The exploration and clarification of free will in philosophical discussions are of immense importance because many of the laws we’ve established in human societies, along with various religions and ideologies, are built on the belief that humans possess free will and can choose their destiny.

Free will, composed of the two words “free” and “will”, will be examined individually before addressing the complete concept.

The word “freedom” in English comes from the combination of “Free” and the suffix “dom.” This “dom,” found in words like “freedom” and “kingdom,” is derived from the Latin word “dominium,” meaning “rule” or “domain.” Just as every king has a domain, when we talk about freedom, we are discussing a domain or territory. The notion of absolute, unconditional freedom is another illusion of the human mind. Whenever a new freedom is granted to you, new rules will always limit it.

Think about your childhood. Although you were free to do many things, your parents and those around you constantly prevented you from engaging in certain actions, imposing restrictions. Additionally, your mind was far more limited than it is now. As explained in previous chapters, this limitation was due to the constraints of perception shaped by your mental background.

Now, imagine you’ve reached adolescence, and you want freedom. But is this truly the case? While you may have reached the legal age, you are still forced to follow countless rules imposed by society, family, friends, and those around you. Simultaneously, your mind constantly limits you with the “shoulds” and “should nots” dictated by your value systems.

This idea doesn’t only apply to individual freedoms but extends across all areas of life. Freedom is always a relative concept. Absolute, limitless freedom is inherently paradoxical, as the word itself carries limitations. The “dom” in “freedom” reflects this well. This truth also applies to social freedoms.

For instance, if you feel a lack of freedom in your current country and decide to move elsewhere, or are considering such a move, one of the first things you’ll encounter upon immigration is restriction. This experience might be due to an expectation mismatch because you moved in pursuit of more freedom, yet didn’t anticipate facing new restrictions. The point here is that freedom equals limitation. When you gain freedom in one area, you inevitably face constraints in others, and even the new freedoms will come with specific boundaries. For example, if you move from a country with dress code restrictions to one offering more freedom in this area, you might find that driving regulations, banking systems, or even social norms are more restrictive. If you were unhappy with internet censorship and restrictions on free speech online in your own country and move to another without such censorship, you should prepare for other limitations—like being unable to download films, series, or software for free, as you must comply with copyright laws. Moreover, breaking online rules can have serious consequences, limiting you further.

We, humans, continually shift from one limited domain to another, and we call this freedom. Freedom is a relative matter, finding its meaning within a specific domain.

In general, “will” refers to a mental capacity where an individual makes a decision and translates it into action. There are numerous definitions of “will” in philosophy, psychology, and various ideologies, but I won’t delve into those here.

Typically, this process is attributed to humans because many believe that only humans possess will, while other creatures operate entirely on involuntary processes. In everyday conversation, we often categorize things as voluntary or involuntary. For example, we consider heartbeat and digestion as involuntary, while choosing to drink a cup of coffee or water is seen as voluntary. I will thoroughly analyze this distinction here.

For reasons I will soon explain, I won’t provide a strict definition of “will” or “free will” in this book.

Take, for example, the decision to drink a glass of water. This seemingly simple act consists of millions of smaller components that cannot be fully analyzed, though it can be simplified, much like Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

Before any action is taken toward drinking water, some form of content—a thought, an image, or a physical sensation like dry mouth or rising body temperature—emerges in your mind. Once this content appears in your mental space, the brain sends a signal to the motor system to execute the action. You rise from your seat and walk toward the refrigerator. Your brain won’t put in much effort here because you’ve made this trip many times before, and no complicated calculations are needed—unless your spouse has decided to store the water bottle in the bathroom instead of the fridge. In that case, you will follow your previous, automatic path, and when you find no bottle in the fridge, you’ll experience the pain of expectation error, perhaps grumbling or feeling frustrated, before changing direction toward the bathroom. It may take a few days or even weeks for your brain to fully adapt to this new path. Even while walking or retrieving the water or bringing it to your mouth, you won’t exert much effort because you’ve already mastered these actions during your earliest years, and your brain, in its energy-saving mode, has delegated them to your autopilot.

Once you’ve enjoyed the cool, refreshing water, a signal is sent to relieve your feeling of thirst, preventing you from drinking more than necessary. Without this system, you would likely have consumed so much water by now that you’d have brought about your own demise.

Now, let’s examine the voluntary and involuntary aspects of this entire process:

– **Step 1: The appearance of thoughts, feelings, and physical signs of thirst.** The feeling of thirst and its physical manifestations arise involuntarily in your mind. The thoughts and images that push you toward the fridge also appear in your mind without your control, and while scrolling through social media, you can even act like a complete zombie, navigating your way without ever lifting your head to quench your thirst.

– **Step 2: Walking toward the fridge.** As I previously mentioned, the act of walking and even choosing different paths to reach the fridge occurs involuntarily, driven by your brain’s autopilot, unless external factors—such as your spouse rearranging the furniture—force you to change course. In that case, your brain sends new signals to select an alternate path, and this process, too, happens involuntarily, guided by your brain’s complex systems.

– **Step 3: Grabbing the glass and drinking the water.** This action, practiced since your early years, occurs entirely on autopilot. Your hand grasps the glass, and your muscles contract just enough. If they contract slightly less, you’ll drop the glass; if they contract too much, the glass will shatter in your hand. Those who have experienced sleepwalking and drinking water know how flawlessly this process can be executed, even while asleep.

– **Step 4: Stopping the act of drinking water.** Imagine that while you’re drinking water, the part of your brain that signals when to stop suddenly ceases functioning. What would happen? You’d keep drinking water until, heaven forbid, you choked. So, another highly precise system measures the water content in your stomach, preventing you from drinking too much. This process is entirely involuntary, managed by the brain just like heartbeats or body temperature regulation.

We often fall into the illusion of having free will when we choose not to drink water, for example, when fasting, or when we try to prove to someone that we are beings with free will. You might argue that to demonstrate your free will, you’ll get up right now and drink from the kitchen faucet instead of heading to the fridge. This brings us to the crux of the matter—please pay close attention.

Let’s consider the second scenario, where you decide to defy me and drink from the faucet rather than the fridge. Most of the processes remain the same. You’ve filled your glass from the faucet many times, so this has also become an automatic process. The only part that may have confused you is the decision to switch from the fridge to the faucet. My question is, where did that thought originate? Or, in other words, how did this content appear in your mental space?

The answer lies in what I’ve previously explained: your mental background. Rebellious thoughts, aimed at proving a point or defending your beliefs, appear in your mind involuntarily and automatically. Whether these thoughts prompt you to close this book, stop listening to my nonsense, or head to the kitchen faucet to prove your free will, they all arise without any volition. If you’ve ever meditated for even a few hours in your life, you surely know that thoughts and feelings continuously emerge in your mind without any effort on your part. You can become aware of a thought after it appears, or you may pay attention to the thought that was processed seconds earlier, but the act of the thought itself coming into your mind is entirely involuntary.

Now, considering all this, which part of drinking water actually involved your free will?

Let’s turn to fasting. You resolutely decide not to drink water from dawn to dusk. You’ve done this many times, and now you’re proud to prove to me that you possess free will, that you can choose to refrain from drinking water whenever you like. Wonderful! Let’s examine this scenario together.

When you decide to fast, what happens in your mind?

Fasting is typically tied to your value system and beliefs, so you view it as a spiritual act, an obligation, or even something beneficial to your health. Behind each of these beliefs lie countless narratives and validations provided by your value system and ideology, which I’ve explained in detail in the belief chapter. Even the presence of these belief systems operates without your will, as they are part of your mental background, shaping your behaviors rather than you controlling them. As I’ve outlined, the role of value systems is to evaluate our actions and behaviors.

So, what happens in your mind? Another thought arises about fasting, and your brain instructs you to suppress the feelings of thirst and their physical manifestations. This *top-down mechanism* of the brain often leads us to the mistaken illusion of having free will, when, in reality, it’s merely a parallel process within the same brain. Just like the illusion that we are conscious beings because we can observe our thoughts and feelings, it’s merely another parallel system in the brain that can cast the spotlight of attention onto the content appearing in our consciousness. I will go into more detail about conscious attention (which, in English, is also referred to as *Consciousness*) in future chapters.

The top-down brain process, managed by the *prefrontal cortex* in coordination with the limbic system and other areas, controls the parts of the body that this system has access to. For example, it can regulate external limbs like your hands, feet, and facial expressions, but it cannot stop the heart from beating or prevent the stomach from secreting acid. What we refer to as “will” is simply the functioning of this system, which I’ve called the top-down system. A full neuroscientific explanation of this process is provided at the end of the book.

This process can even prevent you from drinking water indefinitely, to the point where the brain’s primary task of preserving your life is sacrificed in favor of what we call belief. This fascinating system manages hunger strikes, which can lead to a person’s death in pursuit of their ideals. Value-based and ideological systems use this part of the brain to suppress many human needs. Whether it’s a priest abstaining from procreation or an ascetic enduring extreme physical pain without a reaction, all of these actions are controlled by the top-down brain system, which we often mistakenly refer to as will, even though this system, too, is governed by our mental background.

Let’s conduct a simple experiment to help us understand the top-down brain process more deeply. Please hold your breath for ten seconds, count to ten, and then allow your breathing to return to its normal rhythm. Please perform this action because it’s crucial to grasp this concept.

What happened? As you read or listened to my sentence, a thought emerged in your mind’s awareness. You either held your breath or ignored my request and continued reading or listening, or perhaps you even resisted out of rebellion. This entirely depends on your mental background.

In the first case, after the requested thought appeared, a top-down command was issued by your brain, and you held your breath. In the second case, when the thought surfaced in your mind’s awareness, another part of your brain disregarded the request, and you continued reading or listening.

Now, imagine another scenario where I tell you that if, every morning when you wake up, you hold your breath for ten seconds and then release it, and if you keep doing this every day, not only will you feel energized all day long, but it will also add ten years to your life. Then I present various scientific reasons and studies, followed by many others on your social media, who report amazing results in their daily lives from performing this action. You begin holding your breath for ten seconds every morning. You might even think to yourself, “Well, holding my breath for ten seconds doesn’t harm me, and if this is true, I’ll gain an extra ten years of life. Other people are also talking about how energized and refreshed they feel, so why not?” Soon, this action becomes a daily habit, like brushing your teeth, and the story continues.

In this scenario, you believed that this action would benefit you, and the placebo effect—something I’ll discuss in detail—might even make you feel better and more refreshed throughout the day. Now let’s analyze this scenario more closely: a completely fictional thought, born from my mind, appeared in your mental space as second-hand knowledge. You trust me to some extent, but seeing your friends and others on social media performing this action would confirm it for you. Just like in the story of the stork, you’ve received new content, and through repetition and the validation of others, it became a belief. Now, this belief has created a top-down loop. Every morning when you wake up, your dear brain opens a thought, much like those annoying pop-up windows on the web, reminding you to perform the action. The top-down command is issued, and you hold your breath. On some days, you might forget to do it, but after checking your Instagram feed and seeing countless friends and acquaintances posting about their breath-holding practice, fearing you might miss out, you quickly perform the action before it’s too late because, like Cinderella’s shoes, the magical effects of breath-holding might vanish after noon.

If you continue this practice for some time, it will eventually shift from a top-down process to your brain’s autopilot, and you’ll continue performing this action until the end of your life without needing reminders or what we call “will.”

This fascinating brain process of delegating tasks to autopilot is incredibly beneficial and practical. Just think back to the early days when you tried to learn to drive and had to coordinate the gas pedal, clutch, gearshift, and steering wheel all at once. Of course, the new generation likely doesn’t know what a clutch or gearshift is, and if you’re reading this book several years from now when all cars are truly self-driving, you might even wonder how strange it was that people once had to learn to drive and take tests. But I digress. The point is, this process is incredibly useful because it means you no longer have to think about these things, allowing you to listen to a podcast while driving and even put on makeup in the rearview mirror at the same time.

Now that you have some understanding of the top-down brain process and autopilot, let’s revisit the concept of free will. In its general sense, free will refers to the idea that humans, by virtue of having will, can shape their destiny and direct their lives. This is the principle upon which our entire system of rewards and punishments is built—that all of an individual’s actions and behaviors are voluntary, and the individual has chosen to engage in them. However, as I have demonstrated in the examples above, none of our actions or behaviors are truly voluntary. Our behaviors and actions stem from the emergence of content such as thoughts and feelings, shaped by our mental background—our beliefs, values, and even our genetics—and they occur without any volition on our part.

This does not mean, however, that people can justify every action they take in society, nor does it imply that we don’t need systems of reward and punishment. On the contrary, it highlights just how crucial mental backgrounds—shaped by educational, value-based, and belief systems—are. It demonstrates that punishment and reward are part of the learning process, as I’ve explained in previous sections. When you moved toward the pantry to steal a delicious chocolate bar and were punished for it, that was the first step in learning that stealing and theft, whether within the family or on a larger scale within society, are unacceptable. From a young age, you learned values such as health, helping others, and pleasing your parents, all of which influence your behavior in society and guide each of your decisions involuntarily. The fact that individuals suffering from unresolved childhood trauma or neurological disorders may commit atrocities like sexual violence or mass shootings only emphasizes the urgent need for education, treatment, and finding real solutions—not simply surrendering to the notion of determinism and passively accepting what happens.

Much of the conflict between believers in free will and its opponents stems from this very point—that belief or disbelief in free will leads us to make different decisions. In my view, whether you believe in free will or not, we all agree that education, value systems, genetics, and various disorders shape our behavior. Therefore, what I’ve explained here is not an argument for moral relativism or social indifference but rather an urgent call for the importance of education, mental content, mental backgrounds, and the ongoing effort to provide proper education and treatment for mental disorders.

The very act of learning, which we are now engaging in by reading this book together, is a crucial part of this process. As I’ve outlined in previous chapters, learning requires study and observation, practice, confronting prediction errors, and repetition.