Do We Have Free Will?—Part 2

Our Western social systems—criminal justice, welfare, and education—are primarily based on the assumption that we possess free will. This is particularly true of our criminal justice system, which is founded on the principle that we are responsible for the choices we make. If we choose poorly, we can expect negative consequences to occur (from the state), and we expect to bear the burden of those mistakes. Conversely, if we make good choices, we expect to reap the benefits and take credit for our accomplishments.

Evolution has encouraged us to make good decisions. Those critters in the deep past who made poor choices, tended to die out, and those who made smart choices prospered. All animals must possess the ability to generate options in a given situation, to weigh them, and then to choose the more favorable one. This ability implies some quality of free will on the part of all critters. As our human brains evolved and grew in size, we were able to conceive of additional and more complicated options when confronted with situations and thus make even better choices than most animals. This seems to suggest that we are freer than most animals. Yet evolution has also provided us with many innate choices; such as a tendency to jump and run from a snake. We do not weigh options in such an emergency... we just jump.

So how free are we, really? I may wish to believe that I act at my own discretion, but is that really the case? How autonomous am I, really? And, furthermore, how moral am I? When I take some action, how much credit or culpability am I entitled to? These are free-will philosophy questions that have been argued for millennia.

Recent scientific research in the field of neurology is changing and updating the free will/determinism debate. Neurology has cast a new light on this ancient argument—bringing us information that our forebears were lacking: details about what's going on inside our heads as we evaluate and make life's decisions. And they've found that what we formerly believed about the mental process that leads us to do things, to think, to dream... is wrong. We've previously imagined that a spirit or a soul is at the core of us—something immaterial and even transcendent that is the very essence of who we are and what we do, and that is mostly unchanging over the years. It turns out that that idea is not really right.

Neurology is giving us a very different picture of what's going on. What is being discovered is that our thoughts, our hopes, our memories, and our dreams do not emanate from the immaterial spirit within, but are simply the result of material neurons firing inside our skull. Researchers are able to show that so much of who we are and what we do actually stems from electrical and chemical activity within the brain... not an immaterial soul.

This is a profound result! It suggests to me that what I do and think are controlled by neuronal activity—not my immaterial soul or thoughts. Who am I? What's more, neuroscience has demonstrated that my brain actually changes—and thus my behavior changes—when my brain chemistry changes. Experiments that interfere with or promote certain brain chemicals literally make me a different person. This is not my soul changing, but my physical brain. These findings were often discovered when researchers examined people who had experienced some sort of brain trauma. When their brains became damaged, they became different people. Military veterans return from war zones, where they've experienced brain injuries, with significantly altered personalities.

In the 1980s some ground-breaking experiments were conducted by neuroscientists on subjects in the lab. One astounding result is that, when our body responds to some external physical stimulus, only later (maybe one-half second later) have we consciously decided to take action. The message: our body often responds on its own—unconsciously, without any intent on our part—and we later think that we chose to do so. In addition, these experiments showed that when people behaved rather irrationally in given situations, when asked why, they often made up silly excuses that made no sense—excuses that arose because they needed to feel that they were really in control of what they did, when in fact, some unconscious process had caused them to do what they did.

It's a fact that some 90% of our brain activity is below the level of consciousness—activity that is beyond our intentional control. Thus my brain is constantly making many decisions without “my” involvement; without any intent on my part at all. For example, when do I choose to breathe in? What and how do I choose to digest my meal? When and how do I choose to instantly withdraw my hand from a hot stove? When do I choose to blink? These are all automatic activities that my unconscious brain takes care of all the time. I'd be tied up in immobile knots if my conscious mind attempted to make these decisions.

Conclusion of free will next time...