Addressing the Free Will Problem by Reconciling Different Perspectives

First written: Sep. 2024. Last update: Dec. 2025.

I believe that many concerns over free will have to do with problems of reconciling different perspectives. Indeed, I have come to see the reconciliation of different perspectives as the main underlying problem in most concerns and discussions about free will, even if it is rarely recognized as such.

Contents

Contrasting Perspectives

The following are some of the contrasting perspectives, or modes of being, that seem relevant to discussions of free will:

passive vs. active
descriptive vs. prescriptive
receptive (e.g. purely observing) vs. creative
concerned with the actual vs. concerned with the possible

A similar contrast is the one between explanatory versus justificatory reasons and perspectives, such as when we descriptively explain versus normatively justify a given course of action (Alvarez, 2016).

Relevance to Free Will

I see at least three ways in which these contrasting perspectives are relevant to the issue of free will.

First, it seems that many people roughly understand free will as the capacity to adopt and act on the latter perspectives listed above — for example, the capacity to adopt a prescriptive stance that is concerned with realizing some future possibilities over others, and the capacity to take action on that basis. At the very least, these capacities seem to be core components of what many understand by free will (see e.g. Monroe & Malle, 2010; Lam, 2021). To be clear, I am not claiming that this is what everyone understands by free will; the term “free will” is obviously quite ambiguous, and there appears to be substantial variation in how people define it.

Second, in terms of what people take to be the underlying substance of the free will problem, it seems that a key issue for many is whether we can legitimately adopt the latter perspectives above. That is, whether we can legitimately adopt perspectives that are active, prescriptive, creative, and concerned with possibilities, as opposed to only (legitimately) having a passive and actualist perspective.

Third, some thinkers who argue against the existence of free will sometimes seem to speak as though we cannot legitimately adopt these more active and possibility-focused perspectives — as though the passive and actualist perspective is the only legitimate one. To be sure, these thinkers might not hold that view, yet many of their statements can nevertheless easily be interpreted that way, especially by those who see possibility-focused perspectives as being core to “free will” as they understand it.

Different yet Compatible Perspectives

The contrasting perspectives outlined above are surely different, yet they are not in conflict in the sense that we must choose only one of them. Granted, we might not be able to embody the opposing extremes of these perspectives simultaneously, but we can still fruitfully shift between them, and each of these perspectives seems to have their valid uses.

It is also worth noting that the ability to adopt and act on these perspectives can vary in degree. For example, we can develop our capacity to adopt more of a prescriptive stance — e.g. to reflect on our values and to consider the best path going forward. Similarly, we can increase our ability to act from such a values-based stance, thereby increasing our moral agency. Hence, these perspectives and capacities are not simply there or not in some binary sense, and they are not fixed. We can actively cultivate them, and we arguably have good reason to do so.

These points notwithstanding, some may object that there is a fundamental tension to be found in the contrasting perspectives outlined above, and that there are some contrasting perspectives that we cannot legitimately and consistently hold. I will explore this core tension below.

The Core Tension: One vs. Multiple Possibilities

While there are some tensions to be found between each of the general perspectives listed earlier, these tensions are not necessarily so strong and explicit. Where there is a strong tension is when it comes to the following more specific perspectives, or assumptions: (1) assuming that determinism is true, in the sense that there is only one physically possible outcome from any total state of the universe, and (2) assuming that there are multiple possible outcomes that are truly open to us. I believe this is the core tension for many people who are wrestling with the problem of free will.

Some might seek to deflate this tension with the statement that “determinism does not imply fatalism”, meaning that determinism does not imply that we are steered by fate to end up with the same outcome even if we act in different ways. This statement is true, but it does not clearly address the core tension above. If we assume that there is only one total outcome that is physically possible, then this seems inconsistent with at the same time assuming that there are multiple outcomes that are open to us, at least without further clarification. And the latter is an assumption that we seemingly all have to make when we consider and choose between different options — and arguably when we inhabit any broadly “active” perspective.

Of course, one could compartmentalize one’s beliefs and say that we at one level have our purely descriptive and ontological beliefs, while we at another level have our more “active” and decision-related beliefs. If these levels are sufficiently differentiated, one might at the “passive” level believe that there is only one ontologically possible future outcome, yet at the “active” level believe that we have multiple ex-ante possibilities — possibilities that we perceive to be open to us. (These could also be called “epistemic possibilities” or “possibilities in expectation”.)

Something akin to this two-level approach seems common among people who have thought a lot about the subject of free will — both among those who affirm and deny “free will” — even if the two-level approach is only adopted implicitly (see e.g. Harris, 2012, pp. 16, 39; 2013; Dennett, 2014; Tomasik, 2014; Strawson, 2022).

Yet it nevertheless seems rare to see direct and explicit attempts at addressing this core tension — that is, attempts at coherently reconciling a “passive” perspective that may involve one future possibility with an “active” perspective that involves multiple future possibilities. I believe it would be helpful if this core tension were generally addressed more directly by those who discuss the problem of free will.

Two Ways to Resolve the Core Tension

There are at least two ways to resolve the core tension described above: an ontological and an epistemic one. These resolutions are not in conflict — we can consistently endorse both and they are arguably complementary.

The Ontological Resolution: Total vs. Relative Perspectives

The central move of the ontological resolution is to distinguish two levels at which we can talk about possibilities. Broadly speaking, there is the total level, which pertains to the entire universe, and there is the relative level, which pertains to some subset of the universe.

For example, at the relative level, we may place a boundary around a particular agent and thus partition the world in two: the agent and the world external to that agent, where the agent is concerned with possibilities available in the external world.

The agent in question can be construed in many ways. It could be a small subsystem within a brain, or it could be a large group of individuals with shared aims. How exactly we construe the agent is not important here.

The point of the ontological resolution is that the truth about possibilities can differ depending on whether we are talking about the total or the relative level. In particular, it can both be true that there is one possible outcome at the total level and that there are many possibilities that are truly open to the agent at the relative level, in the sense that the external world fully permits those possibilities.

Note that this resolution does not rely on merely epistemic possibilities: the possibilities of the external world are genuine possibilities whose realization depends on what the agent does. Indeed, these possibilities are arguably what our epistemic or ex-ante possibilities track to the degree they are well-calibrated. In this sense, we can have genuine ontological possibilities available to us even if the total universe is fully deterministic — that is, fully determined by the external world plus our choices.

This enables the reconciliation of two seemingly opposed perspectives: the universe can be wholly deterministic while we are nevertheless determining actors who choose among genuine possibilities.

The Epistemic Resolution: Uncertainty About Possibilities

The epistemic approach practically reconciles the following contrasting perspectives:

Unitary openness: There is one possible future at the total level, but agents can still choose among genuine possibilities.
Plural openness: There are multiple possible futures at the total level, and agents can choose among these possibilities.

Proponents of plural openness might object that unitary openness seems internally inconsistent, despite the distinction between total and relative levels. However, the epistemic resolution does not require us to settle this debate. Instead, it resolves the issue and practically reconciles these perspectives based on our uncertainty. In particular, when it comes to the question of ontological possibilities at the total level, we have reason to assign a non-zero probability both to there being one possible future and to there being multiple possible futures.

This uncertain stance seems to be the most defensible one for the simple reason that we do not know what is true regarding ontological possibilities at the total level, and there are reasons to think that we cannot know (see e.g. Vinding, 2012, ch. 2). There are probably not many who outright deny this uncertainty; the issue is more whether this uncertainty and its potential role in practically reconciling the two views above are explicitly acknowledged.

The uncertain stance is compatible with each of the perspectives outlined above. Proponents of the unitary view may still hold that there is most likely one possible future at the total level, and they would maintain that we can choose among genuine possibilities regardless. Likewise, proponents of the plural view would find no contradiction in this stance of uncertainty: by their lights, the non-zero probability of multiple possible futures at the total level makes it consistent and practically justified to assume that we can choose among genuine possibilities (cf. “Ontological Possibilities and the Meaningfulness of Ethics”).

In short, proponents of these competing views can broadly agree on these key substantive points, including the point that we can legitimately assume genuine possibilities in our decision-making.

Conclusion

Problems relating to free will often appear intractable because we see a strong conflict between different perspectives: the passive view of a cause-and-effect universe and the active view of an agent choosing among multiple possibilities. Yet these perspectives can be reconciled.

Whether we resolve the tension through the ontological distinction between total and relative levels, or through the admission of epistemic uncertainty, the result is the same: we are practically justified in assuming that multiple possibilities are open to us. We need not reject the scientific worldview to legitimate our role as agents. This insight allows us to set aside any paralyzing concern that our choices are somehow illusory and instead focus on using our active and prescriptive capacities to create a better future.

September 11, 2024

Thinking of Consciousness as Waves

First written: Dec 14, 2018, Last update: Jan 2, 2019.

How can we think about the relationship between the conscious and the physical? In this essay, I wish to propose a way of thinking about it that might be fruitful and surprisingly intuitive, namely to think of consciousness as waves.

The idea is quite simple: one kind of conscious experience corresponds to, or rather conforms to description in terms of, one kind of wave. And by combining different kinds of waves, we can obtain an experience with many different properties in one.

It should be noted that I in this post merely refer to waves in an abstract sense to illustrate a general point. That is, I do not refer to electromagnetic waves in particular (as some theories of consciousness do), nor to quantum waves (as other theories do), nor to any other particular kind of wave (such as Selen Atasoy’s so-called connectome-specific harmonic waves*). The point here is not what kind of wave, or indeed which physical state in general, mediates different states of consciousness. The point is merely to devise a metaphor that can render intuitive the seemingly unintuitive, namely: how can we get something complex and multifaceted from something very simple without having anything seemingly spooky or strange, such as strong emergence, in between? In particular, how can we say that brains mediate conscious experience without saying that, say, electrons mediate conscious experience? I believe thinking about consciousness in terms of waves can help dissolve this confusion.

The magic of waves is that we can produce (or to an arbitrary level of precision approximate) any kind of complex, multifaceted wave by adding simple sine waves together.

In this way, it is possible, for instance, to decompose any recorded song — itself a complex, multifaceted wave — into simple, tedious-sounding sine waves. Each resulting sine wave can be said to comprise an aspect of the song, yet not in any recognizable way. The whole song is in fact a sum of such waves, not in a strange way that implies strong emergence, but merely in a complicated, composite way.

Another way to think about waves that can help us think more clearly about emergent complexity is to think of a wave that is very small in both amplitude and duration. If this were a sound wave, it would be an extremely short-lived, extremely low-volume sound. On a visual representation of an entire song file, this sound would look more akin to a dot than a wave.

And such simple sound waves can also be put together so as to create a song (for instance, one can take the sine waves obtained by decomposing a song and then chop them into smaller bits and decrease their amplitude). It will just, to make a song, take a very great number of such small waves superimposed (if the song is to be loud enough to hear) and in succession (if the song is to last for more than a split-second).

The deeper point here is that waves are waves, no matter how small or simple, large or complex. Yet not all waves are what we would recognize as music. Similarly, even if all physical states are phenomenal in the broadest sense, this does not imply that they are conscious in the sense of being an ordered, multifaceted whole. Unfortunately, we do not as yet have good, analogous terms for “sound” and “music” in the phenomenal realm — perhaps we could use “phenomenality” and “consciousness”, respectively?

The problem is indeed that we are limited by language, in that the word “conscious” usually only connotes an ordered, composite mind rather than the property of phenomenality in the most general sense. Consequently, if we think all that exists is either music or non-sound, metaphorically speaking, we are bound to be confused. But if we instead expand our vocabulary, our confusion can, I think, be readily dissolved. If we think of the phenomenality of the simplest physical systems as being nothing like consciousness in the usual sense of a composite mind but rather as a state of hyper-crude phenomenality — i.e. “phenomenal noise” that is nothing like a song but more akin to a low, short-lived sound, and yet unimaginably more crude still — the problem of consciousness seems to become less confusing.

Avoiding Confusion Due to Fuzziness

A more specific point of confusion the wave metaphor can help us dissolve is the notion that consciousness is so fuzzy a category that it in fact does not really exist, just like tables and chairs do not really exist. As I have argued elsewhere, I think this is a non sequitur. The fact that the categories of tables and chairs are themselves fuzzy does not imply that the physical properties of the objects to which we refer with these labels are inexact, let alone non-existent. The objects have the physical properties they have regardless of how we label them. Or, to continue the analogy to waves above, and songs in particular: although there is ambiguity about what counts as a song, this does not imply that we cannot speak in precise, factual terms about the properties of a given song — for instance, whether a given song contains a 440 Hz tone.

Similarly, the fact that consciousness, as in “an ordered, composite mind”, is a fuzzy category (after all, what counts as ordered? Do psychotic states? Fleeting dreams?) does not imply that any given phenomenal state we refer to with this term does not have exact and clearly identifiable phenomenal properties — e.g. an experience of the color red or the sensation of fear; properties that exist regardless of how outside observers choose to label them.

And although our labels for categorizing particular phenomenal states themselves tend to be fuzzy to some extent — e.g. which part of the spectrum below counts as red? — this does not imply that we cannot distinguish between different states, nor that we cannot draw any clear boundaries. For instance, we can clearly distinguish between the blue and the red zones respectively on the illustration below despite its gradation.

Just as we can point toward a confined range of wavelengths that induce an experience of (some kind of) red in most people upon hitting their retinas, we can also, in principle, point to a range of physical states that mediate specific phenomenal states. This includes the phenomenal states we call suffering, with the fuzziness of what counts as suffering contained within and near the bounds of this range, while the physical states outside this range, especially those far away, do not mediate suffering, cf. the non-red range in the illustration above.

Thus, by analogy to how we can have precise descriptions of the properties of a song, even though an exact definition of what counts as a song escapes us, there is no reason why we should not be able to speak in factual and precise terms about the phenomenal aspects of a mind and its physical signatures, including the “red range” of wavelengths that constitute phenomenal suffering.

* Note that these seemingly different kinds of waves and theories of consciousness can be identical, since connectome-specific harmonic waves could turn out to be coherent waves in the electromagnetic quantum field, as would seem suggested by a hypothesis known as quantum brain dynamics (I do not necessarily endorse this particular hypothesis).

December 14, 2018

Explaining Existence

First written: Aug 2018, Last update: Aug 2023

“Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is.”

(“Nicht wie die Welt ist, ist das Mystische, sondern dass sie ist.”)

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

Why is there something rather than nothing? How can we explain the fact of existence?

This most fundamental question may be worth pondering for various reasons. Such pondering may help sharpen our thinking about the nature of the world, our place within it, and the scope of our understanding. It may also lead us to some significant answers to the question itself.

Is Non-Existence Coherent?

I would argue that the key to (dis)solving this mystery lies in questioning the coherence of the idea that there could be nothing in the first place — the notion that non-existence could exist or be the case. For existing is, after all, exactly what non-existence, by definition, does not. Non-being, by definition, cannot be. Yet, in asking why there is not nothing, we are indeed somehow imagining that it could.

To say that non-being could be is, I submit, to contradict the principle of non-contradiction, as one then asks for something, or rather “nothing”, to both be and not be at the same time.

As David Pearce writes:

One can apparently state the epistemic possibility of nothing having existed rather than something. But it’s unclear how it could make cognitive sense to talk of the epistemic possibility of nothing-or-other having even been the case. For the notion of something-or-other being the case is about as conceptually primitive as one can get. For just what is the (supposedly non-self-refuting) alternative with which one would be contrasting the generic notion of existence – in the sense of something-or-other being the case – that we have at present? The notion doesn’t seem to make any sense. It’s self-stultifying.

“Why Does Anything Exist“, sec. 9.

Philosopher Bede Rundle made a similar point: “We cannot conceive of there being nothing, but only of nothing being this or that, and that is a use of ‘nothing’ that presupposes there being something.” (p. 113)

Furthermore, even if we were to grant that non-existence could be the case, we would still seemingly end up with the conclusion that it cannot. For if non-existence were the case, then its being the case would itself be a truth, which implies that this truth would at least (also) exist. And yet this truth is not nothing in the strictest sense. In other words, the hypothetical assumption of non-existence obtaining itself appears to imply the existence of (more of) something. And such a supposedly empty state would in fact imply other properties as well, such as the property of being free from contradictions (genuine contradictions could not exist in any possible state of existence, much less one that is purportedly empty). Thus, even the notion of a state with absolutely no properties other than its mere being appears incoherent.

This may hint at an answer as to why there is something rather than nothing: the alternative is simply incoherent, and hence logically impossible. Only “something” could conceivably be the case.

In other words, if we hold that the nature of an explanation is to show why one epistemic possibility obtains over another, and if we establish that the existence of nothing is incoherent and hence not an epistemic possibility (let alone an ontological possibility), meaning that existence is the only epistemic possibility there is, then we have explained existence according to this conception of an explanation.

Thus, contra Wittgenstein, one may argue that the real mystery to explain is indeed how the world is, not that it is — to explain which properties the world has, not that it has any.

Necessity and Contingency

Another way to realize that there could not possibly be nothing, even if we were to assume that the notion is coherent, is to think in terms of necessary and contingent facts (following the reasoning of Timothy O’Connor found here). For the suggestion that there might have been nothing essentially amounts to the claim that existence might merely be a contingent rather than a necessary fact. Yet the fact that we are here proves that existence was, at the very least, a possibility. In other words, the reality of (at least) the possibility of existence is undeniable. And yet the reality of the possibility of existence is not nothing. It is, in fact, something. Thus, even if we assume that the fact of existence is merely contingent, we still end up with the conclusion that it is in fact necessary. The existence of the mere possibility of existence necessarily implies, indeed amounts to, existence in full, and hence the suggestion that existence may merely be contingent, and that there could instead have been absolutely nothing, is revealed to be impossible in this way as well.

One can use a similar contingency-versus-necessity argument to argue for the necessity of physical existence in particular (without assuming that physical existence is coterminous with existence in general). For the claim that the non-existence of the physical world could have obtained likewise amounts to claiming that its existence is merely a contingent fact: a possibility that could have not obtained. Yet the fact that the physical world does exist proves that its existence was at least a possibility. Thus, by this reasoning, there must necessarily exist (at least) a potential for the physical world as we know it to emerge. And yet such a potential is not nothing, nor is it non-physical proper — at least not in the widest sense of the term “physical”, which includes not only physical actualities but also physical potentials. In other words, the observed fact of physical existence implies the necessity of physical existence, at least in a broad, “potential-inclusive” sense of the term.

One may object that the notions of contingency and necessity ultimately do not make sense, or that they are just human ideas that we cannot derive deep metaphysical truths from. Yet the notion of contingency is exactly what a claim such as “physical reality might not have been” itself rests upon. So if these terms and the argument above make no sense or have no bearing on the actual nature of reality, then neither does the problem that the argument is trying to address.

No Purpose or Reason Behind Existence, Only Within

The all-inclusive nature of existence implies that, just as there cannot be a mechanism or principle that lies behind or beyond existence, there could not be a reason or purpose behind it either, since behind and beyond existence lies only that which does not exist. Hence there could not possibly be an ultimate purpose behind our being here.

Yet this by no means implies, contrary to what may naturally be supposed, that reasons and purposes, of the most real and significant kinds, do not exist within existence. Indeed, it is obvious that they do. For instance, the capacity to pursue purposes and to act on reasons has clearly emerged over the course of evolution. Beyond that, it is exceedingly plausible, at least to me, that some states of the world — especially states of extreme suffering — are worse than others. Therefore, I would argue, we have good reason to act so as to minimize the occurrence of such states, and to work to create a better world. This seems to me our highest purpose.

August 16, 2018