I will begin with what Greek philosopher Aristotle said 2,300 years ago:- “The more you know, the more you realise you don’t know.”; this was what I felt while trying to understand the great free will debate. At some point, it felt esoteric to me. This article delves into the realms of metaphysics and talks about the age-old question ‘do we have free will?‘ Before I even begin, I shall warn you that I might have gaps in my knowledge, and I will be more than happy to be corrected on my wrong intuitions and interpretations.

So what exactly is free will? Oxford dictionary defines free will as “the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one’s own discretion.”, in other words, given a chance to go back in time, we would be able to act differently than we did originally. This definition that we intuitively ascribe to free will has some flaws, which is the whole point of this discussion. Before that, I will introduce three major viewpoints that people take on free will:-

1. Libertarians: People who believe that free will is logically incompatible with a deterministic universe. As they claim humans have free will, the universe must be non-deterministic.

2. Hard Determinists: People who believe that everything in the universe is already predetermined; That is, past events can be used to predict the future. And they claim that free will is incompatible in a deterministic universe.

3. Compatibilists: People who believe that free will is compatible in a deterministic universe

Now, let me argue that our universe is deterministic. That is, any future event can be determined using past events, provided we have information about all the states in this universe (special emphasis on the all.) Anything that is currently happening is the consequence of the Big Bang. This is what chaos theory teaches us. I shall not dive deep into the physics of these since that isn’t inside the scope of this discussion. Then why can’t we predict the outcome of a simple coin toss if the universe is deterministic? The answer is simple; A coin toss is usually ascribed as a random event only because of our ignorance. The very use of the word random here denotes that humans aren’t capable of measuring the angle before a coin has been tossed, or the torque it is imparting etc., to predict the outcome accurately. Expanding further on this, in 1961, meteorologist Edward Lorenz tried to simulate weather patterns using 12 variables. After its first run, he wanted to see the data sequence again, so he re-ran the model by entering the values obtained halfway through the first run. It was expected to get the same values since he was running again from a previous state. But to his surprise, the values diverged from the original observations. Initially, he thought the computer was broken, but he observed that the computer used six-digit precision for the variables in the first run. And in the second run, the computer used only three-digit precision by rounding off. So if the initial observation was 0.706132, during the re-run, he entered 0.706000, the inaccuracy will be 0.000132. This slight inaccuracy can lead to huge changes in the further iterations of the simulation. This is called the butterfly effect. Now, why is it relevant to our discussion? This tells us that no matter how much we try, we cannot build a device that can measure with zero inaccuracy or a device that measures up to infinite decimal points. Hence our universe is deterministic yet uncertain.

Why is proving the universe to be deterministic important? I shall elucidate this using this simplified step-by-step proof I saw in a research paper:-

1. We have free will only if we can choose otherwise. (Intuitive definition of free will as mentioned earlier)

2. We can choose otherwise only if we can claim that we can choose otherwise, given the laws and the past until just before our choice.

3. If determinism is true, we can never choose otherwise, given the laws and the past until just before our choice.

4. Therefore, if determinism is true, we can never choose otherwise.

5. Therefore, if determinism is true, we have no free will.

Taking into account the previous argument for a deterministic universe, from (5), we could say we have no free will in the traditional sense (essentially debunking the libertarian view.) That is, given a chance to go back into the exact same state of the universe, you will choose to do the same thing, again and again, no matter how many times you did it. This is what the laws of physics suggest.

Okay, now let us recap what we have covered so far:-

1. Discussed the different viewpoints to free will.

2. Argued that the universe is deterministic.

3. Argued that if the universe is deterministic, then we have no free will in the traditional sense (debunking the libertarian view.)

Coming back to the different approaches taken on free will. Libertarian views have already been dealt with. Hard determinism seems a plausible explanation for free will, but this approach is a minority amongst philosophers and is criticised for being a crude way to look at life. And then there’s compatibilism, which seems much more plausible than others.

So do we have a “free will”? I will try to explain by paraphrasing what theoretical physicist Brian Greene said. The traditional notion of free will that we are the ultimate authors of our actions does not have a basis in our current understanding of the physical world. Although as a compatibilist, we are free in some sense. If you look at inanimate objects like rocks, they have a very limited behavioural repertoire because of their coarse internal organisation. You try to have a conversation with a rock it doesn’t do much, it may vibrate a little bit, but that’s about it. The difference between us and rock is that our internal organisation, by aeons of evolution through natural selection, is so refined that we have a huge repertoire of behaviours that are finely organised to stimuli from the external world. You ask me a question (that’s a stimulus), and all of a sudden, these computational processes goes into action, and as a result, I answer that question. In other words, freedom is not that we are free from the laws of physics. But our freedom is from the constrained repertoire of behaviours that a rock has. Do we pick them? We do not. Do we freely choose them? We do not.

We could condense the previous paragraphs into one sentence:- “Traditional sense of free will is an illusion.” This is a very dangerous statement to put out if not properly justified. Free will has potential ramifications if it isn’t understood perfectly well. A study by Vohs and Schooler showed that participants who were told they didn’t have free will were more prone to behave unethically. The same goes with the tendency for fatalism (if everything is predetermined, why should I even try to do anything?). If we choose to be fatalistic, that’s because we choose to interpret the information (free will is an illusion) like that. Fatalism and free will being an illusion are two different things where fatalism is a wrong interpretation of free will. The same reasoning applies to the unethical behaviour of the participants in the study of Vohs and Schooler. This deterministic approach can also lead to scathing arguments regarding the morality of punishing criminals for their crimes. I do not intend to comment much on it due to the philosophical inclination it has. But all I would say is free will being an illusion doesn’t mean people can harm anyone as they wish since it’s ‘meant’ to happen. Just like we take precautions against natural disasters like hurricanes by building floodwalls, we take measures against unethical behaviour (measures like prison sentences.)

So how does being a compatibilist help someone in their day-to-day life? What’s the point of knowing such a thing if it’s too controversial? It’s like asking the point of learning Einstein’s general theory of relativity or Gödel’s incompleteness theorems as an ordinary person. Maybe it’s useful. Maybe it’s not. It all comes down to scientific curiosity. However, I will state some meaningful ways to look at free will. Firstly I will quote what Brian Greene had expressed about the same in a debate:- “Free will is the fact that we’re able to carry out this amazing spectrum of behaviours - we can walk, we can talk, we can sing, we can come up with ideas... the fact that they had an earlier cause, maybe even back at the Big Bang, to me [it] doesn’t take anything away from creativity, it doesn’t take anything away from originality, it doesn’t take anything away from having a sense of authorship over your own actions because you’re the immediate cause of those actions. They emerge through you, through your particles. Your particles and your brain are configured in such a way that when certain stimuli hit your body, you say and do certain things. [And] the fact that it’s determined; who cares.” Another interpretation is that it teaches us to be compassionate towards others—especially mentally ill people—and accept their quirks better. And also, as concluded in this research paper, a deterministic view of life can make people more sensitive to the subtle influences that can affect their goals and actions, making them better equipped to reach their goals.

If you still have sceptical thoughts like “how can complex activities like thought and consciousness be governed by simple laws of physics?” Let us look at the Game of Life developed by mathematician John Conway to demonstrate how complexity can arise from just simple rules. The Game of Life consists of infinite grids of cells; each cell can be either dead or living (living cells denoted by coloured cells and dead cells vice versa), as shown in the figure below:-

A typical cell in this grid has eight neighbours, as shown below:-

The rules that govern this grid are as follows:-

1. Every living cell with exactly two or three neighbours survives to the next iteration.

2. Every dead cell that has exactly three neighbours becomes a living cell.

3. The remaining cells that don’t satisfy the above conditions become dead cells.

The figure shown below shows a demonstration for each of the above-stated rules:-

The Game of Life is a zero-player game meaning that given a set of initial states, it doesn’t need further input for its evolution. A demonstration of The Game of Life (shown below) shows the complex patterns that could arise after many iterations. This system can say a lot about life and how free will works. And it shows how complexity can arise from simple rules.

I would like to end this article with a quote from Brian Greene’s book Until the End of Time:- “We need to recognise that although the sensation of free will is real, the capacity to exert free will—the capacity for the human mind to transcend the laws that control physical progression—is not.” I repeat, sensation.