Why Free Will Exists

we are all compatibilists

Photo by Zulmaury Saavedra on Unsplash

My last post grounded my contractualism, and the ethical system that it gives rise to, on freedom. However, that might be a problem for the reductive materialist among us. Don’t I know that what we call our sensations and thoughts are nothing more than the random movement of quarks? Haven’t I read Sam Harris or heard of the Libet experiments? Am I some sort of spirit-believing dualist?

As far as the material universe is concerned, there is no free will. There is nothing physical that can validate my sense of choice. Every single one of our “choices” has been made for us in an ultimate way, having been caused by a prior action. And that prior action was caused by another action before it, going back until (at least) the big bang. The only thing left to discover is if the universe is pre-determined or random. Either way, free will does not exist. Now, onto my compatibilism.

First, we must establish that the feeling of free will does exist. Regardless of what is going on in my brain, the feeling of choice I have of whether to take a sip of coffee or press on my keyboard is a real sensation. Saying that “free will does not exist” is so provocative because it flies in the face of this familiar experience. We intuitively understand the difference between lifting our arm and an involuntary spasm that lifts it for us. Even the most ardent determinists go through the world with at least a sense of control. But is this enough?

Yes, it is. We believe that for our sensations to reflect reality they must be validated by publicly observable information. Example: If I sense that a coffee mug is on my table, other sensory systems and organisms can confirm that my individual senses reflect reality. However, if instead, I were to ask about the coffee mug I see on the table, and all I received were confused looks (“is the coffee mug in the room with us right now?”) then the coffee mug might be a mere illusion. This is what separates the sensations of the physical from the purely mental—reality versus illusions.

However, our sensations both interpret the world and impose their interpretation onto the world. Our feelings about some things are enough to give them a meaningful reality. Let me provide an example that people tend to associate with discussions on free will: the meaning of life.

Like free will, there is no publicly observable meaning of life. If I were to say to you that the meaning of life is being married and you were to say that the meaning of life is having kids, while another person were to say that the meaning of life is doing neither and partying as much as possible, there isn’t anything or anyone that can adjudicate this matter for us. There is no coded message in the stars or secret text hidden in the atom that tells us how to live our lives. Especially where a Supreme Being who issues divine commandments is found to be a superstition, can life have any meaning? This is the argument that defenders of religion have been making for some time. And without publicly observable meaning, does humanity fall into nihilism? Or do we impose our subjective meaning onto the world? The latter seems correct.

Everyone is only a determinist on paper. And the same goes for nihilists. All self-proclaimed nihilists seem to prioritize some activities and goals over others as if deep down they can’t shake off the sense that things do matter, at least to them. For what purpose are you choosing one action over another, without imposing a subjective hierarchy of significance? If this hierarchy was not discovered within the physical universe, it must have been a creation of our minds.

We cannot show that there is an objective meaning to the universe, just like we cannot show that there is a homunculus in the brain. However, the lack of publicly observable information is no more a denial of a meaning to life than it is to free will. Both can exist in an important sense even in the absence of physical validation.

If the meaning of life is a bit too squishy, let’s use another example: color. One of the mind-blowers for first-year philosophy students is the problem of other minds. How can I tell that your sensation of red is the same as my own? We may both call something red, yet experience it very differently from one another.

You may say that because we are wired similarly and respond similarly, we would have at least similar sensations of red. Fair, that’s my thinking as well. But let us use differently-wired aliens instead, who consequently have a completely different sensation of and response to what we humans experience as red. Then, there is no objective red, only subjective red.

Does this mean that red doesn’t exist? Can I sue my retailer for fraud for labeling a shirt as the fiction red? (last rhetorical question, I promise) Of course red exists. We interpret “red” as arising from the world and impose that interpretation onto it. There may not be a single collection of quarks that all sensory beings must recognize as red, or redness independent of the light that it gives off, but it exists nonetheless.

Let me quote from neurobiologist Semir Zeki to confirm what I mean.

Suppose one looks at a patch illuminated with long-wave light in isolation . . . . The patch produces a high lightness record for light of any waveband since the only comparison that the brain can undertake in these conditions is a comparison of the light reflected from the illuminated patch and the dark surround. The long-wave light thus produces a high lightness while the middle- and short-wave light, being absent, produce no lightness at all. The nervous system thus assigns the color red to the patch.

The last sentence is key. Claims that free will does not exist, to me at least, come across like saying that all sensations of color or meaning for existence do not exist. There may not be objective free will, a discoverable meaning to life, or red. But our sensations of color, prioritization of our actions, and feeling of freedom actually inform how we interpret the world and are features that we impose on it.

If you are feeling idealist enough, this can be applied to all reality. Everything we consider to be real is from the imposition of our sensations. Even if the entire world turned out to be one giant illusion, our conscious experience is the only thing that has to be real. To quote neuropsychologist Mark Solm’s updating of Descartes: “you experience, therefore you exist.” And it is that experience that is relevant for freedom.

If the physical world is unable to validate that experience, then that is just unfortunate for the physical world.

I hope this article has laid a firm enough foundation for freedom that we can continue building up contractualism from it. But if not, please let me know in the comments and I’ll be sure to address it. I’ll tolerate no unwarranted assumptions in my ethical theory.