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Naturalism, Postmodernism and Free Will

No Free Will?

It is widely acknowledged that if scientific naturalism is true, then there can be no such thing as free will. Thus, naturalist philosopher John Searle says, "Our conception of physical reality simply does not allow for radical [libertarian] freedom."¹

Again, Cornell University professor William Provine flatly asserts that, "Free will as traditionally conceived … simply does not exist. There is no way the evolutionary process as currently conceived can produce a being that is truly free to make choices."²

The same has been said for the relationship between postmodernism and free will. As postmodern critic Terry Eagleton points out, since the self is, on the postmodern view, a passive social construction, then "… there are no subjects sufficiently coherent to undertake … actions." Active agency and free action disappear under the postmodern cloud of constructivism.

In what follows, I shall clarify the nature of free will, show in more detail why it does not sit easily with naturalism and postmodernism, and conclude that since we do in fact, have free will, these worldviews must be false.

The Nature of Free Will

All Christians believe we have free will, but they differ about what free will actually is. Determinism is the view that for every event that happens, there are conditions such that, given them, nothing else could have happened. Every event is caused or necessitated by prior factors. Given these factors, the event in question had to occur. Libertarians embrace free will and hold that determinism is incompatible with it. Compatibilists hold that freedom and determinism are compatible with each other and, thus, the truth of determinism does not eliminate freedom. As we will see, compatibilists have a different understanding of free will from the one embraced by libertarians.

Compatibilism

For compatibilists, if determinism is true, then every human action (e.g. raising one's hand to vote) is causally necessitated by events prior to the action. This includes events that happened before the person was even born. That is, human actions are mere happenings — parts of causal chains of events leading up to them. But according to the compatibilist view, freedom, properly understood, is "compatible" with determinism.

Libertarianism

Libertarians claim that the freedom necessary for responsible action is not compatible with determinism. Real freedom requires a type of control over one's action — and, more importantly, over one's will — such that, given a choice to do A (raise one's hand and vote) or B (refrain from voting, leave the room), nothing determines that either choice is made. Rather, the agent himself must simply exercise his own causal powers and will to do one alternative, say A. When an agent wills A, he also could have chosen B without anything else being different inside or outside of his being. He is the absolute originator of his own actions.

When an agent acts freely, he is a first, or unmoved, mover — no event causes him to act. His desires, beliefs, and so on may influence his choice, but free acts are not caused by prior states in the agent.

In order to have the freedom necessary for responsible agency, one must have the ability to choose differently from the way the agent actually does. Compatibilists and libertarians agree that a free choice is one where a person "can" will to do otherwise, but they differ about what this ability is. Compatibilists see this ability as a hypothetical ability. Roughly, this means that the agent would have done otherwise had some other condition existed (e.g. had the agent desired to do so). We are free to will whatever we desire even though our desires are themselves determined. Freedom is willing to act on your strongest preference.

Libertarians view hypothetical ability as a sleight of hand and not sufficient for the freedom needed for responsible agency. For libertarians, the real issue is not whether we are free to do what we want, but whether we are free to want in the first place. A free act is one in which the agent is the ultimate originating source of the act. Freedom requires that we have the categorical ability to will to act.

This means that if Smith freely wills to do A, he could have refrained from willing to do A without any conditions whatsoever being different. No description of Smith's desires, beliefs, character or other things in his make-up, and no description of the universe prior to and at the moment of his choice to do A, is sufficient to entail that he did A. It was not necessary that anything be different for Smith to refrain from choosing A.

The libertarian notion of categorical ability includes a dual ability: If one has the ability to exert his power to do A, one also has the ability to refrain from exerting his power to do A. By contrast, the compatibilist notion of hypothetical ability is not a dual ability. According to the compatibilist, at any one time, a person could only choose one thing — the ability to refrain is not there. It depends on the hypothetical condition that a person had a desire (to refrain from acting) which was not actually present.

An Argument for Libertarianism

Space forbids me from developing detailed arguments for who is right in this debate, but let me offer one thought experiment that I believe supports the libertarian position.

Suppose a scientist slips into your room at night while you are asleep, places an electrode in your brain, quietly sets up his computer across the street, and, by simply typing a specific word, is able to cause any mental state — sensation, belief, thought, desire — to occur in you that he wishes. And suppose, further, that once the mental state happens, it inexorably determines what your body must do.

The next day you arise and take a morning walk. Just as you are about to pass a stranger, the scientist — filled with malicious intent — types in a word which causes you to desire to hit the stranger in the nose. This desire deterministically causes your arm to move and your hand to smack the stranger in the face.

Question: Who did this act? Who is responsible for it? Clearly it is not you. The responsible actor is the scientist who hit the stranger through you. You did not have a free choice about the matter. Why? Because the movement of your arm was determined by factors outside your control. Only if your action was not determined and was brought about spontaneously by you such that you could have refrained from bringing it about, only then was it your action.

Naturalism, Postmodernism and Libertarian Freedom

If naturalism is true, there cannot be libertarian freedom. Why? Because libertarian freedom is incompatible with being determined, and on a naturalist view, human actions — mere human body movements, really — are determined in two ways.

First, they are determined through time. According to naturalism, the state of the universe at any time t, plus the laws of nature, are sufficient to determine or fix the chances of the state of the universe at time, t+1. All states of the universe are unfolding, rigid causal chains.

Second, they are determined from parts-to-whole. According to naturalism, all ordinary sized objects — ordinary wholes — are completely determined in their features and behavior by their tiny, physical parts (atoms and so forth). Changes in ordinary sized objects follow from changes in their atomic structures in a deterministic fashion. For these two reasons, free actions are ruled out.

But what about postmodernism? According to postmodernism, the self is a social construction, a creation of language, a reification of the first person pronoun "I" and, as such, the self is a culturally relative, historically-conditioned construct. As Philip Cushman asserts, "There is no universal, transhistorical self, only local selves; no universal theory about the self, only local theories."³

Thus, there is no unity to the idea of the self and no enduring ego.⁴ Rather the self is a bundle of social roles and relations that are expressions of the arbitrary flux of the group. The "I" is an arbitrary, fleeting constructed illusion. It follows that there literally is no real self that could serve as the free agent! Since the self is constructed by society and conditioned by circumstances, postmodernism itself doesn't allow for free will as we know it.

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Do you think free will is a good argument against scientific naturalism?

Join the discussion!

I think it is self-evident to us that free will is real. If it is real, then the worldviews of naturalism and postmodernism must be false. And if free action is part of God's image, its reality ought to provide falsifying evidence for alternative worldviews. And it does precisely that for naturalism and postmodernism.