Free will is impossible.

If we assume we live in a cause and effect universe, the concept of having free will should seem absurd right on its face. If every action has a cause of some sort, why would you assume your individual brain, or brains are somehow disconnected from this law?

Most people are able to understand this to some degree when it’s overtly visible, like with a brain tumor causing someone to act a certain way. They already understand that this person had no choice to act the way they did when they committed a crime because of how the brain was being effected, so they wouldn’t say they had a choice in the matter.

But they do suddenly see it as different when someone has a different brain configuration that makes them act a certain way right from the start or developed in a way that was less visible/observable to the average person, like a sadistic psychopath who presumably also 1. didn’t choose to be aroused by inflicting pain on others and 2. didn’t choose to be incapable of feeling empathy for others.

• It’s incorrect to assume we ”have brains” we can control, it’s more like we are brains that are being caused to act up in certain ways by our environment, or we are the emotions and thoughts produced by that thing called a brain, that has a certain structure from the start and is also being influenced by the environment to create what we call ”us”, just like any other organ.

We make decisions, but these decisions are always preceded by factors ultimately out of our control, so it wouldn’t be fair to consider them truly free.

A similar example I’ve heard before that I think is good is let’s say you’re currently sitting in your living room, then you go to the kitchen to make food.

Was that a free choice? Not really, in order to be motivated to do so, you need to either be 1. hungry or 2. have appetite (for example). These are two things out of our control, it is fair to say we don’t choose to be organisms that feel hunger and appetite, it just happens.

If the discomfort of hunger and appetite is more intense than the comfort you derive from sitting on the couch, then you will likely stand up and go make some food, but if the comfort you derive from resting on the couch is more intense than the discomfort of hunger and appetite, then you will likely keep sitting on the couch.

• Perhaps you’d say ”no, I can choose not to eat even though I’m hungry to prove you wrong!”.

But then the only reason why you’d do that is because I’ve triggered you into to wanting to prove to me that you can choose not to eat despite being hungry. Did this urge to disprove me not arise in you as a result of me telling you this, you wouldn’t keep stubbornly sitting in the living room.

Now the discomfort of losing an argument against me is stronger than the discomfort of the hunger, so you choose to keep sitting there on the couch.

• Perhaps some people would still choose to get up to make food.

But that’s only because they don’t have the same psychological tendency that you have, which is wanting to desperately disprove me on this matter, they did not feel provoked to try to disprove me, and they didn’t choose to be unable to feel provoked by me into trying to disprove me, some people are just more apathetic.

• And if you take the time to search long enough, you’ll find that there is no true freedom in any choice anyone ever made at any point.

You buy chocolate ice cream at the store. Is that a 100% free choice? I don’t think you chose to like the taste of chocolate. Perhaps you want to stop at some point because you’re getting fatter and fatter, fine, but did you choose to feel uncomfortable about getting fat? I don’t think so.

Likewise, if someone is getting fatter and doesn’t stop buying all that ice cream, did they choose to feel less discomfort than you at the thought of getting fatter than they feel from no longer eating all that chocolate ice cream, was that a conscious choice they made, did they sit down one evening and say ”I wish to feel that the discomfort I get from abstaining from eating chocolate ice cream is much more intense than the discomfort of becoming obese” – and abracadabra, magically, suddenly they were wired that way to be someone who’ll become fat?

And even if they did that, that just brings up another question, which is did they choose to want to want to feel more discomfort from abstaining than from becoming obese? How did they choose to want to want that?

And even if they did that, that just brings up another question, which is did they choose to want to want to want to feel more discomfort from abstaining than from becoming obese? How did they choose to want to want to want that?

• Let’s use a more intense example where most people would be quick to judge since it involves harm/violence.

Let’s say two guys like Ted Bundy have a fetish for brutally raping and killing people. Did they choose that fetish? I don’t think so, seems highly inconvenient.

Person A rapes and kills people, person B doesn’t.

So you might say they have that fetish, but they can choose not to do it.

Sure – depending on different factors ultimately out of their control.

Person A could have chosen not to rape and kill people, perhaps, if he:

• Had higher capacity to empathize with others like person B.
• Didn’t grow up with abusive parents acting as bad role models.
• Felt more discomfort from the idea of going to prison than from not raping.
• Were less easily triggered into arousal.
• Were less temperamental and angry.

So just another set of factors that we ultimately didn’t choose either. Do you think serial killers like that sat down with a magic wand one evening and decided to not be able to feel empathy so that they can be able to fulfill their fetish? And if they did have the ability to blend out feelings of empathy, at what point in time did they choose to acquire the ability to blend out empathy?

And if they did supposedly choose this ability and became emotionally colder when they had a traumatic event in their life when their mother exposed them in public for being a bed wetter in front of all the hot girls, did they choose that this event made them feel so uncomfortable that they were triggered into blocking out feelings of empathy for the female gender they now like to attack, starting to see them more as objects? Did they choose that it made them severely uncomfortable?

So on and so forth, so on and so forth. If you question long enough, you’ll find that not only some things are out of our control, ultimately all are out of our control, we are being motivated or we’re not being motivated to do certain things that will then directly affect how we later on do other things, nothing more to it it seems.

• Some also like to say some acts are ”just random”, so that escapes the notion that it is all just cause and effect.

But even then of course, that still wouldn’t prove determinism wrong, that would just mean that it’s randomness effecting the outcome of our actions, so then randomness would become the deterministic factor for certain actions.

All in all, I don’t think there is any great evidence for the idea of free will in a cause and effect universe, we’re brains caused to act by factors we didn’t ourselves create, and the only way we can sustain the illusion that there’s some kernel of freedom is because we can’t directly observe which chain of events led to which chain of events – unlike with the brain tumor example at the beginning.

Brain tumor is easy to explain, that’s why this guy snapped and attacked everyone with a knife, it gets more complicated to grasp when you don’t have a clear example like that where multiple factors come into play as to why someone ultimately snapped and attacked someone with a knife.

This also doesn’t mean that therefore there is no point in ethics, I understand all ethics to be simply about sensation (consequentialism/utilitarianism), good and bad, pleasure and pain exist regardless of how free our will is – pain is still bad, even if you didn’t choose to cause it freely.

So of course, I wouldn’t say a serial rapist and murderer necessarily chose to commit serial rape and murder, so I wouldn’t think that a vengeful notion of going to hell for eternity as it is often preached by the religious would make any sense, but we can still argue that it is better to stop and arrest said rapist, just like it would be better to stop other harm-causing phenomena that didn’t choose to cause harm, like a cancer tumor or a tornado.