As a person who makes decisions every day, you probably operate under the (very useful) assumption that you have something called Free Will. But what does Free Will really mean?

If we imagine a person, let’s call this person Joe, and imagine that he wants to paint his house. He has two buckets of paint at his feet; the first bucket is filled with blue pain, the second bucket is filled with red paint. If we are saying that Joe has Free Will, then by most people’s definition we are saying that this situation can go one of two ways: either Joe’s house will end up blue, or Joe’s house will end up red, and which of these two results occurs is down to what Joe decides to choose.

But already we have run into a contradiction. It is in fact not true that the house could become either blue or red. It is not true that Joe can chose either, for in reality he can only choose one, so there really is no choice involved. The fact that nobody can predict the result is an irrelevance.

Let’s illustrate why Joe has no choice in a simpler example: an 8 ball sinks into a corner pocket during a game of pool. Would you say that the 8 ball chose that particular pocket, when it could have gone into any pocket it wanted? Of course not, the 8 ball was forced towards that pocket because of the angle and force with which it was struck by another ball, and not because of any choice on the part of the 8 ball.

I believe the same sort of thing is going on when Joe decides which colour to paint his house. However, I am not saying that brains are purely physical, and that it is just one particle bashing into the next. Although I am a materialist, I believe that it is a simple matter of Cause and Effect, to which even spirits and souls are subject.

But what does it mean to be ‘bound by Cause and Effect’, as both the 8 ball and Joe supposedly are? Well, it means that the situations result is not based on choice or Free Will, but rather that everything that happens is the inevitable result of the prior conditions of the universe. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves! Below I have prepared a logical argument to demonstrate that this idea that everything is bound by Cause and Effect, also known as Determinism, is logically supported. I will then go on to explain the implications of this idea in the real world. But first, let’s define some terms.

The terms I will define are: Cause, Effect, and Causal Chain

Effect: Any change in the state of the universe. Anything that happens, from an 8 ball sinking into a corner pocket, to Joe deciding to paint his house red instead of blue.

Cause: Any Effect or state of affairs to which a given Effect is the necessary result.

Causal Chain: A chronological sequence of events in which each effect either is, contains, or contributes to the cause of the next effect in the chain.

Effect and Cause are umbrella terms. Effect stands for every change in the state of the universe which resulted due to a given Cause. Cause stands for the full range of conditions which led to a given Effect.

Argument for Determinism from Cause and Effect

Premise 1) All Effects are either Caused or not Caused.

Premise 2) An Effect which is not Caused is necessarily random, as it does not owe any of its qualities to any other process or event.

Premise 3) An Effect which is Caused is necessarily the only possible Effect that could have resulted from its Cause.

Conclusion) Therefore every movement of every particle, every decision made, and every other Effect was either the inevitable result of the starting conditions of the universe or its causal chain, or was a random uncaused event which bears no relation to anyone’s intention, or to anything else.

Premise 1 is a tautology, and is therefore necessarily true.

Premise 2 leaves open the possibility for Uncaused Effects. Whether or not there actually exists any Effect that is Uncaused is irrelevant to this argument, but It is a useful contrast to Caused Effects.

Premise 3 is true by definition.

So in the example of Joe painting his house one of two colours, what does Free Will mean? Well, if you take it to mean that there is nothing physically stopping Joe from choosing either red or blue, then you haven’t really said a lot because that is still perfectly consistent with the idea that Joe’s choice was inevitable from the beginning of the universe, or at least the beginning of that Causal Chain. If you take Free Will to mean that given a particular situation (Joe standing before his unpainted house, with two cans of paint at his feet), either result is equally possible, then you must also admit that for this to be true then Joe’s choice of colour must be Uncaused. This is so because if it were Caused, then there could only be one Effect, one choice of colour. If he chose red, it was because blue was never truly a possibility. The direct implications of the idea that Joe’s house might end up either blue or red is that the choice is random, and therefore bears as much relation to what’s going on inside Joe’s head, as it does to what’s going on inside the head of a fictional character in a book. That is to say, none whatsoever. It therefore cannot be said to be Joe’s decision, and therefore no Free Will was involved.

In conclusion, every time you make a decision, it is either an inevitable kind of “domino” in a chain of Cause and Effect, or it is random and unrelated to your thought processes. Either way, there’s no room for Free Will, whatever that means.