the red-shifts of distant galaxies, that those galaxies will eventually recede out of our view altogether; and from this, we can infer that the entire framework of spacetime is expanding.
If all of that is true:
If causal determinism enables us to describe the evolution of the universe from the Big Bang forward, and if humans are macroscopic "classical objects," then clearly it must be the case that all of the future behaviors of humans should be predictable based on observations of prior behaviors.
If that's so, it should thoroughly refute the idea that our behaviors are in any way freely-chosen.
Right? No, as we'll see in the next part of this article.
Stay tuned!
(Note, I may be out when this gets published, and I’ll be replying to comments when I get back. Stick around;-)