First published: July 21, 2023
Last revised: April 16, 2025

I think that consciousness has no meaning without free will because we would be powerless spectators. At the same time, free will makes no sense to me becasue we can't "change physics" by thinking. Yes, I'm aware of the contradiction.

Free will is the fantasy that our thoughts have causal power on our actions and that we have power over the course of events (and that we can even decide what to think!). I don't believe we have free will because it doesn't make any sense: both our actions and our thoughts are caused by processes in the brain, and surely they are correlated with each other (after all, we are convinced we exert causal power on our future), but physically speaking there is only "one future" that unfolds and we are just spectators. Even including quantum indeterminacy, well, how does adding a random number generator give us "choice"?

Biologically, it would seem illogical to waste resources on running the mind's eye only to have it passively spectate an everchanging present. So why would evolution select brains with consciousness rather than zombie brains? What is the evolutionary pressure? Why give us an illusion of control rather than no illusion at all? Note that answers involving the brain simulating its environment don't say anything about consciousness: they only speak to brain function, and in fact one can conceive a machine that does the same without involving consciousness.