Free Will as an Open Scientific Problem

by Mark Balaguer

In this largely antimetaphysical treatment of free will and determinism, Mark
Balaguer argues that the philosophical problem of free will boils down to an open scientific
question about the causal histories of certain kinds of neural events. In the course of his
argument, Balaguer provides a naturalistic defense of the libertarian view of free will. The
metaphysical component of the problem of free will, Balaguer argues, essentially boils down to the
question of whether humans possess libertarian free will. Furthermore, he argues that, contrary to
the traditional wisdom, the libertarian question reduces to a question about indeterminacy--in
particular, to a straightforward empirical question about whether certain neural events in our heads
are causally undetermined in a certain specific way; in other words, Balaguer argues that the right
kind of indeterminacy would bring with it all of the other requirements for libertarian free will.
Finally, he argues that because there is no good evidence as to whether or not the relevant neural
events are undetermined in the way that's required, the question of whether human beings possess
libertarian free will is a wide-open empirical question.

Genres: Philosophy, Science

213 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 11, 2009

About the author

Mark Balaguer is Professor in the Department of Philosophy at California State University, Los Angeles. He is the author of Platonism and Anti-Platonism in Mathematics and Free Will as an Open Scientific Question (MIT Press).

Reviews

[Alan Johnson]

I gave up on this book after it got into extensive academic jargon, quasi-symbolic logic, and semantic hair-splitting. I may return to it someday, but perhaps not. It reminds me why I did not pursue an academic career. Many, many books and papers by philosophy professors on free will, determinism/indeterminism, and compatibilism are of this kind, and I am getting weary of them. Strangely, given my lack of a scientific background, I have found neuroscientific theories of free will much more interesting. In my old age, I am finding empirical inquiry more to my liking than the contemporary version of medieval scholasticism.

[Paul Schepers · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is kind of a difficult book for me to review, because I think I disagree (quite strongly, even) with one of its underlying premises, but still agree with its main thesis. Specifically, I disagree with Balaguer's position that the problem of free will is not a metaphysical problem. In a nutshell, I think the question "Do we have free will?" is (unfortunately) always going to boil down to the question of what it is we mean by "free will". That being said, as long as we have a more or less robust definition of free will that everyone can agree on (for the sake of the discussion, if nothing else), then I think we can, at least theoretically, treat it as an empirical question, and looked at from that perspective, I think Balaguer makes a very strong case for his conclusion: there is simply no solid scientific reason to reject the idea that humans have free will, and any claims that science has "debunked" or "disproven" the idea of free will are simply unwarranted. That is not to say that future scientific discoveries will never be able to disprove the idea, but the current state of scientific knowledge simply does not justify any definitive pronouncements on the subject one way or the other, a case Balaguer argues very persuasively in my opinion.

[Kevin K · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has many excellent arguments, but it's written for the advanced philosophy reader. Rough going if you're not used to that. Some quick points:

1) If you want the gist, read Balaguer's short, entertaining treatment of the same topic: Free Will
2) Chapter 3 is a grind. The exposition feels too complicated and formal given the relative simplicity of the points being made.
3) Chapter 4 is fantastic. Here Balaguer shows that there are no good arguments either for or against determinism. His points are strong. Maybe not 100% airtight, but close to it. I like this kind of neo-Pyrrhonian skepticism. Modern people are too eager to take a stand based on intuitions and flimsy evidence.
4) Chapter 2 deals with an interesting semantic issue. Consider this seemingly obvious observation: “To determine whether we have free will, we first need to determine what free will is, and then we can see whether we have it.” As sensible as that seems, it’s a bad approach that ends up in word games. To use Balaguer’s example, it’s like astronomers first sitting down and haggling over the definition of the word “planet” as a prerequisite to examining the solar system. The fact is: the specific terminology doesn’t matter. Various definitions and conceptions of free will have been given, but the issue is not which of these is the “correct concept.” Indeed, we can just eliminate the term “free will” entirely and call them Characteristic #1, #2, etc. The interesting issue is which one’s we actually have, and that’s an empirical question.
5) My main problem with the book was Balaguer’s constant references to the “self” or “I” as the cause of choices. I kept thinking: What is the “I” you’re talking about? There isn’t any “I” in the body. Any neural correlate of a choice in the brain is a horrendously complicated ensemble of events. So where is the active “I” in all that complexity? Balaguer never says. Is it a specific region of the brain? If so, where’s the “I” in that section? He seems to need a sort of unity that isn’t there. The issue is similar to what drove Descartes to attach the soul to the pineal gland.

[Sherif · Rating 1 out of 5]

My review is based on incomplete reading - I abandoned the book in its early stages.

I have reasonable experience in reading science literature (journals and books), less but not negligible experience in reading philosophy, and I found this book inaccessible and difficult to parse and understand.
The author used a lot of terms/definitions/jargon that may be common enough in philosophy literature that explanations were not merited, but that meant that I was completely lost very soon into the beginning of the book.

I think the concepts and ideas in the book could have been explained in much clearer language that made it more accessible to non-experts without compromising the theory or content. After a while of struggling to keep up with the author jumping around from one idea, thought, and [insert philosophy idea/paradigm here] to the next in a scattered fashion, I decided it wasn't worth it.
Disappointing.