Note: Last night we had a great show, one of the greatest shows ever, on Iran and Islam, with a special mystery guest who has a lot of first hand experience with both topics. You can listen to the replay here and here.
The late polemicist Christopher Hitchens famous quipped, “Yes, I have free will; I have no choice but to have it.” He was addressing the paradoxical nature of free will in that even if it were an illusion, and we could somehow figure that out, we would be forced to carry on as if it were real. Everything about how we understand ourselves as human beings, and how we get on with one another, depends on the assumption that we have choices and we make those choices freely.
The reason for that is our societies and even our own minds are organized around prescriptive requirements, not descriptive ones. Sure, we know not to step off a roof as the facts tell us we will accelerate toward the sidewalk below, until we reach the sidewalk and suddenly decelerate. It is that rapid deceleration that kills us and that is a fact not subject to opinion. The reason we believe it is immoral to jump off a roof or kill yourself in any other way has nothing to do with physics.
Suicide is a choice. In Western societies at this point in time, making that choice, regardless of the circumstances, is immoral. In other times and other places, suicide was an honorable option. The Japanese used to treat ritual suicide as an honorable end for a man who faced a disgraceful end. The West used to have the idea of leaving a doomed man alone with a bottle of whiskey and revolver. The former was to gain the required courage to use the latter for the honorable act.
As an aside, this is why the liberal project was doomed from the start. It assumed that there was a universally correct way for humans to organize their societies. We could use reason and observations of nature to arrive at the correct way we ought and ought not act and how we should and should not organize our societies. We can reason our way to a set of universal moral principles. Then we can reason our way to building a society around those moral principles.
The liberal project, all of the ideologies that have spring from it, assumes that human beings are programmed to work best in a specific sort of society. We naturally function at our best within a specific set of rules. If we can figure out those rules and then figure out how to impose them, man will be liberated from the oppression of having to live against his nature within a hostile set of rules. This is the goal of libertarianism, anarchism, communism, progressivism and so on.
This brings us back to the issue of free will. Ideologies fail, because they assume that once the rules are imposed, people no longer have to make choices between the things they desire. Free will is no longer be necessary. Even if free will is an illusion, however, it is one necessary for us to be human beings, rather than moist robots. There is something about the nature of man that requires the belief in free will. Without this illusion, if that is what it is, we cease to be human and cease to exist.
It is probably why we lack the language to discuss the descriptive world in purely descriptive terms. You see that in this post by W. M. Briggs. He is taking on a post by former physicist and current YouTuber Sabine Hossenfelder, who tries to argue that free will is a myth and you should stop believing in it. As Briggs notes, her language, even when discussing the laws of physics, is prescriptive. Even when we think descriptively, we end up using prescriptive language.
This crackpot notion that we would be better off if we chose to not believe in free will is not new to Sabine Hossenfelder. Like all such arguments, the first person to think about it was the first man with enough free time to waste some of it on contemplating pointless questions like do we have free will? Idle hands do the Devil’s work and the best proof of that is philosophy. Everywhere there have been idle hands we find the philosopher and Hell follows with him.
Of course, free will is a slippery concept. There is libertarian free will, which argues that for any choice we make, we could have chosen otherwise, even if all of the conditions that could impact our decision were identical. For example, you chose to arrive at work on time, but you could have arrived earlier or later, even assuming some negative or positive consequences to the choices. Like so much of libertarianism, this makes sense if you forget that humans live in societies with other humans.
The other form of free will involves morality. Often, oaths have a line where the person taking the oath testifies that he is taking the oath of his own free will. In criminal proceedings we differentiate between knowingly committing a crime and inadvertently or accidentally committing a crime. The driver who purposely runs down a pedestrian is treated differently from the person who does so while trying to avoid a group of school children because of our notion of free will.
Both conceptualizations of free will are most likely illusions, like much of what we think we understand about the natural world. What we think of as physical reality is probably a simplified illusion of reality. Our brains evolved to conceptualize the parts of reality we need to understand in order for our genes to advance to the next round. The concept of free will is just another item in the toolkit. Even our ability to question our conceptualization of reality is probably an illusion.
That is the problem with Sabine Hossenfelder’s argument. Whether or not free will, however defined, is a real thing does not matter, other than it being a useful topic around which to build a post. Whether you believe it or not does not matter, but once you decide to act as if it is not real, then you enter the world in which it is perfectly acceptable to remove the people who cannot fit your model of society. In the end, every ideologue must reject free will in order to pull the trigger.
That is the end of the free will debate. The age of ideology has taught us that in order to have societies that accommodate human nature, we must choose to organize ourselves as comes naturally to use. That means leaving others to organize themselves as comes naturally to them. Once you start down the path of rejecting free will, you end up on the road that leads to industrial slaughter and the menticide that now promises to extinguish the Western world.
We have free will and if we did not have it, we would have no choice but to invent as it is the only way we can live as human beings. That means we have a choice as to how we organize ourselves. We must collectively choose our metaphysics and our morality and choose how we deal with those who undermine our choices. Those who choose otherwise, in effect, choose not to be us. Therefore, we have the choice to exclude them from us, even choosing to use force if necessary.
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A conversation you won’t see on Black Twitter
Jeffrey Zoar: “A conversation you won’t see on Black Twitter“
Gateway Pundit has a very ugly article about what “They” have been doing to Caitlin Clark.
Did the WNBA Finally Kill Its Golden Goose? https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/06/did-wnba-finally-kill-their-golden-goose-after/
😂😂😂👍
Stop. Just stop – it’s too early in the day for laughing cramps…
Before I left college, my father strongly advised me to take some philosophy classes. I’ve never regretted ignoring his advice.
Yup. It’s just so much navel gazing and fart smelling. Pointless arguments that entail splitting hairs and matters of semantics.
There’s the saying I heard from VD that engineering is science you can trust, because it has to work. I’d say philosophy is like science in that way, although I’m not sure what would be analogous to engineering.
I’d say it depends upon how far one goes in Philosophy as a discipline. The introductory courses at the undergrad level are, in my opinion, useful—as they have roots in everyday life. For example, Logic. Fallacious concepts in reasoning, and therefore argument, surround us. A survey of the ancients wrt philosophy and reasoning also proved useful for me in later life. Indeed, such readings were not in those days restricted to the dept of Philosophy. Humanities required reading about the death of Socrates as written by Plato. I still to this day am inspired by Socrates behavior in his situation.… Read more »
I learnt a fair bit from philosophy myself. Around 500 BC, there was the birth of abstract reasoning with the pre-Socratics. Good, evil, the nature of reality, the ideal form of governance — all as abstract ideas. And as abstract ideas we need to discuss and define what they should mean. This is why, from a historical point of view at least, Plato’s dialogues are interesting. Other than the ancient Greek philosophers, I learnt a fair bit from Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason,” which is analogous to an intensive gym workout. Among modern writers I’m smitten with Magee’s “Confessions of… Read more »
Meh. Ancient Greek philosophy was decent. Further down the road you go, the sillier the philosophies and philosophers. Lookin’ at you, Camus. My Philo 101 in college was a boring slog.
Go build a chicken coop or something. Jeez.
You make my point. Thanks.
What I know of Logic and the ancient philosophers I learned studying English literature – taught in high school by an older lady from West Virginia, and then in college by long-time professors, not the then new leftist ones who now rule over the ruins of academia.
Much of the modern stuff is garbage and shouldn’t be dignified by calling it “philosophy.” Also many people acknowledged as 20th century philosophers, whom I just don’t think are that great — Russell, Ayer, Rorty, any number of others. After the revolution of Kant, philosophy became problematic.
Humans and angels have limited free will. Enough to express and reveal their true nature and character during existence, but not enough to ruin the greater patterns of God. Modern tech, like Babel before it, is challenging heaven for authority yet again. If we had complete free will, there would be no such thing as, for example, prophecy. Fulfilled prophecy suggests some level of fixed nodes in space-time. Time itself is an illusion of corporality. ‘What we think of as physical reality is probably a simplified illusion of reality’ Yes of course. We get a redacted, simplified version of ‘reality’.… Read more »
Sort of like how “leaders” of nation states have some free will, but not enough of it to oppose central bankers
That minority of permitted leaders that reach high office without subjugation to central bankers, yes.
Further up the food chain ya go, the less ‘free will’ is permitted and expressed.
The Prime Mover is the Israeli Prime Minister…
Whoever down-voted that has no sense of humor.
Very Lovecraftian. As an aside, intentionality is an extremely captious concept. As Z says, the vast majority of human beings, and certainly those in power, must believe in free will. Without this belief, the earth would become an abattoire. Moreso than it already is. However, if you really think about it, absolute intentionality would be a chaotic hell. This is the case because all of our actions would be uncaused. They would be utterly random, with no reason behind them and therefore utterly unpredictable. In such an environment, we would all perish in short order. If reason is causation and… Read more »
There cannot be heroes without a tragedy. May we be the hero who averts a tragedy by making it someone else’s.
If we can figure out those rules and then figure out how to impose them, man will be liberated from the oppression of having to live against his nature within a hostile set of rules.
The State Legislature finished its six month session and passed 400 new laws. One would think after two hundred year, the State would have the rules, figured out, but if 400 new rules are needed every six months, then paradise is a long way off.
Much of “new law” has little to do with restricting behavior. More to do with reelection and politicking of duplicitous pol’s. I’ve had that argument with some and never *won* the issue. Another reason to simply not vote for these people.
Sam Harris is another of these weirdos pushing lack of free will. He let the cat out of the bag on Rogan that without free will, we can’t really enforce the law, like throwing people in prison. The other side of that coin is we just unalive them. Either way, it’s a way to unleash more evil in the world.
I am lukewarm on Sabine. She is a gifted mathematician and scientist…but…Uggghhh. I think we are misconstruing her and our Esteemed Blog Host *may* be misunderstanding her point. Awhile back the fad Theory Of Everything proposed that time is an illusion. The idea was that reality exists as a fixed multidimensional matrix where all our decisions, all our history, all the events in our lives – have already been done and that they are merely just fixed coordinates in an n-space matrix. In other words, the universe has already been born and died, all the outcomes and probabilities have been… Read more »
All the philosophical blather is worthless when confronting reality. An eighteen year old kid on a motorcycle gets killed, hit by a car as he came around a curve at a dangerous intersection. If he had been five seconds earlier or later he would have been around for another sixty years. And the driver of the car? What good does any discussion of free-will do him or her?
“See this? This is this. This ain’t something else. This is this.”
‘Deer Hunter’. I love that quote.
“I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live:”
(Deuteronomy 30:19)
So there you have it…free will has been given man by God. Case closed. The rest of the discussion is commentary.
“I came here to die with you. Or live with you. Dying ain’t so hard for men like you and me. It’s living that’s hard when all you’ve ever cared about has been butchered or raped. Governments don’t live together–people live together. With governments, you don’t always get a fair word or a fair fight. Well, I’ve come here to give you either one or get either one from you. I came here like this so you’ll know my word of death is true, and my word of life is then true. The bear lives here, the wolf, the antelope,… Read more »
Pretty good flick. But ‘Now we’ll only hunt what we need to live on, same as the Comanche does’ The Comanche were the biggest thieves, murderers, and marauders not only in the SW, but of all continental language groups. Their women were notorious for the slow torturing of captives, which constituted an essential part of Comanche entertainment, along with horse stealing and burning down shit. Of all North American tribes, the Comanche were the least to ‘only hunt what we need to live on’. LOL Comanche Nation was VAST at one point in the 19th Century. They terrified the settlers… Read more »
Lewis and Clark reported that the plains Indians hunted buffalo by setting grassfires that made the herd stampede over a cliff. They then took whatever they could carry from the mountain of flesh at the foot, leaving the rest to rot. Primitives see Mother Nature as an inexhaustible cornucopia because that’s how it usually works for them; without firearms, they are unable to even put a dent in the stocks, or at least not one that they’ll notice in their lifetimes. The Chinese still exhibit this attitude, especially when it comes to the seas which they look upon as an… Read more »
That is exactly right. Despite absurd protestations to the contrary, Sitting Bull wasn’t Rachel Carson and Crazy Horse wasn’t Dian Fossey. They were indifferent to the “moral” nature of the natural environment except to the extent that it provided them with subsistence. If they’d had the technology, they would have wiped out animal populations and scorched their part of the earth.
Practically from the beginning, Hollywood was guilty on behalf of the rest of us for the establishment of the USA at the Indians’ expense. And they tried to assuage the guilt by whitewashing–so to speak–the reality of Indian behavior and existence. Regardless, the Western genre is the most traditional in the history of US cinema and Josey Wales is one of the 20 best Westerns ever made.
“What we think of as physical reality is probably a simplified illusion of reality. Our brains evolved to conceptualize the parts of reality we need to understand in order for our genes to advance to the next round” I spent a lot of time listening to/reading Hassenfelder et al and Donald Hoffman (“The Case Against Reality”) during Covid. I ended up with a huge headache and came to the conclusions Zman does. Hoffman would also likely agree with Zman’s passage above. We’re not going to survive as a species unless people are accountable for their actions. This explains much of… Read more »
Have I called for total nerd death yet this week? Probably. It’s Thursday. That’s pretty late. The nerd’s nemesis is the cheerleader, a somewhat idealized one, not quite like the real ones we know. (Nerds don’t know any cheerleaders, or any other real things.) She’s out there, willing freely—or doing whatever, freely. She is free—of neurosis, of all that nerds lie (they always lie, because they don’t know anything) and call reason, calculation, analysis, morality, etc. Without any of that, she cheers—or whatever. She’s doing things. She’s enjoying a drink a friendly man gave her, and she doesn’t imagine it’s… Read more »
‘Louise holds a handful of rain/tempting you to defy it’ (Visions of Johanna)
In other words, the denial of free will springs from a frustrated, misanthropic disposition. (But does that disposition “cause” the denial of intentionality?) That’s certainly possible. Only yesterday I was thinking about how feminism almost certainly stems from plain or hideous physiognomies. (Hardly an original supposition on my part.) The correlation of personal ugliness and the individual feminist is too striking to be mere coincidence.
Good looking women don’t need feminism, because they already get everything they want
A blonde with plenty of curves and a pert little nose can write her own check.
In today’s corporate world *any* moderately attractive woman can steal a six-figure paycheck and get away with murder because – woman.
Modern governments and corporations are guaranteed employment for females. Even the dullest are raised far above their merit.
And they do, quite literally, often get away with murder. Not just of babies, but of adults as well. After all, they’re only a girl! (when it advantages them)
Somebody needs to be liberated, but it damn sure ain’t females.
The cheerleader appears free because there are endless legions of simps to enable her.
I believe it was Rush Limbaugh who said:
“Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society.”
I never doubted his sage observation.
Yep. Those broads still may not be able to get a man, but dammit they will have power, money, and perhaps your scalp.
Feminism was established to silence and disempower the strong and free men who once inhabited America, men who would never sit still for being ruled tyrannically by women and their male enablers in government, corporations, etc. Organized feminism always was a top-down project. Righteous, angry men in groups are the only antidote to plutocratic gynarchy. That is why the FBI, NSA, CIA and other groups disallow modern men forming pro-masculine groups, and spy on us obsessively. This is why enemy Number One in the modern West is not the mullahs or Red China, but Andrew Tate. The boys and young… Read more »
For some reason this brings to mind the Sean Connery quote from The Rock
Which is…..?
Losers whine about their best. Winners go home and f the prom queen
In other words, if free will does not exist, all is permitted.
Free will, to a substantial degree, is synonymous with God.
The reason we can have free will and not just material determinism is that the mind is not material.
I agree. However, the strong materialist would argue that the brain is material and that what we call the “mind” is simply the manifestation of various chemical mixtures in the brain.
“Like all such arguments, the first person to think about it was the first man with enough free time to waste some of it on contemplating pointless questions like do we have free will? Idle hands do the Devil’s work and the best proof of that is philosophy.”
Sounds self incriminating.
“We have free will and if we did not have it, we would have no choice but to invent as it is the only way we can live as human beings.” An age old question indeed. My first introduction was as an undergraduate taking my required “Introduction to Psychology” course. There we were introduced to B.F. Skinner whose fame rested upon being a rabid behavioralist. Best known for his “Skinner Box” experiment/concept, he touched upon why we act as we do. His revelation in short, “We are not free to choose; we are products of our environment and history of… Read more »
“We have free will and if we did not have it, we would have no choice but to invent as it is the only way we can live as human beings.” It seems that the notion of “free will” has to shoulder more of the burden of our destiny than in medieval days. In the old days our occupation and station in life was predetermined and we couldn’t “reinvent” ourselves at will. If I was born a villein, I stayed a villein, and couldn’t become lord of the manor. Sure, there was a place for “free will”, otherwise the idea… Read more »
Interesting how such a concept of free will plays into our understanding of God and morality. My go to book has been “Why Bad Things Happen to Good People” by Harold S. Kushner.
Limited free will is a good way of putting it. Without such life would be an endless series of deterministic outcomes. Without purpose or meaning, akin to a chemical reaction in a test tube.
Arguments that free will doesn’t exist are like arguments that bananas don’t exist. They start either by leaving the term “free will” undefined or by slipping in a philosophical definition that requires human action to be totally un-caused by prior events. Then they conclude, presto!, that free will doesn’t exist. You can use exactly the same argument to prove that bananas don’t exist. In fact, we all experience and exhibit behavior that we call “free will.” The only question is how best to define the reality that’s right in front of us. We can quibble about it, but the most… Read more »
While I don’t disagree with your conclusions, I’d be curious to see your argument that bananas don’t exist.
I always thought of you as a philosopher.
Oh no. He’s a theorist. Much like Emmanuel Levinas.
Theorize, philosophize, imagine. A rose is a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.
Every instance of our experience— every sensation, every perception, every feeling, every thought, and every decision— is accompanied by electrical activity in specific neural circuits in our brains.
Since we’re often not aware of the cascade of neural inpulses that precede our decisions, the case can be made that— despite the feeling that ‘I am freely choosing’— our brains are actually making these decisions for us, entirely apart from our conscious choices.
“…our brains are actually making these decisions for us,…”
Then a branch of Philosophy—if not already—will spring up to discuss/contemplate what is it that makes us human and capable of “free will”, i.e., our brain, or something else? Something reminds me of a story about Diogenes of Sinope and Plato…
It never ends.
The author p*sses on philosophy by, um, philosophizing.
He was jesting.