Many of the papers question whether we freely control our actions and our decisions. With reference to empirical findings in psychology and neuroscience, discuss to what extent we have free will .
When making decisions in everyday life, it would be very strange to feel like one is not in control of one s own actions. You are you one who has the desire to buy a coffee in the morning before work, and it is you who makes the decision to act on that desire and buy the coffee. Or at least it seems like it is. Questioning whether you are the conscious controller of your own life is not something that is typically brought into question and for good reason, because it feels like we do. The feeling that we have free will is about as compelling as the existence of the world around us. Even the majority of academics who study this tend to believe in it (Bourget Chalmers, 2014). However, recent empirical psychology has brought free will s existence into question in a more testable way. There has been more and more compelling research to suggest that we do not have free will. This is a very emotionally loaded question to be asking no one wants to feel as though they are not free, and many important aspects of modern society are built upon the idea that humans are free agents, to do as they consciously please. For example, how would our legal system work without free will? How can we blame someone for acting immorally when they had no ultimate choice in the matter? Questions like these can fundamentally break down a society if not answered sufficiently, which is why this is such an important topic for the scientific community to address. This essay will begin with the current debates around the definition of free will, before presenting the various arguments for and against its existence from a neuroscientific perspective. To have a meaningful discussion about free will, it must first be defined. Whilst it seems intuitive, the actual definition has been of much debate in psychological and philosophical circles. One definition from philosophy is that to have free will, one must have been able to do otherwise (O Connor Franklin, 2002). Based on this, if an individual cannot act differently given the same circumstance, that action is not free. A slightly more fleshed out definition is given by Sam Harris (2012): ...free will seems to rest on two assumptions: (1) that each of us could have behaved differently than we did in the past, and (2) that we are the conscious source of most of our thoughts and actions in the present. (p6)Whilst this encompasses the issue of free will in a more metaphysical way, it is not empirically testable and thus is not of much use within psychology. A more testable definition was proposed by Benjamin Libet (1985), who wrote that for an act to be regarded as of a subjects voluntary (free) will, then (a) it must arise endogenously, (b) there are no external factors restricting the individual s ability to perform the act, and (c) that the subjects introspectively feel that they are controlling the act. This is more testable. The definition this essay will be using is that of Libet, and all studies to be outlined will be compared to this definition for consistency. An early study into the existence of free will was conducted by Libet, Gleason, Wright, and Pearl (1983). This work was built upon the discovery of the Readiness Potential (RP), which is a measure of electrical activity within the motor cortex which precedes and voluntary movement by around 800ms (Kornhuber Deecke, 2016). Libet et al. (1983) built on this by investigating whether conscious awareness preceded the act and/or the RP. In the study, participants had their neural activity measured by an electroencephalogram (EEG), whilst they made the decision to perform a small wrist flick. This was to be performed whenever the participant felt the urge to. In a previous study not measuring conscious awareness but using the same flick principle, all participants felt the flick they performed was entirely controlled and not involuntary (Libet, Wright, Gleason, 1982). To measure conscious awareness, participants were asked to look at a clock with a rotating light, and were asked to recall the position of the light at the point in which they became consciously aware of their decision to perform the wrist flick. The time at which they became consciously aware was referred to as W. By comparing the difference between the time of the action, W, and the RP the researchers could see whether participants conscious awareness preceded the RP. They found that the RP preceded W by between 350 and 400 ms, and that W preceded the actual action by around 200ms. This suggests that we do not have free will because our conscious awareness of our action comes after the action has been initiated. Consciousness could, by these results, just be our brain s way of processing actions that we did not have any control over. Haggard and Eimer (1999) set out to replicate Libet et al. s (1983) original study using the same measuring techniques. They also extended the original study by first measuring participants lateralized readiness potential (LRP) which is seen as a more accurate and specific indicator of preparation to move in only one hemisphere (thus reflecting a movement specific to one side of the body). Secondly Haggard and Eimer compared a condition where participants had a choice between which hand to move and a condition where the movement was made using the same hand every time. They found no difference between having a choice of movements and not having a choice for both the W value and the time at which the movement actually occurred. Further, they found the LRP to be much more strongly correlated to W than Libet s RP. Whilst this study did address some concerns of Libet et al s (1983) study, in principle it does once again show that there is unconscious neural activity that precedes both action and awareness to perform an action. This study helps support the view that free will does not exist. An issue with both of the studies mentioned so far is that the timings are incredibly small and thus more subject to potential errors. This leads to any potential errors having a much larger effect on the data. In an attempt to rectify this, Soon, Brass, Heinze, and Haynes (2008) conducted a study. In this experiment participants performed a freely paced motor-decision task while having their brain activity measured using fMRI. Participants were asked to look at the centre of a screen where a stream of letters were presented, and were further asked to, whenever they felt the urge, press one of two buttons. They were instructed to remember which letter was on screen when they made the decision to press the button. After this, a screen with 4 choices popped up and they had to choose the letter which was present when they made their decision. They found that two specific regions of the brain in the frontal and parietal cortex encoded, and had considerable information about, the motor activity. The delay between unconscious information and processing and the actual decision was found to be up to 10 seconds, which is significantly longer than the findings of Libet et al. (1983) and Haggard and Eimer (1999). This did come at a trade-off due to the nature of using fMRI machines to measure neural activity. Which the potential error is smaller with this higher measurement of time before action, fMRI do have decreased temporal resolution compared to EEG which does need to be considered. Considered fully however, this study does once again support the idea that humans do not have free will in their decision making.A great flaw of all of the studies presented is that they all rely on self-reported measures of conscious awareness, which has been pointed out as an issue by Daniel Dennett (2004). The problem with this is that a finding can only be as accurate as the least accurate measurement tool used, which is this case is human experience. The experience of when conscious awareness occurs is not only subject to timing errors in how long neural processes take, but is also subject to a number of potential confounds such as attention and human reaction time. This is not to say that the findings have certainly been affected by these things, however the potential for these effects does weaken the degree of confidence the findings can attain. In an attempt to move away from self-reported measurements, Matsuhashi and Hallett (2008) developed a method to measure conscious awareness and neural activity preceding a decision without relying on self-report. The study asked participants to, at intervals of their choosing, and without planning in advance, perform a fast finger movement. During this process, a pseudo-randomly timed tone was played. If a participant had the intent to move when one of these tones played, they were asked to veto the movement. An EEG was used to measure neural activity for comparison. From the data collected, the authors could analyse the tones that sounded before each completed action. For a given movement, any tones played before indicate that the participant is not consciously aware that they are going to move. This allows them to find that time at which, on average, an individual is consciously aware of their actions, and compare this to the preceding neural activity for this given action. They found that the neural activity occurred around 2.17 seconds on average before a given action, whilst conscious awareness began around 1.42 seconds on average before movement. This supports the previously mentioned studies findings that consciousness follows neural initiation of an activity, however without relying of subjective self-report measures. Once again, this further suggests that humans do not have free will. Despite findings being presented as quite robust, there are certainly ways that they could be more accurate in defining which areas of the brain function towards this predictive behaviour. Areas such as the frontal and parietal cortex have been found to predict behaviour, the limit of how precise the measurement can be could be important. If the assumption is held that free will does not exist, then an important step forward would be to see how accurate predictions could be in completely knowing one s future behaviour. This would require far more precise measurements, and a glimpse into how this would work has been shown by Fried, Mukamel, and Kreiman (2011). They measured neural activity in the same setup as Libet et al. (1983), however by measuring 1019 specific neurons as opposed to an entire brain region. The findings showed that 256 neurons in the supplementary motor area (SMA) was enough to accurately predict the intention to move by 700ms. This serves as an important development to support the argument that free will does not exist in a more precise way. This also offers a window into how precise future measurements could be, and how this could transfer into more robust models of behaviour prediction. There are studies that directly oppose some of the critical assumptions that the results of Libet et al. (1983) and others rely on. Trevena and Miller (2010) used a similar methodology to Libet et al. (1983), however played an audio tone which dictated when participants were meant to make a decision about moving their finger or not. They found that the RP did not differ between participants who decided to move, and those who did not, concluding that the RP merely represents that the brain is paying attention. The argument could be made back, however, that the decision to not move when an audio tone is presented still represents neural activity associated with a decision for a behaviour, just for a behaviour to not be made. Or rather that participants are consciously cancelling a movement that they were going to make. This does not necessarily show that participants are paying attention, but rather that they are just performing a different type of behaviour. So this neural activity could still be a sign of the readiness potential, but for deliberately not making a movement or cancelling a movement. As a critique of past research methodology, this study has limited strength. As mentioned an alternative conclusion from the Trevena and Miller study is that participants might have been cancelling a movement that they instinctively tried to perform when one of the tones sounded. Whilst the neurological evidence seems to suggest that we do not have free will over our actions, this may merely be that we do not have free will over out impulses to perform a certain action. Libet himself has suggested the idea of having free will over the cancelling of actions (i.e. Libet, 1999). He pointed out that whilst humans may not have volition in initiating an act, there is a window of around 200 ms for the act to be vetoed. Libet, Wright, and Gleason (1983) demonstrated this empirically by asking participants to veto their act once they had the urge to do so, and found that the majority could do this. Every study mentioned shows that conscious awareness precedes the actual action, regardless of whether it precedes the neural activity associated with that action. Thus, this seems to leave room for free will to veto any impulses. The idea of consciously vetoing an action relies on the self-reported feeling of conscious awareness. As pointed out already, self-reporting is subject to biased and has been pointed out to be inaccurate in a study into free will. K hn and Brass (2009) set up an experiment where participants had to respond to a signal to press a button (shown by a green light), which was then sometimes followed by a signal to stop the action, or decide whether or not to proceed with the action. By measuring reaction times, neural activity, and the self-reported awareness of whether a participant had decided or not, K hn and Brass were able to measure the accuracy of self-report in this scenario. The key data was in the decide trials, where participants decided to push the button. From this, the reaction time can be tested to see whether they actually had time to consciously decide, and whether they reported to do so. They found that participants often misattributed their own conscious will to actions that they had no control in deciding due to the reaction time being too fast. This not only shows that attribution of conscious awareness is subject to bias and error, but also brings into question the idea of having free will over vetoing acts. If we tend to be inaccurate in determining when we become consciously aware, then it follows that conclusions from studies such as that of Libet, Wright, and Gleason (1983) could be wrong. This adds doubt to the idea that free will exists only in the form of vetoing actions.Whilst it seems like there is no hope for free will, there are areas in which there is still potential for it to exist. The overwhelming evidence currently known points towards the idea that we do not have free will, however with the caveat that this only applies to small ballistic movements. Where authors such as Harris go wrong, is generalising this to all actions in all of human behaviour. Bergner (2018) points out this issue for the conclusions that most authors draw from the empirical data. He claims that there are ten different types of behaviours from example: unconscious behaviours such as brushing hair out of our face, behavioural sequences where there is little conscious thought about the next step such as playing an instrument, complex behaviours that involve significant though and awareness such as setting up a new computer pass word, and actions that are entirely mental such as mental arithmetic. There are even more behaviours not listed, and to extrapolate the findings of Libet-type experiments to all of the various behaviours we perform in our everyday lives is scientifically inappropriate. Further to this, the very simple and quick motor tasks in Libet-type experiments have very little ecological validity, which limits their generalisability even more. Whilst it may seem as if science has shown free will to be an illusion of the mind, it is important not to get ahead of what has actually been found. To make any substantial claims about whether free will exists in all facets of life, more empirical data relating to a wider range of behaviours is needed. This essay has concerned itself with whether or not free will does exist, however the implications of the results are important to discuss. If free will does get completely disproven in years to come, it could have major consequences for society. For example, belief in free will has been related to decreased gratitude (MacKenzie, Vohs, Baumeister, 2014), increased cheating behaviour (Vohs and Schooler, 2008), and decreased job performance (Stillman et al., 2010). Whilst the consequences are not fully established, this shows a worrying potential for negative effects. The major problems for academics in the future could be whether it is even worth teaching the idea that free will does not exist if it does get disproven. It is important to be objective in reporting results to the public, but given the consequences, free will might just be a necessary fiction for society.
To conclude, the majority of neuroscientific evidence suggests that we do not have free will in simple, motoric acts, and this has been shown under a number of circumstances in response to methodological critique. This essay has further presented, briefly, why this is important to consider as it has wide reaching implications for almost every aspect of the way we as humans function. Future research should investigate other behaviours and actions to fully comprehend the extent to which we have free will across all aspects of our life. Wider reaching future study and theory should concern itself with whether we should abolish the idea of free will, or whether it is a necessary fiction for functioning society.
