Ain’t Nuthin’ Free… and Your Will Ain’t Either.

Hi, and welcome to Studious! I’m your host, Stuart Byers. Each week on Studious, we’ll get our hands dirty trying to parse out life’s greatest riddles. We’ll cover topics of particular interest to me, and hopefully, to you the listener as well. If not, consider this one of those great podcasts to fall asleep to.

Today on Studious, we are going to examine the concept of Free Will through the lens of Hard Determinism. First, we will examine the concept, and then perhaps see what those implications have on reality at large and our place within it. Warning: form the onset, this theory may seem bleak, but stay tuned to the end where I explain in part soft determinism how that can suffice for those of you that are in fear of losing total control of your lives.

Have you ever heard of the experiments where they take identical twins separated at birth to see the effects of nature versus nurture? It’s a tale as old as time, much like that singing teapot would have us believe. Genetics versus environment… which has the stronger influence? You might have your own personal biases or stake in this game, but what if I told you that everyone making these arguments were all total losers?

If there’s one universal clause that all of reality seems to be governed by is the rule of cause and effect. In all of human experience or at least what we have gleaned so far, is that there are no uncaused actions or effects. There is a “why” to everything. If not, mysteries and thrillers would become terribly unsatisfying. Could you imagine the end of a Hercule Poirot mystery and the killer turned out to be a random person with no motive or criminal intent? Not even a solitary relation to the victim or drive to commit the act like psychopathy? Just a lady passing by who had a sudden urge to find a warm, moist place to put her kitchen knife. You the reader would need to know more. Why did she feel that compulsion at that particular time? Who feels a drive like that who isn’t a little kooky? Why for the love of GOD! Why!?!?!?!?!?

If you want to believe in an existence without universal causality, then you immediately have to eliminate any question of “why.” Things would just forever happen in mystery, never to be solved. Talk to a quantum researcher, and perhaps they would possibly consider this sentiment for a few moments. After which, would they just throw their hands up in the air and give up trying to figure it all out?

Of course not, because we all deep down hold on to the belief of universal causality. There simply are no uncaused effects. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and these are intrinsically tied together and are predictable.

Hard determinism is a philosophical perspective that argues that all events, including human actions, are predetermined by previous causes and that free will is an illusion. This means that every choice, decision, and action is fixed and determined by factors beyond an individual's control, such as genetics, upbringing, social, cultural, and environmental influences. Again, there are no uncaused actions here. We aren’t arguing nature versus nurture here, because all of the stimuli involved are what is at stake. And the amount of stimuli are practically unfathomable.

To understand hard determinism, it's helpful to imagine that our lives are like a train journey. We may think we're the driver, but in reality, the tracks are already laid down for us, and all we can do is sit back and enjoy the ride. Just like a train, our lives have a set destination and route, and there's nothing we can do to change the outcome.

Let's take the example of a man named Clifford, who has always wanted to be a rock star. However, despite his best efforts, he's never quite made it big. From a hard determinist perspective, this is because the factors that determine Clifford's life were set in motion long before he was born. Perhaps his parents didn't have the financial means to support his musical pursuits, or perhaps he was simply born without the musical talent required to become a rock star.

Now, let's imagine that Clifford's best friend, Eustice, is a successful musician. It may seem that Eustice has more control over his life and was able to achieve his dreams, but from a hard determinist perspective, even Eustice's success was predetermined. Maybe Eustice was born into a family that was supportive of his musical ambitions, or maybe he was born with a natural talent for music. Furthermore, he may have been born with more drive and ambition.

To get really off topic, Eustice could have been born at the right time for his musical expression. My grandfather had a cool name: Miles, but all growing up, to me it sounded rather pedestrian, as far as names were concerned. In high school, Miles played the clarinet. Perhaps to you, this guy Miles sounds like a dud, relegated to a life of geekdom and solitude. Would it surprise you that Miles was ensconced in punani? During the swing and big band era, clarinet players were the rock stars of the band. They were hep cats that could jive with the best of them. You fast forward half a century, and what is our relationship societally to clarinet players? Are you catching my drift?

The point is, regardless of our efforts or desires, hard determinism argues that everything in our lives is predetermined, and we have no real control over the outcome. This can be a tough pill to swallow, but let's try to look on the bright side. At least we don't have to worry about making any wrong decisions, because everything has already been decided for us!

Now, let's talk about the implications of hard determinism for our understanding of responsibility, morality, and justice. If we do not have free will, then how can we be held responsible for our actions? According to hard determinists, the notion of moral responsibility is an illusion, and the criminal justice system is based on a flawed understanding of human behavior. For example, if a person commits a crime, it's not because they made a free choice to do so, but rather because they were predetermined to do so due to factors beyond their control.

Since we are speaking of ethics and morality, I would be remiss if I didn’t examine the theological aspect of this discussion. Some would argue in strong favor that many religions seem to be based around this concept that life exists as this testing ground for personal salvation. Life presents us daily with moral choices, and how we live our life can determine our role in the next.

I grew up in a holy-roller, speaking in tongues, charismatic, non-denominational but reeking of Pentecostal, church. One of the mantras of which I am most familiar is this concept of man not being judged by his works, but by the contents of his heart. I couldn’t begin to tell you how this factors into a conversation about free will, but it somewhat stands in opposition of being judged by one’s actions.

But if we roll the clock in our way-back machine to the beginning of the Judeo-Christian tale, the whole story of man begins with him making choices, primarily flawed ones. So, there’s always this free will component to that religion, and it would also feel similar in many other world religions as well, for conceptually, we have always retained this notion of autonomy of spirit.

Until we get thrown a theological curve ball with Calvinism. Calvinism, a Protestant Christian theological tradition, holds that humans have limited free will and that their ultimate destiny is predetermined by God. According to Calvinism, individuals have the freedom to make choices, but their choices are ultimately determined by God's sovereignty and predestination. This means that God has already determined who will be saved and who will not, regardless of the choices made by individuals. This view is based on the idea that humans are fallen and unable to choose good on their own, and that it is only through God's grace that they are able to make choices that lead to salvation. Or consider this, if you believe that God is omniscient and omnipotent, then he knows exactly what he is creating, how it will behave, and its future outcome. So even if we eliminate the portion of the conversation relating to original sin and man’s inherent flaws, God knows his designs and your journey was planned billions of years (or if you’re super hard-core Christian, a few thousand years) before you were born. This is where theologians start splitting hairs. Some believe that this notion of free will is incumbent upon the theology here. One has to have the autonomy of choice to choose God. It’s a weird perspective to think of God as this lonely creature who only builds man to actively want to pursue a relationship, not some automaton born to worship. Proponents of this view would say that if true allegiance was the desired outcome, then why build the giant fire lake of suffering and damnation? What we have here is a God saying quite literally, “love me, or burn in Hell for all eternity.” Can somebody say, “EXTRA!?!??!!!?!”

But I digress. We’ve gotten way off topic and have fallen into the “problem with evil argument.” Since we are stumbling around religion, and universal causality, I’m gonna talk briefly about the Theist and Athiest dilemma. One believes that a God that always was created everything, there was never a before God moment and nothing created God. Athiests also take a similar stance in believeing that before the universe, nothing existed, not even time. The BANG! Something was created out of nothing. Both seem to completely wipe their asses with this notion of universal causality.

On the other side of the coin, you have the infinite regress theory. This seemingly braces universal causality, but it is not without its own brain sewage to wade through.

It's best explained by this old philosophical joke: Two sophists are standing around, you know, sophing. One says to the other, what is holding up the Earth? To which the other sophist replies, “well, Atlas of course.” Perplexed, the first sophist then asks, well what is holding Atlas up?” The second sophist replies, “A giant turtle.” The first sophist ponders this a spell and asks, “well, what is holding up the giant turtle?” He is answered, “another giant turtle.” The first sophist now seems a little pissed, “well then, what is hold THAT turtle up?” “Another giant turtle.” The first sophist is now frazzled to the point of enragement, “well then, what is holding…” He’s immediately interrupted. “Don’t you get it, man? It’s turtles all the way down.”

This is the infinite regress: turtles all the way down. When I was a little boy, my first question to my own mother was “who’s God’s mom?” Her answer was that God didn’t have a mom. When I pressed her further, she told me I could ask God about it on judgement day.

But we are finite creatures, bound to our experiential existence. It is hard for us to fathom conceptually what truly infinite outcomes are. We only know existence based on this really short scale cosmically, which is why astrophysicists get aroused every time we are presented with a cosmic calendar. It illustrates how we are mere blips in the grand scheme of things.

So basically what we have here is an all knowing and all powerful God. So if you subscribe to this belief system, then free will is pretty much off the table. God created you knowing all of the factors and influences that would control your decision-making processes. Judas never stood a chance. There’s a reason they say that hindsight is 20/20. Given the opportunity of knowing the potential outcome of a situation, one might be able to change their choices, but one is destined to make these choices, because if none of the variables change that shape our decisions, we would always arrive at the same conclusions. In Buddhism, we have this belief called Niyati, which simply is another word for destiny or fate. If we look at the Vedanta school of Hinduism, they see perhaps an external, or divine power capable of shaping one’s fate, but pay attention here, this is coming from an outside source. The free will still isn’t happening from within. Mind you, most Judeo-Christian teachings do believe in this concept of free will, that it is bestowed upon everyone by God from on high. However, this notion feels incredibly suspect given just two of God’s omni’s: the -scient and the -potent. You don’t get to pick your genes or the set of circumstances of which you are born into, the only one making those choices for you is God.

So, we’ve come at this deterministic problem from the theist perspective; if we examine this through an agnostic, or atheistic lens are we gonna be afforded any wiggle room here?

Let’s take a moment to first go back and see the impetus of these views on determinism. We can harken back to the golden age of thought with my boy, Aristotle. Quick side note: Socrates may be a myth developed by Plato, and Plato gets close on a lot of things, but ultimately I can’t subscribe to many of his reasonings. Aristotle however gets the benefit of riding on the shoulders of giants, much like Jung in relation to Freud, or Darth to his Obi-Wan. So Aristotle comes up with this problem of the Sea Battle. In it, he assumes that given the Law of the Excluded Middle (which for those of you unaware, it simply evokes a law of this OR that, it can’t be both or partially both). So, give the Law of the Excluded Middle, there either will be a sea battle or there won’t be a sea battle. If the battle occurs, then it was destined to occur, all the events leading up to the battle saw it as inevitable. However, if the sea battle doesn’t occur, then the same is still true: the sea battle was destined to be avoided, because all of the events aligned properly to prevent it.

Now fast forward a few centuries and we have Rene Descartes. For those of you unfamiliar with Descartes, he got all up in his head and came up with the maxim, “I think, therefor I am.” Descartes held the opinion that apart from God himself being an uncaused entity, everything else in the universe was subject to causality. He was deterministic in his views of the universe. However, Descartes held the view that man was created in God’s image, therefore he too could skirt causality. It is through the freedom of the will, which Descartes believed was experienced as unlimited, that mankind understands itself to bear the "image and likeness" of the infinite God. Going back to his maxim, Descartes believed that our sentience gave us the ability to reason through our decisions giving this autonomy of choice that we all believe we are experiencing with free will.

So that seems a pretty convincing proposition. The fact that we are thinking beings frees us from the confines of destiny to shape that fate ourselves. We can now all go to sleep safe and secure knowing that we still remain in control.

But wait, not so fast. Descartes lived from1596 to 1650. Surely we’ve had enough time for some others to form some differing conclusions. Up to this point, we’ve only observed determinism through the lens of logic and reasoning. We’ve been applying premises to seek truth, but we haven’t applied any empirical evidence to support such claims.

Let’s take a coffee break here at this moment in the podcast. Go and grab a quick cup of joe. I’d like to say I’ll wait, but I’m confined to these podcast parameters, so I suggest you pause for the moment.

Aaaaaaand we’re back. Got that hot brew in your hand? Let’s dig in.

So, back in 1994, Psychologists John Bargh and Toni Collins completed a study involving physical sensations and their affect on human behavior. In this study, participants were randomly assigned to hold either a warm or a cold cup of coffee while they waited for an experimenter to arrive. The participants were then asked to rate the personality of the experimenter based on brief descriptions.

The researchers found that participants who held the warm cup rated the experimenter as being friendlier and more generous compared to participants who held the cold cup. This result suggested that simple physical sensations, such as holding a warm cup of coffee, can influence our perceptions and attitudes towards others, leading to changes in behavior.

This study has been widely cited and has inspired numerous follow-up studies, which have investigated the impact of physical sensations on various aspects of social behavior, including trust, cooperation, and aggression. The results of these studies have provided further evidence for the idea that our thoughts and behavior can be influenced by seemingly small and inconsequential physical experiences.

A year later after the coffee test, psychology researchers Anthony Greenwald and Mahzarin Banaji began a study into the world of implicit biases. They asserted that unconscious biases existed within humans that shaped our belief systems. They needed a way to prove that these internal biases existed, because self-reporting was considered fallible given that we are all prone to a social desirability bias. Or more simply put, not many are honest enough with themselves to look like an asshole to others.

In 1998, three years later, Greenwald and others would unveil the Implicit Association Test or IAT. This advanced methodology uses a computer to track participants responses to rapidly generated Excluded Middle questions. For example: in respects to logical reasoning, pick one: males or females. Based on response and the timing of response, the test would conclude which internal biases an individual possesses. Of course, this test isn’t without its own critics or detractors. Some say that the test scores aren’t valid given that the scores can change after multiple attempts. However, this only implies that with new information, a new series of inputs, the human is afforded new variables to alter their decision-making process. Remember this, because we will circle back around to this notion later.

Another set of studies to consider are social priming studies. These experiments are conducted by priming the subjects with visual cues to see how it affects behavior. It may come as no surprise that subjects would respond more aggressively after being shown a succession of violent imagery, whereas they are prone to become more helpful after being shown images of cooperation in action.

This reminds me of the mentalist Derren Brown. If you aren’t familiar with Britain’s national treasure, he’s like a magician, but the tricks he performs aren’t slight of hand. He takes ordinary people and manipulates situations for his own desired effects. The first time I saw Brown, he was casually conversing with actor Simon Pegg. In the video, they were talking about how it was Simon’s birthday, and Brown started by talking about how much people dread buying gifts, because one is always uncertain whether or not the person they are buying for will like the gift. Brown then says, “what if I could tell you that I got you a gift, and it was what you always wanted, that you’d beam excitement?” During the rest of their conversation, Brown drops other subtle verbal primes, but in the background, visual priming is also occurring with images. Now before the interview, Brown has Pegg write down on a piece of paper exactly what he wanted for his birthday. Now it’s time for the big reveal. Simon unwraps the gift, and tada! It’s a BMX bike. Simon says how it’s just what he always wanted. But was it? Brown asks him to pull out the paper in his pocket to see what he had written down before their engagement. Was it a BMX bike? No, this isn’t magic. Pegg wanted a leather jacket for his birthday initially.

So what gives? Brown was using NLP otherwise known as Neuro-Linguistic Programming on Pegg along with visual priming. At the end of the episode, he does the big reveal to illustrate how he accomplished the trick. When he says, “you’ll beam excitement…” he’s cleverly masking the BMX prime. The other visual clues around the room are round objects that look like tires and gears and spokes.

NLP works in theory by supposing that everyone is constantly shifting between different modalities of waking state. Mentalists like Brown quickly can achieve putting an individual into a trance state, merely by jarring them with a physical cue, such as a well maneuvered handshake. The individual is then seemingly conscious, but now highly susceptible for suggestion, much like someone under hypnosis. Neuro-Linguistic Programming works based on the assumption that our brains and subconscious work similarly to a computer, and that the proper inputs or stimuli, in this case lingual, can program an individual’s behavior. It’s a ceaselessly fascinating subject, and we will revisit NLP here again in the future.

This isn’t so far fetched is it? We’ve been familiarized with these concepts for years now, even if we weren’t aware of it. Have you ever heard this before? “Objection, leading the witness.” Lawyers can prime witnesses on the stand through language to coerce testimony. Similarly, police officers can prime suspects during interrogations by breaking down the person over time, giving the suspect the version of the story they want to hear, until the individual finally confesses, although a good sturdy phone book could also illicit similar results.

Next, I want to talk briefly about habituation and classical conditioning studies. We all are probably familiar with Pavlov and his prized pooch. If not, this dude Pavlov would ring a bell every time he fed his dog. He did this so many times, that eventually he could ring the bell and the dog would involuntarily salivate without being brought any food. This is classical conditioning. True story, my father would snap his fingers at me any time I was in trouble, so even when he was jamming out downstairs with his comically large headphones, just merrily snapping away, I’d run downstairs in a panic thinking I had done something wrong.

Similarly with habituation, behavioral studies have shown that repeated exposure to certain stimuli, that is something like food or drugs, can lead to a formation of automatic habits that are driven by unconscious processes.

The last of these empirical examples of subconscious driven behavior I’d like to discuss are dual process theories. These propose that our decision-making process is governed by two systems: one that is fast, automatic, and unconscious, another that is slow, deliberate, and conscious. If you get an opportunity, check out Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. In the book, Gladwell discusses how we can properly train our brain to make split second decisions, ones that could have huge overarching effects especially in regards to professions like firefighters or police whose split-second decision making skills could either save or lose lives.

The best way to possibly illustrate dual processes is to consider a concept called automation. Have you ever been driving and not remembered the past 5 minutes you were actively driving? Maybe you were messing with the radio or your phone, and you simply were so focused that you weren’t paying attention to the road. Better yet, have you been driving somewhere and missed your turn because you were driving like you were going to work which is in the direction you still were going? This is automation. Our brains are often doing so many things, that we can really only actively pay attention to one thing at a time. You may think you are multitasking, but realistically, you are just hyper switching between tasks, not doing them all at once, but instead in rapid succession. Automation is when your brain literally goes into autopilot to support your conscious brain in multitasking. So, while you were thinking about that bizarre dream last night where you are back in high school just to finish a few classes to graduate, you missed your turn, because the autopilot was doing the most familiar and habitual route, which was going to work.

So listen, I get what you are thinking. Sure, this just illustrates how part of our decision making is governed by unconscious thought. And our brain researchers are similarly divided. Depending who you ask, psychologists’ opinions range from 50 to 99% of our decisions being governed by the subconscious. The point is, you still feel like you are weighing options when you are actively making a choice.

Here's the problem. Everything that makes you, YOU up to this moment was out of your control. You didn’t get to choose the family you were born into with their genetic debris and economic standings. You didn’t choose the country you were born into, nor the culture or community. The genes or culture that would help govern your choices, were never your choice.

Think of it like politics. You don’t get to select your candidates; the parties do that for you. Even during primaries, you are given a pool of representatives, but you don’t choose who is in that pool. Furthermore, you don’t get to choose which ideologies the parties represent. Sometimes, you get a candidate who kind of represents maybe three or four of your own superficial characteristics, like age, gender, or race, but again, these barely are something to share in common with someone. I come from a town where people still judge each other based on the high school they attended. “Oh, you’re one of those Sacred-Heart kids… I figured.” As if every kid in that high school shared the exact same values, and furthermore, that none of them evolved past that through their later years in life.

So to get back on point, your vote is hardly a vote at all. You didn’t get to choose the candidates or what they represent. It’s basically an excluded middle option now, because let’s be real, those independents never had a shot. And if you wanna get really particular… unless you live in a swing state or an area impervious to gerrymandering, your vote is pointless, because the majority of voters in that area will still vote for the party that they’ve historically voted for. But hey, don’t worry; they give you sticker to wear at the end of it so you feel like you made a choice.

If I’ve done my job properly illustrating Hard-Determinism here, you may start to feel slightly depressed. Never fear. You still have the illusion of freedom of choice, and trust me, it’s enough. You still are the one making decisions, even if you don’t see the Ratatouille pulling your hair.

Remember the train analogy at the beginning of the episode? I’m not sure that’s entirely accurate. I walk with my son every day. He’s approaching 2 rather fast and furiously. When we walk, he’s the passenger in the stroller. He makes none of the decisions which way we’ll go. However, if he yells hard and long enough, the stroller will stop. It’s not likely he will change our course, because I time our ventures in-between naps and feedings, but there is an off chance, that if he’s cranky enough, that route will redirect home. I mean it hasn’t happened yet, he’s pretty mellow. But it couldhappen.

Similarly, hard determinism is based on a specific set of rules. We meat machines run on two types of information systems, much like a computer. We have our hardware, which is like our fixed, internal sytem. This is stuff like genetics and long-term cultural biases that have programmed us. Then we have our software, this is new external stimuli that affects or shapes our behavior. So now that I’ve introduced this concept to you, you can now have the idea to choose what you feed your brain with. If you surround yourself with positive imagery, if you choose to continuously learn new things and examine everything with rigorous logic and skepticism, then you can slowly nudge that train track in a different direction. Or you may be the type that is slow to take advice, in which case, I will go thoroughly fuck myself now.

New information can act as this inception point for a closer illusion for control, to the point perhaps where free will may possibly be attainable. It’s like reaching the point of sentience within an artificial intelligence system. I wonder; can self-awareness be taught, or must it be discovered? Is it as simple as Descartes discovering his own awareness, with the “I think, therefore I am?”

A cognitive ability to reprogram the mind must be achieved to begin to skirt this wired determinism within us. If you want free will, you gotta be able to reprogram the matrix. We won’t have control over the variables often presented before us, but maybe we can gain greater autonomy in the choices we make. Some people have made radical changes with their powers of cognition with Neuro Linguistic Programming, some I have read have mastered the power of lucid dreaming through self-hypnosis and can actually control the time spent in their dreamscapes practicing speeches or other tasks to master them in the waking world. Take a moment to soak that in. Dreams are perhaps a template for how little control we have of our brains, yet allegedly some have mastered the ability to control them.

The power of the brain on affecting waking reality is mysterious as well, and I’m sure we will continuously tackle through this podcast. Perhaps we will discover that we have more control in the grand scheme of things than previously thought. I sure would like to be presently surprised.

Critics of hard determinism argue that it leads to a bleak and pessimistic view of human existence, where individuals are seen as mere passive observers of their lives rather than active participants in shaping their future. They also argue that hard determinism undermines the importance of individual agency and the role of personal effort in achieving goals and making changes in the world.

So, what's the takeaway? Well, hard determinism can be a depressing philosophy, but on the bright side, we don't have to stress about making any wrong decisions, because everything has already been decided for us! And who knows, maybe the predetermined path that we're on is actually better for us than any path we could have chosen for ourselves.

As they say, “Man plans, God Laughs.”

When it comes to the criminal justice system, it may sound like wanting your cake and eating it too, but even though an individual is on a path towards criminal behavior, it doesn’t stop us from wanting to use corrective measures. Positive and negative reinforcement still affect human behavior, so even if the system may not be working perfectly, we don’t need to eradicate it completely.

I think the point of understanding hard determinism is to perhaps not judge others too harshly or critically. We all encounter assholes daily, but it does us all good to stop and consider what kind of day they had, or for the super bungs of this world, what kind of life they had. We can always take personal solace that we’re better than them. And like the illusion of free will, that can sometimes be enough.

That’s all I got, well not really, I could talk about hard determinism for days, but we’ve run out of time here on the podcast. See you next time and thank you for listening to Studious.