I’m sitting at my desk during afternoon office hours; two students from my class are asking questions about topics from lectures; we wander into biological determinism, free will, the whole shebang, which is what the course is ultimately about. One of the students is dubious about the extent to which we lack free will: “Sure, if there’s major damage to this part of the brain, if you have a mutation in this or that gene, free will is diminished, but it just seems so hard to accept that it applies to everyday, normal behavior.” I’ve been at this juncture in this discussion many times, and I’ve come to recognize that there is a significant likelihood that this student will now carry out a particular behavior—they will lean forward, pick up a pen on my desk, hold it up in the air and say to me, with great emphasis, “There, I just decided to pick up this pen—are you telling me that was completely out of my control?”
I don’t have the data to prove it, but I think I can predict above the chance level which of any given pair of students will be the one who picks up the pen. It’s more likely to be the student who skipped lunch and is hungry. It’s more likely to be the male, if it is a mixed-sex pair. It is especially more likely if it is a heterosexual male and the female is someone he wants to impress. It’s more likely to be the extrovert. It’s more likely to be the student who got way too little sleep last night and it’s now late afternoon. Or whose circulating androgen levels are higher than typical for them (independent of their sex). It’s more likely to be the student who, over the months of the class, has decided that I’m an irritating blowhard, just like their father.
Marching further back, it’s more likely to be the one of the pair who is from a wealthy family, rather than on a full scholarship, who is the umpteenth generation of their family to attend a prestigious university, rather than the first member of their immigrant family to finish high school. It’s more likely if they’re not a firstborn son. It’s more likely if their immigrant parents chose to come to the U.S. for economic gain as opposed to having fled their native land as refugees from persecution, more likely if their ancestry is from an individualist culture rather than a collectivist one.
It’s the first half of this book, providing an answer to their question, “There, I just decided to pick up this pen—are you telling me that was completely out of my control?” Yes, I am.
By now, easy. But I’m really cornered if instead, the student asks something different: “What if everyone started believing that there is no free will? How are we supposed to function? Why would we bother getting up in the morning if we’re just machines?” Hey, don’t ask me that; that’s too difficult to answer. The second half of this book is an attempt to provide some answers.
