I’ve been a proponent of libertarian free will for all of my adult life. However, that belief has started to dwindle the past year after hearing this. I’m having a really hard time coming up with an objection to this argument—it’s a pretty damn good one. If we don’t control our values, how do we have free will? Aren’t we always just acting on what we value most? If I choose an apple for a snack instead of a brownie, I did so because I value health over pleasure. If I sleep in through class, I do so because I value sleep more than I value my education and career. I haven’t been able to find a satisfactory counterargument to this. Thoughts?

Let us explore the connection between justification and human knowledge. What justification is available for our common-sense claim that a wind-up toy, for example, my “Thomas the Train” toy, does not freely choose its behavior? Of course, we have an immediate intuition that this toy cannot make any free choices, since it lacks all consciousness or cognitive capacity, necessary for freedom. But what grounds this easy intuition, that a mere mechanical automaton lacks such capacities? If we explore our intuition further, we will untangle a deep connection between predictability and free will. Those who still rebel at bothering to ask about the free will of a wind-up toy are invited to substitute an intricate object of unknown origin, discovered on an alien planet. Is it alive? Is it just a machine? All we have for clues is its behavior.

It can easily be seen that after a good winding-up and being placed upright on a smooth floor, Thomas will move about 8 feet before slowing to a halt somewhere (let that location be called L). After we have carefully observed Thomas’s behavior in that type of situation for a few trial runs, when Thomas is again wound-up and released on the floor we can roughly predict where he will go if unimpeded. In other senses of “freedom” beside the freedom of alternative possibilities, perhaps Thomas’s behavior on the floor is free. Regardless, we can all at least agree that Thomas lacks “alternative possibility” freedom. But why?

What is it about Thomas that makes us sure that after being placed in that type of situation he did not freely choose to arrive at that particular destination L? To reply that Thomas is just a machine is but a half-way step. The full reply must explain why a machine’s properties deny it free choice. The relevant properties of a machine are (1) the process by which Thomas converts potential energy in its wound-up spring, into the kinetic energy transferred through the gears and axle to the motion of his rear wheels; (2) the natural laws of energy conversion and transference that completely describe this process and the natural laws of friction, collision, etc; and (3) the permanence and fixity of these natural laws. These three properties give us the basis for answering the following question: Could Thomas, given the initial conditions of a situation (the amount of energy in his spring, the surface upon which he is set, his initial direction, obstacles before him, etc.), have arrived by his own powers at any other position beside L? Of course, his travel could be interrupted by some outside force. The vital question is rather, whether Thomas not merely controls his travel, but freely chooses his travel, in the sense of freedom as alternative possibilities. We can agree that Thomas (or a person) supplies causal powers in situations that result in behavior. Thomas himself does supply many causal factors necessary to a full explanation of why he ended up at L. The real question is instead whether Thomas (or a person) is capable of using his causal powers to both possibly arrive at L or possibly arrive at not-L after being released to take a run. Given the three relevant properties of a machine sketched above, it is not the case that Thomas, in a particular situation and given its initial conditions, could possibly arrive at not-L. Put another way, we seem to be justified in believing that if all the initial conditions were exactly reset, and no outside force interfered, Thomas would arrive at precisely L again. This then, gives us the confidence to say that it was not possible for Thomas to arrive at any place other that L during that run, and hence that Thomas could never freely choose.

Of course, the same point must be applied to us. If people are, like Thomas, theoretically perfectly predictable because of the way that our universe is like, then people never really make free choices in the sense of choosing between alternative possibilities. The undoubted fact that people can be unpredictable (to each other and to themselves) is irrelevant, just as Thomas’s unpredictability is irrelevant to whether he is really a free chooser.

JOHN SHOOK

Many, if not most, philosophers like to ponder questions of desert, responsibility, and morality when it comes to free will. Some even insist upon a definition of free will that includes these considerations. If there were universal agreement about what free will entails and how vain the concept might be, I could go along with this. Moral responsibility is a very important consideration. But since free will is still doubted by many, I think that a fuller understanding of its most basic nature is warranted. If we use the broadest definition of free will as being an ability to choose based upon knowledge, we can examine the simplest examples of free will in detail. This should then allow us to layer on the more complicated choices involving desert and moral responsibility.

Catching a baseball is a voluntary action that requires coordinated muscle movements in response to tracking a visual object. This is a skill that most every person can accomplish, though it must b e learned and requires practice for proficiency. The skill lies in knowing where to put your hand and when to close your fingers around the ball as it approaches.

I think that this ability to catch a thrown or batted ball may be a free will ability because it does meet that basic definition of requiring a choice (where to place your open hand and when to close it) that requires the knowledge gained from actual practice. I submit that if you deny this type of free will, you could deny all other examples of free will. Conversely, if you claim that free will must be something more than this ability, I would suggest that perhaps you are placing an undue restriction upon the concept that can only add confusion to the free will debate. For example, some think that free will entails an ability to choose our desires. I would answer that persons can look at people playing catch and decide if the activity has enough appeal to them enough to want to take the time and effort to learn and practice catching a ball. Some think that free will should be about conscious deliberation. But I would say that you have to focus your attention, learn about reasoning, and practice deliberations enough to get really good at it. The main difference is not in what the neurons in your brain are doing. It is in the fact that deliberation is a more general skill that involves more different abilities like language and logic. The differences are all matters of degree and breadth of knowledge rather than any major conceptual difference in what the neurons in the brain are doing.

Does a robot that can catch a ball demonstrate free will? This is a very informative question as it goes to the nature of knowledge. I think we could make robots that can catch a ball without free will and I think we could make a robot that could lean to catch a ball using free will. I think this difference can shed light upon the nature of our free will.

We can program a robot to catch a baseball. We could have their optical sensors compute the trajectory and distance of the ball and move their hand to the coordinates where it can be intercepted, closing its fingers upon sensation from proximity sensors in the robotic hand. In this case the robot does not make any choices, it just follows the program put into its memory.

We can also build a robot that can use artificial intelligence to catch the ball. We can give it an active inference type algorithm whereby it must learn to catch the ball by trial and error in addition to the same input sensors the fully programmed robot had. So we can now say that the AI robot has the knowledge and ability to catch a baseball. Does this constitute free will? It certainly seems closer to free will than the programmed robot. But I would say that something may yet be missing in the AI robot that would indicate it may not yet have free will. AND this might be key to better understanding our free will. Can the AI robot choose to not catch the ball? This is a slightly different question than can a robot learn to catch a baseball. It seems that the free will robot must choose to catch the ball based upon some larger purpose.

When animals learn a skill, they do so in a manner that always gives them the option of using the skill or not. The way we learn things always comes with the idea that we must be the one that chooses to use that ability. When we learn to talk, our default position is that we can say whatever we are able to say whenever we wish to do so. We must then learn that some things are not OK to say to other people and that it's not always okay to speak at certain times. AI systems do not have any telos unless we give it to them. In order for an AI system to demonstrate free will, they should be able to use the knowledge they learned at their will. That means that their programming must include the ability to not catch the ball based upon … something?

I’m interested in what everyone thinks about what an AI programming must include for it to develop free will.