Does Free Will Really Exist, or Is It an Illusion?

The ancient Greeks believed that when they had a thought, it occurred to them as a god or goddess giving them an order.  Apollo was telling them to be brave, or Athena was telling them to fall in love.  Now people hear a commercial for sour cream potato chips and rush out to buy them, but now they call this free will. – Chuck Palahniuk

            Isaac B. Singer was once asked whether he believed in free will or predestination.  “We have to believe in free will,” he replied.  “We have no choice.”  Free will is an important concept in the discussion of individual freedom, for if we don’t have free will, then we are not really free agents.  Almost everyone believes that they have free will.  This makes sense because people have a deep desire to be free, to think that they are in control of their own choices and actions.  Determinism, on the other hand, is the notion that everything that happens, including our own actions, is based on previous events or causes.  For millennia, philosophers have argued for the existence of free will, while others have supported determinism; still others have found middle ground supporting both positions simultaneously.  I tend to follow this middle position, because we can see clearly that determinism is in play, at least to some extent.  There’s no question that past events shape our current actions.  That’s not to say, though, that all of our decisions are not of our own volition.  We are able to think through things and come to decisions, even though they are surely shaped by previous events.

Life is like a game of cards.  The hand you are dealt is determinism; the way play it is free will.

– Jewaharlal Nehru

My view of free will is that it’s limited by several factors, many of which I’ve already discussed.   It’s obvious, for example, that past events can limit our free will in the present.  I believe that our personal characteristics can be equally impactful on our free will.  There’s ample evidence to suggest that many human traits are inherited, which implies that we may have less control over our preferences and therefore our choices than we would like to believe. Think about our two primary personal characteristics – intelligence and personality.  In our postmodern society, occupations are sorted primarily by intelligence.  Not everyone can be a doctor, a lawyer, or an engineer.  So, in this important part of one’s life, one’s occupation, is at least somewhat predetermined by one’s intelligence.  And we know that pay and status of occupations are directly related to the intellectual requirements of the occupation.  More intelligent people tend to have higher paying and higher status occupations and thus end up experiencing a greater degree of freedom over the course of their lives.  In this respect, intelligence may be the biggest determinant in one’s overall freedom.  Moreover, intelligent people tend to attain higher levels of education, which helps them to gain a more profound understanding of the world.  I would go so far as to claim that more intelligent people, on the whole, make better decisions or choices.  Their advanced intellect and education enable them to reason through complex problems and ethical dilemmas and to consider a wider range of possibilities.

On the other end of the education continuum is ignorance, and it is possibly the greatest limiter of one’s freedom.  Personal freedom is limited when individuals don’t even know what choices or possibilities they have within their own reach.  This lack of vision is common in places of high poverty and low educational attainment.   I see it in Appalachia, where I live and work.  It’s difficult for people to break the cycle of poverty because they can’t envision any other sort of life, and after a while, they give up hope that they can improve their lives.  Education is the best hope people have of ever breaking out of poverty, for education enables people to see beyond their own lives to what their potential could be.  And only those who can see how their lives could be are truly free.

Only the educated are free. – Epictetus

Personality goes a long way in determining how you react to others and how others react to you.  Whether you are an introvert or extrovert, for instance, helps to shape your personal preferences in a number of areas in your life.  Our personality determines whether others will like us and associate with us.  People with high self-esteem tend to be more successful.  Optimists tend to have a more positive attitude and tend to stick with problems longer.  People fortunate enough to possess certain personality traits, like optimism and an internal locus of control, are more likely to experience greater levels of personal freedom.  People with an internal locus of control believe that what happens to them is directly attributable to the choices they make; or, in other words, they feel that they control their own fate.  Another powerful trait, hardiness, describes individuals with great resilience and stick-to-it-ness.  They don’t let setbacks hold them down, and they tend to think that they can succeed with hard work and perseverance.  It makes sense that personality traits like these predispose individuals to experience greater degrees of freedom over a lifetime.  Although it is unclear how much people can alter their base personality, it still makes sense for people to accentuate their strong personality traits while trying to develop traits that would help them experience a greater sense of personal freedom.