Another unconvincing redefinition of free will

I can’t remember whether a reader or someone else recommended that, since I’m interested in free will, I should read Michael Gazzaniga’s book Who’s in Charge? Gazzaniga, a well known neuroscientist at the University of California at Santa Barbara, gave the prestigious Gifford Lectures (an annual series of endowed lectures in Scotland that have been going since 1898) in 2009 and 2010.

All Gifford lectures deal with the intersection of science and religion, but aren’t Templeton-esque since they’ve included explicit critics of religion like Steve Pinker and Carl Sagan. They’ve also included religionists, of course, including William James, Terry Eagleton, Rowan Williams, and Alfred North Whitehead. Traditionally, the Gifford Lectures are turned into a book, the most famous of which was James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience. And Gazzaniga’s book represents his writing-up of the lectures. Sagan’s lectures were, after his death, edited by Ann Druyan into the lovely book The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (recommended by Professor Ceiling Cat). Those who see Sagan as a “kinder Old Atheist” should have a look at that book.

Gazzaniga’s thesis is that, although determinism reigns at the brain level, so that our actions are determined in advance (though not 100% predictable), humans nevertheless still have free will and moral responsibility. In other words, he’s a compatibilist.  Compatibilism is, of course, the notion that “free will” can still exist despite physical determinism of our behaviors, including “choice”.  It contrasts with libertarian free will (the notion that we can make free and undetermined choices—that we could have “done otherwise” at any time), which almost always rests on a form of dualism: that the mind is somehow separate from the brain and can control it. It’s also opposed to incompatibilism, which holds that free will (one must define it, of course), is incompatible with physical determinism. Since my definition of “free will” is the traditional one, held by religionists and many laypeople alike, I’m an incompatibilist. Here’s my definition, taken from biologist Anthony Cashmore: