If you’re anything like me, the classic free will/determinism debate was the thing that drew you into philosophy. I wrote my first-ever philosophy paper about the debate, but I can’t read it now because it’s logically incoherent. However, I’m glad that I wrote that first paper. It provided a raw analysis of what my gut instincts drove me toward before I researched the topic. Now, I want to preface this argument by saying that there are still countless things for me to learn related to this topic. If one spots that my arguments are unsound, feel free to point it out and leave a comment. I would appreciate it. I’m not here to say this view is the best; it is just the clearest understanding of the topic I have right now. My first paper argued in defense of free will. In this post, I will try to disprove determinism and offer some convincing arguments in support of free will as well.

But before diving into my objections to determinism, we need to define the argument. Determinists argue that all events, including the actions of humans, are causally determined by prior events in accordance with the laws of nature. You are unable to do something other than what you will do. This thereby suggests that free will is an illusion. Another way to illustrate this is that actions are caused by two and only two things: nurture, or how you were raised, and nature, or how you are. It is certainly difficult to think of another factor that contributes to one’s actions. This view is also called causal determinism.

The first way we can challenge determinism is through some 18th-century Humean knowledge. Philosopher David Hume’s problem of induction states that it is illogical to take anything observed from the past and assume it will occur the same way in the future. This is because of the sole fact that we have no idea, and have no idea of what the future holds. All human knowledge has a limit, which Hume and other empiricists soon realized. Just because some rule holds in the past does not mean there is any logical bearing that it will apply to the future. We can only ever guess the most probable scenario from inductive evidence. The problem of induction applies to determinism as well. Just because we only know of two facts that contribute to the causal chain of events does not mean it can always stay that way, and therefore we cannot assume this chain will continue uninterrupted in the future. Just like we can never absolutely prove a scientific theory because new evidence can arise in the future, our view of determinism is fundamentally uncertain.

The second way to attack determinism has to do with deliberation. Deliberation is an acute process that all of us are familiar with. We all struggle through the feeling of picking where to eat dinner, or where to go to college, or what political party to vote for. The process of decision is part of what makes us human. However, I think deliberation is directly contradictory to determinism. Determinism posits that our brains are basically a computer program, one where our actions are purely based on the sum of our nurture and nature. There is no room in this model for a mental battle where we cannot decide which option is better. But then why do we feel like this so often? If we are truly determined, once we cease to be presented with any new information, we should come to a conclusive decision. Of course, there may be a slim amount of time for your neural processes to sort this information out, but once you make a decision, it should stay that way. However, this is such a foreign concept to the majority of us who flip-flop back and forth in our minds. If you are flip-flopping between conclusions, yet no new events contributing to the causal chain of events have occurred, what is causing this indecision? Something else, like a consciousness, must.

Of course, the determinist would argue that the entire process of deliberation is in fact determined, and the indecision you feel is just another event caused by past events. To argue against this, we have to go a few steps back to the principle of ontological indeterminacy. As idealists and empiricists would point out, our knowledge certainly has a limit—our senses. Determinism posits that if we knew the position of every atom to the microscopic level, we could foresee all future events. This example is often referred to as the Laplacean demon. Pierre-Simon Laplace, a French philosopher, posited that if there was a supernatural demon capable of unlimited knowledge, such as the position and velocity of every single particle in the universe, this demon could, in fact, predict the future.

Of course, we cannot do this, and this is why we have something called epistemic uncertainty, which is basically our ignorance. For example, if we flipped a coin, a determinist would say it is already determined that the coin will land on heads. However, we are ignorant of this fact—as we do not have the supernatural power to know the position of every atom—and therefore we live in a state of epistemic uncertainty. Ontological indeterminacy posits that not only do we not know the future, the future itself is random. The state of the world is objectively open, and therefore your choices will shape reality. Laplace’s classical determinism states that if you were able to know all positions and velocities of particles in the universe, plus the laws of physics, you could predict everything, including your choices, for the rest of eternity. However, quantum mechanics, which provides the best understanding of our world, suggests that even if we have the knowledge of all the positions and vectors of every particle, we can at best assign probabilities to our actions, not set steps of things that will occur. If one accepts this interpretation of quantum mechanics, the uncertainty flips from the person (epistemic) to the whole world around us (ontological).

If the universe is not determined, it is highly likely that the brain isn’t either, as both are governed by the same rules of physics. For one who is willing to accept this, it provides a workaround to the deterministic argument that the process of deliberation is determined in itself. If the future is uncertain but one states that the process of deliberation has a determined answer to it, there is a clear contradiction. Until we discover more about consciousness to prove that the mind is not under the axioms of the universe, we should assume so.

This brings us back to the initial problem of deliberation. If the process of deliberation is in fact not determined, what causes the indecisiveness all of us feel? Could it be purely random fluctuations?

Philosopher Robert Kane would call these Self-Forming Actions. Kane defines SFAs as specific moments in time when we feel the pull of multiple competing values or motivations, like what political party to vote for or where to go to college. As our neural complexes play a tug of war, we are left in a state of uncertainty, where, according to ontological indeterminacy, the future is up in the air, i.e., not determined. This escapes determinism. But how do we escape randomness? Kane argues that your effort of will tips the balance to one side or the other. Your effort of will provides the impetus for your decision to be made. Therefore, it is neither random nor determined.

But wait. This just sounds determined. What contributes to your “effort of will” if not your nurture and nature? It seems like a loophole of an argument. This is a valid objection, and Kane’s theory tries to evade these critiques, but in my opinion, fails. Kane states that SFAs evade the trap of determinism because your “effort of will” plays a large enough effect in the decision process, but the future is still undetermined. Still, this doesn’t provide a strong argument for the presence of some free will. If effort of will is part of the decision process, the rest of it, logically, must be down to luck. And if effort of will is just defined by causal events, this seems not like an argument for free will—but an argument for a weaker, more random version of determinism.

All of the past arguments have been centered around what are called event-causal theories. I set it up this way: the standard determinism argument, which people attempt to evade, includes a causal chain of events. To disprove it, one either has to find another criterion influencing decision making or critique the causal chain of events itself. Agent-causal libertarianism throws this out the window. Instead of altering the chain of events, agent-causal libertarianism completely removes it from the picture. Although it is radical to the philosophical world, I think agent-causal libertarianism is the most intuitive, and therefore the theory that we connect most with. It captures a feeling that we have about ourselves that is omnipresent yet exceedingly difficult to put into words. It, better than event-causal determinism, can prove that deliberation is not just a determined event but an instance of free will.

Agent-causal libertarianism breaks from the event-causal structure by assuming that humans are substances that can spark and onset actions without the need for any prior antecedent. But what is a substance, you may ask? And no, by substance I’m not talking about how we are on the atomic level. Aristotle can better explain.

Aristotle thought that humans are made up of a substance with its own intrinsic powers. Therefore, humans are the initiators, not just lumps of events. Humans are able to initiate their own actions, and with that, the will can move itself. An easier way to think about this is the concept of humans having a soul. This soul can provide enough impetus for humans to act on their own volition. Aristotle’s works were continued by Thomas Aquinas and then really applied to free will by Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid’s Active Power Theory. Funnily enough, Reid’s theory reacted against Hume, who was in fact a compatibilist (meaning he thought determinism and free will could coexist). Hume’s theory was that of causal or mechanistic determinism, and Reid thought this approach both reduced humans to the level of a machine while simultaneously eschewing any moral responsibility. Reid developed his theory in opposition to that. If agents, or humans, were the first and only cause of actions, then they would both claim responsibility for their actions and develop decision-making skills above a machine. The ability to make one’s own cause, according to Reid, was the active power. So it is you—yourself, not you as merely an endpoint of a causal chain that began when you were born—that ultimately makes the decision.

Let’s illustrate Reid’s active power against causal determinism and Kane’s SFAs. Suppose you have to decide where to spend ten dollars. Humeans (causal determinism) would argue that your decision is just a conglomerate of events that started since you were born. It is not really you making the decision, but the chain of events. The chain of events is unchanging, so it is determined that you will choose where to spend it, say, at Chipotle. Kane would deny this, saying that there is a certain presence of uncertainty in the universe, and that while you are still at the end of a causal chain, the outcome is not determined. You are going to spend the money on food, but it could be Chipotle or Qdoba. But such change is attributed to either luck or pure determinism. Kane attempts to thread a needle between luck and determinism and provides a close but not quite successful answer. Reid and other agent-causal theorists, on the other hand, would say that they initiated the decision to spend ten dollars; therefore, they are under no chain of previous events, as humans are independent agents capable of active power. Your past still influences you—it would be impossible to deny—but to a point. You are in the driver’s seat, and your past is just like a route on GPS. It guides you, but you are not required to abide by it. The volition is caused by you, not past events, because you initiate the action and therefore break the event chain. Now, not all actions are undetermined. Most of us can agree that 99 percent of our actions are determined—the purely reflex ones, like typing this right now, or brushing our teeth. I think that the moments of deliberation, like what I described earlier in the post—when you are flip-flopping back and forth between two equally convincing actions—are when Reid’s active power takes place. So the core action is when you begin thinking about where you want to spend ten dollars. And when you make a decision, it is your own will, which is undoubtedly influenced but not completely determined by your past, making the decision. It is a power, attributed to and within a substance (us), that allows us to exercise our will. We break the chain of events, and our will does the rest. The fire has the power to heat. The bird has the power to fly. The human, with its grand mental cognition, has the power to will.

Furthermore, the belief in a will and the subjective experience of having said will has been ingrained into us since we were young. Intuition, although so often overlooked, is one of the most powerful sources of knowledge. What we intuit is what is known to us without necessary proof. It is the truth so strong no one cares to question because we all feel and know of its accuracy. Freedom, or the concept that our future is undetermined, is one of the core beliefs all of us have. It is omnipresent everywhere, in language, politics, not to mention the core of the American ideal. All of us assume that we have the ability to control our actions because it is a feeling that is undeniably part of what it means to be human itself.

French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre was one of the most influential existentialist thinkers of his era. He was famous for saying that “existence precedes essence,” meaning that humans are born without a purpose, or essence. Through living, humans create their own purpose with their choices and actions. This goes hand in hand with the belief that humans are, in Sartre’s words, “condemned to be free.” As the existence of the human is not defined, we must struggle through life to give it purpose. The feeling of choice and deliberation is not just a feeling; it is built into what it means to be a person. It is inescapable. One experiences choosing. Should this experience not be the first criterion, above any theory we consult, that proves to us that we are indeed in the driver’s seat?

My life was born undetermined, and as a conscious agent, I have the power to will change into existence. If this idea does not resonate within even the most steadfast determinist, they are mistaken, because they are then missing what it means to be truly human.

I wrote this over the span of two days, and I have decided to not edit it at all. I’ll probably write another post on this topic, so I’d like to keep this argument in it’s truest form so I can look back at it later. I anticipate my position will change.