23 Feb 2025
Free Will is the prize – the treasure of independent thinking
Last year we lost sadly Daniel Dennett (1942 – 2024), the influential American philosopher who wrote so many fascinating books. The library finally has notified me that Daniel Dennett’s last book and autobiography “I’ve been thinking” is ready to borrow. So I went to the library and got it. As expected it is an interesting book. He writes about his time in Oxford and his mentor Gilbert Ryle, his approach to philosophy and his little life hacks. His books are popular because he has done ordinary-language philosophy like his adviser Ryle, as he writes in his chapter about his time in Oxford.
Despite his hands-on approach he always dared to tackle the big questions. Dennett’s law of philosophy for me is that for every big, fundamental question in philosophy there is at least one Daniel Dennett book:
- Consciousnes Explained (1991) about consciousness
- Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (1995) about evolution
- Freedom Evolves (2003) about free will
- Breaking the spell (2006) about religion
I have discussed all four questions with friends fron the FRIAM group in Santa Fe, New Mexico: consciousness, evolution, free will and religion. After a lot of discussions I have the impression that the solutions to the biggest questions can be found in the most ordinary things hiding in plain sight:
- For subjective consciousness humans have built tools to solve the “what it is like to be” question of subjective consciousness. The tools are simply the cinemas and movie theaters which show the stuff that Hollywood produces. Recently the GoPro cameras which show what it is like to be a hero fulfill a similar purpose
- Regarding the spell of religion we have built tools too. Churches, mosques, synagogues and temples are places where the magic of religion is used to form groups out of loosely coupled individuals. And the magic is nothing else but gene expression, as I tried to explain in the book from 5 years ago
- For the question of free will there is a tool which makes it possible too: ordinary language which enables “to be or not to be” thinking, and ordinary things such as notes and calendars help us to remember what we want to do, thereby guiding our decision making
Daniel Dennett argues in his book “Freedom Evolves” [4] that we have the free will that matters: the free will to make decisions without duress. He uses free here in the common-sense of free of being forced to do something: we have free will when no outer force compels our actions.
Why we have this free will at all is an in interesting, difficult question. On the lowest molecular and cellular level actions and decisions are deterministic [1], which could lead to the conclusion that free will is an illusion [2]. And yet most of us would agree with Kevin Mitchell that “we are not mere machines responding to physical forces but agents acting with purpose” [3]. So when does this deterministic behavior turn into unpredictable, indeterministic behavior? The basic question in every moment for a living being is: where does it want to go? What should it do next?
There is no easy answer to this complex question. How we decide what to do depends on a number of factors. Our decisions and choices are influenced by internal and external factors and by the wiring of neural circuits in our heads. Internal factors include the chemistry of the brain and the current mood. The large number of possible combinations of internal and external factors that influence our decisions leads to a combinatorial explosion of possible actions which offers room for the “free will” of many different personalities and distinct characters. The free will of a living being consists in the possibility to choose a specific action from a range of different options. The choice reflects the will – what the living being wants to do at that moment. A living being will primarily make decisions that correspond to its own intentions and will lead in the current situation to the best results based on personal experience. Even if we have the free will to make decisions without duress we can not change the wiring in our heads immediately (which reflects our character and personality, our likes and dislikes, and our general preferences). We can try to change our habits, and the habits in turn are able to change the wiring. We can also try to learn new things which change our perspective and influence our decisions. So it is fair to say that the situation is complicated.
Maybe it is more helpful to approach the problem from the other side and ask when are we free of external influences and how can we avoid acting under duress? Free will means people could have done otherwise and could have acted differently – if they would have made different decisions in the same circumstances. It is primarily language and consciousness that enable us to act different. Our language gives us the freedom of choice to act in one way or another, because it allows us to think about different options and outcomes, and it allows us to realize that others are trying to influence us. Daniel explains that imagining and reflecting on the outcomes of possible actions are the key here. In his autobiography “I’ve been thinking” he says [5]
Free will […] is an achievement, not a metphysical feature, of normal human beings who have learned how to control their many degrees of freedom – and to keep others from remotely controlling them – be developing such habits of self-stimulation as imagining and reflecting on the outcomes of possible actions.
Daniel describes free will as an achievement. Free will is indeed a valuable asset, because if it is manipulated then people can be influenced to do what others want: join a group, vote for a party, or buy a product. On a larger scale this manipulation is invaluable for religious groups, political parties and economic companies. Free will is the treasure island that everybody wants to own. Free will is the treasure that everybody wants to take away. Religious groups want to manipulate our free will to do whatever they preach. Parties want to manipulate our free will to vote for them. Companies want to manipulate our free will to buy their products.
There is in fact a whole 100 year old industry which has evolved to manipulate our free will: since Edward Bernays wrote his book about propaganda and PR in 1928, the emerging PR/advertising/marketing industry tries to influence our decisions in order to do what the advertisers want: follow their movements, join their groups, vote for their parties, buy their products, etc. This is similar to the hard problem of consciousness. There is a whole 100 year industry which has evolved to solve the hard problem of consciousness: the film industry and all forms of show business which earn money by showing us what it is like to be someone.
It turned out that the solution to the biggest questions in philosophy can not only be found in the most ordinary things, the big problems of philosophy have led to giant industries over the last century. Show business grants us a glimpse what it is like to be someone else (whether Indiana Jones hero or Han Solo rebel) and the advertising industry constantly tries to take away our free will. The best argument that we have free will is the existence of a whole industry that tries to influence it, isn’t it?
[1] Robert Sapolsky, “Determined”, Penguin Press, 2023
[2] Sam Harris, Free Will, Simon & Schuster, 2012
[3] Kevin J. Michell, “Free Agents: How Evolution gave us Free Will”, Princeton University Press, 2023
[4] Daniel C. Dennett, “Freedom Evolves”, Viking Books, 2003
[5] Daniel C. Dennett, “I’ve been thinking”, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2023
( The Unsplash photo of a trail is from user Erin O’Brien, and the Unsplash photo of a pile of gold is from user Zlatáky )
Hi, Jochen,
I thought I would beard you in your den!
I think the question is whether to privilege the first person or the third person view. To anyone who privileges the third person view the question of whether animals have free will or humas don’t is just cartesian silliness. To an experience monist, such as myself, first- and third-person views are both presumptively valid, but prove themselves by their capacity to predict future experiences. If you think that you are better able to predict your own behavior than your partner — or your dog, for that matter — then the evidence is against you. First-person accounts of behavioral causality are notoriously shoddy. I feel that that was a bullet that both Ryle and Dennet were unable to bite.
Nick Thompson
February 23rd, 2025 at 8:39 pmpermalink
To have free will or not—that is the question.
Daniel Dennett’s view is intricate, to say the least. He argues that we do have free will—but only if we first redefine what we mean by it. He concedes that, under the traditional definition, we do not. Or something along those lines.
Let me illustrate my perspective through an analogy.
The human mind evolved for a purpose: to maximize the survival and replication of our genes. Yet, our perception of why we act is limited—distorted, even. Within our subjective reality, we seem to possess free will. But how can we be sure? I would argue that our self-awareness is far too incomplete to truly understand why we do what we do.
Now, the analogy.
I spent a professional lifetime developing real-time optimization software for industrial applications—until I sold the IP and, with it, my right to continue in that field. The software I created continuously observes its environment and makes decisions to optimize a predefined objective. Of course, it is vastly simpler than the human mind, but if it could introspect, it might conclude that it, too, has free will. It perceives the world, evaluates possible actions, and selects the best course. Within its own frame of reference, it appears to act freely.
But behind the scenes? I wrote the code. The software does exactly what I designed it to do.
Now, back to the human mind. Evolution shaped our cognitive architecture to solve an optimization problem. We are blind to the full extent of its workings, so we assume we have free will. But, in the grand scheme, we are doing precisely what evolution designed us to do.
Free will, then, may be nothing more than the illusion of agency within a system we cannot fully comprehend.
Pieter Steenekamp
February 24th, 2025 at 8:22 ampermalink
I can’t help but think you put too much emphasis on language. Unless you redefine language to mean something very generic so that it applies to apes and mice and such, or unless you argue that language is a special form of some upstream ability, the argument claims humans are categorically different from (non-human) animals. Are you arguing that humans have free will but non-human animals do not?
A similar (more general) objection lies with the overemphasis of culture. Is your argument claiming that apes and mice have no culture? If so, can we define culture well enough to build an argument not susceptible to special pleading?
glen
February 24th, 2025 at 4:42 pmpermalink
Nick said:
> If you think that you are better able to predict your own behavior than your partner — or your dog, for that matter — then the evidence is against you.
There’s no way there’s evidence the dog can predict what I’ll be doing, say, 20 years from now, much less predict it *better* than I can predict it. So, as always, when someone on the internet claims they have more evidence for their position than you have for yours, you need to ask to see that evidence.
glen
February 24th, 2025 at 9:41 pmpermalink
I believe there was a small mix-up.
I submitted the piece that appeared under Nick’s name, but I’m not sure who wrote the one posted under mine.
Pieter Steenekamp
February 25th, 2025 at 2:48 ampermalink
Oh dear, these “blond moments” are happening a bit too often as I age—and I’m not even blond!
I misread the connection between the author and the post.
Please disregard my previous message.
pieter steenekamp
February 25th, 2025 at 2:56 ampermalink
Glen, Clearly you have neither a dog nor a partner. [};-)]
When you put crumbs on the floor while making toast in the morning, who knows best who is going to clean them up. When you tell a child that you will “do it in a minute”, who knows best when you are going to do it? Anecdotes aside, the papers over o the FRIAM thread have some of the evidence you seek.
Pieter, I am way with you on this one.
Nick
Nick Thompson
February 25th, 2025 at 8:32 pmpermalink
Oh, and …
Putting, aside the first person view for a moment, what exactly is the hard problem? Or, if we agree only to adopt a third person view, where exactly does the problem of free will arise?
Nick Thompson
February 25th, 2025 at 8:38 pmpermalink
I remember we had the discussion about first person view and third person view. If I think about it now in this context I would say normally animals including ourselves perceive themselves in the first person view and others in the third person view. Social animals take a step further and perceive the own group in the first person view and other groups in the third person view.
The hard problem is of course to understand the first person view in others (the hard problem of subjective consciousness) and the third person view of ourselves (related to self-awareness and the problem of free will). From this point of view the two fundamental problems are related.
jofr
February 25th, 2025 at 11:20 pmpermalink