Usually intuition is used to defend the idea that we must have free will. But my intuition points me in the opposite direction: I feel not free at all.
Certainly, at various junctures, I see that I have options. This is what I mean by ‘freedom’ – the ability to choose from among options. I can choose to get up now or sleep in. I can choose to have this or that for dinner. I can choose this or that major in college. But, as I’d argue, when I go to make a choice, I have no control over the ensuing deliberation process. It’s one thing to have options, and another thing entirely to be free in choosing one option over the others.
You’d think that I of all people would believe in free will. I quit my job to pursue my passion, when it would have been easier to just stay the course. What could be a greater expression of free will than that?
But I don’t feel the least bit free even in that. I didn’t choose to be cursed with ‘philosophy brain’, where philosophy problems plague me constantly. While it sounds simpler on paper to stay on the path that life has given you, doing so really would not have been easier for me at all. That would have been the greater agony.
I feel like everything I’ve done I was forced to do. I was forced to be born, forced to do homework, forced to experience hunger, eat food, and so on. I was forced to be raised in a Christian home, which determined much of my psychology. Almost everything that I’ve ever done, I did it against my desire. That certainly feels unfree.
But even when I did act according to my desires, such as a desire to eat a particular food, I did not desire to have such a desire. If I had things my way, I would be perfectly healthy at all times without the need to eat anything. Certain desires are forced on us. I’m sure I’ve said things like “I want to go to sleep” or “I want to take a break” or “I want a coat.” But those are simplified statements. I want to not have to sleep, to not have to take breaks, and to not need a coat. So all my choices either go against my desires or my second-order desires. That feels unfree.
But then there are some things that are a part of my desires and second-order desires. I want to become a philosopher, and I want to want such a thing. My philosophy-oriented desires feel much deeper and a part of me than more basic desires. I want to be skilled in philosophy, and I don’t feel forced in that want in the same way I feel forced in more basic wants. And yet I do not feel free in these higher order wants either. While I do not actively want against these higher order wants, I still don’t feel as though I chose to have them. I see how my circumstances cause me to have the wants that I do.
Sometimes, simple melodies pop into my head, and I record them. I don’t choose for these melodies to pop into my head – they just do. (This is not a brag. They are very simple melodies.) I’m guessing it has to do with the structure of my brain. Likewise, I don’t choose to feel so haunted by philosophy questions – and to have so many questions and ideas pop into my head.
I don’t want against this – I quite like my simple melodies and my philosophical ruminations. But I don’t feel in control in the slightest of any of it.
I didn’t choose to be a biological creature with survival instincts, or to be born on a planet like ours, or in a universe that works the way this one does, or to be born in a place governed by the laws of biology, evolution, competition, survival of the fittest, and all the sociological and psychological laws that follow, such as tribalism, terror management, psychoanalysis, ego, fear and anxiety, social pressures, gendered social pressures, and so on. I didn’t choose to be as ignorant as I am or to be ensconced by the ignorance of my species. I didn’t choose the year I was born in, the culture and language I was born into, the values and beliefs and confidences of those around me, nor my sensitivity or insensitivity to those social pressures. Not a single feature of our universe or of human nature was up to me.
I didn’t choose, I didn’t choose, I didn’t choose. By the time you get to the things I did choose, it’s pathetic how predictable my choices were given all that I was saddled with. We are extraordinarily complex and specific algorithms programmed by extraordinarily complex and specific inputs. And yet, despite the complexity, it’s often fairly easy to tell the psychoanalytic story as to why this person is this way or why that person made that choice, as long as you have enough biographical and biological information to work with. Everything we did, and every way we were, we can explain via evolution, sociology, psychology, philosophy, history, science, biology, neurology, etc.
We are sculpted by the inputs of our genetics and environment and chiseled into shape – and we did not choose the chisels. We are souls along for the ride, like plankton in the water, just particles smashing together in strange ways, witnessing how our brains, shaped by inputs not up to us, interact with our environment.
When people say – and so many people say this – that we feel radically free or self-evidently free, or that our sense of free will is so powerful that we have no choice but to live as if we have free will – that everyone can’t help but see themselves as the author of their choices – I want to ask these folks: Do you really feel this way? Why? I don’t feel free in the slightest.
I understand the feeling of having options, as discussed, and I can even grant the sense that my choices come from me. In those ways, I understand perfectly why people say they feel free. But, as explained, having options alone does nothing to establish free will, and while my choices might come from me in a shallow sense, in a much deeper sense they don’t come from me at all, and really I am just experiencing my brain calculating things as best it can – trying to make the choices that will optimize my life (often failing along the way).
What’s funny is that a pro-free will person must say that I am wrong. In my incorrectness, I am stupid or irrational or ignorant or dishonest or confused or possessing some other kind of epistemic flaw, or some combination thereof. But even they must admit that, obviously, I did not choose to be wrong, or stupid, or irrational, or ignorant, or dishonest, or confused, or possessing some other kind of epistemic flaw, or any combination thereof. At least, it’s self-evident to me that I chose none of these things for myself. The introspection I'm supposed to use to see that I am the author of my own choices I use to see that I am not the author of my own qualities, which determine my choices.
And if the reverse holds true and I am within my epistemic rights to hold the views I do, then that wasn't up to me either, and I take no credit for whatever virtues my circumstances happened to bestow upon me.
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