A FAREWELL TO FREEDOM

Let us suppose we accept biologism in full: our minds are our brains; and our brains are evolved organs designed, as are all organs, by natural selection to maximize the replicative ability of the genes whose tool the brain is. What follows from this? For many, this means that we are acting out a biological script quite different from the story we tell ourselves about ourselves. We may have to jettison the notion of freedom and, consequently, of personal responsibility. Worse still, to be identified with our brains is to be identified with a piece of matter, and this, like all other pieces of matter, is subject to, and cannot escape from, the laws of material nature. Everything that happens in our brains is the product of material events that impinge on them and the events that result from brain activity – notably our actions – are wired into the endless causal net, extending from the Big Bang to the Big Crunch, that is the history of the material universe. Minds and persons are embedded in the physical world. Our destiny, like that of pebbles and waterfalls, is to be predestined.

The general argument that free will is an illusion long antedates the rise of neuroscience: it has haunted philosophers since classical times. There are various ways of arguing for determinism: the notion that we do not determine anything but are ourselves determined by things outside of us.