Free Will and Steering Wheels

Image via WikipediaAn addendum to my recent comments (here) about freedom and neuroscience: I just found a really interesting blog (The Garden of Forking Paths) that appears to be primarily devoted to discussions among philosophers about freedom, moral responsibility, volition, and so forth. It is fairly accessible and really interesting, including all the major schools of thought about this subject. I especially enjoyed the comments that appeared below an entry about the recent discussions about the experiments that appear to demonstrate that students are more likely to cheat on a test if they have recently heard a lecture telling them that neuroscience "proves" there is "no free will" (here is an example of one of the write-ups about these experiments). The introductory sentence in this write-up (in the NYT) is: "If there is no such thing as free will, do you really have to put that money into the office coffee kitty when no one is looking?" The idea being, of course, that there is a danger that science will tell us things that end up making us bad people (note that this at least somewhat resembles the fearfulness, in some religious circles [and especially in Kansas!], that surrounds the teaching of evolution).

It was this "Garden" blog that reminded me of a recent article by Roy Baumeister (one of my favorite social psychologists, especially on the subject of "evil") in a major psychology journal (Perspectives on Psychological Science). Dr. Baumeister describes a viewpoint about human freedom that is very similar to my own long-held view (that human freedom is quite limited, and in some cases practically non-existent) and also consistent with the recent work involving the apparent 6-second time lag between brain-based decision-making, and the conscious perception of "making a choice to do something." Here's how he expressed the idea (sometimes known, technically within philosophy, as "compatabilism"): "[it may be] that there are two systems for guiding behavior: a default one that mostly runs the show and an occasional one that sometimes intervenes to make changes. Free will should be understood not as the starter or motor of action but rather as a passenger who occasionally grabs the steering wheel or even as just a navigator who says to turn left up ahead."

Anyway, Baumeister is a major figure in the area of human freedom; he recently published a fascinating study indicating that people are less capable of resisting temptation when their blood glucose levels have dropped.