On Free Will

To continue my brief series of philosophical discussions, I'm talking today about the notion of free will. I don't think I'll actually be positing any sort of final claim on the issue but I'll surely be exploring what is an interesting perspective.

This came up when we were discussing... Spinoza? Or... Leibniz? Err... well doesn't matter. I thought it was an interesting notion and I want to share.

We go through our lives believing that we are in full control of everything we do. We choose when to wake up, what to eat, whether or not we want to go to class or work. We make "choices" every day. We believe that we have a personality that makes us a unique snowflake among the six billion people that live on the earth.

But consider this: maybe we have zero free choice. Maybe we make no choices that are of our own accord.

Think about this. Say we have a personality. Say it is the governing force behind everything we do. Perhaps it is the genetic rule book that serves as the guidelines for all we do. I chose to wake up 11am today. According to my genetic rule book, I was predisposed to get up at that time. The way I act towards people and what I do in my free time, what I believe and think about, it's all pre-determined. There is nothing I do and nothing about me that is in my control. Say I choose to get up at 9am instead and I choose to go running outside for the first time in my life. Free choice, right? Wrong. The only reason I was able to break from routine is because I recognized a genetically and personality-driven pattern and according to that pattern, deviation is possible only when I recognize it. Say I walk a certain way on my way back from the Gym. As I'm walking, I realize that I always take this path and I suddenly veer off on a different one. The only reason I took the different path was because I recognized that I always take a certain one and purposefully deviated. Even the deviations in the pattern are pre-determined.

Another interesting look at free will is given to us by social psychology. A radically conservative, hardcore social psychologist would say we have no personality. He would say that every moment of the day we are in a situation which molds the choices we make. Naturally, situations can only provide us a certain few options that we can take and so we are always confined within the situation. The choices we make in the situation are based on how we view ourselves inside of the situation. We are in desperate need to constantly fulfill the human desires for social and self-acceptance and thus, the choices we make in a situation are always geared towards those needs.

Now you could say that our personality factors in a little to the decisions made in situations and of course our personality drives us to the situations we find ourselves in... but that only lends credence to the first postulation I brought up. But still, I find it crazy that we are completely governed by the situations we find ourselves in. My main interest in psychology is social psychology, mainly in social cognition and mob mentality. I just find it interesting how the goals and mentality of the group always, always supersede the mentality of the individual.

So what does it mean to be human? To be the moral agents of the world? To be able to held morally accountable for our actions which we can make in a rational and autonomous way? Yes. Absolutely.

The question is, while we are morally accountable for everything we do, right or wrong, are we making these choices from true free will? Or are we governed by something we cannot control?