Irreducible Freedom: Metaphysical Freedom vs. Individual Freedom

Don't ask for references, I am not writing in a professional journal of philosophy. If I was I would not be posting the article here.

The individual experiences freedom and believes that his choices and his actions are his own. He may even be an educated individual and he might acknowledge that he is composed of living tissue, cells and nerves which fire and determine his actions. But he still cannot help but feel responsible for his actions. He felt guilty when he stole his friend’s toy car in the 1^st grade, he experiences that same sense of guilt to this day even though he consciously knows that he cannot help his own actions if they are naturally determined. So why does he feel guilty if he cannot help his own actions? Hard determinists would argue that he should not feel guilty because his actions are determined and he cannot change them. He is relieved of any responsibility to change them according to the hard determinist, while the libertarians would say that the individual could have potentially done otherwise because he is a free agent. He should feel responsibility and guilt according to the libertarians.

The compatibalists on the other hand believe that the person could not have done otherwise but he is still free because he is acting in accordance with his personal motivation. Both approaches, compatibalism and libertarianism, attempt to provide a philosophical explanation and definition of free will. However both approaches fail to address the question of how choice is determined or how actions are determined by the agent. The compatibilist approach defines freedom as the freedom to act, but the approach does not go into any further detail of how freedom naturally arises. The compatibilist approach cannot explain why the individual might feel responsible for his actions, only that the individual is free as long as he acts in accordance with his motivation.

The libertarian approach is the metaphysical approach which states that freedom is incompatible with determinism. If there is freedom there must be alternative possibilities otherwise our actions are determined, and if there are alternative possibilities in freedom then freedom is incompatible with determinism. Although libertarianism sets the conditions which are sufficient for freedom it gives a very mystical and unnatural explanation for freedom. What determines choice and actions? Where do we break the chain of determinism? These questions are baffling and one cannot answered them and give a natural account of how freedom arises. Yet we still experience freedom, our experiences as individuals lead us to believe that we are free. So these philosophical arguments about the nature of freedom are either insufficient (as in the comaptibalist argument) or puzzling (as in the libertarian argument). But these arguments do not demonstrate that metaphysical freedom and individual freedom are irreducible. If they did demonstrate this irreducibility both positions would become irrelevant to our personal experiences with freedom.  In order to show this irreducibility we have to ground freedom in our experience of freedom as opposed to our freedom to act or the metaphysical nature of freedom. According to Descartes’ definition of freedom, which corresponds to the metaphysical definition of freedom, we are free agents as long as we can do otherwise when we must act under an identical set of conditions. We can ask ourselves, if time machines existed would we be able to go back in time and change our actions in the past? Would this satisfy the metaphysical/Cartesian definition of freedom?

The answer is no, it would not satisfy the Cartesian definition of freedom because when we go back in time we still have memories of that event and knowledge of our past consequences. This would certainly change the conditions because our cognition and our perception is not the same. For instance if I use a time machine to go back in time and decide to not write these words I would be doing so with the memories and past experiences of when I initially wrote these words. However when I initially wrote these words, I did not have the same memories and experiences. But with minor modifications the thought experiment does illustrate that metaphysical freedom and individual freedom are irreducible. We can imagine the following scenario.

Imagine that I could go back in time under the same set of conditions as the initial ones where my experiences and memories of the past were completely erased from my mind. If I indeed had free will I could act otherwise or if I was indeed determined then I would not do otherwise. Either way I would not know whether I acted otherwise. In order to experience doing otherwise or taking an alternative action I would have to perceive such a phenomenon because perception is necessary for experience. I would need to have the perception of acting under the same set of conditions but doing otherwise in order to experience the freedom which arises as a consequence of doing so.

But one cannot perceive his own actions under an identical set of conditions, because perception itself is one of these necessary conditions which needs to be identical, yet perception changes. To perceive identical conditions one must have first encountered these conditions previously, but the previous encounter has altered the perception of the individual in such a way that the individual is able to perceive an identical set of conditions upon the second encounter. Being that perception is one of these conditions which needs to be identical, one is never able to truly perceive an identical set of conditions because with each encounter perception is altered. On the other hand, if perception remains unaltered after the first encounter as in the thought experiment above, the individual would not be able to perceive the second encounter as identical because his perception remain unchanged. He would experience his second encounter with these conditions in the exact same way as he experienced the initial encounter. He would not have any memories or experiences of the initial encounter and if he did take an alternative action in the second encounter he would not know it and he would not be able to perceive it as an alternative action.  In other words one cannot have the perception of taking an alternative action or making an alternative choice under the same set of conditions. Therefore in my example above I would not be able to experience my own freedom even if I had it and I could do otherwise. Even if I could do otherwise or take an alternative route in my history I would never know it or I would not be able to perceive such a phenomenon because of the nature of perception and cognition.

If we cannot know or perceive that we took alternative actions, we cannot experience metaphysical freedom. This is why the debate between the libertarians and compatibalists becomes irrelevant, and we could even go further and say that the debate between free will and determinism is also irrelevant. We cannot perceive alternative possibilities,  we will never know if they truly exist and we will never know if freedom is truly compatible or incompatible with determinism. Even if alternative possibilities did exist, they would be irrelevant to how we experience and perceive freedom.

So what is this thing that we call freedom? I do not have the answer unfortunately. We experience it at the individual level, we experience being free and we know that certain things feel coercive. Getting over a drug addiction is a major triumph of one’s individual freedom. Overthrowing a dictatorial regime is an instance where we feel our actions have led to greater individual freedom.  All I can say is that we experience individual freedom but it is not reducible to metaphysical freedom.

Author's Note

Before reading this make sure you know the compatibilist and libertarian approaches to free will in philosophical literature or read up on them. I assume the reader is comfortable with the two.