Written by William M Erlbaum   

There has been long-standing confusion between the concepts of FREE WILL and DETERMINISM. As we learn more about human behavior, research in neuroscience and related fields will move us closer to determinism. However, that has nothing whatever to do with free will, which is not the opposite of determinism. The two notions exist in entirely different spheres from one another and are not parts of a zero-sum game. More determinism does not mean less free will. Conversely, the fact that we humans feel our freedom, our autonomy to make choices, does not imply any rejection of discoveries about human behavior that have been or that will be made.

In neuroscience, the distinction between the MIND and the BRAIN is fuzzy and not well understood, although the distinction between the two realms should be obvious. For example, I ask the reader to look at something that is red. The REDNESS of the color red lies entirely in the realm of the mind and not in that of the brain. [I'll note here that a brain scan blip from the occipital lobe of a person who is viewing something that is red, is a concordance and not the REDNESS.] Likewise, free will, is part of human experience, consciousness. If one were blind from birth, there would be no way to communicate the notion of red to that person. Red is a primary sense modality and can only be defined ostensibly, experientially. In the same vein, free will is also a primary sense modality and is solely an experiential phenomenon.

In the world of neuroscience there is uneasiness about the realm of the mind and consciousness, arguably, even an hostility to that realm. It is an uneasiness rationalized by the claim that the mind and consciousness, unlike the brain, cannot be scientifically evaluated, measured.

That is nonsense. We rely upon our minds all the time. In the game of life we select courses to take, we choose mates, we decide upon investments, we vote for particular candidates, and we make other diverse decisions. In life there are better players, and there are worse players. These different outcomes are explainable and measurable in terms of personality, learning, culture, geographical setting, social structure, genetics, neuroscience, and such. That does not mean that we are not free to make those choices. We are free, because we feel free, and that is what is truly meant by free will. Free Will is akin to Descartes' famous formulation, cogito ergo sum, "I think, therefore I am." In the case of free will, it is, "I feel free, therefore I am free". The recognition of that phenomenological state implies no rejection of any of the laws of behavioral science, known or to become known. It only has to do with our human consciousness.

My experience that "I feel free, therefore I am free", does not make free will illusory, any more so than my feeling hunger or hate are illusory. Feelings are real, the stuff of our conscious experience. If I say that I am experiencing pain, and if I am not lying, then I am experiencing pain. Neurological reductionism of that human experience, is no more useful, and no less intellectually arrogant, than trying to reduce macroeconomics to sub-atomic chemistry.

Nor do one's restrictive circumstances vitiate the existence of free will, including one's saying "I don't feel free". That takes us into a linguistic problem. For example, the reader is asked to consider a scenario in which a rank and file worker, after work, pay envelope in hand, makes his Friday evening ritual trip to the saloon, gets drunk, drives home, and while walking toward his apartment and his wife and children, screams in public, for anybody to hear, "I'M TRAPPED, I'M TRAPPED". That hypothetical situation reflects his feelings of being boxed-in by his present life circumstances, by his existential situation. It does not strip him of the experience of free will, that is, his capacity to make choices. It must be granted that without my winning the Powerball lottery, I cannot choose to have the experience of being the Powerball winner, but I can make the choices that are mine to make. In Cartesian terms, I can conclude that I exist, because I can think, and I have no occasion to doubt my ability to think and my existence, simply because I lack the thinking capacity of an Albert Einstein.

No part of this distinction between determinism and free will in any way undermines responsibility for one's conduct. As we come to learn about the constraints upon another person's behavior, and as those constraints become more familiar, credible, comfortable and syntonic to us, we may feel empathy toward that person and may choose to forgive bad behavior. Accordingly, not only are free will and determinism not opposites, but they can work well together as complementary concepts.
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*WILLIAM M. ERLBAUM
Forest Hills, New York
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-Justice, New York State Supreme Court (retired);
-Adjunct Professor, Brooklyn Law School;
-Adjunct Professor, York College, City University of New York