Free Will: Randomness vs Determinism

Free will is the idea that humans have control over their choices.  If this sounds like a rather loose definition, that is because it is.  That is the lowest common denominator of definitions of the term.  Some people define it as instantaneous control over choices.  Some define it as more of a kind of self determination.  Many religions teach that free will was given to man by God.  In the realm of philosophy, it seems like people choose definitions that best fit their arguments of whether or not humans have free will.  One thing is clear: Very few people have a solid understanding of what free will is, and even fewer understand the futility of trying to prove or disprove free will through scientific inquiry.

Free will is under attack.  Prominent scientists and philosophers claim that science and logic provide evidence proving the impossibility of free will, and those with a desire to believe that they have no responsibility for their actions eat it up.  There are those who argue against, but there are few, if any, coherent and logical arguments from either side.  Part of this is in definitions.

One line of thought suggests that free will cannot exist, because we have no control over our thoughts.  We cannot predict or plan what we will think next.  Thoughts just come out of void, without any power for us to control them with.  This is patently false.  Humans have been training themselves to think in various ways for millennia.  Religions have been teaching people to control their thoughts since the beginning of recorded history.  The hidden devil in this argument is defining free will as the ability to control instantaneous decisions as if there was unlimited amounts of time to consider them.  This argument suggests that free will is doing a task that takes significant time, given no time to do it in.  This is obviously impossible.  This definition of free will is specifically constructed to fail the test, by making it impossible to succeed.  In other words, this is a circular argument.

Another line of thought claims that because the universe is deterministic, our decision making processes must also be deterministic.  This is based on a definition of free will that is free of determinism.  It assumes that if human thought processes occur in a brain composed of deterministic parts, the results must always be deterministic, and determinism is antithetical to free will.  This argument is full of holes.  To begin with, the universe is not deterministic.  In the early 1900s, quantum physics predicted a certain degree of randomness below the subatomic level.  While several of the scientists involved, including Albert Einstein, rejected these predictions, completely undeterministic quantum randomness has been experimentally proven many times since.  It can be argued, however, that randomness in human decision making does not necessarily give rise to free will.  If we cannot control the randomness, then it is nothing more than randomness.

There is also a failure in the assumption that human thought processes occur exclusively in physical matter.  Many religions argue that humans have a spirit or soul, that is not made from matter as we know it.  If this is true, it is possible that this immaterial element of human existence is capable of free will, and the human brain is only a tool that it uses to interface with the body.  This kind of mechanic needs neither determinism nor randomness at the physical level to have free will.  It is a beautiful idea, but unfortunately it is entirely untestable.  This leaves it firmly in the realm of religion, as it is untouchable by scientific inquiry.

Another flaw is in the assumption that humans cannot control quantum randomness.  It is argued by some that quantum randomness cannot allow for free will, because humans cannot control it, and merely introducing randomness cannot create free will.  There is no proof that humans cannot control quantum randomness sufficiently to make room for free will.  In fact, quite to the contrary.  In a very real sense, humans are what creates quantum randomness.  Particles can exist in quantum superposition, multiple mutually exclusive states at the same time, but when they are observed by humans, they are forced into only one of the states.  This is what quantum randomness actually is.  When a particle in superposition collapses to one state, the state chosen is literally and truly random.  Einstein refused to believe that this was true randomness, but numerous experiments have proven otherwise.  We know human observation can trigger quantum randomness.  By itself, this may not be enough to provide free will, but it sets a precedent for human influence of quantum randomness.

The core assumption in this argument is in the definition of free will.  It assumes that determinism is antithetical to free will.  Must this assumption hold?  Is randomness critical to free will?  According to that definition of free will, yes, randomness is critical.  The is the hole in the determinism of the universe that free will can sneak in through.  It is the mechanic that allows the violation of fate.  It is also totally unnecessary by another definition of free will.

Perhaps the most critical flaw of all of these arguments, both for and against free will, is the source of the original concept.  Free will is a religious concept, not a scientific one.  Most religions teach that humans have free will as part of some kind of test.  Christianity and its precursors teach that God gave free will to man explicitly.  What does this mean?  This does not necessarily mean that God gave man the ability to think for himself.  In fact, the evidence suggests that when God gave man free will, he was promising not to interfere directly in the personal decision making processes of humans.  This does not mean that humans had some sort of quantum randomness injected into their decision making processes.  In fact, that would have been counter productive.  It means that God won't force decisions upon man.  It means that God won't change the minds of humans against their will.  God was essentially telling humans that he would not change their nature without their consent.

This provides a building block for free will to exist, even within a purely deterministic universe (which this one is not).  Breaking this down to the lowest level, a deterministic decision making engine is essentially an algorithm.  Given certain inputs, it will provide output, and given the same input, the output will always be the same.  This is not as simple as it sounds.  This does not mean that if a person was given the same choice two times in a row, that person would chose the same both times.  The first choice will change the state of the system, which is one of the inputs.  The person may learn something from the first choice that changes the outcome of the second.  This experiment would require that the entire experiment be rewound to the starting point before being done the second time.  This is, of course, impossible and probably never will be possible, as even one atom or quark in a slightly different position would change the input, and in a system as complex as the human brain, chaos theory applies.  (Chaos theory says that in a sufficiently complex system, very small differences in initial conditions can make very big differences in the end results.)  So how is it free will, if all of our choices are governed by an algorithm?


In a deterministic system, free will requires two things.  First, the decision making algorithm of an entity with free will must be immutable to everything except itself.  This means, no outside force can change the algorithm itself.  Given the same inputs, the algorithm will always produce the same outputs.  This rule does provide room for stored state, by allowing the algorithm to modify itself.  When the algorithm modifies itself, the inputs of the decision that creates the modification become part of the input for every future decision.  This means that it may seem possible to give it the same input twice and get different outputs, but in reality the second input includes the first input, in the form of the change in the state of the algorithm.  In short, inputs that change the algorithm are impossible to give multiple times, unless there is some other input that will perfectly reverse those changes.  (The nature of self modifying code suggests that reversible changes will be extremely rare, if they are even possible within such a complex algorithm.)

The second requirement for free will in a deterministic setting is a certain level of uniqueness.  In theory, it may be possible for two identical algorithms to exist, though if they are self modifying, it is likely they will quickly become unique, as they have different experiences that cause them to change themselves in different ways.  In a sense, two identical decision making algorithms are literally the same entity.  Without uniqueness, everyone becomes the same, merely reacting to circumstances but using the same algorithm to processes different inputs.

There is an additional Easter Egg of sorts in here for religions that believe humans were put on Earth to be tested.  If this is the case, randomness cannot play a major role in free will.  Imagine this: Two people are given a test.  One always answers according to an immutable algorithm.  The other answers with some degree of randomness.  The test is for some critical position.  Before the test has even started, it should be clear that there is a problem here.  No matter how well the second person does on the test, that person cannot be trusted in a critical position, because it is impossible to predict that person's future behavior.  The outcome of the test says nothing about how that person will perform, even taking the same test a second time.  The first person, however, will produce something useful.  The outcome of the test will at least be a good predictor of the results of giving the first person the same test again.  If free will is based on randomness, and God is testing humans to see how they will behave, so he can judge whether or not they will behave well if he lets them into heaven, the test will be meaningless.  If free will is random, someone who lives a perfect life might do all sorts of bad stuff after being allowed into heaven.  No test can predict the outcome of a random process.  That is the definition of randomness!  For such a test to be meaningful in any way, the decision making algorithms being tested must be deterministic!  This is not inconsistent with God giving humans free will though, because free will does not have to mean randomness.  It can mean that God gives the decision making algorithms complete control over their own internal integrity, promising never to modify them or allow others to modify them, without the consent of the algorithms themselves.

With or without religious implications, this provides the only solid and consistent definition of free will that can reasonably exist within a deterministic system.  This is not necessary for free will to exist in our universe, because quantum randomness does provide just enough holes to conceivably allow a certain level of free will, through subtle manipulations of the outcomes of quantum superposition collapse, and religions provide mechanics that transcend physical matter entirely.  Logically, however, there seems to be significantly more value in a deterministic system of free will, where decision making algorithms are immutable to any outside force and sufficiently unique to be more than just very complex biological robots.