Do We Have Free Will?

The case against free will

In the 1980s, the researcher Benjamin Libet conducted experiments that showed our minds make decisions to do something about one-half to one-third of a second before we become consciously aware of the decision. Also, the human mind operates under a warped time illusion. Under this illusion, our conscious minds believe that we consciously make a decision at the same time we become consciously aware of it.

Libet's data was interpreted as meaning that our fast powerful unconscious minds make decisions. Assuming that free will is defined as decisions that are consciously made, we do not have much or any free will. After all, conscious free will or intent could not have any role in decision-making if decisions are made before conscious awareness arises.

Later research found that some decisions can be detected in the brain up to about 10 seconds before we become consciously aware of it. But even then, the mind illusion leads us to consciously believe that we consciously made the decision when we became aware of it, even though the decision really was made up to about 10 seconds before then.

Several other lines of research indicated that people's sense of control or agency are illusions the mind creates that we are unaware of. For example, people often say they did something for reasons that have absolutely nothing whatever to do with motivating a decision. This well-known human tendency to confabulate is another source of illusion that we are consciously in control of our actions.

Questioning the case against free will

That seems like pretty solid evidence that we don't have free will. Is it? Maybe not.

Later thinking about the disconcerting research and data on unconscious decision-making led to some deeper insight. That deeper thinking raised some objections. First, the unconscious decisions were about when to do something, not what to do. Second, the data relates only to trivial decisions, e.g., when to push a button in a lab experiment, not significant decisions where people tend to stop and think before acting. There was no choice of what to do in the lab experiments.

Third, later experiments questioned people and found that sometimes some people vetoed their initial impulse to act after receiving the stimulus to act, e.g., a flash of light on a computer screen. That appears to be conscious veto control over a prior unconscious decision. One expert commented: "An unfree will may not be so hard to swallow if we at least have a free unwill." (think about that for a moment)

Who cares?

This question is highly relevant to society and politics. For example, if humans don't have much or any free will, punishment for bad behavior arguably makes little or no sense. People just can't stop themselves from doing bad things because they have no free will. If there is little or no free will, maybe society would be better off by replacing very expensive punishment (imprisonment, etc.) with less expensive pro-social incentives. One can easily see how that thought can get some people's shorts in a nasty twist.

Other research has shown that people who do not believe they have free will tend to be (1) less honest and cheat more, (2) more aggressive, and (3) less inclined to act in pro-social ways, e.g., helping someone who (a) dropped their papers or groceries on the floor, or (b) were injured in an accident.

The question of free will isn't a trivial one.

OP by Germaine, your friend and mine