Four Arguments for the Nonexistence of Free Will

[A tip for those in a rush: If you want to cut straight to the point, skip the intro paragraphs and start at “What Do You Mean, Free?”]

“The only reason, for example, that you are not a rattlesnake is that your mother and father weren’t rattlesnakes. You deserve very little credit for being what you are—and remember, the people who come to you irritated, bigoted, unreasoning, deserve very little discredit for being what they are.” — Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People

Steeped in Intuition

Knowledge comes through many channels. It can be gained through deliberate study, absorbed through exposure to contexts and cultures, or emerge unbidden in flashes of insight from the subconscious. It can even develop over aeons of natural selection, shaping dispositions suited for survival in an unforgiving world. Yet despite these diverse ways of knowing, all knowledge shares a common root: a dependence on intuition.

Without intuition to guide us, we could not learn anything. Our worldviews—from our likes and dislikes to our impressions of truth and falsehood—are inseparable from intuition. Whatever our convictions, whether we’re liberal or conservative, Buddhist, Christian, or nonreligious, none of us can escape intuition’s persuasive gravity. Intuition leads us to our most informed knowledge and our most irrational beliefs. After all, unless we can intuit that something is true (or false) we cannot incorporate it into our worldviews.

Although it often misleads us, only by intuition’s light can we be led to more accurate ways of thinking. Our species has cobbled together an impressive wealth of knowledge, thanks to countless individuals who’ve found ingenious ways to push intuition into new areas. And by using clever tools to string intuition along in a step-wise fashion, we’ve passed on such knowledge to others. Learning, of any kind, is simply the process of bending intuition down new avenues of thought and feeling. Without intuition, learning would not be possible.

For example, consider what it takes to grasp Einstein’s general relativity. To fully understand the theory, our intuitions must be able to track advanced mathematics. But we cannot bring intuition to bear on complex maths until we’ve first trained it, sequentially, with simpler maths. And until we’ve gone through rote memorization of basic rules—to get an intuitive sense of addition, multiplication, etc.—we can do no maths at all. Regardless of subject matter or practice, all knowledge forms in this way, by bootstrapping intuition to ever-higher levels.

Since intuition props up both our best knowledge and most backwards beliefs, it can be hard to tell fact from fiction—which, of course, is a judgment ultimately left to intuition itself. The stronger our intuitions, the more difficult this challenge becomes. And intuitions are rarely stronger, or more rigid, than when they’re tied up with our sense of self. Because we have such strong feelings about who and what we are, we struggle to see ourselves, and our place in the cosmos, clearly. This has stunted the growth of knowledge throughout history, from Galileo’s house arrest in 1633 to the modern day fight over the teaching of evolution in public schools.

Of course, most well-informed people now accept that neither the universe nor the web of life exist solely for our benefit. We may be special, but we’re not that special. However, for all the progress we’ve made in shedding outdated intuitions, a particularly stubborn one persists: the belief that we exist as agents who can stand aside, soul-like, from the causal flow of events to act with unimpeded autonomy. If we ever hope to fully understand ourselves, it’s time to accept yet another cosmic demotion and shake this mistaken belief in free will.

Mistaken Agency

It makes evolutionary sense that we feel in control of our thoughts and actions; to feel in control is to feel important. If our ancestors had felt indifferent towards themselves, they likely wouldn’t have survived for long. Where conscious organisms intuit that they’re in control, they’re more likely to feel self-concern and a range of emotions that encourages survival (such as possessiveness, jealousy, and feelings of social responsibility). Evolutionary pressures have made us feel like free agents, blinding us to the fact that our thoughts, feelings, and behaviour—no matter how voluntary—are ultimately caused by forces outside of our control. Put bluntly, despite our instinctive feelings, our widespread belief in free will is wrong.

Free will is a mirage, which withstands neither introspection nor logical scrutiny. No tiny controller lives in our heads, orchestrating behaviour from behind the scenes. This strikes most people as overwhelmingly counterintuitive, but it’s possible to actually feel the nonexistence of free will: by paying sufficient attention to experience, the sense of being in control vanishes, as we learn to watch thoughts, emotions, and intentions arise and pass away of their own accord. (Applying enough attention to witness experience in this way generally requires some training in meditation; for most people, simply deciding to pay closer attention won’t work.)

However, we need not actually experience the absence of free will to understand that it doesn’t exist. We regularly hold knowledge in mind that is inaccessible—or even disputed—via sensory experience. For instance, each day the sun appears to rise and set. Although our senses show the sun moving around us, we know, logically, that sunrise and sunset are actually ‘earth-turn’. In rejecting the geocentric orbit of the sun, we are (rightly) rejecting the implications of our sense perceptions in favour of a more robust, heliocentric worldview. In a similar way, we can know that we do not have free will despite what our senses seem to imply.

In fact, we’ve already made progress towards a coherent self-view that’s stripped of free will. Psychologists are continually uncovering the natural forces that move our mental lives. As we understand in more detail why we act as we do, free will shall become an increasingly impotent way of explaining human behaviour. Like the God rendered superfluous by scientific understanding, free will loses its explanatory sway as we learn more about what makes us tick.  

Future scientific breakthroughs need not occur, though, for us to appreciate the non-existence of free will. Although our intuitions about free will run strong, they can be interrupted. By thinking about free will in novel ways, we can invert intuition until its non-existence seems plausible (or even, I hope, probable).

What do You Mean, Free?

For most people, free will seems so self-evident that it warrants no further investigation. (When I broach the subject, I’m commonly met with the following slap down. Obviously we’re free, otherwise how could I choose to do [action X] right . . . now!? This argument misses the fact that the desire to perform action X was itself triggered by me mentioning free will—and why action X, but not actions Y or Z?)

Surprisingly, if we set aside our preconceptions and try to mount a case for free will’s existence, we’re quickly left grasping. For starters, most people struggle to even offer a coherent definition of free will (and if they aren’t sure what the term means, how can they be so sure it exists?). When pressed, people tend to define free will as the fact that they could have thought or done otherwise, were the same situation to occur again. As we’ll see, this definition is untenable—and our failure to come up with a better one is symptomatic of our failure to understand just how misguided our belief in free will truly is.

Given enough thought, we can come to realize that the very idea of free will makes no sense (which would mean, of course, that it cannot exist). To understand why, let’s consider free will in a number of ways. We’ll start by looking at the common assumption that we could have acted differently, if only we could rewind time.

Rewinding Time, Unwinding Belief

Think of a time when you did something that you later regretted. Maybe you said something stupid, screwed up at work, or just wasted valuable free time. Whatever the scenario, your regret was probably accompanied by the desire to have acted differently. When regretful, we often wish that we could go back in time to fix or foreclose our blunders. And though we know that we cannot actually rewind time, we generally believe that if we could, we could then behave differently. This thought—I could have behaved differently—is emblematic of our confusion about free will.

It’s true that when similar scenarios occur, we can behave differently each time: in one instance we may be better rested, in another we might be less stressed, and in yet another we might have learned from past mistakes. But if identical scenarios occurred (as would be the case if we rewound time) then, by definition, we would behave exactly the same in each. If we rewound time, everything in the universe would be arranged as it previously was. From the motion of galaxies down to the spins on every quirk and quark, nothing would differ—including the state of our nervous systems and associated mental activity. This means that our thoughts, emotions, and inclinations—the entirety of our psycho-physiological inertia—would be indistinguishable from how they were in the situation we were hoping to alter. Given an identical scenario, how could we possibly behave differently?

At a coarse level, people have no problem admitting that previous states of the universe bring subsequent states into existence: objects fall when previously dropped, fires burn when previously ignited, and water evaporates when previously heated. And few nonreligious people would deny that humans are a natural part of the universe, subject to natural law: we are soulless animals composed of the same stuff that burns in stars and suffuses the cosmos. In such a world, there is no room for free will. Cause and effect bleed into each other and we can’t help but be swept along for the ride.[1] We’re firmly rooted in the present, unable to step aside and influence events from some primal position.

To believe in free will, one must either abandon their belief in causation or reject the idea that humans are natural processes constrained by natural law. For most people, neither option is attractive.

Trading Places

All of us have, at some point, imagined being someone else. Such imaginings can provide insight into the felt experience of others, or can simply be great fun. In fact, we are so adept at imagining others’ mental states that we rarely notice when we’re doing so.[2] For instance, during face-to-face interactions we constantly tweak our tone of voice, topic of conversation, body language, and facial expression based on how we imagine the other person thinks and feels. As social animals, this ability to ‘mind read’ is important. If we couldn’t place ourselves in others’ shoes we would be socially impaired, less able to reap the rewards of cooperation or to detect the dishonesty of swindlers.

However, this important ability leads us astray when thinking about free will. As we try to inhabit others’ minds we often imagine how, if we traded places, we would act differently. Essentially, we believe that if we led the life of another, we’d have the free will to do whatever’s best. But such thinking is nonsensical and leads to much fruitless prejudice. If any of us were another person, we’d behave exactly as they do! If you woke up one morning as somebody else—with their nervous system, memories, family life, social ties, work commitments, etc.—you could only do as they would. You would be that person and be none the wiser.

That said, obviously it’s impossible to trade places with someone else. Even if we swapped nervous systems, we’d still mostly be ourselves (albeit with a new body and serious transplant rejection concerns). Fantasizing about being another person may be valuable, but it is also preposterous. By appreciating just how preposterous, we can better understand the absurdity of belief in free will.

What do we mean when we think, “If I were them, I wouldn’t have done that”? We’re basically implying that if we could somehow transplant our essence into the mind of another, they’d be different yet still be the same. Imagine applying this line of thinking to, say, a tree and a rock, and its problems quickly become clear. “If that tree were that rock, then that rock wouldn’t be so mineral-dense.” Needless to say, this is nonsense. If a rock traded places with a tree, we’d still have one rock and one tree, and nothing whatsoever would be different.

Likewise, if two people swapped places—in the sense of you waking up as me and me as you—we’d still have the same two people, and everything in the universe would be exactly as it was. In other words, if you were another person you would not be free to behave differently. Where’s the free will there?

An Adaptive Delusion

We generally assume that free will arises from intelligence and awareness: the greater a person’s ability to reason and reflect, the more free will they seem to have. On its face it makes sense that functioning adults (with fully developed brains) would have more free will than children or people with developmental disabilities. But if free will is the product of intellect and awareness, we face some strange issues. Under this view monkeys have more free will than dogs, which have more than fish, which have more than insects, which have more than bacteria. However, would anyone argue that bacteria, insects, fish, or even dogs have free will at all? (I’m guessing that, given their close relation to humans, many people are comfortable ascribing some free will to monkeys.)

Thinking about the evolutionary origin of free will can help us see how we’ve misinterpreted the stunning complexity of our species—and the intelligence it gives rise to—as a kind of unrestrained freedom.

Through evolution, simple life can transform into complex organisms. We know beyond a doubt that our biological heritage stretches back billions of years to the simplest cells and protocells.  Throughout this time rudimentary organisms gradually accumulated variations, becoming successively more complex. This conservation of variation across generations produced every biological feature that has ever existed, from blood to bones to brains. Because human behaviour—and the supposed free will it entails—is ultimately rooted in biology, free will must, if it exists, also have arisen through evolution.

It’s easy enough to understand how simplicity can give rise to complexity. What’s harder to fathom is how free will could have arisen from non-free precursors. How could an organism have evolved the ability to act independently of past conditions and present context, when the evolution of such an ability depends upon those very conditions and contexts? And even if it were possible to evolve such an ability, it would almost certainly be maladaptive: we can only survive in relation to our environment, so wouldn’t an ability to act wholly independently of context make us less likely to survive (and thus less likely to pass on such a trait)?[3]

Human brains and minds are complex beyond imagining, allowing us to adapt and thrive in wide-ranging circumstances. But just because we’re versatile does not mean we’re free. We are natural phenomena so awed by our own complexity that we suppose ourselves exempt from natural law. However, just as birds did not evolve flight by banishing gravity, so humans did not evolve our labile natures by casting off all constraints. In fact, just the opposite is true: whatever freedom we have is a consequence of the constraints that govern us, not a liberation from them.

I am free to type these words—and you are free to read them—because evolution “learned” how to coax electromagnetism, biochemistry, neurology, and more into an emergent phenomenon which feels like… this. But even though we don’t control these underlying processes (simply counting one’s neurons would be a heroic feat, but free will implies that we can go further and finely manage them), it would be a mistake to think that they hold us in bondage. For it is only thanks to the workings of these natural, impersonal systems that we are able to feel love, awe, beauty, and wonder—which liberate us from life’s true sources of bondage, like despair, hatred, apathy, and envy.

In fact, most people get so defensive when their freedom is called into question that they overlook the simple truth that, on the issue of how to lead a meaningful life, free will is a red herring. We were raised with the belief that unconstrained freedom is a prerequisite to flourishing, a necessary ingredient in our quest to rise above circumstance, seize the reins of fate, and steer ourselves toward fully realized lives. But freedom from constraints is not a prerequisite of flourishing. How could it be? We’ve never needed freedom from constraints to be happy—what we’ve needed is freedom from misery, and this can be realized whether free will exists or not. If, upon reflection, you still think that free will’s absence somehow detracts from the goodness of life, consider the following.

One day a religious man is walking in a garden, luxuriating in the brilliance of the flowers around him when, unexpectedly, he suffers an abrupt loss of faith. His newfound atheism comes with an oppressive sense of nihilism: If there is no God, he wonders, well, what’s the point? He casts his gaze back to the flowers which, only moments before, were objects of near-perfect beauty, but they now seem drained of all splendour. If God doesn’t exist, thinks the man, and God was responsible for the beauty in the world, I now understand that beauty cannot exist. The man leaves the garden, retreats into his nihilism, and never finds anything beautiful again so long as he lives.

What’s wrong with this story? The man was so attached to the idea that God created beauty that he couldn’t comprehend the existence of beauty without God. In so doing, he overlooked the genuine source of the world’s beauty, which never depended on God in the first place.

If you feel depressed at the thought that free will might not exist, you should ask yourself whether you’re making a similar mistake to the man in the garden. Do you think that free will is what gives rise to life’s meaning, and cannot conceive of a meaningful life in its absence? What if, just as the beauty of a flower has nothing to do with God (and everything to do with purely natural systems), the meaning of your life has nothing to do with free will (and everything to do with the promotion of joy, kindness, and friendship—themselves the expressions of purely natural systems, which have nothing whatsoever to do with free will)?

How often, when genuinely happy, do you credit such feelings to free will? Almost never, I’d guess.

Reflecting on Impulse

I suspect that the above arguments may be intriguing, yet are too far removed from personal experience to really get the point across. Therefore, let’s look at our own experience to see how we can spot free will’s absence first-hand.

To start, consider the force that drives so much of what we think, say, and do: desire. Most people claim that free will exists because they are free to do as they desire, but they ignore the fact that nobody chooses their desires. Our likes and dislikes—which thoroughly inform our behaviour—are determined by forces beyond our control. None of us truly choose our favourite movies, foods, friends, or activities; rather, these things are chosen by our likes and dislikes. (If you doubt this, I invite you to choose to enjoy every movie you watch from now on. If you really can choose what to like, it should be a straightforward project to ensure you never waste time or money on a bad movie again.) If free will exists, why do our desires so often lead to poor choices with regrettable consequences, even when we’re fully aware that regret is a likely outcome?

And what about the situations in which we’re mostly unaware of what’s happening?

To believe in free will is to believe that we are the conscious directors of thought and behaviour, but for most of our waking lives we don’t even notice what we’re doing. We go through life lost in thought, whether driving, walking, exercising, eating, showering, or even talking. In fact, we’re so thoroughly lost in thought that few of us even notice our lack of awareness. If free will existed, wouldn’t we need to take a more active role in our lives? Shouldn’t we be consciously tending to action, and deliberately creating the impulses that lead to those actions? And if we do consciously craft our behaviour, why aren’t we frequently paralyzed under a mountain of possibilities, meticulously scanning through countless options before selecting each impulse. How can we call ourselves free when we barely pay attention to behaviour and rarely notice the impulses that move us?

Some would allege that they do choose their impulses, and their thoughts and actions too. Even if this were true, it does not save free will. A short experiment shows why:

Take a moment to think of something. It can be any size, shape, or category that you please. Once you’ve thought of it, read on.

Now, in thinking of this something, you likely felt free to choose anything. But did you think of a toenail clipping? Likely not. And if you didn’t think of a toenail clipping, were you really free in that moment to choose to think of one? Or was this thought foreclosed to you by the simple fact of its not arising? In any moment, we’re only free to think whatever we actually happen to think (or to choose whatever we happen to choose). Because there are an infinite number of things that never occur to us in any moment, we’re never truly free to think anything at a given time. In light of this, what could free will possibly mean?

Seeing Clearly

Most people in the modern age pay lip service to the fact that human beings are, at base, expressions of the universe, wholly enmeshed in the natural world. As the scientific mystic is so fond of saying, “We are stardust.” But when it comes to thinking about our minds, we tend to view them as something other, lying just beyond nature’s purview. Free will embodies this confusion: it is the modern incarnation of immaterial souls, which can affect the world without being affected by it.

Free will is the great myth of modern secularism, and it’s time to lay it to rest, retiring it to the pantheon of unscientific beliefs—like a personal God, creationism, and the soul—that have historically cleaved us from reality. We are stardust, in both body and brain. As such, we cannot step out of the flow of causation any more than a massive star could choose not to go supernova in its dying days. There is no place to stand outside of nature’s influence, because we are nature—down to our thoughts, emotions, and intentions.

To believe in free will, one must believe that we are not integrated processes in the seamless whole of the universe. Free will erects a cognitive wall between humans and nature, meaning that no matter how often we run barefoot, eat vegan, or say namaste, we’ll still think of ourselves as separate, isolated beings. To me, this is an alienating prospect, which makes the project of questioning free will worthwhile. But, ultimately, whether we believe in free will or not is outside of our control.

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[1]I like to think that Bill Hicks understood this, although it’s possible he was simply relating wisdom gained from his yearly mushroom retreats. (Some might wonder why his invocation of choice doesn’t presuppose free will. These people should choose to notice how he’s hoping to trigger a change in their mindset by appealing to reason, emotion, humour, and feelingsof agency—and if he succeeds, is this a free choice on the part of his audience or simply cause (Bill Hicks) flowing into effect (greater love)?)

[2]Autistic people are obviously less adept at this. Regardless, many of them still try—they just tend to be less accurate.

[3]People might argue that felt experience seems unlikely to have arisen gradually either, yet it obviously evolved somehow. However, unlike free will, nothing we know about felt experience contradicts knowledge about physical reality and causation. (We know very little about felt experience.)