I do believe that there is such a thing as
free will but by that I do not mean that there
is some process that defies the laws of physical
cause and effect.
As my colleague Joshua Greene once put it,
it is not the case that every time you make
a decision a miracle occurs.
So I don't believe that.
I believe that decisions are made by neurophysiological
processes in the brain that respect all the
laws of physics.
On the other hand it is true that when I decide
what to say next when I pick an item from
a menu for dinner it's not the same as when
the doctor hits my kneecap with a hammer and
my knee jerks.
It's just a different physiological process
and one of them we use the word free will
to characterize the more deliberative, slower,
more complex process by which behavior is
selected in the brain.
That process involves the aggregation of many
diverse kinds of information – our memory,
our goals, our current environment, our expectation
of how other people will judge that action.
Those are all information streams that affect
that process.
It's not completely predictable in that there
may be random or chaotic or nonlinear effects
that mean that even if you put the same person
in the same circumstance multiple times they
won't make the same choice every time.
Identical twins who have almost identical
upbringings, put them in the same chair, face
them with the same choices.
They may choose differently.
Again, that's not a miracle.
That doesn't mean that there is some ghost
in the machine that is somehow pushing the
neural impulses around.
But it just means that the brain like other
complex systems is subject to some degree
of unpredictability.
At the same time free will wouldn't be worth
having and certainly wouldn't' be worth extolling
in world discussions if it didn't respond
to expectations of reward, punishment, praise,
blame.
When we say that someone – we're punishing
or rewarding someone based on what they chose
to do we do that in the hope that that person
and other people who hear about what happens
will factor in how their choices will be treated
by others and therefore there'll be more likely
to do good things and less likely to do bad
things in the expectation that if they choose
beneficial actions better things will happen
to them.
So paradoxically one of the reasons that we
want free will to exist is that it be determined
by the consequences of those choices.
And on average it does.
People do obey the laws more often than not.
They do things that curry favor more often
than they bring proprium on their heads but
not with 100 percent predictability.
So that process is what we call free will.
It's different from many of the more reflexive
and predictable behaviors that we can admit
but it does not involve a miracle.
