You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice

If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice

You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill

I will choose a path that’s clear, I will choose Free will

-Rush

Free will is defined as “the assertion that our choices and actions are not caused by antecedent events, but emerge spontaneously from the mind” (Ettinger, 2018). Freewill is a topic that I have delved into many times throughout my life. When I was much younger, immature, and naive, I found it easier to relinquish my free will and blame or even empower others or other circumstances to determine my actions. With time and real-life experiences of our own choice, we hopefully acquire life knowledge and/or wisdom. Over my lifetime and relatively gained experiences, I have come to learn that we are very much in control of our own thoughts, emotions, and actions. This is not to say, that as part of the human condition, we are not subject to others, our environment, and other circumstances that present themselves. Obviously, some people may not have this control due to illness, injury, or other congenital issues.

I have heard an explanation of free will, as that our lives can be viewed from the perspective that we are all on airplanes. We choose to travel in specific directions, towards a specific destination. Once we are on a particular plane that we choose, we are somewhat free to move about the cabin, albeit relative to what we can accomplish within the vessel we willingly entered into. So, while we may have free will, we still may be limited by our resources of time, finances, status, location, and other natural resources. Along with free will comes the consequences of cause and effect. I may be free to play in the Florida sun all day, but I will inevitably suffer the consequences of sunburn and heat exhaustion. I am free to shout “fire” in a crowded movie theatre, but again I am subject to the consequences of my actions if there is no fire.

I have read articles on free will that address more the physiological aspects of how humans behave, rather than the circumstances that might determine why we behave a particular way. An example would be where test participants have predictable reactions during a controlled experiment, which attempts to show that the participants had no free will.  The experiment demonstrated that brain activity before the physical action of pushing a button was responsible for the choice of when and which button to push (Ettinger, 2018). Not mentioned, were other details of the experiment, such as if the participants were made aware of the purpose of the experiment and if they were able to retry the experiment after knowing so. Both variables might have changed the outcome of the experiment.

I think the concept of free will can branch out into many different directions such as mental diseases, habits, or addictions and their relationship to free will. Relative to drug addiction, perhaps an addict’s free will can be seen as weakened due to the chemical interactions with their physiology which can affect thoughts, emotions, and relative actions (Monterosso & Schwartz 2020). Or even the belief that we have free will to not believe that we have free will, can be debated and discussed.  Additionally, if we have free will to choose only between given options, do we really have free will to choose other options (Reeve & Middlebrooks, 2021)? Similar to the concept of “Sophie’s Choice” where no outcome is preferable over the other, or maybe the “lesser of two evils” as many feel we experience with politics, healthcare, as well as societal and cultural issues.

References:

Ettinger, R. H. (2018). Psychology: The Science of Behavior (6th ed.). BVT Publishing.

Monterosso, J. R., & Schwartz, B. (2020). Addiction science and the perception of freewill. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 50(3), 373–390.

Reeve, D., & Middlebrooks, D. (2021). MISUNDERSTANDING FREEWILL: (Which We Don’t Have). Skeptic (Altadena, CA), 26(4), 54.

Braun, A. (2018, September 27). Freewill is an illusion. The Guidon Online. https://hayshighguidon.com/opinion/2018/09/27/freewill-is-an-illusion/

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Jim Moltzan

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