Harry and Susan are standing at the bar. After two glasses of wine, the question arises whether they will have a third. Susan would like to, but still thinks it is better to leave it at two. Harry actually thinks so too, but nevertheless takes that third glass.
It is not surprising to say that Susan’s choice is freer than Harry’s – she is less likely to get carried away and more likely to follow her own judgment.
Or are you still in doubt here? This probably has to do with the fact that we can also see Susan’s freedom as her happiness and Harry’s lack of freedom as his unhappiness. Neither of them had any influence on the evolution or upbringing that made their brain processes what they are. Why then should Susan’s choice be her own free choice and not Harry’s?
This issue is extensively discussed in philosophy. The question is what makes a choice one’s own, while at the same time it must be assumed that evolution, brain processes and upbringing have made us who we are. But what exactly that process of development looked like according to the most recent scientific insights usually plays no significant role in philosophy.
Two recent books, written by a neurologist and a neuroscientist with a background in biology, want to show that this is a mistake: according to them, scientific details about how evolution and upbringing have shaped our brains are decisive in answering the question of whether we have free will. Both books provide a comprehensive overview of the natural processes that make us who we are – and reach diametrically opposed conclusions.
Natural laws
What if all our choices are the result of brain processes and if the course of those processes is determined by nothing other than the laws of nature? In other words: what if we are determined? The prevailing idea – inside and outside science, but not in philosophy – is that there can be no such thing as free will.
That, in short, is the problem of free will. Why is that a problem? Scientifically speaking, it is likely that we are determined. But without free will, can there still be such a thing as responsibility – wouldn’t it be pointless to reward or punish actions that are inevitable anyway?
Robert Sapolsky’s Determined. A Science of Life Without Free Will is a 500-page defense of the idea that everything that happens in the universe – and therefore everything we do – is determined by the laws of nature and not by ourselves. Sapolsky writes in an accessible and compelling way (to the point of being demagogic) and provides a stunning amount of information that supports his thesis that we are completely determined. How ‘the universe’ determines who we are and what we do is extensively explained on different time scales; from the influence of smells and atmospheres at the moment of action, via the influence of culture and upbringing, to the influence of millions of years of evolution.
That level of detail is important, according to Sapolsky. Leading scientific evidence of the non-existence of free will is based on experiments that show that our conscious free choices are unconsciously determined by our brain several seconds earlier. But according to Sapolsky, that leaves room for free will; After all, it could be that decisions prior to those few seconds are free and therefore not determined. To eliminate free will once and for all, Sapolsky argues, it is important to show that all processes that influence what we do and decide are fully determined.
Sapolsky convincingly shows that three popular ideas about how science would show that the world is not determined are incorrect. So-called ’emergence’ and chaos theory show that some phenomena in the world cannot be predicted by mapping all the natural forces underlying them. But unpredictability can very well go hand in hand with determinism.
Sapolsky here follows the standard argument that free will requires more than randomness. Quantum mechanics indeed shows that the world, at least at the subatomic level, is not deterministic. Sapolsky holds to the idea that determinism completely rules out free will. “Show me one neuron whose activity is not determined by past biological processes and I will believe in free will,” he writes.
Different kinds of will
It is incorrect to say – as the back cover of the book promises – that Sapolsky systematically debunks all arguments for free will. A majority of the philosophical community agrees with Sapolsky that the universe is probably determined, but then still thinks that free will can exist in it. Sapolsky pays no attention to them (or he misrepresents them).
Both Susan and Harry could be determined, but that doesn’t make the difference between their choices any less important. From that perspective, there is a classic argument against Sapolsky’s thesis. According to him, it is not ‘we’ who determine what we do, but ‘the universe’. But who exactly are that ‘we’?
We would indeed be unfree if we wanted anything other than the universe and if the universe, rather than us, determines who we become and what we do. But we are part of the universe. There is no difference between what we want and what the universe makes us do. To say that we are determined is not the same as to say that we are forced. Free will and determinism are therefore not incompatible.
That is not straightening out something that is crooked. The point is that there are multiple types of ‘free will’. And being able to do what you decide for yourself – as Susan’s choice illustrates – is a very important one.
Brain processes
As dogmatic as Sapolsky is, Kevin Mitchell is nuanced in his book Free Agents. How Evolution Gave Us Free Will. He also shows that the most current scientific knowledge about how humans have been shaped by evolution, brain processes and upbringing is decisive in determining whether we have free will.
In short, his idea is: when a person is born he or she is nothing more than the product of genes and evolution, but over the course of a person’s development he or she increasingly acquires ‘actorship’ – the ability to act on the basis of for your own reasons. People are increasingly taking control and exerting increasing influence on the factors that determine who they become. So the difference between Susan and Harry is more than just luck or bad luck. For Mitchell, the formation of everyone’s free self is a mirror of the formation of actorhood in the course of evolution: ‘The story of agency is really the story of life itself.’
Mitchell offers a beautiful, nuanced answer to the question of how organisms with a ‘self’ gradually emerged during evolution. Mitchell does not interpret ‘choice’ in terms of absolute freedom like Sapolsky. That is to say: being able to choose without any external cause. But he claims that we can make real choices because, as individuals with agency, we are to a certain extent causally independent of the rest of the universe.
This causal independence arises in two ways. Firstly, because people have been shaped by evolution, which allows us to make our own choices, which in turn shape us. This makes us a kind of ‘causally autonomous piece of universe’. Second, Mitchell thinks that indeterminism plays a decisive role. He convincingly demonstrates that actors acting as a result of natural selection actually use probability and indeterminacy in specific situations. Being able to act randomly and therefore unpredictably, for example when an animal is threatened, provides an evolutionary advantage. But it remains unclear how this unpredictability really constitutes indeterminism and how he thinks he can escape the argument that indeterminism does not result in free will.
Circumstances
According to Sapolsky, when we let go of our belief in free will, we see that every action is always the product of circumstances. Harry’s ill-advised third glass of wine is not his responsibility, but the result of the very same kinds of processes that prevent Susan from drinking more.
Mitchell finds the rhetorical opposition between ‘I’ and ‘the universe’ (or ‘my brain’, or other supposedly external factors) misleading. Our ‘self’ is a product of all kinds of factors that on the one hand limit what we are and can be, but on the other hand make a coherent and consistent self possible. Even in a deterministic world we can say that Susan really chooses to forgo the third glass of wine. She has been able to shape herself into someone who is more capable of controlling herself than Harry, making her choices in line with her own reasons. Of course, her genes and upbringing contribute to this, but that is more than just a matter of luck.
One of Sapolsky’s polemical examples takes on a very different interpretation from this perspective. He describes a graduation party where the student’s successful performance is widely praised and praised. In the background there is a cleaner who is treated with contempt and not even reviled. For Sapolsky, this example shows the ethical importance of his scientific argument: if the achievements of the student and the cleaner are the result of biology and upbringing – and not of personal agency – there is no reason to value the cleaner less than the student .
But that same example also makes a completely different conclusion possible. By saying that the student and the cleaner neither have free will, we accept the difference between the two. But if we realize that education can enable someone to better shape themselves into someone who can act according to their own insights, the example shows that we should make as much effort as possible to improve people’s development opportunities. Neuroscience can teach us which factors explain the differences in freedom of choice between people.
In our opinion, these are the most interesting and relevant questions in the debate about free will. If we may influence your free choice here: ignore Sapolsky, read Mitchell’s book if you want to be scientifically up to date. Choose Robert Kane’s Contemporary Introduction to Free Will from 2005 if you are mainly interested in the philosophical questions and answers.
Jolien Francken is a neuroscientist, philosopher and university lecturer. Marc Slors is professor of philosophy of cognition. Both are affiliated with Radboud University.