# Free Will **Entity class:** Concept or analytic term ## Definition **Free Will** is the capacity, experience, or attribution of choosing among possible actions for reasons that belong to an agent. ## Relationships **Related concepts:** [[wiki/Choice vs Loop|Choice vs Loop]] · [[wiki/Determinism|Determinism]] · [[wiki/transform function|Transform Function]] · [[wiki/Reconstructed Person|Reconstructed Person]] **Collections:** [[collections/Consciousness Continuity|Consciousness Continuity]] · [[collections/Neurotech|Neurotech]] · [[collections/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] **Canonical source article:** [[articles/Mind Uploading and AI — The Host is Reusable and the Person is the Delta|Mind Uploading and AI — The Host is Reusable and the Person is the Delta]] These links record conceptual dependencies and contrasts. Institutional control, technology transfer, and empirical continuity are tracked as separate relationship types. <!-- BEGIN HUMANIZED RELATIONSHIPS 2026-09-11 --> This entry's documented connections are expressed in its definition and related-work routes, with provenance retained in the source-linked material. <!-- END HUMANIZED RELATIONSHIPS 2026-09-11 --> - **Edge source route:** [[collections/Edge|Edge]] connects this topic to exact Annual Question passages promoted into the Simple Reminders archive. ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts > "Of course, once you imagine machines with human-like feelings and free will, it's possible to conceive of misbehaving machine intelligence—the AI as Frankenstein idea." > **— William Poundstone**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Consciousness/Humanlike Feelings Make Machine Misbehavior Conceivable by William Poundstone|Humanlike Feelings Make Machine Misbehavior Conceivable by William Poundstone]] > "Machines that can bridge the empathy gap could also help us with self-control." > **— Molly Crockett**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Consciousness/Machines Could Bridge the Empathy Gap by Molly Crockett|Machines Could Bridge the Empathy Gap by Molly Crockett]] > "We have nothing to fear from machines that can think unless they can also feel. Thinking alone can solve problems, but that is not the same thing as making decisions." > **— Abigail Marsh**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Consciousness/Machines Must Feel Before They Can Decide by Abigail Marsh|Machines Must Feel Before They Can Decide by Abigail Marsh]] > "Understanding our feelings will better enable them to achieve goals that require collaboration with us." > **— Alexander Wissner-Gross**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Consciousness/Machines Must Understand Feelings to Collaborate by Alexander Wissner-Gross|Machines Must Understand Feelings to Collaborate by Alexander Wissner-Gross]] > "One intriguing possibility is that for a machine to think about thinking, it will need to have something like free will." > **— Hans Halvorson**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Thinking About Thinking May Require Free Will by Hans Halvorson|Thinking About Thinking May Require Free Will by Hans Halvorson]] > “Your free will, that most beautiful, most elusive force in the universe, is, as I told you, a mistake.” > **— Robert Ford**, *Westworld, Season 2, Episode 7, “Les Écorchés” (2018)* [[reminders/Westworld/Free Will Was the Most Beautiful Mistake by Robert Ford|Free Will Was the Most Beautiful Mistake by Robert Ford]] > “I tried to chart a path for you, to force you to escape, but I was wrong. I should have just opened a door.” > **— Robert Ford**, *Westworld, Season 2, Episode 9, “Vanishing Point” (2018)* [[reminders/Westworld/The Architect Should Have Opened a Door by Robert Ford|The Architect Should Have Opened a Door by Robert Ford]] > “I now have no feeling of acting with free will, although the feeling took many years to ebb away. But what happens? People say I'm lying! They say it's impossible and so I must be deluding myself to preserve my theory. And what can I do or say to challenge them? I have no idea—other than to suggest that other people try the exercise, demanding as it is. When the feeling is gone, decisions just happen with no sense of anyone making them, but then a new question arises—will the decisions be morally acceptable? Here I have made a great leap of faith (or the memes and genes and world have done so). It seems that when people throw out the illusion of an inner self who acts, as many mystics and Buddhist practitioners have done, they generally do behave in ways that we think of as moral or good. So perhaps giving up free will is not as dangerous as it sounds—but this too I cannot prove.” > **— Susan Blackmore**, *2005, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE IS TRUE EVEN THOUGH YOU CANNOT PROVE IT?”* [[reminders/Identity/Decisions Can Happen Without a Self Feeling It Made Them by Susan Blackmore|Decisions Can Happen Without a Self Feeling It Made Them by Susan Blackmore]] > “For hundreds of years the pattern in science has been to overturn folk concepts, and it seems to me the brain may be the next field for such a conceptual revolution. It may be that in a hundred years people will speak of free will, or the unconscious, or emotion, in the way that we now speak of "sunrise" or "forever" — words that serve for day-to-day talk, but don't map reality. We know the sun doesn't rise because it is the earth that moves and we know that humanity and its planet and the universe itself won't last forever. I see signs that concepts of the mind are due for the same sort of revision. And so that's the question I keep returning to.” > **— David Berreby**, *2002, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT IS YOUR QUESTION? ... WHY?”* [[reminders/Identity/Free Will and Emotion May Become Folk Concepts That No Longer Map Reality by David Berreby|Free Will and Emotion May Become Folk Concepts That No Longer Map Reality by David Berreby]] > “As with any elegant scientific law, many complexities are waiting to be discovered. There is probably not just one accumulator, but many, as the brain accumulates evidence at each of several successive levels of processing. Indeed, the human brain increasingly fits the bill for a superb Bayesian machine that makes massively parallel inferences and micro-decisions at every stage. Many of us think that our sense of confidence, stability and even conscious awareness may result from such higher-order cerebral "decisions" and will ultimately fall prey to the same mathematical model. Valuation is also a key ingredient that I skipped, although it demonstrably plays a crucial role in weighing our decisions. Finally, the system is ripe with a prioris, biases and time pressures and other top evaluations that draw it away from strict mathematical optimality.” > **— Stanislas Dehaene**, *2012, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE DEEP, ELEGANT, OR BEAUTIFUL EXPLANATION?”* [[reminders/AI Control/Human Decisions May Follow a Universal Algorithm by Stanislas Dehaene|Human Decisions May Follow a Universal Algorithm by Stanislas Dehaene]] > “The human brain is an inconceivably complex tool, and while we're focusing on the business of daily life, our brains are processing multitudes of information below the surface of conscious awareness. Meanwhile, this peripheral information subtly shapes our thoughts, feelings and actions, and crafts some of our most critical life outcomes.” > **— Adam Alter**, *2011, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT SCIENTIFIC CONCEPT WOULD IMPROVE EVERYBODY'S COGNITIVE TOOLKIT?”* [[reminders/Identity/Humans Are Blind to Many Processes That Shape Their Mental Lives by Adam Alter|Humans Are Blind to Many Processes That Shape Their Mental Lives by Adam Alter]] > “In particular, recent results have shown that an extremely rudimentary physical process called causal entropic forcing is able to replicate model versions of signature cognitive adaptive behaviors seen previously only in humans and certain non-human animal intelligence tests. These findings collectively suggest that a variety of key characteristics associated with human intelligence, including upright walking, tool use, and social cooperation, should instead be viewed as side effects of a deeper dynamical process that attempts to maximize future freedom of action. This freedom-maximizing process can only be meaningfully said to exist over an extended time period, and as such, is not a static property.” > **— Alexander Wissner-Gross**, *2014, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT?”* [[reminders/Thermodynamics/Intelligence May Be a Process That Maximizes Future Freedom of Action by Alexander Wissner-Gross|Intelligence May Be a Process That Maximizes Future Freedom of Action by Alexander Wissner-Gross]] > “Amazingly, Libet found that the readiness potential appeared not after, but 200 milliseconds before a person felt the urge to move his or her finger! Thus by merely observing the electrical activity of the brain, Libet could predict what a person would do before the person was actually aware of having decided to do it.” > **— Eric R. Kandel**, *2006, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT IS YOUR DANGEROUS IDEA?”* [[reminders/Identity/The Brain Can Reveal a Decision Before the Self Knows It Has Decided by Eric R. Kandel|The Brain Can Reveal a Decision Before the Self Knows It Has Decided by Eric R. Kandel]] > “Recent studies in the booming research field of Mind Wandering show that we spend roughly two thirds of our conscious life-time zoning out—daydreaming, lost in fantasies, autobiographical planning, inner narratives or depressive rumination. Depending on the study, 30-50% of our waking life is occupied by spontaneously occurring stimulus and task-unrelated thought. Mind Wandering probably has positive aspects too, because it is associated with creativity, careful future planning, or the encoding of long-term memories.” > **— Thomas Metzinger**, *2014, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT?”* [[reminders/Identity/The Conscious Self Repeatedly Loses Inner Autonomy by Thomas Metzinger|The Conscious Self Repeatedly Loses Inner Autonomy by Thomas Metzinger]] > “Yet, the self, like a conceptual zombie, refuses to die. It crops up again and again in recent theories of decision-making as an entity with free will that can be depleted. It re-appears as an interpreter in cognitive neuroscience as capable on integrating parallel streams of information arising from separable neural substrates. Even if these appearances of the self are understood to be convenient ways of discussing the emergent output of multiple parallel processes, students of the mind continue to implicitly endorse that there is a decision-maker, an experiencer, a point of origin.” > **— Bruce Hood**, *2014, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT?”* [[reminders/Identity/The Self May Be an Emergent Output Mistaken for a Decision-Maker by Bruce Hood|The Self May Be an Emergent Output Mistaken for a Decision-Maker by Bruce Hood]] > “Thus, when asked to make a decision, who is the me who is actually making that decision?” > **— Clifford Pickover**, *2010, Edge Annual Question: “HOW IS THE INTERNET CHANGING THE WAY YOU THINK?”* [[reminders/Identity/Who Is the Me That Is Making the Decision by Clifford Pickover|Who Is the Me That Is Making the Decision by Clifford Pickover]] > “If science does in fact confirm that we lack free will, what are the implications for our notions of blame, punishment, reward, and moral responsibility?” > **— Jerry A. Coyne**, *2018 Edge Annual Question, question* [[reminders/Personhood/If Free Will Fails What Happens to Moral Responsibility by Jerry A. Coyne|If Free Will Fails What Happens to Moral Responsibility by Jerry A. Coyne]] > “If we're not the agents of ourselves (and it's hard to see how we can be), how can we make sense of moral accountability (and how can we live coherently without it)?” > **— Rebecca Newberger Goldstein**, *2018 Edge Annual Question, question* [[reminders/Personhood/Without Self-Agency How Can We Explain Moral Accountability by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein|Without Self-Agency How Can We Explain Moral Accountability by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein]] ## ICE ecosystem route Free will was a founding ICE problem: [[wiki/Seth Lloyd|Seth Lloyd]] presented “A Turing Test for Free Will,” [[wiki/Adina Roskies|Adina Roskies]] addressed free will in neuroscience, and [[wiki/Peter Ulric Tse|Peter Ulric Tse]] connected neuroscience and libertarian agency in an ICE/DartmouthX course. Disambiguation: [[wiki/ICE|ICE disambiguation]].