Neuroscience and Free Will

The death of free will, or its exposure as a convenient illusion, some worry, could wreak havoc on our sense of moral and legal responsibility. According to those who believe that free will and determinism are incompatible…it would mean that people are no more responsible for their actions than asteroids or planets. Anything would go.

--Dennis Overbye, The New York Times (2007)

This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeits of our own behavior, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars; as if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on--an admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition on the charge of a star. 

--William Shakespeare, King Lear (1610/2005)

During the past few years the popular press has become increasingly interested in free will, agency, and responsibility, with stories appearing in mainstream media outlets such as The New York Times, The Economist, Forbes Magazine, Wired, and FOX News.  As psychologists continue to demystify the mind by uncovering the mechanisms that undergird human behavior, what was once an issue that fell mostly under the purview of philosophers and theologians has started to pique the curiosity of the public more generally.  This interest is quite understandable.  If free will provides the foundation for our traditional moral beliefs and practices, and its existence is incompatible with the gathering data from the so-called “sciences of the mind,” then free will isn’t just a topic fit for philosophers—it is a psychological, sociological, cultural, and policy issue as well.  To the extent that scientific advancements undermine or threaten our traditional views about human agency, we ought to carefully consider what impact this might have on our moral and legal practices. 

In approaching this issue, one of the first things we need to do is closely examine the relevant data from the sciences of the mind.  On this front, the three most common research programs that are assumed to be salient to the free will debate are Benjamin Libet's work on veto power (see here and here) Daniel Wegner's work on the purported illusion of conscious will (see here), and Jonathan Bargh's work on automaticity (see here).  For a thorough overview of this research as well as a thoughtful philosophical reply, I highly recommend Alfred Mele's new book Effective Intentions: The Power of Conscious Will.  Mele is widely recognized as the world's leading scholar of the relationship between developments in psychology and free will.  Of course, I am admittedly biased since he was my dissertation director!  Be that as it may, given that the issue of free will is likely to come up frequently on this blog in the month's to come, I thought some of you might like to check out some of the books linked to above.  Another helpful collection of recent articles about these issues can be found in John Baer, James Kaufmann, and Roy Baumeister's (eds.) Are We Free? Psychology and Free Will.  As always, happy reading!