Musings on Free Will

Reading Time: 9 minutes

I’ve often wondered how one could define the point in history at which humans first became conscious. The opening scene from Stanley Kubrick’s Space Odyssey has always stood out as my favorite depiction of how this flip of the mental switch could have happened. The biological changes behind the transition from ape to human took place gradually over millennia but it is much more satisfying to imagine a singular catalytic event. This is why Kubrick depicted the transition to sentient humans as he did, and it is why I have been enthralled by his work since I first saw the film. At some moment in the early years of human history, one of our ancestors was the first to contemplate the most abstract form of what we know today as free will. At that moment consciousness became fertilized in the mind. Up until that point, only the physical forces of nature drove our ancestors. Genetics paved our path as a species until the mind reached a level of capacity that made us look towards the stars and wonder many things. I am certainly glad that fate granted me life in a time where contemplating the self was already centuries old. Socrates in particular has much to teach us in regard to free will. Although he too was far from the first to examine the struggle between our conscious and unconscious actions he did so in a unique way. The way he spoke of concepts such as compassion makes it clear that he was much closer to a modern human than he was to an animal. Hopefully, we can learn from him and the many other philosophers who have stood on his shoulders over the centuries to continue becoming more human and less animal.

I do feel that as my life has progressed my choices have become more and more conscious. As a baby, I responded exclusively to directions dictated by my instincts. My capacity to drink, eat, and stay healthy was entirely directed by other humans. As I grew older, I became capable of acting on my own accord but a majority of my actions were still directed by instinct.  I was fortunate enough to have parents that actively coaxed conscious thought out of me. They worked hard to speed up my cognitive development. Despite their best efforts, I would be willing to wager that Socrates would have labeled my life largely unexamined until approximately 12 years of age. In middle to late adolescence, I started to deviate from what I would call genetic predestination. I began to read a tremendous amount and my mind began gradually mapping abstract concepts like religion, government, and economics. As this mapping progressed my deviations from the norms coded into my DNA became more numerous. In my most recent years, I have occasionally become convinced that my actions were those of a free man but like all other humans before me, I will never completely escape the nagging weakness of will that underlies us all.

Entropy (noun) a scientific concept, as well as a measurable physical property that is most commonly associated with a state of disorder, randomness, or uncertainty.

My outlook on free will, as informed by Socrates and Marcus Aurelius, is mainly a biological one. Despite the limited understanding of hard science that existed during Socrates’ productive years the concepts that he writes about map fairly closely to organic science as we understand it today. I believe that his philosophy is popular largely because it provides us with a relatively optimistic explanation as to what we are capable of. Applying a purely physical understanding to the concept of free will doesn’t come out quite the same way. Effectively we are all a collection of forces acting and opposing other forces throughout the universe. Presumably, the future could be predicted if the current position and inertia of every atom were known. Despite the fact that we feel as if we are making choices as we live our lives, we are interacting with the physical world just as any other inanimate object does. Just as the interaction of two or more inanimate objects can be predicted using a simple free body diagram it makes sense that the thoughts of a human brain could also be predicted using a much large data set. In essence, this is what the singularity is. At some point in the future, it is plausible that some sort of collective consciousness could be constructed that truly knows all. Perhaps one already exists that we do not know about. Predictive modeling and targeted advertisements as they exist today are already scarily accurate at predicting the human brain and as data sets grow exponentially these systems will only improve. To be unpredictable in today’s world is a great and perhaps impossible achievement. Strive every day to inject as much entropy as you can into the world around you.

We humans may very well be glorified bumpers and springs in the universe’s pinball machine. However, since we cannot prove that we are or are not in a singularity it is most productive to live as if we are not. I believe many philosophers have struggled at this juncture of thought before me and have concluded that it is more productive to act as if we do have free will. To rage against the apathy that begets our animal nature is our purpose as humans. We have been gifted a higher level of consciousness and must push our minds to their physical limits. Hopefully, at some point in this life or the next, I am granted the answer to this age-old question but for now, I will soldier forth as if my will is my way. My decisions may in fact be influenced by others, but those others shall not bear the responsibility for the results I bring upon this world.