Free Will, Pride, Remorse
Free will is a fallacy. Existing as separate entities from our bodies and from nature is a superficial, self-centered idea. There is no conscious decision making. Our consciousness only bears witness to brain’s processed outputs of environmental inputs. In the light of this assertion, pride and remorse will fall viciously.
A hypothetical reverse engineering can support this assertion. Suppose one constructs her/his own mind. This means that there exists an entity which must be able to manipulate our brain, followed by brain cells, neurons, atoms, and quarks. Why? Because our consciousness must cause a change in the momentary state of our brains. And the change can only occur on matter — what we are made of — and energy. I am not talking about the energy that you send to the universe, I am talking about electromagnetic radiation and electricity. So any thought arising in my brain, from the possible outcomes of the date I have in the evening, to the dilemma I feel towards drinking a cup of coffee or tea, must be triggered from somewhere which remains unexplored.
Maybe our strongest candidate for this paradox is the prefrontal cortex, which is being held accountable for a lot of personality traits. You may have heard of the Lobotomy Operation which is a psychosurgery that turns people into vegetables (lobotomy is applied to prefrontal cortex). Even if prefrontal cortex can manipulate other parts of the brain, what manipulates the prefrontal cortex itself?
The answer lies in the Occam’s Razor: The paradox is built on the assumption that free will exists. Dismissing this assumption solves the paradox. Our “conscious decisions” are the outputs of an algorithm; an algorithm forged by our surroundings: Family, friends, the culture we live in, the weather and nature around us… And the foundation of this algorithm was laid at the moment of fertilization: Genes. Algorithm changes every moment, but not by our free will, by everything apart from us. Our personality is determined by everything else but ourselves.
My favorite color is blue possibly because my father’s favorite color is blue. High tea consumption in my culture must have a great effect on my liking of tea. I play tennis instead of basketball probably partly because I am not tall enough. If I “decide” to go out for a run, the knowledge I received from my environment about running is good for health, not feeling tired or weak at that moment and the possibility of running into the beautiful girl in my neighborhood (my genes command me to appreciate female companion) are among the many reasons I end up with that decision.
What I am saying is, there is nothing but our genes and our environment. We do not have a say in being who we are, just like an ant, a sparrow, or a rhino. Consciousness and free will are two different things.
For more refined arguments against free will: The Case Against Freewill by Sam Harris.
What Does Inexistence of Freewill Mean?
I believe understanding the absence of free will profoundly to be crucial. Even though thinking over this idea is not our decision, and our consciousness is only a witness to this process, reading these lines will hopefully trigger (as an input from the environment) your brain to evaluate the possible effects of a world without free will and thus produces a change in the attitude as an outcome.
As only a conscious witness to my subconscious outputs, I can take no credit for who I am. There is no difference in being proud of how intelligent I am, my achievements in academia or career and my hair color. A flamingo’s diet grants it its pink feathers while attending a prestigious school and having geeky parents possibly result in a successful career.
This may sound frustrating but bear with me. Pride is not constructive. Yes, it pumps up self-esteem among possible other positive effects. It also causes one to construct a glorified vision of one’s self. “I am a doctor so I must be smart”. “My friends complimented to my pepper steak so I must be good at cooking”. Any attempt to disrupt this illusion causes an instant, unconstructive reaction. We adopt this bigoted behavior; dismiss and deny any criticism about it. If you cannot take criticism, you cannot make progress.
The first step in solving a problem is recognizing there is one.
In a world without free fill, in a world where I cannot take credit for my strengths, feeling insecure about my weaknesses suddenly becomes irrelevant. Every criticism becomes an opportunity to grow, to improve and to debug any bugs you may have in your ideas and thoughts. Being wrong starts to not make you feel bad. Accepting your mistakes gains you immense respect in the eyes of others (surely if you learn from them). And being able to take criticism, helps people to be a lot more honest with you.
Regret and Remorse
I will not ease into this. I will jump into the heart of conscience with a possibly controversial example. You go out with your friends, drink few glasses of scotch, have a wonderful time and it is time to go home. You think to yourself, “I am not as sober as a judge right now but I don’t want to pay for a cab and I surely can drive home”. You start the car, get sleepy on the way and go over the sidewalk, passing over 17 years old girl, crushing her bones and resulting in her death. There is no silver lining to this. You just killed a young person because of a wrong decision you made a few minutes ago. But wait, we said there was no conscious decision making involved. We were only witnessing to our brain’s outputs. You did not cause any change in the electrical transmission in your brain, right? So who is to blame?
A Change in the Attitude
You did not choose your genes, nor your parents. You did not choose to be born where you did. You did not choose to be lactose-intolerant, handsome or ugly. And you did not choose to get into that car that night. That was the output of your brain in that exact situation. A million times you mimic the exact same scenario and a million times the same output will occur. If not, that is due to the randomness and uncertainty in physics, not some supernatural decision-making process that is hidden from science.
This does not mean that you are not responsible. Your brain is responsible for it, it just did not have any other option. When I stroke the keys of my keyboard, letters appear on the screen just as you going out that night, resulted in this tragedy. They are just different forms of inputs. The law will hold you accountable for it, in an attempt to preserve the order of the society. What I am saying is, that scenario was the only possible outcome. You did not choose that. What you can and should do is to learn from this or any kind of experience. When I say you can learn from this, I mean I hope your brain processes this input to act differently in similar scenarios in the future.
Feeling sad about what happened does not have to be correlated with remorse. Regret is meaningless because it assumes that you chose that while you could do otherwise.
Pride and remorse break in the absence of free will. Thus empty the stage, for much more constructive ways of thinking. Without them, the reality is clearer. No more wasting time on I’s and what if’s. Start taking criticism and acting on the current situations.
