Free Will Under Attack
Dr. Helen asks:
Have you noticed an uptick in studies that seem to say you have no or little free will?
There does seem to be some evidence that there is. A July article in Time, for instance, featured the work of psychologists Ruud Custers of Utrecht University in the Netherlands and John Bargh of Yale:
Both Custers and Bargh acknowledge that their research undermines a fundamental principle used to promote human exceptionalism — indeed, Bargh has in the past argued that his work undermines the existence of free will. But Custers also points out that his conclusions are not new: people have long sensed that they are influenced by forces beyond their immediate recognition — be it Greek gods or Freud’s unruly id. What’s more, the unconscious will is vital for daily functioning and probably evolved before consciousness as a handy survival mechanism — Bargh calls it “the evolutionary foundation upon which the scaffolding of consciousness is built.” Life requires so many decisions, Bargh says, “that we would be swiftly overwhelmed if we did not have the automatic processes to deal with them.”
For his part, Custers says that it is true that our conscious selves are sometimes voyagers on a vessel of which they have little control, but he does not see this as a cause for helplessness. “We have to trust that our unconscious sense of what we want and what is good for us is strong, and will lead us largely in the right direction.”
If we really believed that free will is a mere illusion, we’d have to rethink all kinds of things– morality, responsibility, democracy and the justice system for starters.
Dr. Helen notes the political implications:
Glenn [Reynolds] and I interviewed Cass Sunstein, the author of Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness two years ago. Sunstein is now Obama administration’s regulatory czar. I remember as I listened to him talk about “libertarian paternalism” (isn’t that an oxymoron?) that I felt sick to my stomach. In Sunstein’s opinion, it seems that justifying the notion that people do not have free will gives license to bureaucrats and politicians to “nudge” people in the direction that they desire them to go. A nudge is often not noticed until it becomes a shove and by then, it is often too late.
Wesley J. Smith had some interesting observations on the attack on free will at Secondhand Smoke back in February:
It is astonishing to me the fervor with which some in the life sciences seek to dismantle the very concept of human freedom. If they have their way, we will go from, “The devil made me do it,” to perhaps, “My genes made me do it,” or, “My genes as mediated by my experiences made me do it,” to now apparently, “My chemicals made me do it.”
