Free Will at the Perimeter of Ignorance

Perimeter of ignorance

Tyson: “Charles, I want to compare notes on free will”

Liu: “Oh, one of my favorite things. Here’s my take. At some level of resolution that we can observe, causality is absolutely true – given these initial conditions, this is what will happen. Then there is no free will because everything is predetermined by things that, whether you know it or not, is causing it to happen. But there is also stochastic uncertainty in the universe – it’s built in. There’s randomness. There’s unpredictability.”

Tyson: “Chaos”

Liu: “What level of chaos affects you to the extent that you could make an instantaneous decision based on stuff that’s not necessarily part of your past experiences.”

Nice: “But wouldn’t those past experiences inform your decision on the thing that you’ve never experienced?”

Liu: “Inform is the word… Let’s say you’re in a room with an audience. You tell a joke. It falls flat. In that moment, you have many things you could do to turn it into a laugh. You could hear silence. Or you could be like, ‘Oh, that was good.’ And everyone laughs.”

Tyson: “Or ‘Is this mic on?’”

Liu: “Do you have the freedom to choose one of several choices that you have designed from your past to deal with this eventuality, or is the choice made for you already?”

Tyson: “He preloaded his neuron synapses so that, in that moment, they all tripped. They were triggered to go to the solution.”

Nice: “But then I wouldn’t have free will at that point. It would just be a response. I wasn’t really choosing. It chose it for me”

Liu: “At that moment, you are not exercising free will. Did you set it up, though, with free will in the past so that you could react this way – deterministically. Here’s another example. A football player is trying to sack a quarterback. The QB dukes left. The person trying to sack the QB doesn’t have enough time to think about whether to move left or right. He has to react based on years of practice and experience. At that moment, his action is not free. But, in the setting up of that moment, is it free enough to constitute free will?”

Tyson: “Would you still be happy with life if an alien said, ‘There’s nothing you can do about it. You’re a puppet on a string.’”

Liu: “In that case, I hope the knowledge of being a puppet on a string allows me to circumvent it. The bottom line is, I would still be satisfied with trying to do something different. Even the illusion of trying to do something different, is in itself a form of free will. Neil, if you had to decide whether free exists or not, what would you prefer?”

Tyson: “My thinking over the recent years is leaning towards the absence of free will. At one time, you were totally to blame for something you did. But a person may be more susceptible than you to addiction – there’s biochemistry there. Take epilepsy where, before it was even a word, you were thought to be occupied by the devil – you were not in control. But today no one is saying, ‘Did you have the free will not to have an epileptic seizure?’ Of course not. Do you have the free will not to be depressed? For the person who’s ready to jump off the bridge, in that instant, do they have the free will to not jump off the bridge? I don’t think so. The more I add up and explore the human condition, I’m forced to conclude that we are all products of an absence of free will. As a result, society needs more compassion for people who do not otherwise fit in.”

Liu: “See, I have the exact opposite position. I feel that it is because of the absence of free will that you can see the 1% of free will that is active. It moves us in the right direction. It bends us toward compassion. It takes the arc of history toward justice.”

Nice: “But there are people who suffer from personality disorders and brain disorders where they can’t do what you just said. They can’t express compassion.”

Liu: “If they can’t, you can. You can show that person compassion or understanding and therefore free will as an entity exists.”

Tyson: “Charles, you’re drawing a line that I have seen be in constant motion – that line that you’re saying, “They don’t have free will but I do.”

Liu: “I have free will over some things and not over others.”

Tyson: “So you have to draw the line for every individual and even perhaps for society. Does the criminal who’s born in poverty have free will to not be a criminal? Most people in prison come in below the poverty line. There’s some sociological force operating there that we are less susceptible to.”

Liu: “I think that’s a great analogy. Let’s say those folks who have been branded criminals by our society are incarcerated. We, who were fortunate enough not to face those same circumstances, can look at them and instead of saying we must keep them away from society, welcome them back.”

Nice: “That’s called restorative justice”

Liu: “It’s an exercise of free will in society toward individuals who may not have had the options – the life experience – to recover from a bombed joke.”

Tyson: “I saw an old movie where there’s a guy who’s a junkie and needed help. The cops came and arrested him because he was a junkie. Today you wouldn’t do that. Even if he had robbed somebody, he needs treatment. The people who cannot shake whatever it is that afflicts them tells me that free will cannot be as free as we think it is. Do you remember the shooter in the University of Texas at Austin? He left a note saying, ‘I just want to kill people. Something must be wrong with my brain. Please, when I die, look into this.’ They looked and there was a tumor putting pressure on a part of his brain.”

Liu: “And this person had the free will to write the note. He did not have the will to resist shooting.”

Tyson: “It’s a line of convenience then. Tomorrow we’re going to find out, oh my gosh, that person has no real free control over their behavior, over their personality, over their tendencies, over their treatment of others.”

Liu: “It’s not a line of convenience. It is a perimeter of ignorance. When Newton said we couldn’t explain certain things, God must have done it. That’s a god of the gaps. That delineates what we don’t know. The line you describe, I hope, is that perimeter of ignorance. A line we are slowly moving towards understanding the true nature of free will.”

Tyson: “Charles, if we’re going to find a point of agreement, it’s that within this perimeter of ignorance there are forces operating against free will; our physiology, our neurochemistry, and physics. Surely that perimeter may grow. But it’s possible that there’s a limit to how far it will grow beyond which we have to admit the existence of free will.”

Liu: “Yes”

Tyson: “Okay. I’ll give you that”¹

This isn’t the first debate on free will, nor will it be the last. We have been baffled by it for thousands of years, and it will likely bewilder us for thousands more. We ponder it, wrestle with it, and, at times, drive ourselves mad over it. In the end, most of us bunker down in a position, no matter what arguments exist to the contrary. After all, the illusion of solid ground is preferable to facing the possibility that there is none at all. There are moments when I look up at the sky and cry out, “I give up… let me in on the secret! What is this all about?” But the cosmos remains silent.

The reality is that I occupy a specific place in space and time. Granted, my physical space is limited, and the segment of time I experience is short. Despite these limitations, do I have any influence over the small part of space and time that I inhabit? Or am I simply a random collection of atoms interacting in predictable ways? Do my decisions, thoughts, and feelings hold any inherent or unique value, or can they be reduced to a single scientific formula? Do I truly have free will, or is it just an illusion?

I have a dream

I have a dream ...

And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!²

I dream of being free. I yearn for it. I desire to make my own decisions and determine my own destiny. I don’t like the idea of being bound to the laws of physics. I’m disheartened by the idea that what I call making a decision is nothing but an inevitable pattern of electrons falling into their most stable energy state. I’m disturbed by the atomic forces and energies that govern me. I want to be free—free to create my own destiny.

Though I seek freedom, it stubbornly remains just out of reach, like a floater resting at the edge of my vision. I can see it. It dances in my peripheral vision, but I can’t focus on it. I’m continually on a journey towards it, but never quite arriving. So here is my question: Do I truly have the freedom to make my own choices, or must I be content with the illusion of freedom? Do I have any real control over my small corner of space and time, or will freedom forever remain a dream?

What say the philosophers

Immanuel Kant described our inner drive to be free as the noumenal. The noumenal exists in a realm that transcends space and time. While we sense its presence, we cannot directly perceive or focus on it. It’s similar to the floaters at the edge of our vision—there, but elusive. The noumenal is impossible to visualize; one might say it is inconceivable or unknowable—yet it is still real.

Science fiction often attempts to depict the noumenal through images of ethereal beings and pulsating energies that traverse space and time. However, the noumenal is not ghostly; to be ghostly implies a lack of reality. The noumenal is, in fact, more real. It can be described as superreal—some might even label it supernatural.

Although the noumenal cannot be reached or observed in a physical sense, it plays a significant role in our everyday lives. It does not have a tangible effect that we can dissect to understand its workings. Nevertheless, it actively guides our inner convictions, functioning like a moral compass that influences our decisions.

Arthur Schopenhauer saw it differently. He believed that, while we may be free to choose, our choices are ultimately better explained by an all-encompassing force. Though we feel we are responding to our inner convictions, our actions instead reflect an infinite and eternal force that permeates through all things. He famously stated, “You can do what you will, but in any given moment of your life you can will only one definite thing and absolutely nothing other than that one thing.”³ In the end, he argued, the fate of the universe will have its way.

A similar concept involving fate was first described in the Sanskrit texts from around 1500 BCE, which speak of a universal soul. The Bhagavad Gita later elaborated on these themes, advocating for Yoga—a union with the absolute. It portrays the world as an unstable, transitory illusion shaped by our senses. Schopenhauer was not the only thinker to suggest that an impersonal force guides our decisions.

Baruch Spinoza had yet another take on free will. He proposed that it is not a noumenal or impersonal force that dictates our choices, but rather our past experiences that shape our inner convictions and moral compass. Our instincts, which guide our decisions, are based on a belief system we have developed, often unconsciously. Therefore, we are not constrained by physical forces or impersonal powers that infuse everything. These things may exist, but they are beyond our comprehension. Instead, our behaviour is predetermined by the experiences we have encountered.

If a stone falls from the roof on somebody's head and kills him, …[they] will prove that the stone fell in order to kill the man; for if it had not fallen for this purpose by the will of God, how could so many circumstances… have chanced to concur? Perhaps you will reply that the event occurred because the wind was blowing and the man was walking that way. But they will persist in asking why the wind blew...And so they will go on and on asking the causes of causes until you take refuge in the will of God -- that is, the sanctuary of ignorance.⁴

Who is right? Do my experiences hardwire my instincts and reactions, guiding my every decision? Is there an all-encompassing, universal force directing my actions? Is there an unknowable noumenal moral engine within me? Is the idea of free will just an illusion? The answer may be unknowable, yet these questions intrigued many philosophers, and they intrigue me as well. Why do I pursue them? Because I dream of freedom—just like Martin Luther King. ¹

I tell myself I should be content to let things unfold as they will. Is it so wrong that impersonal evolutionary forces shape my desires and dreams? After all, perhaps evolution provides the illusion of free will for my survival benefit. Maybe that’s simply the way it is. Yet, I find the idea unsettling; I don’t like the thought of anyone—or the universe itself—playing with my head. I want to control my own realm, no matter how small it may be. I desire to be free of the atomic forces of the universe making decisions for me. I want to be my own god.

And then there is the soul

I’m a simple spiritual man—a philosopher wannabe. If there is a soul, then the soul and free will must be connected. The concept of the soul has intrigued humanity since the beginning of recorded history. Like the question of free will, we continue to ponder the existence of the soul. If you are confident we have a soul, then good for you. For you, the problem of free will is no longer an issue. But for the rest of us, including myself, the question remains.

But then, I’m prone to magical thinking. If you dismiss any possibility of the magical and are thoroughly convinced that nothing exists except what our five senses can perceive, then maybe the problem of free will is not a concern for you either. Kudos to you.

As for me, I continue to wonder about the soul. It may be a futile preoccupation. After millennia of thinkers who have failed to reach a solid conclusion, why should I, of all people, expect to clear it up now? But I was created with a craving to wonder. So, I continue with my exploration.

I find Kant’s idea of the noumenal the most intriguing. The noumenal realm represents a reality just beyond our vision that remains unknowable. It is like the present moment. No one questions the existence of the present; it is more real to us than the past and future. The present is where we exist, every moment of every day. However, the present passes by infinitely fast, much like a film can’t be paused. Since there is no pause button, we are unable to engage with the present. We are always either just behind it, anticipating what it will be, or just ahead of it, recalling what it was. The present is undoubtedly real, yet, in a way, unknowable because, as soonas we think we have grasped it, it’s already a memory.

The soul is the same. Our five senses can only perceive the physical world, just as our passage through time can only address the past and future. The soul, like the present, remains so very real but on a mysterious plane just out of reach.

I’m not attempting to provide proof of a soul; I’m only offering a hopeful illustration. Despite my insignificant place in space and time, and despite my inseparable link with the physical, there is a reason to uphold the concept of free will.

I admit, it is a belief. Though, to be clear, arguing that we do not possess a soul is also a belief. There is no definitive evidence for or against the unknowable. Regardless, the belief is grounded in reason, despite its magical connotation. The story of humankind walking on the moon has a similar magical flavour. Yet, I believe it, even though I didn’t see it myself. The indirect evidence supporting it is overwhelming.

Good for you, but what’s the point

I don’t envision a single thing that, when unguarded, leads to such great harm as the mind. The mind, when unguarded, leads to great harm.⁵

Another name for Liu’s perimeter of ignorance is instinct. Instinct is a fundamental aspect of the animal kingdom; it is either encoded in our DNA or developed chemically through a lifetime of experiences. Unlike free will, instinct is a programmed response. While humans are aware of their instincts and often strive to control them, the rest of the animal kingdom does not share this concern. In fact, humans are engaged in a constant moral struggle against their instincts.

Not all instincts are burdensome. For instance, my instinct to run from a grizzly bear is beneficial. However, there are other instincts that we seek to overcome. Society frowns upon the selfish individual who steps on others to get ahead, and we question the morals of those who take from their neighbours. If we relied solely on our instincts, the strongest among us would likely survive and evolve into superior beings. However, given our species’ historical context, such a scenario would likely lead to chaos and ultimately destroy us. According to Liu, our effort to rise above these destructive instincts reflects our exercise of free will.

Liu isn’t the first person to advocate for rising above our worst tendencies; this theme is common in Eastern thought. As the founder of the modern yoga movement stated, “In that power of self-control lies the seed of eternal freedom.”⁶ Similarly, Robert Wright, a contemporary Buddhist author, noted, “In fact, one big lesson from Buddhism is to be suspicious of the intuition that your ordinary way of perceiving the world brings you the truth about it.”⁷ This desire to control our instinctive behaviour is a hallmark characteristic of our humanity.

The urge to rise above our instincts may not necessarily stem from the existence of a soul. It could be an evolutionary illusion designed to encourage us to create a more harmonious living environment where we work together. Alternatively, it may reflect a yearning of our souls, urging us to transcend ignorance—leaving behind our primal instincts to embrace a more enlightened way of living. May I call it a godly type of behaviour? A behaviour that exemplifies the free will to choose.

When Adam and Eve chose to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, they expressed their desire to be free. This act suggests they were a new kind of creature—one that longed to control its own destiny. It is this persistent pursuit of knowledge and the desire for free will that distinguishes us as humans. I recognize that I am tethered to certain behaviours. I wish I could evolve past them or escape through meditation. But I need another option to overcome my instincts, something better than the most effective yoga exercises, or waiting for evolution to enlighten my prodigy. I can embark on a journey that requires me to believe in free will. Is it a journey filled with mystery? Yes. It is a journey that transcends explanation and takes me through the perimeter of ignorance. Is it a pointless one? No. It is a journey that provides me with a sense of control and hope. I choose to be guided by the wings of free will.

Questions of Reflection

Think of a recent difficult decision you made. To what extent did it feel like a free choice, and to what extent did it feel determined by your past, personality, or circumstances?
Where in your own life do you notice yourself acting on instinct or habit rather than deliberate choice? Can you name a time when you consciously resisted a strong instinct or impulse? What helped you do that?
Do you feel you have something like a “soul” that stands apart from brain chemistry and physical laws? Why or why not?
If you do believe in a soul, how do you think it relates to your daily decisions and moral struggles?
Even if free will were an illusion, would you still find it valuable to live as if you are free? Why or why not?
How might your life change if you fully embraced the view that your choices are determined? How might it change if you fully embraced the view that you are deeply free?
Which instincts or ingrained patterns in your life do you most wish to rise above? What practices (spiritual, psychological, or practical) help you move from automatic reaction toward more intentional action?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXvv6CbGg8A – Two Astrophysicists Debate Free Will – The text is a paraphrase of the recorded conversation but, I believe, it is represented accurately. ↩︎
Martin Luther King, August 28, 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial Washington DC ↩︎
On the Freedom of the Will, Arthur Schopenhauer – Everyone believes himself a priori to be perfectly free, even in his individual actions, and thinks that at every moment he can commence another manner of life … But a posteriori, through experience, he finds to his astonishment that he is not free, but subjected shaping every decision I make hardwire to necessity, that in spite of all his resolutions and reflections he does not change his conduct, and that from the beginning of his life to the end of it, he must carry out the very character which he himself condemns… ↩︎
Ethics, Baruch Spinoza 1677 ↩︎
Aṅguttara Nikāya, AN 1.21-40. Ekadhamma Suttas: A Single Thing. A collection of Buddhist scriptures. ↩︎
Paramahansa Yogananda – an Indian-American monk ↩︎
Robert Wright, Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment ↩︎

References

Ethics, Baruch Spinoza 1677[↩]