The Science of Freedom

The Science of Freedom deals with the question of our free will. Although this is a very old question, in the last decades it receives new answers mainly because of the development of neuroscience. Although, in many cases the discussions on this question are lacking, for two main reasons: the first is that it is a multidisciplinary field, which combines, among others, mathematics, computer science, physics, biology and chemistry, philosophy, psychology, neurology, psychiatry and more. Experts in one field are not always well versed in the other fields, and when a combination of all is required, mistakes are made. Beyond that, most of the discussions on the subject, including those of experts in the various fields, lie in the definition of the basic concepts and therefore lead to wrong conclusions. For example, one of the common arguments against libertanism is the following: every action either has a reason or it doesn’t. If there is, it is determinism, and if there is not, it is randomness. Either way, there is no third option, and therefore it cannot be free action. The book shows that this argument fails in the definition of the concepts. The same is true of the compatibilist position that is so widespread nowadays, according to which there is no contradiction between determinism and free will. The book aims to clarify the complicated picture described here, in a way that appeals to an educated reader who is not a professional, but also helps professionals to see the full picture and form a consistent position on the issue. Despite the popular writing style, the book does not give up entering complex scientific and philosophical topics and encompasses this problem from all its aspects. The book begins by defining the various concepts and positions, such as determinism, free will, materialism, libertarianism, and the like. Scientific and philosophical arguments for and against libertarianism are reviewed, most of which fail. After that, the book deals with the connection of this issue to the principle of causality. In a nutshell, if indeed every phenomenon in the world has a reason, then apparently there is no room for freedom and therefore no free will either. A particular chapter is dedicated to the concept of causality itself, which also suffers from many misunderstandings. It turns out that science cannot deal with causality in its full meaning. Bottom line, if we accept the principle of causality, apparently there is no room for freedom and therefore no room for libertarianism either. In recent decades there have been proposals to resolve the dilemma of free will with scientific tools. Therefore, the next part of the book reviews the scientific background required for the discussion. One chapter is devoted to the theory of chaos, in which it can be seen that chaos is a completely deterministic field, therefore the common link between chaos and the possibility of libertanism is wrong. The next chapter deals with quantum theory, because it deviates from the causality of classical physics. But the conclusion of this chapter is once again that even the deceptive quantum theory does not help us to plant free will within the framework of the physicalist picture. Many thinkers and scientists in the last generation try to build libertarianism on emergentism, that is, to see free will as a collective property of the mind (in the spirit of the image that emerges from statistical mechanics in physics). The argument is that although the brain is a physical-biological object, there may be other properties of it that will ’emerge’ on the collective level. The argument is that even if the micro is deterministic maybe the macro can be free. In this chapter also, the conclusion is that it is not possible to explain our free will with emergentism. From all that has been said so far, it appears that there is no reasonable way to reconcile our free will with the current picture of physics. Apparently, a deterministic conclusion emerges from this, but this is not accurate. The situation described so far presents us with two choices: either to reject libertarianism or to assume that the effect of the will on the body goes beyond physical causality. This general statement is detailed in the book to more precise and detailed definitions. The discussion so far has been conducted from the bottom up (from science to man), since we have asked whether basic sciences allow freedom at all. This brings us to the neurosciences, where the discussion of the question of libertarianism is conducted from the top down. The claim is that the question of whether or not we have free will can be examined directly and empirically. The American neurologist Benjamin Libet began with this in a series of experiments he conducted beginning in the late seventies of the twentieth century, and it continues to this day in many follow-up experiments. There are arguments that rely on findings of a split brain, on various psychiatric disabilities, and more. In the last part, the book deals with neuroscience and the question of libertarianism, and the conclusion is that neuroscience has not fundamentally changed the picture. There is still no way to resolve the question of libertarianism with scientific tools. Indeed, one of the goals of the book is to show that, contrary to the opinions of many thinkers and scientists, the question is still in the philosophical sphere and not in the fields of science. In the last chapter, various arguments and thought experiments are offered that will help the reader formulate his own position on this complicated issue. One of them is ‘Buridan’s Man’, paraphrasing the well-known donkey of the medieval French scholar Jean Buridan. The book claims that in the materialist-physicalist picture of the world, a person who is in a ‘buridanic’ situation, i.e. standing between two identical tables loaded with food, which are at equal distances from him, is supposed to die of hunger, just like a donkey. Now every reader can ask himself whether such a conclusion sounds reasonable to him or not. If not – he thus reveals about himself that he is a libertarian, even if not consciously. In the bottom line, the book shows in a systematic way by integrating different fields of opinion that the more reasonable view is actually the libertarian one. This conclusion relies on weighty philosophical considerations, and surprisingly is not challenged by any scientific findings that exist today.