by Sam Harris
Conclusion
It is generally argued that our experience of free will presents a compelling mystery: On the one hand, we can’t make sense of it in scientific terms; on the other, we feel that we are the authors of our own thoughts and actions. However, I think that this mystery is itself a symptom of our confusion. It is not that free will is simply an illusion—our experience is not merely delivering a distorted view of reality. Rather, we are mistaken about our experience. Not only are we not as free as we think we are—we do not feel as free as we think we do. Our sense of our own freedom results from our not paying close attention to what it is like to be us. The moment we pay attention, it is possible to see that free will is nowhere to be found, and our experience is perfectly compatible with this truth. Thoughts and intentions simply arise in the mind. What else could they do? The truth about us is stranger than many suppose: The illusion of free will is itself an illusion.
The problem is not merely that free will makes no sense objectively (i.e., when our thoughts and actions are viewed from a third-person point of view); it makes no sense subjectively either. It is quite possible to notice this through introspection. In fact, I will now perform an experiment in free will for all to see: I will write anything I want for the rest of this book. Whatever I write will, of course, be something I choose to write. No one is compelling me to do this. No one has assigned me a topic or demanded that I use certain words. I can be ungrammatical if I pleased. And if I want to put a rabbit in this sentence, I am free to do so.
But paying attention to my stream of consciousness reveals that this notion of freedom does not reach very deep. Where did this rabbit come from? Why didn’t I put an elephant in that sentence? I do not know. I am free to change “rabbit” to “elephant,” of course. But if I did this, how could I explain it? It is impossible for me to know the cause of either choice. Either is compatible with my being compelled by the laws of nature or buffeted by the winds of chance; but neither looks, or feels, like freedom. Rabbit or elephant? Am I free to decide that “elephant” is the better word when I just do not feel that it is the better word? Am I free to change my mind? Of course not. It can only change me.
What brings my deliberations on these matters to a close? This book must end sometime—and now I want to get something to eat. Am I free to resist this feeling? Well, yes, in the sense that no one is going to force me at gunpoint to eat—but I am hungry. Can I resist this feeling a moment longer? Yes, of course—and for an indeterminate number of moments thereafter. But I don’t know why I make the effort in this instance and not in others. And why do my efforts cease precisely when they do? Now I feel that it really is time for me to leave. I’m hungry, yes, but it also seems that I’ve made my point. In fact, I can’t think of anything else to say on the subject. And where is the freedom in that?
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank my wife and editor, Annaka Harris, for her contributions to Free Will. As is always the case, her insights and recommendations greatly improved the book. I don't know how she manages to raise our daughter, work on her own projects, and still have time to edit my books—but she does. I am extremely lucky and grateful to have her in my corner.
Jerry Coyne, Galen Strawson, and my mother also read an early draft of the manuscript and provided very helpful comments.
NOTES
1. Recent advances in experimental psychology and neuroimaging have allowed us to study the boundary between conscious and unconscious mental processes with increasing precision. We now know that at least two systems in the brain—often referred to as “dual processes”—govern human cognition, emotion, and behavior. One is evolutionarily older, unconscious, slow to learn, and quick to respond; the other evolved more recently and is conscious, quick to learn, and slow to respond. The phenomenon of priming, in which subliminally presented stimuli influence a person’s thoughts and emotions, exposes the first of these systems and reveals the reality of complex mental processes at work beneath the level of conscious awareness. People can be primed in a wide variety of ways, and these unconscious influences reliably alter their goals and subsequent behavior (H. Aarts, R. Custers, & H. Marien, 2008. Preparing and motivating behavior outside of awareness. Science 319[5780]: 1639; R. Custers & H. Aarts, 2010. The unconscious will: How the pursuit of goals operates outside of conscious awareness. Science 329 [5987]: 47–50).
The experimental technique of “backward masking” has been at the center of much of this work: If one presents subjects with a brief visual stimulus (around 30 milliseconds), they can consciously perceive it; but they can no longer do so if this same stimulus is immediately followed by a dissimilar pattern (the “mask”). This technique allows for words and images to be delivered to the mind subliminally. Interestingly, the threshold for the conscious recognition of emotional words is lower than for neutral words, which suggests that semantic processing occurs prior to consciousness (R. Gaillard, A. Del Cul, L. Naccache, F. Vinckier, L. Cohen, & S. Dehaene, 2006. Nonconscious semantic processing of emotional words modulates conscious access. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 103[19]: 7524–7529).
Recent neuroimaging experiments have offered further evidence: Masked words engage areas associated with semantic processing (M. T. Diaz & G. McCarthy, 2007. Unconscious word processing engages a distributed network of brain regions. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 19[11]: 1768–1775; S. Dehaene, L. Naccache, L. Cohen, D. Le Bihan, J. F. Mangin, J. B. Poline, et al., 2001. Cerebral mechanisms of word masking and unconscious repetition priming. Nat. Neurosci. 4[7]: 752–758; S. Dehaene, L. Naccache, H. G. Le Clec, E. Koechlin, M. Mueller, G. Dehaene-Lambertz, et al., 1998. Imaging unconscious semantic priming. Nature 395[6702]: 597–600); subliminally promised rewards alter activity in the brain’s reward regions and influence subsequent behavior (M. Pessiglione, L. Schmidt, B. Draganski, R. Kalisch, H. Lau, R. J. Dolan, et al., 2007. How the brain translates money into force: A neuroimaging study of subliminal motivation. Science 316[5826]: 904–906); and masked fearful faces and emotional words drive activity in the amygdala, the hub of emotional processing in the limbic system (P. J. Whalen, S. L. Rauch, N. L. Etcoff, S. C. McInerney, M. B. Lee, & M. A. Jenike, 1998. Masked presentations of emotional facial expressions modulate amygdala activity without explicit knowledge. J. Neurosci. 18[1]: 411–418; L. Naccache, R. Gaillard, C. Adam, D. Hasboun, S. Clemenceau, M. Baulac, et al., 2005. A direct intracranial record of emotions evoked by subliminal words. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 102[21]: 7713–7717).
The subliminal presentation of stimuli poses some conceptual problems, however. As Daniel Dennett points out, it can be difficult (or impossible) to distinguish what was experienced and then forgotten from what was never experienced in the first place—see his insightful discussion of Orwellian vs. Stalinesque processes in cognition (D. C. Dennett, 1991. Consciousness explained. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., pp. 116–125). This ambiguity is largely attributable to the fact that the contents of consciousness must be integrated over time—around 100 to 200 milliseconds (F. Crick & C. Koch, 2003. A framework for consciousness. Nat. Neurosci. 6[2]: 119–126). This period of integration allows the sensation of touching an object and the associated visual perception of doing so, which arrive at the cortex at different times, to be experienced as though they were simultaneous. Consciousness, therefore, is dependent upon what is generally known as “working memory.” Many neuroscientists have made this same point (J. M. Fuster, 2003. Cortex and mind: Unifying cognition. Oxford: Oxford University Press; P. Thagard & B. Aubie, 2008. Emotional consciousness: A neural model of how cognitive appraisal and somatic perception interact to produce qualitative experience. Conscious. Cogn. 17(3): 811–834; B. J. Baars & S. Franklin, 2003. How conscious experience and working memory interact. Trends Cogn. Sci. 7(4): 166–172). The principle is somewhat more loosely captured by Gerald Edelman’s notion of consciousness as “the remembered present” (G. M. Edelman, 1989. The remembered present: A biological theory of consciousness. New York: Basic Books).
/> 2. B. Libet, C. A. Gleason, E. W. Wright, & D. K. Pearl, 1983. Time of conscious intention to act in relation to onset of cerebral activity (readiness-potential): The unconscious initiation of a freely voluntary act, Brain 106 (Pt 3): 623–642; B. Libet, 1985. Unconscious cerebral initiative and the role of conscious will in voluntary action. Behav. Brain Sci. 8: 529–566. Another lab has since found that a person’s judgment of when he intended to move can be shifted in time by giving him delayed sensory feedback of his actual movements. This suggests that such judgments are retrospective estimates based on the apparent time of movement and not based on an actual awareness of the neural activity that causes the movement (W. P. Banks & E. A. Isham, 2009). We infer rather than perceive the moment we decided to act. (Psychological Science, 20: 17–21).
However, Libet and others have speculated that the concept of free will might yet be saved: Perhaps the conscious mind is free to “veto,” rather than initiate, complex action. This suggestion has always seemed absurd on its face—for surely the neural events that inhibit a planned action arise unconsciously as well.
3. J. D. Haynes, 2011. Decoding and predicting intentions. Ann. NY Acad. Sci. 1224(1): 9–21.
4. I. Fried, R. Mukamel, & G. Kreiman, 2011. Internally generated preactivation of single neurons in human medial frontal cortex predicts volition. Neuron, 69: 548– 562; P. Haggard, 2011. Decision time for free will. Neuron, 69: 404–406.
5. The neuroscientists Joshua Greene and Jonathan Cohen make a similar point:
Most people’s view of the mind is implicitly dualist and libertarian and not materialist and compatibilist. . . . That is, it requires the rejection of determinism and an implicit commitment to some kind of magical mental causation . . . contrary to legal and philosophical orthodoxy, determinism really does threaten free will and responsibility as we intuitively understand them (J. Greene & J. Cohen, 2004. For the law, neuroscience changes nothing and everything. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci. 359[1451]: 1775–1785).
6. For a good survey of compatibilist thought, see http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/. See also G. Watson, ed., 2003. Free will (second edition). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
7. D. C. Dennett, 2003. Freedom evolves. New York: Penguin.
8. Tom Clark, personal communication.
9. Daniel Dennett, personal communication.
10. Galen Strawson (personal communication) has pointed out that even if one agrees with Dennett here, the ordinary notion of moral responsibility is still deeply problematic for the reasons already given.
11. In his book Consciousness Explained, Daniel Dennett describes an unpublished experiment in which the neurosurgeon W. Grey Walter directly connected the motor cortices of his patients to a slide projector. Asked to advance the slides at their leisure, the subjects were said to have felt that the projector was reading their minds. Unfortunately, there is some uncertainty as to whether the experiment was ever performed.
12. D. Wegner, 2002. The illusion of conscious will. Cam-bridge, MA: Bradford Books/MIT Press.
13. L. Silver, 2006. Challenging nature: The clash of science and spirituality at the new frontiers of life. New York: Ecco, p. 50.
14. For a recent discussion of the role of consciousness in human psychology, see R. F. Baumeister, E. J. Masicampo, & K. D. Vohs, 2011. Do conscious thoughts cause behavior? Annual Review of Psychology, 62: 331–361.
15. Again, as Galen Strawson points out (personal communication), even if we granted that you are the whole of your mind (conscious and unconscious), you still cannot ultimately be held responsible for its character.
16. Einstein (following Schopenhauer) once made the same point:
Honestly, I cannot understand what people mean when they talk about the freedom of the human will. I have a feeling, for instance, that I will something or other; but what relation this has with freedom I cannot understand at all. I feel that I will to light my pipe and I do it; but how can I connect this up with the idea of freedom? What is behind the act of willing to light the pipe? Another act of willing? Schopenhauer once said: Der Mensch kann was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will (Man can do what he will but he cannot will what he wills). (M. Planck, 1932. Where is science going? New York: W. W. Norton & Company, p. 201.)
17. As Jerry Coyne points out (personal communication), this notion of counterfactual freedom is also scientifically untestable. What evidence could possibly be put forward to show that one could have acted differently in the past?
18. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/is-neuroscience-the-death-of-free-will/.
19. K. D. Vohs & J. W. Schooler, 2008. The value of believing in free will: Encouraging a belief in determinism increases cheating. Psychological Science, 19(1): 49–54.
20. R. F. Baumeister, E. J. Masicampo, & C. N. DeWall, 2009. Prosocial benefits of feeling free: Disbelief in free will increases aggression and reduces helpfulness. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35: 260–268.
21. J. Diamond, 2008. Vengeance is ours. The New Yorker, April 21, 2001, pp. 74–87.
22. Steven Pinker, personal communication.
INDEX
actions:
brain and, 69n
freedom to reinterpret meaning of, 40
modification of, through punishment or incentives, 59–60
past, free will and, 6, 39–40, 77n
as products of impersonal events, 27
seen as “self-generated,” 27–29
voluntary vs. involuntary, 12–13, 31–32, 41–42
see also intentions
agency, sense of:
experimental manipulation of, 24–25
free will and, 23–26
attention, directing of, as conscious act, 31–32
backward masking, 70n
bacteria, in human bodies, 23–24
behavior, see actions
brain:
causal states of, 34
disorders and tumors of, 50, 51, 53–54, 55–56
dual systems in, 9, 32, 69n–70n
medial prefrontal cortex of, 50, 58
as subject to laws of nature, 11–12
subliminal presentation of stimuli to, 70n–71n
see also neurophysiology
brain activity, as preceding consciousness of intent, 8–11
brain scans, 8–11, 24, 69n–72n
chance, 27–28
see also luck
change, possibility of, 62–63
child abuse, 3–4, 50, 51
choice:
as causal brain state, 24
importance of, 34–35
as product of prior events, 34, 43–44
seeming spontaneity of, 6, 37
stories as explanations of, 35, 37, 43–44
see also intentions
Clark, Tom, 20–23
cognition, 69n
Cohen, Jonathan, 73n–74n
compassion, 45
compatibilism, 15–26
free will as defined by, 16–17, 39–40, 74n
moral responsibility and, 18
consciousness:
delayed sensory feedback and, 73n
as dependent on working memory, 72n
free will and, 6, 26
intentions as appearing but not originating in, 8
unconscious origins of, 5, 7–14
Consciousness Explained (Dennett), 74n
conservatives, free will and, 61–62
Coyne, Jerry, 76n
criminals, criminal behavior:
causes of, 3–5
as dangers to society, 52–53, 56
deterrence of, 56, 58–59
empathy for, 45–46
free will and, 17–18, 53
incarceration of, 53, 54, 58
moral responsibility and, 3, 17–18, 49–52
punishment of, see retribution
rehabilitation of, 56, 58
Daniel (New Guinea highlander), 57
deliberative thinking, r
ole of, 32–33
Dennett, Daniel, 20–23, 25, 33, 71n
desires:
mutually incompatible, 18–19
pathological, 18
determinism, 15, 74n
fatalism vs., 33–34
moral responsibility and, 48–49
scientific validity of, 16, 29–30
DNA, mutations of, 29
Edelman, Gerald, 72n
EEG (electroencephalogram), 8
Einstein, Albert, 75n–76n
emotion, brain and, 69n
emotional words, subliminal presentation of, 70n–71n
empathy, 45–46
entitlement, sense of, 45
evolution, 29
existentialism, 40
experimental psychology, 69n–72n, 74n–75n
fatalism, 46
determinism vs., 33–34
Ferriss, Tim, 36, 37
forgiveness, 45
fMRI, see functional magnetic resonance imaging
freedom:
as ability to act on beliefs, 38–39
sense of, as enhanced by loss of belief in free will, 46–47
social and political, 13
free will, as concept:
as basis of justice system, 1, 23, 48, 54
compatibilist view of, see compatibilism
consciousness and, 6, 26
conservatives and, 61–62
criminal behavior and, 17–18
determinist view of, see determinism
hating and, 53–54
hypothetical requirements for, 13–14
