The concept of will is perfectly valid, but “free will” can be troublesome.

Will and Freedom

Will refers to desire, choice, intention, and determination. Inherent in the idea of will is some “actor” or “agent” that has, in some sense, a human-like internal experience of mind with which it experiences will, whether that experience is more or less rudimentary than a human’s. Such an agent can be said to have the property of will; the agent has will. We do not have extremely rigorous means of measuring will as of this writing; we generally observe behavior of an organism and compare it with our own behavior to infer whether something has will or not. Perhaps someday we’ll have a rigorous theory of physical mind instantiation (probably involving complex network dynamics) where we’ll be able to measure organisms’ bodies to reveal different degrees and kinds of mind, internal experience, and will. Or, another extremely unlikely hypothesis, given the evidence we have, would be that mind is separate from the body and somehow decisions get “beamed” to the body while the thinking and “willing” goes on somewhere else.

Freedom refers to a lack of constraint on some thing. Anything instantiated in reality must have some constraints in order to exist at all, so freedom is a relative term, referring to lower levels of constraint with respect to some higher level of constraint.

Free Will

What could it mean to have free will or freedom of will? And what does it mean to have a constrained will? It seems obvious to me that a (willful) mind instantiated in reality must be constrained and determined by whatever physical (or “non-physical”) processes are allowing the mind to exist in the first place. Perhaps freedom of will could refer to a relatively greater range of theoretically possible or experientially actualized desires held and choices made by one organism with respect to another organism. I think the common notion of “free will”, however, refers to the intuition that, given a specific choice made by someone, that someone *could have* made a different choice, and that person was “free” to choose among the possibilities. The person making the decision was not aware of any influence that “forced” the decision inevitably one way or another. However, this is completely indistinguishable from completely determined (“pre-destined”) behavior, where one’s desires and choices are a direct inevitable consequence of the events and processes that precede the choice. When the decision process itself is determined, there is no sense of external pressure. The feeling or actuality of “freedom” does not conflict with complete determinism in behavior. It is the ignorance of which decision is the inevitable one that leaves open the question of which of the available options will be chosen. This is a “compatibilist” position that proposes no contradiction between “free” will and behavior and determined will and behavior.

The word “free” here may simply be unnecessary and adding confusion to the concept. I tend to think and communicate in terms of “will” rather than “free will” whenever possible, since it may make more sense to think of a (predetermined) will that is, to some degree, unpredictable. The idea of will is sufficient. There is no need to postulate a counter-factual option that could have been chosen. There was, in actuality, a consideration of different options, and an option *was* chosen, even if that choice was determined and inevitable. No contradiction.

The concept of “freedom” seems to be more useful in the context of social and political freedom and lack of pressure, force, and threat from other beings, rather than some abstract, metaphysical, counter-factual, “absolute”, or impossible freedom.

Cases for Consideration

Let’s consider some more concrete cases to investigate will and freedom of will.

Consider four children. The first child is lacking in imagination and originality, easily swayed away from any self-directed behavior, and is very obedient, following instructions and suggestions with no resistance or consternation. The second child is more imaginative, passionate, independent, stubborn, determined, and disobedient — that is, more willful — yet thon seems unfazed and equanimous in struggles of will and when taking of punishment. The third is just as imaginative and passionate as the second, but very obedient, and willing to shut down thon’s own pursuits whenever asked or told to do so. The fourth is equally imaginative and passionate as the second, and very obedient like the third, but is tremendously anguished about putting off thon’s own pursuits when following requests and orders.

Which of these children’s wills is most free? Or is “freedom” even an appropriate metric to be used here? Would a better question be, which child has more will or stronger will than the others? Are these meaningful questions?

It seems that the latter three children have “free-er” wills in the “considered options” or “possible options” sense of freedom. They have more “powers of will”. It seems that the fourth child has the least “free” will in terms of being constrained and put-upon by social and/or physical pressure and force. Is the second or fourth child exerting the most “will power”? Which has the “stronger” will? Although the second child’s will seems to be “winning” more, the fourth child’s will seems to be fighting against a greater internal opposition. Perhaps a comparison is not really possible (without some rigorous science of mind and measurement of these children’s wills).

If a person desires to have a new desire (say, to crave healthier food) or get rid of a current desire (such as an addiction), some people can accomplish these goals through intelligent and persistent action. This is a particular kind of freedom, to shift desires and habits. But what separates those who manage to accomplish these goals and those who don’t manage? It seems that it comes down to a combination of inherent qualities of the person and sometimes (or perhaps always ultimately) unexplainable instances of follow-through versus non-follow-through. Even a generally conscientious person may have certain times when thon doesn’t follow through, and it can be difficult or impossible to figure out why there wasn’t follow-through in that particular instance.

Conclusion

Before I wrote this, I thought I might be able to show that “free will” is a contradiction and nonsense. However, I’ve shown to myself that there does seem to be some room for sense in the phrase, even if many people use the phrase in nonsensical ways. Still, I think in many cases it may help to replace the idea of “free will” with “will” and move on.