Free Will or the Lack Thereof According to Neuroscience

[JasoninMemphis]

[alecto]

Most neuroscientists assume that Newton's Laws govern the behavior of the particles that make up all biochemistry, and that Newton's Laws are deterministic. Therefore there is an implicit assumption that there is no free will before any talk about brains.. This does not mean that they have extensively studied physics. The idea of physical determinism kind of flows around anonymously in science classes starting in high school. That Newton's Laws imply determinism is true. That they are a complete description of nature is not true. Most biologists and medical doctors have had some training in new physics, usually in their chemistry classes, but usually not enough to dislodge the assumption of determinism. Therefore they assume at bottom that whatever is going on in the neurons is completely determined by input (sensory and genetic) so that there is no room for free will. It is almost always possible (if you read hard enough) to see where the idea of "chemical determinism" gets into a neuroscience argument about free will.

The NY Times article is actually pretty good and "up to date". But the assumption of no free will is packaged into the argument whenever they mention subconscious thought. By assuming that there is no free will in subconscious thought, then saying all conscious thought is determined by subconscious thought or perception, they eliminate free will. We of course do not understand any of these things well enough to make a claim about free will, and none of them are deterministic in any but the grossest fashion. Today we are dealing as well with the "mechanical" model of thought, where a machine is limited in concept to a deterministic mechanism that follows rules like Newton's Laws. So when someone says "the brain is like a computer" they are limiting themselves to one kind of machine that does not encompass all of the kinds of things there are in the world. There are chemical processes that cannot be modeled by such a machine in finite time, yet they happen nearly instantaneously in the real world. It may be legitimate to compare the mind to a machine, but not to the simplistic machines that we build today with much of the nature thrown out so that they may by artifice do only what we want. After all, we don't want machines that even seem to have free will. They might not "act right".

[Josh]

Without reading the articles (yet) or knowing very much about neuroscience or psychology, I do have a couple comments about scientific determinism.

First, as alecto points out, it is built upon the Newtonian paradigm. Quantum theory throws any sort of materialistic (and perhaps theological) determinism out the window.

Second, if it were indeed a deterministic universe where our own volitional free will was a mere illusion, it would seem that, with our current level of technology, we would have been able to create robots with the same sort of illusory "free will" that we have. In other words, it would seem that we could program a robot to "think," to give it a soul, if those things really don't exist and our choices are all preprogrammed. We've become pretty good at programming stuff recently.

Third, since we're in a C.S. Lewis forum, his philosophical response to this should be restated. If determinism (and thus materialism and/or atheism) were true, we would never be able to know for sure that it were true. Our conclusions regarding the "truth" about free will would themselves be unreliable, because those conclusions were merely the products of a predetermined chain of thoughts and were, in a sense, random (in that an infinite number of other conclusions could have been reached if the stimuli directing our thoughts had varied). Truth, itself, is in fact an illusion if the universe is deterministic and there is no God (and the universe would have to be deterministic if there were no God--this is why a growing number of physicists, and other scientists except perhaps for biologists, are becoming theists today). Atheism, therefore, said Lewis, is too simple a solution. It cannot account for free will. If atheism were true, and there were no free will (and all were deterministic), we would never be able to know it for sure. Our reasoning would be inherently unreliable.

[girlfreddy]

You guys are way above me in this, but one thing I thought of in reading your posts was that this is the way the world is going. To say that "free will" is non-existant implies that nothing is our fault; that the need to own up to one's own actions is a moot point. We are a product of ___? and therefore we can't take responsibility for our own actions. Look at the courts these days. We are inundated with law suits about hot coffee and such that always put the blame on someone or something else. Even settlements are seemingly always defined by "and this is not a statement of wrongdoing" or some such rhetoric.

We have been going down this road for a while now. I'm not sure that it will stop any time soon.

[Stanley Anderson]

[Josh]

[Karen]

[JasoninMemphis]

[Josh]

[Josh]

[JasoninMemphis]

Josh, thanks for your response. There are certainly some dilemmas inherent in Murphy's non-reductive materialist approach. I believe her definition of humans being "spiritual," yet not having souls, was in our relationship with God. That strikes me as a bit of a weak definition of spiritual, though.

In your first response you mentioned Lewis' proof that determinism would negate our capacity to ascertain truth. Certainly his explanation points out what the consequence of determinism would be, but it doesn't negate the possibility of determinism (I don't think you intended it as that).

[Kolbitar]

[JasoninMemphis]

[Kolbitar]