NewScientist
by Dan Jones
September 19, 2014
A conscious choice, or inevitable? (Image: Aykut Unlupinar/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
The vast majority of people think we have free will and are the authors of our own life stories. But if neuroscientists were one day able to predict our every action based on brain scans, would people abandon this belief in droves? A new study concludes that such knowledge would not by itself be enough to shake our confidence in our own volition.
Many neuroscientists, such as the late Francis Crick, have argued that our sense of free will is no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells. This is tied to the idea of determinism, which has it that every effect is preceded by a cause, with cause and effect connected by physical laws. This is why the behaviour of physical systems can be predicted – even the brain, in principle.
As author Sam Harris puts it: “If determinism is true, the future is set – and this includes all our future states of mind and our subsequent behaviour.”
If people lost their belief in their own free will, that would have important consequences for how we think about moral responsibility, and even how we behave. For example, numerous studies have shown that when people are led to reject free will they are more likely to cheat, and are also less bothered about punishing other wrongdoers.
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