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A Reason To Be Free

Operationalizing ‘Free Action’

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Abstract

Recent Libet-style experiments are of limited relevance to the debate about free action and free will, and should be understood as investigations of arbitrary actions or guesses. In Libet-style experiments, the concept of 'free action' is commonly taken to refer to a 'self-initiated voluntary act', where the self prompts an action without being prompted. However, this idea is based on the problematic assumption that the conscious self needs to be free from every constraint in order to be actually free. We maintain that a fundamental condition for free action is the presence of reasons to act responsibly. By analyzing a recent neuroscientific experiment, we indicate how its results could be interpreted as indicating how free action operationalization is inappropriately focusing on arbitrary actions. Hence, the way free action has been experimentally studied may have had a misleading influence on the debate about free will.

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Notes

  1. Although the concept of “cue” is used often, its relationship with the concept of “cause” and “reason” is not completely clear. To our understanding, in the current context “cue” has an epistemic connotation, a cue provides information that is used (e.g. taken as a reason) for potential action.

  2. It has to be noticed that conceptual issues have been raised about the scientific validity of appealing to internal cues in general. An extensive review of the debate would be beyond the scope of this paper. Those interested in deepening this topic may check [7, 9, 11, 12].

  3. We do not wish to imply that the authors agree on all issues, rather to illustrate the various ways of emphasizing the relation between free will, free action and responsibility.

  4. There is one potential confusion we would like to forestall here. One could still meaningfully attribute responsibility in this case in the following way: If one believes that X and therefore one does Y, that could be wrong (blameworthy) in the sense that never in the case of X one should do Y, regardless of whether or not X is actually the case. This, however, is a type of responsibility (what would you do if X applies) that we are not discussing here. We are addressing responsibility for action, not for hypothetical action.

  5. In Bode’s experiment, this freedom is represented by subjects' liberty not to comply with experimenters' requests.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Ceci Verbaarschot for her extensive and useful feedback on an earlier version of this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Radboud University, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Montessorilaan 3, 6525HR, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Giulio Mecacci & Pim Haselager

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  1. Giulio Mecacci
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  2. Pim Haselager
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Correspondence to Giulio Mecacci.

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Mecacci, G., Haselager, P. A Reason To Be Free. Neuroethics 8, 327–334 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12152-015-9241-8

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