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Writer's pictureMarcus Nikos
Sep 238 min read

The Paradox of Free Will ~ an Essay on Determinism


The Paradox of Free Will

Free Will. It is a concept that is presupposed in many aspects of our society, including our government, economy, and law; it is embedded in our marketing advertisements and justice system, which emphasize the concepts of ''consumer choice'' and ''criminal responsibility'' respectively. Being such a foundational axiom to our everyday lives, Free Will often goes unquestioned and is instead treated as a necessarily true platitude, akin to ''2+2=4.'' But what if Free Will was actually, in fact, an illusion? A farce, even? What would this mean for a society that rests upon the assumption of Free Will such as ours does? This is a question that I will be analyzing in this paper, and by the end, I will have explained not only why Free Will does not and, in fact, can not exist, but also why this does not necessarily run contrary to our assumption of its existence.

For starters, let's define terms:

  • Will: the faculty by which a person decides on and initiates action (in other words, what allows a person to do or not to do something)

  • Free Will: the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion (or, as some philosophers put it, the ability to have done otherwise in any given moment)

  • Metaphysical Libertarianism: the belief in Free Will

  • Determinism: the belief that all events, including human action, are ultimately determined by causes external to the will (in the words of Arthur Schopenhauer, ''One can choose to do what they will, but one cannot choose to will what they will'')

  • Compatibilism: the belief that Determinism is compatible with Libertarian Free Will

The first and, in my opinion, most convincing argument against Free Will lies in the existence of higher-order desires, a concept introduced by American philosopher Harry Frankfurt in the early 1970s. First-order volition, according to Frankfurt, referred to one's desire(s) (such as the desire to make a sandwich, pour a glass of lemonade, take a nap, listen to music, or even light a cigarette), while second-order volition referred to one's desire(s) about their own desire(s) (such as the desire to continue desiring healthy foods or the desire to stop desiring alcohol). The point of Frankfurt's article Freedom of the Will (1971) was that if an individual's (or more specifically, an addict's) second-order volition could overcome their first-order volition (or addiction), then their Will could truly be said to be free; however, this conclusion did not seem to provide as much closure as it did open more doors for debate and inquiry. Surely, if one could have second-order volition, many philosophers reasoned, then one could also have third-order volition, and fourth-order volition, and so on and so forth to infinity.

If an alcoholic could be considered ''enslaved'' by their first-order desire to have another sip, then why couldn't an ex-alcoholic also be considered ''enslaved'' by their second-order desire to quit drinking? Both are equally giving into their thoughts, neither of them having control over which volition overrides the other. That is not to say that one who drops their addiction is irrational for doing so, but rather that the choice to quit is no more liberating than the choice to continue being addicted. Although there are many benefits to no longer craving addictive substances, ''having more freedom'' is not one of them. Since we are our minds, and because we cannot decide what thoughts enter our minds anymore than we can decide what smells reach our noses, it is impossible for us not to be ''enslaved.'' But if we are our own slaves, then this paradoxically also makes us our own masters, though we had no choice in being in either role. As odd as it sounds, we are confined to freedom. 

Another household name in Determinist literature is Benjamin Libet, the American neuroscientist who conducted an experiment in 1983 that supposedly proved Free Will's nonexistence. In all honesty, I do not find Libet's case for Determinism to be particularly convincing; in fact, I think it's rather flawed, but I would still feel it to be improper if I didn't at least mention Libet and his experiment, especially considering how influential it was and still is. Here's a rundown of the experiment, as described in the 2012 article Does the Brain "Initiate" Freely Willed Processes? A Philosophy of Science Critique of Libet-Type Experiments and their Interpretation from the Journal of Theory & Psychology: 

''In [Libet's] neuroscience lab, he wired up subjects to an EEG machine, measuring brain activity via electrodes on their scalps, and then asked them to choose to perform a simple hand movement when they ''felt like it.'' He also got them to record the time at which they made a conscious decision to move their hands. Disconcertingly, he found evidence of brain activity initiating the movement hundreds of milliseconds before the conscious decision to report it. In other words, his experiments seemed to show that the conscious decision didn't cause the movement.''

I can't help but feel that the supposedly ''groundbreaking'' conclusion of the Libet Experiment is, at best, trivially true. It seems like a given that there would be a delay between the moment a thought pops into the brain and the ability of the subject to write it down, rather than the onset of a thought and the process of writing it down occurring simultaneously. While I do think Libet was correct in his conclusion, I believe that the reasoning that led him there was flawed. I also think Libet's use of experimentation-based induction to defend Determinism is unnecessary, especially when defending it via deduction and tautological proof is much more easy and convincing; consider the following: 

You cannot choose your thoughts, as it would require that you think them before you think them.

This simple axiom is much more effective at communicating the point of Determinism and holds true regardless of any potential errors encountered in practical experimentation.

Among Determinism's philosophical rivals is a position known as Compatibilism. Free Will, as described by Compatibilists (such as Thomas Hobbes and Daniel Dennett), is the ability to act according to one's Will free of any external restraint(s), even if one doesn't necessarily have the ability to change their Will. For example, a person who is able to make themselves a sandwich when they're hungry would be considered ''free'' by Compatibilists, even though they have no control over their hunger. The axiom that grounds this Compatibilist definition of Free Will is a distinction between the internal and external; the internal is that which originates from within the subject (such as thoughts, feelings, sensations, and emotions) and the external is that which originates from without the subject (such as things in the outer world, but more specifically, anything that can influence the Will, such as coercion, threats of physical harm, or intoxicating substances like drugs and alcohol). My problem with this distinction is that the line between the inner and outer world is actually a lot more blurred than the Compatibilists make it out to be; I'd even go as far as to say that the line is nonexistent. We have the same amount of control over hearing our own inner monologue that we do over hearing another person's voice. This is because we are less the thinkers of our thoughts and more the bystanders of thoughts. 

The reason no one else can hear our inner voices like our outer voices is because we're the only ones who will listen. Even though thoughts are considered ''internal,'' I would say it is actually the external world that distinguishes thoughts from reality. The only thing that separates a thought from a thing in the environment is whether its existence is acknowledged by others. We use external acknowledgment to judge whether what we're seeing is an actual stampeding elephant in the real world or merely a mental image of one in our mind's eye. To use an analogy, the human mind plays thoughts like a radio plays music, picking up stations rather than generating its own lyrics. These lyrics that play in our head are what drive every action or inaction we partake in. I am often humored by the use of a marionette cutting its own strings as a symbol for freeing oneself from one's master (usually their own mind, urges, vices, etc.), because it is more accurate than the people who invoke that metaphor realize. Just like a puppet without its strings, we would fall motionless without our internal influences, unable to perform any action. To separate your body from your mind is both the ultimate exercise and ultimate denial of the Will.

A common objection to Determinism is that if we were to accept the premise that no one has Free Will as true, then it would have negative societal consequences, particularly in how we administer justice. After all, how could we punish criminals for committing crimes if they had no other choice but to commit them? Fortunately, a solution to this problem has been proposed by British Determinist Alex O'Connor; in his 2019 presentation The Good Delusion, O'Connor brought up the idea of treating ''Free Will'' as a socially useful concept, rather than a literal reality. Throughout his talk, he gave several examples of axiomatic principles that, although not true in a literal sense, are nevertheless adopted by society anyway to ensure functionality:

''…take the legal concept of ''innocence until proven guilty.'' This is crucial to a functional legal system, and I don't need to explain to you why, but consider this: does anyone actually believe that people are actually innocent until the literal moment that a jury decides that they're guilty? That's obviously not what's going on; we don't actually believe that these people are innocent until proven guilty, but we believe in this as a useful concept to bring about the goal of a stable legal system. It's what Brett Weinstein has described as a metaphorical truth, like going to the gun range…if you go to the gun range, ''the gun is always loaded.'' Even though you know it's not, it's good to treat it as though it is, and not only that, but we can show that innocence until proven guilty objectively brings about a more functional legal system that objectively leads to less false imprisonment.''

In addition to O'Connor's ascriptivist position, there's also what I like to call ''quarantine logic.'' The objection that if people couldn't have done otherwise, we can't hold them morally responsible and imprison them only makes sense if you assume that justice is only about punishing the perpetrator and not protecting others. Think of an asymptomatic carrier of a deadly plague, infecting and killing anyone who walks within a five-foot radius of them; they cannot help their own condition, but we would still try to isolate them from the general population on the basis that their pathology is deadly to others. The last, and in my opinion, strongest counter to the ''moral responsibility'' objection is the fact that, if the premise of Determinism really holds true, then the judge prosecuting the criminal is equally unable to help their Will to administer justice, just as the criminal is unable to help their Will to commit crime. It is all determined and as such, nothing would change if we accepted Determinism to be true, except our own acknowledgement of it being the case.

And so, we've reached the concluding paragraph of this paper. I do hope that I was at least able to change the minds of some of you reading this right now, but then again, if what I've written is correct, you had no actual choice but to find it convincing. 

Works Cited

Balaguer, Mark. "Free Will, Determinism, and Epiphenomenalism." Frontiers in

Psychology, 9 Jan. 2019. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A568923646/AONE?u=wilm99594&sid=summon&xid=1115f570. Accessed 19 Oct. 2021.

Fischborn, Marcelo. "Libet-Style Experiments, Neuroscience, and Libertarian

Free Will." Philosophical Psychology, vol. 29, no. 4, 05/18/2016, pp. 494-502,

Loughrey, D. "Second-Order Desire Accounts of Autonomy." International

Journal of Philosophical Studies : IJPS, vol. 6, no. 2, 06/01/1998, pp. 211-229,

Nannini, Sandro. “Free Will, Compatibilism, and Incompatibilism. A Dialogue

with Daniel Dennett.” Rivista Internazionale Di Filosofia e Psicologia, Mimesis Edizioni, Milano, 2017, https://doi.org/10.4453/rifp.2017.0017.

Radder, Hans, and Gerben Meynen. "Does the Brain "Initiate" Freely Willed

Processes? A Philosophy of Science Critique of Libet-Type Experiments and their Interpretation." Theory & Psychology, vol. 23, no. 1, 02/01/2013, pp. 3-21,

Varga, Somogy. "Existential Choices: To what Degree is Who we are a Matter of

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