A Brief Discussion of Free Will, Moral Agency, and Neurological Influence
*This section may contain emotionally triggering content*By Steven Wang
In the year 1966, ex-marine sharpshooter Charles Whitman, after murdering his mother and wife the night before, climbed on top of the University of Texas Tower and committed an unspeakable atrocity (2). 16 were killed, 32 were wounded, and many more were traumatized (3). It is hard to make sense of tragedies like this, and we are often left to hope that “justice,” whatever that is, will be served. Retributive justice was served. Whitman was fatally stopped by the police at the scene, but more questions arose after his written letters were found. Here are a few thoughts that Whitman had left for the public to consider.
“It was after much thought that I decided to kill my wife, Kathy…I love her dearly, and she has been as fine a wife to me as any man could ever hope to have. I cannot rationally pinpoint any specific reason for doing this.”(4)
“After my death I wish that an autopsy would be performed on me to see if there is any visible physical disorder.”(5)
His wish in the letter was fulfilled, and the professionals found signs of the said “visible physical disorder.” It appears that he has a “brain tumor pressing on his amygdala, a region of the brain crucial for emotion and behavioral control”(6). Whitman’s impulses were, at least in part, caused by this. Years after the incident, Whitman’s autopsy was compared to the autopsies of other mentally impaired criminals. Unsurprisingly, researchers found correlations in the functions of their respective lesioned brain tissues (7). Most of these lesions have to do with theory of mind, which is the capacity to ascribe mental states to others, and value-based decision making (8), which is the ability to judge the consequence of a future action. It seems that many of our actions depend on our neurological state of being. In fact, contemporary neurological researchers show that simple decisions—such as moving a finger or pressing a button—can be predicted several seconds before they become conscious (9), but it is unsure whether this could be generalized to more complex decisions like committing a crime. To further explore the issue of free will, let’s examine the moral agency (or lack thereof) of Charles Whitman through the lenses of materialistic determinism as well as libertarian free will.
A materialistic determinist (among many other forms of determinism)(10) would affirm that Whitman was a victim of his neurology, which marks his inability to have acted otherwise (11). He was unable to intuit the moral difference between actions nor understand the feelings of others. If another person were to have Whitman’s neurology and circumstances, they would have brought about the same atrocities. Whitman is as free as a sunflower and as morally responsible as an earthquake; he is neither free nor morally responsible.
On the other hand, a typical libertarian free-willer (12) would say that Whitman is the conscious author of his actions. He should not have acted upon his psychopathic intuitions. Although he has an impaired theory of mind, he is intelligent enough to understand that murder is illegal and immoral, and that refraining from murder is better for everyone. He knows that an illegal act is something that he should not do, and he could have chosen to act otherwise. Whitman had faced possible and real opportunities to reach out for help, but he made the deliberate conscious decision to murder innocents. In short, Whitman possesses free will; therefore, he is the moral agent who should be held responsible for his actions.
You can take either of those interpretive lenses, but in order to analyze Whitman’s moral agency, we must examine what it means to be “Charles Whitman,” or more broadly, what it means to be “you” or “me.” It is of necessity to address what “you” means before accusing you of committing a crime.
Materialistic determinists would say that Charles Whitman is merely a material effect and a summation of unfortunate causes, such as his genome and the environment that had influenced his upbringing. His murderous urges arose involuntarily, and his body acted in accordance with that urge, just like how our bodies seek water in times of thirst. His murderous acts were necessary effects of prior environmental causes. Many would say that the brain tumor influenced “him,” but is there a “him” to influence in the first place? Materialistic determinists are thus nudged toward an unappealing conclusion: there is nothing that makes him “him.” The totality of what we call “Charles Whitman” is the interplay between materialistically determined causes and effects. At best, the terms “you,” “I,” or “Charles Whitman” are useful labels when referring to seemingly coherent clusters of matter. By holding the materialistic view, one would have no grounding for the existence of any human beings apart from undefinable matter. And if a person’s real existence is compromised, then a person’s moral agency would be as well. Again, the knowledge of what a “person” means would better justify our decision to punish them. In the eyes of materialistic determinists, a person is a cluster of matter and a summation of causes and effects that could not have turned out otherwise. What is the point of judging a person’s actions when it is literally impossible for them to do otherwise? It’s like asking: is it moral for us to become hungry? There is no point in answering this, because hunger just happens, and it will continue if it goes unaddressed. It must be concluded that determinism does not leave room for moral agency.
Before going any further, I must clarify that human beings must treat a person as if they are moral agents, and we should, as a functioning society, punish murderers for their actions. We intuitively feel that crime deserves punishment and that the victims deserve justice. I have no problem with that intuition, but for now, I am attempting to philosophically analyze the relationship between morality and free-will. According to determinism, it seems likely that human beings are not moral agents, and we may not be justified in punishing murderers. This is the end of the dialogue about determinism, but it is not yet the end of all discussions about free will.
There is another stance to take on this issue: compatibilism. This view is the hardest to fully grasp, partly because it comes in many forms. From now on, my use of the word “compatibilim” will not commit to any specific subcategories of the term, but rather the beliefs that most compatibilists hold. The typical compatibilist would affirm the beliefs of determinism on the one hand, but conclude that there is room for free will on the other. They arrive at this conclusion through an attempt to redefine free will, thus reframing the entire question. Compatibilists believe that it is irrelevant to speak of free will as it is defined, because we are obviously not the conscious authors of our wants or needs. Thirst, hunger, and the urge to urinate simply arise into our consciousness, where we would fulfill these desires through conscious action. Feelings like rage, devastation, and happiness arise in the same involuntary manner. Now, why is the current definition of free will irrelevant? Just think of what it would take to truly have free will. We have to be able to choose what we want, such as choosing to want vanilla ice cream rather than chocolate, or choosing to love Bob rather than Tyler. We need the ability to choose what to like, who to love, and even where and when we were born. But if you think twice about this hypothesis, you’ll notice that we are back to ground zero. What deeper “want” determined you to choose to want vanilla over chocolate, to love Bob over Tyler, or, for example, to want to be born in 21st century China rather than 18th century America? And what deeper want determines that “want”? Are we able to choose the things we want to want? And what “want” determines that “choice”? It turns into a regressive word game really quickly, and these questions are the embodiment of pure absurdity. We must recognize that to do one thing is to not do other things, and there will always be people who say “you chose this thing rather than the other because you couldn’t have done otherwise. If you knew all the causes and effects that played into your decision, then you’ll realize that this is not a ‘free’ decision.” This statement presupposes that it is possible to know all of the causes and effects in the universe, and use it to predict future actions. This is an act of faith as much as the belief in conventional free will. Therefore, free will (as it is defined) is an absurd concept that shouldn’t be taken seriously. Now, let’s examine what compatibilism is actually arguing for.
Most compatibilists are concerned with the degrees of freedom(13) rather than the above representations of free will. To illustrate, consider my life at this instant. I am currently sitting at Starbucks with a full cup of coffee on the table. I could knock it off the table, spill it on my laptop, dump it on the person next to me, or simply drink it. These are real possibilities that could be actualized if I so desired, but fortunately, I will not actualize those possibilities. If I had truly desired to act in one of the ways described above, I could have made it happen. In other words, I had the power and accessibility to perform a specific number of possible actions in this given scenario (the exact definition of freedom). The number of possible actions is “specific” because there are things that I cannot do, such as tossing the cup onto the moon or making it instantaneously evaporate. Freedom is limited in a given situation (within a given timeframe), because if I were in an advanced research lab for a whole day, there are many more things that I could do with a cup of coffee, thus the possibilities would expand. There is also an epistemological aspect to freedom: I cannot consciously actualize a possibility that I did not think of or know of. My limited knowledge constrains the “specific number of possibilities” or even my own “power and accessibility” when navigating in a scenario. Now that we’ve established some parameters for freedom, let’s examine what it means to lack freedom. Imagine I am strapped onto a chair at Starbucks—handcuffed and everything—with a cup of coffee and its straw forcefully shoved into my mouth. The obvious possibilities are to drink the coffee, to blow air into the cup through the straw, or to bite the straw. My accessibility to possibilities shrank dramatically compared to when I was not strapped onto a chair, thus my freedom is compromised. Freedom is, in part, defined by the range of possibilities that can be actualized by a being in a specific scenario. There is a lot more to be said about the definition of this, but I will stop here and explain why the compatibilist idea of freedom is significant, starting with a recap of the libertarian and determinist account of free will.
Libertarian free-willers and determinists answer the question in a binary sense: we either have free will, or we don’t. If determinism is true, then people have no moral responsibility for any of their actions. If libertarian free will is true, then people have full moral responsibility for all their actions. Somewhere in between is the compatibilist, who reframes the issue by saying: “sure, we don’t have free will in the libertarian sense, but the fact of this matter is irrelevant and absurd.” Compatibilism attempts to leave room for free will by shifting the discussion to freedom, a concept that is more useful and evaluative (some compatibilits may redefine free will altogether). For freedom, there are degrees of accessibility, power, knowledge, possibility, distinct scenarios, and certain moral implications. Freedom can be used as an evaluative tool in distinguishing good from evil given a specific temporal and situational context. You could argue that strapping people onto chairs, which compromises freedom, is morally worse than doing the contrary (14).
I must clarify that I’m not proposing a detailed analysis of morality here. I’m merely laying out the three main positions of free will in regard to metaphysics, then considering their ethical implications. Throughout this short and generalized analysis, we see that libertarian free will is often purely based upon intuitive philosophical assumptions, while determinism seems empirically justifiable but ridiculously reductionistic. Compatibilism is useful, but it shifts the question’s focus from free will to freedom. I tend to agree with the compatibilists for the sake of a more useful definition of free will, because there really isn’t a clear-cut answer to this. There is progress being made, both philosophically and empirically. Progress is not an answer, though.
In ending this discussion of great moral consequence,(15) I will not conclude that a specific position is true. They are all justifiable in some sense or another, and again, they do have their respective moral consequences. Hold them at your own peril.
Endnotes
2: Joan Neuberger, “Charles Joseph Whitman (1941-1966),” Behind the Tower, http://behindthetower.org/charles-joseph-whitman.
3: Micah Johnson, “How Responsible Are Killers with Brain Damage?,” Scientific American (Scientific American, January 30, 2018),
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-responsible-are-killers-with-brain-damage/.
4: Johnson, “How Responsible Are Killers with Brain Damage?”
5: Cara Santa Maria, “WATCH: The Mind of a Mass Murderer,” HuffPost (HuffPost, March 28, 2012). 6 Johnson, “How Responsible Are Killers with Brain Damage?”
7: Lesion: An area of abnormal tissue. A lesion may be benign (not cancer) or malignant (cancer). See “NCI Dictionary of Cancer Terms,” National Cancer Institute,
https://www.cancer.gov/publications/dictionaries/cancer-terms/def/lesion.
8: Johnson, “How Responsible Are Killers with Brain Damage?”
9: Andrea Lavazza, “Free Will and Neuroscience: From Explaining Freedom Away to New Ways of Operationalizing and Measuring It,” Frontiers (Frontiers, May 18, 2016),
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2016.00262/full.
10: Determinism: the belief that every event in the universe could not have happened any other way. Libertarian Free will does not exist, because your consciousness is a part of certain physical causes and effects, and those causes and effects are determined from the beginning.
11: Sam Harris, Free Will, 2012.
12: Free-Willer: a believer in or advocate for free will. See “Free-Willer,” Merriam-Webster (Merriam-Webster).
13: Freedom: the power and accessibility to perform a specific number of possible actions in a given scenario. Some Compatibilists redefine free will in this way when they are building their case, but I will use the word “freedom” to better distinguish between the competing views.
14: Though the specific rhetoric by which you do so will depend on the model of morality you subscribe to.
15: By moral consequence, I mean the consequence of committing yourself to a specific moral system, if you wish to remain consistent with your view of free will. However, you are not obliged (nor is it possible) to make all of your moral judgements in complete consistency with your philosophical views.