A Psychological Study of Free Will
Hannah Knerr
What is free will?
One of the main problems I have had in my research is that different people discussing
free will have different definitions of free will. Alfred R. Mele nicely describes this problem
when he examines the different standards for free will (Mele 88). He claims that there are two
main high bars for free will which can be described as follows: “1) having free will requires
making conscious choices that are entirely independent of preceding brain activity and 2) having
free will requires being absolutely unconstrained by genetics and environment (including the
situations in which we find ourselves (Mele 89). While these definitions do give a good example
of an extremely high bar to set for the existence of free will, I happen to find Mele’s definition of
free will to be subpar as well. He claims that if we find it “plausible that people sometimes
deserve – from a moral point of view – credit or blame for what they do” then we must also think
it “plausible that people sometimes exercise free will” (Mele 89). I do not like this definition
because he seems to want to describe the cause by the result. He assumes that the result of free
will is credit or blame for our actions, and thus that the only cause of credit or blame for our
actions must then be the existence of free will. If this line of reasoning were true, then perhaps it
would be good evidence that free will does exist. However, he does not seem to consider that
even though we may find people to deserve credit or blame for their actions, this may just be a
construct of the human mind in order for us to create a functioning society. If we did not give
people credit or blame for their actions then no one would care to act in ways other than those
directly beneficial to themselves. It seems to me very possible that even though we desire to
assign people credit or blame for their actions, this is not because they deserve it, but rather it is
to preserve the society that we have built around this illusion of free will.
This has distracted me from the main point of this section though. Why we desire and
function under the guise of free will is something that I will further discuss later. For now we go
back to defining this elusive term. In my introduction to philosophy class we learned that there
were three levels of belief in free will: hard determinism, compatibilism, and libertarian freedom.
Hard determinism is the belief that everything we think or say or do is determined, and we do not
have free will. Compatibilism is a similar belief in that compatibilists also believe that
everything we think or say or do is determined, but they also believe we do still have free will
(Vance 20414). This view can be summed up with a quote from Harris: “You can do what you
decide to do – but you cannot decide what you will decide to do” (Harris 38). In other words,
even though everything is determined, what is determined is what you want to do anyway, so it
hardly even matters that it is determined. I suppose this is what I believe in, but unlike a
compatibilist I find it hard to say that we have free will if everything is determined, even if what
is determined is what we want to choose anyway. That just doesn’t seem like free will to me
even though there are good thought experiments that argue otherwise. I will give you the one my
philosophy professor used for us to explain the concept:
“Tomorrow is Election Day, and you have made plans to vote for your favorite candidate, Mrs.
Winner. While you are sleeping, a neurosurgeon installs a chip in your brain. The neuroscientist
intends to watch your every move tomorrow. They WANT you to vote for Mrs. Winner. If you
try to vote for Mrs. Winner, the scientist will do nothing. However, if you try to vote for Mr.
Loser, the scientists will push a button that activates the chip in your brain. This chip will cause
you to vote for Mrs. Winner instead. As it turns out, you vote for Mrs. Winner without the
scientist ever having to activate the chip” (Vance 2014).
So did you freely vote for Mrs. Winner? The compatibilist would answer yes. However, the third
view of free will, Libertarianism, would say no. Those who believe in Libertarianism believe that
we do have free will and this is because they believe that with every action we take that we had
the ability to do otherwise. They also require that we have the ability to do otherwise in order for
us to have free will, which the compatibilist view does not require.
Mele also suggests a similar three-tiered division of levels of free will. His third tier
division appears to be the same as my philosophy professor’s definition of Libertarianism, but
Mele describes the view under the name “ambitious free will” (Mele 79). He describes this view
as follows: “If you have free will, then alternate decisions are open to you in a deep way…deep
openness…what’s needed is that more than one option was open to you, given everything as it
actually was at the time” (Mele 2). My issue with this view is that to prove it you should in
theory need to believe that if I picked a color shirt to wear today and the color was red then if we
rewound back to that exact moment again then I may pick a different color shirt because that
option was also open to me and the only way to prove it was open to me would be for me to pick
a different color. However, is everything is the same as it actually was at the time the first time I
picked, then why would I not pick the same red shirt again? Whether conscious or unconscious
there must have been something to provoke me to pick the red shirt, so if everything were the
exact same as the first time I picked a shirt, then those same factors should be in play again and I
should again choose the red shirt leaving me I suppose incapable of choosing a different color.
Do you consider this to mean that I lacked another option? I had the option of choosing a
different color shirt, but to do so the initial conditions would have had to be slightly different
(maybe I would have needed to have chosen a different pair of shorts previous to choosing a
shirt). In this sense it does sound like a lack of free will because if everything were the exact
same then I would be in a sense forced to pick the red shirt. However, I think many people who
believe in free will do not appreciate the real meaning of what I mean when I say forced. No one
held me at gunpoint and forced me to pick the red shirt, but everything in my life and the
environment up to that point made it so that I wouldn’t want to pick any shirt but the red shirt. I
don’t know if this fits your definition of forced or not especially considering that even a small
change in conditions could allow me to choose a different shirt. Suppose the red shirt ended up
on the bottom of the pile instead of the top, and then perhaps I would have picked a different
color shirt to wear. I think many people don’t consider that other options are available they just
need to come with different prerequisites. Once again I have wandered off topic though, so back
to Mele and his two other views of free will.
The next view of free will he discusses is the belief that “free will is housed in souls”
(Mele 1). This belief is then closely followed by the belief that “whether or not souls exist, free
will doesn’t depend on them” (Mele 1). Unfortunately, a debate on the existence of souls is not
one I would like to get into at this moment, and this is the true peril of philosophical speculation:
one question leads to another question which leads to another question, not all of which can
simply be covered in one book or probably even in three books. So here we must limit ourselves.
I will not be delving into the reasons behind my belief that souls do not in fact exist, but to
appreciate many of my following arguments you will just have to assume this is a true fact.
Perhaps if I have the time I will one day write a follow up article on why I do not believe in
souls, but I would like to keep this paper more focused than that, so we barrel onwards.
With this belief in mind I will pose to you the next big issue in defining free will that I
came across in my studies: is our brain us? Obviously yes our brain is physically a part of us, but
many people (myself included) have an issue with the idea that our brain is functioning to make
all of our choices and create all of our beliefs before we are consciously aware of what or why,
assuming that is that we ever really become aware of what or why we have done or believe
something. I will discuss many studies later that show evidence of this type of brain functioning,
but I wanted to at least plant in your mind that debate that runs through my head every time I
read one of these studies. Initially, it always seems scary that so many of the decisions I make are
for reasons apparently totally unknown to me, and that perhaps it is true that all consciousness is
just a post hoc explanation to make sense of what is happening and what I am doing in the world.
However, when you really think about it: if it is your brain making all of these decisions, and
your brain is a part of you, isn’t it still you making these decisions, even if you lack the
conscious awareness about making them? Does this count as having free will? You are in a sense
free because it is your body that is choosing (is choosing the right word? Can you choose
something if you are not conscious?) to do everything, but if you lack the conscious portion of
the process, does it really count as free will? I am still inclined to say no, but why not? It is my
body doing this to me?
Now that I have posed all sorts of crazy questions to the definition of free will, I will
attempt to give you the definition of what I am trying to defend, so that moving forward we can
be clear what exactly my argument is. I claim that I do not believe we have free will. To contrast
Mele’s high bar definitions of free will, I feel I have a low bar belief of free will. I believe that
lacking free will requires making conscious choices that are entirely dependent on preceding
brain activity and that lacking free will requires being absolutely constrained by genetics and
environment. Basically, I believe that between environmental factors, genetic factors and the
way our brains function, all of our decisions are out of our control. If you consider the plethora
of factors that are utterly out of our control then I’m not sure how you can ever claim to make a
decision independently. Your actions are driven by things like where you were born, how you
were raised, basic human needs, the way your genetics interplay with your environment, the
functioning of your brain, and so many more different factors. Overall, this brings us to the two
major arguments against free will, both of which I support.
What are the arguments against free will?
There are two main approaches to the argument against free will. There is the
neuroscience claim, which is that “all our decisions are made unconsciously and therefore not
freely”, and then there is the social psychology claim, “that factors of which we are unaware
have such powerful influence on our behavior that no room remains for free will” (Mele 1). The
social psychology claim is by far easier to imagine in everyday life, but it just requires you to
think a little deeper about your decision making process. To try to demonstrate what I mean I
have prepared an example.
Example 1: What college should I attend?
A year and a half ago I had to decide where I was going to go to college. It came down to
Davidson or William & Mary, and it was a close call. I ended up choosing the college of William
& Mary. The next logical question is why did I do that? I chose the college of William & Mary
because both of my parents attended the college, and I wanted to feel close to them even when I
was far away at school. This seems like a choice I made, but really did I? I had no control over
the fact that my parents went to the college of William & Mary because I wasn’t even born yet. I
had no control over the fact that I grew up having a good relationship with my parents that would
lead me to desire to follow in their footsteps because this relationship was forged before I can
remember and before I had choice of my own. I had no control over the fact that I grew up in a
school district where it was frowned upon to not attend college after high school leading me to
believe it was the only suitable path to take therefore leading me to having to decide where to go
to school. I could go on, but I think you get the point.
As you can see, when you really try to imagine the causes of your decision making
process, it becomes clear just how many factors that lead you there are not in your control at all.
The example I gave is a fairly easy one to look at because it was a decision I labored long and
hard over, so tracing the causes of my choice is easier for me to do. However, there are also
some cases you can look at where it may seem like you made a choice, but the factors that really
caused you to make that choice just aren’t obvious to you. I will demonstrate this with another
example.
Should I ask out that woman?
You are sitting at the bar and a woman comes in and sits down to seats next to you. She is alone,
so you decide to approach her. Why did you decide to do this? You may think it was randomly or
just because why not? However, you didn’t realize it was because her eyes were dilated and she
is the peak of her fertility. It has been shown that “men [are] consistently more attracted to
women with dilated eyes” (Eagleman 4), and that “a woman is considered to be most beautiful at
the peak of fertility in her menstrual cycle (Eagleman 93). So while you may be able to tell you
me approached her because she is attractive, the reasons you found her attractive were not only
out of her control, but also left you with “no insight into [your] decision making” process
(Eagleman 4).
This second example better demonstrates the neuroscience view of free will: everything
we do is done for reasons our consciousness cannot or struggles to explain. We could apply this
view to the first example to by saying that even though I may think that I chose the College of
William & Mary because my parents attended school there, I really am attending school their for
reasons only my unconscious knows about, and saying I chose to go there because my parents
went there is just my consciousness attempting to explain the actions that my unconscious has
made for me. You could also apply the social psychology view to the second example by saying
something like you decided to go over and talk to her because you were feeling lonely. You were
feeling lonely because when you were a child you had an anxious attachment relationship with
your mother, and this anxious attachment relationship leaves you feeling like “in order to get
close to someone and have your needs met, you need to be with your partner all the time and get
reassurance.” However, your now ex-girlfriend couldn’t handle the pressure of this need because
she grew up with dismissive/avoidant attachment and was constantly seeking isolation from you
until she finally dumped you (Firestone 2013). As you can see, the dumping was not in your
control because the types of attachment styles you each had was not in your control, and
therefore this leaves your loneliness and desire to approach this new woman out of your control
as well.
Each of these arguments provides at least partial reasoning for how this action or choice
is left out of your control, and this is the reason why I prefer a combination of the two views. It
seems to me that on their own each explanation can account for a least most of the reasons
behind a decision or action, but then together I can hardly believe that there is anything that these
two explanations cannot account for. Unfortunately, I was very disappointed to find that most of
the literature I approached focused on one view or first one view and then the next, not a
combination of the two. This is probably because proving or supporting just one view is a hefty
enough task, much less both at once. However, I hope that, as more work on the subject comes
about that there will be a better combination of the two views to try to really eliminate the
possibility of belief in free will.
What studies or evidence support a lack of free will?
The studies probably most famous for opposing a belief in free will and the studies that
led me to want to explore this topic of research are Libet’s studies. His experiments focused on
the timing of neural events versus physical events. His most famous experiment worked as
follows: he had participants sit in a chair and randomly flex their wrist. They were looking at
what is now known as a Libet clock, a spot that revolves around the clock face in about 2.5
seconds, and after flexing the clock would stop, and participants would report where on the clock
face the dot was when they felt the intention to flex. Libet also had his participants hooked up to
an EEG machine and was taking measurements of their wrist movements. What he found was
that the brain would show activity known as a readiness potential that signaled the beginning of a
movement at about 550 milliseconds before the wrist flexed. However, participants reports of
when they had the intention to flex was only 200 milliseconds before the wrist flex. To Libet,
this showed that the unconscious decided to flex about 350 milliseconds before we are
consciously aware of this decision. This shows a lack of free will because this, and in theory all,
decisions are made unconsciously before we are aware of them (Mele 8-10).
Another famous experiment that attempts to disprove free will was done by Soon et al.
Soon used fMRI to measure changes in blood flow in the brain while participants chose to push
either the left or right button. Using this imaging technique, Soon was able predict the button a
participant would press up to ten seconds before they would press the button and with 60%
accuracy. This is a huge hit for free will for the same reason that Libet’s experiment was: if we
can predict your decision before you make it, then your actions are predetermined and out of
your own control (Mele 26-27).
Gazzaniga’s split-brain patient experiments also serve as an objection to the idea that we
have free will. A split brain patient is a patient whose corpus callosum has been severed, so the
two hemispheres of their brain are no longer connected. This surgery is one that was often done
on those with uncontrollable epilepsy to help prevent their seizures from spreading throughout
the body. Anyway, once this surgery is performed the left brain, which controls the ability to
speak, loses access to the information received by the left half of the body because this
information is sent to the right brain. What Gazzaniga would then do is he would flash a picture
of to both the right and left visual fields and ask the patient to point to the picture that had just
been flashed. When a chicken claw was flashed to the left brain and a shovel to the right brain
then the left hand pointed to the shovel picture and the right hand pointed to the chicken.
However, since the left brain did not know that the right brain saw the shovel, when asked why
they were pointing to the shovel the patient responded that you would need a shovel to clean out
the chicken pen. This makes sense as an explanation, but it is clearly not the reason the patient’s
other hand is pointing to the shovel (Gazzaniga 84). This experiment connects back to the
neuroscience explanation of why I chose to go to William & Mary: even though I had an
explanation for why, it by no means is true that that explanation is the real reason why I chose to
go there.
There are many examples “that the brain functions automatically and that our conscious
experience is an after-the-fact experience” (Gazzaniga 127). As with the split-brain patients,
many of these examples come from those being treated for brain abnormalities. For example, a
lesion in a particular part of the parietal lobe results in reduplicative paramnesia, “a delusion
belief that a place has been duplicated or exists in more than one spot at the same time, or has
been moved to a different location” (Gazzaniga 49). Gazzaniga describes a patient he talked to
with this lesion who insisted she was in her home in Freeport, Maine when she was in fact being
treated in New York Hospital. He says that when he asked her why there were elevators in her
house, “she calmly responded, ‘Doctor, do you know how much it cost me to have those put
in?’” (Gazzaniga 49). Clearly she did not actually have elevators in her home nor was she at her
home at all, but this response shows how the conscious brain will come up with explanations
with whatever information it is given.
Not all evidence that the conscious experience is an after-the-fact experience has to come
from those with brain abnormalities though. In fact, Gazzaniga gives us a simple experiment we
can try on our own to prove his point: touch your finger to your nose. Which did you feel first?
Neither, they were simultaneous, right? Well as it turns out “the neuron that carries the sensation
from your nose to the processing area in the brain is only about three inches long, while the
neuron from your hand is about three and a half feet long, and the nerve impulses travel at the
same velocity. There is a difference of a few hundred milliseconds in the amount of time it takes
for the two sensations to reach the brain, but you are not conscious of this time differential”
(Gazzaniga 127-128). This is because your brain gathers all the information and decides to both
have been touched at the same time even though this is not how the signals were received, and
then after all that is when you become consciously aware of the sensation. Your consciousness is
the last to know.
Another consciousness experiment is discussed by Daniel Wegner. In the experiment,
participants would rest their hand on an automatograph, a device that would record even slight
movements of the hand. Then the experimenters would do things like play a metronome or ask
where the nearest street is then you may unconsciously move your hand to the metronome beat
or shift it towards the street you are thinking of. However, if asked if you moved your hand you
would respond no because this movement of your hand was unconscious (Mele 41-42). This
unconscious movement helps Wegner’s main argument that “conscious proximal intentions are
never among the causes of corresponding action” because it shows no consciousness was
necessary for that action (Mele 42).
Obviously there are many more experiments attempting to disprove free will and even
many more variations of the above experiments I mentioned. However, I am going to limit
myself to discussion of these four main experiments because they offer four different
perspectives on the limited role of consciousness. In Libet’s experiment he shows that the
unconscious preparation for action is occurring before the desire for action even occurs, which
implies that the desire for action is just an illusion to help us explain why the action is occurring.
Soon’s experiment takes the role of the unconscious even further by allowing us to not only see
preparation for action before a desire arises, but by allowing us to predict a choice before the
conscious is even aware a choice has been made. Gazzaniga’s experiment takes a slightly
different approach not by demonstrating what the unconscious can do, but rather by
demonstrating what the conscious can’t do. He shows how the conscious can come up with
explanations for what is going on in the world or what one is doing, but that these explanations
are not often correct. Finally, Wegner discusses an experiment where consciousness is bypassed
altogether and shows that it is unnecessary for action to occur.
As you can see, these experiments are geared more towards the neuroscience argument
against free will because they all argue of the importance of the unconscious over the conscious.
However, they can also be considered to support the social psychology view if you consider that
some of the factors outside of our control can be factors that effect us unconsciously such as eye
dilation as described in my example above. To help convince you, I will give a couple more
examples of factors that can impact us unconsciously and that are entirely out of our control:
1. “People more often get married to others with the same first letter of their first name than
would be expected by chance…[because] those mates somehow remind their spouses of
themselves” (Eagleman 62).
2. People more often choose brands that share parts of their name as well. This was shown
in an experiment where subjects were offered two brands of tea to taste, and one of the
brands shared the first three letters of their first name. Despite tasting the same cup of tea
just named two different things, people would “almost always decide that they preferred
the tea whos name happened to match the first three letters of their name” (Eagleman 62).
3. People who have birthdays on the same number day as their number month were more
likely to live in places that shared this number in their name. For example, someone born
on 2/2 would probably end up living in Twin Lakes, Wisconsin (Eagleman 63).
4. There is also a good chance that your name can influence the profession you go into. For
example, “people named Denise or Dennis are disproportionately likely to become
dentists, while people names Laura or Lawrence are more likely to become lawyers”
(Eagleman 63).
5. “If you have seen a picture of someone’s face before, you will judge them to be more
attractive upon a later viewing. This is true even when you have no recollection of ever
having seen them previously” (Eagleman 64).
6. “You are more likely to believe that a statement is true if you have heard it before –
whether or not it is actually true” (Eagleman 65).
Clearly none of these are reasons that we would use to explain our decision making process. I
wouldn’t get married to someone simply because we share a first initial much less would I
believe a statement simply because I have heard it before, but the simple fact of the matter is that
I would even if I wouldn’t explain my choices that way. I know for some of these it is easy to
argue that even if that is a factor why I made that choice or feel that way, it surely isn’t the only
one. However, with the tea example it is clear that the name is the only factor that has caused
you to prefer that cup of tea because the name is the only thing that is different between the two
cups, even though participants claimed that the cup that shared the letters in their name tasted
better (Eagleman 62). Maybe your consciousness is telling you it tasted better, but it couldn’t
have because it was the same cup of tea. This demonstrates how even though we can feel in
control, there are still factors at work that we could never expect or would never use to explain
our actions, and if there are enough of these factors then there just can’t be room for free will no
matter how much it feels like we are in control.
What are criticisms of these studies and/or evidence?
The critiques I discuss here are all going to be either from Mele’s book or one’s I have
come up with myself because Mele’s book was the only one I read that believed in free will, and
it was actually a whole book just devoted to critiquing so called studies and evidence against free
will. However, I will also offer my own critiques of Mele’s viewpoint in order to promote my
bigger argument against free will.
Mele has a couple different issues with Libet’s work, some of which I agree with and
some of which I don’t. He starts off by suggesting that the brain activity that Libet sees 550
milliseconds before the wrist movement is not necessarily a decision being made. He suggest
that “maybe what’s going on in the brain when a rise begins is a process that might – or might
not - lead to a decision” (Mele 12). He goes on to ponder if this same brain activity might occur
when patients do not go on to flex because Libet’s experiment only recorded the activity when it
lead to a flex (Mele 13). This is a good point, but it is nothing that another set of experiments
couldn’t point out. If the brain activity is only occurring before a flex, then it would be clear that
it is immediately leading to the flex and is therefore a decision being made.
Mele’s next argument against Libet’s work is that he used too simple a task. Mele argues
that he had no reason to choose one second versus the next second to flex he wrist. He claims
this is a very different kind of decision to make than a big decision like where to move or who to
marry, and so perhaps “free will might work very differently in this [simple wrist flexing]
scenario rather than when weighing pros and cons and having to make a tough decision” (Mele
15). I half agree with this argument. When Mele is discussing not having a reason to prefer one
second over the other, it makes me think of the tea experiment from above. You had no real
reason to prefer one tea over the other, but you still find a way to have a preference just like you
have no real reason to move your wrist, but you still find a way to pick when to move it. Just
because you don’t see or understand the actions you are taking, it doesn’t mean they are random
or useless. I can agree though that perhaps there is a difference in simple decisions like flexing
your wrist versus bigger decisions. However, I do not think the difference is big enough that all
of a sudden you gain free will for big decisions. I just think that with bigger decisions there is a
more complex web of reasons causing you to make one choice over another.
Mele’s final argument against Libet’s work is that the intention to muscle burst process
should take only about 200 milliseconds, not the 550 that Libet’s work shows. To demonstrate
this, Mele references a go-signal study where participants hear a tone and click a button as fast as
they can and the whole process on average took 231 milliseconds (Mele 21). I would argue that
randomly flexing your wrist and hearing a tone and reacting are two different processes that may
use different routes through the brain entirely. I would also like to see a comparison of the EEGs
in the two experiments. I do not believe they took an EEG in the stop-go experiment but perhaps
you would see brain activity that would help us better understand the differing results of the two
experiments. I find it hard to compare the two experiments because of their different methods
and differing data collected. He could be right that the go-signal study invalidates Libet’s work,
but in my opinion they do not compare well enough to do so.
Mele next takes on Soon’s experimental work arguing that it is not as impressive as many
people seem to think. He critiques the 60% prediction accuracy claiming that he could predict
50% accuracy by just flipping a coin and he could do that way more in advanced than 10
seconds. In my opinion, Mele undervalues the 10% difference. If it had been the difference
between 90 and 100% I think he would have found the ten percent gap to be much more
important. Furthermore, just because the prediction rate was only 60% in this experiment, it does
not mean that better monitoring devices in the future will be able to predict at better rates. In fact,
Fried et al. were able to use “the activity of merely 256 neurons” to “predict with 80 percent
accuracy a person’s decision to move 700 milliseconds before he became aware of it” (Harris 89). Mele counters this by again arguing that 80 percent accuracy isn’t good enough to prove
determinism, but surely it must convince him that it is at least a possibility (Mele 32). Apparently
not though as he continues on to argue that these are most likely just urges and that is why
prediction accuracy is not 100 percent, and since they are just urges it can still be up to us to
decide if we will act on them or not. I suppose this could be a possibility, but this is where the
psychology argument comes into play. Even if it is up to us if we will act on our urges or not,
there are still infinite factors impacting us that will determine if we will or will not.
Mele then tackles Gazzaniga’s argument that our consciousness is a series of “post hoc
explanations, using post hoc observations” by giving an example from his own life (Mele 52).
He goes in detail describing how when he goes to conferences they give him enough money for a
first class ticket, but instead he will spend it on a coach class seat so that he can get a seat in the
emergency exit isle because he likes the extra leg room. He claims none of the reasons he
selected the seat would be based on observations he made after booking the seat, but rather that
they were all reasons that led him to book the seat both before and during he booked it (Mele 5354). However, I don’t think Mele is correctly interpreting what Gazzaniga is saying. I am not
sure exactly how Gazzaniga would respond, but it seems to me that Gazzaniga meant that each
step along the way he took to book the seat would have been a mere post hoc explanation for
why he took that step, not the process as a whole because the process as a whole was occurring
in your consciousness. However, each step leading you through that process would have began
unconsciously and been explained post hoc. Furthermore, even if Gazzaniga is for some reason
wrong about this just because you can explain what you think is why you booked the seat it
doesn’t mean it was in your control. Think back. Why don’t you want a first class seat? Because
you want more leg room and can afford that in coach. Why do you want more leg room? Do you
have long legs or a fear of tight spaces? Why do you have one of these things, was that in your
control? No. Therefore, even if you can define the process, even just with reasoning we know
about and can understand I can show how it was not in your control that you booked that
particular ticket, and that was only considering two of thousands of factors that could have gone
into it.
Finally, Mele discusses Wegner’s beliefs. It is important to note that Wegner’s beliefs
and my beliefs differ. Wegner believes that “conscious intentions are never among the causes of
corresponding actions” (Mele 40). However, what I believe is that conscious intentions are never
caused by ourselves. Essentially, you can have a conscious intention, but that intention is not for
no reason. This slight change invalidates all of Mele’s responses. He spends a lot of time arguing
that when told to consciously decide on a place and time to do something, people are more likely
to do it (Mele 45). However, why did they decide on that place and time and why did they decide
to set a place and time at all? In the experiments described the participants do this because they
are told to, hence an outside force is acting on them resulting in a conscious intention that leads
to the resulting action. The conscious intention is not without cause, but perhaps he has captured
what the job of consciousness actually is!
Overall, Mele attempts to destroy much of the experimental evidence against free will.
However, in my opinion he is hardly successful. He brings up a couple good points, but none that
cannot be better shown with more research. Furthermore, he repeatedly fails to acknowledge the
experiments in the grand scheme of the argument as a whole, rather he chooses to isolate each
individually and point out the most technical of flaws. At best I would say he took away some of
the shock value that the conclusions of the experiments often seem to leave, but even without
this shock value we are still left with good science that raises an intriguing point. It may not yet
be enough to prove a lack of free will, but it certainly is enough to raise question against it.
Why do we need free will/what would a world without free will look like?
What does it even mean to lack free will? What would a world without free will look
like? Well, to be fair it depends on what your view on the definition of free will is. However,
based on my definition it seems to me that a lack of free will is not such a bad thing. Gazzaniga
in fact claims that we “wouldn’t want it any other way. For instance, we wouldn’t want our
actions, such as lifting our hand to our mouth, to result in random movement: We want that ice
cream in our mouth not on our forehead” (Gazzaniga 3). However, many people seem to believe
that a lack of free will would mean we are nothing more than “zombies, with no volition”
(Gazzaniga 3). How could that be true though? We still are able to appreciate the world we live
in. All of the quirks that make us human would still be present. The only difference would be
that instead of just being in control on your own, you would now be a part of something bigger.
You are the results of your neurology and biology churning away, and not only that but you can
impact and effect the neurology of others around you. We are all connected effecting each other
and being effected by each other in this wonderful web of the world, which sure may not leave
room for free will, but who needs it? So many people think of a lack of free will as a loss, but
how can you lose something that you never had? We don’t miss our ability to see radio waves or
x-rays because they are never something we had (Eagleman 77), and in the same manner we
would not lose anything or miss anything by acknowledging that we lack free will.
So now it is time to talk about the white elephant in the room. What does a lack of free
will mean for responsibility? Eagleman claims “the biggest battle [he] has to fight [when
explaining his lack of belief in free will] is the misperception that an improved biological
understanding of people’s behaviors and internal differences means we will forgive criminals
and no longer take them off the streets” (Eagleman 190). I agree with him on this point.
Whenever I discuss my research with someone their first response is to say “Well if we don’t
have free will then nothing I do is my fault. I could rob a bank or kick the dog and you couldn’t
hold me responsible for doing it!” This response is inane. Just because you are not responsible
for your actions, it does not mean that there still will not be repercussions for these actions. If
you rob a bank then you will be detained. If you kick the dog then you will hurt the dog.
Let’s back up to the robbing a bank situation though because while repercussions like
hurting someone else will remain in place regardless of society, but being detained is a societyenforced repercussion. Is this fair? Should we keep laws in tact even if we cannot hold people
responsible for their actions? Harris gives five cases to help clarify our feelings on responsibility
and what a world without free will would mean for them:
1. “A four-year-old boy was playing with his father’s gun and killed a young woman. The
gun had been kept loaded and unsecured in a dresser drawer.
2. A 12-year-old boy who had been the victim of continual physical and emotional abuse
took his father’s gun and intentionally shot and killed a young woman because she was
teasing him.
3. A 25-year-old man who had been the victim of continual abuse as a child intentionally
shot and killed his girlfriend because she left him for another man.
4. A 25-year-old-man who had been raised by wonderful parents and never abused
intentionally shot and killed a young woman he had never met ‘just for the fun of it.’
5. A 25-year-old man who had been raised by wonderful parents and never abused
intentionally shot and killed a young woman he had never met ‘just for the fun of it.’ An
MRI of the man’s brain revealed a tumor the size of a golf ball in his medial prefrontal
cortex (a region responsible for the control of emotion and behavioral impulses)”(Harris
49-50).
In each case the end result is the same, but our feelings about each case vary widely. The four
year old and the twelve year old are not old enough and their brains are not fully developed
enough for us to hold them accountable for their actions. The abuse and brain tumor in cases
three and five again mitigate our anger at the man, and instead we find him a mere victim of
circumstance, a “victim of his own biology” or upbringing. However, we despise the man in
case number four. Why is this? Harris’s argument is that “the more we understand the human
mind in casual terms, the harder it becomes to draw distinctions between cases like 4 and 5”
(Harris 54). The more we understand the brain, the more we understand the different factors
that led to this end result. However, understanding the different factors does not mean letting
every murderer and rapist run around the streets free claiming it wasn’t their fault, it simply
means “our justice system should reflect an understanding that any of us could have been
dealt a very different hand in life” (Harris 54). This means when sentencing criminals instead
of looking backwards at the causes of the crime, which are far too complex to understand
with our current knowledge, we need to be looking forward and looking into “customized
rehabilitation” (Eagleman 180). We need to use science to predict the likelihood of
reoccurring criminal behavior which can allow us to better determine what steps to take from
there. Many people may question “whether it’s unfair to take a scientific approach to
sentencing….But…what’s the alternative? As it stands now, ugly people receive longer
sentences than attractive people; psychiatrists have no capacity to guess which sex offenders
will reoffend; and our prisons are overcrowded with drug addicts who could be more usefully
dealt with by rehabilitation rather than incarceration. So is current sentencing really better
than a scientific, evidence-based approach” (Eagleman 192)?
Overall, the idea of free will is one that has caused debate for many, many years and will
continue to cause debate for many more. Before we can ever come to accept such an idea
there will need to be much more scientific evidence to back up the claim, and even then I’m
sure the level of protest will be similar to when it was first claimed that the world was not flat
or when natural selection was first suggested. It is truly a revolutionary idea. I will leave you
with one last thought though and it is one that contradicts the point of this whole paper: will
we ever truly be able to accept that we lack free will? Is the feeling in our heads that we are
in control too powerful to be defeated even by the truth? Many philosophers such as Van
Inwagen claim that our belief in our own freedom is unshakeable, so it does not matter
whether we have free will or not because either way we will never be able to believe or
function as though we do not (Vance 2014). Think about it, could you function that way?
Works Cited
Eagleman, David. Incognito. Rearsby: Clipper Large Print, 2012. Print.
Firestone, Lisa, Ph.D. "How Your Attachment Style Impacts Your Relationship." Psychology
Today. Sussex Publishers, 30 July 2013. Web. 21 Aug. 2015.
Gazzaniga, Michael S. Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain. New York,
NY: HarperCollins, 2011. Print.
Harris, Sam. Free Will. New York: Free, 2012. Print.
Mele, Alfred R. Free: Why Science Hasn't Disproved Free Will. New York: Oxford UP, 2014.
Print.
Vance, Chad. "Free Will." Intro to Philosophy. Williamsburg. 2014. Lecture.