1. Modernity and Its Challenges to Free Will

Can one make sense of a nondeterminist or libertarian free will described in the preceding section without reducing it to mere chance or my­stery, and can such a free will be reconciled with modern scientific views of the world?

Many modern skeptics about such a free will think not. They believe that the traditional idea of being the ultimate source or ground of one’s will and actions is an incoherent and impos­sible ideal. And they argue that such an idea of free will is out­dated and cannot be fitted to modern images of human beings in the natural and human sciences. As one of the more famous of these modern skeptics, Friedrich Nietzsche, put it in his inimi­table prose:

“The desire for ‘freedom of the will’ in the superlative metaphysical sense…the desire to bear the…ultimate responsibility of one’s actions oneself… to be nothing less than a causa sui…is the best self-contradiction that has been conceived so far” by the mind of man.

I agree that this traditional idea of free will is likely to appear utterly mysterious and obscure in a modern context unless we learn to think about it in new ways.

Like many other issues of mo­dernity, the question is whether some­thing of the traditional idea of free will “in the super­la­tive metaphysical sense” can be retrieved from the dissolving acids of modern scien­ce and secular learning. Or will such a notion of free will, along with other aspects of our self-image, become yet another victim of the “disen­chant­ments” of modernity?

Doubts about a free will requiring ultimate responsibility, expressed here by Nietzsche and shared by many modern thinkers, have deep roots in the history of philosophy. As noted in Part 1, such doubts are related to an ancient dilemma: If free will is not compatible with determi­nism, it does not seem to be compatible with indeterminism either. Deter­minism im­plies that, given the past and laws, there is only one possible future. Indeterminism implies the opposite: Same past and laws, different possible futures.

On the face of it, indeterminism seems more congenial to the idea of an “open” future with branching pathways in decision-making—a “garden of forking paths,” in the image of Borges’ well-known story mentioned earlier. But how is it possible one might ask that different actions or choices could arise voluntarily and intentionally from exactly the same past and (bar­ring miraculous departures from the laws of nature) without occurring merely by luck or chance?

This question has had an hypnotic effect on those who think about free will. One imagines that if free choices were undetermined, then which one occurs would be like spinning a wheel in one’s mind or one must just pop out by chance or randomly. Events that are undetermined, such as quantum jumps in atoms, happen merely by chance and are not under the control of any­thing. Hence they cannot be under the control of an agent. If, for example, a choice occurred by virtue of some undetermined quantum events in one’s brain, would that amount to a free and responsible choice? It seems that undetermined events happening in the brain and body would occur spontaneously and would be more likely to diminish rather than enhance our freedom and control, and hence our responsibility.

As noted earlier, objections such as these, and many others, have led to repeated charges through the centuries that undetermined choices or actions, such as libertarian free will re­quires, would be “arbi­trary,” “capricious,” “random,” “irrational,” “uncontrolled,” “inex­plicable,” or “mere matters of chance or luck,” and hence could not be free and responsible choices or actions at all.

It is not surprising that traditional libertarians about free will, who believed it was incom­pa­tible with deter­minism, have looked for some deus ex machina or other to solve the prob­lem, while their opponents have cried magic or mystery. Indeterminism was required for free will, liber­tarians have argued, but it was not enough. Some other “extra factors” must fill the causal gaps in nature left by chance. Some additional forms of agency or causation were needed that went be­yond cau­sation in the natural order, whether the causation in the natural order was determi­nistic or indeter­ministic.

Thus, in response to modern science, there were numerous appeals in the modern era, from Des­cartes to Kant onward, to “extra factors” such as nou­menal selves, immaterial minds, trans­empi­rical power centers, nonevent agent causes, uncaused causes, and the like, to account for liber­tarian free will. And these appeals tended to reinforce the widespread view among critics that notions of free will requiring indeterminism are mysterious and have no place in the modern scientific picture of the world.

 2. Chance or Mystery? Some Personal Background

When I first began thinking about free will in the 1960s, for example, it was widely assumed among philosophers and scientists that if you believed that free will was incompatible with determinism, you must inevitably appeal to one or another obscure or mysterious form of agency of the above kinds to make sense of it—to uncaused causes, nonevent agent-causes, and the like. At the time, the noted British philosopher, P. F. Strawson (in his influential 1962 essay, “Free­dom and Resentment”) referred disparagingly to all such appeals as the “panicky metaphysics” of libertarianism. And he rejected such appeals in favor of a compatibilist view of free will.

I started thinking about free will shortly after Strawson’s essay appeared, when my philosophi­cal mentor at the time, Wilfred Sellars, also a well-known analytic philosopher, challenged me to reconcile a traditional incompatibilist or libertarian free will with modern science. Sellars was also a compatibilist about free will, like the majority of philosophers and scientists of the era. And like Strawson, he did not believe a libertarian free will could be accounted for without appealing to obscure forms of agency of the kinds Strawson had dubbed “panicky metaphy­sics.”

Employing a well-known distinction he had introduced into the philosophical literature, Sellars granted that free will in some sense was an integral part of what he called the “manifest image” of humans and their world (our ordinary everyday view). But he did not believe a traditional free will requiring incompatibilism could be reconciled with the “scientific image” of that world; and he challenged me to show otherwise.

I accepted this challenge at the time and with brashness and naivete not unknown to graduate students, told him I’d be back in a few weeks with an answer (or at least by the end of the semester!) Well, it is now nearly fifty years later and the effort is still ongoing. The reason the task was so much more difficult than I naively assumed back then is that it would require rethinking many facets of the historical free will problem from the ground up.

In the prece­ding section, I explained how that rethinking proceeded in connection with the Compati­bility Question. I’ll now try to do the same for the Intelligibility Question.

 3. Indeterminism, Choice, Agency and Responsibility

Where to go if one is to avoid such traditional libertarian appeals to uncaused causes, non­event agent causes, noumenal selves, and the like, for explaining free will? What is required, I came to believe, is a series of complex steps that involve rethinking the relationship of inde­ter­minism to freedom, choice, action and responsibility.[1]

Step 1: The first of these steps (which is implied by our discussion of the Compatibility Ques­tion) is to note that indeterminism need not be involved in all acts done “of our own free wills.” Not all such acts have to be undetermined, but only those choices or actions in our lifetimes by which we make ourselves into the kinds of persons we are, namely, the “will-setting” or “self-forming” actions or SFAs discussed earlier.

Step 2: A second step involves saying more about how these SFAs might arise and what they may in­volve. I believe such will-setting or self-forming actions occur at those difficult times of life when we are torn between competing visions of what we should do or become; and they are more frequent in everyday life than we may think. We may be torn, for example, between doing the moral thing or acting from ambition, or between powerful present desires and long term goals, or we may be faced with difficult tasks for which we have aversions.

In all such cases, we are faced with competing motivations and have to make an effort to over­come temp­tation to do something else we also strongly want. At such times, the tension and uncer­tainty in our minds about what to do, I argue, would be reflected in some indeterminacy in our neural proces­ses themselves in the form of chaotically amplified back­ground neural noise that makes our neural processing sensitive to micro-indeterminacies at the neuronal level.[2] The uncertainty and inner tension we feel at such soul-searching moments of self-for­mation would thereby be reflected in the indeterminacy of our neural processes them­­selves. The expe­rienced uncertainty would correspond physically to the opening of a win­dow of oppor­tunity that temporarily screens off complete determination by the past.[3]

Step 3: When we do decide under such conditions of uncer­tainty, the outcome would not be deter­mined because of the preceding indeterminacy. Yet it is important to note (and this is step 3) that in such circumstances the outcome could nonetheless be willed (and hence rational and volun­tary) either way because in such self-for­mation the agents’ prior wills are divided by conflic­ting motives.

To see this, consider a businesswoman who faces a conflict of this kind. She is on the way to a meeting important to her career when she sees an assault taking place in an alley. An inner struggle ensues between her moral con­science, to stop and call for help, and her career ambi­tions which tell her she cannot miss this meeting. She has to make an effort of will to overcome the tempta­tion to go on to her meeting. If she overcomes this temptation, it will be the result of her effort, but if she fails, it will be because she did not allow her effort to succeed. And this is due to the fact that, while she wanted to overcome temptation, she also wanted to fail, for quite different and competing reasons.

When agents, like the woman, decide in such circumstances, and the indeterminate efforts they are making become determinate choices, they make one set of com­peting reasons or motives prevail over the others then and there by deci­ding.[4] Their acts of deciding, in other words, are “will-setting.” They “set their wills” one way or another at the moment of decision.

Step 4: Now add a further step. Just as, in this fashion, indeterminism need not undermine rationality and voluntariness of choices, so indeterminism in and of itself need not under­mine agency and responsibility.

Suppose you are trying to think through a difficult prob­lem, say a mathematical problem, and there is some inde­terminacy in your neural proces­ses complicating the task. It would be like trying to con­cen­trate and solve a prob­lem with background noise or distrac­tion. Whether you are going to succeed in solving the problem is uncertain and undetermined because of the distracting neural noise. Yet, if you concentrate and solve the problem none­theless, we have rea­son to say you did it and are responsible for it even though it was unde­termined whether you would succeed. The indeterministic noise would have been an obstacle that you overcame by your effort.

There are many other examples supporting this point, where indeter­minism functions as an obstacle to success without precluding agency or responsibility. Among these examples are some that were discussed in previous Part 2. Recall the assassin, for instance, who is trying to shoot the prime minister, but might miss be­cause of some undetermined events in his nervous system that lead to a wavering of his arm. If the assassin does succeed in hitting his target, despite the indeterminism, can he be held res­pon­si­ble? The answer is clearly yes because he intentionally and voluntarily succeeded in doing what he was trying to do—kill the prime minister. Yet his action, killing the prime minister, was undetermined.

Here is another exam­ple not mentioned earlier: A husband, while arguing with his wife, in anger, swings his arm down on her favorite glass-top table intending to break it. Again, we sup­pose that some indetermi­nism in his outgoing neural pathways makes the momentum of his arm indeter­minate. It is thus undeter­mined whether the table will actually break right up to the moment when it is struck. Whether the husband breaks the table is undetermined and yet he is clearly responsible, if he does break it. It would be a poor excuse to offer his wife, if he ex­claimed: “Chance did it, not me.” She would not be impressed and rightly so. Though there was a chance he might have failed, chance didn’t do it (break the table), he did.

To be sure, these examples of the assassin, the husband and the like, do not amount to genuine exercises of free will in self-forming actions (SFAs), such as the businesswoman’s, where the will is divided between conflicting motives. The businesswoman wants to help the victim, but she also wants to go on to her meeting. By contrast, the will of the assassin is not equally divi­ded. He wants to kill the prime minister, but he does not also want to fail. If he fails therefore, it will be merely by chance (and so also for the husband and the mathematical problem-solver).

So these examples of the assassin, husband and like are not all we want for free will. Yet they are a step in the right direction—important clues, so to speak, to a larger puzzle. For they show that indetermi­nism in and of itself does not necessarily rule out agency and responsibility, just as it need not rule out rationality and voluntariness. To go farther, we have to dig more deeply and add further steps.

 4. Parallel Processing

Step 5: A fifth step involves noting that in such cases of self-formation, where we are faced with com­peting motivations, whichever choice is made will require an effort of will to over­come the temptation to make the other choice. I thus postulate that, in such cases, multiple goal-directed cognitive processes would be involved in the brain, corresponding to these competing efforts, each with a different goal corresponding to the different choices that might be made. In short, such will-setting or self-forming actions would require a form of parallel processing in the free decision-making brain. One of these neural processes would have as its goal the making of one of the competing choices (say, a moral choice), realized by reaching a certain activation thres­hold, while the other has as its goal the making of the other choice (e.g., a self-interested choice).

The competing processes would have different inputs, for example, moral motives (beliefs, desires, etc.), on the one hand, self-interes­ted motives, on the other. And each of the processes would be the realizer of the agent’s effort or en­dea­voring to bring about that particular choice (e.g. the moral choice) for those motives (e.g. moral motives).

In such circumstances, if either process succeeds in reaching its goal (the particular choice aimed at), despite the indeterminacy involved, the resulting choice would be brought about by the agent’s effort or endeavoring to bring about that choice for those motives. This would be so because the process itself was the neural realizer of this effort and it succeeded in reaching its goal, despite the indeterminism.

Step 6: The sixth step is thus to think of the indeterminism involved in free choice, not as a cause acting on its own, but as an ingredient in larger goal-directed or teleological acti­vities of the agent, in which the indeterminism functions as a hindrance or interfering element in the attainment of the goal. The choices that result would then be achievements brought about by the goal-directed activity (the effort) of the agent, which might have failed since it was unde­termined, but did not.

Moreover, if there are multiple such pro­cesses aimed at different goals (in the conflicted cir­cum­stances of an SFA), whichever choice may be made will have been brought about by the agent’s effort to make that particular choice rather than the other, despite the possibility of failure due to the indeterminism. We can then say the agent brought about the choice by making an effort to do so; and we can say this, whichever choice is made.

 Step 7: Note that, under such conditions, the choices either way will not be “inadvertent,” “acci­dental,” “capricious,” nor will they occur “merely by chance” (as critics of indeterminism claim) because the choices will be willed by the agents either way when they are made, and made for reasons either way—reasons that the agents then and there endorse as the ones they are acting for. But these are the conditions (that the choice is willed by the agent and is made for the reasons moti­vating it) usually required to say something is done on purpose, or inten­tionally rather than by “mistake” or “accident,” “capriciously,” or “merely by chance.”

Step 8: Now assume further (as we consistently can in the woman’s case and in other cases of SFAs) that the agent is not being coerced (no one is holding a gun to her head), nor physically constrained or disabled, nor forced or controlled by others. Then the absence of these further negative con­straining conditions plus the presence of the positive conditions of Step 7 (that the agent wills the choice that is made either way, brings it about on purpose, etc.) together rule out each of the normal reasons we have for saying that agents act, but do not have control over their ac­tions— that is, reasons such as coer­cion, constraint, compulsion, incapa­city, inadver­tence, involuntari­ness, mistake, accident, and so on.[5]

We could, of course, imagine cases in which one or another of these control-undermining con­straints was not absent, for example, cases in which the businesswoman’s choice was coerced or compulsive. In such cases the choices or acts in question would not be free and would not be SFAs. But the point is that there is nothing inconsistent in cases like the businesswoman’s, as we have imagined it, in which all of these further undermining constraints are absent. And such cases would be examples of SFAs.

Step 9: To be sure, with such “self-forming” choices, agents cannot determine which choice outcome will occur before it occurs, or else the outcomes would be predetermined after all. But it does not follow, because one does not determine which of a set of outcomes is going to occur before it occurs, that one cannot determine which of them occurs, when it occurs.[6] When the above conditions for self-forming choices are satisfied, agents determine their future lives then and there by deciding.

Indeed, they have what I have called “plural voluntary con­trol” over their options in the fol­lowing sense: They are able to bring about whichever of the options they will, when they will to do so, for the reasons they will to do so, on purpose rather than by mistake or accident, without being coerced or compelled in doing so, or otherwise controlled by other agents or mechanisms. Each of these conditions can be satisfied in cases like the businesswoman’s, whichever choice she makes, despite the indeterminism involved, as I have shown in a number of writings.[7] Satisfying them amounts in common parlance to the claim that the agents can choose either way “at will.”

Step 10: Note further that this account of self-forming choices amounts to a kind of “doubling” of the mathematical problem. It is as if an agent faced with such a choice is trying or endea­voring to solve two cognitive problems at once, or to complete two competing (deliberative) tasks at once. In our example, the two tasks are to make a moral choice and to make a conflic­ting self-interested choice and they correspond to the two competing neural networks involved.

Each task is being thwarted by the indeterminism created by the presence of the other, so it might fail. But if it succeeds, then the agents can be held responsible because, as in the case of solving the mathe­matical problem, they will have succeeded in doing what they were trying or endeavoring to do, despite the chance of failure due to the indeterminism.

Recall the assassin and the husband once again. Owing to indeterminacies in their neural path­ways, the assassin might miss his target or the husband fail to break the table. But if they suc­ceed, despite the probability of failure, they are responsible because they will have succeeded in doing what they were trying or endeavoring to do. And so it is, I argue, with self forming choices, except in their case, whichever way the agents choose, they will have succeeded in doing what they were trying to do because they were simultaneously trying to make both choices, and one is going to succeed. Their failure to do one thing is not a mere failure, but a voluntary succeeding in doing the other.

Does it make sense to talk about the agent’s trying to do two competing things at once in this way, or to solve two cognitive problems at once? Well, we know that the brain is a parallel processor; it can simultaneously process different kinds of information relevant to tasks such as perception or recognition through different neural pathways. Such a capacity, I believe, is essential to the exercise of free will.

Step 11: Putting these steps together, one can say that in cases of self-formation (SFAs), agents are simultaneously trying to resolve plural and competing cognitive tasks. They are, as we say, of “two minds.” Yet they are not two sepa­rate persons. They are not dissociated from either task. The businesswoman who wants to go back to help the victim is the same ambitious woman who wants to go on to her meeting and make a sale. She is a complex creature, torn inside by different visions of who she is and what she wants to be, as we all are from time to time. But this is the kind of complexity needed for genuine self-formation and free will. And when she succeeds in doing one of the things she is trying to do, she will endorse that as her resolution of the conflict in her will, voluntarily and intentionally, not by accident or mistake.

Needless to say, there are many questions and objections that may be raised about this view. I have attempted to address these questions and objections over the years and will discuss many of the important ones in the next part.

A third step involves noting that in such cases of self-formation, where we are faced with com­peting motivations, whichever choice is made will require an effort of will to over­come the temptation to make the other choice. I thus postulate that, in such cases, multiple goal-directed cognitive processes would be involved in the brain, corresponding to these competing efforts, each with a different goal corresponding to the different choices that might be made. In short, such will-setting or self-forming actions would require a form of parallel processing in the free decision-making brain. One of these neural processes would have as its goal the making of one of the competing choices (say, a moral choice), realized by reaching a certain activation thres­hold, while the other has as its goal the making of the other choice (e.g., a self-interested choice).

The competing processes would have different inputs, for example, moral motives (beliefs, desires, etc.), on the one hand, self-interes­ted motives, on the other. And each of the processes would be the realizer of the agent’s effort or en­dea­voring to bring about that particular choice (e.g. the moral choice) for those motives (e.g. moral motives). In such circumstances, if either process succeeds in reaching its goal (the particular choice aimed at), despite the indeterminacy involved, the resulting choice would be brought about by the agent’s effort or endeavoring to bring about that choice for those motives. This would be so because the process itself was the neural realizer of this effort and it succeeded in reaching its goal, despite the indeterminism.

The fourth step is thus to think of the indeterminism involved in free choice, not as a cause acting on its own, but as an ingredient in larger goal-directed or teleological acti­vities of the agent, in which the indeterminism functions as a hindrance or interfering element in the attainment of the goal. The choices that result would then be achievements brought about by the goal-directed activity (the effort) of the agent, which might have failed since it was unde­termined, but did not.

Moreover, if there are multiple such pro­cesses aimed at different goals (in the conflicted cir­cum­stances of an SFA), whichever choice may be made will have been brought about by the agent’s effort to make that particular choice rather than the other, despite the possibility of failure due to the indeterminism. We can then say the agent brought about the choice by making an effort to do so; and we can say this, whichever choice is made.

Putting this another way, the wills of the assassin and husband are “set one way” on doing what they are trying to do. There actions, if they succeed, are therefore will-settled. Their wills were already set one way on doing them before they acted. Not so for the businesswoman. Her choice to stop and help the assault victim or go on to her meeting is will-setting. She sets her will one way or the other in the act of choosing itself. Prior to choosing her will is not already settled on doing either of the things she chooses. Indeed, her will is conflicted prior to choice and she has strong motivations for each of her options.

Whether the requisite indeterminacy is there in the brain is an empirical question of course. On this empirical question there is much recent discussion. See, e.g., Mark Balaguer, Free Will as in Open Scientific Problem (MIT, 2010), Martin Heisen­berg 2012, Glimcher 2005, Hameroff and Penrose 1996, Shadlen (forthcoming), Brembs 2011, Stapp 2007, Maye et al. 2007.

---

[1] I summarize here arguments from many prior works, including prominently, Kane 1985, 1989, 1996, 1999, 2002, 2005, 2007, 2011.

[2] Kane 1996: 130ff.

[3] Whether the requisite indeterminacy is there in the brain is an empirical question of course. On this empirical question there is much recent discussion. See, e.g., Balaguer 2010, Heisen­berg 2012, Glimcher 2005, Hameroff and Penrose 1996, Shadlen (forthcoming), Brembs 2011, Stapp 2007, Maye et al. 2007.

[4] (Kane 1996: 126 ff.)

[5] (Kane 1996: 137-50).

[6] (Kane 1996: 134-6).

[7] (Kane 1996:133-48; 1999o)