A five-part descent into the illusion of autonomy, where biology writes the script, reason provides the excuse, and the self is merely the echo of its own conditioning.This is a follow-up to a recent post on the implausibility of free will.
You Cannot Originate Yourself
The causa sui argument, and the final collapse of moral responsibility
“If you cannot cause yourself, you cannot cause your choices. And if you cannot cause your choices, you cannot own them.”
Audio: NotenookLM podcast on this topic.
Everything until now has pointed to erosion:
Your choices are state-dependent.
Your identity is cumulative, not authored.
Your evaluations are judged by compromised observers.
But here, finally, we strike at the bedrock.
It isn’t merely that you are manipulated. It isn’t merely that you are misperceived. It’s that you never could have been free, even in theory.
Because you did not make yourself.
The Causa Sui Problem
To be ultimately morally responsible, you must be the origin of who you are.
You must have chosen your disposition.
You must have selected your values.
You must have designed your will.
But you didn’t.
You emerged:
With a particular genetic cocktail.
Into a particular historical moment.
Through particular developmental experiences.
With particular neurological quirks and vulnerabilities.
And at no point did you step outside yourself to say:
“I would like to be this kind of agent, with this kind of character.”
You were thrown — as Heidegger might say — into a situation not of your choosing, with equipment you didn’t request, subject to pressures you couldn’t anticipate.
And everything you think of as “yours” — your courage, your laziness, your generosity, your rage — is the unfolding of that original unchosen situation.
No Escape via Reflexivity
Some will protest:
“But I can reflect! I can change myself!”
But this, too, is a mirage.
Because:
The desire to reflect is conditioned.
The capacity to reflect is conditioned.
The courage to act on reflection is conditioned.
You didn’t author your ability to self-correct. You simply inherited it — like a river inheriting a particular gradient.
Even your rebellion is written in your blueprint.
Freedom by Degrees Is Not Freedom
The compatibilist fallback — that freedom is just “acting according to oneself” — collapses under causa sui.
Because the self that acts was never authored. It was configured by prior causes.
If you cannot be the cause of yourself, then you cannot be the cause of your actions in any ultimate sense.
Thus:
No ultimate credit for your virtues.
No ultimate blame for your vices.
Only causal flow, chemical procession, narrative stitching after the fact.
The criminal and the saint are both unlucky configurations of biology and circumstance.
TL;DR: No Self, No Sovereignty
To be responsible, you must be causa sui — the cause of yourself.
You are not.
Therefore, you are not ultimately responsible for your actions.
Therefore, free will — as traditionally imagined — does not exist.
There is choice. But there is no chooser behind the choice. Only the momentum of prior conditions, impersonating agency.
A five-part descent into the illusion of autonomy, where biology writes the script, reason provides the excuse, and the self is merely the echo of its own conditioning.This is a follow-up to a recent post on the implausibility of free will.
Continuity Is Not Identity
You are not who you were — you are what you’ve become
“A river doesn’t remember yesterday’s curve. But we point to it and say: ‘Look, it’s still the same.’”
Audio: NotebookLM podcast on this topic.
The compatibilist move here is subtler — less grandiose than autonomy, more domesticated than sovereignty. It says: Even if you didn’t choose your traits, your past, your preferences — you’re still you. That self has endured. And moral responsibility flows from that continuity.
But this, too, is sleight of hand.
Because continuity is a pattern, not a person. And a pattern that evolves without origin is not accountable. It’s just happening.
A River Is Not a Moral Agent
Yes, you are still “you” — but only in the loosest, most cosmetic sense. The fact that your behaviour follows a recognisable pattern does not imply authorship. It merely confirms that systems tend toward stability, or path dependence, or neural canalisation.
You can be stable. You can even be consistent. But that doesn’t mean you’re choosing anything.
Continuity is not control. It’s inertia dressed up as identity.
Predictability Is Not Ownership
We mistake persistence for personhood. If someone acts one way for long enough, we assume that behaviour is theirs — that it reflects their values, their self. But all it really reflects is probability.
“You’re still you,” we say. But which you?
The one shaped by sleep deprivation?
The one under hormonal flux?
The one shaped by language, trauma, and cultural myopia?
Every iteration of “you” is a snapshot — a chemical event disguised as character.
You’re Not Rebuilding — You’re Accreting
The recursive defence — “I can change who I am” — also crumbles here. Because you don’t change yourself from nowhere. You change because something changed you. And that change, too, emerges from your condition.
Growth, reflection, habit formation — these aren’t proofs of freedom. They’re signs that adaptive systems accumulate structure.
You are not shaping clay. You are sediment, layered by time.
Character Is Compulsion in Costume
We love stories about people who “showed their true colours.” But this is narrative bias — we flatten a life’s complexity into a myth of revelation.
Yet even our finest moments — courage, restraint, sacrifice — may be nothing more than compulsions coded as character. You didn’t choose to be brave. You just were.
The brave person says: “I had no choice.” The coward says the same.
Who gets the medal is irrelevant to the question of freedom.
TL;DR: Continuity Doesn’t Mean You Own It
The self is a pattern of events, not a stable agent.
Continuity is not agency — it’s habit.
Predictability doesn’t prove ownership.
Even your finest moments might be involuntary.
And if you’re not choosing your changes, you’re just being changed.
So, no — you are not who you were. You are what you’ve become. And what you’ve become was never yours to shape freely.
📅 Coming Tomorrow:
Manipulability as Disproof
If your will can be altered without your knowledge, was it ever truly yours?
Philosophics 