Is there free will?

I’m a total nerd. Not the usual kind people think of: computer scientists, engineers, physicists. But I’m a nerd nevertheless especially when it comes to matters of how our mind works and what makes us human. So my ideal of spending the evening with my husband is to watch a marathon debate between Sam Harris and Daniel Dennette on whether or not there is free will. After half an hour, my poor husband could not help but muttered “It’s amazing you can get into all this.” His polite way of declaring “I can’t take it anymore.”

I get it. In this age of ever accelerating scientific and technological breakthroughs, these types of debate seem too metaphysical and archaic. Only the ancient Greeks would do these philosophical debates as a pastime. Today, the best and the brightest of the world are focused on conquering Mars, solving for climate change, or curing cancer. What is the use of philosophy?

The word “philosophy” may cause some people to roll their eyes these days, but it is the foundation of everything. It is the study of such fundamental questions as why do we exist, where does knowledge come from, and what determines our values. Through the exercise of our human mind, philosophy provides theoretical frameworks to organize our world so science could study them, gather evidence to confirm or refine these theoretical frameworks. In fact, the most advanced degree in science is called Ph.D. – Doctor of Philosophy. So I believe far from having outlived its usefulness, more than ever, we need guidance from philosophy (derived from the Greek word wisdom) to live a meaningful life in a world full of noises, as I shall try to demonstrate through the debate of free will.

As usual, Sam Harris (author, neuroscientist, philosopher, and podcaster) has a controversial and provocative thesis: there is no free will. Who we are and what we do at this particular moment are determined by our genes and what has happened to us up to this moment, much of which we have no control over whatsoever (e.g., who our parents are, what social environment we were born into and brought up in, etc.). Therefore, the concept of free will is a pure illusion.

Dan Dennette (writer, philosopher and cognitive scientist), on the other hand, belongs to the school of thought called compatibilism. For Dennett, the existence of free will does not have to be incompatible with Sam Harris’ deterministic model of the universe. He believes while free will in the ordinary sense is an illusion, the consequences of free will are real so free will should be redefined to refer to these consequences. Dennett suggests that calling an action "freely chosen" should not mean that the person had some other possible alternative action, but rather should mean that we are justified in holding the person morally responsible for that action: " He calls it “free will worth wanting”.

My initial reaction to this debate is Sam Harris has finally lost it. Of course, there are many things that are outside our control, but to claim that we do not have free will at all, that our actions are a mere function of what has been pre-determined, that people should not be held responsible for their actions, is pure insanity. How do we function as humans and as a society if we are to believe our actions do not matter?

The only thing that gave me pause is when Sam Harris talked about the case of Charles Whitman, an American mass murderer who became infamous as the "Texas Tower Sniper". On August 1, 1966, he used knives to kill his mother and his wife in their respective homes, then went to the University of Texas in Austin with multiple firearms and randomly killed a total of 16 people while injuring another 31 victims. Another evil serial killer, you might conclude, except that an autopsy revealed Charles Whitman had a brain tumor pressing on his amygdala, a region of the brain crucial for emotion and behavioral control. While it is inconclusive whether the brain tumor was the sole cause of the mass murder, it is plausible it may have at least played a role as none of Charles Whitman’s earlier life suggested that he was an evil man.

So should we hold Charles Whitman responsible for his killing? What about other mass killers who may have unknown brain tumors that led to their psychotic behaviors? And what about the rest of us, who may not have exhibited such extreme behaviors like murder, but aren’t we all dysfunctional in some way, cognitively impaired and traumatized in some way? What if our irrational, misguided behaviors and thoughts can be explained by misfiring of certain neurons in our brain that are entirely out of our control? In fact, there is well documented scientific research to show our neurons are fired seven seconds before we are aware of our thoughts. Indeed, if you carefully observe where your thoughts come from (meditation teaches you how to do that), you realize thoughts simply appear in your head somehow without you summoning for them. They may be triggered by something or another thought, but how they came about and why a particular thought happens to surface at a particular moment remain quite mysterious. Furthermore, it is rather hard to suppress these thoughts that seem to come out of nowhere. So are we really in control of our thoughts or are they a mere manifestation of our biology?

While I still cannot bring myself to agree with Sam Harris, I start to understand his perspectives. Most of us believe that people make choices independently of causes, to a significant degree, and therefore deserve reward and punishment. This is the basis of the American justice system and of much of our culture. What is refreshing and unsettling about Sam Harris’ deterministic view is the fact that it challenges these assumptions. Many people find the implications troubling, as how do we think about good and evil if we cannot assign responsibility to individuals. Sam Harris argues it does not have to be that way. Rather, realizing our behaviors are inevitably a result of our genetics and environment can make us much more compassionate about others and ourselves. It makes us focus on the environmental and systematical issues that produce evil behaviors rather than blaming the individuals who may be victims to such systematic injustices. For example, victims of child abuse are much more likely to become criminals than people who grow up in a happy household. We do need to punish these criminals to establish the correct social norms, but it may be just as important for us to put more effort and resources to ensure our children grow up happy and unharmed. And at a personal level, it absolves us in our endless self blame – we have limited control in who are and how we turn out, so there is no point in feeling bad about it. We might as well embrace it. And the most futile, senseless emotion of all is regret. There is simply no point in looking back, because if we did not do the things we regret doing, we would not have become the people we are today to be thinking the thoughts we are thinking, regret included.

This is why I enjoyed the Sam Harris Dan Dannette debate. Underneath the metaphysics and the semantics are the lens through which we make sense of the world. Each person has his or her own lens. The older I get, the more I find there is hardly anything that is black or white. The world is way more nuanced than binary. It is millions of shades of gray. But it is through debate of opposing views that we get to more clarifications of our own particular shade of gray. For me, I agree with Sam Harris that we are in less control of our destiny than we think. Free will is overrated and in fact, the wrong vocabulary. Having said that, I also agree with Dan Dannette that choice matters, as limited as these choices may be for us. The biggest contribution of psychology is scientifically proving that our perspectives, the way we choose to interpret our environment, the stories we tell ourselves and others, can impact the world and our lives just as powerfully as random external events can. Why a particular individual may choose to believe certain things may still be pre-determined at least probabilistically due to our genetic tendencies, but so long as we have a choice, or at least the illusion of it, we should exercise that power to choose wisely.

So here is my utilitarian view of free will: We were not free to choose our past, so no need to hold onto it. No need to hold grudges or bask in your own glory. You might just be unlucky or extremely lucky. There is no point in taking blame or credit. Knowing that, we will be unencumbered by our past and free to face whatever the future holds for us.