Do humans possess an inherent quality to make independent choices from their own free will? Are we potentially opening up vulnerabilities which could permeate throughout society by placing so much faith in an unsubstantiated, outdated concept? In the past few decades, neuroscience has allowed researchers to peer further into the deeper workings of the mind; the conclusions of these studies have brought to light many new questions to do with liberalism, free speech and social responsibility. ‘Free will’ is at the core of these topics and as of recently, it’s facing an ever-growing challenge emerging from the laboratories. So how can we evolve our systems of society and take back control of our thoughts and desires?
To put it simply, ‘Free Will’ isn’t a scientific reality and as it turns out, this false reality is what underpins the idea of human feeling and choice as the ultimate moral and political authority. In reality, it is merely a myth created by Christian theologians in an attempt to justify God’s right to punish sinners for their bad choices and reward those who made good choices – saints. According to them, it is reasonable for God to act in this way as our choices reflect our ‘Free Will’: a quality of our eternal souls which is independent of all physical and biological constraints.
This myth has little to do with our modern understanding of Humans through science. We do indeed have a will, but not a free one. You can’t decide what you desire. You don’t suddenly choose to be easy-going or anxious, introverted or extroverted, gay or straight. These choices are never independent. Every one them is influenced by biochemical, social, personal and experiential conditions which our brain uses to compute different probabilities in the space of a split second. Research by Van Roekel et al. (2013) gave evidence to support this by showing that girls with specific oxytocin receptor genes felt more lonely – a free response was in fact the consequence of a biochemical condition.
This isn’t just some abstract theory. In recent decades, there have been many studies which reinforce this explanation. In a very controversial experiment in 1983, Benjamin Libet conducted a study in which he instructed participants to flex their wrist whenever they wanted to. By monitoring brain activity, he was able to see that the conscious decision was preceded by considerable activity in unconscious parts of the brain by up to 350 milliseconds. Effectively, the conscious experience of deciding an action (what we usually associate with free will) appears to be a post hoc reconstruction of events that our brains create to rationalise the outcome of its calculations. This occurs after the brain has already set the action in motion.
The contemporary scientific image of human behaviour is that of neurons firing, causing our thoughts and desires in unbroken chains; as John Searle put it: ‘The brain is no more free than the liver or the stomach’. You can witness this phenomenon easily. Simply bring your attention to the next thought that pops into your mind. Do you know where it came from? Do you know what conditions influenced this thought? Did you choose to think that thought? Of course not. By observing your mind, you come to realise that you have no control on what’s going on in there, and you are not choosing freely what to think, to desire, to feel.
This brings about disturbing realisations. If governments and companies are indeed successful in hacking the human mind by understanding and curating their inputs, the easiest people to manipulate will be those who believe they are acting upon their own free will. This is why the importance of free speech in society couldn’t be stressed more. People need to be exposed to a wide range of views, ideas and opinions to make them less susceptible to the manipulation of their thoughts.
Consider the role of media in shaping your thoughts. If news reporters and journalists weren’t allowed to voice their freedom of speech, and instead must be censored to fit a certain ideal chosen by the government, society would eventually reach a point where we are only exposed to one point of view. Without free will, we are only capable of forming opinions through the calculations our brain makes based on information, and experiences that we are exposed to. Thus, all the minds in a society would be making calculations based on increasingly similar inputs and so we would come out with increasingly similar outputs – thoughts and opinions. How could a civilisation possibly advance if everyone agrees with each other and there are no opposing views? Progress can only come out of debate and disagreement. This serves to highlight the necessity for free speech as a crucial means to create as many differing views as possible: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”. This illustration of Voltaire’s beliefs by Evelyn Beatrice Hall encapsulates our social responsibility to ensure we are exposed to as many different opinions as possible and make sure this continues for generations to come.
Now, how exactly could the government’s exploitation of people’s belief in free will become a threat to Liberal Democracy? In order to effectively hack the human mind, you require two things: a solid understanding of biology and a lot of computing power. Soon, corporations and governments may have both, and once this happens, they can hack you to not only predict your choices, but also reengineer your feelings and responses. And to do this, they don’t even need to know you perfectly, just better than you know yourself. This is not impossible, as the reality is that most people don’t know themselves very well.
Propaganda and manipulation aren’t new concepts but their application will change from carpet bombing to more precision-guided attacks. Exploiters can now tailor their message to the unique weakness of each individual brain. Algorithms can detect biases, soft-spots and your passions simply by monitoring your online activity. This is already being put into place by tailor made ads and fake news articles being pushed towards those with a known weakness towards them. And this is just the beginning, in the near future, biometric sensors could allow hackers to observe what’s going on in your heart, giving them the ability to monitor your moods, affections and reactions to events.
Liberalism, therefore, is facing a new challenge from within; no longer are the fascist or communist ideologies the biggest threat. The very concepts of ‘individual’ and ‘freedom’ no longer make so much sense. In order to prosper in the 21st century, we need to leave behind the view of humans as free individuals and accept what humans really are, hackable creatures. However, liberal democracies have endured many challenges and it has proved able to adapt. And so, we hope Liberalism can reinvent itself yet again. We have an obligation to know ourselves better, identify our weaknesses: fears, hatreds, biases and cravings. Hackers cannot simply create fear or hatred, they rely on discovering what people already fear and hate so that they can push the relevant emotional buttons to provoke their chosen sentiments.
Questioning our free will or exploring the true nature of humanity is not a new occurrence. We have had this discussion for hundreds of years; but we have never had the technology before. And technology changes everything. Philosophical problems have now become practical issues for engineers and politicians which affect our society. And so, we are left with a heightened sense duty to modernise liberal democracy as we know it and bring it in line with the changes that are coming in the 21st century. We need to look at ourselves and gain a deeper understanding of where our thoughts are coming from – are they really ours? We must fight to uphold freedom of speech to ensure that as many opinions as possible are exposed to us in order to continue turning the wheels of innovation. People often think that having no free will would make them into apathetic, powerless machines but this doesn’t have to be the case. One can find a certain freedom by understanding that our desires are not the outcome of free choice, hopefully becoming less preoccupied with them as a result. Realising that humans have no free will is the best way for society to defend itself from the challenges that it will face in the near future.