Some compatibilists think that so long as we can make decisions to “do what we want” that such decisions are sufficient to label as “free will”. They don’t, however, understand the implications of such thinking. Take a look at this excerpt from my book Breaking the Free Will Illusion for the Betterment of Humankind:
Some compatibilists have a different idea of what’s meant by the word “freedom.” They may say that if a person’s thoughts dictate the event (are the antecedent causes of the event), it’s free, but if the person’s thought does not control the event, it’s not free.
For example, they may say that if a person is stuck in a rainstorm and there’s no shelter available, they are not free to decide to stay dry. But if someone is under shelter during a rainstorm, they are free to step out from the shelter and get wet (or not) because they can make the conscious decision to do so.
This way of defining freedom bypasses the causes of the conscious decision being made, but it leads to some big problems.
Take the thought experiment of a microchip hooked up to a person’s brain without them knowing. This chip is remotely controlled by a scientist who’s able to control the chemicals in the brain, redirect the electrical impulses, and so on, in such a way that the scientist could control whether or not the person 
desires to and decides to step out in the rain. The decision happens after the scientist inputs variables into his computer that will causally lead to the decision in the person’s mind.
The person would feel like they were in control of the decision to step out into the rain. The person would in fact desire to step out in the rain, even though the desire was ultimately controlled by the scientist. It was the person’s brain state that dictated their decision, even though the brain state came about via an external process of a chip they had no control over.
The compatibilist who accepts this definition of freedom must also accept that the person with the microchip was just as free as a person without it. This is because instead of a microchip attached to the person controlling the output of their decisions, the causes or acausal events that extend outside of or prior to the person controls them. Even though the person makes a decision and feels they do it of their own accord, just as the person with the microchip in their brain feels they make decisions of their own accord, those decisions stem from something out of the person’s control.
If the compatibilist decides to use such a definition of free will, it’s important to note to them: the chances are such that most people wouldn’t consider the person being controlled by the scientist as free. In other words, this is not the common free will usage. When the compatibilist defines free will in such a way, they cause confusion in the minds of those that think they have this other type of free will. The type in which they have the actual control over the path their own thoughts and actions take. The type that the compatibilist isn’t talking about.
Another common thought experiment is to imagine a brain tumor that causes someone to go out on a shooting spree (or do something outside of the person’s normal character), as in the presumed case of Charles Witman. If the tumor itself is what drove the desire and obsessive need to fulfill that desire, most people wouldn’t say the person did so of their own “free will”. Especially given that without the tumor they would have never had such a drive, desire, or compulsion for the act.
In response to these thought experiments, the compatibilist might change things up to “so long as we can do what we want and are not coerced in what we want” for the term “free will” – simply bypassing the very point that we are always coerced by events that are outside of our conscious control. That’s, in fact, the entire point. They may tack on that free will is the “ability to do what one wants if one has a normal functioning brain”, but this too simply misses the point. The very configuration of a person’s brain comes about through long causal processes that are out of the persons control. Something being the “norm” has nothing to do with it. If every person had a brain tumor or microchip, such would be considered the “norm” of brain functioning and such wouldn’t make the functioning any more “free”.
The ability to do what one wants or desires is in no way reflective of such wants and desires being any more free than the dictation of the microchip or tumor. It’s just a different configuration, one we are often less concerned over. Some compatibilist like to invoke the word “rationality” into the definition, for example, the ability of a biological organism to make a “rational decision”. Again, the very rational mechanism is equally constrained. For example, if someone makes a mistake in their reasoning, they couldn’t have, of their own accord, not made such a mistake, and if they didn’t make a mistake in their reasoning, they couldn’t have made one.
In fact, we could imagine a microchip that causes a very specific weighing of options and rational assessment to be made, in which the rational assessment couldn’t have been made otherwise. We can call this a “rational chip”, but the output will always be the “rational decision” dictated by the chip.
These thought experiments truly do show a problem with many compatibilist (re)definitions of free will. Of course they aren’t the only reasons to reject compatibilism. They just demonstrate how attaching the word “free” to a process that is no more “free” than a microchip or brain tumor causing a person to “want” or “desire” or “rationally think about” in such a very specific way in which what they decide on is dictated by such chip or tumor just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
The network of our brain and central nervous system, the configuration of our body, and the configuration of our environment as we process it restricts each moment of our thoughts and actions. We aren’t tiny gods that work outside of these things. We are programmed just as much as we are with a microchip or tumor controlling our actions. It’s jut that our programming is done through a natural, extended process and for the most part isn’t what we consider outside of the norm.
In other words, even without a microchip, whether one will “step out from the shelter into the rain” is dictated by a long line that has programmed their wants, desires, and way they will think and process such a decision. It may be that a memory of a pleasant experience about being in the rain comes to the forefront of their consciousness which drives them to step out from the shelter, or it may be a repulsion to getting their clothes wet that drives them to stay under the shelter. But whether or not such decision happens through a long causal line, or it happens through a microchip that drives such pleasant experience or repulsion, or a brain tumor that drives such, are all equally constrained.
This is not to say we wouldn’t prefer the more natural process in which our own lengthy causal history programs our memory and “rational” decisions over a dangerous tumor or chip controlled by a wacked out scientist. This ties into our intuitions about a “self” as well as perhaps our intuitions about consent.
What we prefer here is irrelevant to the point being made – after all, a tumor or chip might be able to adjust that preference to one that now desires having the tumor or chip. The more important point, however, is that the brain state you hold at this very moment isn’t any more free than the brain+ tumor/chip state, it’ just different. Your brain state springs forth from a much longer line of constrained brain/mind processes that account for what one “wants” and how they make “rational decisions” between options – rather than a tumor or chip doing so.
So defining free will as “the ability to do what we want” fails unless one is to concede that the person with the tumor or chip that controls what they “want” has such free will, something I doubt anyone would want to admit to. But again, these thought experiments are just a small factor as to why we shouldn’t accept compatibilist notions of free will. The larger reason has to do with the free will ability that people hold intuitively – which these compatibilist notions bypass for no good reason:
- Common Intuitions about Free Will (and how it needs to be defined)
- Free Will Intuitions: Fred and Barney Case Study – InfoGraphic
…and all of the problems with redefining free will outside of those common intuitions:
- Redefining “Free Will” is Like Redefining “Geocentric” – Except Worse
- Dennett’s “Free Will” vs a Free Will Not Worth Wanting
Let’s not murky up language with compatibilist notions of free will that fail the tumor or microchip test. In fact, let’s not murky up language with any compatibilist notions, as they all fail to address the ability that most people intuitively feel they possess and ignore some very important topics by doing so.
'Trick Slattery
Latest posts by 'Trick Slattery (see all)
- Semantic Shift Day, August 31 – REMINDER! Mark your calendar! - August 1, 2020
- Debunking Dennettian Diatribe - May 2, 2018
- Compatibilism: A Parable (comic) - December 7, 2017
3 Responses to “Brain Tumors, Microchips, and Free Will… Oh My”
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Compatibilists completely miss the point that we don’t choose what we want in the first place. To change what we want, we would have to want to want something else. This leads to an infinite want regression where you need to want to want to want to want, etc.
Bingo! 😉
Determinism has also attempted to destroy the Church worldwide for 2000 years. Palaganism, Semi- Palaganism (Both express man is born morally neutral and therefore able to determine ones standing before his Creator), continues to ruin the Evangelical Church today. We are no more able to do this than a Leopard has the ability to change it’s spots. Our will can only choose in what we delight in doing, and as John Calvin said, “The mind of man is an idol maker”.