Free Will

Free Will

It’s a common thing for every conscious mind to ask for the will of its action. As human, we look for the reasons behind our actions, some of them have an answer, while some remain elusive. For thousands of years, philosophers tried to give logical explanations while religious persons attributed to divine will, or God. The fundamental question remains simple, ‘Why?’, and ‘How?’. With the development in science, we have pretty much answer for most of our ‘How’ but ‘Why’ has been a tough crystal to break.

Let’s begin with ourselves, why are you reading this? Ask yourself, “why am I reading this?”

Postulate a scenario, in this specific period you’re reading this, ‘certain date’, ‘precise time’. Would you still be reading this if you’re a year older or younger? Would you be reading this if the development of internet hadn’t been? There’s a constant chaos in the universe, yet this exact event unfolded. What if instead of reading this you had jumped out off the window, or developed a machine that precisely breaks radioactive atoms? What’s the probability of you getting a noble prize, and what’s the probability of you living to 120 years, or being a president of your country? For an individual what determines the future? While choosing a profession, what’s the probability of you being a neuroscientist? No matter what there’s a space and opportunity for every individual to perform any action. You being a world-renowned musician, aerospace engineer or greatest artist? What determines these things?

Now returning to the question, “Why am I reading this?” You might answer that you clicked on a post or followed a link which led here and you’re reading this. Tracing back the route you followed, you’re reading this because you followed a link, before that you got a link, before which you were doing something on your device, before which you were doing something, before which other actions, the series of your actions in the past. There’re always choices in front of us before performing any actions, each influenced by prior decisions and often bounded by morality. If you had done something else instead of using your device you wouldn’t be ended to this series of questions, which means you’re destined to these questions since your birth. Just to end to this question, you took the very damn school you studied from and very damn bus the other day. 

Now another set of question, do you play poker? Or Roulette? There’re two colors where we play our bet on, either black or red (Variations in games occur where bets are placed accordingly), let’s assume you’ve to place your bet on either black or red after four consecutive red. Where will you place your bet on? The probability is equal for red and black, yet many believe the black is due based on past events. Another scenario, flip the coin. After two continuous head, what’s probability of head on next flip? Here the third flip is independent yet many people believe the outcomes are connected. This is cognitive bias. These biases influence our decisions not just on poker, also in our everyday life by blurring the lines between rational choices and subconscious choices.  

What do you think about Mt. Everest? You have an idea that it’s the highest mountain in the world, but have you measured? Well, someone did and established the truth, now all we have is to believe the fact. Now, another scenario, you might have built a bucket list consisting of; to climb the Everest. If you climb the Everest, is it your will? The human is guided by the human brain, what we do and how we do is completely considered and regulated by our brain. The perception of knowledge guides us, out of any information we perceive a knowledge and might consciously derive best positive outcome it could bring and take an action. Now climbing an Everest doesn’t become your will to climb the hill or Everest in particular, you have an idea it’s the highest peak and climbing it brings prestige to you, if not you’d have climbed Nuptse(7861m) or any other. It becomes we are information biased and, will an action.  

Take for an instance how many of your tasks you do willingly, or more consciously? Drinking water whenever you feel thirsty, stopping by the red light, watching news? How many of your tasks you perform unconsciously? Some require conscious thought while some don’t like; Breathing, blinking, such actions are controlled by our autonomic nervous system. We can choose to hold breathe or blink temporarily, but our brain makes such routine functions autonomic preserving energy. Fatum, a Greek word for fate; the idea of any action is performed accordingly divine purpose, to Spinoza (1677) were in support of deterministic approach of actions, even though humans perceive themselves ad free. The idea of determinism supports that even though we can choose to hold the breath, the choice is predetermined. Also, there is a soft-determinism or compatibilism purposed by David Hume, suggesting free will and determinism co-exist. Suggesting that we are driven by own will even though those wills are predetermined. The actions performed by our brain, conscious, subconscious or unconscious are mostly regulated by our brain. Higher cognitive actions like decision making, writing poetry, making government are conscious actions. Dreaming, riding a bike, walking, muscle memory, are subconscious, information plays role and can be learnt. Physiological actions (Digestion, Circulation), Metabolism are unconscious actions. The idea of free will itself comes from the conscious ability of our brain. The human brain is most capable of performing cognitive actions; thus, we’re taking the example of human. Even though chimps too learn about using tools, dolphins have communication and monkeys do communicate with each other which are cognitive activities.

Now activities you perform; giving sidelight while driving, playing an instrument, these activities which are practiced multiple times and requires no active thought process. Blinking, understanding language, metabolic functions, pathogens engulfed by your macrophiles, you don’t control them your body and brain perform unconsciously. Though this isn’t about how we perform activities, it’s about the why we perform activities. Now we understood that it’s our brain that controls which activity requires conscious consideration, and which doesn’t. Especially the activities requiring learning and of no certain outcome requires conscious consideration. Like mostly we blink unconsciously, for lubricating our eyes and protect from injuries, also we can close eyelid when we want, and when we want? Whenever we get information that can be harmful for our eyes. The brain controls the body, how one will speak and what one will think is controlled by the brain. Regarding free will we consider consciously carried activities as controlled by ourselves. We calculate our moves consciously while we are mountain climbing rather than while jogging. But why we climb mountain and why we jog? To reach the top and to be fit? Both scenarios are consciously calculated by our brain, Human brain. We don’t see elephant jogging to be fit and giraffe trying to climb Kilimanjaro. It's human, and why humans do such things is simple, it’s human’s brain.

One of the most complex body parts and yet to understand a lot, Human brain has a region called cortex, especially prefrontal cortex. During human evolution, it’s newly developed; also known as neocortex, the part responsible for higher level cognitive functions controls and performs the various activities that makes us Homo sapiens. Of course, other parts of brain are involved for certain activities, but all higher cognitive functions have prefrontal cortex in common. Brain analysis during cognitive activities shows prefrontal cortex most active while during subconscious activities; limbic system is most activated. Any action or process done by brain doesn’t occurs at just one-part, multiple parts work simultaneously, the thing is prefrontal cortex is much active during higher cognitive activities rather than subconscious or autonomic activities. Why our brain does so, for some activities use prefrontal cortex more than rest? One of the reasons is efficiency and energy preservation. The brain is such an organ which preserves itself rather than our body, it uses our body to gain information and energy. Now we must understand, it’s our brain that drives us to do any activity. Every task we perform; moral or immoral is initiated by our brain. The generous man willing to live his life serving our society is also driven by the brain, and the person committing heinous crime. The difference is first person’s brain has consideration of his actions and willing to bring best outcome and efficient environment for other’s survival. The later person’s brain either have some serious brain malfunction or due to lack of knowledge doesn’t has any true idea of consequences of the actions.

To understand one’s intention of any action, the exposure of knowledge must be acknowledged, and how one uses that knowledge to derive any action can be understood. We as social creature have a common consciousness, which most of the philosophers, scientists call, collective consciousness. We have developed morality and ethics and align our actions towards it. One misaligning to morality or ethics brings chaos in our social order and is rejected by society. Now, we have plenty of actions we could perform, we have space in front of us to perform that action we could choose any action, what does one chooses? The free will is that we can want anything we want, we can do anything we want to do, and we can choose to do or not.

Now back to scenarios, what determines our action? Our actions are bounded by our ideas, you can do anything you want but you can’t want anything you want because your wants are bounded to the limitation of knowledge you have. Scientists after a decade of research, in 2024 have found that there’s a meteorite “Aurezia” is hitting moon in 2035, which is made up of 70% gold, 20% tungsten and rest is iron and rock. The worth of that meteorite is 200 trillion $, double than the earth’s GDP. Is there anything to stop you to go to the moon, which is possible and many people have been to, and mine that meteorite? One is bounded by the social circumstances, and you might consider many technical reasons that might affect you, but this can’t stop you from willing. Only thing that might stop is that the fact of meteorite is It doesn’t exist. We will according to the information we have, and what we derive as knowledge from that information; and how we perceive that knowledge. The word, “Gold” in that meteorite might have triggered you because it has value in our society. “Ice” wouldn’t have worked there as gold is more valuable to humans in this case. The intensity of will towards gold increases rather than intensity of will towards ice. It’s simple, in the first hand we ‘will’ what brings value to our social presence. Alexander the Great’s will to conquer the world and hold the mouse in its tail while sitting on the throne was less likely to happen to him than, hold the very famous sword he used in the battlefield.

What human wills is what brings a meaning to his action, either one drawing sword to initiate revolution or on the way of being a Buddha, because human is a social creature. The meaning of an action increases the chance of societal survival. Apart from mental illness, every sane human wills to be in a good social position and bring prosperity to the society and one acts what he cognitively calculates to be the best. Our development in tech is the result that we collectively wanted the easier life.  Another scenario, what you will is completely different than what mine is. What we “will” is influenced by society and environment. Just look around, whatever one wills, performs an action (even not performing an action is also an action taken), and tries to give meaning and just in the society for that action. The information becomes the limiting factor of the will of an individual. What one wills is a subjective approach of information by an individual, how one wills is limited by the availability of information itself, and why one wills remains unsolved. It’s not just an individual’s will, but everything around us; whole universe and the order in this chaos which birthed the will in an individual. The series of actions occurs along the entropy, in this constant chaos every action triggers a series of action. The idea of questioning the freewill or deterministic nature of action is also a part of constant flowing energy, the chaos within the universe.