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by Edward Jayne
January 27, 2002

There are both supporters and opponents of free will among believers and atheists, so the issue of freewill is not very important in differentiating the two groups. In fact, four distinct theories of free will may be diagrammed based on similarities and differences within an obvious quadrant: (I) religious believers who support free will (Catholics, etc.); (II) religious believers who oppose free will (Calvinists, etc.); (III) atheists who support free will (e.g., Sartre's version of existentialism, etc.); and (IV) atheists opposed to free will (Lucretius, etc.). Me, myself, I have effectively split the issue: as a philosopher, to the extent that I can put myself in this category, I am a rank determinist opposed to the concept of free will. However, as a more or less effective husband, teacher, citizen, etc., I adhere to the notion of free will as a useful fiction relevant to just about everything I do. My assumption is that I've been locked into my attitudes and behavior pattern on a strictly determinist basis as a willful individual driven by my delusional sense of freedom--as are all other such individuals, may we thrive in everything we do. Everybody I know is captive of delusions of one sort or another, and this free-will assumption--call it a free-will "fiction"--is one of my two primary delusions. The other is that I'm a kind of "god" surrogate in the experiential field I inhabit, surrounded by other surrogate gods and goddesses, most of whom foolishly refuse to accept their supernatural status.

In my opinion the ultimate advantage of determinism as an explanation of human behavior can be demonstrated by the hypothetical model of a perfect clone. Imagine two brains exactly identical, one of them the total duplication of the other. Every one of the billion neurons would be identical--every dendrite, every molecule in every dendrite, every atom, every subatomic particle within every atom, every sensation, every hormone, every enzyme, every electric potential on every surface. The two brains would be perfectly identical. If one of them could be replaced by the other inside somebody's skull, there would be no sense of anything having happened except for the moment's transition from one to the other, rather like switching from oneTV station to another, both with exactly the same program. I realize this isn't possible in real life, but for the sake of argument let's imagine it to be true.

What I would suggest is that under this circumstance there would be no choice made by one of these brains that wouldn't also be made by the other. If one refrains from eating a candy bar, the other can be absolutely counted on to exercise the same choice. And the same would go for every other decision in life. There would be no free will in the sense that either of the two brains could make a decision that would not also be made by the other. The two brains would be completely in synch with each other.

But let's take this hypothetical model to its extreme: imagine ten thousand such brains that are totally identical, or even, for that matter, ten million such brains. Even here there would be perfect unanimity. They would all make the same decisions resulting from absolutely identical neural and environmental influences. There would be absolutely no exception. If any kind of variation presents itself--of a brain, for example, that does in fact exercise free will by deciding to eat a candy bar contrary to the rejection of this option by all the other brains--an autopsy would be needed to determine how this happened. If dissection is sufficiently thorough, I am confident that some kind of a microscopic difference--however miniscule--would be found to have produced this variation. It is thus my supposition that each choice supposedly the act of free will is instead the product of compound physical circumstances--the intricate chemical and biochemical organization of the brain confronted with a panoply of sensations produced by its physical environment. This is pretty much the common assumption of all deterministic philosophies, though few take the time to spell it out.

True, we have the sense of free will when we make choices, which happens with everything we do, but it's totally fictitious. In fact, we're caught up in a vast net of acts and outcomes that is only too obvious to those who know us. The best analogy would be when driving a car: the driver himself is aware of every need to swerve from his course, but a observer standing away from the car is primarily impressed by its predictable forward momentum. And the same with life. Oscar thinks he does something new and exciting when he suddenly takes his wife into an unfamiliar furniture store; his wife, however, thinks, "Poor Oscar--always trying to appease me when he knows that I'm irritated by his bad manners." As far as Oscar is concerned, he is venturing into new frontiers; as far as his wife and children are concerned, he's utterly predictable in his behavior. This pseudo-freedom might be harmless enough with Oscar, but it bears telling results when his son, Bilbo, repeatedly avoids homework by attending lively parties, and when his daughter, Phoebe, disappoints herself with a predictable sequence of dull-witted bum-of-the-month boyfriends. Free will turns out to be not so free, not even when one repents by turning to a fictitious God to be forgiven for all of one's mistakes earlier in life.

On the other hand, the advantage of a fictitious theory of free will derives from the recognition that, whether one is ultimately free or not, the fiction (or delusion) of freedom is usually linked with the achievement of better results, whether among theists fearful of God's judgment or among atheists and agnostics whose pragmatism is unencumbered by fear-ridden eschatological distractions such as eternal hellfire. We might be destined to make unfree free-seeming choices by a power beyond our ability to choose (God or, more probably, nature itself), but, granted this deterministic inevitability, we should comply with our destiny as beneficiaries of the free-will fiction. And we should feel free to help others impacted by the same destiny to recognize the paradox involved so they too can live better lives on the same basis, successful in their efforts because of their unfree delusion of freedom.

To sum up: as philosophers we are determinists conscious of our ultimate inability to have any impact on our destinies that were sealed well before we were born. But as human beings going about our business as well as possible we best perform this task by cultivating the belief in free will, able to do as we please, as we think the most fulfilling, the most appropriate, the most ethical choice relevant to our needs and expectations as well as those of others about us. Granted, we are dominated by powers beyond our control, whether these be physical or metaphysical, but probably the most useful trait these powers have bestowed upon our minds is our ability to take advantage of the wonderful fiction that we possess the ability to make choices on our own. And so we should take advantage of this fiction as much as possible with the recognition that we are finally off the hook, as the saying goes, as soon as all is said and done. Even more useful is our ability to engage in a blatant double standard, treating ourselves as the beneficiaries of free will at the same time as we treat others as being entirely predictable. Without blaming them, we can better fathom their behavior, their needs and feelings; and without trying to escape blame as victims of our circumstances we can better confront our own behavior toward improvements we foolishly (but effectively) consider our own responsibility.