What does this even mean?
Free will is illusory; this is to say that the awareness and the attachment of your own mental states act in parallel with each other; further establishing the presence of a “spotlight” of attention that is one step behind the precipitating cause – mainly, a phenomenon occurs, therein stimulating a responsive awareness towards the existence of the thing itself. From the nanoscopic length of time that precipitates the awareness of such occurrence and the occurrence itself, it seems reasonably conclusive to assume that the awareness of an idea, a thought, a desire, or an intention was under our own doing. This is a faulty overestimation of one’s own mental capabilities. The notion that an idea seemingly appears out of thin air is erroneous. To any degree, the attribution with one’s own mental state ascribes more power to the observer than is warranted. That is to presume that we, the creator of the initial cause, also brought about their mechanistic levers of causal production. Wherein we orchestrated the actions that precipitated the thought, desire, or intention before its existence in our conscious phenomena. Therefore, ascribing one’s mental state to be under their own conception is an illusory and inapt perception.
How might this be explained through example?
It is safe to say that I drink a lot of coffee. I buy multiple batches of beans that have different flavors and origins. Each morning, my election of a particular batch of beans to brew is a mystery. Now, why do I choose to go with the light roast, some days darker, and hell, some days I elect to mix the two in various percentages just to achieve a different taste? I do not know why I chose what and when; it seems as though it is just preference and random chance that such was determined.
I just took a sip of my coffee, was it under my own will that I chose to move my hand, grasp the cup, and bring it up to my mouth? Was it my own will that brought about specific neurotransmitter imbalances that precipitated and induced my thirst? Was it under my own will that chose to follow along with the impulse to drink my coffee rather than resist the urge to continue writing about the alleged “freedom” of our intentions, choices, and behaviors that we claim to be ours? These questions are valid and produce uneasy responses to those who stand firm with the notion that their thoughts are theirs; well, yes, they are yours, but you did not bring them into existence. To have conveyed them into existence and be a “free” choice begs the questions raised above.
Chance occurrences seem the most reasonable, but why?
Another mystery is, why coffee? Why not tea or an energy drink? They all have caffeine, so why would I not choose any other option than coffee. Well, as it turns out, you really don’t have a choice of what you like and don’t like; what your taste buds are accustomed to enjoying; what you’ve heard about the nasty ingredients that they put in energy drinks that make you grow a third arm; that to you, green tea tastes like green dirt. I did not get to choose any of this. Just as not choosing to be born, not choosing your skin color, not choosing your genetics for male pattern baldness, all this was determined for you, by chance.
Chance occurrences explain, but yet fail to elaborate to what extent, the mysterious aspect of our happenings, ideas, desires, intentions, and motives; all of it, result into existence. By mere chance, I was blessed with a well-adjusted neural activity that elicits rapid-fire connections to and from adjacent neurons; by mere chance, I was cursed with uneven size feet (my left foot is a full size bigger than my right); by mere chance, I was graciously endowed supportive, and loving parents; by mere chance, my inveterate impulse to be highly anxious and self-conscious causes severe stress and seemingly ruins my more intimate relationships. All this is to say that you do not get to choose. There is no rational explanation beyond things simply transpiring, by mere chance.
Another example trying to explain how might this be.
Now, here’s a scenario that could be against this notion – but probably not; let’s investigate. Imagine you wake up later than you should have. It is Monday morning, and you do not have time to make yourself a cup of coffee at home, so you decide to pick up one on the way to work. Having limited time, waiting in a long line with the other coffee dwellers will not suffice. So, as you pass one, then two, and another coffee place, due to crowdedness, you elect to stop at a convenience store to quickly grab an energy drink. While jogging in and out of the store as quickly as your unlaced dress shoes will allow, you realize that you do not have lunch for today’s busy schedule. So, on the way to the register, you mindlessly grab something that looks appetizing – convenience store grade appetizing. Driving down the road, you realize that you forgot to charge your phone the night before, so you quickly send a text to your wife letting her know you will be late for dinner that night, seemingly before the life of your phone seizes to exist.
You arrive at work surprisingly on time and out of danger from your maniacal boss whose motives are to seek and destroy all life of enjoyment. Unfortunately, as you walk to your desk, he spots you armed with a stack of folders; he then plops them on your desk and states, “get to work.” You reluctantly start chipping away at the pile that seems to multiply double for each one you pick off. Not long after starting, you get the urge to open the energy drink, hoping that a caffeine-induced mental state will make the experience more productive and less monotonous. Once a few sips have entered your body, you start to feel the caffeine-induced rush, crushing through your assigned paperwork and enjoying the euphoric pulse of happiness come back into your body. After a while, your stomach starts to scream and rumble; you then check what time it is, hoping that you can head to your lunch hour. Now getting to see what you hurriedly picked up at the convenience store, you realize that you grabbed the wrong package (a peanut butter sandwich that has crunchy peanut butter instead of smooth), a food that you do not like. Upset with your decision to not have taken the extra second and made sure that it was smooth and not crunchy, you sulk in your chair and think of how easy it would have been to simply stop and double-check. Heading back to your desk, you start to open up drawers and check if you have ever channeled your inner squirrel and stored food for this very occasion; no luck. Although, you did happen to find a phone charger that you had left there a couple of days prior. Elated with your find, your hunger pangs are no longer bothering you as you mindlessly scroll down your Twitter feed for the duration of your lunch hour.
Why this story?
Now, what is the point of this story? Why would someone’s seemingly ordinary day justify my rationale for lack of autonomous choices? Let’s investigate; each paragraph represents a different section of the story.
Starting out, we can agree that when waking up, it seems as though it just happens to us. There is no conscious decision that we are mulling over regarding when to wake up or stay asleep; if that were the case, we would still be living in a very non-developed world. Thus, some processes are underway without our own doing. Let alone dreaming content, although I’m not going to elaborate further, it doesn’t hurt to mention that dream content on occasion may seem as real as reality; how do we explain what theoretical movie gets played on our eyelids at night without the notion that there are processes that occur without our own doing?
What factors made you decide that picking up a coffee would be superior to brewing one at work? You don’t know; if you say you do, you’ve committed a post hoc fallacy by attributing causal factors to the most readily available explanation. For example, you might think you knew you decided to pick one up because Linda at work talks too much by the coffee maker or that K-cup coffee tastes poor compared to locally grown beans; maybe you do not have a mug to put it in. All these seem logically clear, but since you are not aware of this deliberation until after the decision is made, you thus cannot attribute any of these factors to the outcome in the final analysis.
Why did you not stay with your coffee choice? You don’t know; if you say you do, you are electing that you can foreshadow your life’s events’ direct outcome. The choice to stop at a convenience store due to a simulated mental event figuratively blocking your election of coffee is unknown to you. Why do you project life’s events in a fatalistic manner? Why did you ascribe yourself to the vision of a long wait time and not the opposite of opposing such attribution and deciding to continue with coffee given the possible risk? It is unknown to you to understand that those visions, fatalistic thoughts, and mental simulations happen, but electing to attribute yourself to them or oppose them is happenstance. Why you would be considered a risk-taker or a safe-better is no better answered by you or me.
When an individual “decides” to start walking or running, it is safe to assume that you are walking for a specific purpose, or instead you are electing to move to a different place; regardless of if the reasons that are either known or unbeknownst to you is beside the point. After a selection is made, specific processes are in full swing without requiring your conscious decision to operate. These processes contribute to other mechanisms that influence other processes; again, you are not required to decide for them – or in conscious awareness of their existence or operation. Yet, these processes are happening without you having to contribute to their operation. Now in the case that we do have a specific purpose of moving to and from one area to another, all these mechanisms and their operations become even more invisible to our conscious awareness. In this sense, you free up any space previously occupied by other awareness processes. If you broaden this view, our thoughts, intentions, desires, inhibitions, repulsions, fondness for specific smells, acquirement of casual sex goals; regardless of what we’re referring to, we were not the operating mechanism in the bringing about of those processes, simply the observer. Since having seemed to have elected the cause that created the effect, the observer becomes that which is deemed the creator. To our knowledge as beings, the creator is justified into a definition that is synonymous with God, that which creates has “powers” similar to that of God. There must be a “real” enough phenomenon that elicits what comes to us so naturally to make us believe that we were the originator of such ordeal. The original originator complexities argument does not get anywhere; that which originates must have been deemed by forces outside of its control that is the true originator – ad infinitum. The argument of that which truly is the originator is circular and is not argued in good faith.
Free will is perceived as an illusory mechanism over which we are not in control. Thomas Hobbes credited the initial cause to God, and the chain-link of the following causes was due to that initial cause. Imagine a long row of dominos, particularly placed by an unknown creator of all causes; there must be an initial cause – the initial flick of the finger that produces all other standing blocks to fall down. Although only one initial cause produced the string, this explanation presupposes the belief and existence in and of a God at least once.
What looks appetizing is just as enigmatic as seeing something aesthetically pleasing; only until after are you then able to describe what makes it so. This is to say that what looks pleasing to you does not necessarily mean that it will look pleasing to me. This randomness of who enjoys what and when is only explainable by mere chance. Thus, it would be incorrect to ascribe any more autonomy to something that you are barely able to describe; aesthetic excitement.
Claiming an idea is yours can only go to the extent that it happened in your mental space and not someone else’s. Beyond this, you only become aware of an idea after it is presented to you. Having the realization of forgetting to charge your phone the night before – randomly, as in, just appearing out of thin air – is the best explanation we have for such phenomena. This realization brings forth more thoughts about how you could have been so negligent and forgetful when in reality to say you would have done otherwise is purely hearsay; it is unverifiable.
It is true that we could not have acted differently in the past, but that does not cause reason to believe that we will not act differently in the future. Just because an event took place, a behavior transpired, does not logically follow that it will predict future behavior. Nor the fact that we are on a “destined” path that is previously laid out for us. This is nonsensical reasoning to say that a previous event causes another set in a stone string of patterns.
Believing that one could have acted differently in the past is not logical. You acted the way you did because the events (beliefs, intentions, desires, goals) leading up to that action were influencing how you behaved and not in any other particular manner. You, therefore, could not have acted differently because what you did was influenced by previous interaction outcomes that influenced the way you acted in that scenario. This can be thought of as continuous interaction learning; the more interactions one engages in, the more alterations in behavior due to goals and desires being met or not. However, how you behaved in the past is set. The only thing subject to change is the future. This alteration depends on the previous goals, intentions, or desires held prior to the interactions, actions, and behavior. Which itself was based on prior interactions, actions, and behavior. This influence matters greatly because there is an intention, which manifests through behavior, which then alters others’ and our own worlds – respectively. Due to the law of Interdependence, the only rule that logically follows is how behaviors influence subsequent behaviors taken thereafter. Those goals, if not perceived as met, will alter the way in which we act in future scenarios.
Final thought.
To bring a thought into existence, the “free will believers” ascribe the hidden mechanism that brought the mental phenomena into existence as their own doing, their own conceptual creation, their own original conviction. Before your conscious awareness becomes aware of the thought by pointing its “spotlight” of attention towards it (which is determined by your frontal lobes’ process of attending to novel and anomaly-type stimuli), there are hidden and unknown mechanistic processes that exist truly underlay the creation of that thought. The spotlight of our attention determines how illusory the free will notion is. The more attentive you are to the hidden active mechanisms during a choice or behavior, the more you realize how little control you have beyond observing. Therefore, illusory free will exists; we are not the original creators of our mental existence and happenings.