ID# 1431289

Dr. Farrelly-Jackson
The Examined Life
11-25-14
1431289
Honor Pledge:_______________________________

Free Will and Contemporary Science

A woman walks into a restaurant, is seated by her waiter, and given a menu. After
looking over all of her options she has narrowed the many selections down to two
possibilities. In the instantaneous moment before she picks one or the other, it would
appear to both herself and the people around her that she had every possibility of picking
either dish. And yet, there are many philosophers and scientists who would wonder if she
had any choice at all. If everything leading up to that point had caused her to choose
option a, was there ever any real possibility of her choosing the other? Was she really
exercising her free will? Different people would pull from different resources, some
turning to Newtons three laws of motion to show that there is no "free will, others turning
to more recent science, such as quantum physics, in order to prove that it does exist.
Essentially, the question that all of them would be trying to prove is this: Is free will
compatible with the contemporary scientific picture of the universe?
Opponents of "free will" - or determinists - would turn to one of the most basic
principles of physics, Newtons second law of motion. Simply put, the law states that any
moving object must have been acted upon by a force of some kind, and that if one knows
the force and mass of an object it can predict its speed and many subsequent facts about
it (Koch). Armed with this knowledge, philosophers like Pierre-Simon LaPlace have made
claims that if one knew the location and momentum of every particle in a given entity whether it be a single person or the entire universe - that

individual could know the fate of that entity at any given moment in time (Solomon, et. al).
On the other hand, proponents of "free will" would refute their argument using the
Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Simply put, it states that it is impossible to know both
the location and momentum of an object at the same time. Using this theory, one can
conclude that not everything in the universe is predictable, meaning the determinist
argument that all of our actions are the predictable effect of some cause, is false (Koch).
However, hard determinists still claim that there is a problem with this idea.
Philosophers such as Robert Kane say that, while it might be true not everything is
determined, that does not mean we have "free will. In his work On Indeterminism he
says If, for example, a choice occurred by virtue of a quantum jump or other
undetermined event in ones brain, it would seem a fluke or accident rather than a
responsible choice. Undetermined events in the brain or body it seems would inhibit or
interfere with our freedom, occurring spontaneously and not under our control (Solomon,
et. al). Essentially Kane is saying that undetermined events do not equal "free will, only
randomness. True freedom would mean some kind of a conscious choice, and such
random events do not prove the existence of free will.
More evidence that free will is not compatible with contemporary science can be
found in an experiment done by Benjamin Libet in the 1980s. When asked what events
lead up to a physical action, most people would say that we first think about moving, send
a signal to our limbs to move, and then the movement occurs. However, Libet had a
different idea of what was happening. In the experiment, he used a machine called an
electroencephalograph to detect electrical activity in the brain. Specifically, he was
looking at the electrical impulses that occur when people tell their bodies to move. He

asked the participants to randomly, but deliberately, flex their wrists, while noting exactly
when they become aware of the urge to move. From the experiment he learned
something astonishing. The electrical impulse to move ones body starts to build up
almost an entire second before that person is consciously aware of having made the
decision (Koch). This evidence would give credence to the idea that free will is not
compatible with modern science, because it shows that the physical brain decides to
move our bodies before our conscious minds.
There is one more theory opposing free will in modern science that needs to be
considered. The idea is as follows: every time we make a decision we could not have
ever actually made a different decision, even in identical circumstances. This is due to the
reasoning that exists behind every decision we make. If our reasoning leads us to one
logical conclusion, then there was never really an option to decide differently (Pollard). In
a way, this theory is similar to the one mentioned earlier based on Newtonian physics,
only it focuses on our reasoning instead of on specific subatomic particles. Proponents of
free will would agree that our decisions are based on logical reasoning, but they would
disagree that there isnt another option. One such disagreement comes in the form of
sufficient and insufficient conditions. Simply put, a sufficient condition is a condition in
which a person is forced to act in a certain way (Massey-Chase). An insufficient condition
is a condition in which there are causes, but they are not so strong that they force the
person to act a certain way. While we do make decisions based off of the conditions were
in, most of the times they are insufficient conditions, and so we do have a choice.
One interesting theory that supports free will in modern science is the idea of
causes. This theory claims that the process by which humans make decisions is

fundamentally different from the natural laws that cause things like gravity. Imagine the
sciences arranged in a hierarchy. Fundamental sciences such as physics and chemistry
would be at the bottom, while other sciences such as biology, psychology, etc. are farther
up. Science at each level cannot be reduce to the lower levels, but it also cannot violate
the rules that the lower levels have set in place. As you move up, each level introduces
new causes that are not available to the ones below. In essence, the claim is that free
will should be treated as a cause in and of itself, not as something that is being caused
(Baumeister).
In the end, the question of free will is far too complicated to be answered with a
simple yes or no. It depends on the definition of free will, on the understanding of
complex physics, and even on the fundamental beliefs of every individual person. It is
likely that the true answer lies somewhere in between, as issues like this are rarely so
black and white as to say that one is absolutely true and the other absolutely false.
However, there is a clear answer to the question is free will compatible with the
contemporary picture of the universe? In short, no. While it hardly disproves the
existence of free will, the science behind Newtons laws of motion, the uncertainty
principle, and Libets experiments is enough to say that the two are not compatible. This
mean that, in the future, either our definition of free will, or our understanding of the
universe will have to change. As to the question of the existence of free will, modern
science has not progressed far enough to give us a clear answer. And until the day it
does, most people are more than happy to live with the belief that they have control over
their own lives, even if it is just an illusion.

Bibliography
Baumeister, Roy F. Do You Really Have Free Will? Slate 25 Sept. 2013. Slate. Web.
24 Nov. 2014.
Koch, Christof. How Physics and Neuroscience Dictate Your Free Will. Scientific
American. N.p., 7 May 2012. Web. 24 Nov. 2014.
Pollard, Luke, and Rebecca Massey-Chase. An Argument About Free Will. Philosophy
Now 2008 (2008): n. pag. Web. 24 Nov. 2014.
Solomon, Robert, Kathleen Higgins, and Clancy Martin. Introducing Philosophy. Tenth
Edition. New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Print.