Do We Have Free Will?

Is our sense of freedom an illusion?

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How free is our will?

We make countless choices every day. From small decisions like what to wear to major life choices like purchasing a home, we feel a sense of agency. It feels like we can freely choose what we want. However, each of these choices may be influenced by peer pressure, societal expectations, or demands from family members. Then there are hormonal influences, genetic predispositions, substances, and our physiology that impact us.

One study found that experienced parole judges tended to rule more favourably after having lunch and more harshly when they were hungry right before their meal break (Danziger et al., 2011). We cannot escape our bodies and the society we live in. However, this is not the end of free will: While these factors influence us, they may not determine our choices (Clarke et al., 2021). It could be argued that satisfying societal expectations is part of what we want and should be included in the umbrella term of “our will” (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). Similarly, some have suggested that since our bodies belong to us, physiological influences are still part of what we, as holistic and embodied creatures want (Shapiro & Spaulding, 2024).

Has science disproved free will?

In a famous experiment, the late American neuroscientist Benjamin Libet and colleagues (1983) found that brain waves related to finger movements seemed to occur prior to people wanting to move their fingers. This study is often cited as proof that free will is an illusion. Although interesting and informative, this study is not as clear cut as it is often made out to be. It is uncertain if the measured neural signals really cause finger movements (Schurger et al., 2012). There are also problems with the experimental design: Trying to sense when exactly the will to move a finger arises is at best imprecise. Matching this event to a moving dot on a special clock takes effort and is likely impacted by processing delays (see Pang, 2024a). A small lag between this process and a direct measurement of neural activity seems to be unsurprising. However, there are more compelling problems facing the idea of free will.

Has neuroscience disproved free will?

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Science has made incredible progress and we are able to understand, explain, and predict most of what’s going on in the physical world. A big part of this success rests on the assumption that physical events are based on a combination of previous events and the laws of nature (Hoefer, 2024). Like falling dominos where every tumbled piece can be traced back to the first falling tile, a widely held theory—called causal determinism—suggests that every event in the universe is ultimately the result of the initial conditions at the very beginning of time (Van Strien, 2021). Many view the mind as a direct result of brain processes, which in turn is just a biochemical machine that follows the laws of nature (Harris, 2012). This reasoning suggests that our decisions are not free at all but simply the result of the laws of nature acting on the previous state of the world.

Despite its successes, causal determinism is an incomplete theory that cannot explain the causes of the initial conditions (Chen, 2023). Another problem comes from quantum mechanics, which suggests that at the smallest levels, nature does not seem to follow deterministic laws (Del Santo & Gisin, 2021). While this only applies to very small things, it still indicates that the universe is not entirely deterministic. Moreover, some biochemical processes in the brain occur at a level where quantum effects could play a role. This may not give us back free will but at least dismantles aspects of complete determinism.

Consciousness: The missing piece?

Although our brain processes may be biochemical, they produce something that is distinctly different from biochemistry: Subjective and conscious experiences. We still don’t know how consciousness arises (see “what is consciousness?”, Pang, 2023). We know that there is a clear link between our conscious experiences and the brain (Pang, 2024b) and what we perceive enters our conscious awareness through our physical sensory system. Some have taken this to imply that the mind is nothing more than physical processes (see Chalmers, 2003). This is a possibility that has to be taken seriously. However, it must not be taken for granted or become an unexamined assumption (see Wilson, 2005).

Even if consciousness were found to be entirely physical, it is so different from any other known physical phenomenon that it may end up in a different category from what we know so far. Without understanding the underlying mechanisms that give rise to consciousness, we cannot draw any informed conclusions on what impact consciousness may have on our decision making. Some have argued that consciousness is merely a by-product—or an epiphenomenon—that cannot cause anything, a bit like we directly impact our shadow but not vice versa (William, 2023). While this neatly solves the problem of mental causation, there is not much evidence for this and few scholars hold this position.

We need to learn more about consciousness to understand free will.

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Suggesting that the mind can have a causal effect on the physical world does not require esoteric beliefs. An electromagnetic field does not consist of matter but can still exert a force on material objects. Conversely, material objects can generate an electromagnetic field. Electromagnetism is a physical process but classical Newtonian mechanics is insufficient to describe it: A new framework, pioneered by scientists like Faraday and Maxwell, was needed (Byrne, 2015). The same may be true for consciousness. I would argue that until we have such a framework (or until we have evidence to show that consciousness is just an epiphenomenon), we cannot rule out that our consciousness can impact the choices we make.

Do we have free will? We don’t yet know. And I would suggest that until we solve the puzzle of consciousness, we cannot meaningfully answer this question.