A recent article published in The Atlantic claims that neuroscience has more or less proved that we human beings do not have ultimate control of our actions. Just as we do not consciously will ourselves to breathe – rather relying on subconscious, neurological processes to control our vital functions – neither do we consciously determine our any of our thoughts or actions. The author, Stephen Cave, goes on to explain the dramatic implications this holds for modern philosophy, religion, politics, and even criminal law.
However, I am of the opinion that these findings should not – and do not – matter at all.
The agreement within the scientific community which is alleged by Cave holds that if it were possible to “understand any individual’s brain architecture and chemistry well enough, we could, in theory, predict that individual’s response to any given stimulus with 100 percent accuracy.” The reason for this opinion – which constitutes the culmination of 150 years of deterministic thought sparked by evolutionary theory – is that, in the 1980s, it was discovered that before a person decides consciously to perform an action, electrical activity occurs in the brain. This indicates that the experience of conscious decisions is a mere evolutionary byproduct which gives us the illusion of agency. Given our access to modern brain scans, we are able to attribute “not just some or most but all of our thoughts, hopes, memories, and dreams” (emphasis his) to the firing of neurons.
Cave goes on to examine the possible societal impacts that widespread knowledge of this scientific conclusion could incur. From the already greatly increased number of court cases wherein the defense uses the argument that “their brain made them do it,” to experiments persuasively linking a belief in free will to moral behavior and job performance, to general societal chaos, the consequences seem grim enough that certain scholars have begun to espouse an “illusionist” position: keep this discovery in academia and let people believe the lie. Others, Cave also explains, are more optimistic, believing that this knowledge will lead people to be more merciful to criminals and view wrongdoers as simply the victims of their own thought processes. The justice system, they hold, could be overhauled to eliminate the concept of “guilt” in a moral sense in favor of a view of criminality as sickness only. Eventually, perhaps, treatments and eventual “cures” for phenomena such as psychopathy or recidivism could be successfully pursued. The conclusion, despite the article’s subheading, is left ambiguous – societal revelation as to their brain’s decidedly deterministic nature could be a blessing or the worst thing to ever befall humanity.
Now, I am certainly not qualified to argue the scientific claims made in the article; I have no brain scanner in my dorm, let alone a neuroscience degree (and Cave also didn’t link to any of the ree literature). However, let us accept, for the sake of argument, the premise that we do not possess free will and that our experiences of consciously choosing are illusory. I would argue that this doesn’t matter in the slightest – that our concepts of justice, culpability, and agency ought not to radically change.
The important thing to recognize about this issue is that (regardless of the truth of the claims made by neuroscience) we will always perceive our own decision-making process as conscious and guided by free will. Insofar as one is able to abstractly comprehend or accept that one does not have free will, one will still be hamstrung by the intrinsic nature of our brains. One cannot observe these subconscious electrical activities that take place before one is aware of making a decision to act, and thus the lens through which one views one’s actions is inextricably intertwined with the experience of conscious agency.
Why, however, does this matter? Take the concept of truth (bear with me, please). Truth – objective truth, as in truth free from any doubt – is generally held by philosophers to be problematic, to say the least. Ever since Descartes (of “I think, therefore I am” fame) plunged the world into the Cartesian hole wherein everything but one’s own existence is dubitable, philosophers have been attempting to prove that we can say that we can know anything. Though some attempts have produced theories more plausible than others, there is a general acknowledgement that the concepts of truths and objectively true knowledge constitute particularly thorny issues. In fact, one could easily argue that knowledge or truths beyond doubt are a logical or psychological impossibility – such is an eminently defensible position.
“But,” as well you might ask, “What’s the point? We all get along just fine without ‘objective truths,’ thanks.” And you’d be exactly right; regardless of whatever the especially esoteric philosophy wing of the already esoteric ivory tower worries about, most regular people function well enough on their own. That is because people do not act based upon their grasp of objective truths – they eschew knowledge of those in favor of functional truths, i.e., the sort of principles and truths one grasps from living in the world and figuring out what works. One doesn’t need to know whether or not there is actually – in objective reality – a semi-truck barreling toward them or whether it’s an illusion; one needs to act as though it is real and get out of the way. Even if one were truly only in a dream world or being deceived by a demon (as per Descartes), one would still need to act as though what they believed they were perceiving were true and respond to the stimuli accordingly. Functional truths may be less than epistemically perfect, but if they allow us to function within the confines of the world around us, then they suffice.
That is why, even though some scientists are now denying the existence of any external “reality,” we must act as though it’s a certainty – and that includes our perception that we have free will. Even if all of our actions are truly decided upon subconsciously, we will always perceive that we have actively made our own choices out of our own free will. In practice, we must still weigh choices through the lens of an agent with free will because that is the only lens available to us.
Therefore, while I’m all for reforming the justice system toward a more rehabilitative model – one that acknowledges that crime may be less about guilt and more about biology and upbringing – there’s no need to let the concept of free will’s apparently illusory nature undermine our concepts of justice or morality or responsibility for one’s actions. You may have made a given decision consciously, or you may not have – but then you consciously justified it, and thus must own the action. If we can only observe our conscious choices, we must treat as functionally true the statement that conscious choices are what matter.
Ultimately, should the world at large become aware of the growing scientific agreement that free will is but another illusion foisted upon us by evolutionary progress, there oughtn’t to be a radical upheaval of all of human thought. We can make our justice system more rehabilitative while less punitive (and thus obviate the need for the “my brain made me do it” defense), but ultimately our religion, our politics, and our own inner lives can remain the same – but that’s your choice, I suppose.
