The Problem of Free Will and its Solution

The problem of whether or not humans possess free will has been a major focus of philosophy for millennia. Various perspectives have existed throughout history, but two have been dominant: that free will defies causality, and, oppositely, that every thought one has is predetermined. In this post I hope to clarify the distinctions between different characterizations of free will and explain why this dichotomy is false, offering a solution to the problem once and for all.

A definition of free will is necessary for any discussion of it. There are various interpretations of free will with different specific definitions, but they all share the same foundation: free will is the ability of an actor to pursue a course of action in the face of alternatives. An action is then "free" if there is potential for one to act differently, and it is "non-free" if there is no such potential. If free will may be assumed true for the moment, choosing to study mathematics instead of physics is a free choice, while the (literal) knee-jerk reaction is not free. With this definition of free will, the three major categories of positions on the subject may be evaluated.

The first, most radical variant of free will is metaphysical free will or metaphysical libertarianism, which holds that the mind is capable of generating a new course of action with no reason or cause in reality. Next, compatibilist free will suggests the possibility of a free choice exists at a non-metaphysical level, meaning the ability to choose exists at a different level and determinism in the physical or metaphysical sense does not restrict the ability of a conscious agent to choose between existing alternatives. Finally, hard determinism holds that all events are determined by preexisting causes and that as a result, free will is impossible. While there are many nuanced positions in this range of categories, it is not necessary to understand every possible variant of free will to discuss and solve the question of whether or not we possess it.

Ayn Rand's characterization of free will is contained in the concept of volition, the psychological process humans possess allowing them to make decisions. Leonard Peikoff, Rand's favorite student and intellectual heir, discusses a man's free will as being "limited to his cognitive processes; he has the power to identify (and to conceive of rearranging) the elements of reality, but not the power to alter them. He has the power to use his cognitive faculty as its nature requires, but not the power to alter it" (Ayn Rand Lexicon, "Free Will"). He characterizes human consciousness as being capable of "self-initiated motion in the realm of cognition, which...other species do not possess" and compares this to the ability of other species to generate "self-initiated motion," but only in the physical realm (Ayn Rand Lexicon, "Free Will"). While non-human animals choose a physical course of action, entirely based on their deterministic internal calculations, humans possess the ability to organize their minds and reach conclusions in the face of alternatives. This paints a clear picture of free will as the result of the psychological nature of the mind, being able to generate self-initiated thought through reason. It is also clear that the nature of a person is such that he may think by choice, and thus causality at the metaphysical level is preserved—that is, Rand is opposed to metaphysical free will.

To justify Peikoff's characterization of human consciousness as being volitional, one must simply look inward for a moment: what are you doing right now while reading this article? Is your mind automatically agreeing or disagreeing, or are you capable of thinking and deciding your perspective? Are you capable of choosing between putting further thought into this paragraph and simply moving on, or do you experience your mind as traveling down a fixed track with no potential for self-direction? For individuals who use their minds less often or less intensely, it may be difficult to understand the nature of cognitive volition at first, but the image of a challenging examination in which one must carefully consider the material of a course may call to mind the experience which I am attempting to awaken in the mind of the reader. In consideration of one's own cognitive processes while reading this paragraph or in the case of an academic examination requiring careful thought, the answer to these questions is easily and readily found: we do possess volition over our cognitive faculties.

It is now clear that we possess "free will" in the sense that we are able to direct our thinking towards a conclusion in the face of choosing not to do so or to stop at a different conclusion. However, this may feel unsatisfying to those who are familiar with scientific determinism, which essentially states that every event is entirely determined by prior events. While scientific determinism is not necessarily true and may only represent simple physical systems, the large body of evidence supporting scientific determinism and the many poor interpretations of its meaning for the human mind makes it difficult for most to accept the existence of free will while scientific determinism is the leading doctrine. Thus, in order to clear all doubt of free will, it is necessary to show that free will and scientific determinism are compatible, disproving hard determinism and affirming the compatibilist model of free will.

It is likely to scientific determinism has metaphysical flaws and does cannot fully describe the scope of causality, but since it clearly holds for similar physical entities of which the human brain is likely composed, it is reasonable to assume its truth for a more powerful argument. Let us assume for the sake of argument that scientific determinism is true and all events, including all actions of a human being, are entirely determined by past events. It seems at first that this condition destroys the potential for free will. However, this is not the case, as revealed by the meaning of the term "actor" in relation to the human mind. When a person acts, she does so not as a single irreducible process, but as a collection of many small processes, including fully deterministic lower-level processes and volition, the process allowing her to observe and decide on them. This means that, unlike a car or an animal without cognitive volition, the person as a whole has the ability to run certain processes in her mind to analyze others and then choose whether or not to act on them. This internal functioning of the brain gives rise to a process which cannot be predicted from the outside, unlike the functioning of the car or of a non-volitional animal.

From this perceptive, recursion is the key to the freedom of the will. Since our brains perform higher-level recursive processes that observe those that are mere reactions to our physical environment or internal state, there is a lot of action that occurs entirely inside of the brain relative to these lower-level processes, unlike the car which simply acts and has no ability to evaluate or direct its action, or the animal whose internal processes are automatic at the lowest level and have no volitional component. Thus, it is the conceptual self-analysis of the human mind that gives rise to its internally-directed cognition and its freedom of choice as an integrated unit experienced as separate from its environment. No amount of external knowledge of a person at any given moment, then, would be sufficient to reduce his choice to a predetermined path, and another person would have to regard his choice as a whole as "free" or "undetermined."

At this point one may raise the objection that, if one were to know "the starting conditions of the universe" and all the laws of physics, every action of a person would be entirely predictable. This is equivalent under scientific determinism to stating that "if one were to enough to derive everything about the universe, one would know everything about the universe," which is tautology. Free will is not about any given physical process being capable of volitional action and thereby violating the laws of physics and being self-contradicting, but instead the ability of the human mind to perform internally controlled cognition and thus undertake a course of action which, while determined by particles at the lowest level, is completely determined (and thus chosen) by the internal functioning of the mind itself at the highest level and not by anything external of it at a given moment. Obviously the options possible for a person at a given mind are determined by her environment, but it is by her volitional thought ("she" as an integration of quadrillions of smaller processes into one conscious unit) that she chooses her action—freely.

We have now shown that one possesses the ability to choose through volitional consciousness the course of action one takes, whether or not scientific determinism is the case. The specific form of free will one possesses is either compatibilist or slightly stronger (I would assume the former), but nonetheless a human being as a cognitive unit possesses the potential for internally-directed cognition, which allows for choice that cannot be reduced to any physical phenomena outside of the individual, unlike other physical processes. The question of whether or not we possess free will can then be given a definitive answer: yes, we are free to choose as integrated actors due to the internally determined nature of our cognition, even in the case of scientific determinism.

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Thank you for reading my article on free will. This one was very difficult to write, as it deals with complex concepts not easily reducible to simple ideas. If you enjoyed this post, please consider sharing it with people you think would find it interesting, and stay tuned for more posts like this one in the near future. Finally, as always, leave a comment if you have any thoughts!