Why is the word "illusion" used regarding free will, given our physics theories?

Question

In the study into free will, I've heard many people use the word "illusion" to describe free will. I think their reasoning is that since all matter behaves according to the rules of physics, people don't really have a choice in their action, and therefore the free will is just a feeling, an illusion or a mirage.

This line of thought is bewildering to me, given our knowledge of physics, and how we gradually learned that concepts that were once thought objective are actually subjective. For example, according to the special theory of relativity, two observers might disagree about the order of two events: For the first observer, event A happened before event B, while for the second observer, B happened before A. None of the two observers are suffering illusions. None of them are more correct than the other. They are both correct from their own point of view.

This is isn't easily grasped the first time you hear it, but it's been an undisputed fact for the last 100 years.

If we can accept that different observers might have such different perspectives, without using the term illusion, why is there a need to say that free will is an illusion? Can't we just say it's a different perspective, same as we do for physics?

Answer 1

1.) In the end of your question you ask whether one can solve the clash between

• our feeling of having free will

• and the causally closed worldview of physics

in the same way as the former problem of the observer dependent time order: Just taking it as a subjective effect depending on the choice of the frame of reference?

2.) I don’t expect that a solution for the mind-body problem exists at the cheap price of an analogy.

The insight that the time order of two events depends on the frame of reference follows as a result from an ingenious theory, the theory of special relativity. But in neuroscience we still do not have an elaborated theory about the mind-body interaction.

3.) Anyhow we have a well-posed research program:

Reconcile the first-person viewpoint and the third-person viewpoint: Each person feels free, but our scientific theories operate on the basis of determinism.

The problem of current research is to explain the generation of our conscious self-model (first-person viewpoint) on the basis of neuroscience (third-person viewpoint), hence as a result of information processing in the brain.

For a survey from neuroscience see

James A. Reggia: The rise of machine consciousness: Studying consciousness with computational models. Neural Networks 44 (2013) 112–131 (I can send you a copy on request.)

4.) Aside: I do not consider the indeterminism discovered on the micro-level of quantum mechanics to be relevant for explanations on the meso-cosmic level of mental processes.

Answer 2

In the physical world it appears that all known phenomena are deterministic. At a Newtonian level we see objects following Newton’s laws, and even at the quantum level we see that things we can’t predict follow statistical patterns, which strongly suggests there’s an underlying deterministic principle that we don’t know about. If we believe that consciousness is a part of the physical world then our actions must also be predictable to an observer who has infinitely precise information and unlimited computing power, and of course knows how to extrapolate future events from past events. If this is the case then although one might think that they are making a choice of their own volition, it is in fact a predetermined choice, and so it could be said that this is an illusion because the subject thinks that their choice isn’t predetermined. On the other hand, the subject may be comfortable with the idea that the choice could have been known in advance, but they made it themselves anyway.

Answer 3

Philosophy has known the difference between illusions and "difference of perspectives" for far longer than relativity theory is known.

As witnessed e.g. by the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant parable with the earliest writings dated 500 BCE.

So your introduction of theory of relativity has no value for the discussion, at all.

Philosophers will choose the word "illusion" when they mean "illusion", and they will use the word "different perspective" when they mean that.

There are diverse incompatibilist views about free will, and without knowing which one you refer to it is impossible to go into details about whether the word "illusion" fits better than other classifications. However there are definitely some models and interpretations where the term "illusion" is much more fitting than "different perspective".

Copying from wikipedia:

In his book Free Will, philosopher and neuroscientist Sam Harris argues that free will is an illusion, stating that "thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control."

People typically experience a thought that is consistent with a behavior, and then they observe themselves performing this behavior. As a result, people infer that their thoughts must have caused the observed behavior. However, Wegner has been able to manipulate people's thoughts and behaviors so as to conform to or violate the two requirements for causal inference.[197][198] Through such work, Wegner has been able to show that people often experience conscious will over behaviors that they have not, in fact, caused – and conversely, that people can be led to experience a lack of will over behaviors they did cause.

Answer 4

The idea of free will as an illusion is not a serious one worth of any deeper discussion. It is only a half-wit half-idea for a party trick.

Nobody has ever properly thought what it would actually mean. An illusion is a misinterpreted observation. Nobody has ever explained what is happening in reality while we experience this illusion, what would be a correct interpretation.

If making your own decisions is an illusion, then who is making the decisions in reality? How is this illusion projected into the minds of outside observers? If you see someone making a choice, how can you experience the same illusion? Who is making these illusions, for what purpose?

Free will is not an illusion, it is the ability to decide what you do. Your decisions control the physical actions of your muscles.

There is no concept of control in physics. You might say that your decisions cause the physical actions of your muscles, but that would not be entirely accurate. In a philosophical sense, yes, your decisions insert new causes in the causal flow of events. In a physical sense your muscle actions are caused by burning of glucose converting chemical energy to kinetic energy. Your ndecisions only control which muscles do it and when.