Christian Gentry

ENG1201

Dr. Cassel

3/20/2020

Literature Review on Free Will

If we can’t trace the origin of our thoughts, how can we say we are in control of

them? This is one of many questions that has had philosophers debating for literally

thousands of years. Free will as we know it is a controversial topic that may undermine

how our Western society is structured, depending on your perspective. While many

think we have free will, purely based on the fact that we can choose between options:

we can pick coffee or tea, deliberate whether or not to eat oatmeal this morning, etc. On

the surface we feel like we have free will, but in actuality our feeling of this metaphysical

liberty is nothing more than an absurdly primitive understanding of how the mind works.

As science and technology have improved over time, we are gaining more insight to

prove that free will is nothing more than an illusion.

This idea became an academic concept that can be traced back as early as 6th

century Greece. This idea greatly influenced the Stoics in Rome and abroad, and has

run its course through time alongside free will pioneers like Aristotle. Before the 1980’s,

however, we had limited scientific resources to support either side of the argument to go

beyond philosophical arguments. In recent history certain experiments have revealed

very interesting results, as Sam Harris explains in his book, “Free Will”, “The

physiologist Benjamin Libet famously used EEG to show that activity in the brain’s

motor cortex can be detected some 300 milliseconds before a person feels that he has
decided to move. Another lab extended this work using fMRI: Subjects were asked to

press one of two buttons while watching a “clock”... The experiments found two brain

regions that contained information about which button subjects would press a full 7 to

10 seconds before the decision was consciously made.” (Harris 7-8). Taking it a step

further, Meghan O’Gieblyn’s New Yorker article “Do We Have Minds Of Our Own?”

shares a concept from neuroscientist Michael Graziano “...consciousness is simply a

mental illusion, a simplified interface that humans evolved as a survival strategy in order

to model the processes of the brain.” (“Do We Have Minds Of Our Own?”). Whether or

not you believe we don’t have a consciousness working immaterial ways in our brain,

we are increasing our knowledge that our thoughts arise from seemingly “nothingness”

well before we are aware of how we will act/react, supporting the argument that free will

is an illusion.

One counter-argument against free will is can we be held morally accountable for

our actions if we don’t have the ability to do otherwise? One response summarized by

Joshua Shepherd is Reasons-Responsive View, which states “an agent is morally

responsible for an action only if that action is produced via a mechanism that both

recognizes and reacts-in a sufficiently flexible way…” (“Consciousness, Free Will, and

Moral Responsibility: Taking the Folk Seriously”). In other words, being held morally

accountable is not dependent on whether or not you had the ability to choose otherwise.

The Reasons-Responsive View stems from philosopher Harry Frankfurt’s hypothetical

scenario (which I’ve intentionally modified for this paper): You shoot a man, named

Jerry, for certain reasons you’ve outlined. Another man, named Greg, also wanted you

to shoot Jerry. Although during the moment of action Greg had no physical influence on
your actions, he was present and had the intent of manipulating you to follow through

with your plan should you back out. Ultimately you had no choice, no alternate

possibilities, yet you are still held morally accountable because Greg was dormant,

therefore not coercing you through the entire process. You are entirely responsible for

your actions.

While some of these claims I make may seem advantageous, they are rooted in

reliable sources from respected scholars and neuroscientists that have dedicated

portions of their careers to this study. Sam Harris, for example, is a neuroscientist and

philosopher who is widely regarded as the leader of the modern day deterministic view.

His published work is widely accepted as academic and reliable, amongst the other

sources I have settled on, like the Philosophical Reviews journal of University of Notre

Dame.

Do we know everything about the brain, how it operates, how our consciousness

behaves? All of these questions are still severely uncharted territory. However, for this

paper I will need to do more research on how my severe lack of understanding of the

brain and human consciousness makes it impossible for me to map out the inner-

workings of something I don’t understand, therefore restricting me from making

falsifiable claims about deterministic concepts, or their counterparts. The main tone of

my research is to project skepticism over free-will being a more probable metaphysical

concept over determinism given the slowly-building scientific evidence of the last thirty

years.
 Works Cited

Harry G. Frankfurt

The Journal of Philosophy

Vol. 66, No. 23 (Dec. 4, 1969), pp. 829-839

Harris, Sam. Free Will. First Free Press trade pbk. edition, Free Press, 2012.

EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?

direct=true&db=cat01128a&AN=scc.b1809533&site=eds-live.

O’Gieblyn. “Do We Have Minds of Our Own?” The New Yorker, The New Yorker, 3 Dec.

2019, www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/do-we-have-minds-of-our-own.

Sehon, Scott Robert. Free Will and Action Explanation : A Non-Causal, Compatibilist

Account. Oxford University Press, 2016. EBSCOhost,

search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?

direct=true&db=cat01128a&AN=scc.b1752052&site=eds-live.

Shepherd, Joshua. “Consciousness, Free Will, and Moral Responsibility: Taking the

Folk Seriously.” Philosophical Psychology, Routledge, 3 Oct. 2015,

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4647831/.