by I M Probulos
The Illusion
of
Free Will
I. M. Probulos
The Illusion of Free Will
First Publishing, Dec 26 2013
Update Version 5.0 Wednesday, January 15 2014
All Rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information-storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
Copyrightã by I. M. Probulos 2013
Probulos, I. M.
The Illusion of Free Will
The author can be contacted at: http://www.improbulos.com
Follow I. M. Probulos on Twitter @improbulos
Includes bibliographic references.
If you enjoy this publication, please leave a comment; you may also enjoy the author’s other publications below. Please help support the mission of I. M. Probulos to promote reason, science and rationality.
Click here for a list of all books currently available on Amazon by I. M. Probulos.
Original Non-Fiction Books:
The 12 Unthinkable Horrors of Human Existence: A Manual for Atheists, Agnostics and Secular Humanists [Amazon Link]
The Statistical Theory of Everything: It Explains Everything and is Never Wrong [Amazon Link]
101 Lists for Atheists, Agnostics and Secular Humanists: The Little Book [Amazon Link]
The Big Book of Lists for Atheists, Agnostics, and Secular Humanists [Amazon Link]
Mind Mapping for Atheists, Agnostics, and Secular Humanists [Amazon Link]
How to Speak Fluent Atheist, Agnostic, and Secular Humanist [Amazon Link]
Quote Books:
The Big Book of Quotations for Atheists Agnostics and Secular Humanists [Amazon Link ]
Over 365 Quotations for Atheists Agnostics and Secular Humanists [Amazon Link ]
365 Additional Quotations for Atheists Agnostics and Secular Humanists [Amazon Link ]
Humorous Quotations and Jokes for Atheists Agnostics and Secular Humanists [Amazon Link ]
Positive Affirmations for Atheists, Agnostics, and Secular Humanists [Amazon Link]
Original Novellas
The Balance of Nature, a Novella [Amazon Link $.99] (first written, 1986)
A Hole in the Sand, a Novella [Amazon Link $.99] (first written, 2006)
The Other God's Earth: No Sin, No Death, No Evil: Part One: Introduction [Amazon Link $.99]
Adam and Eve Revisited: A Free Will Story [Amazon Link $.99]
When All is Lost [Amazon Link $.99]
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Introduction
Definitions and Issues
What’s The Harm?
Evolving from Bronze-Age Thinking
Free Will Arguments
Choices
Questions for Case Studies
Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow
Psychology Basics
Ways to Look At Free Will
Examples-Partial Free Will Argument
God and Free Will
The Illusion of Free Will
What We Believe
Intuition Pump Analogies
Complexity
Counter-Intuitive
We Are Poor at Comprehending
Definitions-Concise
Bad for someone
Adversity Makes Us Stronger
Determinism
More Definitions
Some Unusual Definitions
Consciousness
The Hard Problem of Consciousness
Near-Death Experiences (NDE)
History and Background
Blame and Punishment
History
Good and Now Bad
History of Man
Downside of Accepting Determinism
Reasons to Behave
The Golden Rule from Many Sources
Policy Changes for Determinists
Basic Statistics
Agency
Apologist Pro Free Will Arguments
Case Study 1
I Like Robots
Good or Evil?
Original Sin
Cognitive Biases and hell
Sins
Prayer
Hierarchy of Stuff
Willpower
Self-Control
Responsibility
The Warrior Gene
Case Study-Archetypes
Case Studies
Case Studies-Killing
Restless Legs Syndrome (RLS)
Case Studies-Neurology
Logical Bias, Survivor
Thought Experiments
Thought Experiment 1
Matched Pairs
Other Actions-Blame or Not
What’s Up with All the Names?
Implications
Legal Implications-low IQ
Legal Challenges
Quantum Physics
Quantum Mind
Research
Social Psychology Studies
Decision-Making Study
Neurobiology
The Right brain versus the left brain.
Addictive behaviors
Mind Control
Mental Illness
Panic Attacks
Dementia and Alzheimer’s
Genetics
Postpartum psychosis
Electrolyte Disorders
The Human Microbiome
Autoimmune Conditions
New Definitions for Old Ideas in a Deterministic World
Deterministic Mantras (Affirmations)
Deterministic Positive Affirmations
If You Knew You Would Die…
Appendix I
Books on Free Will and Consciousness
Authors
Debates
Numerous free PDFs on Free Will
Other Resources on Free Will
Does the death penalty deter crime?
Top 50 Non-Christian Countries
Appendix II
Biblical Predestination Quotes
Quotes against Predestination
Logical Fallacies
Tautologies
Compassion in Wild Animals
Free Will and God
The End
Introduction
After a solid year and publishing sixteen books on Amazon.com I wanted to contribute to the free will debate–is it real or only the illusion of free will?
I discuss this topic in my first book, The 12 Unthinkable Horrors of Human Existence [Amazon Link]. This is an expanded version and in the Book of Lists tradition, I have included over 25 succinct lists relevant to the free will debate.
My greatest contribution, I hope, is to help better define the issue. After spending hundreds of hours researching this topic and watching numerous debates, I find that the mass majority of people don’t understand exactly what “the illusion of free will” means. My first point is making a choice and having free will are two, entirely separate issues; second, I explore numerous approaches to the concept of free will, third, I have created numerous scenarios of deterministic behavior, fourth, I have included positive determinist behaviors, and finally, I have included numerous additional resources including books, debates, internet articles, and even information contrary to my position of hard determinism.
A quick definition of determinism is the belief that we could not have acted otherwise if all causal factors were the same. It does not mean we do not make choices; we do. The issue is that we could not have acted otherwise.
In my research I find that most academics approach a topic from their particular specialty. A physicist will approach it via quantum mechanics, a biologist from the evolutionary perspective, and a philosopher from logical arguments. As someone versed in a wide range of topics, my approach is both expansive in scope but brief and to the point. Feedback from my readers is that I help explain complex topics for the layman and add my own unique insight (see The 12 Unthinkable Horrors or the Statistical Theory of Everything).
To paraphrase Sam Harris, the debate of whether free will exists is probably greater and will meet with more acrimony than the current one on evolution. In The 12 Unthinkable Horrors of Human Existence I offer up seven religiously significant horrors:
1. There Is No Afterlife
God Does Not Answer Prayers
There Is No Eternal Justice
God Is The Invention Of Man.
Man Is Not Special
There Is No Absolute Morality or Truth
Free Will Is a Myth
Another unthinkable horror, (3) Life is Chance, is not specifically religious, but is an inevitable product of the seven above and it forms the foundation of yet another book, The Statistical Theory of Everything (STE). It is an easily understood alternative to the concept that “everything happens for a reason” or that “everything is the will of Allah or God.” I will refer to it as STE.
The free will theme continued in my novella, Adam and Eve Revisited: A Free Will Story, in which I describe a humorous scenario where Eve refuses to eat the apple, and no matter how hard Satan tries to convince her and Adam otherwise, original sin and the fall of man do not occur. The absurdity of my story makes it painfully clear, for one, how ludicrous this fable is, and second, that Eve did not have free will in the sense that everyone believes, and last, just how difficult it is to imagine our world if the fall of man had not happened.
Following this train of thought, I wrote The Other God's Earth (TOGE), which is an alternate earth with an alternate god where there is no sin, no death and no suffering. In my world there is only good and better; there is no Satan, crime, greed, envy, or neurotic insecurities. There is lust, however, and that is not a sin on TOGE. Reward centers were created in the brain for a purpose.
The most common arguments against this utopian world are that we would not have free will (bingo!), we would be robots, it be boring, and that life would have no meaning without death and suffering.
I reject all of those. The true reason we cannot imagine such a world is a lack of imagination. In scientific terms this is also called availability bias–what we most recently experience with impact our thoughts and decisions. Spend two hours in my alternative universe and see if you can believe it. I like The Other God’s Earth and Suroh, the other god, who visits humankind every week and is 100% clear of His goals and expectations and has designed a world to maximize human potential and enjoyment. Yes, we can have free will, or at least the illusion of free will without evil.
We will now take a tour through the numerous factors concerning the concept of free will. There is a huge difference between the scientific argument against free will and the theological, omniscient God version (aka Calvinism). Based on theological determinism, God selected the saved and the damned at the second of creation. We have no say in the matter. The results are the same but hard determinism and theological determinism are completely different and incompatible views.
Throughout this book I will refer to my topic as, alternatively, the illusion of free will, free will is a myth, and abbreviate it as TIFW.
If I use the term limited free will, or propose a strategy, tactic or action to improve our decision-making, and therefore our choices, that is not a logical contradiction concerning the illusion of free will. We have all have made and will continue to make important choices on the path we take in life.
Accepting that free will is a myth does not mean I cannot adopt a new hobby like gardening, Tae Kwon Do, or the guitar. It does not mean that I do not plan for the future, change my mind, or decide if my behavior will have positive or negative consequences. Parsing words or asserting that if “molecules cannot be good or bad” that a “person's behavior cannot be good or bad” is both a red herring and a faulty analogy. Often determinists use the phrase to choose because it is so common; perhaps we should say select, act, or decide instead. I will use the word choose, as well as others in this book and again, I repeat, that making a choice does not mean you have free will. And proposing strategies to improve our decision-making does not imply free will. One simple reason is that we don’t know how the story of our life unfolds; that fact means that we should act on our next decision or action to produce the most positive outcome possible.
Unless you are already a hard determinist, this book will and should make you uncomfortable. While my goal has always been to educate fellow non-believers and not persuade the faithful, I think, on, this subject you will have to at least acknowledge that free will is on a continuum with a majority of our behavior based on causal factors either beyond our control (genetics, childhood trauma) or on an unconscious level (fight or flight, PTSD).
If you insist on adding the "free won't", quantum fluctuations, or an immaterial consciousness, you must at least admit that when a golf ball-sized brain tumor is pressing against someone’s brain and causes them to kill . The debate is much stronger with the more subtle nuances of dendrites, neurotransmitters, or childhood trauma explanations for behavior. Even the most hardened religious fundamentalist or personal responsibility proponent will allow for macroscopic, organic defects in our brain.
After you read this book, you will think twice the next time you make a personal choice or read about someone who made a particularly bad choice. You will examine the antecedent events to the outcome and ask yourself, “Could they have acted differently? Did they the free will to choose?”
Richard Speck, Mass Murderer
He murdered eight student nurses from South Chicago Community Hospital on July 14, 1966. After his death, a neuropathologist at the Chicago Institute of Neurosurgery performed an autopsy of Speck's brain. The doctor found gross abnormalities where the hippocampus, which involves memory, and the amygdala, which deals with rage and other strong emotions, encroached upon each other, and their boundaries were blurred. There is widespread belief that this gross abnormality plus repeated beatings Speck suffered at the hands of his alcoholic stepfather contributed to his violent behavior. Given the biological and environmental cards stacked against him, did he have free will to do otherwise? We will continue to explore examples such as this.
When I write, I don’t expect universal agreement. If I explain the topic well and encouraged you to think, that is success enough for me. I consider myself a highly complex, biological machine and proud of it. My purpose and goal in life is to be the very best-functioning machine possible.
If I am going to destroy a belief (free will) you've held your entire life, I would be remiss if I did not offer a substitute thought pattern. In a deterministic world, antiquated concepts like self-control, willpower, blame, good, and evil have to be revised. Also the concepts of morality and personal responsibility have to be adjusted to adapt to our new worldview.
Concepts such as courage are romanticized in the media. We read stories of those who suffered during crises, weathered poverty, and rose to the occasion in wartime–to laud them on the strength of the character. If we accept the theory that free will is an illusion, it challenges even cherished traditions such as courage and moral character.
Without free will, leaders are now born and improved by their environment, the courageous and the foolhardy are separated by nuance, time, and circumstance, and the successful are now the products of luck (birth, genetics, opportunities, timing, competition, and the environment) as well as traits we encourage (patience, perseverance, and personal responsibility).
In Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) [Amazon Link), he compares and contrasts the a
rchetypal hero found in world mythologies. We have courageous heroes such as Hercules, Prometheus, Achilles, and Moses, who overcome insurmountable odds on their path to self-discovery. We also have archetypal heroes such as Jesus Christ, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and now Nelson Mandela, who were not warriors but men of peace–who changed the world. Jesus Christ is the ultimate agape love meme–a deity that so loved the world that he died for us. There can be no greater love than self-sacrifice. It is unselfish, altruistic and a courageous act. It is no wonder that Christianity is the number one religious faith–it has a hero beyond compare. This is a powerful meme.
But let me be very clear here–determinism does not mean that we cannot act unselfishly or attend a self-help seminar. Each action simply becomes another causal factor to the next causal action. The positive, determinist view is to think of ourselves as causal ramjets.
The concept of a ramjet is simple–since it operates by air intake, the faster it goes, the more oxygen it takes in, and the faster it goes. Therefore the pro-free will argument is that “if everything is determined, why do anything?” or “if I am a robot then why not just go home and sit on the couch?” is faulty. For one, accepting free will is a myth changes nothing concerning choices in a causal world. Let me repeat that for emphasis.
Once you accept that free will is an illusion, you must act as if you have free will.
Your behaviors will not change–and should improve.
You will be less judgmental–toward others and yourself.
We want to cascade as many positive and beneficial causal events as possible and minimize the negative. Before I move on, I will include the words of a famous determinist, Jesus:
Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. And they parted his raiment, and cast lots.
–Luke 23:34
Thank you for buying my book, In addition to having this on your Kindle to read anytime, you can download this E-book to your personal computer, Android phone or iPad. I do update my books two or three times the first month after publication so be sure to check the version number and date in the very front of your version and compare it the Amazon Version listed. Amazon only sends out notices where there is a major change so currently updating your book is a manual process.