Neurons fire in your head before you become aware that you have made a decision. But this discovery does not mean you are a “biochemical puppet”
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One night last fall I lay awake wondering how I should begin this essay. I imagined a variety of ways I could write the first sentence and the next and the one after that. Then I thought about how I could tie those sentences to the following paragraph and the rest of the article. The pros and cons of each of those options circled back and forth in my head, keeping me from drifting off to sleep. As this was happening, neurons were buzzing away in my brain. Indeed, that neural activity explains I imagined these options, and it explains why I am writing these very words. It also explains why I have free will.
Increasingly, neuroscientists, psychologists and pundits say that I am wrong. Invoking a number of widely cited neuroscientific studies, they claim that unconscious processes drove me to select the words I ultimately wrote. Their arguments suggest our conscious deliberation and decisions happen only after neural gears below the level of our conscious awareness have already determined what we will choose. And they conclude that because “our brains make us do it”—choosing for us one option over another—free will is nothing more than an illusion.
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