Making a Scientific Case for Conscious Agency and Free Will

By William R. Klemm

Making a Scientific Case for Conscious Agency and Free Will makes a series of arguments that certain human behaviors are impossible to explain in the absence of free will, and that free will emerges from materialistic processes of brain function. It outlines future directions for neuroscience studies that can harness emerging technologies and tools for systems-level analysis.

All humans have the sensation that they consciously will certain things to happen and that, in the absence of external constraints, they are free to choose from among alternatives. This notion of free will is deemed obvious by the average person based on common experience. Free will is frequently defended with arguments stemming from social, legal, philosophical, and religious perspectives. But these arguments appeal to consequences—not causes—of choices and decisions. In the past 3 decades, debate has raged within the scientific community over whether free will is in fact an illusion. Because free will would require conscious agency, the supporting corollary is that consciousness itself cannot do anything and is merely an observer rather than an actor.

• Considers arguments for and against free will from religious, social, legal, and neuroscience perspectives
• Provides thorough coverage of the manifold human behaviors that can be explained only by free will, from consciousness to creativity
• Outlines future directions for further neuroscience research into the topic

• Language: English
• Publisher: Academic Press
• Release date: Feb 11, 2016
• ISBN: 9780128052891

William R. Klemm

As a Professor of Neuroscience at a major research university and a widely published and cited researcher, Dr. Klemm is a Texas A&M and Sigma Xi "Distinguished Scientist," a Distinguished Alumnus of Auburn University, and is listed in 19 biographical publications, including Marquis’ Who’s Who In America and Who’s Who in the World. He has impressive research credentials and can speak with authority about brain and behavior, having been enlisted as a reviewer for 45 scholarly journals and the Editorial Board of 12 journals and a university press. He has published 54 book chapters and 19 books. His most pertinent recent book is Mental Biology, The New Science of How the Brain and Mind Relate (Prometheus). He is a paid writer for Psychology Today. He posts on two blogs that have over 1.5 million reader views.

Book preview

conclusions.

Chapter 1

The Scientific Case Against Conscious Agency and Free Will

Abstract

Scientific and philosophical fashion these days claims that humans have no free will. The argument holds that our pervasive sense of free will is an illusion and that all our intentions, choices, and decisions are made by the unconscious mind. The conscious mind presumably has no ability to act other than just observing the relatively small amount of information that the conscious mind can access.

This chapter challenges the scientific research that leads to denying free will and informs the reader of conflicting research by numerous scholars whose key papers are identified. The deficiencies in peer-reviewed publications by free-will deniers are enumerated for the categories of premise deficiencies, technical limitations of the experiments, misinterpretation of the data, subjectivity and unreliability of self-reported data, and overdrawn generalizations.

As a consequence, this chapter concludes with the assertion that there is no valid science against free will and that scholars should start considering the possibility that free will actually exists. The only alternative to denying free will is to accept the possibility that humans have at least some free will.

Keywords

Agency; conscious mind; determinism; free will; illusory free will; mental states; mind; unconscious mind

1.1 Illusory Free Will

Scientific and philosophical fashion these days claims that humans have no free will. That is, we are basically biological robots, driven to our thoughts, beliefs, choices, intentions, and actions by unconscious forces in our brain. We are puppets controlled by the programming from our genes and life experience. Free will is deemed an illusion. Freudian psychology has been reborn in a revised framework of a preeminent unconscious mind (Fig. 1.1).

Figure 1.1 Diagram of the modern notion of illusory free will. Unconscious mind generates willed action and informs conscious mind, which acts only as an observer and has no capacity for agency.

Free-will deniers get their idea by extension of the fact that the brain does make unconscious choices. If you accidentally touch a hot stove, it is your unconscious mind that initiates the hand and arm withdrawal reflex. Only afterwards are you informed, Damn that hurts. Even at more complex levels of behavior, humans commonly make unconscious choices, as when our behaviors are stereotyped or compulsive. Certain disease states, such as obsessive/compulsive disorders, are driven unconsciously with little or no conscious control (that’s why it is called a disease). Damage to certain areas of the brain’s source of consciousness, the neocortex, can change personality-driven choices. The problem is that such phenomena are inappropriately extended to mentally normal people and the assumption that conscious does nothing but observe, that it has no agency.

The word agency has many meanings, but the meaning used here is the issue of whether human consciousness has the power to generate self-directed causes of thoughts, feelings, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors—and associated choices and decisions. A recent book explores a wide range of theory about agency (Gruber et al., 2015) and I have a chapter there on the neurobiology of agency. All neuroscientists agree that the unconscious mind, when a person is awake, has agency in that it directs reflexes and more complex behavioral responses that do not require conscious intervention. But neither scientists nor philosophers think much about what the unconscious mind is doing during sleep and what it is about wakefulness that gives agency to the unconscious mind. The crux of the free-will debate focuses on whether any portion of a person’s agency comes from conscious direction. I make a case for conscious agency in chapter Physiology of Mental States and Conscious Agency.

The denial of free will has a centuries-old history, but is now popularized by an influential clutch of activist scientists, such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Wegner, who have become intellectual rock stars from their best-seller books arguing the case against free will. Many philosophers also have joined the illusory free-will crowd.

Free-will deniers seem to believe there can be no ego, no real I that we all erroneously think we are. Descartes’ I think, therefore I am, can’t be right because there is no I. We are all its. When we think we are making a decision or a plan or directing an action, it is not our I that does this. To buttress their position, many deniers have constructed the argument as follows:

1. Freely chosen actions would have to come from a conscious brain.

2. Consciousness is only an observer that has no agency.

3. Therefore, there can be no free will.

If consciousness is viewed only as an observer of a decision or choice made by the unconscious mind, then the conscious brain must not be the source of actions that occur during consciousness. This book tackles the subject of free will with trepidation. The subject, as Christof Koch (2012) puts it, is a scholarly minefield. An obvious first step to counter the illusory free-will argument is to challenge its premise that consciousness lacks agency, which this book does in chapter Physiology of Mental States and Conscious Agency.

1.2 Key Definitions: Free Will, Conscious Agency

What do we mean by free? Apparently there is no clear consensus. One thing we can say with certainty: the brain’s network of networks surely has more degrees of freedom than does a single neuron. The latest book on the subject by Joaguín Fuster (2013), The Neuroscience of Freedom and Dignity, makes a useful distinction between freedom of action and free will. I can illustrate Fuster’s thesis this way: A mosquito is free to fly, but is unlikely to freely will to fly because flying insects lack the cortical network structure of humans. But humans are free to fly—by consciously inventing and building balloons, planes, and rockets. Fuster thinks that humans have an enormous amount of freedom to make choices, but they cannot freely will anything because such factors as genes and environment necessarily dictate brain