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Jonathan Jayne Professor Mahaffey English 1102-106 20 March 2013

The Chariot Drawn by One Hundred Trillion Horses: The Fallacy of Free Will Frank Sinatra got it right in one sense: I Did It My Way is certainly a catchy title for a song. But what do we mean when we talk about doing something as if we were the author of our actions? Within our skulls, around 100 trillion neural connections fire(Ross), beholden to the randomness of quantum physics and the laws of nature, converging in time to cause every aspect of our inner and outer life. How can there be room for free will in such an environment? Instinctually, we envision ourselves charioteers, bridling and directing these one trillion horses, able to choose which way they turn at any given instant. It feels like it is a foregone conclusion that we are the conscious agents who have the final word in our behavior. Recent science, however, shows that it is by no means clear that we have anything to do with the ultimate outcome of our neuronal firings. It is far more likely that we are passive riders on the chariot, pulled by our neurons in directions mapped out for us far before our birth. I Did It My Way becomes Consciousness, an accident of nature due to the abundance of neurons in the human brain, observes events which seem to be directed by conscious choice. If this is true, how does it affect our most cherished beliefs? What does it mean for our political, social, and moral lives? If we are not the proud charioteer directing our thoughts and actions, then why does it seem that way? The feeling that we control our thoughts and choices is so obvious that it can be taken for granted. However, if we can see our consciousness through the eyes of an evolutionary

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psychologist, a different perspective emerges. With the glut of neurons homo sapiens and their evolutionary predecessors received as a gift from evolution, possibilities in the stimulus-response cycle expanded in complexity far past our mammalian predecessors. One result of this is the ability to make complex predictions based on observed behavior. Ray Kurzweil, the esteemed inventor and pioneer in A.I. research, goes as far as to call the brain a future prediction machine" (Kurzweil 33). Assigning a conscious agency to events allowed our ancestors an unprecedented advantage in survival by allowing them to predict the future. No longer were we confined to simple instincts inherited by genetics alone: We were able to modify our behavior internally, on the fly, due to our newly developed ability to imagine future outcomes. While this conferred great advantages in prehistoric times, it has not come without heavy prices. We see this in the grotesque practices of societies which sacrificed humans to a God which could be placated by blood, who wasted precious time and resources in rituals to deities for rain and good fortune, and who subjugated women and those of racial difference to bizarre punishments. These behaviors all share a common cause: A belief that nothing happens without a conscious agent. The idea of personal agency in our own behavior also looms large in history, evidenced when societies encountered the mentally ill or the handicapped, whom they often blamed for their maladies through constructs of religion such as karma, or the sins of previous generations. Despite its many shortcomings, ascribing an agent to events conferred an advantage in survival, and this tendency exists in us today because we are the descendants of these survivors. This does not, however, mean that free will and agency have any validity, nor does its success in the past make it the proper response to a 21st century world. Free will is the cornerstone of concepts of religion, sin, and retribution, as well as pride, feelings of superiority, vengeance, and retributive

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justice. History shows that mankind has paid in blood and pain to maintain these ideas, ideas which are needless today. Conceptually, the idea of conscious choice fails to get off the ground logically. To say I can only choose that which I can choose is useless in bolstering the idea of personal will says Sam Harris(Harris), a well known critic of the idea of free will. He goes on to offer the following illustration: Think of a city. Now, why did you think of, say, New York City instead of Cairo? You could have just as easily thought of Tokyo, or Dehli, or Rome, but why did you choose the city that you did? Your conscious mind has no insight into why the thought appeared, and the choice you made. Can you claim authorship of this thought?(Harris). Fundamentally, free will hinges on the idea that we have any choices at all, but this is an illusion. It almost goes without saying that there is only one choice: The one you make. Retrospectively, it may seem as though a myriad of choices presented themselves, and that we had options in which choice we ultimately made, but introspection reveals this as untrue. Can you choose to feel happiness when you vomit, or to prefer classical music when you simply enjoy Rock and Roll more? Even making the concession (which the author does not) that some wiggle room in choice is available to you, a free will, unconstrained by natural law, is impossible. This illustrates the fundamental problem with free will: Natural processes, whether deterministic, random, or a combination of the two, leave no room for a personal agency in any event. If the firings of your neurons are determined wholly by the laws of Newtonian physics, then you have no choice in what you do. If they are determined by the fuzzy probability fields of quantum mechanics, then you have no choice in what you do. Free will is still left with nowhere to stand. There isnt a shred of evidence for the will of humans violating natural law in any way. Barring a miracle that violates all the laws of nature, where can a free will reside? Even in our most mundane tasks, causal strings of which

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we cannot account for dictate what thoughts arise in our minds, and when an idea enters our stream of consciousness, we perceive ourselves as having thought of something. However, the brain producing a thought through the laws of physics and chemistry does not require an agent. Nevertheless, the perception of free will is undeniable. No less than the esteemed physicist Michio Kaku has argued that quantum mechanics, and its uncertainty principle, leaves the door open for freedom of choice in our actions(Kaku), despite its clear logical inconsistencies. Even to a brilliant scientist like Kaku, free will appears to be a concept that must be preserved at all costs. Why do we feel so strongly about free will? What is it we feel that we will lose if we relinquish this idea? Divesting ourselves as a society of the concept of free will brings with it numerous rewards, but somehow, instinctually, it feels the opposite. If I have no authorship in my actions, why do anything at all? This question seems very important. Few of us would be happy if we felt our choices had no meaning. As riders in the chariot, our neurons and physical body will pull us in the direction they wish and impel us to action. While thats not to say information doesnt effect our behavior (or this essay would serve no purpose), natural desires and laws which are much stronger than our ability to understand them will simply force us to act. In other words, we will go on doing something because we have no choice. Even choosing to do nothing is a choice, and has its own set of feelings, and requires a paradoxical kind of effort. The question of why we should act is essentially pointless, because we do act, whether we like it or not. Knowing this, we can focus on ways to make our actions produce the maximum amount of well-being. Although we are passive riders in our bodies and minds, we still have very real feelings of our experiences. Our choices still matter.

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How do we cope with the choices of others which harm us? How can we feel pride in our own successes? Without an agency, there is no one to feel vengeance towards, and there is no author to point to when our actions bring us acclaim. This appears to be a most unsatisfying problem on the surface, but like the question of inaction, it really holds no water at all. Retribution is an extremely wasteful sentiment. Overcrowded prisons consume tremendous resources: In fact, each inmate can cost more per year than an Ivy league education at Princeton University(Resnick). If we know that the burgler acted due to forces which we do not understand, an as yet undefined malady of brain or an improper set of life experiences, how we treat him changes. While it is clear that impulses for justice and revenge will still be felt no matter our intellectual understand to the contrary, dropping the idea of free will brings with it a sense of relief. Furthermore, changing our conception of justice and punishment can save vast sums of money. Incarceration is no longer for revenge, but a safety measure for society at large. Criminals suffer from an unlucky roll of the genetic dice, or a medical condition of the mind. As we understand our brain and its workings, we can seek to find preventative measures for these events, and spend less time bothering with how best to level the scales of justice. Indeed, punishment is a stopgap which does very little to reverse the damage which has already been done. Similarly, our conception of high achievement and pride also changes for the better. The genetically gifted singer, with good looks and a golden voice, is venerated and given disproportionate resources due to attribution of her achievements to a personal will. An apparently lazy, unintelligent, underachieving person is derided with criticism because their will is not strong enough to reach success, despite it being due to the same genetic laws and random chance which favored the singer. With this in mind, strategies can be devised which close the gap in achievement. The guilt and shame felt by low achievers can be dispensed with completely

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as our understanding grows. For example, the explosion of anorexia as a result of young girls comparing themselves to genetically dissimilar and more fortunate models would be completely transformed if the lack of authorship to our behavior was accepted by the greater population. The shame a person of average intelligence feels in being unable to compete with those of more fortunate genetics would be assuaged, at least somewhat. Arrogance in achievement would all but disappear. Realizing that we are all pulled in chariots we did not choose would only serve to heighten our compassion for each other. Ultimately, it would bring humanity closer together, and produce lasting results in optimizing our lives for well-being. Religious beliefs are the ultimate result of our perception of agency. Not only do they mete out reward and punishment based on our behaviors, but they extend this even beyond death, filling the vast majority of believers who do not meet their stringent demands with guilt and fear. Desire for the numinous is a fundamental ingredient of our well-being, and when it is freed from the shackles of a vengeful deity who holds us to account for our every (non)action, it can be studied and incorporated into our lives in the best way possible. Our focus can be turned towards how best to incorporate our desire to experience spiritual experiences into our daily lives. Concepts of karma, a retributive God, and punishment for sin simply cease to have any validity. Clearly, the resources gained from this shift in thinking, not to mention the lives saved, would be enormous. With free will exposed as an illusion, religious thought as we know it would be transformed. Things like stem cell research, the Israel-Palestine conflict, and abortion could be investigated and discussed without the religious bias thrust upon them. Removing free will from our lives brings us together. When we see that we are all riders of similar chariots, some with strong, fast, talented horses, and some with slow, dumb, unresponsive ones, compassion arises with little effort. Our focus is shifted outward towards our

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fellow charioteers. We see that they are just like ourselves, tossed and turned by the vast forces of nature, experiencing the highs and lows of events set into motion long before they were born. Their experiences become intimately related to ours. We share their successes and failures, because as we grow together as a species, our well-being improves. Ironically, we reach the greatest ideals of religion and morality by removing their foundations. Perhaps Frank Sinatra, had he known this, would have said We Did It Our Way instead.

Works Cited

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Harris, Sam. Sam Harris on Free Will. Online Video Clip. Youtube. Youtube. 27 March 2012. Web. 18 Feb. 2013. Kaku, Michio. "Michio Kaku: Why Physics Ends the Free Will Debate." Online Video Clip. Youtube. Youtube. 20 May 2011. Web. 18 Feb. 2013. Kurzweil, Ray. How to Create a Mind. New York: Viking Adult, 2012. Print. Resnick, Brian. "Chart: One Year of Prison Costs More Than One Year at Princeton." The Atlantic. The Atlantic Monthly Group. 1 Nov. 2011. Web. 19 March 2013. Ross, Valerie. "Numbers: The Nervous System, From 268-MPH Signals to Trillions of Synapses." Discover Magazine. Kalmbach Publishing Co. 15 May 2011. Web. 29 Feb. 2013.