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Space
Space
Science
Paul Sutter

Does physics say that free will doesn't exist?

An illustration of a human head made of glowing dots facing right with glowing planets from our solar system at the back of its head all against a dark blue background.

You are currently making a conscious, willful decision to read this article. But physics says every action has a cause. So did you really make this decision as freely as you thought?

One of the bedrock philosophical concepts under all of physics is something called causal determinism. It says that every effect has a cause, and that if you know the current state of a system, you can use the power of physics to predict how it behaves. If effects happened without causes, then there wouldn't be much need for physics. And if we couldn't predict how systems would behave, then we wouldn't be very good at our jobs.

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