Freewill is one of those things which is an underlying part of our being. Its existence is necessary for our morality, gives us our criminal justice system and is what make us humans so very different to the other animals. Or so it is said. There is no doubt that freewill carries with it a lot of problems, paradoxes even. They can seem very difficult to sort out, although mainly, it seems to me, because we expect too much of it.

In fact, our legal system does not demand a philosophical debate about freedom of will. Essentially, it asks whether the accused did what is alleged, whether it was contrary to law, whether his action was free from duress by a third party, whether he intended to do it and whether he had the ability to understand the nature and consequence of his actions. If these conditions are met, then he is guilty and will be punished. In other words, if someone who is apparently sane intentionally breaks the law, we don't enquire into his thought processes in deciding whether or not he is guilty, although it may be relevant in sentencing.

Religion goes further. It is based on the premise that I have the freedom to choose between right and wrong, where right is defined as a series of rules. It presumes that my actions are neither determined by past events nor taken at random. If they were, then I could not be blamed for them. Religion claims that because they are neither pre-determined nor random acts they are therefore somehow peculiarly mine. But religion also requests that I give morality a place in my life such that it will overcome all my normal emotions and instincts. Except that no-one has ever explained to me quite how a decision could be made in such a way. If morality is not an integral part of my emotional make-up, then I do not know how it can affect or indeed overcome my emotions. After all, we now know from quite a lot of reports that people who, by reason of brain damage, are no longer motivated by their emotions find it virtually impossible to make any sort of decision, never mind follow the golden path of morality.

Obviously it is possible to use our reason to see in a clinical way whether or not a decision would comply with a particular moral code, but that is a trivial part of what is required to exercise one's freewill in this sense. Using reason without emotion is like having a map, but not wanting to go anywhere. You have also to decide actually to comply with your intellectual finding. How can that be possible in the absence of motivation? And motivation comes from our emotions (as modified by our experiences). Our decisions cannot be made in a vacuum. To work, our morality has to be an emotion - just like all the other competing emotions.* And if morality does in fact have an overwhelming emotional weight, then I will simply be responding to my emotions, which is hardly something to warrant Brownie points. So this rather ill-defined concept of freewill seems to me to be hollow, to have no meaning.

From this, you may think that I am advocating a straightforward causal link between what has happened in my life and what I will decide to do in the future. A causal link there may be, but straightforward, I am happy to say, it is not.

Let us first get the idea that genetics explains everything out of the way. There have been studies of genetically identical twins now for very many years who, for one reason or another, have been brought up by different parents. Whilst certainly there are similarities between them - they of course look identical, and there is certainly a genetic component to the way they behave, detailed studies have shown that their genetic make-up generally accounts for no more than about 30% of peoples' behaviour. The rest is down to the way they've been brought up; the lives they have led.  

It seems to me that there is in fact a fascinating process which is involved with our development. It makes predicting what we will do at some time in the future, and even in the next few minutes, so complex that in practice it is impossible. Using the most powerful computers we find it virtually impossible to get anything more than an approximation of the weather for the next few hours. Chaos theory rules - the flapping of a butterfly's wings producing a hurricane on the other side of the world - and that same complexity exists in our own lives. We are constantly in a state of flux. We come into contact constantly with outside sources of information, other people's ideas and influences. We may simply see a friend in the street or leaf fall from a tree and our next step will be different to what it would have been. And the mightiest computer will not have the processing power to tell us in advance what that outcome will be.

But it is not just a matter of cause following event following cause. This is where our intellect comes in. We are able to respond not just in a robotic, mechanical kind of way to what has happened, but to hold the situation up to the light and examine it. We consciously apply our reason to what is going on. We learn to do this. Our reason enables us to foresee the likely outcome of what our emotions and instincts are proposing. And this awareness will, in turn, feed back into the decision-making process itself.

Curiously, though, this also means that we can let randomness in as well. What if our thoughts are, in part, the consequence of random interactions between molecules in our neurons? It is after all quite a possibility given the quantum nature of the world at atomic and sub-atomic level. One may think that this would lead to madness but, in fact, what may be uncaused thoughts (in moderation) could have a beneficial effect. The point is that our thoughts are ultimately the subject of our intellectual verification processes and so a randomly produced thought need be no more dangerous to our sanity than a suggestion read in a book or a discussion with a friend.  And it could be just as productive of rational change.  If we conjecture that such randomness is inherent in our brains, then in the days before books, who knows, it may have been a significant way of making us look at things differently - giving us a sort of creativity. That creativity may in turn have given us a greater fitness to survive.

Now whether I' am really in charge of what goes on in my life in some incomprehensible way or whether it is, as I think, a sequence of events so complex as to be unpredictable, in which I take part in some way through my consciousness of what is happening, as a sort of overseer, may never be the subject of universal agreement. What I do know, however, is that I am an interested, and sometimes slightly detached, observer of how my life unfolds. And so, whatever the cause of our ability to see things in new and different, even slightly different, ways, I am very grateful for it. I would not like boredom to set in.

PJB

21 January 2010

*For a fascinating lecture in the TED series by Paul Zak on the evidence for oxytocin being the molecule which motivates us to act morally, click on the following link -

http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_zak_trust_morality_and_oxytocin.html

1 December 2011

For some thoughts on the nature of morality please click here