Free and Unhappy, Happy and Unfree

Free will or determinism? Your well-being depends on your answer.

The question of free will is an important and popular one. It has taken up the time of philosophers for ages, but even greater praise for the question can be found in its popularity among everyday people, especially those who do not share a taste for academic metaphysics. And there is yet another way in which the question is important, though probably not in a way expected. Different ways of thinking about free will have specific effects on well-being and behavior.

I will begin by defining what I mean by “ways of thinking about free will” with the use of agent perspectives. I will then show how agent perspectives play with expectation, which is at the core of attachment and detachment. Attachment and detachment are themselves central to dissonance and consonance, terms for suffering and well-being, which in turn have causal effects on behavior.

This is another essay I wrote for a class on the Philosophy of Mind. I believe that it is the clearest among the three academic essays I have published here so far. There is yet another aspect that differentiates this essay from those other two. Both Mind as a Figment of Yours and Shuzan’s Shippé deal with meaning and concepts, but this essay deals with attachment, dissonance, and behavior.

I will be writing more on dissonance, on attachment (and detachment), and on behavior. To be notified when those essays are published consider subscribing!

Returning to the essay proper…

Paul Klee, In Angel’s Care, 1931 • Of Angel and Puppet

Views on free will have effects on agent perspectives, where agent perspectives are the ways people see themselves in situations relating to free will. With regard to the various views on the matter, people typically fall into one of three groups: libertarian, determinist, or compatibilist¹. One key difference between philosophical views and agent perspectives is that while philosophical views are thought about abstractly, agent perspectives are reflections on particular situations. For example, a libertarian might see their own history of addiction and believe that they have control over what happens next. Such a perspective frames the self as a subject, as an actor in control of some of the events they encounter. I call it the subjective perspective. The objective perspective, in contrast, relates to a determinist’s outlook on their situation: “this addiction is controlling me and I cannot escape it.” It is marked by framing the self as an object, onto which events occur, the self without control.

What about compatibilism? A compatibilist may take a more nuanced view when considering things in abstract, but in real situations, they take on a certain perspective. Agent perspectives are not philosophical views, but down-to-earth frames of mind, dealing with particular circumstances, tied with concepts from free will.

So how does all this relate to the concepts of attachment, detachment, and expectation? Shifting between the perspectives discussed above is the same as attaching or detaching. To understand attachment or detachment, understanding expectation is key.

An expectation is an ardent desire that involves an inclination towards fulfilling that desire. This inclination naturally develops into desire to be in control of the situation.² Humans fundamentally desire control³, which is why there is often an expectation to be in control. All of this talk about control brings something to mind, right? The perspective of being in control, of course, is the subjective perspective. Therefore, expectation is linked to the subjective perspective.

One key point of note is that people change which perspective they use to view particular situations all the time, compatibilists and incompatibilists alike. Just because somebody is a hard determinist does not mean that they see every situation from an objective perspective. Now, it has been established that the subjective perspective is linked with expectation, and the objective perspective is not.

What is meant by attachment is simply the act of expecting, while detaching is letting go of such expectations. In other words, and to reiterate, attaching is the shifting from the objective to the subjective perspective, while detaching is the shifting from the subjective to the objective perspective. Attachment and detachment are thus linked to views on free will. Great, but what does this all have to do with well-being?

Suffering, and by extension well-being, has to do with expectation. In particular, it has to do with a disconnect between expectation and realization, or a lack thereof. The specific type of ‘suffering’ I am talking about is dissonance, a tension of ‘wrongness.’ This term is borrowed from cognitive dissonance, and can be seen as a different interpretation of the concept. Dissonance is the tension that occurs in a subject when they perceive that something is wrong within them, or within the world. ‘Wrong’ here denotes ‘against the held worldview,’ so that dissonance is the tension due to a broken worldview. This is similar to the original ‘cognitive’ dissonance, which has to do with holding contradicting beliefs. Having a broken worldview, or even more extravagantly having ‘your world crumble around you’ is not likely to contributes to well-being. Hence, well-being requires the lack of dissonance. To make the concept of dissonance a bit clearer, consider an example:

Sarah thinks of herself as fit and athletic. She was on a sports team in high school and has maintained this view of herself after graduating. She decides to go for a run, and upon realizing that she runs out of breath quickly nowadays, senses that something is wrong. She understands that she is athletic, but now she is presented with evidence that she is not. This tension between her simultaneous beliefs that she is athletic and that she is not athletic is dissonance, causing her suffering.

Where in the formulation does expectation and realization fit? There is an alternative way of looking at dissonance, or at the very minimum an alternative way of looking at how it forms: dissonance as an awareness of a gap between expectation and realization. Realization is a perception of the way things are, while expectation is an belief that things are a certain way now, or will be a certain way in the future. When things do not unfold in the ways that we want them to, we get hurt! That is also dissonance.

Expectations, which bring about dissonance, and therefore hurt well-being, are the defining factors of attachment and detachment. Attaching, since it involves more expecting, hurts well-being, while detachment at minimum prevents dissonance. Keeping in mind that shifting agent perspectives is attachment and detachment, shifting also causes suffering and well-being. And what affects the agent perspectives relied on? Philosophical views on free will. The picture comes together: philosophical views on free will, particularly libertarian ones, cause suffering! Yet, there is one more almost-paradoxical part of the puzzle.

From Henrique Alvim Corrêa’s Illustrations for The War of the Worlds (1906)

As established by cognitive sciences, we do whatever we can to get rid of dissonance.⁴ Dissonance is a force like hunger and thirst. Just like we have a drive to satiate our hunger and quench our thirst, we have a drive to resolve our dissonance. The drive to resolve dissonance could result in different attempts at resolving it. One common attempt is to become distracted, so that the awareness wanes and realization is dissipated. After all, dissonance requires awareness, so being shielded from the world by doom-scrolling on social media is often one attempt to distract and resolve dissonance. Another way of resolving dissonance is to take action to work towards the expectation: If Sarah, from the example above, realizes that she is not the athlete she thinks she is, she might be urged to start exercising regularly. This is how behavior is affected by dissonance, though not exclusively by dissonance. Following the chain of argument, philosophical views concerning free will cause this kind of behavior, the kind of behavior that is done in reaction to dissonance.

One might claim that this kind of ‘dissonant’ behavior constitutes only a marginal amount of behavior, and I believe this claim is true: much more of our behavior is autonomous, like the beating of our heart or the regulation of body temperature. External things as well can be autonomous, like habits and associated movements like walking, and even passively sensing. What is interesting is the balance of dissonant and voluntary behavior. I will not complicate this paper with more definitions, but consider how many times in a day you really think through consequences of things with a clear mind. Those are the only times you engage with volition. Every other behavior is autonomous, or else it is dissonant. Therefore, much of life is lead by dissonance.

I mentioned that there would be an almost-paradoxical element, and it is this: libertarianism leads to dissonance, which affects behaviors in particular ways. Such behavior, however, is not necessarily performed fully under free will; some part of the behavior is determined by the nature of the dissonance taking place. That seems to count against libertarianism in the first place! This isn’t a strong argument, but I think it might be some food for thought.

Ways of thinking about free will have effects on well-being and behavior. This is because ways of thinking about free will have effects on agent perspectives ( reflections of situations relating to free will). These perspectives are (a) the subjective perspective with an assumption of control, of will; and (b) the objective perspective with an assumption of determinism. When shifting agent perspectives, dissonance can appear or disappear, mediated through expectation, which is an ardent desire involving control. This expectation factors into dissonance as awareness of a gap between expectation and realization. Dissonance hurts well-being, and we do what we can to get rid of dissonance. All of these relations, but particularly the relations between free will, well-being, and behavior, will continue to be debated and expounded due to the importance of the question and the prevalence of schools of thought with different answers to the question. What I think may be equally as important, however, is bringing back to philosophy an engagement with the human condition, in a way that connects it to various aspects of everyday experience. It isn’t often that we experience “free will,” but what is certain is our experience of suffering.

1. Kane, Robert. A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will. Oxford Univ. Press, 2005.

This was a class textbook. The first chapter outlines these different views. In short, libertarians believe in free will, determinists do not, and compatibilists are somewhere in between.

2. That an expectation involves some subject to expect an outcome is at the root of both the name and meaning of the term.

3. Leotti, Lauren A., et al. “Born to Choose: The Origins and Value of the Need for Control.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences, vol. 14, no. 10, Oct. 2010, pp. 457–63, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2010.08.001.

4. I got introduced to cognitive dissonance through Carol Tavris, on a podcast and her book on the subject:

Carroll, Sean. Carol Tavris on Mistakes, Justification, and Cognitive Dissonance. 1, https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2018/07/09/episode-1-carol-tavris-on-mistakes-justification-and-cognitive-dissonance/. Accessed 23 Jan. 2024.

Tavris, Carol, and Elliot Aronson. Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts. Third edition, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020.