Psychology and Cognitive Sciences · Vol. 3, No. 4 · 2017 · pp. 116–122 · e-ISSN 2380-727X

Which is Necessary for Cognition, “Free Will” or “Free Will Illusion"

Enrico Bignetti

DOI: https://doi.org/10.17140/pcsoj-3-133 · Published 2017-10-23 · Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 · © 2017 The Author(s)

Also available as PDF (figures and tables appear in the PDF).

Abstract

Over a long period of time, the issue concerning free will (FW) has been a much debated topic. In general, being fully aware of ourselves, we are convinced that our conscious will can freely control a “voluntary” action. However, natural events that cannot be predicted, such as earthquakes, cyclones, etc., frustrate our self-esteem and affects the process of thinking in men. To address this concern, by comparing the action decision-making of voluntary actions owing to our inability to escape such “supernatural” events, Searle1 was of the opinion that: “The persistence of the problem of traditional free will in philosophy seems to me something of a scandal”; nevertheless, many have studied this issue and many papers have been written focusing on this area; however, it appears that limited progress in related research has been made.

Conclusion

On the basis of soft-sciences we may infer that this illusion is psychologically connatural with the human mind (1 st-person perspective). All of us can recognize ourselves in a popular definition of FW that recites “FW is an art for a particular sort of capacity for the rational agent to choose a course of action from among various alternatives”. 42 Actually, the term “…rational…” might not have a clear meaning for all, but the verb “…choose…” is surely comprehensible and extremely attractive to our Psyche. According to soft-sciences, the idea of possessing FW is connatural with a subjective experience of conscious will1,18,19,32,43-46; then, the possibility that our Self might choose a voluntary action sounds appealing to TBM’s CM, the “explicit” part of the mind. 47 This would imply that we may differentiate ourselves from a robot or a mechanical device.

Whereas, from hard-sciences, we may infer that FW must be an illusion (3 rd-person perspective). On the other hand, we have evidences from hard-sciences that Free-will is not compatible with the intrinsic activity of neurons and neuronal networks as well, since these are not self-sufficient thinking systems in the absence of an environmental input that might cause an adequate and efficient response. As we inferred from hardsciences, the theory about the continuity of mind claims that brain in the absence of an environment is nothing but a noisy electronic circuit. To this regard, Spivey 48 has published a systematic overview of how perception, cognition, and action are partially overlapping segments of one continuous mental flow. TBM proposal seems to conciliate the two positions above: on the one hand, the mind adopts a psychological trick based on FW illusion, in order to activate a learning-throughexperience circuit; on the other hand, it manages this circuit by means of a well-known biophysical computational mechanism, e.g., integrate-and-fire.

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