The Scalar Stack: Free Will as the Capacity to Direct Causal Flow

AbstractFor centuries, the free will debate has been paralyzed by a false binary: either human agentspossess metaphysical “uncaused causation” or we are deterministic automata. I argue that freewill is not a binary property but a scalar capacity inherent to life itself—the capacity to redirectcausal flow toward persistence. This capacity, which I term Hormē (Ὁρμή), is the constitutivedrive of living systems and scales through evolutionary complexity: from bacterial taxis to hu-man deliberation. By reframing free will as what life does—not what minds have—I dissolve thetraditional stalemate and provide an empirically grounded, testable account of freedom across thetree of life. The framework yields a graduated spectrum of agency—from vegetative (plants) toreflective (human)—each with measurable degrees of causal influence. This approach naturalizesfree will without reducing it, offering a unified account that respects both the laws of physicsand the lived reality of choice. The result is not just a philosophical solution but a scientificallytestable framework with implications for neuroscience, artificial intelligence, mental health, andethics. Keywords: free will, scalar agency, Hormē, causal flow, degrees of freedom, life‐agency continu-ity, thermodynamics, navigation