The Illusion of Free Will - Hold it Fast

The Illusion of Free Will – Hold it Fast

We need to exercise our free will. What else can we do? It’s determined….

I’ve reached the conclusion, partly out of boredom, partly out of frustration with the pointlessness of the traditional debate, that the concept of “free will”, so long clung to, can be let go without much damage to our sense of self, but with implications, very probably beneficial, for criminal justice systems.

I’m fed up with the ancient oppositions: on the one hand, we are sophisticated animals determined in everything by “laws of nature”, such that our outcomes are settled in the last jot by events in past millennia, back to the beginning of time- a truly scary thought..; or, on the other hand, “we” are somehow separate from,  or, while stickily connected, rise above our basic law-bound biology and can direct ourselves, our courses, influenced but not determined by the state and history of the material world.

These oppositions, or their variants, have produced endless rounds of mostly dreary bickering between modern philosophers – for premium example, compatibilists (free will of a sort compatible with determinism) versus incompatabilists (free will worth having not so compatible).

It turns out that neuroscience has been steadily rendering these debates obsolete – but not the traditional terminology. Consider a recent BBC programme on the present state of the science (portentously titled Destiny and the Brain, 20 May 2019, Radio 4, also summarised on the BBC website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0050p8). This focuses on the “plasticity” of the brain – its ability to change itself (or be changed by external factors..), whether to heal damage, or to learn new skills (Spanish, perhaps, or taxi drivers’ Knowledge).

The brain is far from being hard-wired, the BBC presenter tells us – there’s nothing intrinsically deterministic about its nature: in the sense of Ready, Steady, Start the clockwork and watch it inevitably run.

This is all fascinating and richly cheering stuff. However, the BBC then draws the lazy conclusion that what brain plasticity shows is that we still have free will. We start, the argument goes, with a certain set of neurons in our brain, determined by genes, the History of the Universe, or what you will.. But, because of self-plasticine moulding, determinism and free will are harnessed happily together. So says the BBC, or its presenter, or its website summariser.

I say, or repeat: let’s ditch the “free will”, but celebrate the plasticity. There’s a much more nuanced discussion of neuroscience, socio-biology and the like in the magisterial book Behave, by the zoologist and neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky. It is a work of enormous erudition, lightly worn, written in a captivating self-deprecatory style (but deprecating not his own scholarship, just its limits).

Sapolsky traces the influence of biology and culture on brain development and, through that, attitudes, morality, prejudices (Us/Them), complex societies and their dysfunctions.

He shows what a driven bunch we are, whether it is Nature or Nurture that shapes us. Yes, there is “plasticity” of the brain. But it can be as easily (and more often) manipulated shaped by external environmental or cultural forces (for good or ill) as by learning a new language, or taxi route, or having talking therapy.

The simplistic inference that plasticity equals agency equals free will slips away.

Where have we got to? Probably away from clockwork determinism, but certainly not back to the ancient model of complete human autonomy.

We are enormously complex beings, who have (as we intuitively know) the capacity for self-direction and correction. But that capacity is a product of our being creatures of particular inheritances, biological and cultural. There’s not a hovering steering presence above all of this rich mixture. Determinism, in a fiendishly complex way, still lurks. But not fatalism.

There are profound implications for morality and justice. As Sapolsky frequently emphasizes, the right set of genes and upbringing means that it is easy for some to be moral and law abiding. The reverse is true for others. They just won’t be.

(Sapolsky traces ideas of criminal responsibility from the era of witchcraft trials to the modern recognition of “insanity”, and speculates that future generations will find the fact that we still uphold concepts of “full” criminal responsibility just as misguided as our ancestors willingness to execute witches.)

Can we blame and punish? Yes, if blame and punishment works well on their plasiticity (PF Strawson argued along these lines in the days before the pre- eminence of neuroscience). Yes, in the case of the irredeemably dangerous -they have to locked up.

But the notion that everyone is on an equal moral footing because of their Will is Free is gone.

June 2019