Is it all in your head?

SDG here with an article representing a recent salvo in the debate on free will.

In this article, the issue is framed in terms of criminal and penal law, and the up-front emphasis is the claim of leading neuroscientist Wolf Singer that all criminal activity can in principle always be traced back to brain abnormality, even if no brain abnormality can be found.

However, the underlying issue is Singer’s explicit arguing point that all human actions and choices are deterministic results of electro-chemical processes in the brain, which obey deterministic laws, and that our own ideas about our motives and decision-making processes are essentially rationalizations that we create to make our lives seem rational and meaningful.

Such deterministic materialism is at least as old as Spinoza, of course, and has been advocated by a number of philosphers and schools of thought (Marxism is one example). This view is contrary to Christian anthropology, which insists on what in philosophical discourse is sometimes called libertarianism, meaning belief in a human faculty to make non-deterministic choices. On this view, presumably, non-deterministic choices have effects in the electro-chemical processes of the brain, with physical results in the brain that are different from the result that would obtain in a purely deterministic system.

The difficulty with either proving or refuting either point of view on empirical grounds, of course, is that the brain as a system is so staggeringly complex, and the difficulties in observing and measuring its processes so formidable, that the probability of meaningful analysis of the processes involved in making a choice, and of confirming a result consistent with or contrary to deterministic principles, approaches zero.

Even if a neuroscientist happened to be looking at the exact spot in the brain where cerebral bioelectric processes were being impacted by a free choice, he could never definitively say that this was not the result of deterministic processes. There are too many factors and the system is too complex to ever fully be understood. (As the saying goes, if our brains were simple enough for us to understand them, we’d be so simple that we couldn’t.)

So neither libertarianism nor determinism can ever be proved or disproved on purely empirical grounds. That doesn’t stop Wolf Singer from claiming to have done so, though. For example, consider this passage from the article:

Neurobiology tells us that there is no centre in the brain where actions are planned and decisions made. Decisions emerge from a collection of dynamic systems that run in parallel and are underpinned by nerve cells that talk to each other – the brain. If you look back in evolution to say, the sea slug Aplysia, you see that the building blocks of this brain have not changed. The amino acids, the nerve cells, the signalling pathways and largely the genes, are the same. “It’s the same material [in humans], just more complex,” says Singer. “So the same rules must govern what humans do. Unavoidable conclusion.”

Ridiculous. That’s like saying “The mineral components of the rock formations in Monument Valley are identical to those of Mount Rushmore, so therefore the configuration of both must represent the same processes.” A thing’s makeup has nothing to do with the question whether some force may be operating upon it. If free will in the fully libertarian and Christian sense exists at all, it is not a function of cerebral biochemistry, but a force acting upon it. Singer’s observation that human brains and sea slug brains are built out of the same components simply has no bearing on the question whether human brains are joined to rational souls.

The article then goes on to cite the phenomenon of hypnosis, which Singer claims to have practiced on an RAF pilot at a party at Cambridge University, as an example of the brain’s ability to respond to a complex of influences and factors with specific action in a way that has nothing to do with conscious thought or decision making. But even if one grants the phenomenon of hypnosis, which I’m not prepared to do, it only shows that it’s possible to bypass or short-circuit full human freedom, not that it doesn’t exist.

Some of the other conclusions in the article (it’s not always clear which are really Singer’s and which are merely the reporters) are equally dubious. “He does not argue that a criminal should not be held responsible for their crime,” writes the reporter. “After all, if a person is not responsible for their own brain, who is?”

Framed that way, the question is meaningless. It’s like saying “He does not argue that a tree should not be held responsible for the way it grows. After all, if a tree is not responsible for its own shape, who is?” The answer is that Singer’s worldview negates the very concept of “responsibility” in any true moral sense.

One may of course argue that it still makes sense to prosecute and punish criminals, in the same way that we discipline a puppy when he exhibits unwanted behavior, or restrain or destroy a dog given to biting. It still makes sense to want to influence human behavior in ways that make us safer and better able to get along, and to protect society from those whose nature is to resist our attempts to influence their behavior and continue to behave in antisocial ways.

Of course, as soon as we say that we want to do this in order to bring about that result, we assume that we have some actual insight into our reasons for doing things. But on Singer’s view we may not. Singer wants to show that jurisprudence and penal law still make sense within his worldview — but does the concept of “making sense” make sense? If we don’t really know why we do things, if our ideas about why we do things are merely rationalizations of brains looking to make patterns, why doesn’t that apply to our ideas about why we should make laws and punish criminals as well as to any other ideas?

Even Singer’s central thesis (if it really is his thesis, and not the reporter’s interpretation) that criminal activity must always indicate brain abnormality seems not to make sense. How does Singer know that a “normal” brain will always behave in a way consistent with whatever laws happen to hold sway in a particular time and place? Does this conclusion apply to unjust laws as well as just? Were European Gentile civilians who illegally hid Jews in their houses during WW2 suffering from brain abnormalities?

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live." View all posts by Jimmy Akin