Our current way of understanding the world is fundamentally mechanical. Traditional science1 assumes that the world is a system of cause and effect, where everything can be reduced to smaller parts and laws of nature. This approach has brought us enormous success – from explaining the movements of the universe to understanding how the brain works.
But the mechanical perspective has an inherent limitation: it can only tell us how things happen through causal chains, not why. For example, science can explain which neural pathways in the brain are activated when we make decisions, but it cannot tell us why we feel free or what it means to be human.
The metaphysical deduction
A mechanical starting point colors all deductions as mechanical. It is a deductive process from the metaphysical plane. The problem of exploring free will within this framework is fundamental.
Say that every event is a product of previous causes. If that is true, it follows that: Our thoughts and actions are causally determined by our genes, our environment and past events.
The perception of being able to choose freely must thus be an illusion, as our choices are ultimately determined by factors beyond our control.
As long as we stay within this framework of how things work, there is no room for genuine free will. We are reduced to advanced biological machines, whose behavior is entirely predetermined.
However, free will is not just about how we make decisions – it is about why we feel free and what it means to be human. These are questions that cannot be answered by the mechanical models of science alone.
The philosopher Martin Heidegger pointed out that science is always based on an implicit fundamental conception of reality (ontology), where the world is understood as a collection of objects and processes. This leaves subjectivity – man’s lived experience of the world – out. The sciences make statements about the properties of being, what it is and is not. Being itself is taken for granted. Philosophy transcends Being by dealing with non-Being, with pure NOTHINGNESS (Heidegger, 1977).
Instead of just asking how our brains work, we need to ask questions like:
- What does it mean to feel responsible for our actions?
- Why do we experience choices as meaningful, even if they can be seen as limited by circumstances?
Phenomenological and existential interpretations
Phenomenology, with philosophers such as Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, offers an alternative to the mechanical perspective by focusing on the lived experience of freedom. Instead of reducing human actions to causal processes, phenomenology examines how people subjectively experience themselves as free agents.
Phenomenology assumes that we are always in relation to the world through our perception and corporeality – that is, freedom is not an abstract concept but something we concretely live and feel.
Husserl believed that human consciousness is intentional, which means that it is always directed towards something – towards a world that is experienced as meaningful. Free will can therefore be understood as part of how we actively engage with the world and choose meaning in our experiences. Merleau-Ponty built on this by arguing that the body is our primary way of being in the world. Free will, according to him, is not something that happens ‘outside’ our circumstances, but rather a freedom to navigate and reshape our situations from within (Bakewell, 2016).
Existentialism, particularly through Jean-Paul Sartre, takes an even more radical perspective. Sartre argued that we are ‘condemned to freedom’ because we are always faced with the choice to create meaning in our lives, regardless of circumstances. For Sartre, freedom does not mean that we are free from the influence of our history or environment, but that we are always responsible for how we relate to these factors. Even in situations where our options are severely limited, we are free in our ability to choose how to interpret and respond to them (Bakewell, 2016).
The common feature of these perspectives is that they do not deny that we are influenced by our environment or our biology, but they emphasize that free will cannot be reduced to these factors. Freedom is an existential and experiential reality, shaped by our conscious approach to the world.
And so…
Science, despite its successes, has its limits – and philosophy still has a role to play in helping us understand what it means to be free.
In broad terms, then, my thesis can be described in the following way: as long as we cling to a strictly mechanical perspective, we miss something fundamental about ourselves.
Science can describe the world, but philosophy helps us understand ourselves in relation to it. Free will may not be mechanically provable, but that doesn’t mean it’s irrelevant or non-present.
On the contrary, it is a central part of what it means to be human.
Bakewell, S. (2016) At the existentialist café: freedom, being and apricot cocktails. London: Chatto & Windus.
Heidegger, M. (1977) Basic writings: from Being and time (1927) to The task of thinking (1964). 1. ed. Edited by D.F. Krell. New York: Harper & Row, pp. 90-110.