Psychology: Free will is an Illusion - Research Proposal Example

Psychology: Free will is an illusion Id No: No: Introduction The ability of human beings to make rational and conscious decisions without any form of influence, external or internal, has been a subject of debate from the time of the Romans to the present day. The reason why the debate of whether free will exists or is merely an illusion is important due to the impact it may have on human beings’ ethical, moral and religious perspectives. Scientists have taken up the challenge of proving the existence or non-existence of free will by conducting an assortment of psychological and neurological tests. Most of these tests indicate that free will is at best, a hazy, complicated process, and at the extreme, non-existent. Referring to these studies, this paper will argue in favor of the proposition that free will is an illusion. Discussion Scientific developments such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) have enabled us to study the brain in action. The resultant field of neuroscience is capable of tracking the thought process as it happens in the brain by observing what neurons light up and in which section of the brain. These achievements have made the field of neuroscience the leader in arguing against the concept of free will as we know it. One of the pioneering free will experiments, and easily the most controversial, was conducted by Benjamin Libet in 1983. Libet attached electroencephalograms (EEGs) on the participants and asked them to watch a timer similar to a clock face with a moving dot on it (specifically a cathode-ray oscilloscope). They were then asked to perform a motor function such as moving a finger, flicking their wrists or pressing a button, at any time, within a given time frame, any number of times. The setup was intended to measure the onset of cerebral activity (termed the readiness-potential) in relation to the time when the subject actually felt the onset of a conscious intention to act. Subjects were asked to perform the act of flicking their wrists. The experiment reported at least several hundred milliseconds between cerebral activity and the subject’s report of actually making a conscious decision to act (Libet et al, 1983). Libet’s experiment indicated that there was a short delay between the time the brain made the decision to move, and the time the participant registered as having made a conscious decision to move. The outcome was consistent even when subjects reported that the decision to move had been spontaneous and whimsical. It challenged the notion of free will as we know it and initiated studies into the possibility that chemical reactions in our bodies make decisions for us before we even realize it. In 2008, Stefan Bode and fellow scientists at the Max Planck Institute revisited Libet’s experiment with functional magnetic resonance imaging that allowed them to study the entire brain in action, improving on Libet’s technology that only captured a few areas of the brain. Subjects were asked to watch a stream of changing letters while their hands rested on four buttons, two on their left side and two on their right side. The subjects were encouraged to feel relaxed and not think about what they would do. At any time, they could decide to press any button. Upon making a conscious decision to press a button, they were asked to take note of whatever letter was flashing on the screen as soon as it appeared. The letters were used as a timer to overcome the problem in Libet’s experiment where the clock was criticized as distracting to the subjects and also a source for large distortions and margins of error (Bode et al, 2008). The results made from this study were very damaging to the concept of free will. The subjects reported that they had been relaxed and some were even thinking of daily chores and not which button to press and when, and that their decisions had been spontaneous. The scientists observed a one-second delay between the physically conscious moment of the subject choosing to press a button and then actually pressing it. However, the cognitive processes were way ahead. The researchers found an average of a seven- second delay, and in some cases, a ten-second delay, between the time the prefrontal cortex (PFC) showed signs of having come to a decision, and the time the subject recorded as becoming conscious of their decision (Bode et al, 2008). The scientists could even predict with accuracy, based on brain readings, what button the subject would press and which hand they would use. Both of these experiments bring up questions of what consciousness really is, what the mind is and how it is separate from the brain. These are challenges that have bothered mankind for centuries, since we have always considered our minds as what separates us from the beasts of the wild. The reason the concept of free will is hotly debated is the fact that if proven to be non-existent, or overrated, as the above experiments show, the very fundamentals on which humans rest their case for superiority over other species will be shaken to the core and cease to exist. We will have lost not only free will, but also our glorified position on the top of the food chain, our “specialness”. Arguments for the case of free will have included the moral, ethical and religious implications of eliminating the concept. It has been argued that removing the concept will have legal implications, that is, a murderer made the choice to kill subconsciously, thus should be considered blameless because the chemicals in his brain made him/her do it. Potential murderers considering the “chemicals made me do it” defense should pause a while. However, because studies indicate that when people believe they are not responsible for their actions, they make different decisions. In an experiment designed to observe the impact of determinism (the school of thought that our behavior is not intentional but the result of external factors such as genes and environment) on human behavior, Schooler and Vohs (2008) found that people changed their behavior according to what they were told. The subjects were given texts to read. One set was given texts that told them that human behavior was predetermined. The other set was given text that was neutral. Then two different experiments were conducted. The first was to solve a math problem on a computer. Subjects were told to accidentally display answers, but they were to click away and not look. The second experiment was also on a computer with a glitch that would overpay the participants by mistake on tasks they were performing. In both texts, subjects who had read deterministic material showed an increase in cheating habits by copying and overpaying themselves for tasks, compared to subjects who had read neutral material (Schooler & Vohs, 2008). This is an indicator that indeed, thorny societal issues are bound to come up when human beings, who seem to be opportunistic by nature, are given a chance to lay blame for their actions on something other than themselves. The misuse of the notion of determinism by the “chemical soup” in our bodies is apparent in the above experiment, and its implication on society at large should the theory be confirmed and validated, is frightening. Conclusion The notion of free will as we have always imagined it is being redefined and reshaped by experiments demonstrating otherwise. Even though opposition to the concept is strong, with people refusing even for a moment to think of themselves as anything but in full control of their decisions, the truth remains that the decisions we make day to day are influenced by a variety of environmental, external and internal factors. These factors are too varied and some of them may be so minute and cannot be readily perceived by our consciousness. It is therefore only rational to think of the supercomputer that is our brain as adding up all these factors and coming up with our decision before what we term as our consciousness catches up to it. Accepting that the notion of free will is an illusion does not mean we should now consider ourselves powerless, subhuman creatures being buffeted this way and that way by strange inner workings and forces. It does not mean we are incapable of making choices and that we should lie down and take whatever the world has to throw at us. Most importantly, it does not mean that we relegate the dictates of common sense and morals and act as we please because we can assume we are not responsible for our actions. What it means is that our bodies, and especially our brains, are bigger, more powerful and work more intricately than we can even imagine, and we should work even harder at unraveling the mysteries of the brain, the mind and human consciousness. References Bode, S., He, A. H., Soon C. S., Trampel R., & Turner R. (2008). Nature Neuroscience Tracking the unconscious generation of free decisions using ultra-high field Fmri, 11, 543-545. Libet, B., Gleason, C. A., Wright, E. W., & Pearl, D. K. (1983). Brain. Time of conscious intention to act in relation to onset of cerebral activity (readiness-potential). The unconscious initiation of a free voluntary act, 106, 623-642. Vohs, K. D., & Schooler, J. W. (2008). Psychological Science. The value of believing in free will. Encouraging a belief in determinism increases cheating, 19(1), 49-54. . Read More