The Atlantic: The Brain on Trial

Raphael, said hee....
Go...
Converse with Adam...
As may advise him of his happie state,
Happiness in his power left free to will,
Left to his own free Will, his Will though free,
Yet mutable; whence warne him to beware
He swerve not too secure: tell him withall,
His danger, and from whom, what enemie,
Late fall'n himself from Heav'n, is plotting now...
-- Paradise Lost, Book V

Last night finally completed The Brain on Trial, an excerpt from a new book by neuroscientist David Eagleman published in this summer's The Atlantic, "the Ideas issue." The article opens with the revelation that Charles Whitman, still remembered in Texas for going up to the top of the UT Austin tower to shoot dozens of people, for no reason, actually wrote a letter before the act that tells us he thought something was wrong with his brain. An autopsy revealed a tumor.

The article pivots on a renewed look at the existence of "free will," finding that the legal system still assumes we are "practical reasoners" in most cases, but now building in more and more exceptions. The emerging science of brain imaging (see my pro-translation!) will likely be taken up more and more to identify ways to treat criminals and so reform the prisons.

Free will may exist (it may simply be beyond our current science), but one thing seems clear: if free will does exist, it has little room in which to operate. It can at best be a small factor riding on top of vast neural networks shaped by genes and environment [interjection: "mutable" said Milton. Guy knew his stuff!]. In fact, free will may end up being so small that we eventually think about bad decision-making in the same way we think about any physical process, such as diabetes or lung disease.