I'm not going to say I don't think humans have free will, but I will say
that I don't understand what people mean when they say that we do.
I've heard it described as "the ability to make choices." It seems obvious
to me that humans can make choices. Without arguing too much about what a
human is in the first place, we can all admit humans have brains, don't
they? It seems to me one of the most important functions of the human
brain is to make choices. Humans choose this food or that food based on
their understanding of nutrition, or perhaps which way to walk based on
prior experience of the scenery, or what to say next to communicate their
point as best they can. Those sound like choices to me.
But then, computers make choices - and people seem to get fussy if you
suggest computers have free will. So what do they really mean by free
will? Why is it important for some to say that the choices we make are
"free" and the choices that a computer makes are not "free"?
I don't even know what a "free" choice is. Some people suggest a free
choice is one in which 'the chooser is not coerced'. This doesn't make
sense to me, because I can't imagine a situation in which the chooser is
not coerced. In fact, it seems to me that the process of making a
decision is the same thing as the process of being coerced
into a decision. Every decision that is made, whether it is made in a
computer, in a brain, or elsewhere, is not made in isolation. The outcome
of each choice always depends on a greater context. A computer program's
outcome depends not only on it's programming but upon the input from a
human at a keyboard, or from a file on a file system, or from sensor data
it recieves from connected hardware. A human decision similarly depends on
a context (that is much more obviously large). All of the human's past and
present, from 'inside of them' to 'outside of them', influences their
choice. Their culture, memories, sensory information, values, dislikes,
blood sugar levels, etc all coerce the human into a decision when
presented with a choice. Even if you tell me "I ate the ice cream because
I wanted to" you're expressing how a desire influenced the decision's
outcome. That desire was itself influenced by your evolution which makes
you particularly vulnerable to sugary treats.
What could a non-coerced choice even be? A choice that is uninfluenced by
anything whatsoever? What kind of useless choice is that? A choice
uninfluenced by wisdom and reason? A choice that wasn't affected by our
values nor our love? Nor by the valuable insights of others? It sounds like
an arbitrary and impossible choice to me.
We may draw a line around specific aspects of decision making such as
'logic', 'wisdom' or 'love' and say that these are factors we want to be
coerced by; perhaps a decision primarily influenced by these factors is how we
can define a 'free' choice. This does allow us to distinguish between (for
example) choices made under gunpoint and choices that were honestly
deliberated on. This is a meaningful distinction.
So perhaps with this definition, free choices are made when there is an
opportunity for honest contemplation. Although, importantly, this
definition does not capture is the idea of an independent 'chooser'. Under
this definition humans can surely make free choices (decisions that are
not made under threat of violence), but nowhere in this picture is there a
decision maker that is independent from the rest of the world, capable of
making decisions without being totally influenced by it's spatial and
temporal environment. Such a decision maker, perhaps a human or a human
spirit, can't simultaneously be independent from the world and connected
to the world.
In my opinion, this is where the real confusion of this discussion stems
from. People often jump into talking about what it means for an individual
to be free by presuming the existence of an individual. Maybe if people
exist separately we can talk about each of them making separate choices,
but no such individual has ever existed. Humans don't exist
separately. You may draw a line around some part of the world and call it
separate, but that line is always imaginary. Every piece of the world is
influenced, even defined, by everything around it in space and
time. Humans are no exception, we don't exist in isolation and therefore
can't possibly make choices in isolation. Rather than fearing the
unavoidable connection of all things, we should embrace it and recognize
that connection is the mechanism that enabled every decision ever
made. Granted, poor decisions are made frequently - but I would bet the
poor ones were rarely made shortly after the revelation of universal
connection...
What I've said here makes effectively no difference and was a waste of time. Well for the most part at least. If the perspective that 'we don't really exist as free, independent individuals' is uncomfortable, then this paragraph is for you. Specifically, if not being free to make your own choices makes you feel like your choices don't matter at all, please recognize that is not the case. I've only talked about how we're connected to everything else, and only mentioned that it's impossible to make an isolated decision, not that it's impossible to make a decision (so go ahead and continue making them). I haven't said anything about what matters. Whether you like it or not you will continue to make decisions and weigh what matters to you. Not being independent doesn't change the fact that humans care about things, and those things will continue to influence our decisions. Being connected shouldn't make us forget the importance of everything we thought was important a minute ago when we still imagined we were separate.
Recognizing that we are coerced into each decision is however important. Knowing that we are coerced no matter should make it obvious that understanding the factors that coerce us is crucially important. If you're stuck imagining yourself in isolation, then your choices feel bulletproof to outside influence and more easily forget your biases. From cultural influences to physical mechanisms - you will make better choices the better you understand the influences.
Understanding people don't make choices in a vacuum also changes how we mmight treat people who make bad choices. It's not simply an isolated human that commits a crime. If various environmental factors such as abuse, trauma, poverty, education are causing people to commit crime then we can focus on fixing those influences. It also means we may be able to change those influences to improve the decisions that people who have committed crimes may make.
It should be noted (but shouldn't have to be noted...) that we don't have to deny the dangerous realities of people's potential to be violent. We obviously can't just release killers after an anger management seminar. But If you don't accept that people are a product of more than what's in their skull then you will never accept rehabilitation by changing the outside of their skull is possible.