For those challenging evolutionary theory that is based on natural selection, one often-repeated argument is free will. Human free will somehow doesn’t fit into the world that rests on natural selection. If everything evolved based on natural selection, then free will is superfluous. And then it seems pretty logical to say that if consciousness is “only” a result of neural interactions; if we cannot define a place where we can find “me” with presupposed free will; if “me” is only an emergent property of brains that interact with other subsystems of the body and external subsystems; then a man cannot have free will. However, since we all experience our free will all the time, evolutionary theory must be wrong. The existence of free will and, with that, a refutation of evolutionary theory, is also on top of everything necessary from a moral perspective. If there were no free will, a man would live without boundaries. A man run by neural interactions only would lose all responsibility and fall into moral decay.

It seems, thus, that the fact that we do experience free will strongly supports “intelligent design” or any other form of creationism. This, apparently too quick, assumption is going to be clarified, hopefully.

The Deconstruction of Free Will

There are many answers to this challenge that resolve the apparent impossibility of free will being a part of evolutionary theory. Let’s mention one: If there is no place in the brain where something as “me” (manager) would be located, this still does not contradict the existence of free will. In the same way that we do not exist only in brains, free will is not to be located only in brains. When we start to understand free will as a feature that comes out of a higher system, the whole body, then it is perhaps easier to understand that a will is neither a unified marble block nor a detectable point somewhere in our body. If a part of my body acts on its own (against my will), does this mean that I have no free will? It does not, since a part of my body is me as much as my brain. Each part of my body, down to the last cell, abridges my will but simultaneously constitutes it. Precisely because I am atomized, I have free will. Exactly because I am atomized (embodied), my free will is not absolute but partial.

This simple resolution not only places free will as a natural consequence of evolution, but also presents a case against any universalism. As presented in the chapter about time and a fixed background, we are particular creatures. Nothing in us is universal; neither our bodies, nor our consciousness, nor even our free will. In absolute terms, free will is a straw man proposed by those who want to destabilize the judicial system or invoke intelligent design.

Let me clarify this universalistic fallacy in relation to the judicial system, for it plays a vital role in the argument for homonism and against humanism.

The Deconstruction of Universalism

It is increasingly practiced that, if a person commits a crime, various social considerations come into play as arguments against or for less severe punishment. He might have been raised in a broken family, with parents neglecting him. He might have grown up in a violent community. He might have just lost his job and been pushed into depression. There was a case in Slovenia recently when someone who, driving drunk, hit and killed a person was convicted, but the argument for less severe punishment was that he was drunk and thus not in control of himself.

There are two false ideologies behind all the mentioned judicial malpractices and many others that could be listed.

The first is the presupposition that man is a social construct. If man is a social construct, then the added value that he produces is primarily the merit of society, but equally, so are his faults, including crimes. It does not bother progressivists propagating social constructivism, that accepting all consequences of social constructivism, free will disappears together with individual responsibility. The more that “we”, “humanity” begin to appear as a responsible agent, the less responsibility, freedom, and freedom of will rest with the individual.

It is somewhat surprising that another supporting ideology for the mentioned judicial malpractices comes from a contradictory direction. If a human does something wrong in a way that makes it pretty clear that he cannot act autonomously, then his free will is abridged, and thus, he is not guilty of his misdeeds. The final consequence of such an ideology would be (will be, unfortunately) acceptance of Benjamin Libet’s experiments as a-priori proof of the exculpability of humans as acting upon their free will.

Fitness Landscape and Free Will

A will is always confined by “neighboring” systems, and neighboring systems are nothing but the environment. An environment for a cell is another cell; for an organ, another organ; and a being, another being, mentioning only one element of the environment for each case. Just as we could not walk without friction between our legs and the ground (caused by gravity), there is no will without environmental restrictions. There is no freedom without confinement, no free will without peculiar determinism written in evolution and complex resistance from other environmental elements. This evolutionary determinism is peculiar, for it gets weaker and weaker with each step further from our present moment. It is a determinism of the fitness landscape, and free will is determined by elbow room (Daniel Dennett), established in each moment in relation to a specific position within such a fitness landscape.

It is thus just to conclude that human free will emerges on various levels of our body. It results from “free will” on all levels of the human body. It is not even universal on the level of the individual, since various free wills must constantly negotiate with the free wills of other parts of us. And since there exists no agency that could compute such a vast complexity of interdependencies of will, the approximation of an agent represented by a physical body as the sole example of identity takes full responsibility for all deeds and misdeeds that this body produces.

So far, we have investigated free will and responsibility on the individual level. The story becomes much more interesting when collective agents are taken into consideration. But to open an agency on the collective level, we have to go over, at least, the principles of memetics.