Let us imagine a scientist places a subject into stasis, connected to a neural interface. This interface is able to interact with the subject’s brain to the extent that it can create feelings, sensations, perceptions and even higher thought processes. The scientist has complete control of this.
In this thought experiment, where is the subject’s free will?
I don’t think it would work. I think it is physically/metaphysically impossible.
Same place it always was, IMO. From a material-causal standpoint, the “scientist” is whatever got the cosmos started in the first place. Then stuff happened. Stuff continues to happen. If we fall off a building, F = MA will very much apply.
The notions of “freedom” and of “will” (and for that matter of “identity”, “self”, or any of the terms associated with those) must be approached phenomenologically in the first instance. They are, above all, experienced. Accounting for how such experience arises is a secondary, more derivative matter. A lot of what follows now is from my reflections on Augustine - what he got right, what I would prefer to adjust - and also on Augustine’s many interpreters, from Aquinas to the present day.
The nub of the problem was that the Hebrew YHWH, the Father made Son in Jesus, was beyond any constraint whatsoever. The Greco-Roman philosophical sense of divinity by contrast, summarized by Plotinus’s One, preferred to emanate an orderly cosmos for our rational contemplation. For Augustine and later Scholasticism, the God who combines both of these tendencies does indeed make orderly rules, but is not however bound by any such rules. Aquinas was at pains to tidy up this evident contradiction, so he invoked the “natural” for all that involved rational forms, entities, and ideas and the “supernatural” for the pure freedom of the transcendent God.
Informed by 800 years of additional perspective, not to mention a bunch more history, geography, and linguistics, I pick up the same problem now from a different POV. My sense is that YHWH was not bound by natural laws (not Aristotelian, nor Newtonian) because the Hebrew tribes generally lacked a notion of orderly cosmos. Cosmic order, for the desert nomads, was something administered by god-king figures in Thebes or Babylon. The Hebrews didn’t need no stinkin’ cosmic order. They were just navigating their own peoplehood in historical time, bouncing from one contingency to another. Their God was present in events, far more than in abstract structures. They cared about history the way Plato cared about spheres. History is very far from tidy and geometrical. Being in the middle of it inspires action more than calculation. Will and freedom belong to that sensation, more than they do to first causes or final causes (the “scientist”, in this example).
Having a different vocabulary (and social setting) at my disposal, I can appreciate Augustine’s insights into sacred and secular time, not to mention his problematization of will and selfhood, (without feeling the need to reconcile these ideas into Christian practice and neo-Platonism straight away. Both the Christianity and the neo-Platonism are baked into modern sensibilities in any case, just folded into a more complex recipe). When authors like Taleb or Snowden point to the domain of the “chaotic”, well-attested from systems theory in general, they illustrate that simple, mechanical cause-effect fails to capture the behavior of complexity in emergence. The kind of levers the “scientist” has in this thought experiment exist with little doubt. (Switches do generally turn lights on), but complex systems manifest properties that cannot be deduced from their component primitives. There is something beyond all that in the interactions of components in their millions.
Systems as such, therefor, are Platonic-Aristotelian in nature, with structure and forms that are analytically tractable. Simpler systems are even predicable in direct causal terms. Complex emergence, by contrast however, never fails to surprise. Notice that emergence does not “violate” cosmic order, it “realizes” it with phenomena we could not have anticipated. At social-historical levels, these include the one-off event stream that is the stuff and substance of historical progression. As actors in the world, we navigate this one-off stream. Moreover, the “we” that is doing the navigating also represents emergence. (Here comes my plot twist! …) Out in the woods, I like to meditate on freedom and causality. To prove that I am “free”, I choose to do something arbitrary, like reach for a leaf or branch selected randomly from the trail side. I touch the plant. No one made me do that. That must have been “freedom”, right?
Except, how did that notion of “freedom” arise in consciousness? When I “will” some action (like grasping a leaf), what is the provenance of that “will”? My sense of self does not include a sense of pumping “will power” into my body any more than it includes manufacturing oxygen or food stuffs ex nihilo. If my body needs oxygen, it breathes it in. If my body needs food, it reaches for an existing snack. If my body needs a sense of direction, it drinks in “will”. Will is not really a property of the “self”, IMO. It’s more like energy that constitutes the self and guides the body-mind system through its various adventures. The entire challenge of spirituality, again IMO, is to align the body-mind with energetic will emerging from the complex ambient. Or to paraphase Paul in way I believe Augustine would approve, the spiritual path is to encounter not me, but Christ in me. Or to frame this Shitoistically in a way Augustine would likely not approve, I listen to birds and trees and wind and rain and let their spirits inform my spirit. Who is it that is being thus informed? Listen to birds and trees and wind and rain! What must that human self then do? What the birds and trees and wind and rain said!
Zuckerberg is a “scientist”. Musk is a “scientist”. Palantir is a mad “scientist”. We’re all wired up already. Complex systems are flipping switches on us every waking moment. We are the “objects” of many scientists’ attention, scientists out to maximize something or another. But Exodus is also at hand. You can hear it in the wind.
I can imagine the difficulty here, as it puts your theory of consciousness effectively in the bin.
The burden does not lie with demonstrating complete control, but wuth explaining why it would be physically impossible in principle.
We already know that direct stimulation of the brain can alter emotion, perception, urges, decision biases, pleasant sensations, and even the perceived timing of intentions. Researchers have induced movement intentions through cortical stimulation, altered hand-choice decisions via TMS, modulated emotional states, and influenced the subjective experience of agency itself. Would you like a list of studies and sources to contend with, or should we just stick with the thought experiment itself - I would hope anyone even on the fringes of philosophy can understand the idea of, and engage with, such a technique?
So, again. If a thought, perception, emotion, urge, or intention can be modified through neural intervention, then the question becomes: where precisely is the metaphysical barrier that prevents this becoming more comprehensive?
To say “we cannot currently do it” is one thing. To say it is physically impossible is a much stronger claim.
I emphasise again that all of contemporary neuroscience points in the opposite direction: that subjective experience is deeply dependent upon modifiable neural processes. The thought experiment simply extends that trajectory to its logical conclusion.
Sorry if you want to overrule it as somehow impossible, but I understand why.
There is much there I agree with, particularly regarding emergence and the limitations of simple mechanistic cause-and-effect explanations.
However, I am not sure emergence gets us out of the thought experiment. let’s suppose I grant the entirety of your argument… consciousness is emergent, selfhood is emergent, will is emergent. The scientist is not merely pulling a few switches but interacting with a vast, dynamic and irreducibly complex system. The question remains: if the scientist can influence every input to that system, every sensation, memory, perception, emotional state and even higher-order cognition, where precisely does the freedom survive?
I find myself wondering whether emergence is being asked to perform two contradictory roles at once. On the one hand, we are told it arises from interactions between components. On the other, it seems to be invoked as the place where intervention suddenly ceases to matter.
I totally accept that many phenomenon are emergent. Hurricanes, ecosystems, civilisation (inclusive of the OMBAOW destination), yet none become immune to influence simply because they are complex. Likewise, if what we call ‘will’ emerges from the activity of the system, then manipulating the activity of the system would appear to manipulate the will itself.
The scientist in my example is merely standing in for a deeper question: if the substrate can be controlled, what exactly remains beyond control…??
My response to this started emerging 3 decades ago when I encountered the work of Huston Smith. I’ll let Gemini serve up a Smith-salad to set that context.
In his philosophical and theological writings—most notably in Why Religion Matters—the great scholar of world religions Huston Smith mounted a sophisticated critique of modern science. Crucially, Smith was not “anti-science.” Instead, his target was scientism: the dogmatic, philosophical assumption that the scientific method is the only reliable path to truth, and that material entities are the most fundamental things that exist.
At the heart of Smith’s critique is a brilliant, tight definition of science that hinges directly on the concept of control, which he uses to map the strict limits of what science can tell us about reality.
Smith argues that if we strip away all the fluff, the hard core of science is defined by one mechanism: the controlled experiment.
Science as Power: Science is what replaced traditional societies with the modern, technological, industrial world. The engine of this massive transition was our ability to isolate variables, manipulate conditions, and force nature to answer specific questions.
The Mandate of Control: For a scientific fact to be an absolute “must-believe” truth, it must be verifiable through a setup where the researcher has rigorous control over the environment.
Because science relies entirely on the controlled experiment, Smith argues that science can only grasp things that we can successfully bring under our control.
This is where Smith applies his foundational critique. He introduces a simple, logical law of epistemology: The superior cannot be controlled by the inferior.
Smith views reality as a traditional hierarchy of being, moving upward from inanimate matter to life, to self-conscious human intelligence, and ultimately to the transcendent/divine (God, the Absolute, or Ultimate Reality).
▲ [ THE TRANSCENDENT / GOD ] --> Infinite, superior intelligence (Cannot be controlled)
│ [ HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS ] --> Self-aware, creative
│ [ ANIMAL / PLANT LIFE ] --> Organic, animate
│ [ INANIMATE MATTER ] --> Passive, predictable (Perfect for control)
Because the scientific method requires control to function, it is exquisitely, beautifully suited for looking downward or sideways at things inferior or equal to human intelligence—like rocks, chemical bonds, cells, and physical forces. We can manipulate them, so we can know them scientifically.
However, when science tries to look upward toward things that surpass human intelligence, its method breaks down completely.
Because of this requirement of control, Smith argues that science is inherently blind to several massive dimensions of human existence :
The Transcendents (God/The Divine): You cannot subject God or a transcendent spiritual reality to a double-blind, controlled laboratory experiment. We cannot control the Infinite; therefore, science cannot verify it. To say “science has found no evidence of God” is a meaningless statement to Smith, akin to a fisherman saying “there are no fish in the ocean smaller than two inches” when his net has two-inch holes.
Values and Meaning: Purpose, deep meaning, and moral values cannot be isolated in a test tube or measured with a caliper. Science can tell us what is (the descriptive), but it can never tell us what ought to be (the prescriptive).
Quality vs. Quantity: Science must reduce things to quantities (numbers, data points, wavelengths) to control and measure them. In doing so, it misses the raw quality of experience—the actual felt beauty of a sunset, the intrinsic experience of love, or the depth of mystical consciousnes s.
Huston Smith’s ultimate warning is that we have mistaken the limits of our method for the limits of reality. By letting scientism convince us that only what can be controlled and measured is real, we have flattened our worldview. We have traded a profound, vertical universe filled with qualitative depth and transcendence for a flat, horizontal world of mere material objects.
To Smith, recognizing the link between science and control is the key to liberating the human spirit: it allows us to deeply respect science for its power to manipulate matter, while keeping our minds open to the vast, uncontrollable realities of meaning, value, and the divine.
Justin,
Your thought experiment, logically, goes like this:
Imagine there is no such thing as free will.
Now, is there free will?
You’ve set up a completely hypothetical, untestable situation, where the subject has no free will, and asked “Where is the subject’s free will?”
This demonstrates absolutely nothing.
You’ve just demonstrated an inability to engage with thought experiments, or apparently to even understand how they work 
I disagree. Science explains a great many things outside ‘the controlled experiment’. We have theories like general relativity that explain astronomical phenomenon we cannot experiment with. We can predict the interactions between distant things that have been subject to zero direct experiment or control through science.
I find Smith’s hierarchy wholly subjective, a way of perceiving systems we use to observe and analyse the universe, rather than an objective description of the universe.
Quality vs. Quantity: Science must reduce things to quantities (numbers, data points, wavelengths) to control and measure them. In doing so, it misses the raw quality of experience—the actual felt beauty of a sunset, the intrinsic experience of love, or the depth of mystical consciousnes s.
Science ‘must’?
Reducing things to quantities is a methodology within science. A common one, granted. Science also examines things through interactions, processes, embedded interrelations, and so on. As for it missing the quality of experience - it is just a different language. Many equations within physics have a deep, intrinsic beauty that those familiar with them compare to sunsets or the like.
I don’t agree that Smith is properly doing science justice, although I’d agree insofar as the scientific method we know and the theories we have available do not explain everything.
Every thought experiment is different. And they are very frequently misunderstood.
The problem with your thought experiment is that you ask us to assume that is possible for something external to a brain to completely control what is going on in that brain. If that is possible then there can be no such thing as free will (which is what your thought experiment demonstrates).
But why should we believe it is possible?
Yes, but: https://history.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2020/01/2019Eddington-1.pdf
General relativity would just be speculative math without the observational alignment.
You think they put a shotgun to a cat to prove/disprove quantum uncertainty…?
Of course the thought experiment is possible. You claim to know neuroscience, and rely on it elsewhere.
It’s already proven that manipulation of the brain (passive and more active like with surgery) can change how we feel, perceive things and even higher cognitive processing.
You are being deliberately resistant to following along with even superficial engagement of this thought experiment because it fundamentally threatens your theory of consciousness.
Eh? Are you talking about Schrodinger’s Cat? If so, it is the most misunderstood thought experiment in history.
Of course the thought experiment is possible. You claim to know neuroscience, and rely on it elsewhere.
Nothing in neuroscience justifies the claim that it is possible to completely control somebody’s thoughts from outside. We have no scientific means of saying whether or not that is physically possible.
It’s already proven that manipulation of the brain (passive and more active like with surgery) can change how we feel, perceive things and even higher cognitive processing.
It does not follow that we can externally control everything going on in a mind/brain, does it?
Not even remotely. Your thought experiment depends on the assumption that it is technically possible to control everything going on in a brain from outside. This is directly equivalent to assuming there is no such thing as free will.
If that’s not what your thought experiment is assuming, then it isn’t telling us anything about free will.
Are you talking about Schrodinger’s Cat?
No, the one from Alice in Wonderland.
Nothing in neuroscience justifies the claim that it is possible to completely control somebody’s thoughts from outside. We have no scientific means of saying whether or not that is physically possible.
Replace the words ‘nothing’ with ‘many studies’ and remove the ‘no’ to gain better accuracy.
Or have you invented a new kind of ‘neuroscience’ that has different evidence like studies below?
It does not follow that we can externally control everything going on in a mind/brain, does it?
Re-read original post.
It’s not about if we can do it now.
It’s about principles. I really think you have no clue how thought experiments work
Your thought experiment depends on the assumption that it is technically possible to control everything going on in a brain from outside. This is directly equivalent to assuming there is no such thing as free will.
Indeed, it imagines the possibility of controlling everything going on in the brain from outside. Correct. What part of neuroscience overrules this from being possible? What part shows the limit that makes such a proposition as impossible?
So, to be clear. You are saying that because it is possible to influence what is going on in a brain from outside, it is also certain that we can completely control what is going on inside. Yes?
That word “completely” changes everything. If we take it out of the sentence, then free will is possible. If we leave it in, then free will is impossible.
Do you think there is scientific justification for including “completely” in that sentence?
Again. Where is the hard limit in neuroscience to say it is impossible to completely control what goes on in the brain from outside?
Your stance is like someone before the advent of planes arguing against the principle of flying.
Neuroscience is nowhere near being able to answer this question. From a scientific perspective, we have no idea. Which is exactly why you can’t just assume it is possible. The assumption that it is possible is equivalent to assuming that determinism is true (which also entails an assumption that 2PC is false).
None of this requires special neural interfaces. An iPhone will do!
Not neuroscience. You.
I’ve pointed to the sources and set the case.
It’s fine to disagree. What’s irritating me is continuously circling back without engaging the points whilst presenting an expert or objective position when in fact it’s purely your own subjective opinion (an illogical one, IMO).
And you also accuse others of bad faith communication, which strikes me as hypocritical.
Yes, it’s a valid point. Still a way off completely controlling…