are only problematic “if one imagines that, for me
to decide something, I have to have willed it with
the conscious part of my mind. Perhaps my uncon-
scious is every bit as much ‘me.’ ” Why shouldn’t
your will be associated with deeper, less con-
scious areas of your mind (which are still you)?
You might sense this if, while trying Libet’s experi-
ment, you find your wrist just seeming to move of
its own accord. You feel that you have somehow
made the decision, even if not wholly consciously.
Because of issues such as these—and others
that I don’t have space to mention—it seems
strange that such a flawed experiment has be-
come so influential, and has been (mis)used so
frequently as evidence against the idea of free will.
You might ask: Why are so many intellectuals so
intent on proving that they have no free will? (As
philosopher Alfred North Whitehead pointed out
ironically, “Scientists animated by the purpose of
proving themselves purposeless constitute an in-
teresting subject for study.”)
This is probably because the nonexistence of
free will seems a logical extension of some of the
primary assumptions of the materialist paradigm—
such as the idea that our sense of self is an illu-
sion and that consciousness and mental activity
are reducible to neurological activity. But as
I suggest in my book Spiritual Science, it is entirely
possible that these assumptions are false. The
mind may be more than just a shadow of the brain,
and free will may not be an illusion but an invalu-
able human attribute, which can be cultivated and
whose development makes our lives more mean-
ingful and purposeful.
OPINION