Exploring the Illusion of Free Will 18

This is the eighteenth of a series of posts where I will be sharing the transcripts of George Ortega’s show which he has so generously made available on his website.

I will share both the link and copy the text as well. This is convenient for those who subscribe to my blog by email. You can read without visiting the site, but I highly encourage you to visit the link and see what else George has on his website.

http://causalconsciousness.com/Episode%20Transcripts/18.%20%20Why%20Humans%20Cannot%20Circumvent%20Natural%20Law%20to%20Gain%20a%20Free%20Will.htm

Episode 18. Why Humans Cannot Circumvent Natural Law to Gain a Free Will

For this book’s final episode, let’s talk about why human beings cannot circumvent natural law to gain a free will. The term free will means that human beings would be free to choose anything we want, and all of our choices and decisions – the feelings we feel, the acts we do – would be completely up to us, and they would be completely independent of anything that is not in our control. There are two simple ways to understand why free will is not possible.

The first is the fact that nothing happens that is uncaused. There is a cause for everything. Nothing happens at random. That means that when we make a decision, there is a cause for that decision, and there is a cause for that cause, because everything has to have a cause. There is therefore also a cause for the cause of the cause of our decision. We then have a causal chain regressing back into the past.

The key thing to remember is that the cause will always precede the decision – the event, or whatever it causes. The causes always goes further back in time, cause by cause by cause, which means we’re going back moment by moment by moment. This chain of causality doesn’t end within our lifetime. It goes back to before we were born, and before the planet was created.

That is one way to understand why the notion that we have a free will is impossible. The second way is the idea that we have a part of our mind that we refer to as our unconscious that is the storehouse of all of our memories – all of the words we use when we talk, and all the concepts that we consider when we’re making a decision, all of the data. Another part of the unconscious processes the data, and makes our decisions.

Whenever we make a decision, like choosing something over something else, all of the processing for this decision must occur at the level of the unconscious. We are not aware of this processing. Because all of the data we consider in order to decide, and how we weigh these considerations, happens in our unconscious, obviously our decision can’t be the result of a free will. In order to have a free will, we would have to have a conscious will. The unconscious is something we are not aware of, and if we’re not aware of it, we can’t be in control of it.

Our whole civilization is all based on the erroneous premise and illusion that we have a free will. It creates great havoc in our personal lives, and throughout the world. When we’re with someone, and they do something we perceive as wrong, we’ll tend to blame them. We’ll tend to feel that they should be punished. The illusion of free will creates unnecessary negative feelings.

When we do something wrong, we often feel the pain of guilt. Naturally, overcoming the illusion of free will would not mean that we are also abandoning morality. I’ve worked with this causal will perspective for decades, and my understanding is that regardless of whether fate, or God, or whatever, makes me do what I do, there tend to be consequences. When I do something that is good, God, or nature, or fate, tends to reward me. When I do something that is wrong, God, or nature, or fate, tends to punish me.

As long as we keep that perspective, we can see the wisdom and utility of our overcoming the illusion of free will so that we can see ourselves, and treat ourselves, as innocent. A good way to explain this is through a young child, like a toddler. When they do something wrong, we don’t ascribe a free will to them. We don’t blame them. We say to ourselves that they could not have done any better. They did not know any better. By transcending the illusion of free will, we can apply this same kind of compassionate and intelligent understanding toward each other and ourselves. We’d create a brand new world through that transcendence.

Some philosophers concede that everything has a cause; they concede that nature is causal. These philosophers concede that nature, particles, matter – everything — has a cause, but they believe that we human beings are different.

They say that it is because we are different that we have a free will, but when we explore that contention, we find that it’s wrong on two counts. Firstly, by all appearances, we are matter. We are physical, and we’re bound by the physical laws. Even if we were to claim that our decisions were not “physical,” and that they were, in fact, “spiritual,” we must understand that every decision we make is made at a moment in time.

We can’t escape this fundamental understanding that whether the decision is defined as physical or spiritual, the decision is made at a precise moment in time. Thus, because our decision resides within time, it is subject to the physical laws.

We no longer understand time as an entity separate from space. It’s best understood as space-time. This is one of the results of Einstein’s special relativity. Time cannot exist without space. Space cannot exist without time. If the universe is made of space-time – particles, energy, matter, mass-energy interacting in space-time, — and you have a spiritual decision occurring in time, such a decision must be completely determined by the causal laws.

Some philosophers contend that we human beings are special, and can circumvent natural law to have a free will. This contention asserts that causality doesn’t apply to us, and that we can make a decision of our own free will. But what does that mean? Does that mean that our decision is made without a cause? Think about this. By definition, randomness means without order or purpose. Its strongest meaning is that something is actually uncaused. If a decision is made without a cause, then it must be random. If a decision is random, certainly we can’t take credit for it, or assign it to a free will.

Let’s consider decisions relative to morality. Morality is a key concept in this question of human will. To understand that we don’t have a free will is to understand that, essentially and most fundamentally, we’re not morally responsible. We might want to blame, or hold accountable, the universe for whatever it compels us to do. But since we’re agents, or instruments, of the past, and since our decisions are not up to us, we are not fundamentally personally morally responsible.

From that perspective, if we could make a “freely willed decision,” and our decision had no causal past, this would mean that the decision would also have no moral reason. From that understanding, we can see that such a concept of a free will is simply incoherent.

There is no evidence for the contention that we human beings can somehow circumvent natural law. I’ll explain this in terms of quantum mechanics, and the physical nature of reality. Back in the mid 1920s, Warner Heisenberg published a paper showing that at the quantum level, our knowledge of particle behavior is “uncertain.” In other words, in classical mechanics – the mechanics of Isaac Newton, and the mechanics physicists relied on to make predictions before quantum physics – we could simultaneously measure the position and momentum of an object accurately enough to make a successful prediction.

Let’s imagine we fire a photon at another particle to measure its position and momentum. The problem here is that the act of firing the photon at the target particle interferes with the trajectory, or the momentum, of that particle. Hence, physicists cannot simultaneously achieve an accurate measure of the particle’s position and momentum. At the macro level of an everyday object like a grapefruit, the difference between a measuring particle like a photon and the grapefruit is so great that the photon would not, for practical purposes, interfere with the measuring process.

Some philosophers claim that this Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle demonstrates that matter, at its most fundamental level, is random. Again, there is no logic behind this assertion. The term randomness is incoherent because randomness means that things happen without causes. Try to imagine anything happening without a cause. What would that even mean?

Our science all points to the very strong conclusion that everything is caused, that everything has a causal past. Because of that, free will is impossible. If I make a decision right now, and there is a cause for that decision, and there’s a cause for that cause, and a cause for that cause, again we can see how that chain will go back to before I was born, and to before the Planet was created.

One of the factors that lead to claims that we human beings can somehow circumvent natural law to gain a free will is that life would have no meaning without a free will. They say “If we’re instruments of God, and if we’re not the authors of our acts, and if we’re just the actors, and we don’t get the opportunity to even interpret our roles, then what’s the point of anything?”

This concern has some cogency, but, it’s somewhat like asking “What’s the point of our life at all, since we’re here only about eighty years with an eternity on either side of us?” I tend to believe in an afterlife, because I try to have beliefs that increase happiness and diminish unhappiness. Existing seems, for whatever reason, like a more pleasant belief than not existing.

We may not have a free will, but we still experience life. We human beings don’t decide; we experience. What I’m saying right now, what we do, and our emotions, are all real. Meaning in life has to do to a great extent with emotion. We’re hedonic creatures. We seek pleasure. We avoid pain. Meaning is valuable because it is a pleasant experience. It makes us feel good to value things, and give them meaning.

But life can have sufficient meaning without our falsely Believing that we are the authors of our thoughts. Let’s say we attribute our thoughts to a deity or god. Let’s say God is responsible for our thoughts. We could also say this scientifically – that it is the causal past or our unconscious that is responsible. If we attribute all of this to God, we could ask ourselves “Whom would we want deciding what we do, we with our limited experience and knowledge, or a God who presumably knows everything?”

This is admittedly confusing because if we had a free will, who among us would choose to not feel happy all of the time – to not feel blissful all of the time? Who among us, if we had a free will, would choose to feel negative feelings? Who among us would choose to do things that are wrong – to make mistakes? From that perspective, if we had a free will, we would be in paradise. It’s because we don’t have a free will that we’re not there yet. That’s not to say that we can’t eventually live within a paradise, understanding fully that our world and human will are causal. We can glean great meaning from life while understanding that free will is, in fact, an illusion.

We’re obviously fated to succeed at some tasks and fail at others, but it’s all predetermined. You have to ask yourself “why in the world would fate cause us to fail at anything,” because who likes to fail? Also, fate creates us as beings that find displeasure from failure, but, nonetheless, compels us to fail sometimes, and feel the sting of such failure. It doesn’t make sense, but it’s kind of like asking why there’s pain in the universe. Without pain, the universe would be completely blissful. So, the answer is, “Who knows?” Who knows why things are like that, but they absolutely have to be like that because we don’t have a free will.

It’s curious and interesting that we’ve been fated to believe that we’re the authors of our thoughts, when the exact opposite is the case. Now, for whatever reason, fate has determined that it is time for us to understand the true nature of our human will. By that, hopefully we’ll be fated to create a much better world as a result.

Links:

Every episode of George’s show is also available on youtube at:
https://www.youtube.com/user/Georgeo57/videos

Additionally, I have a playlist specifically of the shows George and I both take part in.

Exploring the Illusion of Free Will 17

Exploring the Illusion of Free Will 17

This is the seventeenth of a series of posts where I will be sharing the transcripts of George Ortega’s show which he has so generously made available on his website.

I will share both the link and copy the text as well. This is convenient for those who subscribe to my blog by email. You can read without visiting the site, but I highly encourage you to visit the link and see what else George has on his website.

http://causalconsciousness.com/Episode%20Transcripts/17.%20%20Revitalizing%20Religion%20through%20Transcending%20the%20Illusion%20of%20Free%20Will.htm

Episode 17. Revitalizing Religion through Transcending the Illusion of Free Will

Let’s talk about revitalizing religion through transcending the illusion of free will. Before we do that, I just want to go briefly through what we generally mean when we say that we have a free will, why that’s impossible, and why this question of human will matters.

The belief in free will means that we would be free to choose whatever we would want to think, feel, do, and say completely of our own accord, without any kind of influence from any factor that we do not have control over. Naturally, when you consider that we have an unconscious where all of our thoughts, words, concepts and other memories are stored, and that the unconscious is also the part of our brain where the processing of all of that information for decisions occurs, it’s easy to understand how free will must be an illusion. Remember that, by definition, the unconscious is a part of our mind we’re not aware of in real time.

The reason this is so important is that our very civilization is founded on an illusion of free will that creates so many problems. We blame each other and ourselves for things we have no choice but to do. We do what nature, God, or whatever, compels us to do. My hope and prediction is that to the extent we understand that free will is an illusion, and that our human will is really causal and unconscious, we can create a much more intelligent, compassionate, and understanding world based on an accurate understanding of that nature of our human will.

With religion, at least in America and probably throughout the world, as each decade goes by there are fewer and fewer people who gravitate to it – that have it as a part of their everyday life. That’s somewhat unfortunate because while some religions continue to propound certain beliefs that are outdated, divisive or otherwise harmful, there is one aspect of religion that is actually very beneficial to society and to us as individuals. Modern cities, suburbs and metropolitan areas are a relatively new aspect of civilization. Before that, there were mainly small towns, and before that, tribal, or other, small groups, that created a true community. One could see and relate to the same people each day, whereas in many of our cities one can walk for hours seeing no one but strangers.

As our civilization evolved from small towns to the cities and their suburbs, we lost a great part of that cohesion. Television and other media do help bring us together in a different way, but churches and synagogues, and other religious institutions, have traditionally done a good job of creating communities. From that perspective, it’s unfortunate that religion is waning as it has been during recent decades.

The problem is dire for many congregations. For example, the cost of maintaining their property has become so burdensome that many congregations are now forced to share their building with one or more other congregations. That’s a nice idea in a sense, but the salient point here is that because of their dwindling membership, these religious institutions are threatened, and the vehicle for community they create is threatened.

There are various reasons why so many people have moved away from religion. In Christianity, and much less so in Judaism, there is the idea that if you do certain things wrong, you’re going to be punished for the rest of eternity. As we evolve as a species, and become more intelligent and considerate of our world, we think to ourselves “why would an all-loving God do this?” or “if we’re here on Earth for about eighty years, how can one justify being condemned to suffer an eternity – trillions of years, at least – for an act done in a day?”

Sometimes churches are seen as hypocritical in the sense that they profess to champion the rights of the poor, but, when it comes to politics, many churches and other religious institutions will support policies and legislation that oppose the interests of the poor. And it’s not just about poverty. It’s also about children’s rights, women’s rights, and various other kinds of issues.

Another reason for this exodus from religion is that the traditional mythology doesn’t seem to work anymore. It’s actually counter productive in many ways. Consider, for example, the creation story of Adam and Eve. The standard account is that Eve, the first woman, was formed from the rib of Adam, the first man. That account is derogatory to women. Lastly, relatively speaking, very little in religion has changed over the last two thousand years. So much of it does not make sense to people, and that may account, in part, for why so many of us have left religious congregations and communities.

My hope and prediction is that a major change in theology – in what churches and synagogues believe and teach – might actually help bring people back to the flock, and to a religious community that is based on doing good, and being good, and improving the world. That’s, to a great extent, what religion is about.

Before going through how the idea that we don’t have a free will can help congregations bring people back, I just want to go briefly through what this idea of free will means in religion. In Christianity, most people take free will to be a premise, but when you look through the Bible, you’ll find that the issue is far from clear. For example, the first Christian documented to have questioned and challenged free will was Saint Paul in his letter to the Romans, which is dated about 58 A.D. At 7:15, Paul writes, “I don’t understand myself at all, for I really want to do what is right, but I can’t. I do what I don’t want to do – what I hate.”

Here Paul is explaining that If he had a free will, if he could exercise his will freely, and be good all of the time. He knows that with a free will he would do the good that he wanted to do, and not do that evil that he doesn’t want to do. Paul had this understanding in 58 A.D.! What many people don’t realize is that the term “free will” is actually not in the Bible.

It doesn’t appear in Christian theology until about 380-90 A.D. when Saint Augustine grappled with the question of human will. It was in relation to God’s qualities. Augustine was trying to reconcile evil and justice with the premise that God is all-good, and wrote a book titled De Libero Arbitrio, which is translated as “on free will.” He actually coined the term free will. He writes, “Evil deeds are punished by the justice of God. They would not be punished justly if they had not been performed voluntarily.”

This conclusion is based on a misunderstanding – or one interpretation – of God. One conception of God is that S/He is omni-benevolent, or all-good. The reality is that God Her/Himself in Isaiah said that he creates both good and evil. From that contradicting evidence, you can see how Saint Augustine’s premise, upon which he based his need for a free will, is actually false, at least according to Isaiah.

The notion of free will is not central to the Bible. It’s something that is not even mentioned as a term, and is alluded to very infrequently. Many religious congregations could very realistically and authoritatively look at the question of human will, and reach a new conclusion. Many congregations now understand that the world was not created about 6,000 years ago, as the Bible would have us believe. Most congregations, I would imagine, accept the standard scientific understanding that the universe is, as far as we know, about 13.7 billion years old.

It’s not uncommon for churches, denominations and congregations to look at the world through the eyes of modern science, and amend or change certain beliefs that seemed reasonable back when they were created, but no longer seem justifiable. Let’s say churches began to promote the idea that free will is an illusion. They would begin to say that the truth is that we human beings do not have a free will, and free will is nothing more than an illusion. But at the same time they would say, very rightly, that knowing this does not give us license to do as we please.

Just because we’re not the authors of our acts – of our thoughts and decisions – doesn’t mean that we can shirk responsibility. What we do has consequences and we have to maintain order and civilization. When we are judging others and ourselves, we should remember that we were all born with faults, and that we all sin. Sin, incidentally, in the original Aramaic, literally and simply means “missing the mark,” as when one is shooting an arrow at a target.

Religions very rightly teach that because we’re all flawed in various ways, it is wise to forgive each other and ourselves for the invariable mistakes that we will make. But to the extent that we understand that we are not the authors of our thoughts, what churches and synagogues could say is that we’re instruments of God. That would certainly fit within their theology. Because we are not the authors of what we do, we now have every rationale to be more understanding toward each other and ourselves, and hold each other and ourselves innocent. That’s major.

If we’re innocent, what we do is not really up to us. If we’re just basically manifesting the will of God or fate, then when we do wrong there is not even a need to “forgive” others or ourselves. We might want to forgive God, or the universe, for compelling us to do wrong. That’s certainly a question to be explored. But, there is no longer any justification or rationale for blaming others or ourselves, and wanting us to be punished retributively.

A new causal will perspective would be epochal for religion. It would revitalize religion for many who long ago left the flock. When Jesus came around about 2,000 years ago, that was a major change from the very legalistic tradition of the Jewish Pharisees. Christianity was supposed to be more about acts of compassion and mercy than scrupulous adherence to a multitude of laws. Since that time, there was Mohammad with Islam, and others with other religions changing regions of the world. But within the Judeo-Christian context, nothing as major as our collectively overcoming the illusion of free will has happened over the last two thousand years, or perhaps ever.

Overcoming the illusion of free will would represent that sea change people need, and want, if they are to return to religion. Many have moved away from conventional religion because, in too many ways, it doesn’t make sense to their lives any more. It’s unfortunate. Much of religion is ennobling; it helps people to understand the difference between right and wrong. Much of religion is very good, and very useful.

The communities that religions create through the world are an invaluable service to humanity. It’s a shame that congregations are dwindling, and it’s a shame that some very important ideas that these congregations hold are so out-dated. Considering that the notion of free will is not central – remember that a term for free will is not even found in the Bible – to any biblical teaching, and it was simply Saint Augustine’s answer to his conclusion that God can’t be blamed for anything, it is something we all could perhaps fare much better without. Often in religion, when we humans do something that is really good, we’re taught to be modest, and humble, and thank God. We’re taught that we could not have done the good we did without God’s allowing us to do it. We praise God for the good that we do, and feel gratitude for his help.

But, when it comes to our doing wrong, we’re taught by religions that we shouldn’t blame God; it has to be our fault. You’ll, of course, notice the inconsistent logic in praising God when things go right, but blaming humans when they don’t. Religions teach us to blame each other and ourselves. It’s not just religion. Our legal system and our educational system – actually our whole civilization — is based on this myth, this illusion, of free will.

To overcome the free will illusion would be a complete paradigm shift in what churches, synagogues, mosques and temples teach. This could be a global movement. It no longer makes sense to believe that human beings have a free will. The belief in free will leads to so much unnecessary conflict and aggression. If overcoming this belief and adopting a new understanding of our causal will – that we are basically instruments of God – would help revitalize religion, and help bring people back to congregations so that we can restore our lost sense of community, that would be wonderful.

Challenging the notion of free will is an essential challenge to a belief we’ve held for as long as we can remember, such a challenge could not but attract a huge amount of attention among congregations and people who have left churches and synagogues, and may now wish to come back, if for no other reason but to explore this brand new perspective on reality – to see how their lives could change as a result of their not blaming the people in it for what they do wrong, and not feeling the pain of guilt for what we do wrong.

This certainly does not mean that we will abandon morality, because we are hard-wired to seek what we believe is good, and we’re hard-wired to seek pleasure and avoid pain. We’re not going to abandon these values and our morality. But, we no longer have to blame people, and when we no longer blame people for what they do wrong, we feel closer to them. When we don’t blame ourselves for what we do wrong, we feel better about ourselves, and self-esteem is one of the four personality traits most closely correlated with happiness.

Considering how science, logic, and experience so completely refute it, the notion of free will is ripe for overcoming and transcending. As religious institutions recognize that they can overcome the illusion of free will, and still promote morality, the existence of God, and the rest of their theology, religions can help create a new world.

Our world has a lot of problems. Climate change, the global economic crisis, overpopulation and much more is going on, and we need new answers. The answers that have been coming out of politics and religion for centuries are just not suited to the reality we now face. With climate change, for example, as the world becomes very challenged in various ways, the last thing we want to do is be at odds with each other, not doing what we need to do because we are so busy blaming ourselves and each other for what went wrong.

I hope that ministers, pastors, rabbis and other clerics throughout the various religions and denominations will understand the importance of this issue of human will, and how rightly addressing it can bring people back to their congregations.

Links:

Every episode of George’s show is also available on youtube at:
https://www.youtube.com/user/Georgeo57/videos

Additionally, I have a playlist specifically of the shows George and I both take part in.

Exploring the Illusion of Free Will 16

Exploring the Illusion of Free Will 16

This is the sixteenth of a series of posts where I will be sharing the transcripts of George Ortega’s show which he has so generously made available on his website.

I will share both the link and copy the text as well. This is convenient for those who subscribe to my blog by email. You can read without visiting the site, but I highly encourage you to visit the link and see what else George has on his website.

http://causalconsciousness.com/Episode%20Transcripts/16.%20%20Overcoming%20Free%20Will%20as%20an%20Evolutonary%20Leap%20in%20Human%20Consciousness.htm

Episode 16. Overcoming the Illusion of Free Will as an Evolutionary Leap in Human Consciousness

Let’s talk about overcoming the illusion of free will as an evolutionary leap in human consciousness. When we say that we have a free will, we’re saying that our decisions are completely up to us. Nothing that we’ve learned in the past, and nothing in our genes can influence our decisions. One way to understand why free will is an illusion comes from science. In biology and psychology, for example, there was once a debate on whether human behavior was caused by nature or nurture – whether our genes compel our behavior, or whether our upbringing and our environment the kinds of experiences we’ve had in the past determine what we do..

Ultimately we came to understand that every decision we make, and everything we do, is caused by both nature and nurture. The key thing here, however, is that the debate, quite rightly never allowed, or entertained, the possibility of a free will. Free will plays no part in that equation. If nature and nurture combine to cause our every decision, they represent a complete description of our behavior. There is no room for a third cause, logically or otherwise.

We humans have been around for a few million years. We’ve gone through a lot of evolution during that time. We’ve gotten taller, we walk more upright, we’re more intelligent, our brains are bigger, we’ve lost a lot of hair, etc. As our human physiology has evolved, so has our mind. Our mind has especially evolved during this last century.

Over the last couple of millennia, for example, we had wildly erroneous notions about women. The notion that women are incompetent and unintelligent as compared with men still survives to some extent even today. In Judaism there was once a law forbidding the teaching of the Torah to women because male Jewish leaders were afraid these women would corrupt the teachings. Our minds have evolved in terms of how we see each other and ourselves. As part of this evolution, we’re gaining a better understanding of who we are within this universe.

Hundreds of years ago, we thought that the Earth was the center of the solar system, and the center of the universe. We now know that we’re living on a tiny planet within one of billions of galaxies in this immense reality. We cannot even logically or scientifically discern whether our reality is infinite and eternal, or not. We’ve come to understand our place better in this universe, and we’ve learned to better get along with each other. We’ve learned to form societies. We can generally walk around without carrying weapons. We trust each other. We have a civilization.

However, our world definitely has problems, and a lot of them stem from the way we see each other and ourselves — from how we perceive our human will. This notion that we have a free will – that our decisions are completely up to us – is the premise for our legal system of holding people accountable. It labels criminals as bad, and therefore deserving of punishment. Free will also forms the premise and foundation of our socio-economic system of rewards and punishments. If someone does something that is really good, we say to ourselves that they did it of their own free will, and deserve a greater reward than someone who did not, or could not, do such a good.

The notion and illusion of free will also affects our relationship with the people closest to us, and our relationship with ourselves. We were made imperfect in many ways. This free will illusion aside, we have faults, and flaws. We get things wrong. We’re far from perfect. If we did have a free will, who among us wouldn’t choose to be completely good all of the time? But, we don’t have a free will, and because of that we do things against each other – things that we unfortunately can’t but do.

The irony here is that until now, the universe has had us ascribe accountability to each other and ourselves. That kind of attribution often leads to conflict, aggression, and hostility. It leads to vengeance and revenge. It leads to indictments. I’m taping this episode a couple of days after the U.S. killed Osama bin Laden. Some people celebrated in the streets, partly because of their prediction that the world would become safer, but also partly from a free will-based vengeful attitude.

Our desire for retribution is pervasive. To the extent we believe we have a free will, we will treat others and ourselves differently than we would under a causal, or unconscious will perspective. The idea of forgiveness is common to all major religions. We understand that everyone is imperfect, so we forgive. Forgiving derives from the recognition that the person could not have done any better – that the person is human, and flawed. Forgiveness is done from virtue. You are a good person if you forgive, but you don’t necessarily have to do so. When you understand that free will is an illusion, there is nothing to forgive because there is no reason for indictment to begin with.

The notion of free will is the foundation of our civilization, and of our personal lives. What would our world be like if we were to overcome this illusion? Under the free will illusion, we do something good and “hey, we’re great! We’re better than other people!” We become arrogant. We compare ourselves with others. We think we’re special. That self-attribution separates others from us, and separates us from others. Such comparison creates a barrier between people.

When we do something wrong, we blame ourselves. We often conclude that because we did something bad, we deserve to suffer. We deserve to be punished. Very often, we’ll punish ourselves through feeling the self-inflicted pain of guilt. I’m not asserting that we should overcome our conscience, because certainly our understanding of right and wrong is good and necessary. But the idea that because we did something wrong, we deserve punishment is our current understanding, and as we transcend this illusion of free will, we can expect to become much kinder to ourselves. As we overcome the illusion of free will, we will also be more humble. We won’t see ourselves as better than others. We might have a better skill, or might be able to do something better, but it’s not up to us anyway. It’s completely fated. It’s just how God, or the universe, is using us.

Let’s also go through envy. When we see other people do something really well, we might envy them. We might say to ourselves “wow, these people are so much better than we are.” This conclusion is derived from the illusion of free will. We say that because they freely choose to do whatever they did; they deserve the credit, and are better because of it. The problem with that attitude is that it often demeans and devalues us. As we transcend the illusion of free will, we restore egalitarianism, and true equality, to all of us. Some of us may be luckier in certain ways than others of us, but such luck is in no way attributable to their having a free will.

In relating to our family and friends, often conflicts happen because we ascribe free will to others. If someone does something we consider inconsiderate, we blame him or her. If someone is doing something disturbing, we’ll sometimes say to ourselves “this person is evil, or bad.” When we take that attitude, naturally, they get defensive, and the situation is ripe for conflict. That’s the problem with ascribing free will to others.

When we recognize that we don’t have a free will, and that free will is an illusion, when someone does things that are wrong, or inconsiderate, we may have reason to become upset that the universe has caused that to happen, but we won’t necessarily be upset at the person. We’ll recognize that the person had no choice but to be the way they were, and do what they did. That’s how fate made them act.

To the extent that we hold that perspective, we maintain better relationships with each other. I think you now understand why the illusion of free will is harmful, and how overcoming it can be very helpful to our lives. Let’s now explore what overcoming the illusion of free will means to our world, and why I describe this as an evolutionary leap.

We have the basic, fundamental fact about human will completely wrong. We’re ascribing authorship to ourselves when we’re really just the actors. To the extent that we get the nature of our human will right, our whole psychology will change. Our whole consciousness will change. It feels surreal to realize that this life is really a movie, and that everything that is happening is happening because it is compelled to happen. We’re just going along for the ride. We’re experiencing life rather than freely making the decisions that make it happen.

Consider our global criminal justice system. There are many, many people in jails and prisons all over the world, and the sad truth is that they are as innocent as the most innocent of us. They were completely compelled to do what they did. They had absolutely no free choice in the matter. Naturally, we will need to maintain law and order in the world. We can’t have us simply do whatever we want to do, but to the extent that we transcend the illusion of free will, we will be seeing others and ourselves, and others will see themselves and us, in a completely different way.

When a police officer, or a judge, or we, as society, look at someone who has done something wrong, we’re not going to say, “that person’s evil, and deserves to be punished and suffer.” We’re going to instead say, “It’s very unfortunate that the person was fated to do something wrong,” and we may have to take certain measures, like separating that person from society. But when we’re relating to that person, we’re not going to be condemning them, and they will understand that whatever they did was not their fault. Remember that much of the pain that arises from the illusion of free will comes from self-blame. Our criminal justice system would be dramatically changed for the better, and we would be creating a much more compassionate world by overcoming the illusion of free will. Religion will also change profoundly.

Again, the concept of free will was coined by Saint Augustine sometime around 580 A.D. He wrote a book back then called De Libero Arbitrio, which is Latin for “on free will.” He was grappling with the notion of evil. Since according to the Judeo-Christian tradition, God is supposed to be omni-benevolent, or all good, he was considering the question “How can there be evil in the world?” His answer was that if it’s not God’s fault, it has to be our fault.

The foundation for most religions, and especially the condemning of people to hell or the rewarding of people with heaven, depends on the notion of free will. That’s something that will have to change. No longer can religion rightly call a person evil. We might refer to an act as evil, but the person will always be recognized and understood as innocent.

Once that happens, it’s no longer justifiable to have the belief that some of us go to heaven, while others of us go to hell. That paradigm no longer makes sense. God willing, we’ll adapt the belief that we all go to heaven. In truth, we don’t know what, if anything, happens after we die, and the belief that we all go to heaven seems the kindest, and most optimistic, belief available to us.

Our educational system will also change because, at present, we don’t teach our kids to be as happy and as good as possible. With the notion of free will comes the correlate that it doesn’t really matter what we teach kids about goodness and happiness. Those of us who buy into the myth of free will conclude that when kids grow older, they can completely ignore our teaching through their free will. To the extent that we understand that our human will is causal, and unconscious, and that free will is an illusion, we’ll understand how important it is to spend the proper resources to educate our kids in the best way. What we communicate to them is what they will express as adults.

The evidence demonstrating that we don’t have a free will is accumulating in the sciences, like neuroscience and psychology. In philosophy the logical arguments against free will – causality and the unconscious — have been understood since the time of the Greeks. Overcoming the illusion of free will will likely come in stages. A milestone happened in April, 2011 when the weekly science magazine New Scientist published a cover story on the nature of human will titled “Free Will; The illusion we can’t live without.”

One reason this is a milestone is that in the past magazines almost never covered free will, and never before through a cover story. The piece understands and asserts the fact that free will is an illusion. What will likely happen is that more of those kinds of articles will be published, initially in science magazines like Scientific American and Psychology Today. We’ll then begin to think about the matter a lot more. We’ll begin to understand how it relates to our personal lives. As we come to understand that free will is an illusion, this new and revolutionary truth will find its way into the more popular magazine, into our legal system, and into our educational system.

In our educational system today, we teach our kids that human behavior is the complete result of nature and nurture, but we don’t ever go beyond that. We don’t say that because of that, we don’t have a free will. But, as we begin to understand our causal, unconscious human will, this new understanding will become the standard teaching. It will be the way our kids, and the rest of us, are taught.

What will be the outcome? On a personal level, when two people are having some kind of disagreement, it’s not going to take the form of competition. They are not going to be in conflict – one against the other. They will both be on the same side, trying to figure out why fate is pitting them against each other – why fate is having one aggress against the other. As all of this takes place, there will be a profound and substantial change in our human consciousness.

I start each show with a quote from philosopher John Searle, who says that for free will to be understood as an illusion would be “a bigger revolution in our thinking than Einstein, or Copernicus, or Newton, or Galileo, or Darwin. It would alter our whole conception of our relation with the universe.” It will, in fact, be the most significant world change ever.

The purpose of life isn’t to understand that we don’t have a free will. But understanding this has its utility in helping us create a happier world. Ultimately as we become more aware of our lack of free will, and start structuring our societies and world based on that understanding, we’ll recognize that happiness is the main goal of our life. That may be a second kind of evolutionary shift in our consciousness and our world.

The world’s overcoming the illusion of free will may happen in ten years or less. Progress is happening relatively fast on this. The challenges we face, like climate change, demand such massive cooperation between us as individuals, and as countries, that if we are to meet them successfully, we have no realistic choice but to shift our understanding of our human will from the myth of a free will to the reality of a causal will.

Links:

Every episode of George’s show is also available on youtube at:
https://www.youtube.com/user/Georgeo57/videos

Additionally, I have a playlist specifically of the shows George and I both take part in.

Exploring the Illusion of Free Will 15

Exploring the Illusion of Free Will 15

This is the fifteenth of a series of posts where I will be sharing the transcripts of George Ortega’s show which he has so generously made available on his website.

I will share both the link and copy the text as well. This is convenient for those who subscribe to my blog by email. You can read without visiting the site, but I highly encourage you to visit the link and see what else George has on his website.

http://causalconsciousness.com/Episode%20Transcripts/15..%20%20Why%20Frankfurt%27s%20Second%20Order%20Desires%20Do%20Not%20Allow%20for%20a%20Free%20Will.htm

Episode 15. Why Frankfurt’s “Second Order Desires” Do Not Allow for a Free Will

Free will being an illusion, and not representative of how things really are, our belief in it is very problematic to our actions on both a personal and global level. It leads to blame, accusations, conflict, competition, self-blame, arrogance, envy, and creates a lot of problems. My hope is that as we overcome this illusion, we’ll create a much more intelligent, compassionate, and understanding world.

When we say that we have a free will, we are saying that our decisions are completely up to us. Neither genetics nor environment — including what we learned or didn’t learn in the past, can influence our behavior. A free will would give us the ability to over-ride any, and all, influences, and make decisions completely on our own.

The two strongest refutations to that are that, firstly, we have an unconscious where all of our memories are stored. That unconscious is obviously not in our control. We’re not even conscious of it. It’s also the part of our brain that contains the processes by which we make our decisions. When we make a decision, we’re not thinking to ourselves, “Why exactly did I decide that?” “What calculations did I use?” This all takes place at the level of the unconscious. If both the data and the processing for making decisions occur in the unconscious, obviously that makes free will impossible. Our decisions are being made at a level of our mind that we’re not in control of, and that we’re not even aware of in real time.

The second reason free will is impossible is that everything has a cause. If we make a decision, there is a cause for that decision. And there’s a cause for that cause, and a cause for that cause, and if you follow that chain of cause and effect back through its history, it stretches back to before we were born.

Let’s begin refuting Frankfurt’s “Second Order Desires” claim against free will. Harry Frankfurt is a philosopher who claims that while other animals have “first order” desires, human beings have both first and second order desires. An example of a first order desire might be that we want something to eat because we’re on a diet, and want to lose some weight. A second order desire, in this case, would be that we want something to eat, but would rather that we didn’t want something to eat.” It’s a desire about a desire.

Frankfurt is saying that because we have second order desires, that prospect would somehow give us a free will. There is no logic in that, as we’ll see later, but that’s his assertion. Let’s first defend our animal friends. Throughout history, we’ve made claims that animals don’t feel, and we’ve treated animals horribly because of this absurd notion. Whether it is farm animals or lab animals, we refuse to acknowledge, and admit to ourselves, that they absolutely do feel pain.

There is no evidence for the assertion that animals don’t have second order desires. For example, a dog named Cachidulo lives an apartment, and wants to pee. He wants to pee, but there is no one around to take him out for a walk.

Cachidulo knows that in the past when he’s gone to the bathroom on a carpet or other floor, he has been punished. We can all relate to the idea that a dog would have that understanding. Naturally, Cachidulo would very probably want to not want to go to the bathroom. Cachidulo is probably saying to himself, “Gee I wish I didn’t have to go to the bathroom, because I would rather not get punished afterwards. Dogs clearly have second order desires.

Let’s say we have a second order desire. We want to not want to eat, or we want to not want to smoke, or not want to whatever. But, how would that grant us a free will? A want is a reason, and whether it’s a direct want or a want about a want, it’s causal. If it’s a want about a want – if I would want to not want to eat – there will be a reason for wanting that. When you have a reason, you have a cause. So, the simple refutation to these Frankfurt-style second order desire arguments for free will is “No, a second order desire in no way allows the decision to escape this law of causality that governs everything.

Second order desires are not a valid demonstration of free will because of causality. Naturally, the causality of the unconscious refutes this claim equally well. That second order desire – that wanting to not want something – is taking place at the level of the unconscious. It is drawing from information stored in the unconscious. There have to be reasons why we would want, or not want, to do something. There is also our reasoning process. If all of our data – our memories and other stored information – is in our unconscious, then the processing of our decisions must also be made at the level of the unconscious. We can understand how we have no control over our unconscious. The unconscious is certainly a part of us – no one is disputing that – but it’s a part that we have absolutely no real-time control over.

It’s as if your hand was saying “I made this decision to put myself here,” whereas the reality is that your mind made the decision. Our conscious mind simply becomes aware of decisions that the unconscious makes, and claims credit for them. There are actually many experiments in neuroscience and psychology, like experiments with hypnosis, that demonstrate this misattribution. For example, subjects are hypnotized and given a post-hypnotic suggestion to do something. They come out of the hypnosis, and perform the post-hypnotic suggestion. They are then asked why they did what they did. They then make up a reason, or, more sincerely, plead ignorance. They express no recognition, or knowledge, that the reason they did what they did was because of the post-hypnotic suggestion.

Every decision is made at the level of the unconscious, because that is where at least some of the data is. The decision making process must also be unconscious to be able to access that data. Naturally, since we can’t control the unconscious, the decisions it makes cannot be thought of as having been freely made by our conscious mind.

Frankfurt had a few other claims that are a mistaken in terms of how they would allow for a free will. He claims that free will is having the will that we want. In other words, if we can want what we want to want, to him that’s free will. But that’s not free will. That’s just luck. If we have a will to stop smoking, for example, and we’re actually able to succeed with this, we’re fortunate. Such fortune in no way demonstrates that our want was freely willed.

When we consider the question of human will in terms of wants, or desires, we understand why free will is impossible. We’re not in control of our desires. Whether we desire a certain kind of food, or experience, or music, or clothing, or whatever, these are preferences that are the complete result of genetics and past experience. We can’t, at the moment we’re making a decision, just choose our desires. They have been chosen for us by this causal process of nature and nurture.

Frankfurt makes another kind of curious assertion. He says that some people are what he describes as “wontons.” He says that these people don’t have impulse control. They can’t control their impulses, so they naturally don’t have a free will. He’s, of course, right about impulses. We all have impulses, and to the extent that we can’t control them, that naturally demonstrates that the impulses, and not a free will, are controlling us.

But, he claims that those of us who can control our impulses have a free will. Why does that not make sense? Let’s say we control an impulse. Why did we do that? There must have been a reason. Once we have a reason for doing something, we have a cause for doing something. Naturally, that cause has a cause, and that cause has a cause, and you end up with a causal regression leading to before our planet was created.

Any time there’s a question regarding why we do anything, or an assertion that we have a free will, the refutation is always the same. For example, one plus one is always going to equal two. That will be the answer whether the ones are in Roman numerals or Chinese characters, or whatever. It’s always the same answer. With any claim to a free will, there are two basic answers. The first is causality. If a decision, to control our impulse has a reason, that reason is a cause.

Causality is the reason why the decision is not freely willed. The other reason is the unconscious. We generally tend to think somewhat linguistically. Some of us think more in terms of imagery, but our thinking tends to involve the memory of concepts like “table,” and “chair,” which are stored in our memory. In order to make a decision about whatever, we have to consider it. If that information is not consciously available to us, it must be stored in the unconscious. It has to be, because for it to be consciously available, we would have to be aware at the moment of any decision every word and every memory that we’ve ever had. That is clearly impossible. We have to study to take tests. If we had a free will, we could just commit something to memory, and at test time just write it without hesitation, because we could freely draw whatever we willed from our memory bank. Obviously, very few of us can do that to any substantial degree, and even we who can, at a certain point, fail at accessing the memories. It is always our unconscious that allows us to access any of that information.

The unconscious not only stores the data upon which we’re making decisions, impulse control, or whatever, but also our actual decision making processes. Why are we deciding one way rather than another? Is it a moral decision? Is it a hedonic decision? Is it a rational decision? These are all considerations that are taking place at the unconscious level. We obviously don’t consciously go through the entire process of why we’re making a decision when we think. That’s often what a gut feeling is about. Someone asks us something, and we wait for the answer to come to us.

Let’s briefly discuss the notion of second order desires from the standpoint of desires. Desires are conditioned to a great extent. The foods we prefer are different from the foods people from other countries prefer. This starts very early.

We’re conditioned to like something, or not. Sometimes even at a very early age, you find that mothers will try to get their kids to eat spinach and some other foods. It doesn’t always work. Sometimes our desires are genetic. Our strongest desire – the one actually responsible for all of our decisions, including moral decisions– is the hedonic desire, or the desire to seek pleasure and avoid pain. We’re hard-wired for that. All organisms are hard-wired for that.

Let’s consider a second order desire to stop eating. Why would we want to do that? Perhaps we want to be healthier, or happier, or whatever. Any time we desire to not want something, there is a hedonic reason for that desire. That reason relates to our well-being. We predict that if we don’t want to want a certain thing, or don’t want to not want a certain thing, that will make our life, or the lives of those around us, better. The hedonic imperative of always seeking pleasure and avoiding pain is a great way to understand why we don’t have a free will. If all of our decisions are based on that imperative, obviously we can’t have a free will.

We generally talk about how our wills are completely determined by causality, and how the past moment completely determines our will. But, we should remember that everything is completely causal. If you go outside and see cars and people moving, and birds flying, take notice that everything is happening in a completely causal way. We are actually taking part in a kind of movie, and reality, or our world, is the movie.

It’s even more amazing than that, because generally with a movie, the actors get to interpret their roles somewhat. Actors have some say in how they interpret their character, and play their role. But in this movie called reality – our universe – we don’t even get to interpret our roles. Our every reaction to everything is predetermined. What I’m also saying is that it’s not just human behavior that is causal. It’s not just animal behavior that is causal. The Sun, and the rain, and the entirety of nature, are all causal. It’s all predetermined. I do not describe reality as “predestined,” because that relates to the religious concept that some people are pre-destined to a better or worse place in the afterlife. But, essentially, everything that is happening at this moment in time is predetermined by cause and effect.

We’re spectators, rather than the writers. We experience, rather than decide. From a religious perspective, asserting that we have a free will is like asserting that we are mini-gods who “create” decisions. However, if we believe in a God that is all-powerful, all powerful means that God’s decisions rule. Our actions are basically expressing God’s will. We’re instruments of God. That way of understanding our human will makes a lot of sense to many of us. It feels a lot better than describing us as robots or puppets, or computers.

A computer is programmed to do certain tasks, and it has no free choice but to do those tasks. We can accurately describe ourselves as robots or puppets or computers, but that self-definition is impersonal. I believe in God, because I define God as everything, which makes God synonymous with our universe. By retaining our belief in God, and understanding our lack of free will within that context, we personify both ourselves and our wider reality. God is generally defined as omniscient, or all-knowing. God is also often described as omnipresent, or everywhere. If God is everywhere, we are a part of God. Everything is a part of God. There isn’t anything that exists that isn’t a part of God. Logically, if God created everything, S/He had to have created everything from Her/Himself. From that standpoint, we’re the hands of God. We’re the instruments of God, and the vehicles for God’s will.

We’re certainly a part of God, but we’re not the decision making part. There is a part of reality that you can define as either the causal past or God, although it’s more precisely defined as the causal past. The question then arises; does God have a free will? Can God break this law of causality? I’m not sure S/He can. I would hope S/He can’t, because I like to believe in a good and loving God. That understanding obviously doesn’t make sense because there are so many not-so-good and unloving things in the world. But, to the extent that I ascribe a free will to God, then I would have to hold Her/Him responsible. If I understand that God is compelled by causality in every act, I can hold God as innocent as we are.

When we fall for the notion that we have a free will, we hold ourselves responsible. We indict ourselves, and convict ourselves, and punish each other and ourselves. When we understand that we don’t have a free will, and we hold ourselves as innocent, we’re much more understanding.

Some of us are afraid that if we abandon the illusion of free will, everyone will just do whatever they want, because they will say, “You can’t blame me. I’m programmed – blame the universe.” The reason we would not let that happen is because we’re programmed, to be hedonic creatures. We’re always going to seek pleasure and avoid pain, both as individuals and as a society. This means that if someone is going around doing something that is not good for them, or us, we’re going to take steps to not allow that. I trust you now understand why the Frankfurt second order desires argument for free will just doesn’t make sense.

Links:

Every episode of George’s show is also available on youtube at:
https://www.youtube.com/user/Georgeo57/videos

Additionally, I have a playlist specifically of the shows George and I both take part in.

Exploring the Illusion of Free Will 14

Exploring the Illusion of Free Will 14

This is the fourteenth of a series of posts where I will be sharing the transcripts of George Ortega’s show which he has so generously made available on his website.

I will share both the link and copy the text as well. This is convenient for those who subscribe to my blog by email. You can read without visiting the site, but I highly encourage you to visit the link and see what else George has on his website.

http://causalconsciousness.com/Episode%20Transcripts/14.%20%20Why%20Both%20Causality%20and%20Randomness%20Make%20Free%20Will%20Impossible.htm

Episode 14. Why Both Causality and Randomness Make Free Will Impossible

Our belief in free will forms the premise for why we do things, and how we decide. It is the basis for our entire civilization, for our entire society, and for our personal lives. In order to create a more understanding and intelligent world that is in line with the way things are, and isn’t based on a misconception, we’ve got to explore this matter. We’ve got to overcome this illusion of free will. It may take several decades, but the purpose of this show is to help create a better world for everyone by helping us overcome this illusion.

What do we mean when we say free will? Basically, we mean that our decisions are completely up to us, and that nothing that is not in our control is influencing, or compelling, us to make a decision. But, we understand that we all have an unconscious, and that our unconscious is where we store all of our data, memories, and thought processes. Every decision we make is based on words, concepts, memories and processes stored in this unconscious. The unconscious is not in our control. It’s completely unconscious. That’s why we call it the unconscious. If that part of our brain is actually making these decisions for us, we can’t correctly claim we have a free will. Something that we’re not in control of is making these decisions. Obviously, what we have is a causal will, meaning that it is caused. Everything has a cause. Nothing happens without a cause. Causality is the fundamental universal process.

In order to have a free will, we would have to somehow circumvent causality, but we can’t do that. Any decision we make has to have a cause, because we are making it for a reason. The problem is that if we have a decision that has a cause, and that cause has a cause, and that cause has a cause, and you’re going back in time in a causal regression that ultimately leads to before our birth, before the Planet was created, and to the time of the Big Bang, free will must be impossible.

In the late 1600s, Sir Isaac Newton created what we now refer to as Newtonian, or classical, physics. This theory is completely causal. We can measure the position and momentum – meaning direction and velocity – of objects, whether they are planets or objects here on Earth, and with that information, we can calculate their future. We can predict exactly where they would be moments, our years, later.

When we track a comet through the sky, or track the other planets, we know exactly where they are going to be at any moment thousands of years into the future because these objects obey strict causal law. The obvious conclusion from this classical, Newtonian, physics is that free will is impossible because, again, everything has to have a cause.

It was during the early 20th century that Warner Heisenberg, Neils Bohr, and a few other physicists developed what is known as quantum mechanics. Heisenberg published a paper in 1927 that described what we now refer to as the uncertainty principle. At the macro level, let’s say we’re measuring a basketball. We can fire photons at it, and, with enough precision for prediction, measure its position and momentum. Light particles do not substantially affect the movement of the basketball because the basketball is so large relative to the photon.

But, when we get to the quantum level of sub-atomic particles, this is not the case. When we fire one particle at another to obtain that measurement of position and momentum, the measuring particle knocks into the target particle, and thereby moves it into a different trajectory. The crux of the uncertainty principle is that we can’t simultaneously measure the position and momentum of a particle. To the extent that we get the position more precisely, we lose information about its momentum. To the extent that we get its momentum more precisely, we lose information about its position. That’s pretty clear. We can’t any longer use classical mechanics to make predictions at the quantum level because of the uncertainty principle, so we rely on probabilities.

We understand the behavior of groups of particles, and then develop probabilities for them. At the quantum level, measurement changes from being a completely physical, direct, and clearly causal process to a statistical process, derived from probabilities for individual particles based on their causal behavior within groups.

The problem for the proper understanding of human will came when those physicists then interpreted what it meant that you couldn’t simultaneously measure the position and momentum of a particle. Bohr, Heisenberg, and a few others, came up with what came to be known as the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics. What they claimed – and we can see the absurdity of it from the onset – is that since we can’t simultaneously measure the position and momentum of a particle, particles don’t simultaneously have a position and momentum.

They also claimed that because we can’t see what is happening after a measurement, (once we measure the target particle, its position and momentum have changed because of the impact of the measuring particle) the particle’s behavior was somehow uncaused. They claimed that particle behavior at the sub-atomic level had no cause. I’ve read some of work of Heisenberg and Bohr, and of some of the other physicists who championed this interpretation, and learned that these guys were quite into philosophy. My hunch is that what they were trying to do with the Copenhagen Interpretation was to revive the idea that humans have a free will.

They made these claims, but the best they could do with them was to assert that particle behavior at the quantum level is uncaused, or random. They claimed that these things at the quantum level happened for no reason at all – for no cause. The problem for the human will question is that if something is happening for absolutely no cause at all, it can’t be caused by a human will, free or otherwise. If it’s happening arbitrarily, or at random, obviously we are not causing it.

For some phenomena, like this simultaneous particle position and momentum measurement, we don’t know everything that’s going on. With radio-active decay, for example, we can know the half-life, or rate at which a group of particles will decay, but for any given particle, we can’t precisely predict when that radio-active isotope will decay, or transform, into something else. Because of that example, and because of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, physicists and philosophers began to absurdly claim that this radioactive decay must be uncaused.

We’ve gone over how causality makes free will impossible. Let’s go through it again, and then we’ll go through why randomness also makes free will impossible in a bit more detail, so that we more clearly understand.

We make a decision. Let’s say our decision has a cause, and is not random in the absurd sense of uncaused. There is a reason for why we make a decision, for why we chose what we chose. Remember that everything has a cause. Nothing happens that is not caused. There was a religious argument about this many centuries ago about the Latin phrase “causa sui,” meaning the cause of itself. They would ask themselves “if God created the universe – the world – then who created God?” Their answer was that God created Her/Himself.

Let’s say we accept that God, or the universe – the logic-transcending very beginning – caused itself. After that first cause, everything has a cause. The best way to understand this, as I’ve explained before, is to consider the entire universe at the state of the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago. The state of the universe at the very next moment in time was the exact and complete result of that first moment. What we have is particles moving sequentially through space in time. By bringing that state-by-state evolution of the universe causally up to the present, we can understand that everything that is happening now is a direct and complete result of the state-of-the-universe evolution.

We can also understand this in terms of decisions. We make a decision. There is a reason for it. That reason is a cause. And there is a cause for that cause, and a cause for that cause, and a cause for that cause, each cause spanning further and further back in time. We see causality regressing into the past. Everything has to have a cause, and a cause must precede its effect.

By definition, a cause cannot come after its effect. The cause is happening a moment before its effect, and the cause of that cause is happening the moment before that. If we follow that chain of moment-by-moment causes and effects, we can understand that whatever we’re doing right now is the direct result of a causal chain that spans back to before planet Earth was created. There is obviously no room for a free will to emerge from within this causal chain.

Now let’s address randomness. Randomness sometimes gets confused because it’s given various different meanings. Here’s one that makes sense. I have a deck of cards, and ask you to pick one out at random. What we understand that to mean is that you’re going to pick one out without giving it any thought. You’re not going to count from the beginning of the deck to the one you want, or use any other system or plan for your choice. It will be arbitrary. That’s the conventional, colloquial sense of randomness that we tend to use.

In physics, however, there is a more precise technical meaning of randomness. Some physicists define randomness as something that is unpredictable. That’s a mistake. Sure, randomness is unpredictable, but so is causality, to a completely accurate degree. Some physicists will say that unpredictable means unpredictable in theory, but not in practice. But, as human beings, with our subjective perspective on whatever it is we’re trying to predict, we can’t know all of the information necessary. We’d have to know the exact position and momentum of every particle in the universe to make a completely accurate prediction of whatever. Secondly, because of the uncertainty principle, we can’t directly make those predictions.

What is interesting is that our quantum probabilities would not work if the particle behavior being measured was not inherently causal. A single particle acting randomly, in the sense of unpredictably, and uncaused, cannot suddenly become causal when it joins other particles within a group.

Some physicists say that randomness means unpredictability, but when we ask them “what does unpredictable mean?” they say that the particle’s behavior is not being caused. Again, such an assertion is completely absurd, and based on neither logic, nor scientific method, nor empirical observation. There is no such thing as true randomness. There are random events generators that will generate “random” numbers, but they are not completely random because computations are completely causal processes.

When some scientists claim that something is random, it seems they don’t understand exactly what they are claiming. They are claiming that some things that happen do not have a cause – that they happen uncaused. Unfortunately, in physics, this is not something they like to explore very much. Most college-level introductory physics textbooks will not even have an entry on causality or randomness. They might have one on the uncertainty principle. They consider the matter theoretical, whereas most of physics today focuses on practical applications. But, the theoretical understanding of what is happening at both the macro and quantum level is very important as it relates to this question of human will.

There is no such thing as randomness in the sense of uncaused. Everything must have a cause. There has to be a reason why something has happened. Again, the best way to understand this is to consider that if anything is happening at this moment in time, it is completely dependent on, or caused by, the state of the universe, as the most complete description, at the previous moment.

Let’s say there was such a thing as randomness in the sense of uncaused. The notion of free will involves accountability. With a moral decision, a free will believer will say “we decided something because of some moral principle or principles. ” But, once we make that decision, and describe it as a moral decision, that’s our cause. In other words, we made the decision because of some moral principle or precept. Or, we made the decision because you “wanted to.” But, that want is a desire, and that desire is a cause.

In physics, the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics is actually what you will find in most high school and college textbooks, because most standard physics textbooks are written by physicists who have never delved much into this matter of causality vs. randomness. Most leading physicists understand that physics is completely causal, and that quantum behavior is completely causal, but this understanding has curiously not made its way through to many other physicists. This embarrassment to the field likely has something to do with the question of free will.

Some physicists clearly believe in free will. To acknowledge that nothing can be uncaused would be to admit that we have no free will. Since the Copenhagen Interpretation in the mid 1920s, philosophers have been saying that particle behavior at the sub-atomic level is indeterminate. It’s random, so that leaves an opening for free will. It’s a completely irrational conclusion, but that is what they conclude in order to preserve their belief in free will.

Heisenberg, and Bohr especially, pushed the idea of randomness and acausality on physicists when quantum mechanics was entirely new, and nobody really understood it. Actually, nobody really understands it today. Admittedly, there is amazingly counter-intuitive stuff that is going on at that level. Many physicists back then, with little or no investigation of the question, simply concluded that if Heisenberg and Bohr said that quantum behavior is uncaused, it must be uncaused.

Einstein and several other physicists attempted to clarify the matter, but they went about it in a misguided way. They didn’t focus on the causality of the matter; they focused on particle measurement. Einstein and his colleagues wanted to demonstrate that although you can’t simultaneously measure the position and momentum of a particle directly, such measurement could be accomplished by proxy. That effort led to a lot of experimentation, and it turned out that a proxy measurement will not work as a proof for causality.

They didn’t take the right approach on this back then, but since the 1980s, physicists have, more and more, come to reject the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics. They understand that everything has a cause. This Copenhagen interpretation has actually been replaced to a great extent by an interpretation of reality that to my mind doesn’t make much sense, but at least it’s deterministic. It’s called the Many Worlds Interpretation, and it says that any time we make a decision, there are an infinite number of possibilities that can arise from that decision. Each of those possibilities supposedly takes place in a different universe. There is no credible evidence, of course, for that conclusion.

The main thing here is that various other interpretations are now more in vogue, and more accepted than, Copenhagen. There have actually been several polls conducted on this. In one, the Many Worlds Interpretation had over fifty percent of respondents agreeing that it was the dominant theory of nature. In physics, the field-wide transition from indeterministic to deterministic interpretations of quantum mechanics is already happening.

The fact that we human beings do not have a free will challenges the very foundation of our understanding of who we are. We’re living an amazing delusion. The irony here is that nature herself – the causal past, or God – has compelled us to have this illusion. It’s like when we see what we think is water on the horizon while driving down a long straight road in the sun. It’s an illusion. Hopefully within a couple of decades or sooner we’ll all generally understand that our wills are completely causal, that there is no such thing as true randomness, and that if there were, that would also leave no room for a free will.

Links:

Every episode of George’s show is also available on youtube at:
https://www.youtube.com/user/Georgeo57/videos

Additionally, I have a playlist specifically of the shows George and I both take part in.

Exploring the Illusion of Free Will 13

Exploring the Illusion of Free Will 13

This is the thirteenth of a series of posts where I will be sharing the transcripts of George Ortega’s show which he has so generously made available on his website.

I will share both the link and copy the text as well. This is convenient for those who subscribe to my blog by email. You can read without visiting the site, but I highly encourage you to visit the link and see what else George has on his website.

http://causalconsciousness.com/Episode%20Transcripts/13.%20%20Overcoming%20Blame,%20Guilt,%20Envy%20and%20Arrogance%20by%20Overcoming%20the%20Illusion%20of%20Free%20Will.htm

Episode 13. Overcoming Blame, Guilt, Envy and Arrogance by Overcoming the Illusion of Free Will

Let’ talk about overcoming blame, guilt, envy and arrogance by overcoming the illusion of free will. When we believe we have a free will, we hold each other and ourselves accountable. To the extent that we can overcome this illusion, we will not blame each other, feel guilty, and envy others. When we do good things, we won’t feel arrogant; we’ll feel grateful.

That’s on a personal level. Consider how overcoming the free will illusion would effect how we treat each other as countries, and groups of people. This illusion of free will has profound and global consequences, which is why it is important that we take steps to re-construct our society in a way that will adhere to the reality of our causal and unconscious human wills, and thereby help us in many ways.

When we say we have a free will, basically what we’re saying is that what we do – what we decide, think, feel – is completely up to us without anything that is not in our control compelling us to do what we do. For example, let’s say we claim that our feelings are completely up to us. If free will means that we can freely choose to feel what we want – then who among us would choose to feel negative feelings? Who among us would choose to feel anything but blissful every hour of every day? If having a free will means that we could make our moral decisions completely up to us – that we could be as good as we would want to be, who among us wouldn’t be a perfect angel? Who wouldn’t be good, and do good, all of the time, especially toward the people in our lives?

Considering those questions is a very good way to understand why we obviously do not have a free will. Free will is an illusion. It’s something that we’ve actually been predetermined to believe. It hasn’t been up to us that we believe this. Nature had us hold the illusion that the world is flat. We held that illusion for a long time, and now we know we’re living on an orb. But this free will illusion is much more important. We can conduct our every day affairs very well, regardless of whether or not we believe the world is flat. The belief in free will affects us much more profoundly.

Free will says that what we do is completely up to us. Nothing that is not in our control is making us do anything. Right from the start, if you consider that we have an unconscious that is always awake and active, then we can never say that anything we do has not been made at the level of the unconscious, or, at the very least, with the participation of the unconscious. Think about it. When we make decisions, these decisions require concepts, and a decision-making process. We don’t hold all of those concepts – many of them linguistic – in our conscious mind. Our conscious mind can only focus on one, or at most a few, concepts one at a time. So, all of the words and other concepts that we draw on for our conclusions and our decisions must reside in our unconscious.

If the unconscious is not in our control – and it isn’t because, by definition, we’re not even aware of it – and if we have to draw on the unconscious to make every decision we make, then it’s easy to see why free will is impossible. It has to be an illusion. There are many other ways to understand this, but for this show, we’re going to be focusing on overcoming blame, guilt, envy and arrogance by overcoming the illusion of free will.

Under this illusion of free will, we hold ourselves accountable. When we or other people do things that are wrong, we blame, and indict, and prosecute, and condemn, and punish ourselves, and each other. When we do good, we take pride. But pride often leads to arrogance, and comparisons. “Because I did this, I’m better than you,” we boast. We look down on others, and that’s not good for our personal relations. When other people do good, we sometimes envy them. We don’t realize that what we’re envying them about wasn’t really up to them. They were either lucky, in a certain sense. That is simply the way nature compelled them to be.

Let’s look at these matters one by one, and the actual harm that the illusion of free will causes every day at both personal and societal levels. Somebody does something wrong. The belief in free will leads us to blame them. It leads us to say that they, of their own free will, did some wrong toward us. With the illusion of free will, if we are ascribing complete accountability to that other person, and we’re blaming them, we very likely see them as our adversary. We’re in competition with them. We may seek vengeance and retribution. We may seek to punish them because they did wrong. That’s what happens when we ascribe free will to others.

So, what happens when we understand that the other person who did whatever they did toward us had absolutely no choice in the matter? They were completely compelled in what they did. It wasn’t up to them. To the extent that we can understand that, we become more compassionate. Let’s say, for example, that someone takes another person’s hand, and pushes it so that the hand knocks into you. Are you going to blame the person whose hand someone else took and knocked into you, or are you going to blame the person who took the other person’s hand and knocked it into you? Naturally, it’s the latter.

When you understand that nobody has a free will, and that free will is, and always will be, an illusion, if you become angry, you’re not going to become angry with that person. You won’t wish to punish that person, or seek vengeance. You may become angry with the universe, or God, but you’re not going to be angry with that person. When you don’t become angry, and don’t blame that person, you suddenly find that they and you are on the same side of the equation. If both the other person and you realize that neither of you have a free will, you might then ask yourselves “why would fate, or God, or the universe, or the causal past, do this?”

What happens is that your relationship with the other person is preserved. You and they are no longer adversaries. You’re on the same side, trying to figure everything out. I’m not saying that understanding that we don’t have a free will will lead to everyone being open to aggression by others. For example, if someone aggresses toward us in a certain way, we may have to take certain measures, like separating ourselves from them, or whatever. But we would do this with understanding. It’s a completely different experience to hold someone responsible for something, and address the situation from that perspective, than to understand that both they and you are victims of this fate.

Another way to understand this is by considering a young child. When a young child does something wrong, we don’t ascribe free will to them. They just don’t know any better. They’re obviously doing the best they can. So, what happens? We treat that young child with compassion, and kindness, and caring. If we take that same understanding that we naturally ascribe to young children, because we don’t believe they have a free will, and we apply it toward each other, that becomes the more intelligent and compassionate way of addressing the matter.

From a religious perspective, it makes forgiveness far easier because, in the final analysis, there is nothing to forgive. If the person really wasn’t to blame, we might want to “forgive” them, but the understanding that they are not blameworthy truly means there is nothing to forgive. We now understand how coming to the understanding that free will is an illusion can help us to not blame each other, and help prevent the kind of conflict that blame causes.

Let’s consider guilt. When we do things wrong, we tend to blame ourselves. When we blame ourselves, we sometimes unconsciously punish ourselves in some way or another. That’s the free will perspective. What happens when we understand that free will is an illusion? We do something wrong. Like in the first case, we come to realize that it was wrong. Our conscience can recognize that we may have transgressed against someone else, or against ourselves, and make that determination without our punishing ourselves. In other words, we can say to ourselves, “fine, I realize that I did wrong, but it wasn’t my fault. I remain innocent.”

That, of course, doesn’t mean we’re going to continue to do that wrong, because once we understand that we’ve done something wrong, it’s good, and wise, and right to correct ourselves. We don’t have to punish ourselves. It would, in fact, be wrong to punish ourselves for what we could not help but do.

Let’s go to envy. Let’s imagine you’re watching someone do something, and you say to yourselves “wow; I wish I could do that.” With our free will perspective, we conclude that they did what they did of their own free will, and we just can’t compare. That person is just much better at this. What does that lead to? It leads to feelings of lower self-esteem. It leads to our devaluing ourselves. Self-esteem is one of the four personality traits that correlate most strongly with happiness. To the extent that we diminish our self-esteem, we likely diminish our general well-being and happiness.

What’s the alternative? When we understand that someone may have done a wonderful thing – a great discovery, or an amazing athletic performance – and we don’t ascribe a free will to that person, we’re much less likely to envy them. We might say to ourselves “I wish that fate, or nature, or God, had given me those kinds of qualities,” but we wouldn’t compare ourselves with the person in the sense of ascribing those qualities to the person’s free will, and holding ourselves in lower regard as a result. It wouldn’t make sense.

As we understand that we don’t have a free will, we also prevent arrogance. Think about it. It’s good to feel good about doing something, even when we know that it was not truly up to us. For example, when many sports stars are interviewed, they talk about how they were lucky in certain ways. They thank God, whom they consider to have worked through them. They are very humble in that way.

But when many of us do something great, we think to ourselves “wow, I’m special! I did this of my own free will. I deserve the credit and rewards.” The problem with that kind of attribution is that it naturally leads to our comparing ourselves with other people. “I’m better than that person.” “I deserve more than that other person.” To the extent that we do that, we get disconnected from each other. This arrogance separates people.

When we understand that free will is an illusion, we understand that if we do something of value, we can feel grateful that fate is using us as an instrument for this act. But, there would be no logical reason for any kind of pride or arrogance. It is not “we” who are doing these things. We’re a vehicle, or instrument, of God, or fate. We recognize that we don’t have a free will, and although we did something great, we recognize that it’s really fate’s doing. Through this understanding, we remain humble. Our interactions with others remain on a more equal footing. We don’t sense ourselves as any better than others, and that helps keep us closer together.

Because there is cause and effect, and because we have an unconscious, and because if we had a free will, we would be completely blissed out and completely moral, we don’t have a free will. Then who, or what, are we to hold accountable and responsible? There’s an irony in this. Within the Judeo-Christian tradition, when something good happens, or we do something good, the proper response is appreciation and gratitude. “Thank God.” “Thank Goodness.” We say to ourselves that this good could not have been done without God. When we do good, we understand that, but when we do what’s not so good, all of the sudden it’s not God’s or fate’s fault. These religious traditions teach us that when we do bad, it’s our fault. That is the harm of the belief in free will.

What’s the reality? When something good happens, it is the result of God, or fate, or the causal past, or the universe. When something not so good happens, again, it’s the result of God, or fate, or the causal past, or the universe. The remaining question is whether or not God, or the universe, has a free will? Personally, I hope that God or the universe is as completely compelled in what S/He does as we human beings are. Before I get into why I hope that, let’s get a bit into the idea of God.

I was raised in the Judeo-Christian religion, and I believe in God. I like the belief in God. However, some teachings certainly don’t make sense. Let’s say our belief is that God is all-good. We could then ask ourselves whether or not God can decide whether or not to be good. If S/He is all-good, it would seem that S/He would have to be all-good. S/He therefore can’t have a free will. Or, ask yourself whether God, if S/He so decided, could suddenly cease existing? Can God say “I don’t want to be God anymore. I’m outta here,” and then everything just disappears? I don’t think so.

If God is compelled to be good, and if God is compelled to be God, then maybe God doesn’t have a free will either. This question may be beyond our reasoning ability, at least for the time being. But if God, or the universe, doesn’t have a free will that would be a good thing because there are some things in this world that are really bad, like the way we treat farm animals. You would not believe it. We basically torture them. To the extent that we don’t have a free will, we don’t have to blame ourselves for this atrocity, but I would hope that through compassion we would come to their rescue. Although we don’t have a free will, it seems that God, or nature, tends to reward us when we do good, and punish us when we don’t. It would be very good for us to stop torturing those animals, along with lab animals and animals raised in pet mills.

If God, or nature doesn’t have a free will either, then we cannot justly blame Her/Him/It for this cruelty. Granted, if we don’t blame God or nature, something must be responsible, and this prospect leads us into a conundrum wherein God would have to be responsible if God created everything. But to the extent that we hold God blameless, it would help us to be closer to God, and less judgmental of God.

The illusion of free will does a lot more harm than good. Without it, we wouldn’t blame each other and ourselves. We wouldn’t feel that we were better than others. We wouldn’t feel arrogant. We wouldn’t punish ourselves when we did wrong. We would understand that we did wrong, and would hopefully try to correct ourselves. We also wouldn’t feel envious toward others.

Links:

Every episode of George’s show is also available on youtube at:
https://www.youtube.com/user/Georgeo57/videos

Additionally, I have a playlist specifically of the shows George and I both take part in.

Exploring the Illusion of Free Will 12

Exploring the Illusion of Free Will 12

This is the twelfth of a series of posts where I will be sharing the transcripts of George Ortega’s show which he has so generously made available on his website.

I will share both the link and copy the text as well. This is convenient for those who subscribe to my blog by email. You can read without visiting the site, but I highly encourage you to visit the link and see what else George has on his website.

http://causalconsciousness.com/Episode%20Transcripts/12.%20%20Why%20the%20Concept%20of%20Free%20Will%20is%20Incoherent.htm

Episode 12. Why the Concept of Free Will is Incoherent

Let’s talk about why the concept of free will is actually incoherent, in that it is logically and internally inconsistent – it just doesn’t make sense as a rational construct.

Our world is virtually completely deluded about the fundamental nature of our human will. We’re completely deluded about who we are as individuals, and as a humanity. This has been the case for several thousand years. We’ve structured our entire civilization – our criminal justice system, our socio-economic system, our interpersonal relations, and our relation to ourselves — on an illusion. For us to be guided by the truth of who we are, and the truth of why we do what we do, has to be a wiser, and better, way of conducting ourselves in our world than by living under the illusion that we have a free will.

When we say we have a free will, we generally mean that what we do, and think, and say, and feel is completely up to us. In other words, nothing that is not in our control is either making these decisions for us, or taking part in the decisions. When you look at it logically, you quickly realize that such a free will is impossible. We have an unconscious that is the storehouse for all of the words we draw on when we think things, and say things, and make decisions. Obviously, we can’t have a will that is free from that unconscious. The unconscious must be part of every decision because it contains what we base our decisions on.

If our unconscious is not something we’re in control of — because by definition it is unconscious — that very clearly demonstrates why we don’t have a free will. There are other ways to demonstrate this, but for now let’s focus on why the very concept of free will is simply incoherent.

To have a free will would mean that our decisions would be completely free of anything. For example, how could our decisions be free of our memories – of what we’ve done in the past? When we make a decision, whatever the decision is, we have to base it on something. Sometimes we’ll say that we can make a completely intuitive decision that we don’t at all think about. We just make it. But, when we make a decision like that, there is a reason for it. It’s happening at the level of the unconscious.

Let’s explore this. Let’s say there was such a thing as reasonless intuition. You want to make a decision that is not based on anything. That decision could not be a freely willed, according to what we mean when we assert that we have a free will. When we say we have a free will, we mean that it’s something we can take pride in, and for which we will hold ourselves and other people accountable.

Let’s consider morality. We are, ironically, hard-wired to seek to do good. We have a moral imperative, and that is one reason we don’t have a free will. But, if our moral decisions were not based on moral lessons we must obviously have learned, how can we reasonably say that these decisions are ours completely?

The concept of free will is something that evades and ignores, and chooses not to consider, the very fundamental process in nature. When we say we have a free will, what we’re saying is that our will is free of causality. To say we have a free will is to say that what we decide is free of a cause. Since every cause has a cause, the cause of our decision would have a cause, and suddenly we find we have a causal chain stretching back to before we were born. That’s why the concept of free will is incoherent. You can’t have things that happen without a cause.

For the sake of discussion and exploration, let’s say that something can actually happen without having been caused. If that something was not caused, there is only one other option. The decision must be random, or indeterministic. It has no cause at all; it just happens. If our decisions are just happening for no cause, or reason, that is not what we mean when we say that our decisions are freely willed.

When we claim that we have a free will, we are claiming that we can take pride in, and are truly accountable for, our decisions. If our decisions are uncaused – if they are just random – they are not up to us. By strongest definition, randomness means that something is not up to anything. The reality, however, is that everything must have a cause.

How did we come up with this concept of free will? In the West, we didn’t always have it as a clearly defined construct. The term “free will” is actually Christian, although the concept has its counterparts in other non-Christian parts of the world. In Romans 7:15, the apostle Paul writes that he wants to do what is right and good, but he finds that he sometimes can’t. This is the first statement in Christianity that questions the notion of a free will. Paul is asking — wait a minute — if I want to obey God’s laws and be moral, and I find that I can’t, what’s going on?

It’s not until about 380 A.D., when Saint Augustine of Hippo begins to grapple with the question of who’s responsible for the evil we do that Christianity adopts the doctrine that if God is defined as all-good, then the evil we humans do must be up to us, and not God. Augustine actually wrote a book back then titled De Libero Arbitrio, which translate as On Free Will. He coined the term free will to explain how any evil in the world would have to be up to human beings, and could not possibly be God’s doing. That’s how the idea of free will in Christianity came to be. It was an explanation for the existence of evil in the world. If God is all-good, then all evil must be our fault. But the belief in free will is also a point of contention in Christianity because there is a phrase in Isaiah 45:7 where God says, “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things. Augustine was apparently discounting, or ignoring, that particular passage.

As incoherent and illogical as the concept of free will is, its origin within Christianity may explain why it hasn’t been successfully challenged until now. Many Christians believe that when we die we may go to a place of eternal suffering and damnation. According to Christianity and some other religions, what we believe may determine where we go in the afterlife. Naturally, when people are faced with the contradiction of decisions free of the past, and memories, and how we were raised – things that we cannot control – many of them choose not to explore this problem because of their fear of spending the rest of eternity in hell.

We’re now in a world where many of us believe in God, but far fewer of us believe that, for example, the first woman was taken from the rib of the first man, or that our world is less than 6,000 years old, as the Biblical chronology asserts. We’re now living in a world with the Internet, and relatively free exchange of information. We can now easily download from the Internet papers by scientists that demonstrate, for example, that decisions we believe we are freely making are actually made by our unconscious. Through the process of priming, researchers can make us behave in certain ways, and make certain decisions, without our even being aware of the experimental manipulation.

Advertisers do this to us all of the time. When you see the same commercial on TV, that’s exactly what they’re doing. They understand that we don’t have a free will, and they condition us to behave in ways they would prefer. This is another reason why this issue of human will is important. Conditioning by marketers is real, and advertisers have refined this science to a scary, Orwellian degree. They really can make large portions of the population behave in various ways, in a way that is also unconscious to those consumers.

If you believe in free will, you will say to yourself “no, advertisers cannot control our buying habits and choice of products because we have a will that can over-ride all of that conditioning.” When you understand that we don’t have a free will, and that what we do, and what we buy or don’t buy, is based on the information we have, and how we acquired it, then you’ll understand why it’s important for us to understand that free will is an illusion. It’s important to understand the forces that mold us, and lead us to do what we do, if we allow them.

The concept of free will, when you think about it, is internally inconsistent. It’s not logical. If you define the will as volition, or that part of our mind or self that makes decisions, and you say that volition is free of things that it can’t control – free of causality, free of our memories, free of how we’re conditioned. This claim just doesn’t make sense. Essentially, the term free will means that we are doing what we’re doing, and saying what we’re saying, and thinking what we’re thinking, completely of our own accord. By logical extension, that belief leads to the conclusion that we do all of what we do for no reason. As soon as you say “I made this decision of my own free will because, for example, it was the right decision, or because I wanted to be a good person, you’ve introduced a cause. You’ve introduced the chain of cause and effect. Once you say you’ve made a decision because of something – because of anything – then you must also acknowledge that that cause has a cause, and that cause has a cause, etc.

A good way to understand cause and effect is to look at the state of the entire universe. Consider everything – which means every particle, every person, every planet, and every galaxy — that exists at this very moment. It has to be the complete result of the state of the universe at the previous moment. The universe evolves from state to state through time. The universe is in a certain state during one moment, and through the process of change, or cause and effect, it evolves to its state at the next moment. It can’t but do that.

If the universe is all there is, the universe is the only explanation for every next moment of the universe. You can only explain the state of the universe at one moment by understanding that the previous moment is the complete cause of it. There is nothing else to cause it. The universe is a singularity. There is only one. If you claim you are making what you consider to be a freely willed decision, and you’re making it at a certain moment in time, but the state of the universe at the previous moment is completely determining the state of the universe at the moment you make your decision, then that previous state is obviously determining your decision.

The moment-by-moment states of the universe form a chain of cause and effect that stretches back in time to before our planet was created, and before the Sun was created, and presumably, to the Big Bang about 13.7 billion years ago. By understanding that our universe evolves in a moment-by-moment fashion, according to its state during each previous moment, you can understand that our human will cannot possibly be free from that causal progression.

Why is this important? Our world right now is facing a very challenging era that will likely last decades. Much of what we face is about climate change. There is one international scientific body or institution that is responsible for compiling and analyzing all of the research on global warming and other manifestations of climate change. It’s called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, (IPCC) and this United Nations organization is comprised of over 3,000 scientists from over 100 countries. Their last major report was published in 2007, but if you saw Al Gore’s 2006 documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, you have some idea of what we’re up against.

The very challenging part of all of this is that back in 2007 when the IPCC published their most recent findings, scientists had concluded that the level of carbon dioxide concentration in our atmosphere that we must be under by the year 2050 in order to avoid catastrophic, and very likely irreversible, consequences was 450 parts per million, (ppm). A few years later, however, these same scientists realized that their assessment was far too optimistic, and that the actual level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that we need to remain under to remain relatively safe is 350 ppm.

The scary thing about that is that we’re already at 391 ppm, and the carbon dioxide concentration is rising by over 2.7 ppm each year. We face a monumental challenge. As an optimist, I would expect our human race to rise to it, but as a scientist and a thinker, I understand that we will not have a chance of meeting that 350-ppm target unless we profoundly, and dramatically, change the nature of our civilization.

It’s actually more serious. In 2007 when the IPCC made that assessment, they did not consider the effects of the melting of the polar ice caps, or the methane that is currently in the permafrost, and gets converted to carbon dioxide and released into the atmosphere as this frozen layer of ground thaws. There is apparently more carbon dioxide in the permafrost – which covers vast areas in Alaska and Russia among other places – than has already accumulated in our atmosphere.

If we want to address those challenges, we will need to stop competing with each other, and we will need to stop thinking that we deserve so much because we did so many great things. We need to start working together. There is absolutely no way that we can adequately address the threat of climate change unless we work together. For example, if China, India, Brazil and Europe were to do their part, but we in the United States did not do our part, we would not be doing nearly enough. If we in the United States did our part, but those other countries did not do their part, we would not be doing nearly enough. It must be a global effort.

There are other reasons why I think this issue of human will is important, but climate change will remain a supremely important reason for at least the next several decades.

Links:

Every episode of George’s show is also available on youtube at:
https://www.youtube.com/user/Georgeo57/videos

Additionally, I have a playlist specifically of the shows George and I both take part in.

Exploring the Illusion of Free Will 11

Exploring the Illusion of Free Will 11

This is the eleventh of a series of posts where I will be sharing the transcripts of George Ortega’s show which he has so generously made available on his website.

I will share both the link and copy the text as well. This is convenient for those who subscribe to my blog by email. You can read without visiting the site, but I highly encourage you to visit the link and see what else George has on his website.

http://causalconsciousness.com/Episode%20Transcripts/11.%20%20The%20Absurdity%20of%20Varying%20Degrees%20of%20Free%20Will.htm

Episode 11. The Absurdity of Varying Degrees of Free Will

Let’s consider the absurdity of the claim that we humans have varying degrees of free will. Some philosophers and psychologists assert that while we may not have a completely free will, we have a free will in certain respects. We’ll be exploring that assertion.

Before we do that, I want to go through a brief description of what we generally mean when we say we have a free will. In essence, what we mean by free will is that our decisions are completely up to us. Nothing that we cannot control is compelling our decisions. Nothing that is not under our control would be either taking part in our decisions, or making them completely for us. Right from the start, we can understand that because we have an unconscious that is always awake and active, free will is impossible. If the unconscious is taking part in a decision, that decision is not free from its participation. Again, if the unconscious is making the decision completely — which is the most accurate description for how all of our decisions are made — that decision cannot have been freely willed.

Civilization has had this illusion of free will as its premise for our whole legal system, our whole political system, our whole socio-economic system, and our whole system of relating to each other personally. This irrational conclusion leads to unnecessary harm, problems, and confusion. By overcoming the illusion of free will, we can create a much more intelligent, compassionate, and understanding world.

Some philosophers and scientists understand why we can’t have a completely free will. For example, they understand that fifty percent of our personality is genetic. But, they will assert that we have a certain amount of free will; a partially free will. There are two types of partial free will that they wrongly conclude. The first is the idea that while not all of our decisions are up to us, some of them are. The second type of partial free will they claim we have is that when we make a decision, that decision is partly up to us. They claim that it may be partly up to other factors, but it is also partly up to us.

Let’s examine these two claims in detail to see whether or not they make sense, or have any evidence to support them. Let’s begin with the first one that not all of our decisions are freely made, but some of them are. Here’s where the unconscious comes in. We’ve talked about this before, and it’s the answer to why even a partially free will is not possible. Our unconscious is always active. There is a part of our unconscious that controls our bodily actions like breathing, circulation, and all of the organs inside of us. Part of our unconscious is constantly awake controlling all of that biology. Because our unconscious is also awake while we are sleeping, it is actually more a part of our experience than is our consciousness, which is active only while we’re awake.

As far back as Freud and the hypnotists, we have empirically understood that there is an unconscious. We have understood that this unconscious is really responsible for a lot of the decisions – in truth, all of them — we generally attribute to our conscious will. In neuroscience and psychology today, researchers are demonstrating this with more and more hard evidence. Before this, a researcher would hypnotize a person, and give them a post hypnotic suggestion. When the person was no longer under hypnosis, s/he would perform the post-hypnotic suggestion.

The way researchers determined that the post-hypnotic action was done by the unconscious, rather than by the person’s conscious will, was to ask the person “why did you do that?” The person would then confabulate some kind of reason, but the reason would not reveal the understanding that the reason they did what they did was because of the post-hypnotic suggestion while under hypnosis. Other experiments reveal our unconscious will through priming. Subjects in an experiment are given words that will cause their unconscious mind to focus on a certain kind of behavior, and they are evaluated, or they perform a task while primed with those words. It turns out that the priming is responsible for what they do or don’t do.

When we say what we say, or decide what we decide, we have to rely on memories. We can’t make a decision with no data upon which to draw on. We can’t say anything without there being a collection of words in our unconscious memory bank from which to draw for our sentences and paragraphs, etc. Remember, the term free will means that we would be able to make our decisions completely free of anything that is not in our control. Think about it. We have an unconscious that is the storehouse of all of our memories – all of the words that we know, our reasoning processes, and our morality. Because this unconscious is something that we’re not, by definition, even aware of, we’re obviously not in control of it. There is no way for us to, in real time, control our unconscious.

So, to make every decision we make, we have to draw on an unconscious part of us that we can’t control. The words that I’m saying right now are just coming out of me. My unconscious is leading me to say what I say. My conscious mind then becomes aware of what I’m saying, and, to the extent I’ve been conditioned to believe in free will, wrongly concludes that it made the decision. Whether we see the unconscious as controlling the very decision itself, as many experiments in hypnosis have demonstrated, or as taking part in the decision, we can’t, therefore, have a free will.

Especially since Freud, we’ve come to understand that we have a part of us that is unconscious and is not, therefore, in our control. That seems a very easy way for us to understand the logic of why we don’t have a free will. But, the fundamental reason we don’t have a free will is the law of cause and effect. Everything that happens has a cause. Nothing can happen without a cause. This has been known since Leucippus, who at about 500 B.C., wrote, “Nothing happens at random, but everything for a reason and by necessity.”

If everything has to have a cause, this means that every one of our decisions has to have a cause. It doesn’t stop there because if everything has a cause, then the cause of every one of our decisions must have a cause, and the cause of that cause must have a cause. You then get a chain of cause and effect that spans back to before we were born. Things that are happening before we were born, and before the planet was created, determine what’s happening at this exact moment, and what will happen in the future.

How does all this apply to the claim that some of our decisions are freely made? To answer a question with a question, how could it be that some of our decisions are subject to this law of causality, and others aren’t? That’s why I say that the notion of varying degrees of free will is absurd, incoherent, and logically inconsistent.

Now let’s explore the second claim, that part of every decision we make is in our control, and thus, freely willed. Imagine yourself writing a report, raking leaves, doing dishes, or whatever you’re doing. There is something – in this case, your unconscious – that insists on both taking part in your decision, and in the actual doing. If that is the case, you can’t rightfully say that either the decision to do something, or the doing of it, is the result of a free will. Something that you can’t control is insisting on participating.

The unconscious never sleeps. To the extent that it is not making the decision completely (it actually is, as we’re just beginning to demonstrate in neuroscience and psychology) the unconscious is certainly taking part. If we have to draw on our unconscious for the concepts — the building blocks, the words, the memories — upon which we’re going to make our decision, then obviously that unconscious is going to, at the very least, take part in every decision we make.

You may want to conclude that part of our decisions is up to us, and part of them is up to something else. However, the part of any decision that was up to us would have causes. It couldn’t escape that law of causality that governs everything. If we claim that part of our decisions was up to us, we confront the following kinds of questions. What was the reason for that decision? Why did we make that decision? What caused us to have that reason?

It’s not that we can always know completely what the causes are, especially once you go back three or four steps in this chain of cause and effect. We’re usually just guessing at what the causes are. We start out with the fact that everything must have a cause because things can’t happen uncaused. Think about what it would mean if some of our decisions were uncaused, and not subject to this law of causality that governs everything. Clearly, if a decision of ours is not caused – if it is random or indeterminate – it can’t have been the result of a free will.

When we say free will, what we mean is that our decisions are be up to us, and we can take pride in, and feel accountable for, them. A free will decision is presumably one for which there would be our own autonomous reasons. Asserting that we have a free will is akin to asserting that our will is free of causality, free of any kind of reason, and free of the self. It’s easy to see how the term “free will” is incoherent, and doesn’t really make sense.

Whether philosophers, psychologists and other thinkers make the assertion that some of our decisions are freely willed, or that some parts of our decisions are freely willed, because we have an unconscious, and because our world works according to cause and effect, these assertions are simply mistaken.

Let’s say we understand and accept this inescapable truth that free will is impossible. What does that mean to our world? Many of us genuinely understand the science and logic of the conclusion that free will is impossible. But, we’re sometimes reluctant to accept it, in part because we’re all, very ironically, conditioned by the causal past to believe we have a free will, and to take pride in this notion. We’ve been conditioned to not want to relinquish this belief so easily.

Some of us are reluctant to live our lives and restructure our civilization according to the truth of our causal and unconscious human will. We believe that if we all understood that free will is an illusion, and everything is truly fated – that we’re instruments of God, doing the will of God, or more secularly, that we’re robots, or computers, doing exactly what we’re programmed to do – civilization would collapse because many of us would say to ourselves, “if I’m not morally responsible for anything, then I can do anything, and can’t justly be held accountable.”

That’s really not something we need to fear because one of the ways nature has conditioned us is that we are hedonic creatures. We seek pleasure and avoid pain. That is an imperative that, incidentally, controls every decision we make. A second imperative we’re hard-wired for is that, at the time we’re doing anything, we consider it to be the most moral of our available choices. In hindsight, or to others, it may clearly seem wrong. Our moral imperative always compels us to do the greater of two or more goods, or the lesser of two or more evils.

We as individuals and we as a planet – would not allow anarchy to reign just because we understand that we humans do not have a free will. For example, let’s consider that everyone in our family and everyone we know completely understood that free will is an illusion. Everything is a movie and we’re all programmed. We’ve obviously been programmed to occasionally upset or hurt one another – to say or do things that are offensive, or aggressive, or threatening, to each other. If we really had a free will, we’d all be perfect angels, and we wouldn’t be aggressing against anyone. But to the extent that reality, or fate, or God, compels us to see free will as an illusion, and understand that everything is actually predetermined, we wouldn’t spend our time blaming each other. We would begin to explore why fate is doing this to us, understanding that our blaming or aggression is really an offense by fate against both the blamer and the blamed.

Under the notion of free will, we are all competing with each other, and against each other as adversaries. But when we understand that free will is an illusion – that everything is fated – then all of the sudden our friends and we are on the same side. We’re no longer competitors; we’re cooperators in trying to find an answer to why fate is disturbing our relations. If you want to look at this from a theological standpoint, there’s the idea of Satan, who is responsible for messing things up on the planet. From this perspective, the notion that we humans have a free will is probably one of his prime strategies for advancing his agenda. If Satan has everyone at each other, accusing ourselves and each other for things that we’re not responsible, then we’re not going to be as focused as we would otherwise be on solving the issue at hand in the best, and most intelligent, way.

Think for a minute about how amazing it is that our civilization – humankind – is so completely confused about likely the second most fundamental aspect of being a human being, (the first aspect being that we exist). This second aspect is the matter of why we do what we do. Who is all of that that up to? For us to conclude that it’s up to us rather than the causal past, or God, or all of these influences that come together completely independent of our control, is bewildering.

To the extent that we see free will as an illusion, I would hope that we can create a much more intelligent world. Consider how much harm our world is subject to because we blame each other and ourselves, and how profoundly our world could change through our understanding the true nature of reality and human will. It would be major. It would arguably be the biggest change ever in human history. We’ve had democracy, and various religions, but this evolution of our consciousness would be much grander and influential. It would be change on a scale that humanity has never before experienced.

Life is, and can continue to be, wonderful with our continuing to hold the belief that we have a free will. But to the extent that we understand that everything is really a movie – that what I’m saying right now, and what you’re reading right now, and what you did earlier today, and plan to do tomorrow, and everything we ever do is completely predetermined — that understanding can make our lives so much more wonderful, in the most literal sense meaning full of wonder.

Links:

Every episode of George’s show is also available on youtube at:
https://www.youtube.com/user/Georgeo57/videos

Additionally, I have a playlist specifically of the shows George and I both take part in.

Exploring the Illusion of Free Will 10

Exploring the Illusion of Free Will 10

This is the tenth of a series of posts where I will be sharing the transcripts of George Ortega’s show which he has so generously made available on his website.

I will share both the link and copy the text as well. This is convenient for those who subscribe to my blog by email. You can read without visiting the site, but I highly encourage you to visit the link and see what else George has on his website.

http://causalconsciousness.com/Episode%20Transcripts/10.%20%20Why%20Change%20as%20the%20Basic%20Universal%20Process%20Makes%20Free%20Will%20Impossible.htm

Episode 10. Why Change as the Basic Universal Process Makes Free Will Impossible

Our civilization, and mindset, and personal lives are all founded on this notion that we human beings can freely choose whatever we want – that we have a free will. The problem is that we don’t, and apart from our seeing reality completely contrary to the way it is, our belief in free will causes problems both in our personal lives and societally. Hopefully by our understanding that our wills are causal, and not free, we can create a world that is more compassionate toward each other and ourselves.

Before I get into our topic, I just want to go a bit more into what we mean when we say we have a free will. Basically we mean that our thoughts are completely up to us – there is nothing compelling us to decide what we do. We mean that what we do, what we eat, what we say, what kind of work we do – everything – is completely up to us.

Naturally, we have an unconscious that is always active, and makes free will impossible. But, the more basic reason why we don’t have a free will is the process of cause and effect. This show will be about the fact that everything that happens in the world, including our decisions, has a cause. If everything has a cause, then whatever causes us to make a decision will have a cause. And there will be a cause of that cause, and a cause of that cause, etc.

Note that a cause will always precede its effect. A cause can never come after its effect. When we consider this chain of cause and effect that leads back further and further into the past, we can see how the causes that ultimately led up to any kind of decision we might make were made long before we were born, and long before the planet was created.

The idea that we don’t have a free will leads us some of us to believe that we’re “robots,” or “puppets,” and in a certain sense, we are. But we don’t have to see ourselves that way. We can hold the understanding that God, or nature, is in control of everything. God created the world. God is omnipotent, and omniscient, and omnipresent, and so we can see ourselves as instruments of God. We’re expressing, in a physical way, what God is and what God does. That self-identity is a lot more palatable to many of us than to think of ourselves as robots.

Some of us will say that because we have a free will, we’re zombies. I didn’t know what a zombie was until about three weeks ago. Apparently, a zombie is someone who arises from the dead and walks the Earth doing stuff. That’s a completely different idea than being an instrument of God. We’re like computers that have been programmed to behave in certain pre-described ways. Or, we’re actors.

Let’s get to the topic. The first fact of existence — and this is undeniable, a priori, and axiomatic – is that the universe exists. Everything exists; we are here. The second a priori fact is that the basic process of the universe is change. Think about that. If the universe didn’t change, everything would be completely frozen. I wouldn’t be doing this show. You wouldn’t be reading this book. Planets like our Earth would not be rotating around their axis, and revolving around stars like our Sun. If there were no change, nothing would move. There would not be a world, as we know it.

Again, we have a priori knowledge that the universe exists, and a priori knowledge that the fundamental process of the universe is change. What is change? Change is something moving from one state to another. Change is a particle being at one point at one moment, and then at another point the next moment. That is what change is. It is matter moving through space in time. At one moment, you’ll have a particle or something at a certain point, and then at the next moment, because of change, it will be at a different point. That’s change.

Again, two axiomatic facts – reality exists, and reality changes. What pulls this all together, and what makes free will impossible, is the idea that in order for change to take place, there has to be causality. In fact, causality is the process that allows for change. No change could ever happen without causality. There is a statement to the effect that “nothing can be causa sui,” meaning that nothing can be the cause of itself (unless we want to perhaps consider that God, as the first cause, is the cause of Her/Himself. But after that, every other cause has to have a prior cause). It’s not necessary to know the first cause, if it exists, to understand the process of causality that operates thereafter.

If you have causality – cause and effect – as the process that is required for any change to take place in the universe, you can understand how causality is as axiomatic as the fact that there is a universe, and the fact that the universe changes. I say this to clarify a confusion that has arisen in physics since 1927 when Werner Heisenberg published his Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. I’m not going to get into this too much now because I’m going to do a separate show on it, but basically it’s a mathematical equation that demonstrates that you can’t at the same time measure the position and the momentum of a quantum particle with the precision required for successful prediction using classical mechanics. If you measure the particle’s position, then it’s momentum becomes less clear. If you measure the particle’s momentum, then it’s position becomes less clear.

That’s the basic Uncertainty Principle, and it applies to other conjugate variables like particle spin, particle charge and particle phase. For some reason that doesn’t really make sense, this discovery led some physicists – led by Neils Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, who formed what came to be known as the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics, to conclude that since we can’t measure simultaneously position and momentum, (or two of other conjugate variables, somehow these processes are uncaused.

It is important to see that if the universe exists as an axiomatic fact, and change is axiomatic, causality must also be axiomatic. Again, otherwise everything would be frozen. If causality is necessary, and describes change, obviously causality is as fundamental a fact of nature. In other words, this explanation of causality is at a much more fundamental level than interpreting the results of the Heisenberg and stronger, more recent, uncertainty relations. There is more to it. It has never been shown in any way that something could be uncaused. Think about it. Change requires causality. This can be demonstrated through certain laws of physics. For example, there is a Law of Conservation of Mass-Energy. This law has never been violated. When one particle interacts with another particle, there is an exchange of mass-energy. One particle will gain mass-energy, and the other will lose mass-energy. Again, that conservation law has never been violated. If one particle gains mass-energy, then the cause of that gain has to be the interaction with the other particle. It’s clear as day.

A problem with that conservation law may arise when you consider matter in terms of either mass or energy. Mass-Energy is what Einstein explained the universe as in his theory of Special Relativity. It’s the idea that mass and energy are actually one. E=mc² where E means energy, m means mass and c² means the speed of light squared. That gets a little confusing because apparently there have been some seeming violations of conservation of mass, and some seeming violations of conservation of energy that make this law appear less ironclad.

But, there is another conservation law in physics, which came out of Newton’s Laws of Motion. This is the Law of Conservation of Momentum. When a particle is moving through space, it has momentum. Momentum means velocity and direction. So, when a particle is at one point, its momentum at that point will determine its position at the second point. You can never lose momentum. If one particle interacts with another, momentum is always conserved. That we have this law of conservation of momentum that requires causality is another proof at the most fundamental level of physics that causality is the process for change – is the basic process by which how things happen.

Another law of physics that I think is obvious to us all is that matter moves through space in time. Time is what allows for change. If there was no time, there could be no change. So, you have a particle at one point at a certain moment in time, and since everything is moving, it will be at another point the next moment in time. This movement applies to every particle on Earth. The universe is expanding. So, our whole solar system and Milky Way galaxy are expanding outward. The Galaxy is expanding toward a region of the universe called

The Great Attractor Anomaly. And, our solar system is moving in time as it revolves around the Milky Way Galaxy. There are various kinds of motions that are always happening, that include every particle, and every part of the Earth. This motion all requires time. Time is what allows change. It’s what allows causality to happen.

Another axiom in physics is that there is an arrow of time, in the sense that time will always go from past to present to future. It will never go from future to present to past. The reason I say that’s axiomatic is because there has never been a known violation, and because it is so obvious. In physics, there are certain kinds of theories and equations that are deemed symmetrical, in the sense that they allow, mathematically, for time to travel backward. But, when you think of these kinds of equations and theories, you have to remember that mathematics is a measuring tool. It is not a descriptor of the nature of reality. It helps physicists come up with measurements of reality to then reach their conclusions. With mathematics, you can subtract two from one and get a negative one, but that doesn’t mean that you can subtract two apples from one apple and get as a physical entity a “negative apple.” Negative apples do not exist in reality. That is why I say that although there are equations that allow for time to go backwards, it’s just the math. It has never been demonstrated, and is clearly impossible.

One of the claims for free will is that our mind is not physical, and so our thoughts are not physical. Some say that if our thoughts are not physical, then that means that maybe they are not caused, and maybe they are the result of a free will. The problem with that assertion is the existence of time. Let’s say we make a decision, and we call it “spiritual.” We say it doesn’t have a physical presence, however that decision would have to take place within a moment in time. It has a precise position in this timeline that goes from past, to present, to future. Naturally, if it has a precise moment in our timeline, it is completely subject to the causality that governs everything else in the universe.

Let’s say we make a decision. We define it as spiritual, but it happens in the present moment. We should realize that the present moment – anything that happens in the present moment – is the complete result of the state of the universe at the previous moment. Naturally, if we have a spiritual decision taking place at a set point in time, and then being caused by the state of the universe at the prior moment, and that state of the universe is caused by the state of the universe before that, you now have a causal regression that leads back presumably to the Big Bang, and who knows what happened before that. Defining decisions as not being physical does not allow for a free will because any decision we make, and any thought we have, occupies a specific point in time, and time is causal.

I want to now consider randomness, or indeterminism, defined as acausality. It’s greatly perplexing how otherwise brilliant people have proposed this hypothesis. My guess is that physicists like Bohr and Heisenberg were more than “shut up and calculate” researchers; they were also interested in the fundamental nature of reality. It’s likely they had an interest in the question of whether our human will is free or not. My guess is that it was this philosophical interest, which to some physicists meant finding a way to preserve the notion of a free will, which led them to reach incoherent, internally inconsistent, conclusions, like the idea of acausality, that basically make no sense.

Sometimes we understand randomness in the sense of having a deck of cards, and picking one “at random.” This is more accurately described as “apparent randomness.” What some physicists mean, however — and what’s actually taught in many college level physics courses — is the Copenhagen

Interpretation of quantum mechanics that considers elementary particle behavior as random in the strong sense of not having been caused. Think about the concept of randomness in that sense of something happening that is not caused. It doesn’t make sense. There is a cause to everything. Things do not just happen for no reason, and without cause.

Let’s say something was to “just happen.” Let’s say a particle could just come into existence out of nowhere. A particle is somewhere, when a moment earlier it was nowhere. That too would be a causal process, and you cannot rationally consider the coming into existence of the particle as random. Sometimes physicists will say to themselves, “I know everything that is happening in this system.” For example, with radioactive decay, for isotopes that have a half-life, meaning they will decay at a certain rate and within a specific window of time – physicists cannot predict exactly when a single isotope will undergo this decay. So, for many years some have claimed that since we can’t predict its behavior, it can’t have a cause, and that it must be random in the strong sense meaning acausal. I trust you understand the illogic of that conclusion.

There is no true randomness, in the sense of things happening without a cause. Everything has to be caused. Another reason some physicists, philosophers, and psychologists became confused regarding this matter involves a statement by Pierre-Simon Laplace, who was a famous French mathematician and physicist. He penned what came to be understood as the classic statement describing determinism, or causality. He essentially said that if we knew the position of every particle in the universe, and every force acting upon every particle, and if we could compute that data, we could know both the past and the future. Nothing would be hidden from us. In his own words:

We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.

What confused some is that because we can’t simultaneously measure the position and momentum of a particle, and therefore can’t know the position and force acting upon every particle, (and more generally, because we can’t know everything in the universe) we can’t make such predictions using either classical or quantum mechanics. Somehow, that realization led some physicists to believe there was such a thing as indeterminism, defined as randomness, or acausality. Whichever term you want to use, these physicists are claiming that some things are simply uncaused. Sometimes physicists will define randomness as unpredictability, but that is a slight-of-hand assertion because when they are asked what they mean by unpredictable, they ultimately equate it with acausality.

Bringing all of this back to the question of human will, if the universe exists axiomatically, and if change is the fundamental process of the universe, without which nothing can happen, and if causality is necessary to all change, then causality is the fundamental process in nature. If everything has a cause, that means that every one of our decisions has a cause, and that cause has a cause, and that cause has a cause. That is a very good way to understand why free will is impossible.

I hope you now understand that everything has a cause, and that causality is fundamental to nature. We cannot escape this truth, and that’s why we don’t have a free will.

Links:

Every episode of George’s show is also available on youtube at:
https://www.youtube.com/user/Georgeo57/videos

Additionally, I have a playlist specifically of the shows George and I both take part in.

Exploring the Illusion of Free Will 9

Exploring the Illusion of Free Will 9

This is the eighth of a series of posts where I will be sharing the transcripts of George Ortega’s show which he has so generously made available on his website.

I will share both the link and copy the text as well. This is convenient for those who subscribe to my blog by email. You can read without visiting the site, but I highly encourage you to visit the link and see what else George has on his website.

http://causalconsciousness.com/Episode%20Transcripts/9.%20%20Overcoming%20Our%20Reluctance%20to%20Overcome%20the%20Illusion%20of%20Free%20Will.htm

Episode 9. Overcoming Our Reluctance to Overcome the Illusion of Free Will

Let’s work on overcoming our reluctance to overcome the illusion of free will. Often, we’ll understand the logic and reason of why we don’t have a free will, but we enjoy having a free will. It’s something we’re preconditioned to like; it is not our choice. We’re hedonic creatures, and we’re programmed to believe and cherish the notion that we have a free will. Before we get into this, let’s briefly go over the purpose of this show, and a definition of free will and it’s alternative, the reality of our predetermined, and unconscious, will. The reason this show is important is that the illusion of free will causes a lot of unnecessary harm.

Consider that a two-year-old does something wrong. We don’t ascribe free will to that two-year-old, and because of that, we will treat him or her with understanding. We’ll say to ourselves, “a two-year-old could not have helped him or herself.” But when it comes to older children and adults, we say, “You did this of your own free will, and you deserve to be punished. You’re bad. You’re evil.” We also do this to ourselves. When we do something wrong, we say “oh, I did something wrong. I am guilty. It’s right for me to suffer this guilt of having done something wrong.” Attributing free will to others and to ourselves causes a great deal of unnecessary blame, guilt, and aggression.

Before I go further, I wouldn’t recommend that we do without a kind of pseudo-personal morality. In other words, not having a free will doesn’t give us license to do whatever we want. We could create a much better world by transcending this very pervasive illusion of free will.

What people mean when they say they have a free will is that nothing that they are not in control of is compelling them to decide what they decide. Control is the key. They say, “I’m in complete control of what I decide and don’t decide. Now consider that our unconscious, by definition, is not under our conscious control (at least in real-time). We’re not even aware of it, and it’s always awake. The unconscious is what makes our heart beat, and it controls our other bodily functions. It’s where we store our memories and our thought processing. Basically, we can’t make any decision without the unconscious being involved. Naturally, if our unconscious is not in our control, you can see how free will is impossible.

We have a causal will. We have a will that is subject to causality. Whatever decision we make has a cause, and that cause has a cause, and that cause has a cause, etc. These causes go back in time, and this causal regression leads to before we were born, and before the Earth and Sun were created. It’s easy to see how, through this cause and effect process, events in the past ultimately led to what can be described as the movie we’re all acting out. It is so mind-boggling that nature, or God, has predetermined that we have this illusion of free will. It is so completely opposite to the way things are, and for this reason alone, I think it would be in humanity’s best interest to finally understand the true causal and unconscious nature of our human will.

Let’s talk about how we can overcome our reluctance to overcome our illusion of free will. Free will is actually more of a delusion. Some people understand logically and rationally that free will is impossible. They understand that we have an unconscious that makes free will impossible. They understand that causality makes free will impossible. They understand that even if things were random, in the strongest sense meaning uncaused, and things could actually happen that were not caused, that would also make free will impossible. If our decisions aren’t caused, then they certainly cannot be caused by our free will. A lot of people understand this, but they still are compelled by fate to believe in free will. They cannot let the illusion go.

The point here is that when an illusion gets where you know that it’s an illusion, but you still believe it, it’s no longer an illusion. At that point it has become a delusion. So, basically, our whole humanity is completely deluded regarding the very nature of our human will. I want to explain what I mean by the word “delusion.” Consider the well-known visual illusion depicting a horizontal line with inward-pointing arrows at each end above a horizontal line with outward-pointing arrows at each end.

If you were to ask yourself which line is longer, it seems like the one on top is the longer of the two. That’s the illusion. If you then measure the two lines with a ruler, and you determine that the two lines are, in fact, equal in length, and you still contend that the top line is longer than the bottom one, that’s where your illusion has become a delusion.

Most people have never thought about any of this. There is a term free will, and people just assume it’s true. Few people have explored human will enough to understand how and why free will is impossible. Why do we continue to believe in free will? Some of us say to ourselves, “If I were a robot, or an actor, life would have no meaning. We couldn’t take credit for anything.”

We generally tend to be religious. We tend to believe in God, or a higher power. Part of us doesn’t want to see ourselves as robots, or puppets – completely programmed beings, and everything being a movie. Another way to look at this, however, is that God’s will is manifested through us. Some of us believe that God exists outside of space and time – outside of the universe. But that doesn’t make sense. One of the definitions of God is that he is omnipresent, or everywhere. So, a clearer understanding of God is that S/He is everything, and we’re a part of God.

In that sense, we are instruments of God. That’s a good way of seeing this that many people can relate to within a religious context. We’re vehicles for God’s will. When we see it from that perspective, it restores our nobility. We’re not mere robots or puppets. We are the physical manifestation of God’s will. God expresses Her/Himself through us. That way of seeing ourselves should be a lot more palatable to many people. It should make understanding that we don’t have a free will easier to accept.

There’s another reason many of us are afraid to believe that we human beings do not have a free will. They believe that if we understand, acknowledge, and accept that we don’t have a free will, and if we act according to that understanding, and there would be no true personal morality, we could not be held accountable for anything. We could not take credit for the good we do, and we could not blame each other or ourselves for the bad we do. It’s an understandable fear. Some of us are afraid that if everyone comes to understand that we don’t have a free will, we will all do whatever we want, and say, “You can’t blame me. I don’t have a free will.” Incidentally, there is a philosopher named Saul Smilansky who wrote a book titled Free Will and Illusion, and he understands that free will is impossible and that it’s an illusion. But, his perspective is that we shouldn’t

tell people this because if we were all to understand the true nature of our will – that we’re actually instruments of God rather than gods ourselves – we would act with reckless abandon. Not incidentally, from a religious context, if we had a free will, that would also mean that we create our thoughts – that we are the authors of our thoughts. However, our understanding of God is that S/He is the only entity in the universe with the power to create.

Some of us believe that if we relinquish our belief in free will, there will be anarchy. No, because we’re hard wired to act in certain ways. For example, we’re governed by the hedonic principle. Freud explained this as the Pleasure Principle, and there have been other formulations of this principle in biology and the other sciences. The idea is that we human beings are hard-wired and compelled to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Sometimes we’ll undergo a certain amount of pain in order to satisfy our conscience. But, the idea here is that because our basic motivation in life is to seek pleasure and avoid pain, we’re not going to let people just get away with claiming “Well, I don’t have a free will so I can do whatever I want.” We’re not going to let ourselves get away with that either.

When we attribute free will to ourselves and each other, and we do things wrong, we accuse and blame. “That person is bad; he’s evil.” We do this to ourselves, and we do this to our friends. When we do this geo-politically, it can result in wars. As we overcome this free will-dependent attribution, we can at least be more understanding. We can say “alright, this person did something wrong. We can’t allow him or her to continue doing it because it’s hurtful to us all, and we have to take steps to prevent it.” By not acting according to the illusion of free will, the steps we would take, however, would likely be far more compassionate and understanding. The person who does the wrong is not going to feel like they are an evil person. When we do wrong, we’re not going to feel like we’re bad. Our overcoming the illusion of free will would likely create a much kinder, and far more intelligent, world.

When we acknowledge that there is no personal morality, and things go wrong, what do we do? In religion, when things go well, we’re taught to be grateful because it’s God’s will that caused them to go well. We thank God. Unfortunately, when things go awry, it’s our fault. As a sideline, it seems an open question whether or not God has a free will. Part of me hopes S/He doesn’t, because if God doesn’t have a free will, we can’t blame God for anything. A very cool thing about not believing in free will is that we can thereby hold ourselves as innocent – as blameless. To be able to hold God as blameless also would also be good.

It may take a few years or decades for people to understand that our wills are not free, accept this truth, and apply this understanding to our personal lives and societally. Interestingly, we already incorporate the understanding that our human will is not truly free. In today’s criminal justice system, if a person is considered to not have known what they were doing at the time of their wrongdoing, we apply what we refer to as the insanity defense. We understand that you can’t justly hold someone responsible for what they did if they did not genuinely, or sufficiently, know what they were doing. This can happen with certain kinds of brain injuries and various illnesses.

With free will exposed as an illusion, our criminal justice system would, over time, become much more compassionate. While we may have to separate some of us who would otherwise go around committing crimes, it would likely be a more compassionate separation. Consider that people often commit crimes against another person because they blame that person for something. They conclude that a certain person did some wrong, and at times desire to get him back. It’s about retribution. If people generally did not believe that other people have a free will, much of that attribution-based crime would be avoided.

Our overcoming the illusion of free will would make life so much more wonderful – and I mean literally wonderful, as in “full of wonder.” Think about it; everything is a movie. What I’m saying right now has been predetermined from before the Earth and Sun were created. It’s not just about our decisions. Everything that happens, everything that moves, every bird that flies, every rock that falls, every planet that moves, is predetermined. To my mind, it’s perplexing, and amazing, and bewildering, but it’s also wonderful. I start each show with a quote from American philosopher, John Searle. He says that if free will is an illusion, that would be a bigger revolution in our thinking than Einstein, Copernicus, Newton, Darwin, and Galileo. I think he’s right. Overcoming the illusion of free will would give us an entirely new mindset, and perspective.

Why do we need a new mindset? We’ve made a lot of progress in our world. About two hundred years ago, almost everyone on the planet was poor. Today, many of have so much more than we need. We have many blessings. Our world works very well in many ways. But in some ways it doesn’t work at all. For example, climate change will challenge us for decades. It’s probably too late to do all we could have done about it, because the climate-driven effects we’re feeling today were caused twenty or thirty years ago. We face monumental challenges with climate change. If we adopt the understanding that free will is an illusion, we can approach climate change and all of our other major challenges with greater cooperation.

Under the free will perspective, we say “they are doing something wrong. They’re bad. We’re opposed to them, and they’re opposed to us.” When we have that kind of relationship with each other, it’s hard to get things done. It’s hard to reach agreement, because if you’re one of the people doing something wrong, to admit this is akin to admitting that you are a criminal, or just bad. We don’t tend to do that. But, if everyone shared the understanding that we don’t have a free will – that if people do something wrong it is only because they were compelled to so, and it wasn’t truly their choice – we could still say “listen; you need to stop polluting the Earth and warming the climate.” When people don’t, and are not made to, feel responsible for those kinds of egregious actions, then they can more easily assume a certain kind of responsibility.

Another major challenge we have is that until about sixty years ago, our farm animals were treated so much more compassionately than they are treated today. Our cows had pastures to graze on, and our chickens were free to roam the yards. Today, you would not believe the horrible conditions by which these animals are raised. If you go to Google Video and search for “Meet Your Meat,” you can view a 12-minute video narrated by Alec Baldwin, and produced by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, (PETA) that shows very graphically just how horribly we treat farm animals. If you watch that video, you will see how chickens are stuffed in cages so small they cannot even fully extend their wings for their entire lives. You will see pigs, who happen to be more

intelligent than dogs, confined in cages so small they cannot even turn around for months at a time. The degree of abuse is unbelievably horrible.

We should stop eating meat simply because we would be healthier, and live longer, if we did. But, we continue to torture these animals because we refuse to even look at what we’re doing. If we were to see our treatment of animals squarely for what it is, we would have to recognize how horribly we’ve been acting, and how cruel and callous that makes every one of us who condone and abet this cruelty by eating meat. That is the only conclusion we could honestly reach.

If we were to view all of this from the understanding that what we’re doing is completely compelled — and in no way up to us – then we could with justification blame the universe, or whatever, for compelling us to commit such cruelty. That perspective would render us innocent, and when we’re no longer holding ourselves responsible for such cruelty, then we will hopefully, through compassion, squarely face the cruelty that is being done through us, and stop torturing those animals.

Our free will-derived sense of responsibility likely prevents us from truly seeing the extent of our cruelty. The sad irony here is that the universe has caused us to torture these animals. God willing, this same universe will hopefully soon make us understand that we don’t have a free will, and compel us to be much more compassionate toward all animals on our planet. To the extent that we overcome the illusion of free will, we will create a brand new world. It would be like a new renaissance, multiplied tenfold.

We’re perpetually at each other. Our coming to understand, and behave according to the understanding, that we don’t have a free will would lead us to sit down with each other, and rationally consider the matters before us. “Why did the universe compel you to do wrong?” we might ask our friend. S/he might respond, “Not so fast; the universe is apparently compelling me to conclude that what I did was not, in fact, wrong.” Basically, the conversation could proceed as a cooperative, rather than blaming, venture, with each of us trying to figure out if a wrong was, in fact, done, and what to do about the matter from a practical standpoint.

Understanding free will as an illusion would also lead to our understanding that the way we treat our children in school, especially when they are young, makes all the difference in the world to their, and our, future. In computers there is a principle called GIGO, which is an acronym for “garbage in, garbage out.” This principle also applies to how we instruct our children. To the extent we understand that what we are basically doing with child-rearing and education is programming our children to behave in certain ways, and not others, we will take more time, and devote more effort, to teaching them how to be happy, and how to be good.

There are many other reasons why overcoming this illusion of free will would create a much more wonderful world by increasing goodness, compassion and understanding. We’ll explore them. Even as we rationally understand the causal and unconscious nature of our human will, it is hard for us to accept this truth about ourselves. So, we will go over all of this a lot. Over time you should ultimately understand why overcoming the illusion of free will would very likely create a much better world.

Links:

Every episode of George’s show is also available on youtube at:
https://www.youtube.com/user/Georgeo57/videos

Additionally, I have a playlist specifically of the shows George and I both take part in.