 Few things are as intuitively obvious, yet philosophically challenging, as the existence of free will. Do we have it? Our intuition screams, of course we do, but our rational analysis screams, of course we don't. Every day we're bombarded with confirmatory experiences. We choose this food over that food. We choose to follow or break the speed limit. We choose what we say, what we write. And surely it seems clear that for all of our choices we could have chosen otherwise. This morning I drank water with breakfast. I could have chosen orange juice. To think that I couldn't have seems ludicrous. Yet if our intuition is accurate, if we indeed have the ability to choose, we're forced to accept a set of radical conclusions. Though even if our intuitions are wrong and we don't have the ability to choose, we're still left with a set of unpalatable conclusions. So either way you spin it, free will is a profound philosophical problem. There's a fashionable critique of free will that says the very concept of free will is incoherent and therefore it obviously doesn't exist. This article will not make the case for or against the existence of free will, instead it will defend its conceptual coherence. Free will is not a nonsensical idea and it might exist. We need first to define free will. I'd say it's simply the ability to choose between possible alternatives. Therefore exercising free will is the act of choosing between possible alternatives. If I possessed free will at breakfast then I had the ability to choose between orange juice and water. When I made my decision I used this ability. Seems straightforward. Free will to the idea of free will and philosophy in general is the concept of causality. The presupposition that effects have causes. That the circumstances that we see in the world are the result of prior circumstances. That all phenomena have a causal connection to their preceding states. So for any event Z you can meaningfully ask what was the cause of Z and you can meaningfully answer X and Y were the cause of Z. So causality may or may not exist that's an argument for another time. For this article I will assume that causality is a real thing. To understand any discussion about free will we need to understand the distinction between determinism and indeterminism. I like to think of these concepts as statements about inputs and outputs. Determinism simply states that any given set of inputs will yield a necessary output. Or for any output it is the result of a certain set of inputs. Indeterminism by contrast says that any given set of inputs will not necessarily yield a particular output. Or for any output it is not a necessary result of preceding inputs. So the argument against the conceptual coherence of free will goes like this. Either determinism or indeterminism is true with no alternatives. And neither option leaves room for free will. The determinist argument is easy to understand, take my decision breakfast. It appears as if I chose water over orange juice, but what was the cause of my decision? The act of drinking water you could think of as the output. Yet it had several inputs, my thirst, the motion of my fingers, the grasping of the cup, the laws of physics, the neurological happenings in my brain and body, etc. You might also say that my quote decision to drink water was also an input. But notice for each of these inputs we can also treat it as an output. So what was the cause of my thirst in the first place? What was the cause of the motion of my fingers, the neurological firing in my brain? Given the presupposition of causality we know that each input will also be an output of something prior. So what happens when we treat my decision to drink water as an output? Well it had a certain number of inputs, my beliefs about water's ability to satisfy my craving, the environmental circumstances I found myself in, my preferences for water over orange juice, my valuing satiation to thirst, etc., but each one of these inputs itself as an output. What was the cause of my beliefs about the water? What was the cause of my environmental surroundings, my preferences, my values? We can keep going on treating our inputs as outputs, and we'll never find room for free will. Instead, we'll find a whole bunch of inputs that we certainly are not in control of. Ultimately, when you step back and think about it, who is responsible for my preference of water over orange juice? I didn't choose to prefer one to the other, I just do. I didn't choose all of my environmental surroundings, I didn't even choose what country I was born into, heck I didn't even choose to exist. So if I'm not in control of the inputs of my decisions, how could I possibly conclude that I control the outputs of my decisions? Thus, the determinist rules out the existence of free will simply by analyzing cause and effect. What about the indeterminist? They claim for any output it is not necessarily caused by a particular set of inputs. So in other words, randomness is an essential feature of the universe. Given a precise set of inputs you don't have a necessary outcome, instead, reality might be fundamentally probabilistic, still incorporating some degree of causality but not without exceptions. This line of reasoning is particularly popular with the quantum physics woo mysticism crowd. Unfortunately, for free will, it doesn't seem to be compatible with indeterminism either, so to illustrate, take a famous thought experiment. What would be required to empirically test whether or not the universe is determined or indetermined? Well, we'd have to perform multiple tests holding every single input identical and then see if we get a different output. If we could ever get a different output and we knew all of the inputs were identical, we could conclude that the universe is indeed indetermined. But there's just one problem. We can't possibly perform this test because we can't control every single variable in the universe. In essence, we'd have to be able to perform an experiment, then rewind the entire universe to the exact state it was in prior to the experiment, then replay the experiment over and over. So while we can't actually do this, as far as I know, we can certainly think about it. So with only two possible outcomes when we rewind the universe, either the exact same inputs yield the exact same outputs, or the exact same inputs yield different outputs, two options. To put it more concretely, let's revisit breakfast. Imagine that all of the inputs leading to the act of drinking water were the same. So if the output was always drinking water, then how could we say there was any choice in the matter? Given the same inputs, you always get the same output. Given your particular state of mind, you always make the same decision, whereas the free will. But what if the test yielded indetermined results? What if you had the exact same inputs? But say 90% of the time you choose the water, 10% of the time you choose orange juice. All of your beliefs, values, and dispositions, capacities, environment, etc. are all the same, but one out of 10 times you drink orange juice. How is this any different than saying, without cause, by random chance, you drink the juice 10% of the time? If all of your evaluations are identical, all of your inputs are the same, but your outputs are different, that certainly doesn't seem like an act of will. That seems like an act of chance. But free will and random chance are mutually exclusive, therefore the argument concludes neither indeterminism nor determinism leaves room for free will. Conceptually, it just ain't possible. I think that this argument makes a mistake. The dichotomy between determinism and indeterminism, as it's been presented, doesn't actually cover all the bases, there's another option. The error is twofold. First, the indeterminist position overlooks the possibility. And second, the rewind button experiment is constructed incorrectly. As I said earlier, I won't make a positive case for free will, but I will argue that it is conceptually coherent. So simply put, indeterminism doesn't necessarily imply randomness. We have a third option between fully causally determined and random. Let's call it volitional. This morning I could have chosen orange juice or water. Both were possible alternatives. But the non-volitional inputs were not sufficient to compel unnecessary output. A volitional actor does not behave like billiard balls. External inputs are not always sufficient to compel an output, though they may affect it. But that doesn't imply that the output was random. It was chosen. Now, if this sounds preposterous, let me be clear. If free will exists, it must be given a certain kind of unique metaphysical existence, a very radical and damn near supernatural kind of existence. We're saying explicitly and by definition that free will is a mechanism in which the inputs do not necessarily determine the outputs. Yet these outputs are not random, they are volitional. In other words, we're saying free will breaks all the rules. Everything we know in the universe operates according to this input output principle. Except for this one thing. The output of a freely choosing conscious agent is not solely determined by the circumstantial inputs, rather his will takes center stage. So, to bring it back to the rewind button thought experiment. Here's where we get the second error. It's misleading to ask given the exact same inputs, would you get an identical output? Because this lumps the volitional choice into one of the inputs. There's a diagram I made of this error on my website, steve-patterson.com. You can check it out. There's just two circles, one's inputs and one's outputs. In the input circle, we have neurology, values, beliefs, environment, physics, capacities, and choice. And in the output, we have effect. I'm saying it's a mistake to put choice in the inputs. So the real question as it pertains to free will should be instead, given the exact same inputs, except for your choice, could there be a different output? Or does your volitional choice make the ultimate determination of the output? So, again, to make it more concrete, let's go back to breakfast. It's a mistaken question to ask given the exact same inputs, including your choice to drink water, could the output ever be different? The relevant question is to ask, given the exact same inputs, could you change one variable, your volitional choice, to drink water, and have it cause a different output? I've created another diagram that's more difficult to describe that you can see at steve-patterson.com, which illustrates my point. So depending on where you place choice as an input, you'll get a different effect. If you have the ability to consciously change one of the inputs and it can determine a new output, that would be the definition of free will. So a natural question is to ask, but how could you change that one variable? What's the cause of the change in volition? Well, the answer is unsatisfactory. It sounds a bit circular, but it's logically possible that a consciously changeable input is the definition for volition. Our volition doesn't have to change due to randomness or predetermined causes. It is chosen. Now, though I claim this is logically possible, it must be with a few constraints. Assuming free will exists, we mustn't just ask, what's the cause of the outputs of our volition? In other words, why do we make the decisions we make? But rather, what is the cause of the existence of such a volition in the first place? How did such a thing come to be? Now here we run into some serious problems. It cannot be that we chose to have volition. That would be a vicious circle. We cannot logically have the freedom to choose our volition in the first place. That doesn't make any sense. So if we do indeed have free will, we're not even responsible for the existence of it. Now that doesn't mean that because we didn't choose our will, we ultimately can't have free will. That doesn't follow. But as far as I can tell, there are three possible explanations for the initial possession of such an ability. There's a naturalistic explanation, there's a theistic explanation, and the transcendental explanation. And none of them are particularly palatable to me. The most absurd is the naturalistic explanation. In this story, through a causally determined series of events, the most extraordinary phenomena happened. The chains of causality broke themselves, like a grand chemistry experiment resulting in the most radical of explosions. If the universe were like a pool table, and a matter which constitutes the universe were like pool balls, and through some grand break of the pool balls, somehow the universe wound up with self-directing pool balls that move on accord of their own conscious volition. This to me is the height of absurdity, though it is logically possible. The next possibility is the theistic explanation, or the traditionally religious one. We're given free will as a gift from a higher power. It's like a pre-packaged mechanism. That way, even though we aren't chronologically responsible for our possession of free will, we can still exercise it freely. It's not some ultimate free will, because we're not responsible for having it, but it's still a radical and meaningful free will. This is of course quite consistent with other religious ideas regarding objective morality. We have a kind of supernatural obligation to follow moral rules given to us by our creator, like a child who's given car keys to an extremely fast and dangerous car. We have a harrowing responsibility. We can actually meaningfully choose good from bad. The final possibility is the transcendental one, or perhaps the Eastern mysticism explanation. We have free will, but it wasn't given to us, nor did we stumble into it. Rather, we always had it. Essential to Eastern mysticism is this idea of the unity of the self with a transcendent, with the entire universe, with God, with everything. So if you are ultimately God and there's nothing to give to anybody, you certainly didn't give free will to yourself. You have it because you've always had it. It's simply being realized in the particular version of yourself. So it's tempting to say, these three possibilities are ridiculous. It's much easier to accept that free will doesn't exist. But unfortunately, even that doesn't escape the assertity because even if you deny the existence of free will, you have to reckon with the following undeniable fact that the perception of free will is a real phenomenon. So not only do we seem to experience free will, but we experience it all the time every day as essential to our existence. Our entire identities are based on the presupposition of free will. We don't think of ourselves as being purely determined machines. So here's a real absurdity for you. What is the evolutionary explanation for the existence of an illusory perception of free will? Think about it. Consciousness takes an enormous amount of resources, blood, oxygen, a complex brain, et cetera. If free will is merely an illusion and it's non-causal, then why in the world do we have such an extraordinary perception? The answer must be no reason at all. We are saying that the illusion is entirely non-causal, ineffectual and useless. It serves no purpose by definition. It is the grandest of tricks. This universe, a gigantic mechanical machine, happens to lay the groundwork for the emergence of conscious mechanical beings who walk around talking to themselves having the illusory perception that they can choose to do things. In fact, this perception is so strong that their entire lives revolve around it that somehow they control the chains of causality. But they can't and it's just a useless trick that happens to cost a lot of physical resources and serves absolutely no function. This notion is absurd. And unfortunately I don't see any alternatives. Either the universe has a staggeringly incomprehensibly absurd sense of humor or our experiences are not illusory and we're essentially little angels. In my own worldview, I don't have a clear answer. I waffle between these options depending on the day of the week. I am especially upset by the following idea. If I believe that free will did not exist, I would act differently. How preposterous, preposterous.