Attention as a Criterion of Free Will

Descartes wrestled with a problem that has become central to the philosophy of mind, namely the interaction between consciousness and the physical brain. This is called the mind-body problem. In the philosophical debate, most people have addressed the question of how consciousness can arise from the physiological mechanisms of the brain. A more difficult question, however, is the reverse: How can consciousness affect matter? Descartes, who believed that consciousness consisted of a substance other than matter, had trouble explaining this. But even in the modern discussion, in which most people believe that consciousness arises from material biological processes, the problem remains.

We now know that in humans a functioning cerebral cortex is necessary for consciousness and that the frontal lobe is needed for self-consciousness. Some neuroscientists believe that consciousness is an epiphenomenon—just a by-product of the brain's activities—and that it cannot affect our physiological mechanisms. It is like the smoke coming from a steam locomotive. Nobel Prize winner in medicine Francis Crick wrote: “‘You,’ your joys and your sorrows, your memories and ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.”

This tendency has now gone so far that Mary Midgley, a grand old lady of philosophy, writes that the question is now not just "Do you believe in God?" but, more frighteningly, "Do you believe in yourself?" She argues that we cannot eliminate the self in the way Crick suggests. An analogy is that physics tells us that heat can be reduced to descriptions of the movements of molecules, but despite this, heat is still there. Similarly, our experience of a self remains even if neuroscience could completely reduce it to various biochemical reactions. The central moral problem is that if the self is an illusion that cannot influence brain processes, then who (or what) is responsible for the actions of the individual?

The question of what it means to have free will is one of the most hotly debated problems in philosophy—and probably one that will never be considered solved. Instead of attacking the problem directly, I want to start by asking what would be a minimal criterion for someone—human, animal, or robot—to have free will. The answer I propose is, perhaps surprisingly, related to the ability to pay attention.

What we commonly call attention is the ability to focus on a part of the flow of information coming from our senses. We focus our gaze on a small part of the world around us while the rest of the visual field plays a secondary role. Two types of attention are important to distinguish. One is stimulus-driven attention, such as when an unexpected bang causes us to turn our head or body to see the source of the sound. The second is controlled attention, when we actively choose what we focus on. Our perception is like a poorly-lit house with work going on simultaneously in many places, and our controlled attention is like a flashlight that we can direct to different parts of the house. We can direct our auditory attention in the same way we direct our visual attention. If there are a number of voices around you, for example at a cocktail party, you can choose to focus on a single voice. Then the other voices fade into the background and you do not perceive what they are saying.

My suggestion for a minimal criterion is that free will at least involves our directing our own attention. Presumably, this criterion sorts out most animal species, but it is pretty hopeless to provide any kind of experimental support for this conjecture. Even totally paralyzed people can usually control their eyes (and also choose what they want to focus on to hear), so the criterion attributes free will to them, too, even if they cannot perform any other actions.

What else would be required for someone to be said to have free will? One answer is given by the physiologist Charles Sherrington. According to him, the self must above all be an actor in the world: someone who makes things happen. The self must see itself as a cause of events in order to be considered to have free will, not just in terms of having a body that can interact with other objects, but by having desires that lead to actions. The criterion I propose is a special case of his.