Why Sam Harris is Wrong About Free Will
"Free Will" vs. "Determinism"
What does it mean to have "solved" a philosophical problem? This is, in itself, a philosophical problem. I don't feel comfortable saying I've solved any philosophical problems, but what if I propose a notion of having "minimally solved" a problem - that is, not necessary coming up with the right answer, let alone an answer that will end the debate for everyone, but coming up with the general shape or framework (perhaps missing some important specifics) of an answer that satisfies me, at least to the point where the problem doesn't endlessly torture me and keep me up at night? If, by "solved," we mean "minimally solved," then I think I have solved the problem that is usually called the debate between "free will" and "determinism". Not that my answer is particularly original. Actually, not I, but modern neuroscience solved this puzzle. And all I mean is that, it is solved for me. I find this answer satisfying. Your mileage may vary. You may need a different answer than I do. That's perfectly fine - and interesting. If that's the case, let me know - I'd like to hear more about that.
I'm sure this sounds very boastful, and perhaps it is. After all, the question of "free will" and "determinism" is very old, and according to many, like John Searle, it remains unsolved. Perhaps many think that it is unsolvable. I, for one, would say that it is mostly solved. And it wasn't even that difficult. In fact, the answer seems so obvious to me that, at this point, it's hard for me to even understand how it was ever a problem.
Of course, I do understand how it was a problem, in one sense. There is a long, long debate over this issue, going back to the ancient world. And not always a civilized, philosophical discussion. It was something that people were willing to go to war over. In the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation, when believers of John Calvin's doctrine of predestination squared off against the Roman Catholic Church, the conflict would erupt into the 30 Years War in Germany (1618-1648) - a period of violence so protracted and so brutal that there are reports of human cannibalism. There's an irony in going to war over such notions: if you believe that "free will" was put into humans by God, then shouldn't you want to let people be free to believe whatever they want to believe? And if you believe in predestination, then everyone's eternal fate is already decided, so it would seem to me completely futile to go to war over spreading your particular beliefs. Ah, well. In any case, I don't want to give the impression that I've come to a conclusion on this issue the way these combatants did - I'm not a dogmatist, demanding that everyone else conform to my faith. Anyway, don't get me wrong - I'm well aware that theological disputes weren't really the cause of this war, which was, like most wars, actually the result of competing economic and political interests. But it's remarkable that theological disputes over free will could even function as a pretext. It would be funny if it weren't so sad.
The "free will" side of the debate probably reached its extreme apogee with the (early) philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, when he wrote that we are all "doomed to be free" and that any doubt in our own primordial existential freedom of choice was just an exercise in bad faith. Thinking along these lines (which is not really an argument based on evidence or logic, but just a kind of intellectual blackmail, the threat of an insult), taken far enough, leads one to believe in something like a supernatural, almost omnipotent freedom of will. But then, gradually, over the course of the 20th century, as our scientific understanding of the brain improved, the "free will" side of the debate would suffer defeat after defeat, and had to back away from this early triumph.
The two sides in the debate today can be mostly summarized in the following way: on the one hand, as neuroscientists learn more about the brain - not to mention sociologists, anthropologists, primate ethologists, other kinds of psychologists, economists, advertisers, and countless others who are testing and doing studies on human behavior of various kinds - more and more of how we operate becomes apparent, and there seems to be less and less "wiggle room." This dovetails nicely with the currently prevalent political ideology of social determinism, which, as I've written before, is rooted in existentialism, theology, and even aesthetics.
On the other side of the debate, the "free will" advocates don't have much going for them anymore except a vague feeling that the determinists are wrong. By appealing to sheer introspection, they stand firm in their conviction that they can and do decide to do things, and do those things when they want to do them. This in itself is not nothing. The experience of willing and acting is after all a phenomenon, and in the work of some philosophers, has been built up into an entire phenomenology. This phenomenon requires an explanation. Before we are too quick to dismiss it, we should reflect that all of science is - or should be - based on the induction of empirical experience - in the final analysis, it is based on seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling. Do we see, hear, touch, taste, or smell the experience of making a choice? Hmm. Perhaps not. But we do experience it, somehow, or seem to - or at least some of us claim to, some of the time. To dismiss this experience because it does not accord with our model would therefore be to reject evidence because it does not fit your theory - never a sound scientific practice.
Nonetheless, the advocates of "determinism" have a point when they reply that introspection is not always the most reliable source of empirical data. Anyone who has studied human memory can attest to how much unwitting confabulation even the most dedicated and sincere observers can produce. Statisticians know that there are myriad problems with self-reporting. What people say about themselves - and even what they genuinely believe about themselves - does not always accord with their actual behavior. (Consider this: think about what it's like to make a decision when you're paying attention to the act of making a decision. Now - what about what it's like when you're not paying attention to the act of making a decision? What is it like then? Is it the same? Is it different? How? For instance, how did you decide to sit in the exact position in which you are now sitting? It's hard to say, isn't it? And isn't it likely that you make thousands of times more decisions without paying attention to the act of making a decision than you do when you're attending to the act?...) Here, read the wikipedia article about the introspection illusion. Thus physical evidence must always outweigh witness testimony.
Those who cling to a notion of "free will" sometimes turn in desperation to quantum physics as some kind of hope for salvation, (sometimes even very smart people, like the physicist Roger Penrose, whose theory of "Orchestrated Objective Reduction" posits that microtubules on the surface of our neurons engage in quantum reactions and thus that human brains are, strictly speaking, non-deterministic) though the indeterminacy that occurs on a quantum level hardly could be said to give rise to a particularly compelling kind of free will, since its effects are slight, and, to the extent that they exist, are essentially random rather than operating according to some kind of ordering conscious will or plan. Is it really much better to be determined by randomness, rather than by order? Would randomness constitute self-control?
And so the centuries-long debate reaches an impasse - the determinists completely surrounding and besieging the freewillists, but the freewillists unwilling (pardon the pun) to give up. To make matters more intractable, this debate often gets confused - in the popular imagination, and even among supposed experts - with several other philosophical problems, notably the debate over the meaning of consciousness. For many, asserting that we have no free will seems tantamount to saying that consciousness does not exist, or that it is a kind of epiphenomenon or illusion. The truth is that these are completely separate issues which only have a tangential connection, if any. In fact, there was a somewhat ironic relationship between Daniel C. Dennett and Sam Harris (more on him in a moment) in their respective positions on these issues. Dennett thought that consciousness was largely explained, a mere epiphenomenon or even a kind of illusion, and in any case rather unimportant - nonetheless, he was a staunch, stalwart believer and defender of free will. Harris, on the other hand, thinks that consciousness is a profound, unexplained mystery, of greater importance than anything else on Earth or in the entire universe, yet he utterly rejects free will. Round and round we go.
* * *
According to some in the media, a major blow to the "free will" side of this culture war came in 2008 with the publication of a neuroimaging study conducted in Australia by a team led by Chun Siong Soon and co-authored by Marcel Brass, Hans-Jochen Heinze, and John-Dylan Haynes, who has become something of a spokesperson for the research - a study which was quickly picked up and somewhat over-hyped by the media. In this experiment, subjects were put into an fMRI machine and shown a screen on which letters were quickly flashing. They were then asked to press a button with their left or right hands whenever they felt like it, and then asked to report which letter appeared when they made the decision to press with either their left or right finger. According to the researchers, certain telltale parts of the brain lit up in the brain scan before the subjects chose right or left, and this happened with sufficient regularity that researchers were able to predict which button the subject would press before the subject reported being conscious of having made a decision - occasionally as much as 7 seconds earlier.
Some outlets, like Nature, reported in a nuanced and balanced way about the experiment, but others took the story and ran with it, claiming that this experiment had proved once and for all that free will does not exist, that it was nothing but an illusion, and that everything about our brain function is absolutely determined. This conclusion seems to me to be a bit hasty.
For one thing, the findings of this Soon experiment were not really all that new. It was one in a series of experiments that had been performed since the 1980s, notably in the work of the pioneering American neuroscientist Benjamin Libet. For instance, in one experiment, Libet showed subjects a dot moving around a clock, and asked them what number the dot was at when they made a decision to move a muscle. Libet was thus able to prove, at least to his own satisfaction, that there was an electric change in the brain, the "readiness potential" (RP) which occurred 550 milliseconds earlier than an action, whereas the person only reported being aware of making a decision about 200 milliseconds before the action.
Soon's team in Australia in 2008 not only used fMRI technology that hadn't existed in Libet's time, but also tried to refine some of Libet's experiments, in order to rule out some ambiguities and possible hidden variables that Libet and his team had left open. But they still have a way to go before all possible variables have been exhausted. For instance, critics of Libet's work had pointed out that it relied on the self-reporting of the subjects. Soon's team hoped that by flashing letters rather than watching (what amounted to) the second hand of a clock, they would get a more accurate read of when exactly their subjects were reporting making their decisions. But though naming a random letter that appears is less predictable, and therefore harder to confabulate, than a number on a clock, the Australian study still relied on what is essentially self-reporting. Thus it is open to some of the same objections that determinists make against the argument from introspection used by freewillists. Just because a subject says that they made a conscious decision when they were seeing a specific letter, should we believe them? If we do, aren't we still ultimately relying on people's introspection to determine when they had the experience of making a conscious decision? And doesn't this very experiment call that ability to introspect into question? Couldn't it be possible that people are simply remembering the experience incorrectly? It seems pretty clear that there's some kind of lag that this experiment is demonstrating, but it's not absolutely certain to me that the lag is between the brain's decision-making process and my conscious experience of that process. Perhaps it takes a certain amount of time to form a memory of making a decision. Or maybe it takes a certain amount of time to order that memory into a narrative in language that the subject can express to the researcher.
Incidentally, there has been some trouble replicating the Soon experiment. Subsequent studies have not produced gaps as long as 7 seconds, but gaps may very well be longer than a third of a second, as in the original studies by Libet. On average, it's probably somewhere in between. (By the way - Libet's experiments were based on even earlier experiments by German researchers named Kornhuber and Deeke. Kornhuber and Deeke remain convinced believers in free will, and Libet was unconvinced that his experiments or the ones that others had performed since, following up on his work, had disproved the existence of free will, up until his death in 2007.) Meanwhile, in 2010, Aaron Schurger proposed an entirely different way of interpreting Bereitschaftspotential, the signal that neuroimaging scientists are measuring for these kinds of experiments, and as his alternate theory has gained wider support, this set off a flurry in the media of journalists like this one now declaring that we can set aside work like the Soon study, and free will exists after all.
But let's assume, for the sake of argument, that everything the Soon study purports to prove is true, and that there is indeed a significant time lag between our decision making and the self-awareness of our decision making - would that actually imply that "free will" is an illusion, that no one ever actually makes a decision about anything? Consider the alternative - what if, instead, researchers had discovered that there is absolutely no time lag, not even a trillionth of a second (which, let's face it, seems pretty unreasonable). So, in this alternate universe, our decision making is absolutely instantaneous, and we are aware of it exactly when it happens. Would that make you feel more comforted, that free will truly exists? Not me. In fact, if our decision-making were completely instantaneous, split-second, and our awareness was immediate and as-it-happens, I think I would feel less comfortable about the existence of free will - it would seem automatic, reflexive, undeliberate, too fast for me to get ahold of. I don't mind the existence of a Libet gap. But moreover, once one considers the alternatives, it seems clear that what Libet-style experiments are testing is quite logically distinct from the existence or non-existence of "free will". Whether, and when, we are consciously aware of a decision making process is a separate issue from whether the decision making process is actually happening. In the final analysis, if "free will" is totally an illusion, and no one ever actually makes a decision about anything, then Libet-style experiments measure the lag between the time when we think we made a decision and... what, exactly? ("...when we actually did make the decision"? Implying decisions exist?)
Haynes himself has not entirely been helpful or careful in drawing this distinction. In the Nature article, parts of which have been quoted in the New York Times, among other outlets, he moans, "How can I call a will mine if I don't know when it occurred and what it decided to do?" Well, there's an answer to that question: Of course you can call it "yours". Whose else would it be? It happened in your brain, which is in your head. It didn't happen in anyone else's head. You may be a little off on when this decision occurred, but then again, at least speaking for myself, I often get the lengths of time wrong between memories, or even get the order of events wrong. And here we are speaking of differences of somewhere between hundreds of milliseconds and a few seconds. I'm not at all surprised at these kinds of perceptual distortions.
I don't know the contents of my spleen, or when it does what it does, but it's still my spleen. Many aspects of my brain function are unconscious - i.e., unknown to me. But they're still real, and they're mine. There's no contradiction there, it's just how it is. Get used to it.
For instance: a practiced chess player will just "see" a strategic move, almost automatically. If you ask them how and why it's a good move, they can probably give you an explanation, but are they simply recounting their own thought process, or are they imaginatively reconstructing - and to an extent rationalizing - their intuitive act? Admittedly, it can be wise to spell out the actual logical steps to yourself, because some of the steps you skipped over may expose you to unacknowledged vulnerabilities. Often when students are trained to do geometric proofs, they're upset because they can just see that what they're trying to prove is true. Why should they have to spell out each logical step, to show all of their work? Similarly, a person riding a bicycle isn't consciously aware of all of the muscle movements necessary to move the bike forward without letting it tip over. Or, for that matter, people who walk aren't consciously aware of the entire physiological process of walking - even though walking is learned behavior. Indeed, becoming aware of every little movement involved in walking may actually make the movement less fluid and more difficult. The same is true of using language. Imagine that, in the middle of a conversation, I ask you, "Why did you use that particular word, and not a different one?" You can probably respond, and give me a story about why you used that word. Are you recapitulating the thoughts that went through your head, or are you confabulating and rationalizing? Probably a combination of the two. But whatever the case might be, it's certain that your brain determined that word choice. Nothing external to you has forced you to pick that word, rather than another. (Certainly many factors may have influenced you, or motivated you, such as your anticipation of my understanding, but so what? Nothing forced you.)
Moreover, I would ask Haynes: "What do you mean by 'I' in that question?" Of course the will is yours - that is, it belongs to your brain - or rather, your entire body. But you are your body. If you mean by "I" something that is above and apart from your brain or your body, then it is you that is being a dualist. Your brain is deciding what to do, and for that reason, those decisions are your decisions, according to your will.
Think of it this way: what if, instead of Libet-style experiments, we had another, more specific kind of experimental data. Imagine there were an experiment in which my brain were opened up, and scientists were able to physically pinpoint the exact neuron where one of my decisions began. And then, after I had been sewn back up, the scientist triumphantly held up a photo and said to me, "See! You think you made this decision, but it wasn't you! It was this!"
I would simply reply, "But that is me. The whole thing is me." And that could be the end of it, right there, though I would probably be curious, and want to ask: "At which point, which neuron in there, in your way of looking at things, does it stop being 'not me,' and start being 'me'?"
"Well, but..." the scientist might stammer, whimpering now and trying to regain some kind of dignity. "You aren't even aware of it when it happens...."
Yeah, for like a third of a second. A period of time so brief that I can barely even register it. A period of time shorter than it takes for me to think one word. This comports well with my experience. I often "find myself doing things." Just now, I found myself cracking my knuckles, while I was thinking of the right way to phrase this sentence. I'd say the process of becoming aware of this takes at least a third of a second. Yes, maybe in some extreme cases, it may take a few seconds. This is especially true of many of the activities one does on any given day, like brushing one's teeth, going to the bathroom, riding a bike, many of the simple parts of one's job - because these are all matters of routine. The more practice you have, the more skilled you become, the less moment-to-moment conscious attention is required and the more intuition (which is usually better than moment-to-moment consciousness, anyway) can take over. Now, in Libet-style experiments, of course, you aren't doing an activity that is routine for you - you're doing something really weird. But you are doing something in some ways comparable to (yet different from) routine: following instructions.
By the way, there are some - Buddhists, especially, like Thich Nhat Hanh (see this video, here) - who think that it would be better to be fully present to every activity, like brushing one's teeth, and so have developed a little brushing-your-teeth-gatha and a riding-your-bicycle-gatha. I, for one, would be totally miserable with this kind of life. I don't want to be fully present when I'm brushing my teeth. I want to be thinking about physics and music and political science.
The correct response to Soon's experiment and other Libet-style experiments is to go: "Oo. Wow. Spooky. Cool." And then, 15 minutes later, get over it. It doesn't really change anything about anything. You haven't lost anything.
* * *
Enter Sam Harris. Sam Harris came out with a book called "Free Will," and later an episode of his podcast in which he tried to clarify his position on this issue. (He has remarked that he expressed his opinion more clearly and definitively in the podcast episode than in the book, so it is primarily to that podcast that I will refer.) In short, Harris argues that free will does not exist. As he puts it: "Your sense of deciding what to do in each moment seems to be the origin of your subsequent behavior. You feel you want to reach and pick up an object, and then you do. The conscious part of you, that wants, and intends, and perceives, seems to be in control of at least some of your thoughts and actions. However, there is every reason to believe that [this] is false."
What is remarkable about Sam Harris's argument is that, even though he has a PhD in neuroscience, his argument does not use any evidence from that field to bolster his case, whatsoever. This is awfully disappointing for anyone who is interested in the topic, and would like to hear about it from a scientific, evidence-based point of view.
Instead, Harris's argument is based on his other passion, his practice of vipassana meditation. He claims to have, through this practice of meditation, come to the point at which it was revealed to him that free will does not exist. He articulates and elaborates this insight in the form of rational argumentation, but does not offer any falsifiable, experimental evidence from the lab. Instead he operates in a purely a priori manner, attempting to persuade people through pure rhetoric and logic, rather than any quantitative results from any lab.
Before he gets into his argument, Harris gives us a little preamble, in which he says "Everywhere we look, we see patterns of events, and all of these events have prior causes - which is to say that they depend, materially and functionally and logically, on other events that preceded them in time. And most relevantly for our purposes, all of our conscious experiences - our thoughts, intentions, desires - and the actions and choices that result from them - are caused by events of which we are not conscious, and which we did not bring into being. [...] The next thing you think and do can only emerge from this totality of prior causes. And it can only emerge in one of two ways: lawfully, that is, deterministically, like one domino just getting knocked over by another, or randomly."
Notice that in this schema, there are only two choices - our behavior can only either be 100% determined, or 100% random. There's nothing in between. Why? Sam Harris offers no answer to that question. As far as Harris is concerned, it's all or nothing.
He goes on: "Randomness of any sort would not give people freedom of will. There is no will in randomness. If you ever did something that was truly random - that had no relationship to prior states of your brain, if it literally came out of nowhere, that wouldn't be what you or anyone means by free will. You would think, 'What the hell did I just do?' and 'Why did I do it?'"
On this point, I agree with Harris. But I want to emphasize that Harris does not think that the brain operates randomly. He's arguing against that, in favor of a deterministic brain. This will become important in a moment. Okay, so, enough of the preamble.
So what is Harris's central argument? In a nutshell, it is that "the illusion free will is itself an illusion" - that "there are no subjective facts" about free will, and so "there is nothing to reconcile with physics and neurophysiology." Let's unpack that a little, and notice that there's a tension here: on one hand he refers to "the feeling that most people have that goes by the name of free will - the feeling that they're free to think and do more or less whatever they want in the present, in a way that allows them to be something other than a mere concatenation of causes or mysterious influences." But then he denies that people in fact have this feeling. "I'm claiming we don't have the experience we think we have. There is no experience of free will."
"If you pay attention to the process of thinking," Harris claims, "You'll see that your thoughts simply appear in consciousness, very much like my words. In fact, you can observe that you can no more decide the next thing you think than you can decide the next thing I say. What are you going to think next? You don't know. Yet your thoughts determine what you want and intend and do next. Your thoughts determine your goals and whether or not you believe you've met them. They determine what you say. [...] In fact, thoughts determine just about everything that makes you human." He goes on: "If you pay attention to how thoughts arise, you'll see see that they simply appear. Quite literally out of nowhere. And you're not free to choose them before they appear. That would require that you think them before you think them. So here's the question: if you can't control your next thought, if you can't decide what it will be before it arises, and if you can't prevent it from arising, where is your freedom of will?"
First off, I have to say that that is a very good argument. The beginning part of it, at least, really had me going. But hold on. Towards the end, there, things start to get weird. Harris claims that thoughts appear "quite literally out of nowhere." Isn't that exactly what he was arguing against, just a moment ago, when he was dismissing the concept of randomness? Weren't those even the exact words he used: "out of nowhere"?
And, more importantly, is it true? Do thoughts really arise "out of nowhere"? The Libet-style experiments that I discussed above definitely seem to indicate that thoughts come "from somewhere" - that there are, so to speak, thoughts before thoughts, somewhere deep inside of us.
Perhaps Harris would reply that, although Libet-style experiments indicate that, objectively, thoughts are the result of a measurable neurological series of events, nonetheless, subjectively, it feels like thoughts come "out of nowhere". But... is that true? Is it really true that it's impossible to predict your own thoughts? I think I actually am fairly predictable - perhaps to a fault.
Once I was sitting in a place in Pittsburgh, PA called "The O" (short for, "The Original Hot Dog Shop"), which was famous for its cheap pizza and its cheese fries. I won't bore you with the details, but one of my friends had just been arrested, and the rest of us were commiserating about it, passing around some fries. Gradually I noticed something about myself - at some times during the conversation, I was depressed, dejected, withdrawn, introverted. At other points in the conversation, I was animated, talking, laughing, extroverted. Continuing to observe myself, I suddenly realized: when the cheese sauce was in front of me, I was upbeat and cheerful. When it was at the other end of the table, I was inconsolable. Predictable, once you see the pattern.
And I can play the meditation game as good as Harris; I've experimented with the stuff - not to mention drugs, another of Harris's favorite topics. Once, when I had taken a handful of psilocybin mushrooms, I thought I could see into my own unconscious, and I could watch my thoughts forming. Was I really seeing my own thoughts forming - the thoughts underneath my thoughts? I don't know. I doubt it. Nowadays, I think I was just delusional. But who knows. And what about right now? Can I witness my thoughts forming now? Can you?
This brings me to another point. Harris has a little tic: throughout the podcast, he keeps saying the same little three word phrase: "in each moment." I think this points to a bias on Harris's part, which I'll call "presentism." Sam Harris, no doubt due to his vipassana meditation training, focuses again and again on this moment. Be here now. And I'll grant him: it is very difficult to choose the next thought, if only because this present moment is so difficult to grab hold of. I am reminded of a brilliant and remarkably practical piece of advice from the great philosopher Michael Polanyi. A concert pianist friend of Polanyi's had crippling stage fright, and Polanyi advised him: stage fright can only happen if you are thinking about the next note. Instead, try thinking of the whole song. His friend tried it, and was cured. I've used that piece of advice myself, and it works.
I can pick nits with Harris's argument, and I will continue to do so over the course of this essay. But I don't want to be guilty of the Aquinas fallacy. What is the Aquinas fallacy, you ask? Thomas Aquinas has the rather nasty habit of arguing like this: 1) Here's an argument against the existence of God. 2) But that argument has a flaw. 3) Therefore, God exists. But even if 13th-century atheists had some lousy arguments for their atheism - and I'm sure they did - this does not say anything for or against the existence of God. The same is true for Sam Harris on determinism. As it happens, I think he makes a pretty good argument, though not a perfect argument. But even if he made an absolutely terrible argument, that would not imply that free will exists.
* * *
Well, I'm sorry, but I reject both of these. And I'm not a fan of the term "compatibilism," either. I'm not on the side of free will, nor on the side of determinism, nor do I want to try to find some kind of "compatibilist" middle ground, that allows me to embrace both "free will" and "determinism". I reject both "free will" and "determinism." But perhaps "reject" isn't the best word to use here - it sounds too angry. I'm not angry at "free will" and "determinism". I just think that there are better terms we can use.
"Free will" and "determinism" are simply not opposites. "Hot" and "cold" are proper opposites - the degree to which something is cold is the degree to which is not hot, and vice versa. "Dark" and "light" are opposites - the degree to which a place is dark is the degree to which it is not light, and vice versa. But "free will" and "determinism" don't have this kind of relationship with each other. It's like opposing "blue" and "walnut". True, most walnuts are not blue, so, if you see something that is blue, it's probably not a walnut. But the opposite of "walnut" is not "blue," and the opposite of "blue" is not "walnut". "Blue" and "walnut" are actually probably a more meaningful distinction than "free will" and "determinism," though, because at least "blue" and "walnut" have more or less clear, well-articulated, and agreed-upon definitions, which is more than we can say for "free will" and "determinism".
To oppose "free will" with "determinism" is a category error. They do not oppose each other because they are terms from completely different fields, operating at different levels of analysis. "Free will," if it has any meaning at all, is a psychological phenomenon, whereas "determinism" has more to do with physics (though philosophers often misuse the physical concept). Asking whether "free will" is "compatible" with "determinism" is like asking whether the laws of the State of Missouri are compatible with Maxwell's laws of electromagnetism. If someone asks you the latter question, the correct answer is, "...Yyyyyyyyessss.... but I suspect you must be deeply confused about both state law and electromagnetism for you to be even asking this question." The same goes for "free will" and "determinism." They are "compatible," in a sense, I guess, sort-of, but only because they have nothing to do with each other. They are compatible the way that frisbee golf is compatible with marine biology. It's just a badly posed question, full of confusing, misleading terms.
* * *
So long as we keep on using the term "free will" in this philosophical debate, we will keep on playing motte and bailey forever. The lack of a clear definition to the term "free will" cuts both ways: it is inconvenient for those people who profess to believe in free will - but it is equally embarrassing, if not more so, for those who claim that free will doesn't exist. To see what I mean by that, try this sentence on for size - I'll call it "sentence A": "People have inclinations to do things, which (almost by definition) have some kind of causal relation to actually doing those things, at least sometimes." So, for instance, maybe I like strawberry ice cream, and as a result, I eat strawberry ice cream. For some people, sentence A seems to be in favor of "free will". After all, you could interpret sentence A as meaning: "People do what they want." (Call that sentence B.) And indeed, I'd say that's what it means. I think both sentence A and sentence B are perfectly reasonable and intelligible sentences, and I would even go so far as to say that they are essentially true. (Though I might slightly amend sentence B to say, "People do what they want, sometimes." Obviously, there are many times and places when people cannot do what they want.)
But for other people, sentence A sounds like an argument against "free will" - because, for them, in order for "free will" to be really, truly free, it must be uncaused by anything. If it has any kind of causal connection to anything else at all in the world, it's not actually free, but "determined". To be truly free, our actions must not be determined by anything, not even our own desires. I'll be honest: these kinds of people seem extremely silly to me. "Determinism" has become such a bogeyman in their heads that any kind of causal connection seems to be a threat to their freedom. I'll call this the Fanatical position. (By the way - there are certain passages in Immanuel Kant's writing where he seems to be saying something like this, and it causes me to lose all respect for him.) Would they prefer it if all of their own actions were completely random and out of control? So that their bodies moved without any causal connection to their minds? That sounds like the opposite of free will to me. Presumably that's not what they want, but... I don't think they know what they want, and if they thought about it for a few minutes, I think they would realize that they are chasing after a phantom of pure meaninglessness.
Now, I'll admit, of course, that our inclinations are not the only thing that determine our actions. There are indeed constraints on our actions, but they are constraints precisely because they cause our actions not to correspond to our inclinations. There are also times when we have multiple inclinations that come into conflict with each other - think of our desire to stick to our diet, and our desire to eat a piece of chocolate cake. One inclination will win, and another will lose. So, for multiple reasons, there are constraints on what one can do. You can't always do what you want. But this does not falsify sentence A.
For instance: I cannot, by my own free will, choose to travel faster than the speed of light. I cannot use my free will to stick my thumb in my mouth, blow up my cheeks like a balloon, and float up into to the sky. In general, I cannot violate, change, or re-write the laws of physics, by an act of will. Nor can I use my will-power to make 2+2=5. I cannot change or rewrite mathematics by an act of will, and the same goes for logic. My "will" is thus "constrained" by logic, math, and physics, and everything that follows from them. And in some ways, this will constrain me fairly severely indeed. But, again, this does not falsify sentence A.
The Fanatical position on "free will," is directly
inherited from certain rather weak strands of Christian theology. The
complete argument goes like this: we have free will. But the physical
world, out there, is deterministic, governed by a web of causal
connections. Therefore there must be something in us that is radically
non-physical, non-material, and therefore completely unconnected to the
web of causal connections. We can call this non-physical, non-material
thing: the soul. This is the "proof" for the existence of the soul. (And this all arose out of theological questions about Original Sin - how much freedom did Eve and Adam have in eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge? How much freedom do we have to accept Jesus as our savior? Etc., etc., etc.) Now, this isn't very good theology. It doesn't actually make much sense. For one thing, if the soul is utterly non-physical, and thus utterly detached from the causal connections of the universe, then how can you will yourself to do something as simple as picking up a cup? This is (a version of) the famous "mind-body" problem (or, more accurately, the soul-body problem), and it remains unsolved, largely because it is so badly framed. There are far better, more sophisticated forms of theology than the Fanatical position on "free will". But the Fanatical position is out there, and there are people who espouse it to this day.
In addition to the completely Fanatical position, there exist some adjacent positions, which we could call quasi-Fanatical. For instance, there are the positions of Henri Bergson and the early writings of Jean-Paul Sartre, respectively. What's the difference between full-blown Fanaticism and quasi-Fanaticism? I'm not sure, and I'm not entirely sure there is one. To be frank, I think these positions are not thought through very carefully, and are in fact logically inconsistent (and by the end of his life, Sartre had abandoned his earlier, more quasi-Fanatical position on free will entirely). The point is that quasi-Fanatical people accept the beginning part of the argument, about the supposed conflict between "free will" "in here" and the causally deterministic world "out there" - they just don't follow this logic to its next step, where this implies the existence of a non-material soul. But what these perhaps more secular adherents of quasi-Fanaticism propose in lieu of the non-material soul is never made clear.
The Fanatical position accepts only a definition of "free will" that is so extreme that it becomes utterly meaningless. People who believe in "free will" and define it in Fanatical terms are rare and strange. But those who reject the existence of "free will" are usually rejecting only the Fanatical interpretation of "free will."
Speaking with a person who claims that free will doesn't exist is a bit like this:
Fred: Schlorb doesn't exist.
Matilda: What's schlorb?
Fred: There is no schlorb!
Matilda: Okay, but what does schlorb even mean?
Fred: That's just it! When you think about it, schlorb is totally meaningless!
Matilda: So it's just a meaningless word?
Fred: Yes!
Matilda: Um... okay.
Or maybe it's more like this:
Fred: There's no such thing as a seagull!
Matilda: Yes, there are. Look, there are a couple of seagulls right over there.
Fred: But I'm defining "seagull" as a giant purple square-shaped monster with 34 eyes, teeth made of pure licorice, and the ability to teleport itself anywhere at any moment. By that definition, seagulls don't exist.
Matilda: I'm going to go talk to someone else now.
In other words, most people who claim that "free will doesn't exist" are either refusing to define what they mean by "free will" - in which case, their statement is meaningless - or are defining "free will" in such a bizarre, improbable, impossible, or downright self-contradictory way that it's no surprise that such a thing does not exist. Nonetheless, there is a real thing that people are talking about when they describe free will - though perhaps "free will" is not an accurate term for that real phenomenon. The only response we can have to people who insist on defining free will in such a way that it doesn't exist is: Yes, the thing you're describing doesn't exist - but that's not what the rest of us are talking about. "Free will" is an obsolete term, one that should be avoided in technical psychological and philosophical literature- but nonetheless one that is sometimes used to describe something real.
Perhaps the best analogy is that people who say that free will does not exist are like people who say "The morning star does not exist" - a statement that is arguably true, because Venus is not a star, it's a planet. Nevertheless, it's a very real thing that you can see in great detail with a telescope. "Morning star" is not a very good description of this real thing - or at least, not a very good description for picky pedants who have nothing better to do with their time than correct you - even though it is a conventional term for Venus, and a rather pretty, poetic term, and nearly everyone will understand what you mean when you say it.
What most people mean, when they use the term "free will" is what psychologists, with decades of research into neuroscience, currently call "executive function." It's true that "free will" is probably not a very accurate or scientific description of executive function. The term "free will" carries all kinds of confusing, misleading, sometimes supernatural and indeed theological baggage with it. Executive function has the virtue of being a much more narrow, specific term.
What is executive function?
When people like Sam Harris deny the existence of free will, their statement is ambiguous. If they simply mean that "free will" is an old-fashioned, unscientific, imprecise term, one which in many contexts would be better replaced by the term "executive function," then I agree. But if they mean that executive function does not exist, then they have a lot more evidentiary work to do, because they stand in opposition to decades of neuroscientific research.
Executive function is the general name that neuroscientists currently give to a broad range of well observed phenomena among human beings and other animals, including attentional control (one's ability to pay attention to certain stimuli and ignore others), inhibitory control (one's ability to inhibit impulses towards actions that conflict with one's own goals), and cognitive flexibility (the ability to shift focus from one internal mental process to another while maintaining both), among others. Indeed, it is becoming more common to speak of "executive functions" (plural) rather than "executive function," though I will use the singular to refer to them all for the time being.
Executive function is not an absolute, and it is not binary, like a
light switch. It's not "all or nothing". Some people have more
dependable executive function, and some have less. At different times of the day, you may experience a high degree of executive function, or a lower degree. Sometimes a person can have a great deal of executive function concerning one group of tasks or one aspect of their life, but a lower degree of executive function in some other area. Sometimes, there can
can be forms of executive dysfunction. People with attention deficit disorder, or various kinds of disorders on the Asperger's/Autism spectrum, for instance, may experience forms of executive dysfunction.
A person who is sleepwalking obviously has extremely low executive function. A person who is severely drunk may quite likely have a lower degree of executive function than a sober person. A person who is in a state of extreme rage may not have executive function to the highest degree that is possible for them, and may do things that they later regret. Some people with certain disabilities and mental conditions may have some challenges with executive function. If a person has not slept in 3 days, they may have a certain diminished executive function. And a person in a coma has essentially no executive function.
Nearly all the sentences in the previous paragraph are not only true, and almost universally recognized to be true, but fairly obvious. We may not fully understand why all of the above is true, or the precise physical process in the brain that causes them to be true, but I think we can all recognize that they are true. Recognizing their truth should be the baseline of our understanding.
And indeed, we have incorporated something like this understanding into our law, in most nations on Earth today. We make fundamentally important distinctions based on this understanding. Premeditated murder is understood differently than murder committed in a fit of passion, which is, in turn, distinct from involuntary manslaughter. In some states, a person can be "not guilty by reason of insanity" - or "temporary insanity". This is because the law understands that a person may be in a diminished capacity for self-control. If there were either such a thing as "absolute free will" or "absolute determinism," these categories would all be meaningless. But obviously (or I should say, obviously to everyone except for certain philosophers) they are not.
* * *
You don't have to take my word for it. Just about everything I believe about this topic can be confirmed and understood through experience, by way of a simple experiment: holding your breath. You can do it right now. Try it! Take a deep breath, and hold it. Hold it as long as you can.
There are several things to notice. First, you can do it. You can consciously decide to hold your breath. That puts breath in an interesting category. There are things that I think about, and decide to do or not do on a regular basis: getting dressed, driving to the store, going to the gym, updating my resume, buying Christmas presents, throwing a kleenex into the waste basket, playing wordle, balancing a pencil on my finger. There are other things that I cannot consciously control, but I know they're happening: my heartbeat, my digestion, a cut on my arm slowly healing. Then there are things that I'm not even consciously aware of, like my spleen's processing hemoglobin and lymph - theoretically, I know that it's happening, but to be honest, I'm not even sure where my spleen is. Breath is weird, though: 99% of the time, I'm not controlling it, and I'm not even really (all that) conscious of it happening. But if I choose to, I can consciously decide to inhale now, or exhale now, or neither. Presumably, this was an evolutionarily adaptive strategy for our pre-human ancestors who wished to sneak up on prey or to avoid the violent who might be looking for us. How much "free will" do you have over your breath? Are you controlling your breath all the time without thinking about it? What would that mean? (I have heard that there are Buddhist monks who, through deep practice in meditation, can control their heartbeats, the same way the rest of us can control our breathing. If that's true, that's fascinating. I wonder how far that goes. Could anyone consciously regulate the actions of their own spleen?)
So you can control your breath. Somewhat. But there are also constraints on your will. Can you hold your breath endlessly? No, you cannot. By now, if you're like me, if you held your breath, you have probably let it go. Pay attention to that moment when you let it go. What exactly is happening, there? You are trying to hold it, but at a certain point... what happens? Here we enter a crucially important area, the phenomenology of will. At a certain point, you let it go. Did you decide to let it go? Or did it just happen? Or, strangest of all, something in between? What would that mean? Do you feel like trying to hold your breath again, but this time, really trying?
Here's another question, equally baffling and fascinating: what happens if you try not to control your breathing? What happens if you try not to be aware of your own breathing? Right now, try to "breathe normally". Or... "don't" try. Whatever that means.
Perhaps it has occurred to some of you, in trying to hold your breath, that you wouldn't have held your breath unless you were reading these words. And so it might seem that you are not truly "free" - precisely because you were influenced by reading this. On the other hand, perhaps some of you obstinately refused to try holding your breath when you read the part about holding your breath. Did that make you more free? Or was your obstinacy determined? Rather than saying that your decision to hold or not to hold your breath was determined, I would say that it was motivated. And most likely, if you have an open mind, it was motivated by curiosity. I'm sorry, but I don't see how having a sense of curiosity makes anyone less free.
Consider the difference between focusing on something - a task at hand, for instance - and allowing your mind to wander. Under which conditions are you more "free"? On the one hand, it might feel more free to allow your mind to wander - but if so, then your mind, so to speak, is in the driver's seat. It is determining where it will go, independent of your will. On the other hand, if you force yourself to focus, and not get distracted, then "you" are more in control. Now, obviously, "your mind" and "you" are the same person, so either way, your mind is the one that is determining - or, as I like to say, your mind is determination. So between the options of focusing on the task, or allowing yourself to slip into tangents and daydreams, the option that we consider more "free" is really just an arbitrary question of terminology. Nonetheless, what we can all agree on, is that there is a difference. One person may consider a wandering mind more free, whereas another may feel more autonomous when they consciously decide to concentrate on something and do so - but whichever word we use to describe either of these states, we can all agree that they are not the same. Then again, I think probably most of us can agree that there's a spectrum here, with total surrender to daydream and free association at one end (and possibly states like sleep, dream, disassociation, catatonia, etc., even further out) and laser-like, rigid focus at the other end. And probably most of us would go on to agree that we spend most of our waking lives somewhere in the middle, maybe swerving slightly to one side or the other, depending on how sleepy we are, or how low our blood sugar is, or whether we're stressed out, or whether we've had coffee.
Perhaps there are people who want something more from "free will" than executive function. They insist that what they want is not mere executive function, they want absolute, bona fide, free will. For them, even when a person is operating with a very high level of executive function, their actions are not really, really, really free - perhaps because they have some kind of instantiation in the physical world. I'm not sure what to say to such people. I'm not sure what they want. I'm not sure they know what they want. I hope they can somehow become happier.
I want to be able to decide to do something, and then do it. Some people seem to want something else from "free will," but I'm not even sure what it is. If I can decide to do something, and then do it, I don't know what's missing. If my decision to do something is a process, rather than a point-like burst of pure spontaneity, that doesn't bother me in the least. In fact, I think it's a good thing. I think the ability to deliberate, to allow a thinking process to unfold inside of you, makes you more free, not less - because it gives you the opportunity to change your mind. And if the beginning of that process is unconscious, this doesn't bother me in the least - indeed, it would be horribly annoying if my brain were constantly "checking" with "me" to see if I want to do the things I'm doing. I'm glad some of this stuff is "taken care of," automatically. Indeed, that "frees me up" to think about the things that I want to think about, and the decisions that I want to make.
Go back to one of the quotes I pulled from Sam Harris's podcast. This time I want to emphasize just a few sentences from it: "Your thoughts determine what you want and intend and do next. Your thoughts determine your goals and whether or not you believe you've met them. They determine what you say. [...] In fact, thoughts determine just about everything that makes you human."
I have two responses to this. I'll admit, there's some tension between them.
Response #1: It sounds to me like what you're saying, Sam Harris, is that free will exists. If my thoughts can determine my actions, then I've won the battle. That's what free will means to me: the ability of my own thoughts to determine my own actions. Sam Harris started off by saying that it was nothing but an illusion that the part of you that wants, and intends, and perceives seems to be in control of your actions. But now he's saying that your conscious thoughts do in fact determine your actions. At this point he has conceded the main issue; I feel that the debate is over.
(There is that funny little phrase at the end there: "just about everything that makes you human". I'm not really sure what he means by that. Is he implying that other animals don't have thoughts? Or that the thoughts of other animals don't matter? Why would that be? What is he talking about? This brings up a larger question: What does Sam Harris mean by "thoughts"? Is he referring only to those thoughts that are in words? In language? So, for instance, if I imagine a beautiful castle, banners flying from its spires, is that not a thought? Are pictures, melodies, the memory of a smell, all excluded from thought? Or are they included? I don't really have a point, here - I'm just going off on a tangent. But what exactly "makes us human" according to Harris? I'm always skeptical of humanism - that is, of every philosophical argument that depends on humans are somehow radically different from other animals. In my experience, every philosopher that starts with that is setting up a long con.)
This is precisely why "free will" and "determinism" are not proper opposites. If I had to give a definition for "free will" (rather than simply abandoning the term, which I think is the better option) I would define it as "thoughts determining actions" - as opposed to when something other than your own thoughts are determining your actions, in which case you really don't have free will. Either way, "determining" is happening. The question is not really determination or not - the question is who, or what is doing the determining - and how.
Response #2: This brings me to my other response, which comes from the opposite direction. I'm sorry to say this, but I'm not sure I agree. Do my thoughts really determine my actions? I would say, sometimes, but not all of the time.
That's right - my worldview may be more "deterministic" than Sam Harris's. It's still a matter of degree; it's not all-or-nothing. But I may be a bit more pessimistic that Sam Harris on this front, and for two reasons, personal and philosophical.
The personal reason that I'm skeptical that thoughts determine what you "do next" as Harris puts it, is that I have had the personal experience of thinking, "I really should get up now," and then not getting up. I've had the experience of thinking, "Now it's time to turn off the TV and do such-and-such" and then I don't do that.
This is a personal matter for me, because I struggle with
executive function myself. I find it difficult to make and stick to
plans, to focus on a particular task, and so on. It's a constant struggle for me to stay focused on the task at hand. I'm always getting sidetracked by one thought or another. For example, it's taken me years to write this essay. I start thinking about it, and then I get diverted into something else. (When I started writing it, Daniel Dennett was alive, and I had just read Sam Harris's book, Free Will. I now realize that was more than 10 years ago! And in the meantime, Robert Sapolsky has written a much better book on the subject. I'll have to respond to him in another essay. I hope it doesn't take me another 10 years.) I have to force myself to buckle down and work on it. But the point is, there is a difference between buckling down and focusing, and not doing so. It's a difference of degree, not all-or-nothing, but there is a difference. I haven't been officially diagnosed with anything, but I have my suspicions.
The other reason I'm skeptical of the idea that thoughts always determine actions is more philosophical: it's because this strikes me as a fundamentally idealist doctrine, rather than a materialist one. Of course it should come as no surprise that Sam Harris's doctrine about free will is idealist, given that its origin is in religion and spirituality - namely, vipassana meditation. It's no coincidence that Sam Harris is always rebuffing Marxists, anarchists, and other leftists who point out the material causes for political conflicts, and emphasizing instead that "beliefs matter" (his favorite mantra) - thus he tends to blame political conflicts on bad beliefs - essentially, bad thoughts. If an act of terrorism happens somewhere in the world, for instance, he will be much less interested in the economic and political exploitation that led to the act than he will be in the religious beliefs of the terrorist.
All of that having been said, I still see a great reason for hope. As I pointed out earlier, I think Sam Harris is operating under what I call a "presentist" bias. That is, when he considers the question of "free will" vs. "determinism," he focuses too much on the present instant - "in each moment". But what if we took a step back?
Return to the question of holding your breath. To some degree, holding your breath is a matter of "willpower," so to speak (another old-fashioned term that I think we can dispense with). But if you're like me, when you tried to hold your breath, you were only able to hold it for about 40 seconds or so. After I tried a few times, I was able to hold my breath for a full minute - and then I got lightheaded, and decided I'd better stop. Any guess as what the world's record for holding your breath is? Think a minute and try to guess.
Okay, here's the answer: at the time I am writing this, the current world record holder is a 56-year-old Croatian named Budimir Šobat, who managed to hold his breath for a whopping twenty-four minutes and thirty-seven seconds. Could I, right now, starting this moment, hold my breath for twenty-four minutes? Of course not. No more than I could lift a 100-pound weight with one hand, or, for that matter, fly to the moon. But of course when Šobat started training, he couldn't hold his breath that long either. And that's really the key here: training - and practice. Practice, practice, practice. And practice takes time.
There is research to suggest that all of the different aspects of executive function are not fixed, but changeable - and often, they can be changed with practice, and training. Consider this study, from 2011, which fairly clearly showed various kinds of improved executive functions among children between the ages of 4 and 12, with computer games designed to train kids for inhibition, self-control, and self-regulation. In 2020, two separate teams (Diamond and Ling, Sala and Gobet) reviewed the available evidence and determined that executive function can indeed be improved and trained in a variety of ways. Come to think of it - we all start out as babies, who don't have great executive functions. We all have to learn these skills.
(Another thing - and this is, in my own opinion, the most interesting part of my entire essay, here, but it's purely speculative and fairly vague in my own mind - an idea that should be developed, later: it strikes me that there is a paradox - or perhaps multiple paradoxes - in the development of executive functions from the time we are babies. On the one hand, when we are babies, we have little or no executive function. We can't make plans, we don't have clear goals, we have no way of determining whether we have met goals. On the other hand, we are extremely "present" in each moment, learning, soaking everything in. Executive functions are skills, and we develop these skills as we grow. But this in and of itself is a paradox: as you develop the skill of each executive function, you become more able to plan, to determine your own goals, etc., and in this sense you are more "free," in the sense of making choices and decisions. But the mere fact that this is a skill implies that you are developing greater automaticity, more fluid intuition, etc. - you are able to do things "without thinking about it." On which side is "freedom"? Both? Neither? Ultimately, "freedom" is an over-extended political metaphor for a psychological fact.)
So the real question, it seems to me, is not, "Do we have free will?" It's not clear what the verb "have" even means, in that sentence. The question is, "To what degree can we improve our executive functions, and how?" The science is all fairly new on this, and I expect our scientific knowledge to grow. And setting this question up as an absolute - all or nothing - is unhelpful and may even derail further research.
I would wager that for every practical question involving free will - and I emphasize, practical: this may or may not apply to certain abstract, supposedly philosophical questions - if you swap out the phrase "a high level of executive functioning" for the phrase "free will," you will have a better question, a more substantive question, a more meaningful question. For instance, let's say Jill hits Jane with her car. Did Jill do this of her own free will? If we rely on the old, tired debate about "free will" and "determinism," the answer will be "absolutely yes," or "absolutely no," both of which are entirely unhelpful for deciding Jill's degree of culpability, because they apply to everyone in the universe equally. On the other hand, if we ask what degree and what kinds of executive function Jill had at the time of the crash, now we have a far more interesting and relevant question.
This brings me back to another thing that Sam Harris claims in his podcast - that even for someone like him, it's possible to believe in a difference between "voluntary" and "involuntary" actions. What is he talking about? No it isn't! He doesn't explain what he means by this, and it's not surprising. If he admits the difference between voluntary and involuntary actions, then he has already given up the argument. Of course, it would be embarrassing for him if he tried to deny the distinction, since scientists have been cataloguing and classifying the autonomic, semi-autonomic, sympathetic, and parasympathetic nervous system since Galen. Surely, no one would claim that reflex movements, such as when a hammer hits your knee and you kick, are controlled in exactly the same way as choosing a graduate school - or that a person is equally in control of their bodies when they are having a seizure and when they are not. Otherwise words would lose all meaning.
At this point, some readers may be pointing out that between the various positions on these questions articulated by Daniel C. Dennett, by Sam Harris, and by myself, there is only a semantic distinction - that is to say, substantively, we all agree, but we are using different language to describe the same reality. Yes, maybe so - but the language matters. In a certain sense, you could almost argue that all of science and philosophy too is just trying to find the right language to describe reality. I think the way that modern cognitive science describes this issue, in terms of "executive function" rather than either "free will" or "determinism," is the best.
Now, on the other side of the issue, there may also be people saying: "Yes, 'executive function' is probably a better, more precise term to use than 'free will.' But even 'executive function,' as a term, has its own problems. It, too, is ambiguous, vague, and may be misleading." With these people, I think I might provisionally agree. Science has a long way to go in studying this complex and somewhat mysterious process that we call executive function. It may very well turn out that, as our understanding increases, we will come to see that "executive function" is not much better as a vocabulary term than "free will" was, and we will have to replace it with yet another, more precise term - or, more likely, many more precise terms, describing very different and discrete phenomena. So be it. I agree. I can't wait to see where science takes us next.
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