‘Freewill is an illusion, does freewill truly exist, freewill does not exist in the truest sense’ – these are some common inquisitive questions and hapless verdicts that one is led to when contemplating the concept of freewill. Since eternity, freewill has been a much debated topic. From the time of Plato to contemporary philosophers and scientists, freewill is one topic that not only has aroused immense curiosity and interest, but also one that compels us to reconsider the very nature of human responsibility and identity. Rightly so, it could have far fetching implications as it challenges the very foundations of morality, accountability, and human agency. I have also observed that much of the confusion about free will stems from varying interpretations about what actually defines free will.

When speaking of freewill, we are in effect addressing two key aspects.

• First, the ability to create choices
• Second, the ability to make choices

The first case drives the point that one can succeed in doing things that one is not naturally genetically predisposed for. If this were the case, it would suggest that someone naturally inclined to dance could also become an outstanding scientist. It would mean that we are truly free to design the course of our life. You can pursue whichever direction you wish to. Right at this very moment you can pick up a profession that you otherwise would not like and excel in that. In effect, the first choice basically means that you have the potential to swim against the tide, which we know isn’t true. Any attempt to do that through one’s will power in an attempt to prove this fact will only be limiting and debilitating. So here we definitely do not have free will.

The second case is about the ability to make choices, once you are better aligned with the stream of life and flowing with the tide. You are not contradicting your default choices here. But here again you will notice that any decision of yours in the direction of your choice is stemming from two factors

• Either they are causative
• They are random

Causative Factors for free will

We all have a powerful engine called brain that drives our decision making. A series of factors influence our choices – genetic predispositions, memories, events, accidents, and more. If you examine the underlying reasons behind any significant decision, whether related to your career, relationships, or other areas, you’ll find a complex chain of causes that contribute to your final choice.

For e.g. A chose career Y earlier because he had obtained the requisite marks, and it aligned with his goals then. His good grades were the result of joining a tutoring class at the last minute for a specific subject, which allowed him to surpass the cutoff. The last minute admission happened because another student opted out. There could be an ever longer chain of causes and I may be lacking a more relevant example here. The point is that every decision and pivotal moment in your life is influenced by past factors beyond your control and which serve as a causation. Like in this example, had this student not opted out, this individual might never have pursued career Y and could have ended up in career Z instead.

In fact many experiments conducted since the 1980s with help from sophisticated brain MRI devices have demonstrated that before the conscious decision making happens, there is a series of events that take place inside the brain as part of the unconscious mechanism. Only after the unconscious part does it bit, do we become consciously aware of our decisions. The cases these experiments have considered could be simple, e.g. selecting between left and right hand, but still it does throw a lot of questions even if real life complex decision making scenarios. It is this unconscious mechanism that brings all the past memories and experience into picture and does its own arithmetic before it passes its decision into the conscious.

Therefore, at this point if you are deciding between two things that could potentially affect your future, there is a lot of unconscious brain pattern operating before you realize and start weighing the pros and cons consciously.

So if there is an unconscious pattern of activity that is affecting your conscious (which takes into account past causative factors or which is random as in the next point) do you have free will? It further boils down to the fact that are you responsible for the unconscious activity that is happening in your brain? Have you really configured it? Well No. Here the laws of physics take over, from the point your sensory organs sense to the way they get assembled into your body as likes and dislikes. Which is why all people have different likes and dislikes? It is the patterns of the atoms firing within your body which decide whether a pattern is good (you like it) or bad (you dislike it). And you have no control over how a sensory input will really behave and get assembled in your body. You might try to pretend otherwise through your will power though.

But in a natural sense, how your body behaves is not in your control. You have only as much control as much control you have over your height, looks, skin color, hair color and so on. There are specific patterns though that excites in you a larger sense of freewill. One of them being you being able to think what you would like to become. But both (combination of what you want to become and you thinking of it) inherently, are outside your control and are only following the laws of physics while leaving you behind with a compelling reason to believe in free will. It appears then that free will is an illusion, albeit a persistent one that lends it the credibility.

Random Factors for free will

The second case of decision being random comes into play when there are no causative factors. For e.g. you have to select between a vanilla and chocolate ice cream. Here your brain does search for a causative pattern but it comes up with none if there has been no association with either of the ice creams. But then, if is a random phenomenon, do you really have free will? Or can we say with conviction that free will is an illusion?

In most cases though, as you age, it is a prior chain of causative factors that does the trick.

So, does free will really exist?

Given the above factors at play, so do we not really have free will? The good news is that we do. Is very subtle, but it exists. However the freewill that we generally know of and talk about colloquially is only a myth. And there also emerges a question that while we keep saying that ‘we do’ or ‘we do not’ have free will, ‘who in real are we?. And lastly, ‘how do we explain karma then when there is no freewill’? ‘ You can know further where, how and when exactly the real free will comes into the picture and know about your true self and karma from the book ‘Can You Play‘. You can also read more topics on free will in the blog here.