"Freewill is nothing, but an illusion and a doze of fake hope through which miserable people are kept alive."
Table of contents
- What is ‘’freewill’’?
- Reviwing the literature-Freewill through the lens of Greek philosophy
- Reviwing the literature-Indian philosophy on free will
- Reviwing the literature-Islamic theology on free will
- Reviwing the literature-Philosophers of enlightenment on free will
- Scientific and logical facts which refute Man's free will
- - Facts
- - Case study
- - Neurological experiments
- - Biology and neurobiology on the illusion of free will
- - DNA, is it a behaviour controller?
Freewill is nothing, but an illusion and a doze of fake hope through which miserable people are kept alive. Throughout history, dominant and rich people have been claiming that their achievements are shaped by their continuous extensive work and their choice and ambition to work. Meanwhile, they justify the status of weakened and poor folks with a fallacious unproven thought. It is that those folks have not worked enough and have chosen to be lazy, hence they deserve to suffer and starve. In fact, there are underlying impulses and factors for the so-called ‘’success’’ and ‘’failure’’. These kinds of factors vary and are overlapped in terms of being linked to nature or nurture. This article will be devoted to defining free will and its history as a concept, and the reasons why free will doesn’t make sense from several levels and aspects.
What is ‘’freewill’’?
Freewill (In Latin: libera
voluntas) has been defined and seen differently from one era and philosophy to
another. Despite the various definitions given by each philosophical school, we
may end up deducing that free will is one’s ability to perform actions
independently. It is the quality of having the power to take decisions without
any effect and being self-motivated to behave or think in a certain way.
Freewill through the lens of Greek philosophy
Historically, since ancient
Greek philosophy, the view towards free will has been a controversial issue for
over two thousand years. This topic was usually associated with religion and
theology, as it mainly appeared in Europe with the appearance of Hellenistic
religions (300 BCE TO 300 CE). Diodorus (__-284 BCE) stated that humans are
powerless and cannot affect the future, since it is inevitable. For Aristotle
and Epicurus (342-270 BCE) the former idea is not fully true. They rather point
out that matters come to happen by chance, necessity, or by us. Here, Epicurus
and Aristotle declare that people can affect reality, but meanwhile, they are
not the only ones, as there are matters that happen for no purpose and are just
spontaneous. On the other hand, some things occur because they are inevitable
and are determined to happen.
What does Indian philosophy think of human will?
Similarly, the Indian old philosophy was pregnant with a couple of views
on this concern. Gosala (about 500 BCE) negates the concept of free will as
well as all of the other religions’ conceptions of reward and punishment.
Buddhism was also affected by some sort in this interpretation. That can be
seen, when analysing the Buddhist circle of life which is birth, death, and
rebirth. However, Buddhism is fundamentally different since it believes that
everything is determined, but it is because of former things done by one’s free
will. Buddhism states that people are living following what they have committed
in previous lives in what is called Karma. Initially, Karma’s occurrence is
determined, but what causes a person to have a Karama in his life is a result
of a choice made by his free will in a former life.
What about Islamic theology?
Islamic
theology has also got diversified thoughts on humans’ free will. Quran, Muslims´
holy book, is interpreted differently depending on each cult. It does state in
multiple verses that humans have got free voluntary to make their choices. As
said in Al Kahf: 29, "The truth is from your Lord, so whoever wills - let
him believe; and whoever wills - let him disbelieve." In the last verse,
it is conspicuous that humans are free to do whatever they desire. However,
Quran also states in Surah an-Nahl, ‘’Had Allah willed, He would have made you
a single community. But He leads astray whom He wills, and He guides whom He
wills.’’ In contrast with the former verse, the latter can be interpreted as if
humans are led by God’s will, not by theirs. The same idea was emphasised in
many other Quranic verses.
Sunni Muslims as the majority believe
that humans own a conditional free will. If my interpretation of Sheikh Ibn Baz
(Total Fatwas and Articles of Sheikh Ibn Baz (8/ 94) is correct, he claims that
people’s actions are created by God in harmony with people’s free will.
Not too far from Sunni Muslims, Al Quadria
cult believes that mankind is of an absolute free will. At the end of the age
of prophet Muhammed’s companions, there comes Ghalaian Ibn Muslim. The latter
has declared that God does not create people’s deeds, they are the ones who
freely do that.
Conversely, another Islamic cult called ‘’ Jabriyah’’ believes that
God controls all Men’s actions. Jabriyah sees Al-Qadar (Destiny) which is
created and decided by God as the only motive power under which all human
beings function. Jabriyah thinks that if one disobeys God’s command, he is even
this way obedient to his will.
Philosophers of enlightenment on ‘’freewill’’
With Europe having the
darkness faded, new ways of thinking appeared and thus new views on the topic
of free will as well. The age of enlightenment has brought about a new way of
discussing whether humans are free agents or functionless machines. The
conversation was improved to offer a distinguished account between action and
forbearance, wanted actions and why they are wanted.
John Locke was the one
leading off the conversation to whether we are free to will and whether we are
free to will what we will. Locke links ‘’will’’ with desire, which means that
one’s desire is what determines his will. If someone has chosen to eat A and
not B, according to Locke, it is him preferring A to B. John Locke says, ‘’
Well, but what is this Preferring? It is nothing but the being pleased more with the one, than
the other.’’ What can be indeed
deduced from Locke’s thoughts is that ‘’will’’ mirrors humans’ desires.
However, John Locke coined his theory of suspension. The latter signifies that
Men can suspend or stand against their desires. Furthermore, John Locke
dissociates between two types of actions; voluntary and involuntary. A
voluntary action is resulted from the mind’s command. Whilst, an involuntary is
the one that occurred with no command of the mind.
In contrast, Baruch Spinoza and Arthur Schopenhauer do not believe in any sort of free will. The first philosopher argues that nature is actually itself God. Therefore, there is nothing external than God, for him everything we see and even what we do not see is God. Spinoza sees nature as one substance in which everything happens by previous factors and so on. In a similar way, Schopenhauer declares that we can do what we want. However, we are never free to want what we want. For example, a person would like to take a red apple and he is truly free to take whatever type of apple he wishes. Still, he was not free in terms of desiring the red one rather than all the other types offered.
Scientific and logical facts against freewill, why aren’t we free?
In sooth, humans are circulated by several conditions which shape who they are. Each individual is usually unaware of what drives him to do what he does. He might be asked why does he do the things which he prefers to do, rather than doing other things. His answer will usually be that he desired, wanted, liked, or loved what he has done. The question to be asked here is what drove that person to want or desire what he wanted and choose to do it? We are all aware that we do things -because we wanted that, but isn’t it more logical to ask, why did we want those things? Trying to give an answer to that, it is indispensable to use various factual pieces of evidence, psychological, neurological, and probably biological ones.
Facts speak
Whoever thinks that he owns
a freewill is ignorant of each driving factor which controls any of his actions
or thoughts. You might have seen various people who are very arrogant about
their so-called achievements. The question is—would they be able to reach the
same success without those conditions under which they have achieved their
success? The answer is ‘’no’’. Mainly, because factors are what produce a large
variety of human behaviour. Person ‘’A’’ has been raised in a caring family and
that family was Christian. Mostly, the result would be a good Christian man
with a high educational level. On the other hand, person ‘’B’’ who has been
raised in a Christian criminal separated family will be a Christian criminal
pervert non educated man.
However, it is notable that
some factors may produce reversal outcomes. The same boy ‘’A’’, if was
extensively forced to get educated and in a non-proper manner would be
contradictory to the former result. The contradiction of that result would take
part also if other various factors have occurred.
There might be a
surrounding that encourages him to be contradictory to what he has been raised
like. Or, probably, some biological factors will intervene and make the boy
‘’A’’ rebel against his parents’ teachings. There is no limit to how many
factors may interfere to change the result. But whatever the outcome and no
matter what the boy looked like in the future, it is all about factors, nothing
else. Any close analysis will not find a glimpse of free will in what that boy
came to be like.
A case study
To
illustrate, I will be making an analysis to Hitler’s life, and how he could
have been completely different if factors around him were so. This is exposed
clearly on the table below:
As explained in that table, changing any factor
would change completely the personality of Hitler that we currently know. He
might have been a professor, artist, archaeologist… Anything other than a
fascistic leader. Initially, Hitler´s life could not have been changed by him
changing his mind, but mainly with factors around him having been modified.
Neurological experiments refute freewill
For a
precise analysis in this regard, it is obligatory to have a look at some
neurological experiments. One of those is the fascinating experiment of the
neuroscientist, Benjamin Libet. To understand it, there are three main elements
to be foreseen which are:
·
RP: Readiness
potential which is an electrical change in the brain taking place before the
occurrence of an action and before being aware of wanting that action done.
·
W: Time of
awareness of urge to move.
· AO: Action’s actual occurrence time.
Libet’s experiment was conducted
through the brain’s electrical changes before and during the carrying out of an
action. Libet has observed that before 350 msec of being aware of the will to
conduct the action (W), there is a slow build-up of electrical potential (RP)
occurring on the skull over the motor cortex. This is clearly shown in the
following chart:
This experiment is magnificently indicating that people´s actions are chained by natural factors. When we take a deeper look at ´´RP´´ that happens before the person is aware of his will towards the action, we find that the person is not aware of what he desires in the first place. The latter means that there are certain factors which determine one’s actions. This experiment indeed reveals the unconscious face of human beings’ acts.
Biology and neurobiology on how human behaviour is being produced
The biology of human behaviour and what lies behind it was detailed in
the neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky’s book ‘’Behave’’. This scientist provides
sharp biological and neurological evidence to prove the nonexistence of free
will. Sapolsky argues that observing a certain behaviour will reveal the factor
which has directed the behaviour to crop up. Those reasons do differ from the
lens through which the behaviour was seen. In this regard, he has given the
example of a chicken in front of a rooster which stands on the other part of
the road. This rooster has given a sexual signal to the chicken which has
crossed the road to mate with it. Here we have got a relevant biological
question—For what reason the chicken crossed the road? A
psychoneuroendocrinologist would probably say that estrogen levels have circulated
in a zone of its brain, making it responsive to that signal made by the
rooster. On the other hand, an evolutionary biologist would say that over
thousands of years, chickens which responded to such signals could preserve
their type, until this behaviour has got to be rooted in their genes. The idea
to be derived is that no matter how any behaviour can differ in terms of
explanation in accordance with each scientific discipline, it is always able to
be explained from several facades. Simply, because the creature be it a
chicken, a monkey, or even a human, has scientific reasons that lay behind its
behaviour. No creature can randomly think of something to do from a vacuum.
DNA, is it a behaviour controller?
DNA components are of an essential role in our shaping; however, they
are still widely limited by various factors in the outside world. DNA has got
99% of its genes noncoding, which indicates that this percentage of DNA holds
evolutionary acquired functions which are switched off. Those switched-off
genes do not determine when to be transferred into RNA or when to get
activated. They rather are activated throughout what is biologically called ‘’a
promoter’’. This one is caused by a TF, transcription factor. This factor by
employing the promoter is what directly recruits enzymes to transcribe the gene
into RNA. That is to say that we hereby get a certain living being´s function
active. This all means that the evolutionary stored functions have got control
over human behaviour by almost 2% in total. Nevertheless, the rest of the non-coding
or non-activated evolutionary functions are activated via factors in the
environment, which are again out of our responsibility.
A clear example of how the
environment activates our biological functions in accordance with its factors
is a female smelling a newborn baby. The odorant molecules that smell out from
the infant link into receptors in the nose. Those switch on a transcription
factor, causing more oxytocin, and the oxytocin leads to milk let-down. That is
how living beings are no different from objects being led by natural factors.
In the same manner, as the wind can drive a tree left, it can also cause once
the activation of a certain function in your DNA. Can you say that you were
free to activate it?—Well, the answer is yours to be thought of.
In a nutshell, the various forms of life that we see including us are no
more than other objects around. If a stone is being thrown by a man and he
thinks that it is he who controls that stone, he would be absolutely wrong.
That man was controlled by biological factors which by themselves are
controlled by natural factors on earth. Those factors on our planet were caused
by others in the solar system, those were the production factors within the
galaxy. This cycle is more likely to be happening infinitely, one factor
affects another and the other does so to another and so on. It is a circle―Can
a circle end? Indeed, whoever thinks he is unbounded is merely ignorant of the
factors by which he is bound.
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