Chapter 7:
The Ineffability of Free Will
Introduction
In Part I we saw that without free will there could be no moral responsibility, meaning and purpose. We also saw that if we limit free will only to processes known to science, then there is no inherently free will and all our seeming free willed decisions are actually PDR.
As discussed there, one could still claim that by definition that if one felt free, one was free, and if one felt that one had moral responsibility for one's action then one did and if one intuited that life had meaning, it did. However, we concluded there that the type of moral responsibility we (the author, and many other people) intuit is not compatible with this, nor is the sense of meaning or freedom we intuit.
We found that the type of meaning we felt was that which would exist if there was an outsider perspective from which life indeed had meaning, that the type of moral responsibility and freedom we intuit is that which would exist if we were responsible and free from this outsider perspective - indeed even from the perspective of a creator who had instituted the laws of nature themselves.
From the outsider perspective that we intuit the existence of a moral being - a being with intelligence, a moral intuition and an inherently free will - is crucial to the existence of the universe: without free will there would be no moral reponsibility from the outsider perspective, no meaning to human activity, and no purpose to the creation and continued existence of that universe.
If the assumption is made that indeed there is a true inherently free will, then this is a statement of great relevance to physics, not only to moral philosophy. That is, the implication is that there are interactions in the universe that are not PDR even though according to known science all physical interactions are PDR at their most fundamental level.
Thus the existence of free will has ramifications not only for questions of meaning and purpose, but for scientific issues as well - in particular as we shall see it has important implications for quantum physics and cosmology (Part IV).
In this section (Part III) we will demonstrate some of the dfficlties involved in defining an inherently free will. After doing so we will determine the general category of the interaction underlying the operation of an inherently free will, and will find it to be a form of acausality.
We will also see that various aspects of the creation and Eden accounts, and of Biblical philosophy, mesh well with this elucidation of the basic nature of free willed interaction, and also with the above-mentioned implications for science.
We will then investigate in the next section what implications the existence of such an acausal interaction holds for physics and for the universe as a whole.
Undefineable Concepts in Science
One of the difficulties with free will involves the difficulty involved in a definition of what it actually involves. However, some of the most familiar of concepts are similarly difficult or impossible to define, but are nevertheless intuitively understood, and therefore we will not be deterred by these difficulties of definition when approaching the concept of free will.
An example of a famliar yet unprovable concept is provided in the following.
The Origin of the Universe and Unprovability
Not even all "physical events" can be dealt with by science. Since the scientific method requires an analysis of regularities, and an extrapolation from large amounts of similar events, science cannot deal with one-time unique phenomena - as for example the origin of the universe.
Indeed, even the concept 'the universe' is itself undefined. All entities which exist can be said to exist by virtue of the fact that there are other entities which are not it. One can in theory point to an entity, or set up an experiment which will detect that entity. However, the universe as a whole includes all measurement apparatus, and all observers as well. Therefore there is no way to point to the universe (from outside it), or to detect it using some measuring device, since all are part of it.
For example, if one speaks of the development of the universe as a whole over time, then since time is part of the universe, this is somewhat paradoxical. Furthermore, even if there were discovered a law that governs the development of the universe as a whole, it is not clear what it is that would regulates which laws operate, and whether or not they shold change or remain the same - the laws of nature are part of the universe, and cannot govern themselves.
Therefore, in a basic sense, 'the universe' is not defined scientifically, and therefore one cannot have a truly scientific theory of 'the universe'. Nevertheless, speculations regarding the universe a s a whole have given rise to theories which gave correct predictions, verified by measurement. Even where the roed is tricky regarding definitions, sometimes progress can be achieved nevertheless. We shall see that the same is true regarding the concept of free will.
The Complexity of the Concept of Free Will
There are some basic arguments which can be presented to the effect that free will is perhaps impossible to define, and which highlight the inherent difficult of the very concept of free will.
The Unprovability of Free Will: The Operational Argument
Neither determinism, nor randomness, nor free will can be proven.
If one can consistently predict the result of a process using a certain formula, we feel the event proceded in accordance with the formula - though even then one cannot prove that it will always be so, or that the event is 'forced' to do so even when it does follow the formula. For example, one cannot disprove the contention that the event decided freely to occur as it did, and for whatever reason it always decides the same way, so that it occurs always in accordance with a set formula (perhaps it chooses to follow that formula).
Just as one cannot prove that a process is determined, one can similarly not prove that an event is free or random.
Whatever event occurs in the universe, no matter how carefully it is monitered by the most delicate instruments, after the event occurs there is no way in which one could conceivably prove that the event could have happened differently than it actually did.
As P. W. Bridgman, the proponent of the philosophy of operationalism, wrote:
"I defy you to set up a single objective criterion by which you can prove after you have made the [choice]...that you might have made [a different choice]."
Since there is no way that one can prove that one could have chosen differently than one actually did, no indisputable proof of free will could ever be offered, and so according to the philosophical approach of operationalism there is no scientific meaning to the statement that humans possess a free will.
Even if one makes many measurements of the same type of event and finds that each time it occurs differently, nevertheless there is no way to prove about an individual event that it 'could have' happened otherwise than it actually did.
If no predictions are correct, or if it is shown that the results form a random pattern, then one still cannot say that any individual event 'could have occured ' differently than it did. Each event may well have only one way of occuring, the next time it occurs there is also only one way it could occur, and so on, and altogether the pattern is random. That is, all the events are determined, and they are correlated in such a way as to guarantee a random distribution.
The same for an allegedly freely willed decision. Even if the brain making the decision is carefully monitored, and it is found that there is no scientific explanation for the process, one cannot prove that it is free will - instead it may well be some as-yet-unknown phenomenon other than free will, which determines the result. And, there is no way in which one could conceivably prove after the fact that the decision could have been made differently than it was actually made.
The assumption of free will is therefore unprovable, and indeed is 'less provable' than that of determinism or randomness. A prediction of events which is always correct, whether it is about individual events or about the patterns that form in the aggregate, is quite convincing to us, and we can accept it as true even though not truly proven that events happen that way and could not have been otherwise, so that although unprovable, determinism can be intuitively convincing.
However, the case for free will is less convincing. Even if it is shown that no predictive statement can be made at all beforehand, then rather than concluding that free will is involved, one is only convinced that one does not know the mechanism involved - this lack of predictive ability need be nothing more than a proof of the unpredictability of the phenomenon, it need not be a proof that it is a free will process.
Although it may be intuitively true to us that we have a free will while other events are determined or random, none of this can be proven, and when we attempt to construct a picture of reality in which these are accepted as fact, we arrive at paradox. Our intuition that we possess a free will can be accepted as true, yet we cannot expect that reality should be such that this unprovably true statement should be consistent with all the provably true statements about reality.
This 'inherent unprovability' of free will illustrates one of the inherent difficiulties in rigorously defining 'true (inherent) free will'.
The Metaphysical Many-Universes Argument
When we say that we have true inherent free will, we mean that if we are faced with a moral dilemma, and must make a choice, there is nothing which determines our choice.
The question can be asked: If faced with the exact same dilemma under the same conditions exactly, would one again make the same choice? If time were rolled back, and we had no memory of the rolled-back time, would we again choose exactly as we did in the past?
Answering that we would always choose the same under the same circumstances seems to carry the implication that it is the circumstance which determines our response, rather than the operation of our free will. One would imagine that if we were placed in the same situation other times, we might choose differently.
To make more clear the problem this raises for free will, imagine that a creator creates an infinite amount of identical universes, so that every moral dilemma we have ever faced has been faced by an infinite amount of duplicates of us in these infinite universes.
If we do not have free will, and the process of choice-making in the brain is a determined one, then it would be expected that all our duplicates will act and choose exactly as we do.
If we do not have free will, but instead the choices we make are based on PDR interactions, then one would expect that in the otherwise identical universes, as an expression of the inherent randomness of the process underlying the choices, all possible choices will be represented. If these universes are only imagined in God's Mind, and then one is chosen at random and created from its mental picture, this universe will seem like one in which free will operates, but in actuality the choices are based on randomness.
Now consider an alternate scenario: all the duplicates in all the universes have a true inherent free will. In this scenario as well, one would expect that the choices in the various universes will not be identical. Indeed, if the individuals are truly free to make any decision, one could expect here as well that in an infinite range of universes, all possible choices will be represented.
Now choose one universe at random, and look at the choice made there. To the duplicate individual, the choice was truly freely willed. However to an outside observer who can see all the infinite number of universes, this scenario seems identical to the one with an infinite number of random-choice universes. To this observer, the free willed choice of the inhabitant of of one of the duplicate universes chosen at random, is simply one of the possible choices, chosen at random from among all the possible choices. Although free willed choice carries significance due to its unqueness, its non-determined or random charachter, when it is allowed to express itself to the fullest in an infinite collection of universes, the choices seem to lose their uniquness and therefore their significance.
Is there any significance to free willed action in any one universe, or in the whole, if all free willed choices are made in the totality of universes?
One could also imagine now that all the universes are destroyed except for one, chosen at random. Are the choices made in that universe free? Are the choices significant to the creator - after all, if the universe is chosen at random from among the infinite group of universes, then the choices are essentially chosen at random from among all the possible choices? From the creator's perspective, can there be meaning and purpose to such a universe?
We stated previously that if God creates a free willed universe, it is capable of possessing meaning and purpose. Imagine that after the universe comes to its end, another is created, and then over and over an infinite amont of times. Eventually every possible universe will have existed, and every possible individual will have existed and will have made every possible free willed decision. In what way is this collection of universes meaningful? And if only one is created, what makes it meaningful?
This argument illustrates the dependence of the value of free will on other issues, and is an exmple of the diffculties faced when attempting to get a handle on the nture of free will.
The Argument from Intuition
It is difficult if not impossible to understand how an event can be neither determined nor random. Especially a choice which is to be a rational and moral one would seem to necessarily involve careful reasoning, and therefore a determined chain of brain events.
If a free willed choice is caused by anything, then it is not free, whereas if it is not caused by prior thoughts and events then it is random and not reasoned. This is the crux of the problem - freedom of the will is actually counterintuitive.
Certainly, as a non-causal phenomenon, one could not necessarily expect that it would be modelable, mathematically describable. Therefore, no physical theory can ever be expected to encompass or describe free will. Indeed there may even be phenomena less radically nonmodelable than free will which will also never be modelable - such as a non-computable physical process - let alone free will which is inherently acausal.
As a result, there will possibly always exist some non-meshing of scientific concepts - concepts encompassable by scientific description - and that of free will, which science itself may eventually recognize yet consider out of its purview.
The Mind Body Problem
By definition, that which can be affected by the physical is itself physical. If the mind knows what the brain senses, what it feels, then it is necessarily physical itself. However, mind is by definition not physical. This paradox forms the crux of the mind-body problem.
The existence of non-physical phenomena in themselves present no paradox. One can imagine a universe which contains consciousness and physicality, and where there exists a paralellism between the two so that although there is no connection between the two, they are nevertheless correlated. This indeed was Leibnitz's solution.
However, if it is assumed that there is some interaction between the two realms, then the paradox arises. This interaction comes in two basic forms.
One form is the interaction of consciousness with the physical universe via the mechanism of free will. As the active ingredient of consciousness, it is free will which crosses the barrier between physical and non-physical, allowing the non-physical consciousness to affect the physical universe in a manner causing it to develop along a path which it would not have followed had it been affected only by the causes present in the physical universe by itself.
The other form of interaction is the emergence of consciousness where none was before, as a result of physical conditions - for example the evolution of a conscious being where none existed previously, or the development of a conscious being from non-conscious material, specifically a sperm and an egg.
Evolution and Consciousness
If all entities including atoms are conscious, then the consciousness associated with human brains is simply the combined effect of all the component consciousneses. In such a case, the consciousness in human brains is merely of greater degree than that in rocks or animal brains, and this is due to the greater complexity of the human brain. Similarly so if consciousness is inherent in the universe and was infused into the human when the human brain achieved the requisite level of complexity.
Conscious people originate in non-conscious sperm and eggs - the question arises as to at which point in the development of humans their consciousness emerges, and as to what physical cause this might have had.
The eminent Nobel prize-winning physiologist Sir John Eccles states that no purely materialist theory will be able to account for consciousness. In his words the theory of evolution is 'defective' in that it ignores the phenomenon of consciousness. Furthermore Eccles states that no purely materialist theory will be able to account for consciousness: "It is of the greatest importance to science that there be from time to time a critical examination of established theories, particularly when they tend to harden into dogmas. The amazing success of the theory of evolution has protected it from significant critical evaluation in recent times. However it fails in a most important respect. It cannot account for each one of us as unique self-conscious beings."
If conscious beings behave in a way that is different than non-conscious beings, this means that consciousness is not simply the passive registering of impressions, but that intentions which would not arise in a non-conscious brain can originate in a conscious brain and can be acted upon.
This however would mean that given the same physical conditions and information the physical output - such as action and behavior - is different for a conscious and a non-conscious brain.
If consciousness is not a physical entity, then a conscious and non-conscious brain can be physically identical. If this is the case, then all the external and internal physical elements leading up to and involved in a decision by a conscious and non-conscious brain are identical, yet nevertheless the resulting decision of the brain and action of the body is different. This is however not in line with physical theory regarding causality, according to which identical causes give rise to identical effects.
Indeed, as soon as one postulates that a non-physical entity can interact with physical entities, one arrives at conclusions at variance with physical theory, and with ordinary intuition.
AR: MESH with the above
Evolution and Consciousness: The Physical Efficacy of Consciousness: If it is assumed that consciousness is a property of complex systems such as the human brain, and that such complex entities evolved much after the initial state of the universe, then consciousness was not present in the universe at its origin, or even near its origin. Therefore it follows that consciousness evolved from what was not conscious.
However, even if consciousness is a physical property which could perhaps have emerged as the result of a random mutation in an evolved being, it would only become a property of an entire race if it gave its possessor a selective evolutionary advantage. To do so however, it must be able to affect physical events. Therefore, if it is assumed that all humans are conscious, the very existence of consciousness in humans indicates that it must be able to affect the brain, to be a factor in the decision-making processes of the brain. This however is highly problematical, and is part of what is called in philosophy 'the mind-body problem' (or 'the psycho-physical problem' etc.).
if consciousness does interact with the physical universe in a way that provides conscious beings with an evolutionary advantage, ; somehow a conscious brain, using the same information, memory and so on that is available to a physically equivalent non-conscious brain, can arrive at a more survivally-correct decision, and act on it. This however would mean that given the same physical conditions, information and so on, the physical output - action, behavior and so on - is different for a conscious and a non-conscious brain.
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However, if consciousness emerged into existence when brains reached a certain level of complexity, then consciousness must have evolved. But if consciousness is a qualitative phenomenon it cannot evolve unless it can interact with the physical universe.
Furthermore, the problem reperesented by the supposition that consciousness evolved is present as well in the supposition that conscious people originate in sperm and eggs which are non-conscious.
The Significance of Free Will
We have seen various aspects of the complexity of the issue of defining an inherently free will, and doing so within the parameters of science mathematics and logic. Of course the intuition we have of free will can attributed to illusion, and such has been done by some speculations of evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology. Nevertheless our intuition that we are free willed is in many of us stronger than the belief that all must must be in consonance with present day scientific understanding, and therefore for most people the intuition that free will exists is too strong to ignore or to accept theories which explain it away. We simply believe more strongly in our free will than we do in evolutionary psychology, even if the latter can venture explanations for this too.
Free Will as the Active Ingredient of Consciousness
The significance of an inherently free will goes beyond the issue of moral responsibility. Without an inherently free will, humans are essentially conscious robots.
Can a consciousness interact with the physical universe via a brain-decision in a way which different than the interaction by a non-conscious brain? Would there be any physically measurable difference between a universe of conscious robots having an illusion of free will and a universe of conscious robots with true inherently free will?
If there is a measurable difference between the two, it must be that the difference is due to an interaction which violates causality, and only such an interaction can underlie what we usually mean by a 'free willed' decision: the decision is 'free' only if it does not depend on the input and physical situation as would a process governed by causality, but instead is 'free' of the constraints of causality.
Free will is the way in which consciousness affects the physical universe, acting in an intelligent manner which is independent of causality even though it is non-random.
Without some form of free-will type interaction, when there is nothing in the mind-state which is not a correlate of the brain state, or even if there is but there is no way for it to affect the brain, or the rest of the physical universe, then the mind is irrelevant to physics, to the physical universe. If there can be a mind-state which is not a correlate of the brain state, then this mind state is acausal, and therefore it is what we term 'free-willed type'. Further, if there is a way for this mental state to affect the brain, or the rest of the physical universe, then the mind causes an event in the brain which has no causal roots in the physical universe - it is self-caused from the perspective of the physical universe, a 'free-willed type interaction', and is very relevant to physics, and to the physical universe.
Without free-willed type interactions, no matter what complex and deep thoughts and emotions may arise in consciousness, the only effects of a person on the universe are due to the body, including the brain state - the mind state is essentially irrelevant to the course of events, and there is no effect of consciousness on the physical universe.
We saw previously that to ascribe the type of moral responsibility to human activity which most of us intuit, there must be an inherently free will, which we can see now must be based on non-causal processes. Similarly for the existence of meaning and purpose in the sense we defined them.
We can also now see that furthermore any philosophy which considers humans as more than material, as more than conscious robots, and which considers humans as entities which can affect the physical universe with the non-material aspect must incorporate non-causality in its world view.
The Nature of Free Will
Free Will and Self-Causation
When one makes a free-willed decision, there are many elements of reasoning backing up this decision - one would always be able to provide reasons why one chose that particular choice, so that it would seem that any 'free' choice, in order to be goal-oriented and meaningful, must be derived from a chain of reasoning. However, if this were the case, 'free' decisions are derived from a deterministic chain of cause-effect ( and are not actually free). Thus, in order for free will to be conceptualized in a non-self-contradictory manner, the concept of a chain of cause and effect - the concept of causality - would possibly have to be modified.
Free will can exist only if it is founded on processes which are neither random nor determined. If the processes underlying an allegedly free willed decision are actually random, then the result of these processes, the randomly-arrived-at decision, cannot be said to be the expression of a will, since it is random; if the underlying processes are instead determined ones, then the resulting decision is determined, and therefore by definition is not a free one.
We also saw that incomputability is a necessary but insufficient condition for free will. That is, all free willed processes are incomputable, but not all incomputable processes are free willed. Even if the free willed decisions are inherently unpredictable, for example based on non-computable processes, if these processes are at their fundamental level deterministic/random then the decisions they give rise to may be non-predictable but neither are they free. Therefore, one must look elsewhere for the underlying physical nature of free will, and we will leave aside discussion of incomputability as not directly relevant.
If the brain state corresponding to a decision follows from prior brain states (and universe-states) in a chain of cause and effect following the same natural law governing other events, then even if the decision is inherently non-predictable by science or mathematics, it is no more free willed than is any other predictable or non-predictable event such as the falling of a drop of rain, the growth of a plant, or the orbit of an electron in its path.
Defining free will is very difficult, since our physical intuition is built up from experience with phenomena which are either determined or random, and it is not possible for us to mesh the physical theories we have of the physical universe - which are all based on determinism and randomness - with the operation of an inherently free will.
Even in mental terms the same problem arises. Free willed action needs to be based on logical considerations in order to be will rather than caprice, however if it is so based, then the decision is not free, but is rather dictated by logic. And, to whatever extent it is not logical, it is not will that is deciding, but rather some other factor. The question of the origin of a free-willed choice therefore presents a paradox, since if it is caused, it is not free, yet if it is random, it is not willed.
Even if one posits an extra-physical realm which interacts with the physical in order to produce free-willed phenomena, we are again involved in the mind body problem, the paradox of the physical and non-physical being able to interact. And in any case, the acausality of free will is inherent to the nature of the decision - that it is free - and an extra-physical realm may not provide a solution to this.
When a free-willed choice comes into existence therefore, if it is in fact truly free willed, it is not caused by something outside of itself, and as a result it is either acausal or self-causative.
Free Will and the Ramifications for Science
Consciousness is a phenomenon which by its very nature is inherently "other" than any other in the universe. The "otherness" of consciousness expresses itself in the fact that we can know of the universe at all only through our consciousness, and thus consciousness in a way "contains" the universe, and in a way is "outside" the universe.
Similarly the phenomenon of our consciousness which we call "free will" operates outside the normal laws of nature: in order for free-willed acts to be "free" they must violate the causal laws of the rest of the universe since they are caused by our will rather than by the previous state of the universe (which itself includes the previous state of our mind). Free will without this causality-transcendence is not free will as we mean it - true free will is therefore "self-causative".
It can be postulated that all phenomena in the universe except for free will are subservient to quantum probabilistic causality.
One can see a form of hierarchical structure: free will contains the probabilistic determinism of quantum physics as a special case where the decision of how to occur is taken at random instead of freely willed , while ordinary determinism is a special case of PDR where one particular way has 100% probability of occurring.
Free Will and Self Causation
The crucial point is that free willed decisions are in some sense 'self-caused' as they are neither random nor totally caused by prior events, and this underlays the moral responsibility to choose good over evil.
Summary
Free will is in essence self-causation, and is therefore not encompassable within ordinary logic and physical theory - it is not modelable, nor is it provable or disprovable. Free will is independent of the causal chain of events, and the existence in the mind of an interaction with this self-causative nature and independence endows it with many intriguing properties and has important ramifications for quantum physics cosmology and philosophy as we shall see in the following chapters (Part IV).
The Creation and Eden Accounts
It is the creation of a universe capable of moral responsibility and with this type of non-causal non-scientifically encompassable free will which is presented in Genesis. This inherently non-scientific nature of the free will discussed there is reflected in the form of the account itself.
As we have seen, science cannot truly deal with the universe as a whole, or with one-time unique phenomena as for example the origin of the universe, or 'the actual emergence of the universe into existence', or possibly the origin of consciousness, nor does science yet encompass mental phenomena such as consciousness and free will. All of the above are however of course the subjects of the creation and Eden accounts.
We have seen that free will is seemingly beyond the rational: it is counterfactual and therefore non-disprovable; it is not causal, and therefore is unmodelable (no scientific theory of it can exist).
As unique events, concepts, and phenomena outside the realm of ordinary scientific inquiry, the issues of existence, the existence of the physical universe, the onset of purpose, consciousness, and free will cannot be encompassed entirely via the rational. It is appropriate therefore that the Eden account which deals with the emergence of free will has an imagery-oriented style rather than a rational historical one, and that these issues are dealt with in Genesis through the medium of allegory and allusion in the creation and Eden accounts.