Free will is an illusion

Free will is an illusion. We live in a world of cause and effect. And as such, all future actions are influenced by the past. For every choice you make that you can say "I did it for reasons A, B, C", it cannot be free, and given the same conditions A, B, and C and holding all other conditions identical, the same "choice" would be made over and over again. We do not make choices any more than a computer is not bound by its programming. For those who would argue that we live in a quantum world, and thus randomness is inherent in our reality, that just means free will is due to randomness, and again, not you. Mind over matter: But do we make conscious choices? For instance, Professor John-Dylan Haynes and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute in Germany report the findings of an extraordinary experiment which seems to show that "free will" - the most cherished tenet of humanity, which decrees that Man has total control of his own actions - may, in fact, be little more than an illusion. For in their experiment, the scientists found that we may not be making conscious choices at all. Rather, our subconscious minds may be dictating our actions, long before we realise. In his experiment, volunteers were asked to view a stream of letters on a computer screen and told, at some point, of their choosing, to press a button either with their left or right index finger - and remember the letter that was on the screen when they did so. The volunteers were also connected to brain-scanning MRI machines which were able to monitor and analyse brain patterns. These "mind-reading" scanners could recognise when the brain had decided on a course of action. To the researchers' astonishment, it turned out that the volunteers' brains would reach a decision about pressing one of the buttons several seconds before the volunteers actually thought they had made up their minds. The implications are hugely significant, because the experiment suggests that what we think of as a "conscious decision" may, in fact, be no such thing. The traditional "folk science" picture of the mind has our "conscious self" as a little man sitting in our heads, pushing buttons and pulling levers, filing "thoughts", receiving messages from eyes and ears and making our muscles move. What Prof Haynes's experiment seems to show is that we need a new picture; instead of that little man pushing and pulling levers, he is merely a passive observer, lazing back in his chair and watching it all happen. It is as though what we are actually aware of is no more than a film show, and the decision-making is made purely unconsciously. It is a disturbing picture, because it reinforces the view that we are mere machines, pieces of biological clockwork that have no more free will than a Swiss watch. This sounds counter to common sense, but the more you think about it the more it is clear that much of what we do is done on "autopilot" and that free will is rarely necessary. If you regularly drive to work, for instance, at the end of your commute tomorrow try to remember the details of your journey. The chances are you will not be able recall more than the basics. When top tennis players are asked to think, consciously, about every stroke and every movement, their game falls to pieces. Studies of elite sportsmen show that at the top of their game they are performing in a sort of semi-conscious fugue, purely on autopilot. The "will", if there is any, comes during the training process, not during the match.