The Freedom of Free Will

Free will is one of those abstractions rarely examined in its vast complexity. Its existence is denied in the materialistic conception of reality. Let me spell out the reasons why. Any action whatsoever is traceable to antecedent stimuli; these can be viewed both as causing the choice and as themselves caused by others. In any purely brain-based conception of action, we can trace the “decision” back to two kinds of cell structures: those hierarchically arranged and those based on what might be called legislative structures; concerning the last, a brain node will only fire if a majority of brain cells forming it signal yea. These structures may operate alone or in combination, but all of them respond to stimuli ultimately traceable to physical causes. And in that thoughts themselves are mirrored in brain action, they can be reduced to brain activity alone, the seeming immateriality of thoughts declared as illusory. In this view all action is chemico-mechanically determined. What we call freedom of will therefore translates into saying that we’re ignorant, unconscious, of the precise process that necessarily leads to this action rather than to that one. The roots of the action are theoretically—but not practically—traceable to a status quo ante in which everything experienced by the actor up to that point contributes something, however minimal, including habits, memories, even forgotten memories—the last by absence.

This view of the matter is strongly compelling because, in most of our day-to-day decisions we do act pretty much as above described. Real choices, free choices (assuming they exist) are rare. These rare, free choices do, of course, also habituate us, form memories, attitudes, and leanings that later produce moral behavior automatically. Free choices therefore also become part of the deterministic background that produces our total behavior, most of which arises from our animal heritage. The question that looms, then, is this: How can we discover that we really do have free choice. The curious answer, I would suggest, is that we cannot do so by looking at the will as such. The answer comes from another source, the examination of intelligence or, put more broadly, consciousness. It must have freedom to function.

The basic premise I want to present here, and I’ll cite the source for it in a moment, is that thoughts may be legitimately viewed as mechanical presentations of a brain mechanism, the brain drawing material from memory by association. This presentation, of course, is on a much more sophisticated level than a computer’s search based on key words, for instances, but functionally equivalent. Now if a stimulus produces such a presentation, selection of some part of this presentation for relevance to our situation must take place. Just as Google can and will present a vast number of items in answer to a search, it cannot and does not select the relevant answer. That selection involves an activity outside of the system that produces the thoughts themselves.

David Bohm, the physicist, develops this approach in his book, Wholeness and the Implicate Order (Routledge, 1996, p. 50-53). Let me quote from the cited passage:

There is in this mechanical process [of stimuli producing thoughts] no inherent reason why the thoughts that arise should be relevant to the situation that evokes them. Then perception of whether or not any particular thoughts are relevant or fitting requires the operation of an energy that is not mechanical, an energy that we shall call intelligence. This latter is able to perceive a new order or a new structure, that is not just a modification of what is already known or present in memory. For example, one may be working on a puzzling problem for a long time. Suddenly, in a flash of understanding, one may see the irrelevance of one’s whole way of thinking about the problem, along with a different approach in which all the elements fit in a new order and in a new structure. Clearly, such a flash is essentially an act of perception, rather than a process of thought…, though later it may be expressed in thought. What is involved in this act is perception through the mind of abstract orders and relationships such as identity and difference, separation and connection, necessity and contingency, cause and effect, etc.

We have thus put together all the basic mechanical and conditioned responses of memory under one word or symbol, i.e. thought, and we have distinguished this from the fresh, original and unconditioned response of intelligence (or intelligent perception) in which something new may arise.

Now if the exercise of intelligence, of consciousness, requires an act that arises in an unconditioned (read free) order, the will, which is part and parcel of consciousness, is also rooted in that same order and is, therefore, capable of acting freely.