Normally, the idea of fate is tied into religious beliefs: one feels that supernatural or divine forces influence one’s life in such a way that an individual’s free will is at times (or even always) circumvented. I posit that it is, in fact, only through non-materialistic philosophy that free will can exist in any form whatsoever. In a wholly materialistic universe there is no room for free will... at all.

To quote Carl Sagan we are “star stuff". Fundamentally, we are atoms created by atomic fusion in long-dead stars that have been arranged in a very peculiar manner; each of us is a unique arrangement which creates life. We are not alone in this; our planet and quite possibly the entire universe is filled with countless organisms that likewise live. This matter, so organized, is capable of movement, reproduction, growth, response to stimuli, and having a metabolism.

But matter behaves deterministically. If one were to know all the information there is to know about a system (velocities, densities, proximities, charges, etc.) one will know exactly how the molecules in that system will behave. The experimentalist will know how they will interact, when they will interact, and where they will be at any given time. The sheer amount of data involved in such a calculation would be far beyond anything humanity will ever be capable of, but in theory an omniscient observer would be able to predict with absolute precision the behavior of those bits of matter.

Everything that happens to a unit of matter is predetermined by the circumstances in which it finds itself. An atom cannot move without something interacting with it, and whatever interacts with it is bound by the same rule, and that interaction is ruled by a set mathematical formula; there is no wiggle room here, the behavior of matter on this scale is absolutely deterministic. An amino acid cannot chose its own fate, nor a polysaccharide molecule, nor a neuron, nor an organism.

If an organism is nothing more than the sum of its constituent matter and energy, then its fate is sealed. Its fate was determined at the outset of the universe. Whatever interactions between cells, chemicals, and ion gradients determine an organism’s behavior have themselves been predetermined. It is the only conclusion. If a rock is suspended in space, its behavior is determined by its initial conditions; same for a sphere of water, same for a ball of coal, same for a mushroom, and the same for a cat. Assuming that there is nothing special about life, that an organism is only a collection of ordinary matter, we must conclude that it is bound by the same laws as other matter and that its behavior is fully predictable.

Humans are sentient creatures, whatever that really means. To an absolute materialist, to one who believes there is nothing to a human being but his matter and energy, consciousness is nothing more than an increasingly sophisticated use of neurons and grey matter. If there is no soul or psychic power or white rabbit named Harvey that is responsible, in some way, for our thoughts or actions then they are predetermined as much as a pool ball’s trajectory or a planet’s orbit.

Such is our condition, given materialism. Our thoughts, our desires, our memories, our actions, to say nothing of all our past experiences, are predetermined by the universe and thus out of our hands. I am not writing this because it’s something I often think about and want to put out for input, I am writing this because the universe has progressed in such a way that the molecules in my body are interacting as to necessitate that the mass of matter that is I write this. You are reading this not because you choose to, not because you are crazy, but because your atoms and chemicals force you to read this, and if you decide to stop reading now it is because they have forced you to stop.

Under this paradigm, consciousness is an illusion. Your free will is a construct of determinism; your brain, a materialist object, sends impulses to your body not because you are thinking it, not because you are willing it, but because the impulses and interactions that immediately preceded it necessitated it... just like a pool ball’s trajectory is necessitated by the movement of the cue ball. It’s all matter, it’s all physics and chemistry, it’s all the same.

As near as I can figure, there are only two arguments against materialist determinism: quantum mechanics (non-determinism, on a very small scale) and non-materialism.

Under quantum mechanics, very small things do not behave deterministically. Electrons and photons do not behave in a predictable manner, they behave in a probabilistic manner. One, by definition, cannot know all the information pertaining to an electron or photon; if one doesn’t know what is happening to a particle/wave, one cannot predict its future. The non-determinist would say that this falsifies determinism; if the most fundamental known particles are behave non-deterministically, how can the universe?

I don’t think it falsifies the doctrine. Perhaps in the earliest days of the universe, when everything was quarks and other subatomic particles, this non-determinism could have had profound effects on the fate of the universe. But, at this point in time, I think not. The neurons and other cells in our bodies, the chemicals that move between our synapses, and the objects we tend to interact with are HUGE when compared to these subatomic particles. We’re talking enormous here, the sizes almost cannot be compared. The effect a single electron or photon has on our scale is non-existent.

While the velocity and location of an individual sub-atomic particle cannot be determined with any respectable precision, the actions of these particles is probabilistic, not random. On the scale of photons striking a plant’s leaf, or electrons traveling down a neuron to a synapse, we are dealing with countless particles. With this many particles to deal with, there is very little unpredictability in the effects we see on our scale. Whether or not a single electron travels across a cell membrane, or a single photon strikes a molecule of chlorophyll, means absolutely nothing to the organism; to its survival or its thoughts. The world is simply too big for this probabilism to have any effect on the course of events, and our minds are too big for this non-determinism to have any effect on our otherwise deterministic thoughts, desires, and actions.

The only way the non-determinism of quantum mechanics can affect our minds sufficiently to make them unpredictable is if our mind operates on a quantum level. I find such a notion to be absurd, since our bodies have no way of engineering on a quantum level, and therefore our genes, and the proteins they code for, would not be able to construct the biological infrastructure necessary to produce our thoughts.

Of course, even if the non-determinism of quantum mechanics does have a sizable effect on our minds, it gives us no more control over our thoughts. It simply means that, in a purely materialistic world, our thoughts are probabilistic rather than deterministic. There is no more free will under this theory; it simply means that your thoughts are controlled, in some part, by seaming randomness as well as by materialistic fate. Either way, we as an entity are not in control; our material bodies are.

The only way in which free will truly exists is if the we are not wholly materialistic. If there is something that controls or affects our thoughts, memories... whatever, in some way that is neither deterministic nor probabilistic, in some way that we actually have control over, then free will can exist.

This is not to be some sort of an argument for a soul or something, far from it. It is simply a statement about the two possibilities. If the universe is wholly materialistic then human thought and action is totally out of the individual’s control. Free will really is an illusion, how an entity’s consciousness perceives the actions its mind, as a material body, forces the entity to perform.

I find this to be an inescapable conclusion, regardless of my own religious beliefs. If the universe is not wholly materialistic, and this non-materialism has some effect on our minds, then there is room for free will. If there is some soul, or spirit, or something else that is not ruled by cause-and-effect, then it is possible that we do control our own destinies.

-David T.