We almost always see ourselves as conscious agents: entities capable of making decisions, selecting from multiple options, problem-solving, asking engaging questions, those innumerable human actions that make us the complex and interesting creatures we take ourselves to be. Most often the phrase used to name these human characteristics is “free will”. And because humans act on the basis of their free will, a person’s choices are neither simply random nor strictly determined by a series of antecedent physical states in their brain or other part of their body—or so goes the story. This view also seems to imply human actions are not completely predictable, even in principle. Of course constraining circumstances can make it impossible for one to exercise their free will. These might include coercion by another individual, civil incarceration, or other extreme condition of compulsion.

What eventually needs to be discussed is whether the phrase “free will” is useful in describing what we call human agency. But for now let’s hold “free will” in abeyance as we work our way through descriptions of human action and agency in general. Like other essays in this blog, my writing reflects the point of view of naturalism (see “Consciousness, Human Action and Cognition” below). From the standpoint of current neuroscience (and naturalism), the human brain is an exceedingly complex web of neurons and synapses called the connectome, with different areas of the brain becoming electro-chemically active as specific tasks are performed. Knowledge of the brain’s architecture and function has deepened rapidly with advanced imaging technologies (MRI, MEG, EEG, etc). While many questions in neuroscience remain to be answered, it makes sense to say our decision making, thinking, experiencing emotions, and the very fact we are conscious, are the result of electro-chemical neuronal patterns in our brains. Expressed slightly differently, electro-chemical patterns—the processing of information—create what we experience as thinking, deciding and consciousness itself. There is nothing more. Our mind is the brain at work. As Arlindo Oliveira wrote in his recent book The Digital Mind, “consciousness is nothing more than the perception we have of ourselves and our actions.” Consciousness is a word used to name or acknowledge everything we experience. While I concur with Oliveira’s point of view, we should view the word “consciousness” as a useful, yet imprecise catch-all name for enigmatic aspects of the human mind.

As entities engaged in actions we ordinarily call instances of human agency, each of us is bracketed by our individual histories, based both genetically and experientially. An individual’s multiple histories include a maze of conceptual patterns, memories, long-standing emotional inclinations, cognitive skills, and other elements, in many cases specific to a person’s particular cultural milieu. While an individual’s unique set of histories is crucial to how information is processed by their brain as they go about living in the world, equally important is the input the environment of the present moment provides, a mass of information the brain selectively receives and stores. And our brain’s selectivity is a function of individual histories, adding recursive aspects to an already abstruse topic.

The idea that an individual’s histories bracket their range of actions—broadly defined both genetically and experientially—provides a provisional picture of agency that avoids some of the dead ends commonly associated with discussions of “free will”. Human agency is depicted in the following way: our individual histories—defined liberally—function as electo-chemical patterns in our brains, and are the basis for our decisions. These patterns limit and focus the character of what we will do, determining and explaining the range of possibilities for each of us as human agents. Our brain’s processing of information—our thinking, deciding, feeling and knowing—can be pictured as a web of relationships. The brain processes stored and received information. Thinking and deciding name the complex interactions taking place. We may be aware of some aspects of these processes, yet others affect the outcome, but are not immediately apparent to us. Daniel Kahneman captured this distinction in his Type 1 and 2 thinking, and in his specific writings about choices, bias, values and heuristics. While human agency is frustratingly problematic to describe, Kahneman and others offer insights supporting a naturalistic description of agency.

Thinking and deciding—the process each of us goes through—evolve as our mind compares and sorts information, processing much like a computer. Every one of us has acquired a mosaic of desires, values and interests (our unique character) affecting this interaction. Should we therefore say the results of thinking and deciding are causally determined by the electro-chemical nature of patterns in the brain? The short answer is “yes” but leaves almost all questions unanswered. Something more substantive is needed, yet necessarily provisional and qualified.

Because some form of causal language is being assumed for this essay, the idea that human decision making is simply a random occurrence has been eliminated. We do not appear to act randomly. Often our actions are surprisingly predictable, emerging from who we are, defined by our values, desires and interest—our individual histories. Yet this does not imply our actions are causally predictable in the same manner one can predict the gravitational attraction of massive bodies. The gravitational paradigm is rigidly predictable, a pattern appearing to us as fixed, exact and invariable in the extreme. What allows the human brain to be different? From the point of view of naturalism, our brains are a highly organized web of neuronal circuitry, subject to the same physical laws as the remainder of our organs and all other adaptive, complex systems. In a manner not yet understood, complexity—convoluted, entangled mosaics—can evolve into systems exhibiting consciousness, general intelligence and the potential to act in ways we call human, including actions not invariably predictable—perhaps a paradigm of human agency. Given the character of the human brain, and presumably highly advanced AI in the future, the enormous number of relationships and interactions taking place (our thinking and considering) present an apparently unbounded number of combinations. We call this creativity, the ability of complex systems like ourselves to think thoughts that have never before occurred, or to create truly new and original art and music. Even problem solving and decision making are rarely rigidly predictable, although necessarily focused and shaped by an individual’s genetic and experiential histories. Having intimate knowledge of a person’s histories does indeed allow one’s close companions to generally know how they are likely to act—usually. But one cannot depend upon invariability.

Does it make sense to use “free will” in naming the attributes of creativity and agency? The phrase is regularly confusing and unhelpful in understanding what sort of entity we are. “Free will” suggests humans can act and decide by means other than the electro-chemical interactions taking place in the brain, that a non-physical/spiritual process is occurring different in kind from the chemistry and physics of the brain, yet capable of interacting with brain processes as they are currently understood. “Free will” is a hypothetical construct bifurcating reality, yet assuming interactions between both realms. What could this possibly be and how might it function? If interactions are assumed, then there are not two realms; both would collapse into a single natural world. The very idea is conceptually unworkable. In its stead we can acknowledge some important truths: no one currently understands how consciousness and agency arise in highly organized, complex systems like humans. No one can yet fully describe how the electro-chemical interactions in the brain lead to consciousness and all we do as human beings, but our limited knowledge does not support or justify inserting “that notorious phrase.” As a placeholder until more is understood about the brain of the human animal, the age-old philosophical problem (the mind-body problem) is answered by contemporary naturalism: the existence of hypothetical non-physical processes is doubtful in the extreme, and assuming their existence requires rejecting most of what we already know about the brain and the world in general. When we refrain from using the phrase “free will” an obstacle to understanding our nature simply disappears.

An issue relevant to the larger society requires clarification: does the naturalistic point of view imply we no longer shoulds view humans as morally responsible? Could some individuals be locked into forms of anti-social behavior? As generally recognized by society, extreme circumstances of coercion may absolve one of moral responsibility. Few would argue this point, but it does not address the more controversial picture of human agency presented earlier in the essay: if a person’s actions are bracketed by their histories (both genetic and experiential) is it not reasonable to imagine an individual with extreme histories that preclude their acting in ways most of us would consider moral? One’s histories may be so limiting and strongly regressive that acting within social norms is not a possibility (that is, without coercion toward the social norm). On a regular basis the court system confronts these issues with varying results, depending upon judge, jury and circumstance. For purposes of this essay, we can assume most individuals, with histories across a typical range, share sufficient knowledge of moral norms, decision making capacity and awareness, for society to expect and demand morally and legally acceptable behavior. The majority of us own histories that allow us to understand the consequences of socially negative behavior and the rewards of positive. This knowledge becomes a relevant element as we process information (thinking and deciding); hence society holds us morally/legally responsible (a social imperative). Of course, one could also argue every society carries an obligatory burden of considerable magnitude; we as a society (morally) ought to effectively assist its members in acquiring the histories (knowledge, training, skills, awareness and habits) necessary for moral behavior. Often this responsibility has not been fulfilled.