Introduction

I know that Philosophers do things properly (sometimes, at least...) but, in casual conversations about Free Will, my experience is that most people talk about whether our will is free while assuming we all know what freedom is, and the conversations often go round in circles.  However, if we start with the recognition that, in general, the meaning of freedom is both paradoxical and ambiguous [see The Meaning of Freedom] then our discussion of Free Will can become far more productive.

Why ask about Free Will?  For a start, it is an interesting philosophical question - but it is much more important than that.  Morality is a vital part of human life, a basic aspect of the way we relate to one another; we hold people responsible for what they do, but not for what is done to them - for what they freely choose to do, but not what they do not freely choose.  So the way we relate to other people is determined, to a large extent, by their their freedom (or, more precisely, our understanding of their freedom) or lack of it.  And the law requires that we have acted freely in order for a contract to be established or (in many situations) for a crime to be committed.  The moral and legal principles which shape our lives both rest upon a belief that people are acting freely.

I have often heard people discussing the question as an abstract generality: "Do I have Free Will?" But this is not a question which can be answered, tempting though it may be.  Freedom is both paradoxical and ambiguous, so questions about freedom can only be answered when you have a specific meaning and context in mind.  Asking, "Am I free?" is like asking, "Does food taste good?" - the only useful question is, "Does this item of food taste good to this person, on this occasion?"  So, instead of asking about some abstract quality, you need to ask about a specific event - not "Am I free?  Do I have free will?", but "Was this choice made freely - understanding 'freely' in this sense?"

Freedom and Belief

Some people believe they have no freedom, and this seems to function as an aticle of faith for them.  "Okay, you think you made a free choice," they say, "but in reality, you could not have chosen any differently." 

Freedom and Determinism

Many people argue that our choices cannot be free because we live in a deterministic universe. But they rarely question why they believe the universe is deterministic, or how strong is the evidence for this?

Some people they believe in a deterministic universe because God decides everything which happens; for other people it is because they believe in science, unbreakable laws of nature and cause and effect, but it seems clear to me that we do not live in a deterministic universe.  Firstly, God does not determine everything that happens (at least, the Christian God does not [see The Sovereignty of God] - other religions may have different views) and, secondly, modern science is clear that we do not live in a deterministic universe.

Some people believe in a deterministic universe because God decides everything which happens.  My main experience is with the Christian faith, and Christiians are divided on this question.  Some Christians clearly believe that God decides everything - or, at least, they appear to: in my experience, they often make the claim, but then back off when you start to talk about the details.  In any case, many other Christians do not believe this, and the Bible clearly teaches the opposite - that God gives us both freedom and responsibility.  Again, many Christians believe that God knows the future, but the Bible does not teach this [see The Sovereignty of God].  Of course, other religions may have different views.

Some people believe in a deterministic universe because science teaches this - or so they understand.  In school, they were taught about unbreakable laws of nature and cause and effect, and this seems to lead to a deterministic universe.  But they were probably also taught in school about the inherent random nature of many subatomic processes - radioactive decay being the most obvious example.  If you take an atom of radioactive uranium, you know the probability of it decaying in any particular timeframe, but you cannot - even in theory - predict it it will actually decay.   We cannot predict what will happen because it is unpredictable, not because we lack the knowledge and understanding to predict it (see Bell's Theorem).

So while the laws of nature may be unbreakable, only some aspects of the world operate according to cause and effect as we usually understand it.  Subatomic particles simply do not have both position and momentum.  When we fire an electron or photon at a double slit, we cannot tell where it will end up, and we cannot tell which slit it went through.  The apparent knowledge and certainty of Newtonian mechanics has been replaced by the uncertainty of chaos and the probability of Quantum Mechanics.

So science does not teach that individual events are all predetermined.  But when you put together lots of undetermined events the situation is slightly less clear.  Sometimes when you put together many random events (the molecules in a gas colliding, for example), you get a clear and predictable effect at the macro scale (Boyle's Law, for example).  But sometimes a small random event has a real, significant effect in the observable world: Schrödinger's Cat is the classic (thought experiment) proof of this, but it has been known for a long time - "For want of a nail, the shoe was lost..."  And it is now well known that, according to chaos theory, the flap of a butterfly's wing can cause a tornado on the other side of the world.

So, while it is still possible to believe that the future is completely determined, science does not tell us this - and science does tell us that we cannot (even in principle) predict the future.  We do not, in any meaningful sense, live in a deterministic universe.

And, while the future is not completely determined, it is very often, to a large extent, predictable: we expect the sun to rise tomorrow morning, we expect boiling water to feel hot and ice to feel cold.  And that is good because a largely predictable future enables us to make meaningful choices.

Free Will and Choice

When you have a choice to make, it is valid to ask: is this a free choice?  Is this choice being made freely, or is it determined?  And, as we have noted, the answer mostly depends on the meaning of 'free' in this context.

When you have a choice to make, you do not know what you will choose.  (If you know, then you have already chosen, even if you not have yet acted on your choice.)  If asked, at this point, "Is your choice here a free one?" I imagine the most obvious assumption about what you are being asked is: is anyone exerting pressure on you to make a particular choice?  Are you (or those you love) being threatened with some harm if you make the 'wrong' choice?  If you are being threatened, it is no longer a free choice: you are being coerced.

We have heard this many times - if not in real life, then in books and films and plays - "I had no choice!  He would have killed me / hurt my family / ruined my reputation..."  Or, alternatively, "You had no choice: you were attacked, it was him or you."  We are happy to accept that this was not a free choice, as long as we are convinced that the threat was real, and responding to the threat was the right thing to do.  We don't accept the excuse if the threat was not real (when a white person in the American South feels threatened simply because a black person is somewhere 'they don't belong') or if the threat is to reveal an immoral or illegal action (when they should accept the punishment or penalty which their actions deserve).  So we decide whether a choice was free or coerced, at least partly, on the basis of the moral status of that choice.

And, I would suggest, even if you are being coerced, you still have a choice: when a character is faced with the traditional "Give me the password or I shoot!" kind of threat, they always have the choice to say "No."  "I had no choice!" may be an understandable claim, but it is not actually true: whatever you are threatened with, you still have a choice to make, and you are still responsible for your choice - of course, you are not responsible for the choice, or the action, of the person making the threat.

We do make free choices.  Of course, the choices we make are constrained in many different ways.  We may be bribed, or given some other incentive, to make a certain choice.  We may be limited by our resources, or our obligations, or by ignorance of some possibilities.  I am not free to fly like a bird, or live on Mars, or become a ballet dancer.  But all these constraints do not change the basic reality: I am presented with choices to make, and I choose from the options I am aware of at the time.

And the constraints are, to a large extent, the things which define who I am.  My likes and dislikes, my desires and commitments - they may limit the choices I am able to make, or am willing to consider, but they are also a vital part of who I am.  If I am to make a choice, then the 'I' which makes the choice is the person with this unique history and relationships and place in history.  Someone with different constraints (irritating though they may be at times) would be a different person.

Given the options open to me, how do I make a choice?  It seems to me that there are three basic questions which need to be asked.

• What do I want to have?
• What do I want to create?
• What do I want to become?

I cannot choose to be a different person, but I can choose to become a different person.  In fact, every choice I make is, to some extent, a decision about what kind of person I want to become, because nothing stays the same for ever.

I am not free to do many things: I cannot become an opera singer or a professional footballer.  But I am free to choose whether to honour commitments I have made, or abandon those people and commitments.  I am free to choose whether to focus on understanding and caring for other people, or on seeking pleasure and having fun.  I may never become what I would like to be, but I am free to make choices which move me in that direction - or away from it because, it turns out, I want other things more.

Summary

Do you have free will?  It depends on the meaining and context you have in mind.  Your freedom is limited in may different ways.  But, yes, you do have freedom: every choice you make is an exercise of freedom.  You decide what kind of future you want to create, in a world which is largely predictable while not being totally determined.

if you would like to read more, here is another article which covers much of the same ground from a slightly different perspective: How to think about free will.

[See also Freedom, The Meaning of Freedom and The Sovereignty of God]