We often think that what really makes us different from inanimate things is the ‘free will’ that we are supposed to be having.
An inanimate thing like a fan for example, can start, stop, run slowly or very fast, not on its own but only when we switch it on or off, or when we tweak the regulator. That is because the fan is not alive, though it can move. It does not have a will of its own. It just does what we want it to do.
Basically, when something does not have a free will, it just operates under the rule of cause and effect. i.e. It is bound by causality.
But, not so in our case. We are capable of doing something, apparently with no cause at all! Just because we ‘will’ to do it.
Does it not show that we have a ‘mind’ of our own which is different from the brain, which often operates within the framework of causality? Afterall, brain is just bundle of cells that are more or less mechanistic in nature. How can these cells have a ‘will’ of their own? So, brain is NOT mind!
Wait a minute. Some scientists deny this very assumption that we have a will of our own that permits us to go beyond causality. They say that even this ‘so called free will’ is not free after all!
Way back in 1980s Benjamin Libet and his collaborators conducted some experiments to know more about the functioning of our brain. Many scientists have interpreted the outcome of these experiments as the confirmation that there is no such thing as ‘free will’.
Whenever we perform any physical action, certain regions of our brain get ready for that action, well in advance. This readiness is indicated by certain electrical activity in those regions. This is called readiness potential. This electrical activity can be measured from outside the skull.
What Libet did was to ask some volunteers to press a button kept in front of them. They could press the button whenever they felt like – without any real cause, i.e. totally out of free will. But just before they decided to press the button, they were asked to note the time by looking at a special clock.
What surprised Libet and his team was that the readiness potential started rising much before the volunteer made the decision. That means that the brain was getting ready for the action even before the volunteer made up his mind to press the button.
This could imply that the volunteer’s pressing the button was pre-decided by the brain or it was anticipating it. That means the volunteer did not press the button by exercising his free will after all! It was pre-decided and the so called free will is not really free!
The volunteer decided to press the button because the brain prompted him to do so and not on his own. There was a cause for his action and so it was not free will. But what prompted the brain to get into action? Was it a random phenomenon or was it ‘pre-decided’? Pre -decided by what, or by whom?
There was lot of controversy about these experiments. Each contending group came up with its own explanation about this strange observation. Some even ridiculed it by calling it ‘neural theology’.
The conclusions remained open. But most scientists are firm on their opinion that there is no ‘free will’. One scientist even went to the extent of predicting that sooner or later, it will be proven that there is no soul either, that can make a free choice! It is brain and just the brain that exists! That was the last nail struck to dismiss the soul theory.
But what motivates this brain to do whatever it does!!!
A series revolving around Mind – Science of Mind, Philosophy of Mind, Notions of reality, Mind modulation, Domains beyond Mind, and so on. © Dr. King 2019
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