This essay is the first in a series on aspects of free will and consciousness, and the implications for how we live in a metacrisis that, understandably, challenges our assumptions, beliefs and emotions. In this essay, I show how the increasingly popularised view that science has disproved relative free will is actually neither true nor scientific. I then explore other forms of knowledge on the matter. Thanks, Jem (PS: this is not written by AI ;-).
Science has not proven there is no free will – almost the contrary.
In the last few years, you might have casually seen a few science magazines, or heard the commentary of a YouTuber or Tiktoker, and assumed that many people now think that science has proven there is no free will. If you have more than a passing interest, you might have noticed new books, from major publishers, which claim the matter is concluded – there is no free will and we can be grateful for it. A widely-quoted author on the topic, Robert Sapolsky states, “we are nothing more or less than cumulative biological and environmental luck, over which we had no control.”[1] Possible reasons and implications of an increase in the volume of arguments against free will is something I’ll explore in the second essay in this series on free will, consciousness and philosophy in an era of ‘metacrisis’ and societal collapse. In my book Breaking Together, I advance a freedom-based response to the predicament of humanity as an alternative to the various strands of either panicked authoritarianism or numbed disengagement. Therefore, the matter of whether freedom exists at all is rather important. In the book I included a brief discussion of the nature and existence of free will [2]. That was before the uptick in content claiming that our thoughts, feelings and actions were predetermined since the moment of the big bang (which is not a flippant summary of ‘determinism’). In response, with a series of essays, I will go deeper into the sciences, philosophy and social sciences on the matter. That is because this is not a mere intellectual and unending discussion; rather, it has very real ramifications for whether powerful people will accelerate the damage to humanity and the environment – and how we might organise ourselves for better outcomes.
In this essay I will focus on some of the basics in this field of discussion, to provide a conceptual basis for where I will go in future essays. If you make time to consider the topic (and this one is a half hour read), it can become deeply fascinating and enjoyable to discuss with friends, if they are open to existential questions. With busy routines and religious or scientific dogmas getting in the way, not everyone is open to deep discussion, but it is worth the risk to find out who is up for such a chat. So, after reading this essay, I hope you share it with someone ahead of discussing this topic with them.
Let’s start with some essentials. If we think that there is free will in each of us that means we think that some of our feelings, thoughts and actions are not entirely predetermined or controlled by internal or external forces. That is a belief in the existence of relative free will. It is not the belief we are autonomous in every feeling, thought or action, or that there are not major influences on most of those, and therefore probabilities to be observed. With such a perspective, we can welcome the insights on how biological and cultural factors shape many of our decisions, as it helps us to become more aware of how many of our behaviours are pre-programmed or habituated, and thus we can be more conscious about how we choose to live – how we exert our free will. To leap from knowing that your DNA, social upbringing, or type of breakfast this morning, all help shape whether you will finish reading this sentence, to asserting that there is no free will at all, is like discovering that some aspects of music can be explained mathematically to then assert that there is nothing other than maths to music. Relishing a single explanation that seems to remove ambiguity can reflect a desire for a feeling of safety through simple maps and models of reality. However, it is also possible to remain curious about existential topics like this one, and assess various forms of evidence and argumentation, as I will try to do in this essay.
We can be open and curious, instead of dogmatic, about the aspect of what or who we are that can make decisions that aren’t either entirely random or purely determined by internal or external factors. Some words used for this aspect of us include ‘self’, ‘consciousness’ and ‘soul’ – and people have different ideas about what these might be. There is an understandable dislike of many of the various religious, or just vague, conceptualisations of this phenomenon that leads many people to wish to dismiss free will as soon as possible. However, just because there are illogical or unhelpful concepts in this area is not reason for ignoring it. Like many before me, I have concluded that our ability to conceptualise and explain this aspect of ourselves is inescapably insufficient. However, we can attempt to point towards it, and towards the experiences of consciousness that reveal its existence. That is important to attempt, as the limits of our ability to conceptualise and explain does not determine whether an aspect of reality is significant to our lives or not. The nature of this aspect of who we are that is neither random nor fully determined is something we will return to later in the essay. Before that, let’s look more closely at some of the views coming from people who claim a scientific approach.
It should not be controversial to state that modern societies have an intelligentsia that is dominated by ‘Scientism’. That means people look to the natural sciences for explanations of all kinds of phenomena, including the personal to societal. That has been happening with the matter of free will, and whether it exists. When engaging with this matter, some scientists move beyond their particular scientific field to take in other types of knowledge, but their foothold in the discussion comes from their scientific specialism and that shapes how they explore beyond it. That means they can favour reductionist and determinist explanations, and I have found that they therefore overlook or misconstrue insights from psychology, sociology, and philosophy.
Within natural science there is a widely-shared assumption that the universe is mechanical, where everything has a physical cause, unless it is purely random. Therefore, natural scientists can claim that physics explains chemistry, which explains biology, which explains psychology, which explains society. This perspective is called ‘determinism’. The implication is that you are considering this issue right now because of how the interactions of particles, waves and fields produced patterns that determined everything until this moment in your life. Many scientists make this claim as both self-evident (an observational truth) and essential to scientific method, so therefore claim that the burden of proof for their determinist speculations is not on them.
However, determinism is neither essential for scientific method nor objectively self-evident. It is not essential for scientific method because that method relies on measurement, repeatability and falsifiability of claims, not an assumption that life is inherently and universally clockwork. Determinism is not self-evident, or an objective truth, for at least four clear reasons. First, we are unable to mathematically represent complex interactions exactly nor to project future interactions without dividing the multiplicity of interactions into binary relationships and calculating each one separately before the next. That is the so-called N-Body problem. That also means we can’t exactly ‘see’ the supposed mechanistic reality with our models. Second, very tiny changes in initial starting conditions can make massive differences to outcomes and therefore we can’t make long term predictions (as described by chaos theory). When determinists do make projections about outcomes, many don’t turn out to be true, but they refuse the implication from normal scientific reasoning that such results falsify their meta-theory of determinism. Third, the recognition of the existence of randomness alongside supposed mechanistic processes challenges the idea that the universe runs only by fully-determined processes. Claims that it is only apparent randomness, which arise from deterministic causes, are not verifiable for most instances. Fourth, quantum experiments reveal particle behaviours that defy assumptions about linear time (such as the latest quantum research on time), physical separation (quantum particle entanglement), and the unidirectional quality to perception (the double slits experiment). In summary: determinism is typically presented as observational truth, but in reality, it’s a belief about how the universe works.
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Even if we wished to retain a model of the whole universe, world, society and individuals as functioning like machines of interacting parts, that view doesn’t require that we see ‘consciousness’ as an illusion produced by those interacting parts and therefore not capable of any true volition. Instead, the complexity of the machinery could be regarded as creating the ‘emergent property’ of various levels and forms of consciousness (patterned matter and energy), that enable the organism to harness randomness for outcomes, with varying degrees of awareness of that process. The emergent property of consciousness could be regarded as a capability rather than an illusion. However, we don’t need to regard the ‘machinery’ of the universe as ‘dead’ like the machines and computers we create (which are a tiny part of reality) without there being forms of consciousness within it, across it, and even prior to that ‘machinery’. Instead, we can be curious about what forms of consciousness might be occurring within, across and prior to the wet ‘machinery’ of life. It is a psychological artefact, rather than a rational process, for the ubiquity of one emanation from nature, which we call technology, to backward-determine the nature of nature. Perhaps a metaphor might help here. Just because a toddler can make a sandcastle doesn’t mean the whole beach is made of either sandcastles or the component parts of future sandcastles. Nor does it imply the purpose of the beach is to make sandcastles! Technology is part of nature, not the other way around.
Unfortunately, an outdated form of Scientism, which assumes determinism, has been suppressing potential agnosticism and curiosity about the possibilities for relative free will. This is done by putting the burden of proof on free will advocates, in a way which is both subjective and illogical. That is because determinism is a universal claim, so it is not proven by showing lots of causal processes. Rather, the scientific method should treat determinism as a testable hypothesis. Therefore, instead of expecting free will advocates to disprove determinism, both sides should be required to provide evidence and allow for falsifiability. That means if any decision-making process is found that is neither fully determined nor random, determinism would be falsified, and free will would gain empirical support. With this agnosticism restored, we can look again at what evidence there is from different scientific fields. In particular, two areas are worth looking at again – neuroscience and evolutionary biology.
Noisy neuroscience
Neuroscience tests on brain activity prior to hand movements, are mentioned in passing in popular culture, and are usually cited by people when they claim that science has found there is no free will. However, the experiments are flawed to the point of not providing any evidence for free will denial. Due to the fame of these tests in popular culture, it is worth presenting a summary of their flaws before looking at evidence from other sciences.
The most famous neuroscientific experiments that are used to claim that neuroscience proves there is no free will were coordinated by Benjamin Libet in the 1980s and John-Dylan Haynes in the early 2000s. Both tests used the newest technologies at the time to measure brain waves. The Libet Test required participants to look at the clock and remember when they decided to move their wrist or fingers. The Haynes Test showed participants changing letters and the participant had to remember the letter that was showing when they made a decision to move one or the other hand. The flaws of these studies relate to how the tests ignored that the brain constantly scans the body prior to movement, and how the tests affected participants with stimuli and the requirement to memorise times – issues we will look at more closely now.
To begin with, multiple preparatory processes occur right before any action, like choosing and moving a wrist or a hand, all of which can be detected by the machinery used by neuroscientists. First, there is ‘proprioceptive readiness’ where the brain checks the status of the body part (e.g., “Where is the hand and is it in working order?”). Second, the neural circuits begin preparing for potential movements, even before a specific choice is made. Third, when deciding between two hands, the brain weighs options. Dominant hand preference or environmental cues may show up as neural activity before conscious awareness. Fourth, after the choice is made (consciously or unconsciously), the brain ensures that the correct hand is engaged and ready to move, before sending signals to execute the action. These four processes indicate a complexity of neurological activity during the process of choosing to move a hand, which in themselves undermine the claims of neuroscientists – and that’s even before we consider the process of noticing and memorising times.
The tests used images in ways that would stimulate brain activity prior to participants memorising a time for their decision to act. In the Libet Test they had to think about the clock and memorise the time of their decision. Therein lies a flaw. We all experience a clock progressing forwards in time, and so might anticipate a forthcoming time that we will choose to remember. Such thoughts can be subconscious. Then in the Haynes Test, the claim was that the delay between brain activity related to movement and the decision to move was sometimes multiple seconds, which means random neural fluctuations could have easily been detected. But they might not have been random: a key problem was that in the Haynes test they were providing new stimuli in the form of a letter on a screen every half a second, which would trigger various associated thoughts in the participant. For instance, seeing the letter ‘A’ might trigger abstract associations (e.g. “it reminds me of the start of the alphabet”) or personal memories (e.g “A is the initial in my middle name”) or evaluations and emotional responses (e.g., “A is a good grade in school”). The brain waves for such thoughts would show up in the frontopolar cortex – the area where Haynes detected the earliest signals prior to hand movement. They didn’t address this in the experiment [See refs: 3 & 4]. In any case, only 60%–70% of results provided data that they (dubiously) claimed indicated decisions to move prior to conscious intent.
The flaws I have summarised here are why a group of neuroscientists stated in Scientific American that “Many cognitive neuroscientists in the field, including former “no-free-will” proponents, now acknowledge that the supposed neuroscientific evidence against it is dubious.” Writing in 2025, they continued that: “Unfortunately, the public still hasn’t heard the news, and the idea that neuroscience has disproved conscious free will, or even free will in general, still hangs in the air.” [5] This fame of flawed experiments is indicative of Scientism within the intelligentsia of many societies and amongst some of the general public. Another area where popular understandings are lagging behind recent data and theory is biology.
Mysterious biology
There is evidence that human minds are not confined to our individual brains. That includes many examples of highly functioning people with very little brain tissue [6], clinically braindead people who revive and have precise memories of that experience [6], and the existence of telepathy [8 & 9]. There are various explanations for such occurrences, but non as paradigm-challenging as those of Rupert Sheldrake. He posits that there is an informational field, much like a magnetic field, which involves consciousness, thereby shaping physical manifestations and mental experiences, while also being affected in return [10]. From that position, as minds extend beyond our brains, then human choices cannot be entirely determined by local neural processes. Instead, intentions can draw from a broader field of consciousness, which complicates the question of how mechanistic and predetermined that process might be.
Recent developments in the field of evolutionary biology give more evidence that relative free will probably exists. Given the way evolution has been used to justify a range of stories about human nature and society, such as the legitimacy of competition and hierarchy, it is interesting to revisit the topic with new information. The ‘new biology’ finds that the evolution of genomes is not reliant on purely random mutations; organisms influence genetic variation, gene expression, and fixation through mechanisms such as epigenetics, stress-induced mutations, and behavioural adaptations that require unlearned and undetermined experimentation to benefit from new phenotypes (the characteristics of organisms). Populations of organisms further shape evolutionary trajectories through social learning and niche construction. Some researchers hypothesize additional non-genetic influences on evolution, such as morphic fields, but these remain speculative. None of this research confirms the existence of a conscious force that directs steps in evolution, or the overall process, but it challenges the claim that biology demonstrates that all behaviours are predetermined [11]. This, in turn, weakens denial of the possibility of free will. There are two areas of this new biology that deserve particular attention as deterministic mechanisms are particularly difficult to imagine as the explanation.
The first area is organism-influenced genetic mutations. We now know that organisms can change their own genome in response to changes in the environment. So, mutations aren’t always entirely random, even if the form of consciousness involved isn’t like us choosing what clothes to wear when we wake up. It’s part of the process of bacteria becoming resistant to drugs. But it is also happening in more complex lifeforms like Killifish, in North America, that have changed their genome rapidly in separate locations, to survive pollution. The relevant mutation and its presence across the species isn’t entirely explained by random mutations and natural selection. In addition, it is unlikely that the fish are epigenetically switching on and off certain genes (plasticity), to become resistant to chemicals never experienced in its evolutionary history [12]. This matters to free will, as the determinist would need to speculate on mechanisms for the ability for an organism to increase the likelihood of advantageous mutations to entirely novel environmental stressors.
The second area that matters to free will is the experimentation with novel phenotypes (new characteristics). For any new phenotype to become useful to the organism sufficiently to lead to it spreading through the population and species, the organism needs to experiment with using the phenotype. For instance, imagine if a bird suddenly grows longer wings. In such a case the bird could not observe and learn from others, and would need to experiment for the wings to be useful rather than a nutritional burden, in order for it to be spread through the population. A determinist explanation might be that the use was instinct, as there was natural selection for longer wings. But if that couldn’t explain the longer wings, the determinist might claim that any experimentation would be entirely random trial and error, or a genetically pre-programmed propensity to experiment when new phenotypes emerged. My view, shared by some evolutionary biologists, is that the experimentation by the organism with an unusual phenotype is its relatively free choice [13]. Perhaps this ‘natural freedom’ theory could be falsified if a gene is found that creates the propensity to experiment usefully with a new phenotype. As far as I am aware that has not happened. The determinists’ claims don’t offer possibilities for falsification. But the existence of other possible explanations means I conclude that scientific reasoning neither proves nor disproves the concept that there is ‘freedom in nature’ that is not fully determined and is essential to evolution. Instead, there is sufficient evidence to conclude that, so it is not unscientific to do so. Rather, it would be unscientific to claim with full confidence that there is no ‘natural freedom’.
Looking back at the way knowledge of evolutionary biology has been changing, we can see that those biologists like Elisabet Sahtouris who were instinctively open to the idea of consciousness being prime in the universe, rather than an epiphenomenon of complex matter, were the ones who anticipated the more cooperative processes of evolution that are now being demonstrated empirically [14]. This reflects the importance of worldview in shaping the questions asked and thus the trajectory of knowledge.
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Wider ways of knowing about life and free will
As natural scientific methods are disproving universal determinism (disproving that the universe is always and only clockwork) but can neither prove nor disprove the existence of relative free will, then we need to look beyond natural science, as it is not the only way we know the world. There is a wide range of approaches to understanding the world, in philosophy and the social sciences. If we experience what we consider to be relative free will, similarly to billions of other people, then that is a form of data that can be investigated. Researching phenomena as consciously experienced, while trying to avoid unexamined preconceptions and presuppositions, is the focus of phenomenology. The questions then widen, including what is the aspect of our consciousness that is not yet fully determined by biology, environment or culture, and why is that important?
The wish not to go into such questions appears to be driving the denial of the science that doesn’t support determinism. Therefore, the terms “free will denier” and “free will denialism” are fair representations for the position of some determinists. Conversely, the terms “free will acceptor” and “free will acceptance” are more suited to the act of recognising both the science and phenomenology that supports the existence of some forms of relative free will. As free will acceptors, we can look again at a variety of wisdom traditions as well as personal experiences, to gain insight into our lives.
For millennia in Eastern philosophy there have been deep discussions on the nature of the phenomena that has consciousness and relative free will. Consciousness is regarded as fundamental to reality, rather than an epiphenomenon of brains. From that perspective it is normal to recognise that such consciousness has some causal power, or relative free will. Therefore, discussions have centred around the extent to which parts of that consciousness associated with individual living beings might have their own volition. To regard all consciousness as an expression of a single divine or cosmic mind, has led some people to unitary, centralised and hierarchical conceptualisations of that one mind. That is a strict universalism about consciousness, and I believe it might be a projection from patriarchy. Instead, in Breaking Together, I align with the Buddhist view of a participatory model of the universal consciousness, where it is imagined as polycentric. We inherit influences from collective consciousness (which some label ‘morphic fields’) and are shaped by that consciousness but not completely determined by it and have some personal relative free will to shape our futures and therefore influence morphic fields and collective consciousness. We can refer to this essence within each of us our ‘co-causal awareness’, which exists beneath a very physically-driven and culturally-constructed pseudo ‘self’ (the one we typically identify with). This co-causal awareness is the aspect of ourselves that is not fully determined. It is in constant relationship with wider fields of consciousness, both contributing and being contributed to. This co-causal awareness is a pattern on a field of consciousness that pervades all matter and energy, and it existed prior to my birth, is influenced by my life, and exists, altered, after my body dies. There is no ‘monad mind’ in charge, but an infinitely polycentric consciousness. Nor is there one lever that was magically pulled at the moment of the big bang.
I arrived at this perspective through reflection, analysis, experiences of ordinary and non-ordinary states of consciousness, and reading and discussing Eastern and indigenous philosophies. Some of those teachings resonated more than others, so I am providing my own emphasis in the previous paragraphs. I have also discovered that there are many parallels with the explanations of the Western heterodox scientists and philosophers Elisabet Sahtouris, Alfred North Whitehead, and Rupert Sheldrake. The perspective on consciousness that I have outlined implies that there can be useful effort to reveal influences on our awareness that come from biology, past experiences and culture, so that we could cultivate our ability to allow our co-causal awareness to become more of our daily awareness. Some words of the Buddha are particularly relevant here: “Just as in the great ocean there is but one taste — the taste of salt — so in this Doctrine and Discipline (dhammavinaya) there is but one taste — the taste of freedom (vimuttirasa)” (… as in, the freedom from cravings, aversions, attachments and ignorance).[15]
With this in mind, we can sense that believers in determinism have an intuition about reality that is being distorted by the modernist culture we live within. The intuition is that everything in the universe is interconnected. Or, as ‘connection’ reifies the notion of separate entities with connections between them, a better conceptualisation is that every aspect of reality is inter-extant. When we try to put a boundary around a ‘system’ we are ignoring (and therefore artificially severing) some interrelationships to do that. The fact that every aspect of reality inter-exists with every other aspect of reality does not need to imply mechanistic non-awareness of either aspects of existence or the whole of existence. Causality does not need to be assumed to flow in one direction of time or to be initiated by one ‘point’ in time and space. Rather, every aspect of existence is participating in the becomings and endings of all of existence, to varying degrees, in ways that are beyond our ability to comprehend. This is the ‘interdependent origination’ of all that is referred to in Buddhism. The awareness experienced by sentient creatures can be regarded as an epiphenomenon of the informational arrangement of matter and energy in such creatures, which resonates with those aspects of consciousness prior to, and pervading, such sentience. With determinists, it might be that our daily experience of machines and technology is creating a conceptual frame that is then applied to the self-evident truth of the inter-existence of all. As mentioned earlier, technology and machines came out of nature, and do not define it.
One area of intellectual endeavour where there is some connection between modern scientific approaches and the ideas in this essay on the primacy of consciousness, is called “Analytic Idealism.” It holds that the universe is primarily consciousness, where our own subjective experience is a segment of that spatially unbounded consciousness [16]. I will explore what I think are that theory’s pros and cons in the third essay of this series on free will, consciousness and the implications for political philosophy in an era of disruption, metacrisis and collapse. Before that, in my next essay in this series, I will discuss the personal and societal implications of free will denial versus free will acceptance. Until then, thank you for reading this extended theoretical discussion! Next time you hear scientists present determinism as an observational fact, you can tell them it’s only an ideological dogma that everything always follows strict causal laws despite not always being observed that way and not being able to be modelled and computed exactly. Freed from that dogma, they could engage you in an interesting conversation.
References
[1] Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will by Robert M. Sapolsky | Goodreads
[2] BREAKING TOGETHER – a freedom-loving response to collapse – Prof Jem Bendell
[3] In support of Pockett’s critique of Libet’s studies of the time course of consciousness – PubMed
[4] Free will debates: Simple experiments are not so simple – PMC
[5] Neuroscientists Should Set a High Bar for Evidence against Free Will | Scientific American
[6] Familial hydrocephalus with normal cognition and distinctive radiological features – PubMed
[8] Telepathy Tapes podcast explores autistic telepathy, stirs debate
[10] The sense of being stared at: A preliminary meta-analysis | Request PDF
[11] https://www.thethirdwayofevolution.com/books
[13] Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will by Kevin J. Mitchell | Goodreads
[14] LifeWeb:Book – EARTHDANCE: Living Systems in Evolution
[15] The Taste of Freedom
[16] https://www.essentiafoundation.org/analytic-idealism-course/
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