No Free Will
Scientists have been working feverishly over the past few decades to debunk some of our most closely held beliefs about ourselves, many of which stem from religion. Among them is the notion that we have free will, that we are rational actors able to determine our own fates according to our best judgment. Free will, of course, is predicated on other psychological constructs such as identity, consciousness, and some sort of immutable soul — all of which have been explained away as emergent properties of the brain or nervous system. The latest chink in the armor is the finding that cockroaches, a rather unworthy proxy for man, may not be automatons responding purely out of instinct. In short, their behavior is suggestible, and by extension, perhaps ours is as well.
In insect societies, individuals lack significance compared to the life of the community. The prevailing thinking is that if there is any sort of awareness with insects, it is a group mind, not an individual one. Though cockroach society isn’t hierarchical, like bee hives, ant farms, or human society, cockroackes behave mindlessly on an individual level, and according to this article in the New York Times, can be induced to act contrary to their nature and instinct, at least in the mundane experiment being reported. In short, they are vulnerable to peer pressure and their internal or instinctual controls can be trumped by external ones.
Writ large, this reports suggests that we humans, too, are less agents of our own authority than metaphorical pinballs careening from impulse to impulse, basically responding to the needs of the moment. and interestingly, constructing a narrative after the fact to soothe ourselves that we chose rather than being subject to mindless response patterns. Philosophers have pointed to this possibility for a long time now, but the rational arguments that demonstrate it are too subtle for the average person and run contrary to our self-interest. Who wants to study and work to discover that in truth there is nothing up there, no one driving the bus, no me in there? The illusion of identity, like to illusion of faith, is so powerful and indeed comforting that even those of us who have been convinced by the arguments in favor of materialism still act on the conscious level (which doesn’t exist, handily) as though we decide things. I don’t actually believe that I have no choice in the matter of writing this blog, yet beneath that self-delusion, my rational mind forces me to admit, albeit unhappily, that I’m responding blindly to the complex of intellectual experiences and memes to which I’ve been exposed. But blindly isn’t quite the right word. Nor is mindlessly. Rather, my lack of free will means that I’m hardly different from the cockroach being tricked into following robot cockroaches. The only difference is that whereas humans may influence cockroaches, there is no puppetmaster pulling our strings. As a society or culture, we’re pulling each others strings.
