What would it mean to live in a world without free will? We can divide the consequences into two main categories: the personal and the social. In this post I’ll address the social, and in a later one I’ll write about what this means for our personal lives (hint: it’s great news).
The first thing that comes to most people’s minds when they contemplate life without free will is crime. The thinking goes something like this: If we don’t freely choose our actions, then we aren’t responsible for what we do and thus we can’t be held accountable. Every criminal will be found “not guilty because of extenuating circumstances beyond his or her control.” Crime will explode and anarchy will reign.
A punitive justice system like the one operating in the United States is entirely based upon the belief in free will. When a person is found to be guilty, the thinking process for that decision goes like this:
Our society’s primitive thirst for revenge, fueled by the belief in free will, is perfectly reflected in our criminal justice system. The need to punish law-breakers is so extreme that even unquestionably sick people like Jeffrey Dahmer are held to be in full control of their actions. Only by believing that criminals choose to be criminals, by convincing ourselves that criminals are operating from free will, can we comfortably impose our brutal eye-for-an-eye code of justice upon them.
But the truth is free will doesn’t exist. Our conscious minds are not in control of our actions. There are innumerable subconscious systems working in our brains all the time that we are completely unaware of (See this earlier blog post).
In addition, everyone is completely confused about reality. We are all innocent by reason of insanity: we confuse our subjective opinions with objective fact. (See “What do we Mean by Insane?”) Our delusions about reality mean we are not rational actors consciously choosing our actions.
Plus, in order to be free we have to be an autonomous, separate agent. “Free” is defined as: “Not under the control or in the power of another; able to act or be done as one wishes.” If we’re honest, we realize that at no time in our lives are we ever capable of acting completely as we wish. We are interconnected with and thus affected by our environment. We are under the control of social mores, family constraints, our time in history, genetic dispositions, the list could go on. As an example, imagine going to work naked. That may be what you wish to do, but could you possibly say you are free to do so (unless of course you work at home, or are a sex worker).
The end of free will doesn’t mean that we are powerless to take action when someone has robbed a bank, or murdered someone, or manipulated the financial system for personal gain. Society has a right to protect itself. But we will no longer think of people who commit such anti-social acts as evil or punish them for their deeds.
Some recent books have begun to explore what a post-free-will landscape would mean for our society.
Alex Rosenberg lays out what it means to be an atheist (his preferred term is “scientism”), which includes giving up the belief in free will, in The Atheist’s Guide to Reality. He envisions two major social consequences. First we must redo our criminal justice system: no more punishment and locking people away in animal cages. “Scientism’s view of crime is like its view of disease…The prison, in our view, needs to be as much like a hospital as possible—with capacity for the incurably ill, the treatment of the curable, and the isolation of those who might spread their infection. But punishment is excluded.”
He also suggests we have to rethink the meritocracy aspect of our social system. If there’s no free will, then people aren’t responsible for their success or failure. Those who succeed are gifted, nothing more. Most people think there is a moral right to what you earn because of free will: you worked for it and thus deserve the reward. Mr. Rosenberg argues:
He concludes his section on free will with this thought, “To the charge of being soft on crime, scientism pleads guilty. According to scientism, no one does wrong freely, so no one should really be punished. Prisons are for rehab and protection of society only. To the charge of permitting considerable redistribution of income and wealth, it must also plead guilty, and for the same reasons…No wonder Republicans in the United States have such a hard time with science.”
Neuroscientist David Eagleman also discusses the consequences of the end of free will in his new book, Incognito. Mr. Eagleman directs the Initiative on Neuroscience and the Law at Baylor College of Medicine, which “addresses how new discoveries in neuroscience should navigate the way we make laws, punish criminals, and develop rehabilitation.”
In his book, Mr. Eagleman suggests ways to move our criminal justice system from punishment to true rehabilitation:
Most of us are familiar with what happens when our frontal lobes are disengaged: When we get drunk we disinhibit the normal frontal lobe functions and that’s why we do crazy things.
American culture is built on the concept of the individual deserving blame and credit for their actions, and this is not going to be an easy shift in attitude, but, we believe, it will result in incomparably better outcomes for our society as a whole. Certainly our punishment-based judicial system is not working. We have the highest percentage of our population in prison in the entire world—what a shameful way to be exceptional. On the other side of the coin, the income inequality fueled by our belief that people deserve the fruits of their work hurts the national economy, according to research by the International Monetary Fund.
The first thing that comes to most people’s minds when they contemplate life without free will is crime. The thinking goes something like this: If we don’t freely choose our actions, then we aren’t responsible for what we do and thus we can’t be held accountable. Every criminal will be found “not guilty because of extenuating circumstances beyond his or her control.” Crime will explode and anarchy will reign.
A punitive justice system like the one operating in the United States is entirely based upon the belief in free will. When a person is found to be guilty, the thinking process for that decision goes like this:
- You know the difference between right and wrong.
- You have the power to freely choose between right and wrong.
- You willfully chose wrong.
- You are, therefore, guilty of willful wrongdoing.
- You deserve to be punished.
Our society’s primitive thirst for revenge, fueled by the belief in free will, is perfectly reflected in our criminal justice system. The need to punish law-breakers is so extreme that even unquestionably sick people like Jeffrey Dahmer are held to be in full control of their actions. Only by believing that criminals choose to be criminals, by convincing ourselves that criminals are operating from free will, can we comfortably impose our brutal eye-for-an-eye code of justice upon them.
But the truth is free will doesn’t exist. Our conscious minds are not in control of our actions. There are innumerable subconscious systems working in our brains all the time that we are completely unaware of (See this earlier blog post).
In addition, everyone is completely confused about reality. We are all innocent by reason of insanity: we confuse our subjective opinions with objective fact. (See “What do we Mean by Insane?”) Our delusions about reality mean we are not rational actors consciously choosing our actions.
Plus, in order to be free we have to be an autonomous, separate agent. “Free” is defined as: “Not under the control or in the power of another; able to act or be done as one wishes.” If we’re honest, we realize that at no time in our lives are we ever capable of acting completely as we wish. We are interconnected with and thus affected by our environment. We are under the control of social mores, family constraints, our time in history, genetic dispositions, the list could go on. As an example, imagine going to work naked. That may be what you wish to do, but could you possibly say you are free to do so (unless of course you work at home, or are a sex worker).
The end of free will doesn’t mean that we are powerless to take action when someone has robbed a bank, or murdered someone, or manipulated the financial system for personal gain. Society has a right to protect itself. But we will no longer think of people who commit such anti-social acts as evil or punish them for their deeds.
Some recent books have begun to explore what a post-free-will landscape would mean for our society.
Alex Rosenberg lays out what it means to be an atheist (his preferred term is “scientism”), which includes giving up the belief in free will, in The Atheist’s Guide to Reality. He envisions two major social consequences. First we must redo our criminal justice system: no more punishment and locking people away in animal cages. “Scientism’s view of crime is like its view of disease…The prison, in our view, needs to be as much like a hospital as possible—with capacity for the incurably ill, the treatment of the curable, and the isolation of those who might spread their infection. But punishment is excluded.”
He also suggests we have to rethink the meritocracy aspect of our social system. If there’s no free will, then people aren’t responsible for their success or failure. Those who succeed are gifted, nothing more. Most people think there is a moral right to what you earn because of free will: you worked for it and thus deserve the reward. Mr. Rosenberg argues:
The morality of the meritocracy is based on the same principle as the de-meritocracy: criminals deserve what they earn by their character and their misdeeds; similarly, those who get rich by the free exercise of their character and their efforts earn their wealth…The trouble with such arguments is that nothing is earned, nothing is deserved. Even if there really were moral rights to the fruit of our freely exercised abilities and talents, these talents and abilities are never freely acquired or exercised. Just as your innate and acquired intelligence and abilities are unearned, so also are your ambitions, along with the discipline, the willingness to train, and other traits that have to be combined with your talents and abilities to produce anything worthwhile at all. We didn’t earn our inborn talents and abilities. We had nothing to do with whether these traits were conferred on us or not. Similarly, we didn’t earn the acquired character traits needed to convert those talents into achievements…We were just lucky to have the combination of hardwired abilities and learned ambitions that resulted in the world beating a path to our door.Mr. Rosenberg’s prescription is to develop a system to redistribute wealth to keep society equitable.
He concludes his section on free will with this thought, “To the charge of being soft on crime, scientism pleads guilty. According to scientism, no one does wrong freely, so no one should really be punished. Prisons are for rehab and protection of society only. To the charge of permitting considerable redistribution of income and wealth, it must also plead guilty, and for the same reasons…No wonder Republicans in the United States have such a hard time with science.”
Neuroscientist David Eagleman also discusses the consequences of the end of free will in his new book, Incognito. Mr. Eagleman directs the Initiative on Neuroscience and the Law at Baylor College of Medicine, which “addresses how new discoveries in neuroscience should navigate the way we make laws, punish criminals, and develop rehabilitation.”
In his book, Mr. Eagleman suggests ways to move our criminal justice system from punishment to true rehabilitation:
To help a citizen reintegrate into society, the ethical goal is to change as little as possible to allow his behavior to come into line with society’s needs…Poor impulse control is a hallmark characteristic of the majority of criminals in the prison system. They generally know the difference between right and wrong actions, and they understand the seriousness of the punishment—but they are hamstrung by an inability to control their impulses…If it seems difficult to empathize with people who have poor impulse control, just think of all the things you succumb to that you don’t want to. Snacks? Alcohol? Chocolate cake? Television? One doesn’t have to look far to find poor impulse control pervading our own landscape of decision-making. It’s not that we don’t know what’s best for us, it’s simply that the frontal lobe circuits representing the long-term considerations can’t win the elections when the temptation is present…So our rehabilitative strategy is to give the frontal lobes practice in squelching the short-term circuits.Researchers are currently working on developing a computerized feedback system that helps people develop the ability to resist cravings. Prefrontal development, Eagleman says, is just another word for maturity. “The main difference between teenage and adult brains is the development of the frontal lobes. The human prefrontal cortex does not fully develop until the early twenties, and this underlies the impulsive behavior of teenagers. The frontal lobes are sometimes called the organ of socialization, because becoming socialized is nothing but developing circuitry to squelch our basest impulses.”
Most of us are familiar with what happens when our frontal lobes are disengaged: When we get drunk we disinhibit the normal frontal lobe functions and that’s why we do crazy things.
American culture is built on the concept of the individual deserving blame and credit for their actions, and this is not going to be an easy shift in attitude, but, we believe, it will result in incomparably better outcomes for our society as a whole. Certainly our punishment-based judicial system is not working. We have the highest percentage of our population in prison in the entire world—what a shameful way to be exceptional. On the other side of the coin, the income inequality fueled by our belief that people deserve the fruits of their work hurts the national economy, according to research by the International Monetary Fund.
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