0:00

This is the guardian.

0:09

This long read contains offensive

0:12

language and descriptions of violence

0:14

you may find distressing. Welcome

0:17

to Guardian long read showcasing the

0:19

best long form journalism covering culture,

0:21

politics, and new thinking. For the tech version

0:24

of this and all our long reads, go to the guardian

0:26

dot com forward slash long

0:28

read.

0:32

the clockwork universe is

0:34

free will and illusion by

0:36

Oliver Berkman.

0:44

Towards

0:47

the end of a conversation dwelling on some

0:49

of the deepest metaphysical puzzles

0:51

regarding the nature of human existence, The

0:54

philosopher Galen Strauelson paused

0:56

then asked me, have you spoken

0:58

to anyone else yet who's received weird

1:00

emails? He navigated to

1:02

a file on his computer and began

1:05

reading from the alarming messages he

1:07

and several other scholars had received

1:09

over the past few years. Some

1:13

were plaintive, others abusive,

1:15

but all were fiercely accused

1:18

tree.

1:20

Last year, you all played a part in destroying

1:23

my life. One person wrote, I

1:25

lost everything because of you, my son,

1:27

my partner, my job, my home,

1:30

my mental health. All because of

1:32

you, you told me I had no control.

1:34

how I was not responsible for anything I

1:36

do, how my beautiful six year old

1:38

son was not responsible for what he did.

1:42

Goodbye, and good luck with the rest of

1:44

your cancerous evil pathetic existence.

1:51

rod in your own shit, Galen. Read

1:53

another note sent in early twenty fifteen.

1:56

Your wife, your kids, your friends, you have

1:58

smeared all their achievements you utter

2:00

fucking prick.

2:01

Roke the same person who subsequently

2:04

warned, I'm going to fuck you up.

2:07

And

2:07

then days later under the subject line,

2:09

hello, I'm

2:11

coming for you.

2:13

This was one where we had to involve the

2:15

police, Strowson said, thereafter,

2:19

the violent

2:19

threats ceased.

2:25

It isn't unheard of for philosophers

2:27

to receive death threats.

2:29

The Australian ethicist Peter Singer,

2:31

for example, has received many

2:33

in response to his argument that

2:36

in highly exceptional circumstances, It

2:39

might be morally justifiable to

2:41

kill newborn babies with severe

2:43

disabilities. But

2:45

Strouseon, like others on the

2:47

receiving end of this particular wave of abuse,

2:50

had merely expressed a long position

2:52

in an ancient debate that strikes

2:54

many as the ultimate in armchair

2:57

philosophy, wholly detached

2:59

from the emotive entanglements of real

3:01

life. They all

3:03

deny that beings possess

3:06

free will. They

3:08

argue that our choices are determined

3:10

by forces beyond our ultimate

3:12

control, perhaps even

3:14

predetermined all the way back

3:16

to the Big Bang. and that

3:19

therefore, nobody is ever

3:21

wholly responsible for their actions.

3:23

Reading back over the emails,

3:25

Strouse who

3:26

gives the impression of someone far more forgiving

3:29

of other people's flaws than of his own,

3:31

found himself empathizing with his harassers

3:34

distress I think for these

3:36

people, it's just an existential catastrophe,

3:39

he said, and I think I can see

3:41

why. The difficulty

3:43

in explaining the enigma of free

3:46

will to those unfamiliar with the subject

3:48

isn't that it's complex or obscure.

3:51

It's that the experience of possessing

3:53

free will, the feeling that

3:55

we are the authors of our choices, is

3:58

so utterly basic to everyone's existence

4:00

but it can be hard to get enough mental

4:03

distance to see what's going on.

4:05

Suppose you find yourself

4:07

feeling moderately hungry one afternoon,

4:10

So you walk to the fruit bowl in your kitchen

4:12

where you see one apple and one banana.

4:16

As it happens, you choose the banana.

4:19

But it seems absolutely obvious that

4:21

you were free to choose the Apple or

4:23

neither or both instead.

4:26

That's free will. Were

4:28

you to rewind the tape of world history

4:31

to the instant just before you made

4:33

your decision with everything in the

4:35

universe exactly the same. You'd

4:37

have been able to make a different

4:39

one. nothing

4:41

could be more self evident. And

4:43

yet, according to a growing chorus

4:45

of philosophers and scientists who

4:48

have a variety of different reasons for

4:50

their view, It also can't possibly

4:52

be the case. This

4:54

sort of free will is ruled out

4:56

simply and decisively by the

4:58

laws of physics says one of the

5:00

most strident of the free world skeptics,

5:03

the evolutionary biologist, Jerry

5:05

Klein. Leading psychologists

5:07

such as Steven Pinker and Paul Blum

5:10

agree as apparently did the

5:12

late Steven Hawking along with

5:14

numerous prominent neuroscientists including

5:17

V. S. Ramachandran who

5:19

called Free Will an inherently

5:21

flawed and incoherent concept in

5:23

his endorsement of Sam Harris'

5:25

best selling twenty twelve book

5:27

Free Will, which also

5:29

makes that argument. According

5:32

to the public intellectual, Yuval Noah

5:34

Harare, Freewill is an

5:36

anachronistic myth, useful

5:38

in the past, perhaps, as a way

5:40

of motivating people to fight against

5:42

tyrants or oppressive ideologies, but

5:45

rendered obsolete by the

5:47

power of modern data science

5:49

to know us better than we know ourselves,

5:52

and thus to predict and manipulate

5:54

our choices. Arguments

5:57

against free will go back millennia,

6:00

but the latest resurgence of skepticism

6:02

has been driven by advances in

6:04

neuroscience during the past few decades.

6:07

Now that it's possible to observe, thanks

6:10

to neuroimaging, the physical

6:12

brain activity associated with our

6:14

decisions. It's easier to

6:16

think of those decisions as just another

6:18

part of the mechanics of the material

6:20

universe in which free

6:22

will, plays no

6:24

role. And from the nineteen

6:26

eighties onwards, various

6:28

specific neuroscientific findings have

6:31

offered troubling clues that

6:33

our so called free choices might

6:35

actually originate in our brains

6:37

several milliseconds or even

6:39

much longer. before we're first

6:41

aware of even thinking of them.

6:45

Despite the criticism that this is all

6:47

just armchair philosophy, The

6:49

truth is that the stakes could hardly

6:51

be higher. Wher free

6:53

will to be shown to be non existent

6:56

and where we truly to absorb the

6:58

fact It would precipitate

7:00

a culture war far more

7:02

belligerent than the one that has been waged

7:04

on the subject of evolution. Harris

7:07

has written. Arguably,

7:10

we would be forced to conclude that it

7:12

was unreasonable ever to praise

7:14

or blame anyone for their actions. since

7:16

they weren't truly responsible for deciding

7:18

to do them. Or to

7:20

feel guilt for one's misdeeds, pride

7:22

in one's accomplishments, or

7:24

gratitude for others' kindness, and

7:27

we might come to feel that it was morally

7:29

unjustifiable to meet out

7:31

retributive punishment to criminals

7:33

since they had no ultimate choice

7:35

about their wrongdoing. Some worry

7:37

that it might fatally corrode

7:39

all human relations. Since

7:41

romantic love, friendship, and

7:44

neighborly civility alike, or

7:46

depend on the assumption of choice.

7:48

Any loving or respectful gesture

7:50

has to be voluntary for it to

7:52

count. Peer

7:55

over the precipice of the free will debate

7:57

for a while and you begin to appreciate

7:59

how an already psychologically vulnerable

8:01

person might be nudged into a

8:03

breakdown as was apparently

8:05

the case with Strouseon's email correspondence.

8:08

Harris has taken to prefacing

8:11

his podcasts on free will with

8:13

disclaimers, urging those who

8:15

find the topic emotionally distressing

8:17

to give them a mess. And

8:19

Saul Smolansky, a professor

8:21

of philosophy at the University of

8:23

Haifa in Israel, who

8:25

believes the popular notion of free will is

8:27

a mistake told me that if a

8:29

graduate student who was prone to depression

8:32

sought to study the subject with him,

8:34

he would try to dissuade them.

8:36

Look, I'm naturally a buoyant

8:38

person. He said, I have the

8:40

mentality of a village idiot. It's

8:42

easy to make me happy. Nevertheless,

8:45

The free will problem is really depressing

8:47

if you take it seriously. It

8:49

hasn't made me happy, and in

8:51

retrospect, if I were at graduate

8:53

school again, Maybe a different

8:55

topic would have been preferable.

8:59

Smolansky is an advocate of what

9:01

he calls illusionism. The

9:04

idea that although free will as

9:06

conventionally defined is unreal,

9:09

it's crucial people go on

9:11

believing otherwise. from

9:12

which it follows that an article

9:14

like this one might be actively

9:16

dangerous. Twenty years

9:18

ago, he said, he might have refused to

9:20

speak to me.

9:21

But these days, free will

9:23

skepticism were so widely discussed

9:25

that the horse has left the barn.

9:28

on the deepest level, if people

9:30

really understood what's going on,

9:32

and I don't think I fully internalized

9:34

the implications myself even after

9:37

all these years. It's just

9:39

too frightening and difficult, Smolansky

9:41

said, for anyone who's

9:43

morally and emotionally deep, It's

9:45

really depressing

9:46

and destructive. It would

9:48

really threaten our sense of self,

9:50

our sense of personal value.

9:52

The truth is just too

9:54

awful here.

9:58

The

10:01

conviction that nobody ever truly

10:03

chooses freely to do anything

10:05

that we're the puppets of forces beyond

10:07

our control often seems to

10:09

strike its adherence early in their

10:11

intellectual careers in a sudden flash of

10:13

insight. I was

10:15

sitting in a Carol in Wilson College

10:17

in Oxford. In nineteen

10:19

seventy five, and I had no

10:21

idea what I was going to write my detailed

10:23

thesis about,

10:24

Strowson recalled. I

10:26

was

10:26

reading something about Kant's

10:28

views on free will and I

10:30

was just electrified. That

10:33

was it. The

10:35

logic, once glimpsed, seems

10:37

coldly inexorable. Start

10:39

with what seems like an obvious truth.

10:42

Anything that happens in the world ever

10:44

must have been completely caused by

10:46

things that happened before it. And

10:48

those things must have been caused by things that

10:50

happened before them. And

10:51

so on, backwards

10:52

to the dawn of time,

10:55

Cores after cores after cores,

10:57

all of them following the predictable laws

10:59

of nature even if we haven't

11:01

figured all of those laws out yet.

11:04

It's easy enough to grasp this in the

11:06

context of the straightforwardly

11:06

physical world of rocks and

11:09

rivers and internal combustion

11:11

engines But surely, one

11:13

thing leads to another in the world of

11:15

decisions and intentions too.

11:17

Our decisions

11:18

and intentions involve neural

11:20

activity, And why would a

11:22

neuron be exempt from the laws of

11:24

physics any more than a rock?

11:26

So in the fruit bowl example,

11:28

There are physiological reasons

11:31

for your feeling hungry in the first place,

11:33

and there are causes in

11:35

your genes your upbringing or your current

11:37

environment for your choosing to

11:39

address your hunger with fruit

11:41

rather than a box of doughnuts. And your

11:43

preference

11:43

for the banana over the apple

11:46

at the moment of supposed choice

11:48

must have been caused by what went

11:50

before. presumably including

11:52

the pattern of neurons firing in your

11:55

brain, which was itself caused and

11:57

so on back in an unbroken

11:59

chain to your birth. the meeting of

12:01

your parents, their births, and

12:03

eventually, the birth of the

12:05

cosmos. But if

12:07

all of that's true, There's simply

12:09

no room for the kind of free will you

12:11

might imagine yourself to have

12:13

when you see the apple and banana and

12:15

wonder which one you'll choose. To

12:17

have what's known in the scholarly

12:19

jargon as contra casual

12:21

free will so that

12:22

if you rewind the tape of history back

12:24

to the moment of choice, you could make

12:26

a different choice. You'd somehow

12:28

have to slip outside physical

12:31

reality. To make a

12:32

choice that wasn't merely the next link

12:35

in unbroken chain of causes. You'd

12:37

have to

12:37

be able to stand apart from the

12:39

whole thing, a ghostly presence

12:42

separate from the material world. Yet,

12:44

mysteriously still able to influence

12:46

it. But of course, you can't

12:48

actually get to this supposed place that's

12:50

external to the universe. separate

12:52

from all the atoms that comprise

12:54

it and the laws that govern them.

12:57

You just are some of the atoms in

12:59

the universe governed by the

13:01

same predictable laws as all

13:03

the rest.

13:09

It was

13:10

the French polymath, Pierre Simon

13:12

La Plas, Writing in eighteen

13:14

fourteen, who most succinctly

13:17

expressed the puzzle here.

13:19

How can there be free will?

13:22

In a universe where events

13:24

just crank forwards like clockwork,

13:27

His thought experiment is known

13:29

as Laplace's demon, and

13:31

his argument went as follows. If

13:33

some hypothetical, ultra intelligent

13:36

being or demon could

13:38

somehow know the position of

13:40

every atom in the universe at a single

13:42

point

13:42

in time Along

13:44

with all the laws that govern their

13:46

interactions, it could

13:48

predict the future in its entirety.

13:50

pretty

13:52

There would be nothing it couldn't know about

13:55

the world, one hundred or one

13:57

thousand years hence, down to

13:59

the slightest quiver of a sparrow's

14:00

wing. You

14:02

might think you made a free choice to marry

14:05

your partner or choose a salad with

14:07

your meal rather than chips. But in

14:09

fact, Laplace's demon would

14:11

have known it all along

14:13

by extrapolating out

14:15

along the endless chain of causes.

14:17

For such an intellect, La

14:19

Pla said, nothing could

14:21

be uncertain. And the future,

14:23

just like the past, would be

14:26

present before its eyes.

14:28

It's true that since

14:30

La Place's day, findings in

14:33

quantum physics have indicated that

14:35

some events at the level of atoms and

14:37

electrons are genuinely random,

14:39

which means they would be impossible to

14:41

predict in advance even by some

14:43

hypothetical mega brain. But

14:47

few people involved in the free world

14:49

debate think that makes a critical difference.

14:53

Those tiny fluctuations probably

14:55

have little relevant impact on

14:57

life at the scale we live it as

14:59

human beings. And

15:03

in any case, there's no more

15:05

freedom in being subject to the random

15:07

behaviors of electrons than there is

15:09

in being the slave of predetermined

15:11

cause or laws. Either

15:13

way, something other than your

15:15

own free will seems to

15:16

be pulling your strings.

15:27

Thank

15:32

you for listening to the Guardian long

15:34

read. We'll be back after

15:36

this.

15:41

It starts the

15:43

same way. Gonna

15:45

tell you a secret. It

15:47

would start off with a random

15:50

girl and just say, hey,

15:52

Hern. I'm gonna tell you

15:53

some secret Please don't mention

15:55

to anybody, but it

15:57

quickly escalates. It

15:59

just spread

16:00

like a wild higher. I

16:03

still sleep with clubs next to my

16:05

bed. I didn't know how far this was

16:07

going to go.

16:08

People seldom show their true selves

16:10

online. but one man.

16:12

He's

16:14

taken it much further. I

16:16

was terrified. Who

16:19

is a cyber stalker behind these message

16:21

is. He

16:22

actually said to me good luck

16:24

proving it's me. And why

16:26

is he sending them? Because he became

16:28

more and more isolated later. He

16:30

just went within himself even

16:33

further.

16:33

Do you punish someone if they're

16:35

acting out whatever is

16:37

going in their mind that we don't understand.

16:39

And if I could

16:40

just turn back the clock, from

16:42

the guardian, I'm sharing

16:45

color, and this

16:46

is Can I tell you a

16:48

secret? A

16:49

story about obsession, fear,

16:52

and the lives we lead online.

16:54

Listen to all episodes now,

16:57

search for, can I tell you a

16:59

secret, wherever you get your

17:01

podcasts and hit subscribe.

17:04

Welcome back

17:08

to the Guardian Longread.

17:10

By

17:19

far the

17:19

most unsettling implication of the

17:21

case against free will,

17:23

for most who encounter it is what it

17:26

seems to say about morality that

17:29

nobody ever truly deserves reward

17:31

or punishment for what they do because

17:33

what they do is the result of blind

17:36

deterministic forces plus maybe a

17:37

little quantum randomness. for

17:40

the free will skeptic writes,

17:43

Greg Caruso, in his new book,

17:45

just desserts. A

17:46

collection of dialogues with his fellow

17:48

philosopher, Daniel Dennitt, It is never fair

17:50

to treat anyone as morally responsible.

17:53

Were we to accept

17:55

the full implications of that idea?

17:57

The way we treat each other, and

17:59

especially the way we treat criminals, might

18:02

change beyond recognition. Consider

18:05

the case of Charles Whitman.

18:08

Just

18:08

after midnight on the first

18:10

of August nineteen sixty six,

18:13

Whitman, an

18:13

upgoing and apparently stable twenty five

18:16

year old former US marine

18:18

drove to his mother's apartment in Austin,

18:21

Texas, where he stabbed her

18:23

to death.

18:23

He

18:27

returned home where he killed his wife

18:29

in the

18:31

same manner. Later

18:33

that

18:33

day, he took an assortment of

18:36

weapons to the top of a high building on the

18:38

campus of the University of

18:40

Texas, where he began shooting

18:42

random for about an hour and a

18:45

half. By

18:45

the time Whitman was killed by

18:48

police, twelve more people

18:51

were dead. and one more died of injuries years

18:53

afterwards. A spree

18:55

that

18:55

remains the US's tenth worst

18:58

mass shooting.

19:01

Within hours of the massacre, the authorities

19:03

discovered a note that Whitman had typed

19:05

the night before. I

19:08

don't quite understand what compels me to type this letter.

19:10

He wrote. Perhaps it

19:13

is to leave some vague reason for the

19:15

actions I have recently performed. don't

19:18

really understand myself these days.

19:20

I am supposed to be an average

19:22

reasonable and intelligent young man.

19:25

However, lately, I can't recall

19:27

when it started. I have been a victim

19:29

of many unusual and irrational

19:31

thoughts which

19:32

constantly recur and

19:34

it

19:34

requires a tremendous mental effort to

19:37

concentrate on useful and

19:39

progressive

19:40

tasks. After

19:43

my death, I wish that an autopsy would be

19:45

performed to see if there is any visible

19:47

physical disorder.

19:53

Following the first two

19:54

murders, he added a quota,

19:57

maybe research can prevent further

19:59

tragedies of

19:59

this type.

20:03

An autopsy was

20:05

performed revealing the presence

20:07

of a substantial brain tumor,

20:09

pressing on Whitman's amygdala,

20:12

the part of the brain governing fight or flight responses

20:15

to fear.

20:23

As the free will skeptics who draw on

20:25

Whitman's case concede, it's

20:27

impossible

20:27

to know if the brain tumor caused

20:30

Whitman's actions What

20:31

seems clear is that it certainly

20:33

could have done so and that almost

20:35

everyone on hearing about it

20:37

undergoes some shift in their attitude

20:40

towards him. It doesn't make the killings

20:42

any less horrific nor does it

20:44

mean the police weren't justified in killing

20:46

him. But it does make

20:48

his rampage start to seem less like the evil

20:50

actions of an evil man and more

20:52

like the terrible symptom of a

20:54

disorder with Whitman among

20:56

its victims. The same is true for

20:58

another wrongdoer famous in the

21:00

Free Will Literature. The

21:02

anonymous subject of the two thousand and

21:04

three paper right orbital

21:06

frontal tumor with pedophilia

21:08

symptom and constructional apraxia

21:11

sign. A forty year

21:11

old school teacher who suddenly

21:14

developed pedophilic urges

21:16

and began seeking out child

21:18

pornography and was

21:19

subsequently convicted of child

21:22

molestation. Soon afterwards, complaining of

21:24

headaches, he was

21:24

diagnosed with a brain tumor. When

21:27

it was

21:27

removed, his pedophilic urges vanished.

21:30

A year

21:31

later, they returned as had

21:33

his tumor detected in

21:35

another brain

21:36

scan. If you find the presence of

21:38

a brain tumor in these cases, in

21:41

any way, sculptory though, you

21:43

face a difficult question. What's

21:45

so special about a brain tumor as

21:47

opposed to all the other ways in

21:49

which people's brains cause them to

21:51

do things? When you learn about the

21:53

specific chain of causes that were

21:55

unfolding inside Charles

21:57

Whitman's skull, it has the effect

21:58

of seeming to make

21:59

him less personally responsible

22:02

for the terrible acts he

22:04

committed. But by definition, anyone

22:06

who commits any immoral act

22:08

has a brain in which a chain of

22:10

prior causes had unfolded, leading

22:13

to the act. If that weren't

22:15

the case, They'd never have committed the

22:18

act. A neurological disorder

22:20

appears to be just a special case of

22:22

physical events, giving rise

22:24

to thoughts and actions. is

22:26

how Harris expresses it.

22:28

Understanding the neurophysiology of

22:30

the brain, therefore, would seem to be

22:32

as exculpatory as finding a

22:34

tumor in it. It appears to follow that

22:36

as we understand ever more about how

22:38

the brain works, we'll

22:40

eliminate the last shadows in

22:42

which something called free will might ever have

22:44

looked and will be forced to concede that

22:46

a criminal is merely someone

22:48

unlucky enough to find himself at

22:50

the end of causal chain that

22:53

culminates in a crime. We

22:55

can still insist the crime in

22:57

question is morally bad.

22:59

We just can't hold the criminal individually

23:02

responsible. Or at least, that's

23:04

where the logic seems to lead our

23:06

modern minds There's a rival

23:08

tradition going back to the ancient Greeks,

23:10

which holds that you can be held

23:12

responsible for what's fated to happen to

23:14

you anyway. For

23:17

Caruso, who teaches philosophy at the State

23:19

University of New York, what all

23:21

this means is that retributive

23:23

punishment punishing a

23:24

criminal because he deserves it rather than

23:26

to protect the public or serve as

23:28

a warning to others, can't

23:30

ever

23:30

be justified Like Storson,

23:32

he has received email

23:34

abuse from people disturbed by

23:36

the implications. Retribution is

23:38

central to all modern systems of

23:41

criminal justice. Yet

23:42

ultimately, Caruso thinks it's a

23:44

moral injustice

23:45

to hold someone responsible

23:47

for actions that are beyond their control.

23:50

It's

23:50

capricious. Indeed,

23:52

some, psychological research, he

23:54

points out, suggests that people believe

23:56

in free will partly because

23:58

they want to justify their

23:59

appetite for retribution. What

24:02

seems to happen is that people come across

24:04

an action they disapprove of. They have a

24:06

high desire to blame or punish

24:09

so they attribute to the perpetrator the

24:11

degree of control over their own actions that

24:13

would be required to justify

24:16

blaming them. It's no accident that the free

24:18

will controversy is entangled in

24:20

debates about religion. Following

24:23

similar

24:23

logic, Sinner

24:24

must freely choose to sin in order

24:26

for God's retribution to be

24:29

justified. Caruso is an

24:31

advocate of what he calls the public

24:34

health quarantine model of criminal justice,

24:36

which would transform the institutions

24:38

of punishment in a radically humane

24:41

direction You could still restrain

24:43

a murderer on the same rationale

24:45

that you can require someone infected by

24:47

Ebola to observe a

24:49

quarantine. To

24:49

protect the public, But you'd

24:51

have

24:51

no right to make the experience any

24:54

more unpleasant than was strictly

24:56

necessary for public protection. And

24:58

you would be obliged to release them as soon as

25:00

they no longer posed

25:01

a threat. The main focus

25:03

in Caruso's ideal

25:05

world would be on regressing social

25:07

problems

25:07

to try and stop crime happening in the

25:09

first place. Just as

25:11

public health systems ought to focus on

25:13

preventing epidemics happening to begin with.

25:15

It's tempting

25:16

to try to wriggle out of these

25:19

ramifications by protesting that while people

25:21

might not choose their worst impasses,

25:23

For murder, say, they

25:24

do have the choice not to succumb

25:26

to them. You can feel

25:28

the urge to kill someone but

25:31

resist it or even seek

25:33

psychiatric help. You can

25:34

take responsibility for the state of

25:36

your personality. And don't

25:38

we all do that all the time

25:40

in more mundane ways. Whenever

25:42

we decide to acquire a new professional

25:45

skill, become a better listener,

25:47

or finally get fit,

25:48

But this is

25:51

not the escape clause

25:53

it might seem. After

25:56

all, the free will skeptics

25:57

insist. If you do manage to

25:59

change your personality in some

26:02

admirable way, you

26:03

must already have possessed the kind of

26:05

personality capable of implementing such

26:07

a change, and you didn't choose

26:10

that. None of this requires us to

26:12

believe that the worst atrocities are

26:14

any lesser pooling than we

26:16

previously thought. But

26:17

it does entail that the perpetrators

26:19

can't be held personally to blame.

26:21

If you'd

26:22

been born with hitless

26:24

jeans, and experienced Hitler's

26:27

upbringing, you would be Hitler. And

26:29

ultimately, it's only good fortune

26:31

that

26:31

you weren't. In the

26:34

end, as Strouse puts it,

26:36

luck swallows everything.

26:48

Given how watertight the case against

26:50

free will can appear, it may be

26:52

surprising to learn that most philosophers

26:54

rejected According to a two thousand

26:56

and nine survey conducted by

26:58

the website, Phil Papers, only

27:00

about twelve percent of them are persuaded by

27:03

it. And

27:03

the disagreement can be fraught, partly because

27:06

free will denial belongs to a wider

27:08

trend that drives some

27:10

philosophers spare. The

27:12

tendency for those trained in the hard

27:14

sciences to make sweeping pronouncements

27:16

about debates that have raged in philosophy

27:19

for years as

27:19

if all those double witted scholars were just waiting

27:21

for the physicists and neuroscientists

27:24

to show up. In

27:26

one Chile exchange, Bennett paid

27:28

a backhanded compliment to Harris, who

27:30

has a PhD

27:31

in neuroscience, calling

27:33

his book remarkable, and

27:36

valuable. But only because it was

27:38

riddled with so many wrong headed claims,

27:40

I am grateful to Harris for saying

27:42

so boldly and clearly,

27:44

What less outgoing scientists are

27:47

thinking but keeping to themselves? What's

27:49

still

27:49

more surprising and hard to

27:51

wrap one's mind around is

27:53

that Most of those who defend

27:55

free will don't reject the

27:57

skeptic's most dizzying assertion that

27:59

every

27:59

choice you ever make might have been

28:02

determined in advance. So

28:04

in the fruit bowl example,

28:06

a majority of philosophers agree that

28:08

if you rewound the tape of history to

28:10

the moment of choice, With everything in

28:12

the universe exactly the same,

28:14

you couldn't have made a different

28:17

selection. That

28:18

kind of free will is as illusory

28:21

as Portuguese to

28:22

quote, dennit. What they

28:24

claim instead is that

28:26

this doesn't matter, that even though our

28:28

choices may be determined,

28:29

makes sense to say we're free to

28:32

choose. That's why they're

28:33

known as compatibleists. They

28:36

think determinism and free will

28:39

are compatible. There are many other

28:41

positions in the debate, including some

28:43

philosophers. Many Christians among

28:45

them who think we really do

28:47

have ghostly free will. and

28:49

others who think the whole so called

28:51

problem is a chimera, resulting from

28:53

a confusion of categories or

28:55

errors of language, To those who

28:57

find the case against free will

28:59

persuasive, compatibility seems

29:01

outrageous at first glance. How

29:03

can we possibly be free to choose if we aren't,

29:05

in fact, you know, free

29:07

to choose. But to

29:09

grasp

29:09

the compatibility point. It

29:11

helps first to think about free will not as a

29:14

kind of magic, but as a

29:16

mundane sort of skill, one

29:18

which most adults possess most of

29:20

the time. As

29:21

the compatibilityist, cadre Vuellen writes,

29:24

we have the

29:24

free will we think we have, including

29:27

the freedom of action we

29:29

think we have having some bundle of abilities

29:31

and being in the right kind of surroundings.

29:33

The way most compatibleists

29:37

see things. Being free is

29:39

just a matter of having the capacity to

29:41

think about what you want. Reflect on

29:43

your desires, then act on

29:45

them and sometimes get what you

29:47

want. When you choose

29:48

the banana in the normal way by

29:51

thinking

29:51

about which fruit you'd like,

29:53

then taking it. You're clearly in a different

29:55

situation from someone who picks the banana

29:57

because a fruit obsessed gunman is

29:59

holding

29:59

a pistol to their head.

30:02

or someone afflicted by a banana addiction

30:05

compelled to grab everyone

30:07

they see. In

30:08

all of these scenarios, to

30:11

be sure, Your

30:11

actions belonged to an unbroken chain

30:13

of causes stretching

30:15

back to the dawn of time.

30:17

But

30:17

who cares? The

30:19

banana chooser in one of them was clearly

30:21

more free than in the others.

30:24

Harris, pinker, coin,

30:27

all

30:27

these scientists. they

30:29

all make the same two step move, said

30:32

Eddy

30:32

Namias, a fundamentalist

30:34

philosopher at Georgia State University

30:36

in the US. Their

30:38

first move is always to say, well, here's

30:41

what free

30:41

will means. And it's always

30:43

something nobody could ever actually have

30:45

in the reality in which we

30:48

live. And then sure enough,

30:49

they deflate

30:50

it. But once you have

30:52

that sort of balloon in front of you,

30:54

it's very easy to deflate it

30:57

because

30:57

any naturalistic account of the world

30:59

will show that it's false.

31:03

Consider

31:03

hypnosis.

31:05

A

31:05

doctrinaire free will skeptic might feel obliged

31:07

to argue that a person hypnotized

31:10

into making a particular purchase

31:13

is no less free than someone who thinks

31:15

about it in the usual manner

31:17

before reaching for their credit

31:19

card.

31:19

After all, Their idea of

31:20

free will requires that the choice

31:23

wasn't fully determined by prior

31:25

causes. Yet in

31:27

both cases, hypnotized

31:28

and non hypnotized,

31:30

it was.

31:31

But come on, that's

31:32

just really annoying.

31:35

said

31:35

Helen Bibby, a philosopher at the

31:37

University of Manchester, who was written

31:39

widely on free world expressing

31:42

an exhaust paration commonly felt

31:44

by compatibleists towards

31:46

their rivals more outlandish

31:48

claims. In some sense,

31:50

I don't care if you call it free will or acting

31:52

freely or anything else. It's just

31:54

that it

31:55

obviously does matter to

31:57

everybody they get hypnotized into

31:59

doing things

31:59

or not. Granted,

32:02

the compatibility version of free will may

32:04

be less exciting. But

32:06

it doesn't follow that it's worthless.

32:07

Indeed, it may be, in another

32:10

of Dennis phrases, the only

32:11

kind of free will worth wanting

32:14

You

32:14

experience the desire for a certain fruit. You

32:17

act on it and you get the fruit

32:19

with no external gunman or

32:21

internal disorders influencing your

32:23

choice. How could a person ever

32:25

be freer than that? Thinking

32:27

of free

32:28

will this way also puts a different

32:30

spin on some curious experiments

32:33

conducted in the eighties by the

32:35

American neuroscientist Benjamin

32:37

Limited, which had been interpreted

32:38

as offering scientific

32:41

proof that free will doesn't exist.

32:43

Wiring his subjects to a brain

32:45

scanner and asking them to flex their

32:47

hands at a moment of their choosing

32:50

Libert seemed to show that their choice was

32:52

detectable from brain activity,

32:54

three hundred milliseconds before

32:56

they made a conscious decision.

32:58

Other studies have indicated activity

33:01

up to ten seconds before a conscious

33:04

choice. How

33:04

could these subjects be said to have reached

33:06

their decisions freely? if

33:08

the lab equipment

33:09

knew their decisions so far in

33:12

advance. But to most

33:12

compatibleists, this is a fuss

33:14

about nothing.

33:16

Like everything else, Our conscious choices

33:19

are links in a causal chain of

33:21

neural processes. So of course,

33:23

some brain activity precedes the moment

33:25

at which we become aware of them.

33:27

From this down to

33:29

earth perspective, there's also no

33:31

need to start panicking that cases like

33:34

Charles Whitman might mean we could

33:36

never hold anybody responsible for their

33:38

misdeeds or praise them for their

33:40

achievements. In their defense,

33:42

several free will skeptics I spoke

33:44

to had their reasons for not going

33:47

that far either. Instead,

33:49

we need only ask whether someone had

33:51

the normal ability to choose rationally,

33:53

reflecting on the implications

33:55

of their actions. We all agree

33:57

that newborn babies haven't developed that

33:59

yet, so we don't blame them for

34:02

waking us in the night. And we

34:04

believe most non human animals don't

34:06

possess it So few of us rage

34:07

indignantly at Waspes for

34:10

stinging us. Someone with a

34:11

severe

34:12

neurological or developmental impairment

34:15

would surely lack it too, perhaps

34:17

including Whitman. But as for

34:20

everyone

34:20

else, Bernie Madoff is the

34:21

example I always like

34:24

to use said

34:25

Namias, because it's so clear that he knew what he

34:27

was doing, and that he knew that what

34:29

he was doing was wrong, and he

34:31

did it anyway. He

34:33

did have the ability

34:34

we call free will and

34:36

used it to defraud his investors

34:38

of more

34:39

than seventeen billion

34:42

dollars.

34:42

To the

34:46

free will skeptics, this

34:47

is all just a desperate attempt

34:49

at face saving and

34:51

changing the sub an effort to redefine free will not

34:53

as the thing we all feel when faced

34:56

with a choice, but as something

34:58

else, unworthy of

35:00

the name. People

35:02

hate the idea that they aren't agents

35:04

who can make free

35:05

choices. Jerry coin

35:08

has argued. Harris has accused Dannett

35:09

of approaching the topic as if he were telling someone

35:11

bent on discovering the lost

35:13

city of Atlantis. that

35:16

they ought to be satisfied with a trip to Sicily.

35:18

After all, it meets

35:20

some of the criteria, It's

35:23

an island

35:23

in the sea, home to a

35:26

civilization with ancient roots.

35:28

But the facts

35:29

remain. Atlantis doesn't exist

35:31

And when it felt like it wasn't

35:34

inevitable

35:34

you'd choose the banana, the

35:36

truth

35:36

is that it actually was.

35:40

It's tempting

35:44

to

35:45

dismiss the free will

35:47

controversy as irrelevant on

35:50

the grounds that we can't help but feel

35:52

as though we have free will, whatever

35:54

the philosophical truth may be,

35:57

I'm certainly

35:57

going to keep responding to others as though they

35:58

had free will. If you

35:59

injure me or someone I

36:02

love, I can guarantee I'm going to

36:04

be

36:04

furious instead

36:06

of smiling indulgently on the grounds that you had

36:09

no option. In this experiential

36:10

sense,

36:11

free will just seems

36:13

to be a given.

36:16

But is

36:16

it? When my mind is

36:18

at its quietest, for example, drinking

36:20

coffee early in the morning before

36:22

the four year old wakes up.

36:25

things are liable to feel different. In

36:27

such moments of relaxed

36:30

concentration, it seems clear to me that my

36:32

intentions and

36:34

choices like all my other thoughts and emotions arise

36:36

unbidden in my awareness. There's

36:38

no sense in which it feels like

36:41

I'm their author, Why do I put down my coffee mug and

36:43

head to the shower at the exact moment I do

36:46

so? Because the intention to do

36:48

so pops

36:50

up caused no doubt by all sorts of activity in my

36:52

brain. But activity that lies

36:54

outside my understanding, let

36:57

alone my command. And

36:58

it's exactly the same when it comes to those weightier decisions that

37:01

seem to express something profound about the

37:03

kind of person I

37:06

am. whether to

37:07

attend the funeral of a certain relative, say, or

37:09

which of two

37:10

incompatible career opportunities to

37:14

pursue. I can

37:14

spend hours or even days engaged in what I

37:17

tell myself is reaching a

37:19

decision about those. And what

37:21

I'm really doing, if I'm honest, is

37:24

just vacillating between options

37:26

until it's some unpredictable moment.

37:29

or when an external deadline forces

37:31

the issue, the decision to commit to

37:33

one path or

37:35

another simply arises.

37:37

This is

37:37

what Harris means when he declares

37:39

that on close inspection, it's not

37:42

merely that free will is an

37:44

illusion, but that the illusion of free will

37:46

is itself. an illusion.

37:48

Watch

37:48

yourself closely and you

37:50

don't even seem to be free.

37:53

If one

37:53

pays sufficient attention,

37:55

he told me by email. One can notice that

37:58

there's no subject in the middle of

37:59

experience. There is

38:02

only experience.

38:02

And everything

38:04

we experience simply

38:06

arises on its own. This is

38:08

an idea with roots in Buddhism.

38:10

and echoed by others, including the philosopher David Hume.

38:13

When you look within,

38:14

there's no

38:15

trace of an

38:17

internal commanding officer autonomously

38:20

issuing decisions. There's only

38:23

mental activity flowing on,

38:25

or as

38:26

Arthur Rambo wrote,

38:28

In

38:29

a letter to a friend in eighteen seventy one, I

38:31

am a spectator at the unfolding of my

38:33

thought. I watch it. I

38:35

listen to

38:37

i listen to it it.

38:38

There are reasons to agree with Saul Smolansky,

38:40

but it might be personally and

38:43

societally detrimental for too many people

38:45

to start thinking in this way.

38:48

Even

38:48

if it turns out it's

38:49

the truth. Denett, although he thinks

38:51

we do have free will,

38:53

takes a similar

38:54

a similar position position. arguing

38:56

that it's morally irresponsible to promote

38:58

free will denial. In one

39:00

set of studies

39:01

in two thousand and

39:03

eight, psychologists,

39:04

Kathleen Voss and Jonathan

39:06

Schuler, asked one group of

39:08

participants to read and excerpt

39:10

from the astonishing hypothesis by

39:13

Francis Croique, co discoverer of

39:15

the structure of DNA in which

39:17

he suggests free will

39:19

is an illusion. The subjects thus primed to doubt

39:21

the existence of free will proved

39:24

significantly likelier than others in a

39:26

subsequent stage of

39:28

the experiment. to cheat

39:30

in a test where there was money

39:32

at stake. Other researchers

39:35

reported a diminished belief in free will, to less

39:37

willingness to volunteer to help others, to lower

39:40

levels of commitment in

39:42

relationships, and lower

39:43

levels of gratitude

39:45

Unsuccessful attempts to replicate Voss

39:48

and Schueller's findings have called

39:50

them into question. But even if

39:51

the effects

39:54

are real, some

39:54

free will skeptics argue that the participants in

39:56

such studies are making

39:57

a common mistake, and one that

39:59

might get

40:00

cleared up rather rapidly

40:02

were the case against free will to

40:04

become better known and understood. Study participants

40:07

who suddenly become immoral

40:10

seem to be determinism fatalism. The

40:13

idea that if we don't have

40:15

free will, then our choices

40:17

don't really matter. so we might

40:19

as well not bother trying to make the good ones and

40:22

just do as we please

40:24

instead. But in fact, it doesn't follow

40:26

from our choices being determined that

40:28

they don't matter. It might

40:30

matter enormously whether you choose to

40:32

feed your children a diet rich in vegetables

40:34

or not, or whether you

40:36

decide to check carefully in both directions

40:38

before crossing a busy road. It's

40:41

just that

40:41

according to the skeptics, you

40:43

don't get to make

40:45

those choices freely. In any case, war

40:48

free

40:48

will really to be shown to be nonexistent.

40:50

The implications might

40:52

not be entirely negative It's

40:55

true that

40:56

there's something repellent about an idea that seems

40:58

to require us to treat a cold blooded

41:00

murderer as not responsible for

41:04

his actions. while

41:04

at the same time characterizing the love of parent for

41:06

a child as nothing more than

41:09

what Smolansky calls the

41:11

unfolding of the given.

41:14

mere blind causation, devoid of

41:16

any human spark. But

41:18

there's something

41:18

liberating about it too, It's

41:21

a reason to be gentler with

41:23

yourself and with others.

41:25

For

41:25

those of us prone to

41:27

being hard on ourselves, It's therapeutic to keep in the

41:29

back of your mind,

41:29

the thought that you might be doing precisely

41:32

as well as you were always going to be

41:34

doing. But in the

41:36

profoundest

41:36

sense, you couldn't have

41:38

done anymore. And for those

41:40

of us

41:40

prone to raging at others for

41:43

their minor misdeeds, it's calming

41:45

to consider how easily their

41:47

faults might have been yours. Sure

41:49

enough,

41:49

some research has linked disbelief

41:52

in

41:52

free will to increased kindness

41:56

Harris argues

41:56

that if we

41:57

fully grasp the case against free

41:59

will, it would be difficult to hate

42:02

other people.

42:03

How can you hate

42:04

someone you don't blame for their actions?

42:06

Yet love would

42:07

survive largely unscathed since

42:10

love is the condition of our

42:12

wanting those we love to be happy made

42:14

ourselves by that ethical and

42:16

emotional connection, neither of which would

42:18

be undermined.

42:20

And countless other

42:21

positive aspects of life would be

42:23

similarly untouched. As

42:24

Strouse puts it in

42:26

a world without a belief in

42:27

free will,

42:30

Strawberries would still taste just as good. Those

42:33

early morning moments

42:34

aside. I personally can't claim

42:36

to

42:37

find the case against free

42:40

ultimately persuasive. It's just

42:42

at odds with too much else

42:44

that seems obviously true about

42:47

life. Yet even if only entertained as a hypothetical

42:50

possibility, free will skepticism

42:52

is an antidote to that

42:56

bleak individualist philosophy, which holds, that a person's

42:58

accomplishments truly belong to them

43:00

alone, and that you've, therefore,

43:02

only yourself to blame if

43:04

you fail. It's a

43:06

reminder

43:06

that accidents of birth might

43:08

affect the trajectories of our lives

43:11

far more comprehensively than

43:13

we realize dictating not

43:14

only the socioeconomic position into

43:16

which we are born, but also

43:18

our personalities and experiences

43:20

as a whole. Our talents

43:22

and our weaknesses are capacity

43:24

for joy, and our ability

43:26

to overcome tendencies towards violence

43:29

laziness or despair and the paths we

43:32

end up traveling. There

43:34

is a

43:34

deep sense of human fellowship

43:36

in this picture of reality.

43:38

in the idea that in our utterick