In addition to the cruel injustice of youthful minds being trapped inside ageing bodies, our daily experience constantly tells us that our minds work independently and in advance of our bodies. Every waking moment, we make decisions that precede our actions. It seems that our bodies are controlled by our thoughts. We feel the authorship of action. We are the ones doing the doing. This is the experience of conscious free will. However, free will – the idea that we can make whatever choices we want, whenever we want – is most likely an illusion. The experience of free will is very real, but the reality of it is very doubtful.
Cognitive scientists (those who study the mechanisms of thinking) believe that we are in fact conscious automata running a complex set of rule-based equations in our heads. We are consciously aware of some of the outputs from these processes. These are our thoughts. We experience the mental processes of weighing up evidence, considering options, and anticipating possible outcomes, but the conclusion that our minds have a free will in making those decisions is not logical.
If you doubt this (and most readers will), then consider this. If we are free to make decisions, at what point are decisions made and who is making them? Who is weighing up the evidence? Where is the ‘me’ inside my head considering the options and doing ‘eeny, meeny, miny, moe?’ That would require someone inside our heads, or a ghost inside the machine. But how does the ghost in the machine make decisions? There would have to be someone inside the ghost’s head making the choices. So if there is only one ghost, how does it arrive at a decision? Does it look at all the alternatives and then flip a coin? If so, flipping a coin can hardly be free will.
THE NUMSKULLS
My editor tells me that these are really difficult concepts that need explaining, so rather than ghosts inside heads flipping coins, let me tell you about ‘The Numskulls’.
When I was a kid growing up in Dundee, Scotland, ‘The Numskulls’ was the local DC Thompson’s comic strip about an army of little people who lived inside of the head of a man called Edd. They were workers controlling his body and brain. And like workers in a factory, sometimes they would screw up. For example, the Numskull controlling the stomach would see that reserves were getting low and send a request for more food. The Numskull responsible for feeding would pull the levers to get Edd eating. Maybe the Numskull in the tummy would fall asleep at his station because of all the food, and Edd would end up stuffing himself until he became sick. An alarm light would go off in the brain department, where the boss Numskull sat at his executive desk reading the incoming messages. Then there would be a frantic race to tell the eating Numskull to stop working. You can see how such a scenario easily generated comic story lines each week as the machine called Edd would encounter different problems arising from his internal workforce. It was one of my favorite comics, even though I did not realize that the creators were actually presenting children with a profound philosophical conundrum about free will.
FIG. 11: ‘The Numskulls’ from my childhood © D.C. THOMSON & CO, LTD , Dundee.
The Numskulls show that decision-making is a deep problem. How are decisions arrived at? If a choice has to be made, how does that happen? We intuitively think that we make the decisions. We make up our minds. But how? Is there a Numskull boss inside my head? And if so, who is inside his head, and so on? Like an endless series of Russian dolls, one inside another, an infinite number of Numskulls becomes an absurd concept.
To cap it all, the experience of conscious decisions preceding events may also be an illusion. If I ask you to move your finger whenever you feel like it, you can sit there and then eventually decide to raise your digit. That’s what conscious free will feels like. But we know from measuring your brain activity while you’re sitting there waiting to decide that the point when you thought you had reached a decision to move your finger actually occurred after your brain had already begun to take action.29 In other words, the point in time when we think we have made a choice occurs after the event. It’s like putting the action cart before the conscious horse. The mental experience of conscious free will may simply justify what our brains have already decided to implement. In describing this type of after-the-fact decision-making, Steven Pinker says, ‘The conscious mind – the self or soul – is a spin doctor, not the commander-in-chief.’30The mind is constructing a story that fits with decisions after they have been made.
As I write these heady sentences, I pause and pick up my coffee mug. This simple act is one of nature’s miracles. First, who made that decision if not me? More disturbingly, how can my mental thought cause my physical hand to move? How does mind interact with body? These are some of the most profound issues that have preoccupied thinkers for millennia, but most of us never even bother to consider how amazing these questions are. This is because we do not see a problem at all. We treat the mind and the body as separate because that is what we experience. I am controlling my body, but I am more than just my body. We sense that we exist independently of our bodies.
For most of us, if feels as if we spend our mental life somewhere resident behind our eyes, inside our heads. If we want to see what is behind us, we steer the ship around in order to look. If we want the coffee, we engage the coffee acquisition mechanisms. We feel like pilots controlling a complicated meat machine. There is only one Numskull in control inside my head, and it is I. But how can a nonphysical me control the physical body? How can a ghost inside my head pull the levers?
The dualist philosopher René Descartes proposed that the mental world must control the physical one through the pineal gland deep in the middle of the brain, which he called the seat of the soul.31 Descartes’s solution represents dualism, which requires that there be a soul that is separate from the body and yet in control of the body. But substance dualism must be wrong. The mind is not separate from the body but rather a product of that three-pound lump of gray porridge in our heads. When you damage, remove, stimulate, probe, deactivate, drug, or simply bash the brain, the mind is altered accordingly. In the last century, the great Canadian brain surgeon Wilder Penfield pioneered operations on awake patients for the treatment of epilepsy, including his own sister. He would expose the surface of the brain and then stimulate the region he was about to operate on to make sure that he was avoiding motor areas that might leave the patient paralysed. When he stimulated the brain directly, the patients experienced movements, sensations, and vivid memories. They tasted tastes, smelled smells, and relived past experiences. Direct stimulation proved that mental life is a product of the physical brain.