The Silly Search for Free Will

Essay by: Dan Kent

Have you ever been out toodling around in your car when a sudden suspicion strikes you that something is wrong—with the car?

Maybe the car lacks pep, so you press the gas.

It REVVVS, but the thrust is just not there.

Then, you look down to discover that the parking brake has been engaged the whole time.

That’s how I feel writing this Free Will section of my open theism book. Way back when I first set out to write this book, I thought the topic of free will would offer the most zest and tingle.

But, no.

I’m bored with the whole debate. I’m cutting it up and trunking it down.

Folks-who-think-we-have-free-will and folks-who-think-it’s-all-determined have argued back and forth for many centuries. These debates continue today, and maybe a younger Dan Kent would’ve jumped into the mix, eager to scuffle, with a cocky smirk and a backpack full of arguments.

Now, though, the debates have gone completely flat to me. They orbit around-and-around the same dozen or so arguments, for-and-against.

No, I’m not merely bored . . . What I feel most is futility.

Vertigo

Say you want to prove determinism, so you set out to find it.

William Lane Craig notes how this quest leaves you in a “sort of vertigo.” If determinism is true, the only way you could ever believe it true is if you were so determined.

Discovering determinism could never be the outcome of a person’s willful intellect. It could only result from the same tsunami of forces already engulfing one’s total self. This becomes especially dizzying when you come to realize:

“your decision to believe in determinism was itself determined and . . . even your present realization of that fact right now is likewise determined . . . for everything that you think, even this very thought itself, is outside your control.”

The search for determinism ends in self-stultifying madness. You can never find determinism, determinism could only ever find you.

Likewise, the search for free will leads to its own vertigo.

When you get down deep into the abyss of the human brain, in search of free will, you find a dizziness obverse to that experienced by those seeking determinism. And, as it happens, there really is something called abyssal vertigo—a vertigo that occurs in deep places (like in an abyss).

What do you find in your search for the free mind? Little more than biochemical dominoes.

Go ahead and study brain tissue through powerful microscopes, compare PET scans, or track brain activity on an fMRI. You’ll never see cause-itself, free or determined. You can only ever see the result of a cause; and the next result; and the next.

Dizzying, for sure, but your world really starts to spin when you ask a more basic question: “What would free will even look like if it could be found in the brain?”

Here, if you’ve had a hearty breakfast and a good night’s sleep, you soon realize that the closest thing to free will you could ever hope to see, no matter how fancy your equipment, would be a spontaneous event, something happening without a prior cause.

You don your lab coat, grab your clipboard, and step into your laboratory. There, a high-powered microscope awaits you, a microscope capable, even, of zooming in on a single neuron.

Imagine your gasp of excitement if you were to find a neuron firing entirely on its own, firing without any prompting from any preceding input. Such a sight might give you hope, seeing a mental action begin all on its own. “I’ve found free will,” you might exclaim.

But have you?

You saw a neuron act, but how did that little fella fire? In order to fire, that neuron needed a certain chemical charge. Neurons create these charges by opening little doors—called ion channels—which allow sodium ions to flow in. It’s these sodium ions that charge up the neuron allowing it to fire.

“No problem,” you say, “the neuron simply opens up the channels to let the sodium in.”

But, no. It turns out, a neuron doesn’t simply “decide“ to open up its ion channels. These channels open in response to conditions outside of the neuron.

What this means is that your discovery is suspect. You are not actually seeing a neuron fire all by itself (since they cannot charge themselves to the level required). To see a neuron fire all on its own would be to see something just as inexplicable, just as miraculous, as free will itself. You’d be swapping out one mystery for another.

Okay-okay, since we’re entertaining hypothetical situations, let’s pretend this one particular neuron could open up its own ion channels to charge itself. If it did this, then we’d have what we thought we were looking for: a chain of events starting without a prior cause.

We would now have something truly indeterminate. Could we finally say we’ve found free will?

No, we could not.

And here your abyssal vertigo peaks.

Since the best you could ever hope to see would be an uncaused happening, the closest you could get to seeing free will would be seeing an event not causally determined—indeterminism. This means your quest to find free will has two possible outcomes—determinism or indeterminism.

Yet neither outcome works. Both invalidate free will.

Determinism obviously invalidates free will because determinism says our decisions result from forces outside of ourselves. But free will decisions come from within ourselves.

Indeterminism also invalidates free will. Indeterminism implies choices happening without a cause. But this is randomness, not free will. A free will decision does have a cause: us. We, the agents who possess the power of choice, are the cause.

So a determined event is not free will, but neither is an uncaused one. Free will cannot be observed.

Remission

Some people think, since we cannot find free will, tag free will, and trap free will in a jar, free will must not be real.

This is nonsense.

While free will cannot be observed, it also cannot be repudiated.

Among other things, Christians trust that God will judge our conduct (Revelation 20:12–13), that God has set before us the two ways (Jeremiah 21:8), that God commands us to choose (Joshua 24:15), and many other such things.

Whatever anyone says, we are justified to accept free will as a basic fact of human existence.

Nothing more is required.

The truth is, we’ll never understand how free will works until we understand consciousness.

Why do I say this?

Because our free will is our consciousness at play in the world. So, we cannot understand free will until we understand consciousness, and consciousness, for now, remains inscrutable. The dealer keeps that card hidden.

We cannot prove free will but must trust that it is real.

So what?

Like gravity, scientists cannot see free will. They can only see its effects.

Big deal?

I reject the demand that we must understand how something works in order to accept that it as true.

Nobody really knows how gravity works, but good luck finding anyone who doubts its downward draw.

For more discussion on this, including what I learned about free will at the casino, subscribe to my open theism podcast: Surprising God.

Dan Kent