Science is Destroying the Concept of Free Will

Science appears to have killed the concept of “free will.”

A growing number of scientists have come to the conclusion that the physical universe is completely determined and that this removes any possibility of free will. Alex Rosenberg, a philosopher of science, lays out the basic scientific view of reality in his recent book, “The Atheist’s Guide to Reality.” Here is how he summarizes reality: The physical universe and the laws of physics are completely deterministic. The universe began about 14 billion years ago with the Big Bang and everything that has happened since, including everything humans have ever done, was determined in that instant by the conditions of the fundamental parameters (e.g., the strength of the nuclear force) and the laws of physics. The brain is a physical system operating according to the laws of physics and the mind is a function of the brain. Thus the mind is completely determined.

Mr. Rosenberg writes, “When I make choices—trivial or momentous—it’s just another event in my brain locked into this network of processes going back to the beginning of the universe, long before I had the slightest ‘choice.’ Nothing was up to me. Everything—including my choice and my feeling that I can choose freely—was fixed by earlier states of the universe plus the laws of physics. End of story. No free will, just the feeling, the illusion in introspection, that my actions are decided by my conscious will.”

In the last decade or so numerous studies in neuroscience have made it obvious that most of the mental processes running our lives are completely below the level of our conscious awareness, so the concept that we have control over what we do has become laughable.

Don't See a Judge Before Lunch

Daniel Kahneman’s bestseller “Thinking, Fast and Slow” analyzes the way we process information, and shows how much of our thinking is outside our conscious control. One example he gives is a study of judges in Israel that revealed that 65 percent of requests for parole were granted after meals, dropping steadily to zero until just before the judges’ “next feeding.”

We think we have free will, we think we choose our actions freely. So how do you explain the judges’ actions? Judges are trained to put aside their personal prejudices and biases, and yet they clearly can’t overcome the most basic cognitive biases of all, those rooted in our physiology.

Dr. Kahneman’s book is only one of a stream of new books that question the basis of our belief in free will. For a review of some of these books, see “The Amygdala Made Me Do It,” by James Atlas. Atlas summarizes:

These books possess a unifying theme: The choices we make in day-to-day life are prompted by impulses lodged deep within the nervous system. Not only are we not masters of our fate; we are captives of biological determinism. Once we enter the portals of the strange neuronal world known as the brain, we discover that — to put the matter plainly — we have no idea what we’re doing.