Do Humans Have Any Control Over Their Actions?

Do Humans Have Any Control Over Their Actions? 

If you were to pick up a pen right now, without being prompted or asked to, that would be free will, right?  Studies show that before you are aware of the fact that you are going to pick up that pen, your brain has already started initiating the movements. Other people argue that while that might be true, there is still the option to not pick up the pen even if your brain was ready to, showing there is a conscious decision that could be made. A more simple version of this is free will and determinism;  free will is the ability to do something without fate or inevitability being the cause, and determinism is the idea that your brain has already decided everything you are going to do before you do it because of things like genetics, your environment, or past experiences. One of the many controversial ideas surrounding this topic is that it makes us question morality and the idea that when people do bad things, it wouldn’t fully be their fault. If the determinism idea is true, then we would have to accept that, for example, the drunk driver who crashed into another car isn’t at fault because it wasn’t their choice. If we do have free will, then we get to lock up people who do harm to others and prevent them from doing it again. Not only that, but we have a purpose in life, we can improve our sense of self and reward people who do so, because it wasn’t laid out in front of them. They worked towards it. Perhaps a middle ground between the argument of the existence of free will could be to have different levels to it. Free will is very complex, so adding different levels that could help explain how it works would give people a better understanding.

Perspective #1: 
There has been lots of research and studies done to test free will. Robert Sapolsky, a neuroscientist, who Corinne Purtill based her article on, has decided that everything humans do is out of our control. In Corinne Purtill's article, "Scientist, after decades of study, concludes: We don't have free will." She breaks down how "[a]ll human behavior is as far beyond our conscious control as the convulsions of a seizure, the division of our cells or the beating of our hearts." No one decides what speeds their heart beats or what time and place they would have a seizure; it just happens, and Corinne Purtill believes that the choices we make aren’t really our choices at all. Purtill uses a quote from Sapolsky which states, “If it's impossible for any single neuron or any single brain to act without influence from factors beyond its control there can be no logical room for free will.” Meaning that when the brain does something, it is influenced by things that we can’t choose like genetics or your environment. The brain can’t make decisions without the effects of these things which are out of control, so there is no genuine free will. There are too many things that influence how your brain works that aren’t up to us as humans. When growing up, you have no choice over how your parents treat you or what type of household you live in, but it is one of the most important parts of shaping you as a person (Corinne Purtill). Purtill acknowledges that without free will, we would have the accept to people who do bad things can’t be fully blamed. She says that it’s hard to admit that it’s not someone's choice to do bad things just as much as it’s not to do good things. "The world is really screwed up and made much, much more unfair by the fact that we reward people and punish people for things they have no control over,” Sapolsky said. (ptd. Corinne Purtill). Not only admitting that people who do bad things aren’t to blame but also when wanting credit for something that you did well, you would get no praise because it technically wasn’t an accomplishment if no matter what you were always going to do that and had no choice over it.  

Perspective #2: 
The article titled “Free Will and Neuroscience: From Explaining Freedom Away to New Ways of Operationalizing and Measuring It” written by Andrea Lavazza in 2016, argues for the fact that free will does exist. She explains how there are things that allow free will to exist and can be split up into three different categories, the first one being “ability to do otherwise,” Lavazza uses the example of a mouth twitching, saying that because you don't get to choose if your mouth twitches you do not have the ability to prevent it/ do otherwise, if you are able to prevent your mouth from twitching then you used your free will to do so. The second one is “control over one’s choices,” she describes this as “The person who acts must be the same who decides what to do,” meaning that if you are being told what to do and have no other option than to do what's told you do not have control over your choices. The third one is “responsiveness to reason.” To describe this one, think of rolling a dice and depending on what number it lands on you will do whatever corresponds with the number; that is not responsive to reason (Andrea Lavazza).  These three things demonstrate how free will can be defined not by what it actually is, but what it’s not. She says that free will is something everyone has and is a “type of freedom,” keeping in mind that there are people with mental illnesses that can affect their actions. Lavazza brings up Libet’s experiment which in simple terms was testing to see how the brain reacts to decision making. The study found that before a decision was made, the brain was already working on the movement. This leads people to believe that because we aren’t consciously making the decision, we don’t have free will. Lavazza uses Haggard and Eimer’s experiment which uses the same idea as Libet’s, but the participants do a different movement. This experiment now can be argued against Libet’s, saying that the results proved that there is still the option to cancel or stop the movement before it happens, meaning we do have free will (Andrea Lavazza). Lavazza and Inglese state, “We often act on impulse, against our interests, without being fully aware of what we are doing. But this does not imply that we are not potentially able to act freely,” (ptd. Andrea Lavazza). Humans might not always make the smartest decision, but that's not to be used as an argument against the existence of free will.  

Similarities and Differences: 

There are many differences in these two articles; they both fundamentally disagree on the concept/existence of free will, but they also have a couple of similarities. Robert Sapolsky says, "Losing all belief in free will and moral responsibility would likely be catastrophic...dangerous, even irresponsible" (ptd. Corinne Purtill). Andrea Lavazza agrees, she says that, "The concept of free will is hard to define, but crucial to both individual and social life.” Both writers agree that free will, or at least the idea of it, is necessary for us as humans to continue living as a society. While they do agree on the idea of free will, they disagree throughout the majority or their articles, Andrea Lavazza states, “Subsequently, a free will index would allow for the search of the underlying neural correlates of the capacity exhibited by people and the limits in capacity exhibited by each individual.” Purtill quotes Robert Sapolsky saying that, “[w]e have no meaningful command over our choice of careers, romantic partners or weekend plans...”. Both authors have completely different ideas on free will, but Lavazza is willing to put it out there that there are different levels to it, while Purtill agrees with Sapolsky that there is no middle ground and there is no meaning behind our choices in life. In Corinne Purtill's article she uses the example of a mental illness saying that “[t]oday we know epilepsy is a disease. By and large, it's accepted that a person who causes a fatal traffic accident while in the grip of a seizure should not be charged with murder.” Lavazza states,” Of course there are exceptions: people suffering from mental illness and people under psychotropic substances (Levy, 2013).” They both can agree that mental illness is a part of the free will conversation, but they disagree on why. Lavazza’s argument is not supported by mental illnesses like epilepsy; she believes that they are the exception. Corinne Purtill believes that mental illnesses are in support of her idea that we do not have free will, and our lives are just as out of our control has having a mental illness is. 

Strengths and Weaknesses: 
Both sides have their strengths and weaknesses when it comes to presenting their opinion. Andrea Lavazza does a great job when presenting different studies that support her idea of free will. One of the best things about her article is that she quotes many, many different articles/people when she brings up different studies or opinions. At the end of almost all of her sentences where she brings statistics into it, she provides the place where she found the information. She provides a works cited page which has the links to 117 different articles that she used to write her own. Lavazza really proves that her article is a reliable source of information. While this is good about her article, one weakness is that she doesn’t always relate her evidence back to her main point. There were many times when I was reading her article that I would get lost in all the numbers and evidence that I forgot what her main point was.  
In Corinne Purtill’s article, she gets her evidence from a book written by Robert Sapolsky. Her article is in agreement with Sapolsky, and one of the strengths of her article is that fact that she is quoting a book written by a trusted neuroscientist. She uses many quotes from Sapolsky throughout her article to use evidence to back up her ideas. One weakness about her paper though is that she only uses one source and doesn’t really use the statistical side of Sapolsky’s book. At the end of her article, there is no works cited page because she only used one person's book as evidence throughout the entire article.  She lacks in backing up her ideas with actual evidence from studies instead of from a book written by one person.

 
Compromise: 
Corinne Purtill and Andrea Lavazza both disagree on the topic of free will, but I do believe there is a middle ground that can be found. Purtill fully believes that there is no free will, at all, but Lavazza suggests that there are different forms of free will, or more studies that can be done to find a more solid answer to the question of free will. I feel that a good middle ground is the idea that our brains influence our choices, but we still have awareness and the ability to reflect on our choices which give us a degree of control. 
With lots of time spent reading both articles and reviewing both sides of the argument, I believe that we do have at least some control over our actions. I don’t think that the research that argues for the fact that our brain starts planning movement before we are aware of it is enough to completely get rid of the idea of free will. I think Lavazza’s idea of a free will scale that expresses the different levels of consciousness is a very smart idea and helps more researchers to provide evidence for free will, whether it's in support of the idea of free will, or against it. I’m sure that our environment growing up and the life that we are born into does have an effect on the way our brains form and make decisions, but I don’t believe that it completely eliminates any opportunity for free will or choice over our actions. 
 
 
 
 
 

 

Works cited 

Lavazza, Andrea. “Free Will and Neuroscience: From Explaining Freedom Away to New Ways of Operationalizing and Measuring It.” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 1 June 2016, pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4887467/#s7. 

Purtill, Corinne. Scientist, after Decades of Study, Concludes: We Don’t Have Free Will, 19 Oct. 2023, phys.org/news/2023-10-scientist-decades-dont-free.html.