‘Ultimate’ Free Will and Materialism
In recent conversations with theists I’ve come across a common objection to the possibility of free will if there be no supernatural dimension to the world in which we live. The argument goes along the lines of:
P1. Materialism assumes we consist of only matter (i.e. atoms)
P2. Atoms don’t have free will
C. We experience free will so there must be more to this world than just matter
an alternative is:
P1. Materialism assumes we consist of only matter (i.e. atoms)
P2. Atoms don’t have free will
C. Under the materialistic worldview we can’t ultimately have free will
I’ve heard this argument couched in numerous ways but the essence of it is that if our smallest bits don’t have free will then we can’t explain the freedom we appear to experience.
I can think of two answers to this.
The first (which I’m not personally convinced of) would be that we only have the appearance of freedom and that, as participants, we are able to fool ourselves into thinking we have control over what we do. My analogy for this is where the desperate dog-owner repeatedly tries to tell their disobedient dog to sit and when they finally notice that the dog is about to sit of its own accord, quickly say “sit!” in order to give themselves the feeling of being in control. This would make what we experience as free will a kind of a self-deception and, like I said, I’m not convinced this is the case but it is a valid answer to the first problem pointed out above. (Although, I must say that I think there is some truth to this at times, especially when it comes to self-justification).
The second, and far more powerful, option is to look at the analogy of music. Take a CD of your favourite musician and if we look closely we’ll see that the ‘music’ is made of only on or off states. 0s or 1s. When we play a CD we experience music but when we look at what this music (on a CD) is made of we can see that it’s just binary bits. And as we all know, a 0 or a 1 is not in itself music. This second argument would suggest that both free will and music are the emergent properties of their component parts doing something.
In the second set of arguments above I italicised the word ultimately. My analogy of music also helps to address the logical fallacy of the usage of this word. I don’t believe there is such a thing as ultimate music. Nor do I believe there is such a thing as ultimate free will. I believe that both are subjectively experienced and are results of non-free and non-musical atoms and bits doing something. We experience free will just as we experience music.
The use of the word ‘ultimate’ in this argument tries to imply that there are only two kinds of free will; ultimate free will or no free will at all. This is a false dichotomy. I would argue that there is at least another type of free will and that is the kind that is experienced subjectively and is only explainable at the macro level of bundles of atoms that are doing something. A world within a world. And using the music analogy once again, you can see how silly this argument is when I say “There is only either ultimate music or no music at all”.
“Free will” is a word that we’ve made up to describe an aspect we observe of the world around us. We have a tendency to want our words and categories to clearly demarcate things we observe into black/white, on/off, etc. But sometimes the words we invent fail at a point when the thing we are describing is a gradient, like ‘red’ (when does red become orange?) or ‘alive’ (are viruses alive? is fire alive?) or ‘music’ (is a ‘chirp’ music? what about a vibration on a violin string? or wind in the trees?). Free will is one of these words. We can observe a gradient of organisms with various abilities to do things. Free will is a gradual and emergent process and to treat it as a binary state is to become a slave to a simplistic understanding of the world and to imperfect vocabulary.
Tags: absolute, free will, materialistic, ultimate
Cheers for the post, Damian. Always fun stuff to think about, but I think the most urgent/important thing is not debating the existence of free will (whether or not we are ‘choosing’ to do ‘1′ or ‘2′, or whether we ‘do’ ‘1′ or ‘2′ as emergent functions of a complex system). I think it’s most urgent/important – in the light of the manifest awareness that we can [and cannot] do certain things – to discern which action(s) (i.e. ‘1′, ‘2′ or ‘3′) are best for a given circumstance (i.e. ‘a’, ‘b’, ‘c’ or ‘z’, etc.).
That we ‘act’ (i.e. that we are active agents) is certain (unless you’re either 1) a crazy post-modernist materialist insisting we’re cogs in a machine or 2) a hyper-hyper Calvinist leaving no room for human human freedom!!)…
How we should act is the real question…
I agree that ‘how we should act’ is an important question. But this post was to put to bed one particular fallacious line of argument regarding what we call ‘free will’ and how that applies to those of us with a materialist worldview.
And as I mentioned on your blog, I really don’t know how two people can ever see eye-to-eye on some issues when one starts their ‘morality’ with the belief that there is a supernatural component to the world and others who, like me, don’t. And we see this played out all the time: the issue I raised of whether it is ethical to take the morning after pill (where a fertilised embryo is barred from adhering to the wall of the uterus) ends in very different conclusions depending on whether you believe there is a magical ’soul’ created at the moment of conception as opposed to the belief that it is nothing more than two cells without plans, feelings or personality.
The materialistic view (mine, at least) sees that people gradually emerge and that there is a period of time where there is a balance of suffering/benefit is in favour of the mother and, gradually, where the child qualifies as a human with equivalent rights. But it’s a grey area and up for debate. Whereas if you believe that all people are equal and have souls from the moment the first cells start dividing (which modern-day Christians often do) then you’ve got no choice but to see this as an act of murder.
So who’s right? And how do we know? I’ve looked and looked at as much evidence as I can find and found nothing that suggests to me that there is a God or some kind of spiritual aspect to our world. What more can one do?
The best we can really hope for is compromise – which, on the whole, seems to be what happens anyway.
On souls, I like C.S. Lewis’ quote: “You don’t have a soul, you are one… You have a body.”
And I’d have severe concern at the ‘Christian’ logic behind the view that murder is only murder if a person has a ’soul’…
Moral/ethics linked to value-judgments, linked to worldview, linked to epistemology. If we wish to know ‘how we should act’ I think it starts there… (and this also relates to what kinds of ‘evidence’ you’ll accept/consider when it comes to ‘evidence’ for God/spirituality)
But yes, I don’t think ‘free will’ (at least the way it’s often discussed) either proves or disproves God.
While I think that epistemology is a very important discussion in itself it’s not really relevant to this topic which is regarding a common fallacy about free will and materialism.
I’ll address that topic over on your blog fella. (When I get a moment).