Closer to Truth: Free Will: Part One.

There is an ongoing PBS TV series, several books and also a website called “Closer To Truth”. The Big Questions surround a trilogy of broad topics – Cosmos; Consciousness; Meaning. So here are a few of my thoughts and comments on the general topic covering the subject dealing with the concept of free will.

What is Free Will?

Free will would appear to be the ability for a living organism, not just of necessity a human, to decide between the various options open to it when presented with an either/or intersection. However there is not such thing as infinite free will. The choices available aren't endless. One option not available to you on your commute to work is to flap your arms and fly. A bird on the other hand doesn't have the choice of driving a car when heading south for the winter. The laws, principles and relationships of both the physical and biological sciences restrict your free will options. Your innate abilities restrict your free will. Your free will option says you can hit a home run out of Yankee Stadium. The opposing pitcher says otherwise. Your society and your culture also places restrictions on your free will. You just can not do whatever you damn well please. Okay, so at best you have only a quasi free will, but as long as you have two achievable this or that options you can argue that you have the sort of free will that's defined as an ability to decide between those this or that options. Whether or not that is an illusion might not be overly relevant as long as you truly believe you actually have free will. If you really believe that your choice of dinner tonight was 100% your own decision, then you're a happy camper, ignorance is bliss and let no one rain on your free will parade.

Do Humans have Free Will 1?

Humans may have free will, but there are many, many aspects to your existence in which you had no say-so whatsoever, aspects in which you would have sold your soul to the devil for the chance to have had some free will choice in the matter. I mean you had no free will about being conceived and born at all. You had no choice, no free will options as to who your parents were and what your ancestors were. You had no free will options about your family - brothers and sisters - and where you stood age-wise with respect to them. You had no choice about your sex, your IQ, or about your race or about any other aspect of your genetics which might have included some sort of deformity or being prone to certain diseases. You had no option about the historical era you were hatched into, or the society, culture or nationality. You probably had little free will, if any, about what religion (if any) you were brought up in. In some cultures in some eras you probably had no free will about who you were to marry or your status or caste in the community. In short, for all the talk about free will, there are many, many facets of your life that you had absolutely no free will control over. That's a bummer!

Do Humans have Free Will 2?

Here's another everyday common example of your lack of free will. How many of you have experienced hearing some stupid advertising jingle or insipid pop song that just keeps on keeping on rambling through the recesses of your mind? Have you ever been able to free will it away? Probably not. You usually need to be externally distracted by something else which causes the irritation to retreat into the far background (only to arise again at a later date).

Do Humans have Free Will 3?

Prior to your conception you had no free will on the obvious grounds that you did not yet exist. Between conception and your birth, and for some days, weeks and months thereafter, you had no free will. You had all of the free will that your stomach has which is bugger-all. If that's the case, and it is had to argue otherwise, what makes you believe you have subsequently acquired by some either physical or nebulous process the concept we call free will? Is acquiring free will somehow akin to acquiring the traits you acquired when you reached puberty? If so, what's the biochemical process? Further, the acquisition of free will would have to be a continuum. It's not likely to be the case that one day you had zero free will and the next day a fully-formed ability to exercise free will in all of its diverse forms.

Philosophy of Free Will

According to legend, God gave us free will. Let’s say for argument’s sake that there’s an afterlife and that we go to Heaven. Do you have free will in Heaven? That is, could you, of your own free will, commit a sin in Heaven? How's that for some heavy philosophy?

Mysteries of Free Will 1

The mystery of free will is how free will can manipulate electrons and atoms and molecules that are part and parcel as being physical substances of the brain (hereafter called brain chemistry) that collectively construct brain structures, into seemingly separate and apart movements of the body that otherwise wouldn't of happened. Free will would seem to use existing brain chemistry to initiate an action in one place that causes reactions in another place. Any free will decision-making must involve some sort of action if concepts are to be turned into reality.

The first mystery is the conscious thought that you think that indicates you might want to do something, say, "should I raise my right arm". Where did that first conscious thought about the possibility of raising your arm come from? Did it appear as if by magic fully formed out of the ether? Probably not. You had to have subconsciously formed the thought (a thought which is a physical thing requiring matter and energy) out of your reservoir of brain chemicals before you can even consciously think the thought. Quite why your subconscious should have come up with such an idea in the first place is yet another puzzlement.

Anyway, the next step is to take the concept that you might want to raise your right arm and then apply an apparent free will decision making exercise into an either/or choice. That involves another thought - "will I, won't I" - which again doesn't manifest itself out of thin air. That "will I, won't I" is being pondered by the subconscious while your conscious mind is dealing with the idea that you might want to perform the arm-raising action in the first place. There's lastly a third thought which is either "I will" or "I won't". That action then translates into a reaction.

The implication is that before you can think any fully-formed thought you have to first form the thought at a deeper unconscious level. You can't consciously think the thought before you subconsciously first think the thought. If your subconscious came up with the idea first before being elevated into the consciousness arena, then you have no free will.

Just to re-enforce the role of the subconscious, most of the time when you move your arms you are not aware of it and thus are not making conscious free will choices. Watch someone in a conversation, even people being interviewed here on "Closer to Truth" and they are usually gesturing and flapping their arms around (for no apparent reason and to no apparent purpose). They are not making each and every gesture deliberately in a fully self-aware and in a free will mode. Nearly every movement you make is not anything that can be related to free will. Say, as a common event, you get up out of your chair and walk across the room. Did you consciously decide which foot to step off on? I think not. Another common saying is how people often open up and engage their mouths before they engage their brain or their mind.

And isn't it amazing how brain chemistry translates all those thoughts within your mind into your native language, or more than one language if you are bilingual. How does brain chemistry become language inside your head? That translation has no free will connection.

Okay, some questions arising: How does your mind take brain chemistry and turn chemistry into thoughts (and in your native language no less)? How do those thoughts end up converting the original set of brain chemistry conditions into the chemistry that actually raises your right arm? It's an entirely physical process from one to the other - brain chemistry - thought - action - but the mystery is how your mind has the ability to somehow drag up and arrange and rearrange those physical bits that will comprise the subconscious thoughts that you must have first constructed before you actually have those thoughts consciously. This would seem to be a case of mind over matter, a psychic phenomenon rather discredited.

Anyway, the bottom line is that it is the subconscious that rules the roost, another case in point being the content of your dreams, and that doesn't require free will.

Mysteries of Free Will 2

If there is such a thing as free will, why is there such an obesity epidemic? You’d think one of the last things people would want to look like is blubber personified. Free will there might be, but will power is lacking! But what do I know? Maybe roly-poly is the latest in body fashion statements! Still, IMHO obesity is a mystery if people really have free will and control over their own impulses.

Physics of Free Will 1

Free will seems to be a variation on the theme of mind over matter and we know how badly the physical evidence for that is. Mind over matter is something that has yet to be established as part of the physical realm that's been peer-reviewed and adopted by the sciences. If there really were a physics of free will, then one might assume that free will would be exhibited when it comes to the things that matter most, like making decisions that gives rise to avoiding or negating pain, disease, ageing and death. If there was free will that operated via some physical mechanism(s) then no one need suffer from migraines, the common cold or flu, cancer and heart disease, getting grey hair or wrinkles, and of course kicking the bucket. Were it not for accidents caused by external happenings (including getting pregnant), free will could just about put the medical profession and pharmaceutical companies out of business, but probably not undertakers since eventually an accident would happen that would be fatal.

Physics of Free Will 2

It seems strange that you have free will to say raise your right arm and you can in fact raise your right arm after you decide to; you have free will over some other bodily functions and those functions respond in kind after you so make the relevant free will decision (say body building or achieving new and improved mental skills), yet your free will over your own body with respect to pain, disease, ageing and death absolutely fails. This is not a question of "you may not succeed” rather that you WILL not succeed. You also have no free will control over say your hair growth, not just some of the time but all of the time. Either you have free will over your own body or you don't. It appears you don't, at least when it comes down to what's really fundamental. So why free will over some things and not over other things? In conclusion, IMHO, there's something screwy somewhere.

Physics of Free Will 3

Connection between A and B is not control of A over B (or B over A), but you have to have the connection before you have the control, and the brain-body connection is well established. That the brain rules the body's roost is not in dispute. In fact the brain is the one organ that cannot be replaced. In theory, the brain could exist without the body (as in the brain-in-the-vat scenario or the mind could be downloaded into a machine), but the body cannot be a viable entity without the brain. So, what does that tell you about the brain-body connection and what organ is in control? Did I hear you say the brain?

Body parts can be replaced. You can have prosthetic limbs and bionic eyes and ears. You can have an artificial heart and exist in a iron lung. Your kidney functions can be replaced by a machine. You can wear a wig! You can be fed via a tube. You can be fitted with dentures. There's even artificial skin available for serious burn victims. But you can't replace the brain or at least the contents of the brain. The buck stops with the brain. Your brain is the most fundamental structure you have. No brain; no you. No big toe? You are still you.