Can Free Will be Neuroscientifically Disproved?

People make decisions every single day. The question is: are these decisions made freely or are they determined? Studies show that the brain is capable of unconsciously making decisions prior to one’s conscious awareness. The article What Neuroscience Says about Free Will suggests that the idea of free will may be an illusion of the brain. Dr. Vukov refutes the claim that there is no free will by arguing that this conclusion cannot be accurately deduced from current studies.

In the article What Neuroscience Says about Free Will, experimenters Bloom and Bear theorize that our minds re-write history. They imply that we may not have a choice, or free will, at all if our minds follow this process: we unconsciously observe ourselves performing an action, and then only after are we able to consciously perceive that action as intentional.¹ If we make a decision unconsciously, our conscious mind did not choose that decision; rather, our conscious mind only recognized that this decision was made, and it concludes that the result was its intention all along. This implies that there was no free will to make a decision— the decision was already subconsciously made. Thus, Bloom and Bear suggest that this concept of free will is an illusion, as the decision has already been made unconsciously, prior to awareness.

In order to prove that the unconscious is responsible for making decisions, an experiment was conducted. Each subject had to choose which of the five dots on the screen would turn red and report their initial predictions after seeing which dot had in fact turned red. When the answer was quickly displayed, people reported their predictions to have a higher accuracy rate than expected. When there was a delay in the answer being displayed, the reported predictions were much closer to the expected results. This time delay prevented the subconscious from being able to observe the answer before a conscious choice was decided. This suggests that the unconscious was observing the answer, and the conscious became aware of the answer and thought that it had predicted the correct answer from the beginning. Thus, the unconscious is responsible for making decisions prior to awareness.

Some people conclude that there is no free will because our brain decides to do things before we are aware of what we have decided. Dr. Vukov, a professor from Loyola University, provided five reasons as to why this conclusion is unable to be deduced from a neuroscientific standpoint. These reasons include: faults with empirical data, the ambiguity of various definitions of free will, the issue that probability does not negate free will, the complexity of free actions, and the fact that free actions do not need to be conscious. While Dr. Vukov does not say that there is no free will, he does provide evidence that the unconscious makes decisions ten seconds prior to one’s awareness of that decision. ²Thus, this directly relates to the discussion of free will in the aforementioned article.

Therefore, the question of whether or not a person is free or determined has been unable to be answered. Cases can be made in support of each argument, and while it can be shown that the unconscious makes decisions prior to conscious awareness, it cannot be proved there is no free will. Thus, free will cannot be neuroscientifically disproved from the information provided. Free will may simply be an illusion and not exist, or is may exist. It is important for the interdisciplinary fields of neuroscience, philosophy and ethics to come together to discuss this issue and do additional research to reach a conclusion.  

Resources:

1.         A. Bear, “What Neuroscience Says about Free Will,” Scientific American, 28 April 2016, https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/mind-guest-blog/what-neuroscience-says-about-free-will/, date accessed October 17^th, 2017.

2.         Soon, et al. ”Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain,” https://luc.app.box.com/v/neuroseminar/file/216116077901, date accessed October 17^th, 2017.