In the part of the world where I live, among the most valued traits a person can have is freedom. The freedom to choose for themselves their destiny. The freedom to choose their path in life. It is considered a sign of strength if a person is able to exercise their freedom, and do as they please in all situations. Often, however, in order to actually succeed in one’s projects requires that others take up those same projects in the same fashion. That is, if I desire to build a house, it makes a lot of sense to convince others to help me in building that house. If I am unsuccessful in convincing others to help me, I may still be able to build a house, but it may take me much, much longer to complete that project, and I may also be limited in the size and complexity of that house. Consider how difficult it can be to lift a large 4-by-6 plank of wood by one’s self, never mind placing it with accuracy while fastening it to other structures.

In many cases, in our modern world, large projects cannot reasonably be completed alone. Those projects require many different people working together to accomplish the project. The group of people who come together to work on the large project are all individuals in their own right, each with their own ideas about what precisely the project is that needs to be accomplished and how best to go about completing that project. Through deliberation and negotiation, agreement is hopefully reached in how best to proceed. But complete agreement is rare. Compromises need to be made. Some, if not all, of the participants cannot entirely have everything they desire in the project.

People can be stubborn. In this part of the world, people often do not want to compromise. People embrace a culture where freedom is all that is really important to them, and the exercising of that freedom is the ultimate goal, no matter the cost. One ought to be able to do whatever they desire, uncontested and unchanged. How do multiple people with conflicting projects fully realize their individual freedom uncontested? The answer is they cannot. Someone, and often everyone, will not actually be able to realize their projects. At least not as they may have envisioned them.

There are many ways for me to ensure the success of my project. The most obvious solution is to convince others to change their projects to match my own. If their project matches mine, then the probability of my project’s successful completion increases dramatically. Furthermore, if I can convince others that my project as I envision the project ought to be their project too, then I can probably convince them that they should defer to me in decision making regarding that project. If it is my house being built, those workers who help me build the house ought to come to me to ensure the bathroom is located in the correct part of the house, as I am the only one who really knows where it ought to be. In a sense, I am the project leader. I indicate precisely what the project is and its parameters, and I direct precisely how the project ought to be completed. I can defer to experts who may know more about what materials ought to be used in the house’s construction than I do, but as the project leader, I still decide whether to follow the expert opinion or not. I could always disregard the expert opinion and make my own choice with regard to materials to use.

There are many ways I can convince others to take up my projects. Force is a common approach. That is, I could literally grab your arms and move them myself. This, of course, will only work if I am stronger than you are. After all, if I am not at least as strong as you are, you can resist. Thus, if I spend my life ensuring I am the strongest person among my community, I can force others to follow my projects. The biggest problem with using force is that there are any number of ways that others may use to resist this approach. For one, the others could band together, agreeing to a contrary project of opposing my project, and if they work together successfully, I will need to be stronger than all of them combined. Hercules was said to be as strong as “ten ordinary men,” but he was also part god (according to myth). Most of us are not part god, and most of us are unable to be even twice as strong as the person next to us.

An alternative to using force is to use coercion. That is, I can threaten others to take up my projects. The threats can be any number of undesirable events that I could suggest will take place if those others do not take up my projects. The most common example that is used is to suggest I could hold a gun to someone’s head. The threat is that I could pull the trigger, which is presumed to result in the death of the individual. As an undesirable event, the person ought to be inclined to take up my project as their own. Guns may be popular in the part of the world I live, but they are far from the only tool of coercion used to convince people to take up projects they might not otherwise take up. Politicians frequently describe to voters the undesirable events that would take place if their adversary is elected instead of them. Elect me, otherwise all those undesirable people will take your house away.

The greatest weakness with both of these approaches is that most people can see that I am trying to manipulate them. If it is clear that I am attempting to convince you to change your projects to mine, you are likely to resist as you will recognize the affront to your own projects and to you as a free individual. And so I may wish to consider another alternative. If I can convince you that my project is your project, perhaps that it has been your project the whole time, then you will definitely take up my project as your own. That is, if you believe that my project is in fact your project (in all the important ways) then of course you will take up my project, because it is actually just your project. This is, in some fashion, the heart of what the 2010 film Inception was all about. With all of its fancy special effects and mind blowing concept of dreaming within dreaming, the ultimate purpose of the inception was to convince someone to change their mind, thinking that the new idea was in fact theirs all along. The team’s goal was to change the target’s project into the team’s desired project. In the film, the team would know they were successful if the target believed the new project was his own.

The film was quite popular, and the concept quite insidious, but it does not require entering into the dreams of others to change their projects in this way. The field of marketing and advertising do this sort of altering of projects constantly. It is often much more difficult for me to detect the attempts at changing my mind about what brand of automobile I ought to purchase, but the automotive companies spend an insane amount of money on all those commercials I stumble upon when watching television, or the billboards I see while driving around town. They often refer to it as “brand recognition,” the simple idea that when I think about that particular brand, I get a positive feeling of some kind. It can work in reverse as well, making me feel a negative feeling about a competing brand. All with the goal of adopting the company’s desired project: that I should purchase their automobiles.

The final technique of convincing that I would like to briefly discuss is argument and debate. In this technique, I simply engage in conversation with you, providing you with evidence and reasons that you should take up my project. You are aware that I am attempting to make you take up my project, and that I may be undermining some of your projects in the process. But I don’t try to make you believe that my project is your project necessarily. Instead, I try to convince you that if you are a rational being, practicing good reason, that my project simply makes sense for you to take up. This is insidious in its own way, as it suggests you ought to take up my position because otherwise you would not be considered a rational being. However, it does also leave open the opportunity for you to flip the argument against me, suggesting that perhaps my evidence and reasons are not themselves reasonable, and then perhaps I am the one who is not being a rational being at all. It can become a contest in sophistry; who can fabricate the most convincing evidence. Ultimately, it can be seen as a measure of the contestants’ respective levels of intelligence (especially knowledge of the world) and skill (ability to successfully negotiate their position).

In the end, through whichever technique I decide to use, I try to convince others to take up my projects. If I am successful, my projects are likely to be completed successfully. If my projects are often completed successfully, regardless of whether others take up my projects or not, I am said to be in control.

I would like to return to my discussion on time, but it just isn’t the right time for it. There is, in my opinion, a more pressing topic to discuss. On the heels of Black Lives Matter, there is the discussion of freedom. I might suggest that it is actually an underlying concern, rather than something that follows from it.

I think the question of freedom is key to almost all that is going on. Without freedom, none of these other discussions have any meaning. As has been said to me about ethics in general, without freedom there is no ethics. That is, without the possibility of individuals “doing otherwise,” I cannot hold those individuals blameworthy nor praiseworthy. After all, if they are simply doing what they must, without the ability to choose otherwise, how can I hold them responsible for choices they have not made?

It seems like freedom is tied closely with choice. That is, in order to have the ability to choose, one must be free to choose. This is significant in the face of the predominant overwhelming evidence that seems to contradict the existence of freedom. If I look out upon the world, I am immediately aware of a pattern of events that occur. I see events followed by other events, but those sequences of events are not at all random. Certain events seem to be followed quite regularly by certain other events. This regularity has been referred to as “constant conjunction” by the 18th century philosopher David Hume. He called it this in response to what he believed was a mistake made by others in thinking this regularity had a more deep connection: causality.

Causality is a controversial topic in philosophical circles. As Hume suggested, I may notice that certain events seem to always (or almost always) be followed by certain other events, with a regularity that is unmistakable, but I cannot see an actual connection between the event that comes before and the event that follows. There is nothing that I can observe that actually connects the two events. If I watch billiard balls on a table strike each other, I may recognize the nature of the movement of those balls. I may, with confidence, predict how they will move around the table. However, no matter how closely or carefully I watch, I cannot observe the actual connection between the movement of one ball and the movement of another ball. I cannot see any transfer of inertia from one ball to the next. I may believe the connection exists, but I cannot see it. I cannot see causality, I can only assume its existence.

Most of our modern lives depend on this assumption, the assumption that causality exists. This computer that I am using to write out this blog post depends on the assumption of causality to function. Otherwise, how could I rely upon the fact that my pressing the keys on this keyboard would result in these characters being added to this webpage. A lot of things have to take place between my pressing a key, to the point where a very specific and anticipated set of bits in memory are added to a database which results in this blog post that you now read. If causality did not exist (or my assumption of it), it would be incredibly challenging to explain how this blog post came to exist at all.

Most of my world is built upon causally connected events. I say causally connected not because I know with certainty that that is how it came about, but because I have to assume it in order to make sense of my world. I can plan my day because I expect certain events to reliably occur when I expect them to. I expect the Sun to follow a path across the sky each day, illuminating my world in its light. I would be greatly surprised if the Sun did not rise tomorrow morning.

This brings me to the idea of freedom. I refer to it as an idea because there is not a lot of evidence to support its existence. Like I have been saying about time, freedom is a way for me to make sense of my world. It is a way to describe an aspect of my world that I assume must exist, for without it, many of the aspects I take for granted would not make any sense at all. The most noteworthy example is the one I began with, the issue of choice. The simple act of making a choice is an expression of freedom. If it were not, then choice as an idea would itself also make no sense.

In the course of my life, I have had many heated arguments with people regarding my ability to predict human behavior. At various jobs, I have suggested that if we followed a particular course of action, our clients would react in a particular manner in response. I have been told in most of those cases that I cannot know for certain that such things would happen; that human behavior cannot be predicted in that way. However, time and again, the actions are taken, and the clients reacted as I predicted. It is true, I could simply be lucky. It could simply be a situation of hedging my bets. But if that is true, it seems to fly in the face of the clients’ freedom to choose to act differently.

In philosophy, a world that is entirely causally connected is referred to as deterministic. Determinism suggests that all events are connected to all other events by a causal chain that stretches infinitely forward and backward. I once heard said in my youth that if you could know the positions and velocities of all the subatomic particles in the universe at any point in time, you’d be able to predict every event to the end of time. Consequently, you could also determine the history of the universe with perfect accuracy as well. All this would only be true in a purely deterministic world. If my world is such a world, then that suggests no freedom exists. And if that is true, then I am not free to choose anything. All my alleged choices are an illusion, and my actions are in some sense predetermined.

The alternative is that freedom, in some sense, exists. I say in some sense, because freedom can manifest in various ways in order to escape determinism. In fact, for some, freedom does not even need to contradict determinism at all. Alfred R. Mele received a $4.5 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation less than 10 years ago in order to try and shed some light on this situation. In his book entitled A Dialogue on Free Will and Science, Mele discusses a number of these different manifestations, relating them to grades of gasoline at a gas station. For me, the most interesting thing about the book is how it is still unable to answer the question of freedom; that is, I can describe freedom as not being deterministic, but that is about as far as I can go.

To be fair, Mele’s book is very good, and I do recommend reading it if you get the chance. It is short (108 pages), and quite easy to read. You can find it here if you like. In it, the lowest grade of free will, often referred to as compatibilism, is not really freedom in the sense I am referring to in this blog. In compatibilism, what is referred to as freedom is simply the ability of an individual to make a choice without being coerced or unduly influenced. The individual is free to choose. However, with pure determinism in play, the choice can be predicted. Furthermore, one can argue whether anyone is every truly in a situation where they are not being influenced. When I sit on this couch writing this blog, there is no threatening man with a gun to my head forcing me to type. However, I am still influenced by all that takes place around me. Even the fact that I watch the news and am familiar with the Black Lives Matters movement has an influence on my choices and actions. To suggest I can ever make a choice without some sort of influence going on is a mistake in understanding the nature of humans, or of conscious beings in general.

That leaves me with less clear descriptions of freedom. As Mele suggests, one way of viewing freedom is like random chance. That is, when faced with a choice, freedom may be as simple as a completely random selection. The way this is described is that if I somehow were to go back in time and replay the events again, when faced with the same choice, a different choice can be made, again completely at random. While it may be tempting to embrace a freedom of this nature, it doesn’t seem to follow from observations I make of the world. I do see the patterns of regularity, and this includes a regularity in the choices made by individuals. Choices do not appear to be completely random. Choices seem to involve some forethought. Choices seem to follow something related to causality.

Mele does not discuss in much detail what the high grade of free will is. He suggests I relate it to the idea of a soul or spirit within me. In some way related to René Descartes’ mind/body dualism, where the mind is some sort of immeasurable aspect of my being. However, the old argument against Descartes by Princess Elisabeth resurfaces, and we are left wondering how something immeasurable could interact or influence the measurable. If freedom is somehow disconnected from a purely deterministic world, such that freedom is not bound by the rules of determinism, how does freedom inject a cause into the deterministic chain of events?

There is no doubt that I need to believe in freedom. I need freedom to exist. I need the possibility that individuals can make choices freely, so that I can hold them accountable for those choices. They must be blameworthy or praiseworthy based on their own freedom. There must be a difference between how one is, and how one ought to be. I must be able to choose otherwise. Because if that is not the case, then I am simply a cog in a very big and very complex machine. And I don’t like that idea very much.

From my observations of the world through the course of my life, I have seen very little evidence of freedom existing. I have been able to trace back choices and decisions, giving me confidence in understanding why a particular chain of events has occurred. It is true that I cannot see the causal influence directly, but it has worked for me with such reliability that I feel I cannot ignore it. But at the same time, despite the lack of evidence, I also feel I must have faith in the possibility of freedom’s existence. For without that possibility, there does not seem to be any reason for any of this.