These Words Are My Choice, Too… I’m Pretty Sure?

Today I decided to write my passion blog early. I laid down in bed, took out my laptop and began to type. I had finished my other homework, made the choice to study for a quiz, got a burrito for dinner because I was in the mood for one, and finally, after a few hours of self-imposed rehearsal, was settled to do some work. A productive day, all in all, full of my own choices and free will.

Or was it? Perhaps I was predetermined to do these things today. After all, last week I made the mistake of procrastinating on my homework; I now feel compelled, forced, to begin my new work early to avoid excess stress. Is that my own free will at work? Or is my future simply bound to what happened in the past? Am I predestined to lay here, in my messy college dorm, writing, ironically, about free will?

Unfortunate Circumstances

What makes the concept of humanity so interesting is our apparent free will—we can think about an action before we take it, and choose what best suits us. In theory, each person has their own life to lead. They can pick their friends, a career that interests them, a romantic partner that they love. All our lives, we are told that we can make whatever we choose out of our time on earth. But is that truly the case? Are we really unbound to any other influence, allowed to do anything we pick? Consider a person born into the rural American south, on a farm. They will be raised on the farm, grow up planting crops and harvesting come the season. When they enter adulthood, they may not know any other path than farming. They may like it, dislike it, whatever the case may be: but most likely, if that is all that person knows, they will choose to farm as their own profession when they are older. Similarly, a child may grow up in a religious household, and remain religious when they are older. They did not have a choice to be born into a religious household. They may decide to keep the religion on their own—but the fact remains, the circumstances they were born into shaped who they became, and thus influenced the choices that they were willing to make.

So does circumstance limit free will? It would certainly seem so. A person who is born to excessive money, for example, will have an objectively different life than a person born with nothing to their name, no matter what choices each may make. Circumstance matters. It frames how decisions are made. Because of a person’s background, they will be predisposed to certain decisions. This would render free will null and void.

Born Unchangeable?

Similarly, and equally disheartening, genetics seem to affect many different characteristics and predispositions. Temperament in personality, for example, is controlled by many different genes; a person can also be inclined to musical talent, or be gifted with an athlete’s body. Those traits, when expressed in real life, would possibly push someone towards one career over another. Granted, a predisposition does not mean a person is forever locked into their genetic lottery. Certainly work and effort—free will!—change how a person’s life may play out. And likes and dislikes are just another part of a person’s complexity. A man may be built like a runner and hate running, so he chooses never to do it. But it does not change the fact that genetics, as cultural background, serve to place us into a sort of “range” of possibility. This is, I think, an accurate representation of just how much free will we have in our lifetime.

Framing A Lifetime

Consider. A person is born, relatively average. They have a good temperament and are predisposed to be friendly and outgoing; their “range,” per say, starts at a neutral level, but could reach a high and very social peak if the right conditions and choices are made within a person’s life. Similarly, this person is of average athletic predisposition. Their metaphorical range does not go all the way to the top, but this person has the potential to be a decent athlete if they put in the work. They were also born into a religious family; they are given the choice when they are older to shed that identity, or choose to keep it. That decision, that choice that they had to make, was ironically forced upon them due to circumstance.

This metaphorical person is given a framework of how their life may go. There are certain unavoidable restrictions placed upon their free will: genetic personality influences, cultural pressures, limiting outside influences. But within this symbolic range or framework, there is certainly room to wiggle. This person could choose to go to the gym each day, for example. That would lower their risk for heart issues, possibly granting them a longer life.

Free will does not seem absolute, at least to me. I see it as a kind of framework. There is a set beginning and end to our lives. There are certain things we are just not capable of, no matter how hard we try. But those things that we do have control over? They still matter. They can improve your quality of life or damage it—perhaps just not in the grand way that media or movies tend to represent it. So the only thing there is to do is to go out there and live your best life. Nothing’s stopping you.

Are We Featherless Bipeds?

Philosophy has many angles. Everything on this blog so far has been concerned with how a person should act, exploring some schools of thought concerning the most “moral” way a person should approach a situation. But philosophy goes deeper than that; it does not also ask the question of how we should act, but rather, how do we figure out who we are? What defines a human?

The ancient Greeks debated this topic feverishly. Plato famously attempted to define a man, using references from his mentor Socrates. He settled on a scientific definition, naming man a “featherless biped,” two characteristics that distinguished humanity from other animals. In a humorous scene, Diogenes the Cynic, hearing Plato’s definition, plucked a chicken in his home and brought it to one of Plato’s lectures. When Plato asserted that man was a featherless biped, Diogenes stood, brandished the bald chicken and shouted, “Behold—a man!” Plato, perhaps missing the point of Diogenes’ criticism, then continued to amend his definition to “featherless biped with flat, broad nails.”

A New Perspective

Plato considered mankind to be biological: humanity has certain genetics that separate them from animals. With new waves in thinking over time came new ways of seeing ourselves: take the famous “I think, therefore I am,” brought to mind by Descartes, that argues any person who is able to think about their own thinking must be alive. Others, religiously affiliated, may believe that a person is composed of a soul, and that the body is just a housing place for the spirit. Others still may argue that any form of intelligent life constitutes a person. Still more may fight for a definition of humanity that includes the ability to feel emotion. These questions may seem easy at first. Of course a human has different genetics than an animal; of course a person is intelligent and emotive. But these questions become muddy when you consider the ramifications. For example: would a clone, bred in a lab, be a human being? Be a person? Genetically, yes. Identical to one, in fact. But to those religious few, whose definition of a person includes a soul, a clone would not be human. What about intelligent synthetic life—AI? To a person who uses Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” to argue the concept of the self, an AI would constitute consciousness. Artificial intelligence has the capability to think, and in the future, that capability is going to grow.

The Modern AI Problem

AI is perhaps the most relevant discussion our society will have to have when answering this question. In Plato’s time, the question “who are we,” while complex, did not have these additional nuances to try and work out. There are already examples of robots and AI being aware and thinking on the spot. Just a few years ago, that was not feasible. It is not out of the realm of reason to consider that in the future, AI may advance to the point of near perfection; emulation of emotion, a synthesized, near-human body—an intelligent life form, created by man’s own hand. Or, rather, not a life form, but perhaps a being either way. If technology ever reaches that point, then the already muddy question of what is a human will become much, much more difficult to answer. People today already empathize with animals who we perceive to have intelligence; dolphins, for example, or dogs, who learn tricks and sometimes seem to act with “human” emotions. Robot “life” would be more intelligent than ourselves; so for those who use the definition of “intelligence” to constitute consciousness, then AI, arguably, would be more human than humanity. It is an interesting concept to grapple with, and surely one that society may have to come to grips with eventually.

A Hypothetical To End On

If this hasn’t gotten you thinking about the nature of yourself and your thoughts, your consciousness, then I hope this scenario will. Imagine you die. Within minutes, a copy of your body—each scar, indent, blemish, and freckle the same—is created. Your memories are also exactly the same, except for one crucial thing: you do not remember dying, nor being “reborn.” Is this hypothetical you, the second you, the same as the first? What makes you, you? Your consciousness? Your physical body? Your memories, or ability to think? Or would this new you not be the same? The nature of self is confusing, and there is no right answer. I just hope you are able to think more clearly about who you are, what you are, and why you can think about it critically at all.