The Conscious and the Unconscious: Challenging Free Will

The Conscious and the Unconscious: Challenging Free Will

In The Ravenous Brain, Dr. Bor writes an analysis on the human conscience from a philosophical view while also looking to cognitive neuroscience for answers.  Dr. Bor states that, “if we assume that consciousness is simply a physical process generated by brain activity, then this makes the mystery of awareness all the more vivid and exciting” (Bor 158). We know that our conscious decisions are caused by neurons firing within the brain. Current research is underway to establish which regions of the brain are responsible and Bor’s book helps to highlight the most recent findings in the field.

In Bor’s novel, Dr. Dijksterhuis says that, “we should follow our gut instinct, where the slow, integrative processing of our unconscious minds [is] vastly superior to our clunky, far more limited conscious thoughts” (Bor 91). More recently it has come to light that our unconscious is constantly processing and even making choices for us before we are even aware of them. In 2008, Chun Siong Soon conducted an experiment, which found that a decision is made though brain activity in the prefrontal parietal cortex up to 10 seconds before it enters awareness. This alone has raised many questions regarding our consciousness; some even take it into the context of discrediting free will.

We know that the concept of free will has been part of philosophical debates for centuries. Currently it is often associated with our conscious and our ability to make decisions.  Some neuroscientists have even made the bold claim that free will is merely an illusion and that we have less control over our brains than previously thought. I wouldn’t go as far as blaming our brain for our actions, but researcher Eliezer J. Sternberg thinks otherwise. His new book, My Brain Made Me Do It: The Rise of Neuroscience and the Threat to Moral Responsibility, has caused hype and many people to re-think the way our mind works. I happen to be highly skeptical at the moment. I am more interested in how Chun Siong Soon’s findings will impact people’s thoughts on free will. Chun Sion Soon’s experiment was able to accurately predict basic motor functions before the individual consciously made a choice of left or right.  These experiments are only the very beginning of “neuroprediction,” defined as using brain activity to predict someone’s choices.

In the article, “Belief in Free Will Not Threatened by Neuroscience”, Christian Jarrett writes about how Neuroscientists: Eddy Nahmias, Jason Shepard, and Shane Reuter counter the claims that free will is an illusion by focusing on what most people perceive free will to be. The trio conducted an experiment at Georgia State University involving hundreds of undergrads to find out if even unrealistic levels of neuroprediction would affect people’s views on free will.  They took Chun Sion Soon’s results and greatly exaggerated the capabilities, and then they asked the participants how this affects free will. It turns out that even if scientists improve the technology to predict complex decisions before you are consciously aware of them, people’s views of free will won’t be altered. The researchers write that, “most people recognize that just because ‘my brain made me do it,’ that does not mean that I didn’t do it of my own free will” (Nahmias, Shepard, & Reuter, 2014). The research leads us to conclude that this won’t alter people’s opinions on free will. The ability to conduct neuroprediction could have far greater implications in the near future, but only if the technology to do so could be improved. I personally find it daunting if neuroscientists can predict my actions before I am even aware of consciously choosing them. At the moment, it is safe to say that no matter what neuroscience discovers about the brain in relation to the mind people will still believe in free will and that they are in control.

References

Bor, Daniel. The Ravenous Brain: How the New Science of Consciousness Explains Our Insatiable Search for Meaning. New York: Basic, 2012. Print.

Jarrett, C. (14, September 27). Belief in Free Will Not Threatened by Neuroscience.  Wired. Retrieved from http://www.wired.com/2014/09/belief-free-will-threatened-neuroscience/

Nahmias, E., Shepard, J., & Reuter, S. (2014). It’s OK if ‘my brain made me do it’: People’s intuitions about free will and neuroscientific prediction Cognition, 133 (2), 502-516 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2014.07.009

Soon, C.S., Brass, M., Heinze, H., Haynes, J. (2008). Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain. Nature Neuroscience DOI: 10.1038/nn.2112

Sternberg, E. (2010). My Brain Made Me Do It: The Rise of Neuroscience and The Threat to Moral Responsibility. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.