Is it possible to restore the motivation lost by rejecting free will without introducing cognitive dissonance/logical fallacies?

Question

I've read in a few places that people tend to get depressed and lose motivation in life after losing their belief in free will; that even if you "know" free will does not exist, you are better off believing in it anyway, e.g. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/theres-no-such-thing-as-free-will/480750/ (sorry for the paywall). As a disbeliever in the existence of free will myself, I'd prefer not to be forced to adopt a belief system with such inherent cognitive dissonance. So I've been trying to think of ways around that ...

Thought experiment: let's start by assuming we live in a deterministic universe. We conduct an experiment where a subject is placed in a room and asked some trivia question -- a correct answer gets her a monetary reward so she has some motivation to put effort into answering correctly. We know she will answer based on the current state of the universe which includes the current state of her mind.

In this experiment we can create an alternate universe where the experiment is repeated with the exact same initial conditions / state. She will subjectively have the same experience, expend the same amount of effort, and provide the same answer.

Now let's repeat the experiment but this time we prime her with a belief that free will does not exist. Primed with this belief, she concludes she will provide the same answer whether she tries or not and ends up not expending as much effort as she otherwise would have and perhaps chooses a different answer [edit: with only this priming, she is likely (even if mistakenly so) to become fatalistic and less motivated (see similar real life experiments in the linked article)].

Finally, let's repeat the experiment one more time but this time tell her 1. free will does not exist, and 2. effort expended is directly proportional to performance on trivia questions.

1. Does the priming that effort->results have the potential to counteract the reduced effort observed in the previous experiment?
2. Do these two beliefs introduce logical fallacies / cognitive dissonance experienced by the subject?

I think (1) is true since our beliefs impact our actions and a belief that effort will get you what you want will lead the subject to expend effort. (2) is the trickier one -- I want to say no because if learning and decision-making can be considered physical processes/algorithms, the beliefs we prime her with causes her to "decide to try" in spite of her disbelief in free will; "decide to try" here being just another run of her decision-making algorithm that makes use of the knowledge that effort->results.

Answer 1

Learning vs knowing that free will doesn't exist?

The only support I've seen for the idea that people get depressed knowing that free will doesn't exist has been highly dubious. For example, trying to convince people that it doesn't exist, and then shortly afterwards asking them how they feel about it. That would be like telling a kid that Santa doesn't exist, seeing that they're sad, and then concluding that people get depressed from knowing that Santa doesn't exist. That doesn't follow. That's merely capturing the disappointment from discovering that something you thought was true isn't actually true, without it saying much about how happy someone would generally be without thinking that is true.

Similarly, there are people who conclude that God doesn't actually exist, like they thought he did, and that they won't live forever with all their friends and family, in eternal happiness without any bad things or bad people. Some such people struggle with dealing with that reality, but they tend to get over it. Many people who were always atheists didn't struggle with that, and are perfectly happy.

If anything, of all atheists who reject free will that I've heard from, giving up on religion was far more significant to them, whereas accepting that free will doesn't exist was barely noteworthy.

What's the target audience?

The above people who aren't that bothered by the non-existence of free will tend to be more scientifically-minded, and care about what's true, first and foremost, even if the truth isn't always fun. Although they also tend to enjoy learning more about how the world works (including the underlying reasons for why they are the way they are, and why they think and do the things they think and do).

If someone has little to no interest in science, philosophy or principles of rationality, I can certainly understand how learning that free will doesn't exist may be more difficult for them. But this is a philosophy site, and I might suggest not trying to convince the general public that free will doesn't exist. ... except free will ties in so heavily to justice, and morality, and education, and welfare, and religion, and mental conditions, and... So even if knowing that free will doesn't exist is unpleasant for someone, that would hopefully be tied to better positions on all the above issues.

On a related note, I would generally encourage scientific curiosity, both because science is fascinating and understanding reality is useful. If you can encourage that, i.e. get someone to want to know the underlying mechanisms of how the world works, and if they've already learnt about the underlying mechanisms of many things, it seems less likely that they'd be as bothered to learn about the underlying mechanism of how they think.

What does it mean to reject "free will"?

I think many people, especially those who accept free will, haven't really wrapped their head around what it means to reject free will.

There seems to be a common idea that free will not existing would mean you cannot make any choice whatsoever, but that's not what's being rejected by those who reject free will.

One might say that "free will" is ill-defined and possibly self-contradictory, in that we base our choices on our environment and feelings, which we don't choose. But if our environment and feelings determine our choices, then we wouldn't have libertarian free will. We've also been increasing our understanding of the brain and it's connection to our thoughts. Those who appeal to free will and a non-physical mind need to keep shrinking and shrinking their claim, as there's less and less that it can explain, as our understanding of psychology and neuroscience increases.

Rather than going down that route, we just reject the thing that doesn't seem to make sense, and which doesn't explain anything. If we want, we can just leave it there and live our lives without thinking about it, but let's keep thinking.

On the topic of being able to make choices, the non-free-will view (or one such view, at least) is merely that our choices are the result of neurons firing, which is bound by physical laws. This merely explains the underlying mechanism of our brains, and doesn't suggest that we cannot make choices (unless you definition of "choosing" is as mystical as the idea of "free will" is).

You still get to weigh up various factors, and your actions still have consequences, even if there was only ever one way you would've weighed up those factors. Consider a robot: it may be programmed to behave in a certain way, but it can still observe what's going on around it, have some internal state, and perform actions based on some rules.

My choices matter because they could increase or decrease suffering or happiness of myself or others.

In conclusion: society has attached this massive importance to the idea of "free will", even though the concept itself is poorly defined, and life without free will isn't really as different from life with free will as people might think. But if you reject free will, it may take some time to get over the disappointment of losing something you thought was important.

Answer 2

It is not possible to restore the motivation lost by rejecting free will without introducing cognitive dissonance/logical fallacies.

That is because it is not possible to reject free will without introducing cognitive dissonance/logical fallacies.

Rejection itself is an act of free will. You must choose to reject, you cannot be caused to reject.

Answer 3

As far as I can tell the only logical reason societies came up with the idea of free will was that it allowed them to punish those who committed acts that the society deemed wrong. The main fear of losing the idea of free will be that it will become harder to justify punishment. I am not sure if its true but I would imagine that those who believe in free will also believe in the concept of good and evil. This justifies punishment such as capital punishment. Those who don't believe in free will accept that there maybe reasons for the way people act that have nothing to do with good or evil. The argument that a person may experience pain or sadness as a result of giving up on the idea of free will seems like a backdoor method of arguing for free will when you are unwilling to express your true reasons. All of the above does not necessarily mean it is a good idea for society to give up on the idea of free will. The idea serves a purpose otherwise it would not have evolved in the first place. Whether its time is past or not is a bigger question.

Answer 4

This answer is a very extensive discussion of this problem: If Free Will Is Proven Illusory, Is There a Case for Suppressing the Finding?

Note the question the earlier answer was posted to, demonstrates two things:

1. It is not just anti-determinists who think that determinism vitiates motivation. The advocates of the suppression of determinism, who are actually numerous within philosophy, consider this to be settled fact. And he evidence for their point 1 was strong.

2. However, even the "rational" philosophers advocating for suppression of determinism were self-admittedly engaging in cognitive dissonance, demonstrating how easily we humans can engage in cognitive dissonance. Also, the opponent of suppression cited, was himself involved in a self contradiction in his argument 3), further illustrating how easily we humans live with cognitive dissonance.

One can reasonably infer from both sides of this debate being immersed in cognitive dissonance, that it is both very rare for ANY position not to possibly involve cognitive dissonance, and that avoiding any cognitive dissonance is an unnecessary constraint.

As an aside, our world is not determined, we know that from physics. Deterministic or stochastic universe?

Answer 5

The unfoldment of reality is a stream of serialized states. What we consider as a cause is a way in which we interpret the change; it is NOT the mechanism by which the change is performed. I want something, you want it too; if only one of us can get it, then the flow of events will be consistent, it will be seen as determinism is not violated but at the end one of us will get it.

Science is compatible with this :

... quantum mechanics, this theory being acausal in the sense that it is unable in many cases to identify the causes of actually observed effects or to predict the effects of identical causes, but arguably deterministic in some interpretations...

Determinism has a meaning inside a context, not in general : if I stop an apple from falling, do I break determinism? It's obvious that a cause exists, but the point is who caused the cause, and why.

Reality is teleological by definition.

Answer 6

Fatalism (the lack of belief in free will) may have psychological advantages, as well as drawbacks. You need to make the most of the advantages, not just focus on the drawbacks, such as this lack of positive motivation you seem to be feeling. Examples follow.

1. You are not deeming yourself responsible for 'your' mistakes and weaknesses anymore, unlike under a free will framework. You are perfectly entitled to fail and try again. That's how you learn. Fatalism dedramatises failure and neutralizes remorse.

2. Fatalism can also reassure you when you are afraid or concerned of something. You are "in the hand of God", or "in the hands of the universe". Your survival is not particularly important, since the universe may have other plans. Whatever scares you is beyond your control, so you can relax.

3. You can think of yourself as more than just a freak experiment of nature, randomly produced among zillions of other possibilities. You are not contingent anymore; instead you play a necessary part in a necessary cosmic plan. You are a part of the big whole. Maybe you didn't write your own lines (as in a free will framework) but the Universe Itself wrote your lines, 13 billion years ago. That must count for something.

Answer 7

If you have no free will, you will be just as motivated because you have no choice:-)

Seriously my happiness, pleasure of having nice things, joy watching a nice movie or reading a good book, pride of my work and achievements and all my other feelings are independent of me having free will or not. Free will or not, I will usually do what’s best for me and sometimes do stupid things. No difference.