Disclaimer: This draft might affect your world view. But If you want to read it anyway, I request you all to read it with an open mind. Also, this draft doesn't reflect my belief in religion or god.

I want to start with a question — Why do you do what you do?

What is free will?

Well, I like to define free will as one’s ability or capacity to could have done otherwise. Ofc, it’s not my own definition in case you want to know.

To elaborate on this:

As an example, free will says you could have ‘chosen’ to have something else or nothing as dinner, yesterday. Which constitutes that you are ultimately in charge of your decision or choice. Which also means that you could be held morally accountable for your actions. Just to be clear, I don't want to get into morality in detail in this blog.

Different doctrines of Free will.

Free will is one of many topics that has been debated over for thousands of years and is still being debated. Many philosophers and thinkers have had different views on free will, which often reflected their ideologies and how they perceived the world.

  • Metaphysical Libertarianism — Metaphysical Libertarianism is an idea which holds the view that one’s decision or choice could be different given in the same circumstances. In other words it’s an idea that says ‘Free will’ is real. And that the decision and action is initiated by an internal factor and has no cause.
  • Determinism — Determinism is an idea that says that every event in the universe has a cause, and that if we knew every physical quantity of the universe at a moment we could deduce every event of the universe, including the choice and action of a person.
  • Hard determinism — Hard determinism is an idea which holds the combined view of determinism and No Free will, and it states that “since Determinism hence ‘Not Free will’”.
  • Compatibilism — Compatibilism is a position which holds the view that Free will and determinism are compatible and it does not necessarily contradict each other. But I think, it does in a way by redefining free will as any decision or actions taken which is determined by only internal factors.

I want to make one thing clear that the above doctrines are the most famous but few of many that I have not discussed.

Problem with Free Will.

Note: In this section what I have discussed directly reflects my views and knowledge on the topic itself. If you find something that is misleading or misinformation or if you have a better argument then do let me know in my dms on ig.

If you remember, I asked you a question at the beginning of this blog.

Before reading any further, I want you guys to answer this question on my instagram. I would love to know that.

The answer is — ‘Either you want to or you are forced to.’

I want to discuss the ‘want to’ aspect first, especially about whether we can choose to want something because ‘Want’ determines most of our decisions. And I think only then we can concede that our actions determined by our ‘wants’ are not in our control.

So, let's take an example: Say you like vanilla ice cream over chocolate ice cream and I offer you to choose one of them, what would you want to choose? Well, if you are thinking that you would choose chocolate ice cream, then I want you to read the question one more time and a bit more carefully!!.

My question is can you ‘want’ to choose chocolate ice cream? Or more deeply can you choose what you want/desire??

The answer is absolutely not!

If you don't believe me just yet. Ask yourself — Can you ‘choose to want’ to hit your mum?

Again, absolutely not! (I am not considering the case where someone really wants to.)

Because to have control over your want, you would need to have control over all the factors that affect your want. Which includes your environment, the people you meet and have met in your life, the family you were born in, the way you were raised, your genes, your hair style😭 and tons of more stuff.

But, you can choose chocolate ice cream, right? Why??

Again, the answer is your ‘want’. It is very much possible that after I gave you the question. Your ‘desire’ to prove that you have free will was stronger than your desire to have a vanilla ice cream. And so your act was determined by your stronger ‘want’. And since we can't control what we want (unless you have better reason to believe otherwise), that action was not in your control.

A better example would be ‘GYM’. Most people who go to the gym don't really want to go to the gym. But they still do because they want to be healthy. Because their desire to be healthy is much stronger than their desire to not go to the gym. And they can't choose not to want to be healthy.

I think I have said enough about your want and free will. Now let's move to the ‘forced to’ part.

In order to understand how being forced to do something affects our actions and decisions, we should discuss the kind of force.

By my understanding there are three types of force that makes someone do certain things:

  • One is like actually being forced to do something by someone or something. Like from an external agent.
  • Second is habits developed over time, like paddling without noticing.
  • And third is our instinct.

First is a bit nuanced between being forced to and want to. A good example would be slaves, like they were forced to do certain things either by beatings or abuse or by starvation coercion. But it needed to be their want to do the job. Which would mean their desire to not starve or avoid beatings were stronger than than not to do the job. I think it's very similar to the gym case but also not very similar.

Similarly, second is something that we have no control over, yet it is developed over years through our wants.

Lastly, our instinct is also something we can't control as it’s engraved in our DNA and genes, like closing our eye lid when suddenly a fast moving object approaches.

This was one approach to prove that we don't have free will. I hope I have done a good job in explaining it. Also, I want to say that I heard these...

Causal determinism and free will

Causal determinism is another concept to prove that you don't have free will. More precisely it argues that there is an unbroken chain of causality of events that occurs in the universe going all the way back to the origin of the universe. It states that nothing in the universe happens without a cause including the neuron signal in our brain.

Divine Foreknowledge Argument

Finally, this is the last argument that I am going to discuss against free will. I think this is unique because it states that an all knowing god and free will cannot co-exist.

This argument goes as follows:

  1. God knows the choice "C" that a human would claim to "make freely".
  2. It is now necessary that C.
  3. If it is now necessary that C, then C cannot be otherwise (this is the definition of “necessary”). That is, there are no actual "possibilities" due to predestination.
  4. If you cannot do otherwise when you act, you do not act freely (Principle of Alternate Possibilities).
  5. Therefore, when you do an act, you will not do it freely.

Okay, after this long discussion, I want to share my belief that I myself don't believe in free will. And the most compelling argument that I find is that the idea of us doing certain things determined by our wants is not really in our control. Also the Divine Foreknowledge Argument is pretty good.

I don't think the determinism argument is very compelling because we have evidence to suggest that certain things in the universe are not ‘determined’ instead it is probabilistic, like radioactive decay.

Note: This blog is still incomplete and I need to address few more things also it needs some refinement which I will add as soon as possible