6. Free Will or Full Wiring
Chapter Six
Free Will or Full Wiring
Are Real Choices Even Possible?
Paul Tonnegin and Sandy Holt looked weary and disheveled. Sandy parked her weathered Chevy Camaro in the nearly empty parking lot of a corner liquor store. Paul exited and started walking into the adjoining neighborhood.
Nearly nine hours earlier we had watched Paul and Sandy slam what was left of their last balloon of heroin. For a week prior, they had been getting high in Sandy’s car, shooting heroin into their arms while parked outside Paul’s uncle’s house in Silver Lake, California. Our surveillance team had been watching them for nearly two weeks after an informant told us Paul was responsible for a series of residential burglaries in our city. Now, eleven days into our surveillance, Paul and Sandy appeared to be out of money and out of dope.
Researching Paul’s personal history, I discovered Paul came from a family of heroin users. His father and brother had also been arrested for heroin possession, and his father was a convicted residential burglar. Paul began using drugs at an early age, and now, at the age of twenty-seven, he was an addict who supported his drug habit by committing crimes of one nature or another.
Today, many hours after shooting what little heroin he had left, Paul was coming down off his high, and like Sandy, he was starting to get sick. Several of our team’s suspects had been addicts looking for ways to steal money or property to support their heroin habits. Paul and Sandy needed money or they’d feel increasingly ill as the high wore off. Sandy drove into a nice neighborhood on the west side of our city, and Paul started looking for an opportunity.
Cold-Case Approach:
Watching from unmarked vehicles, we saw Paul walk through the neighborhood carrying a backpack and knocking on several doors. If a resident answered, Paul said something to convince them he was there legitimately, then excused himself and continued down the street. At the fourth house he found his first unoccupied residence. When no one answered the door, he walked to the side yard, reached over the gate, and entered the backyard.
Members of our team, dressed in street clothes and carrying portable radios, scrambled to get into position. I contacted the residents to the rear of Paul’s target house, identified myself as a police officer, and asked for permission to enter their backyard. From over their fence I watched Paul as he peered into the windows of the victim’s house. He tried the back door and found it locked.
Standing next to the door, Paul paused for a moment. He looked in both directions as if to check for witnesses. He hesitated again. I expected Paul would force his way into the home, but he sat on the porch instead. He pulled out a cigarette and began to smoke.
I radioed my teammates and told them about Paul’s actions. We wondered why he was hesitating. Minutes later, however, after finishing his cigarette, Paul stood up and kicked in the door. Our team tightened their position around the house. Paul exited the front door with a full backpack and began to walk to Sandy’s car.
I jumped the fence and entered the victim’s house. Paul had quickly ransacked the residence. I radioed this to the team and confirmed the burglary. Paul was arrested without incident about ten feet from Sandy’s car.
Paul later told me he was tired of his life as an addict. He said he almost changed his mind about committing the burglary and thought about returning to Sandy’s car just before completing the crime. He smoked a cigarette, however, and gathered the courage to do the job.
Given Paul’s struggle as a drug addict, his upbringing in a family of criminals, and his hesitancy to complete the burglary, should he have been absolved of any responsibility in this crime? Did Paul choose to commit this crime freely, or was his behavior dictated by prior events outside of his control? Did his upbringing shape his nature and limit his choices? Did his detoxification cause a series of uncontrollable chemical reactions in his brain? Did Paul truly have the ability to choose or act differently than he finally acted?1
Just as important, should Sandy be held responsible for Paul’s actions? After all, she was in the car at the time of Paul’s crime, and even though she later admitted she was fully aware of what Paul was about to do, she didn’t actually enter the victim’s home.
At Paul’s criminal trial, Paul’s upbringing, his drug addiction, and Sandy’s limited involvement were cited by their attorneys in the pre-trial motions (and during trial testimony) as potential explanations (or excuses) for their behavior. The jury deemed none of these factors excusatory, however, and Paul and Sandy were ultimately convicted and sentenced to state prison.
The jury considered Paul’s motivations (his desire to acquire money he hadn’t earned in order to satisfy his free choice to continue abusing drugs) and came to the conclusion Paul had made several free, uncoerced choices as he forcibly entered the victim’s home to commit the burglary.
The jury considered Sandy to be equally responsible because she had entered into the conspiracy with Paul and freely chosen to help him as his getaway driver.
Are prosecutions of this kind fair, given the nature of our materialistic cosmos? If we live in a purely physical universe governed by the laws of physics and chemistry, do any of us truly have the freedom to make choices like the ones Paul and Sandy made?
The Evidence “In the Room”:
WE HOLD PEOPLE RESPONSIBLE AS IF THEY ARE TRULY RESPONSIBLE
I’ve been involved in many jury trials over the years in an effort to bring criminals to justice. Our legal system is designed to accomplish this goal, but are judgments or justice possible—or even necessary—in a universe consisting only of space, time, matter, and natural laws?
Nonmaterial minds don’t exist in a purely material universe. All events (including Paul’s and Sandy’s decisions to commit the burglary) are simply physical events governed by natural laws; these events have prior physical causes that made their occurrence inevitable.2
Paul’s and Sandy’s decisions, if we live in a purely material universe, were determined by prior causal events outside their control. Their apparent “choices” were nothing more than dominoes falling in a long line of dominoes—single events in a series of prior physical events, brain synapses firing in response to prior brain events. These physical events can be traced back in time to the very beginning of the universe.3 This view of the material, natural universe is called determinism, and it is the predictable (if not controversial) inference we might make if we limit our explanation for Paul’s and Sandy’s behaviors to the elements and causal factors “inside the room” of the natural universe.
People who have held to this view, such as Harvard psychologist Daniel Wegner and atheist neuroscientist Sam Harris, believe free will (as you and I seem to typically experience it) is an illusion. Paul and Sandy might believe they acted freely, but in reality their actions were simply dictated by prior physical events in their brains.4
Some researchers have tried to scientifically demonstrate the illusory nature of our free will. Physiology researcher Benjamin Libet’s brain experiments in the 1980s are perhaps the best-known studies making a naturalistic argument against free will. They’ve been emulated for decades by other scientists conducting similar tests. Libet fitted his subjects with electroencephalogram (EEG) electrodes and provided them with scenarios in which they had to make choices to respond by moving their wrists. He discovered activity in the brainwaves of his subjects prior to their own conscious reports of their decisions.
While Libet’s subjects thought they were choosing freely, their brain activity seemed to give them away. A series of brain events began prior to the report of each decision. Libet concluded “positive” free will was an illusion.5 If the subject’s “decisions” occurred and physical responses began (as reported by the EEG), even prior to their realizing this was the case, they could hardly be said to have made free choices prior to the deterministic physical sequence.
Expert Witness Profile:
In the years since Libet’s famous studies, many other scientists have conducted similar experiments. John-Dylan Haynes, professor at the Berlin School of Mind and Brain, conducted experiments using an MRI instead of an EEG. His discoveries seem even more astonishing. He gave his subjects two buttons (one for each hand) and told them to push one of the two buttons the instant they made a decision to do so. Haynes discovered unconscious brain activity preceding and predicting their movements. This activity (recorded by the MRI) began seven to ten seconds prior to the conscious decision and action. Once again, scientific research seemed to confirm the deterministic, physical nature of the universe. According to experiments such as these, our choices are not really our own but are instead the result of a deterministic series of purely physical events in our brains.6
If determinism is true, however, it seems unfair to punish Paul or Sandy for their misfortune. Their behaviors were caused not by free choices (for which they were accountable) but by unlucky circumstances. Their actions just happened to be the consequence of their unfortunate physical history. Their “dominoes” fell in a particular, specific order, resulting in the commission of a burglary; my “dominoes” fell in a particular, specific order, resulting in my making their arrest. They were no more blameworthy for their “domino” sequence than I was praiseworthy for mine.
Paul, Sandy, and I cannot be held responsible for the deterministic, physical sequence of events in our pasts (including the physical-brain events preceding our activity on the day of the burglary), and we cannot be held responsible for the laws of nature governing these events.7 In a world like this, how could two of us be condemned while the other is commended?
In fact, if all our actions are dictated by prior physical events (i.e., brain events), we could hardly describe them as morally “good” or “bad” at all. Paul’s and Sandy’s actions (like my own) were outside of their control. Our actions were simply what they were: no more morally right nor wrong, good nor bad, correct nor incorrect than any other unintentional, inevitable event in nature.
Worse yet, if physical determinism is true, our futures are also fixed and predetermined. Both the events of the past and the events of the future are part of the same inflexible physical sequence of cause and effect governed by material laws. Human beings, if they are nothing more than purely physical entities, are subject to the same unyielding laws of nature governing every other physical object in this inflexible sequence. Paul’s and Sandy’s unintentional, inevitable, uncontrollable actions were dictated by prior events, and their future actions (as they served their jail sentence) were just as fixed and determined.8
If determinism is true, our efforts to rightly praise or blame the actions of ourselves or others seems a nonsensical endeavor; our efforts at justice seem equally pointless. Perhaps this is why the Supreme Court has rejected determinism and cited free will as the foundation of our legal system. In 1978, the Court, deciding against a defendant in an appeal related to the defendant’s sentencing, expressed the important relationship between free will and any effort to seek justice. The Court said “a deterministic view of human conduct” was “inconsistent with the underlying precepts of our criminal justice system.” In fact, the Court described “belief in freedom of the human will and a consequent ability and duty of the normal individual to choose between good and evil” as the “‘universal and persistent’ foundation stone in our system of law, and particularly in our approach to punishment, sentencing, and incarceration.”9
If determinism is true, our physical pasts and the laws of nature are the only true reasons why we do what we do. We might commit a crime, but we are not personally the real cause of our criminal actions. We might be responsible, but we are not morally responsible.10 Our legal system might decide to lock us up to prevent the commission of additional crimes, but we could not rightfully say this decision to incarcerate is a judgment against our moral decisions. After all, if determinism is true, we are not the ultimate source of these actions in the first place. If free will is an illusion, we need to admit our legal system is misguided.11
Here, then, is our dilemma: We live in a physical universe in which natural laws act on matter over time, yet we have the persistent, practical experience of making what appear to be free choices as we love, reason, and make moral judgments. We also condemn or praise one another as though our choices and decisions are our own. How are we to reconcile the material, deterministic nature of the universe with our own experience of free will and responsibility?
Staying “Inside the Room” for an Explanation:
CAN NATURALISM EXPLAIN OUR EXPERIENCE OF FREE WILL AND OUR INCLINATION TO PRAISE OR BLAME?
In an effort to explain free will while staying “inside the room” of a purely physical, material universe, naturalistic philosophers typically take one of two approaches. Some try to reconcile free will with determinism to retain the human inclination to praise or condemn specific actions and hold people responsible.12
A Tool for the Call-Out Bag:
Others attempt to deny free will to minimize the importance of this freedom entirely. But in order for these explanations to be adequate, they must be supported by the evidence, maintain the correct definitions related to the data, and avoid logical contradictions. Unfortunately, explanations from “inside the room” fail in one (or more) of those three areas.
IS OUR DEFINITION OF FREE WILL INCORRECT?
As we’ve seen in other efforts to change important definitions to stay “inside the room” for an explanation, some philosophers simply redefine the concept of free will. Philosopher Harry Frankfurt, for example, accepts that our basic (“first-order”) desires (such as the desire to eat a hamburger or read this book) may be dictated by physical, material processes in our brains. If we agree with these desires (our approval is described as a “second-order” desire), this agreement could, according to Frankfurt’s view, be described as “free will.”
But Frankfurt’s “hierarchal” description of decision making doesn’t seem to accurately describe our real decision-making experiences. Few of us are aware of our self-evaluation of every “first-order” desire. More importantly, how can we freely agree with our physical impulses in the first place? This appears logically inconsistent if we’re going to stay “inside the room” of a purely materialistic universe. If physical processes determine our foundational wants and desires, and we are only physical beings, why would we think our responses to those desires would not also be determined by physical processes?
DID FREE WILL SIMPLY “EMERGE”?
When a property appears surprisingly and spontaneously in a system (unpredicted by the laws governing the individual parts of the system), it is said to have “emerged.” Some philosophers and scientists think free will simply “emerges” from the deterministic universe in which we live.
The problem, of course, is in understanding how this could be so, evidentially. There is simply no evidence to support this mysterious concept. For this reason, emergence has been largely dismissed by neuroscientists. Emergence (as an explanation for free will) concedes the dualistic nature of the mind and the brain (one emerges from the other) but tries to explain it as a consequence of the laws of physics and chemistry within the material universe. This is also logically inconsistent, however, since nonmaterial explanations are not available unless we are willing to step “outside” the parameters of a material universe.
A Tool for the Call-Out Bag:
CAN WE ATTRIBUTE FREE WILL TO QUANTUM PHYSICS?
At atomic and subatomic scales (quantum levels), particles do not behave predictably (as do larger material objects). In some ways, quantum particles appear to be altogether indeterministic.
If these quantum particles are the tiniest, most foundational building blocks of the universe, is it possible their indeterministic nature might explain why we experience free will? No. Quantum theories are varied and plentiful, and given the evidence we have so far, scientists still aren’t certain there isn’t a layer of determinism underlying quantum mechanics. But even if physics at the quantum level is truly indeterministic, this still wouldn’t explain our experience as free agents. If the events in our brains are indeterminate and random at their most foundational level, how could we ever trust our thoughts as our own? How would we know if we were the source of our thoughts or if they simply popped into our heads as indeterminate quantum events?13
SHOULD WE REJECT THE EXISTENCE, NECESSITY, AND IMPORTANCE OF FREE WILL?
Some strict determinists, such as Sam Harris, reject free will altogether and describe it as an illusion. While this approach is certainly logically consistent with a deterministic worldview, it doesn’t adequately account for the evidence of our own experience. If determinists such as Harris hope to convince us that free will is an illusion, they are going to need some evidence to do so rather than simply relying on their philosophically natural presuppositions (we’ll examine their evidence from neuroscience in the next section).
Denying the existence of free will has a consequence. In my profession, law enforcement, much has been written about the rehabilitative role of our correctional facilities. If those who commit crimes don’t actually have the freedom to change, rehabilitation is impossible. Free will is so foundational to our daily lives, we often take its importance (and its very existence) for granted. But before we jettison the notion of free agency, we might want to look for a better explanation.
Efforts to stay “inside the room” of the natural universe for an explanation (by redefining what we mean by “free will,” embracing it as the product of emergence, attributing it to quantum physics, or simply denying its existence) fail to provide us with an adequate explanation for the freedom we all experience as conscious, thinking humans. If the explanation for free will isn’t found “inside the room,” maybe it’s time to look outside.
Searching “Outside the Room” for an Explanation:
IS THERE ANOTHER CAUSAL EXPLANATION IN OUR UNIVERSE?
A Tool for the Call-Out Bag:
Some philosophers reject deterministic explanations for free will and offer an alternative. They believe the strict, physical, causal theory of action and the determinist view of control are not completely accurate. Instead, they believe a different kind of control (and liberty) is needed to account for our experience of free will.
For determinists, the only kind of causation occurring in the universe is “event-event” causation. Only events cause things to happen (e.g., the synapses firing in your brain cause you to act in a specific way). But many philosophers, although they accept the existence of event-event causation when it comes to physical objects in the natural world, believe persons are different. There is a third explanation beyond determinism or indeterminism: it’s called self-determinism.14 Persons are agents who are capable of acting as first causes. We are not bound by the causal laws of physics when it comes to our thoughts and wills, and we are not at the mercy of random, indeterminate forces. Paul and Sandy, for example, as unmoved movers, had the power to act freely as the “ultimate originators of [their] actions.”15
There are many reasons to accept this view of free agency. Most importantly, it matches our daily experience. We live as though our decisions are our own, and we see the causal connection between our independent thoughts, our actions, and the resulting consequences. This view of agent causation accurately describes our experience as humans.
In addition, our ability to deliberate about our decisions and ponder the options before acting presupposes we have the freedom to think independently from deterministic physical processes. If you are deliberating about this chapter, you’ve already demonstrated the strength of this view of free agency.
Expert Witness Profile:
Finally, we are inclined to praise and blame people for their actions, and this innate inclination is dependent upon our freedom to make choices without physical restriction. For this reason, agent causation also makes sense of our intuitive (and appropriate) desire to assign personal responsibility.
Free agency cannot be explained, however, if we are limited to processes and systems “inside the room” of the deterministic, material universe. Like consciousness, free will points to a source “outside the room.” But such an explanation does not come without objections from those who point to the brain experiments we described earlier. Do Benjamin Libet’s and John-Dylan Haynes’s brain experiments disprove the existence of free will (and, therefore, eliminate the need for an external explanation)?
No. There are several ways to interpret these experiments, and given the location in the brain where this activity is located, it now appears these experiments are recording the initial planning portion of the subject’s thought process (prior to making a choice) rather than the choice itself. After all, Haynes recorded a seven- to ten-second gap between the activity in these regions and the actual decision. This relatively long period of time is far more consistent with conscious (or unconscious) planning than conscious choosing, given that we typically plan long before we act. Scientific experiments have yet to provide the evidence necessary for us to abandon our own eyewitness experience as free agents.
THE “BOTH-AND” NATURE OF CRIMINAL RESPONSIBILITY
Criminal courts in America recognize the dual nature of human beings. Courts consider a defendant’s ability as a “practical reasoner”—his or her ability, given a normal functioning brain, to make decisions and cause actions.
Courts, therefore, recognize the role of the physical, material brain in this decision-making process. In fact, if the defendant’s brain has been damaged by a lesion, injury, stroke, or neurotransmitter disorder, he or she may be considered less culpable based on diminished capacity.
But courts also recognize the role of the nonmaterial mind and the free will of defendants. To suggest a defendant is able to “practically reason” through a series of decisions implies he or she is able to choose between competing options and to reason toward a wise and moral choice.
In addition, criminal courts are interested in establishing a defendant’s mens rea (evil intent), before assigning guilt or responsibility. This also implies freedom on the part of the defendant to decipher right from wrong. The self-deterministic nature of humans is recognized by our criminal justice system, even as it acknowledges the role of the physical brain.
We needn’t reject the role of the material brain entirely to infer reasonably the nonmaterial existence of free will and mind. It’s the relationship between these two entities we must continue to investigate. Do our material brains cause the illusion of nonmaterial mind and free agency, or do our nonmaterial minds act freely and utilize material brains to signal and affect our decisions and actions?
The difference between these two possibilities is critically important to me as a detective. Am I in the business of holding people responsible or simply in the business of caging people who have the “wrong” kind of brain? Am I part of a larger correctional or rehabilitative process, or am I simply a utilitarian captor? Can I offer hope to those I arrest (as if they could freely change the direction of their lives), or should I simply confine wrongdoers without the expectation of true, unrestricted transformation?
I believe I have been acting appropriately over the years, serving as part of a larger legal system, holding people responsible, encouraging their rehabilitation, and offering the hope of transformation. But all of this is only possible if I account for personal freedom and responsibility by looking for a source “outside the room” of the natural, deterministic universe.
“Inside the Room” or “Outside the Room”?
MORAL RESPONSIBILITY, TRANSFORMATION, AND THE BEST INFERENCE
In the short time I had with Paul, I empathized with his struggle and his unfortunate upbringing. Within a month of his incarceration, I received a letter from his sister. He wanted to stay in touch and reached out to me through his sibling.
I spent the next four years corresponding with Paul occasionally as he was imprisoned in a state penitentiary. Upon his release, he asked to see me, and I’m now happy to report Paul has been able to change the direction of his life; he’s overcome his family history and his drug addiction. He’s now married and working with prisoners to prepare them to reenter society when they are released.
But he’s not married to Sandy. She overdosed within a month of her parole. Paul made good choices after his incarceration, even on days when he was tempted by his addictive nature and the continuing struggles he has with his family. Sandy did not make choices as wisely. Paul and Sandy are examples of self-determinism. We are not imprisoned by our upbringing, our genetics, or our struggles. We are free to change, chart a new course, and hope for something better.
Like good detectives, we investigated the existence of free will by examining personal responsibility and criminal intent, by distinguishing between what is true and what we think is true, and by raising the evidential bar to refute eyewitness testimony. Our common experience of free will and our innate inclination toward praise and blame are important pieces of evidence “inside the room” of the natural universe.
Free will is difficult to deny (unless, of course, we have the freedom to deny it). Attempts to account for free will from “inside the room” require us to redefine what we mean by “free will,” embrace it as the mysterious product of emergence, or attribute it to quantum physics. None of these explanations are adequate. If, however, free will can be attributed to an external source capable of creating humans with consciousness and the freedom to make personal decisions, we could adequately explain our collective experience of free agency.
Our Emerging “Suspect” Profile:
Our “suspect” profile is clearer than before. The external cause of the universe appears to be even more personal, given the evidence of free will. The same external cause responsible for the creation of our finely tuned universe, and the origin of biological creatures displaying evidence of design, is also responsible for conscious humans who possess free will.
If we are personal, conscious agents with the ability to act freely, it’s reasonable to infer the creative cause of our existence is similar in nature and capable of causing such a reality. Our suspect description is nearly complete. But as with other suspects I’ve investigated over the years, I want to know more than what the suspect “looks” like; I want to know what the suspect is thinking. What is important to the suspect? What are the suspect’s values and motivations?
The next piece of evidence will help us answer these important questions.