Free Will?
Is it Real or an Illusion?
When an idea we can mull over comes into our consciousness, we choose one action or another, but it seems we are free to do otherwise. However, neuroscience shows that, despite our persistent feeling, free will, as defined by neuroscience, is an illusion. Their instruments let them read what we are going to decide 500 milliseconds before we are aware we have “decided.” We have no control over what idea bubbles up next from our subconscious. In a causally ordered universe, what bubbles up next was determined from the initial conditions of the Big Bang.
In a study of current philosophers publishing in English, 59.2% are compatibilists, 18.8% accept libertarian free will, 11.2% say there’s no free will, and 11.4% other. Philosophers seem to care more about preserving the right to hold others accountable than they do the evidence showing how humans think.
If you want to probe the free-will discussion more deeply, and see how deep thinkers preserve responsibility for behavior, listen to Laurence Kraus interviewing Professor Robert Sapolsky about his new book, The Illusion of Free Will.
If you think you have free will, try mindfulness meditation for one minute after freely deciding to let no unbidden thoughts enter your head. Unless you are brain-dead, it’s impossible. Grab any one of the thoughts that drift…
