“Could Have Chosen Otherwise Under Identical Conditions”: An Evolutionary Perspective on Free Will

Abstract

Using an evolutionary perspective, this article examines the cogency of the libertarian formulation of free will—that is, that individuals have free will if they “could have acted or chosen otherwise under identical conditions.” The article argues that by representing the agent as a disembodied self acting and choosing in logical rather than in contextualized, lived-in space, the libertarian formulation misconstrues human willing in ways that invite a host of philosophical problems that persist to the present day. This article indicts the Platonic penchant for theoretical explanations consisting of necessary and sufficient conditions that capture the “essence” of terms, while discounting “naturalistic” ones that depict organisms navigating their environments in ways promoting their reproduction and survival. Securing naturalist-based correctives of neuroevolutionary phenomena like “free will” may represent a growth industry for scholars interested in remedying the kinds of problems generated by traditional forms of metaphysical speculation on the nature of intentionality.

Keywords:

• evolution
• free will
• neural networks
• neuroethics
• neurosemantics
• philosophy

Notes

1. Van Duijn and Bem (2005) have advanced a position whereby the sensory feedback the organism receives from an act (or anticipated act) of willing or choosing serves as an estimation of the “gap” between the willed action and the organism's intended outcome or goal state. To the extent that the gap is large enough to suggest “error,” or that the goal state is poorly conceived such that it culminates in untoward consequences for the organism, the organism is motivated to correct the “mismatch” by launching only those outputs most likely to “succeed.” Because of its hard-wired survival interest, then, the organism is motivated to fine-tune its choice repertoire to those outputs having more rather than less adaptive promise (as the organism understands that “promise”), which obviously occurs in marked contradistinction to the CHACO-UIC account that celebrates choosing otherwise in order to achieve a definitional ideal.

2. Kane's (2005; 2014) notion of “self-formative acts” comes close to this, as Kane understands those significant acts and choices that shape our identities as the bases for free will. Nevertheless, Kane understands the neural mechanisms associated with self-formative acts within the tradition of indeterminism due to the ways such choice events cause micro-indeterminate tensions and dislocations in neural interactions that readjust our choice-setting registrations.

3. Searle (2000; 2001; 2007) deserves note as an exception.

4. Some commentators have noted that if there is anything mystical, even sacred, about evolution, it is the self-organization of the complex layers of an organism's biostructures (Kaufmann 2008). On both micro and macro levels, self-organization is essential for species survival, as a respiratory system that was unresponsive to perceptual cues announcing a predator or a food source would have prevented that species from evolving (Dussutour et al. 2010; Van Duijn and Bem 2005).

5. Admittedly, the “folk” of Monroe and Malle's study (2010) are remarkably philosophically unsophisticated. They simply stipulate that they have free will (218); have no explanation for how free will works (220); and of the few who acknowledged the role of neural inputs possibly determining choices, they simply posit a “person” who can respond however it likes about those inputs (220).