Autopraxis: a biological model of limited free will

Abstract

Darwinian continuity and physical monism are traditionally thought to preclude free will, a conclusion reinforced by framing freedom as an instantaneous capacity to choose otherwise (the “branching problem”). This paper proposes an alternative: limited free will is the cumulative capacity of a physical system to modify the dispositions—the “bias function”—from which its future behavior emerges. I term this recursive self-editing autopraxis and contrast it with allopraxis (modification driven primarily by external contingencies). Neurobiologically, autopraxis is hypothesized to be supported by the decoupled default mode network (DMN), which permits internally generated cognition to contribute to restructuring the self-model. Because a recursively self-editing system continually changes its effective, level-specific dynamical organization, its future cannot be exhaustively characterized by a fixed state-plus-effective-law description at that level. I term this condition “incomplete determinacy.” This claim does not require a violation of fundamental physical determinism: the underlying physical laws may remain fixed while the system continually modifies the higher-level dispositions through which those laws are behaviorally organized. While non-human animals exhibit “biological freedom” through allopraxis, metacognitive monitoring, and unconscious autopraxis, the present framework proposes that they lack the declarative, self-aware grade of self-editing required for limited free will. Supported by the evolutionary specialization of the human DMN, this declarative autopraxis is proposed as a structural discontinuity between humans and other primates. Ultimately, human agency is not an exemption from physical causation, but a biologically instantiated capacity to participate in the construction of one’s own future dispositions.