A Short Essay on Free Will, the Brain, and the Illusion of Self
In modern civilizations, the idea of individual freedom is a cornerstone of social, political, and moral life. We take pride in our autonomy: in our ability to vote, to love, to speak freely, and to make decisions about our own bodies. This freedom, however, is predicated on a fundamental assumption—that we have control over ourselves. If one decides to pick up a glass of water, and they do so, it seems to be confirmation that one is free. I believe there is good evidence that this apparent freedom is a trick of neurobiology and its relation to subjective experience. This essay argues that what we commonly refer to as “free will” is neither provable nor real. Instead, freedom must be reimagined not as control over the body, but as a deeper recognition of what the body is—and isn't.
At the heart of freedom lies the question of control. If I can control my thoughts, my actions, and my decisions, therefore I am free. Consider voluntary action: lifting a hand, speaking a word, choosing between tea and coffee. These are often seen as definitive demonstrations of agency. Yet, if these actions are the result of prior causes—neural patterns, environmental inputs, or genetic predispositions—does it even make sense to constitute them as ‘free’?
As it often does, religious doctrine complicates the issue. If a divine creator has granted us free will, it is often to justify moral accountability: reward and punishment in the afterlife (if there ever was such a state). However, the existence of omniscience, or divine foreknowledge, raises troubling implications. If our choices are already known, genuine freedom cannot therefore be possible (under such a fatalist framework). Moreover, if we are made flawed—enslaved by passions, biases, and limited knowledge—then the claim that we are responsible for our actions becomes morally hollow, existentially empty, and ontologically ridiculous.
The problem persists even outside any religious metaphysical superstition, because even from a secular moral standpoint, belief in free will is necessary: Moral systems, legal frameworks, and interpersonal expectations all rest on the assumption that people can choose rightly or wrongly. Yet this assumption is metaphysically dubious. Scientific advances, particularly in physics and neuroscience, suggest a deterministic universe—a closed causal system in which every event, including human thought, is the consequence of preceding events. Animal brains and nervous systems, no matter the creature in question, are physical systems that are governed by natural, physical laws. Within the context of eliminative materialism especially, any powers ascribed to mentality itself completely disappears.
Modern neuroscience has uncovered a rich landscape of brain activity that undermines the idea of an autonomous self. Consider the temporoparietal junction (TPJ)—a neural crossroads responsible for integrating vision, touch, auditory signals, and balance. It is deeply involved in our sense of bodily ownership and spatial awareness. During REM sleep, TPJ activity is significantly reduced, perhaps explaining the dissociation and surreal bodily experiences during dreams. Similarly, the frontal lobes, especially the neocortex, act as a braking system for the brain—suppressing impulses and coordinating complex thought. These systems, however, are mostly offline during dreaming. What does it mean, then, that the brain can so easily turn off the very mechanisms that provide us with our sense of control?
More disturbingly, disorders like apotemnophilia (or xenomelia) reveal how fragile the concept of bodily control is. Individuals with this condition may feel that a limb does not belong to them. In experiments like the Rubber Hand Illusion, subjects are tricked into adopting a false limb as their own through coordinated sensory inputs. These cases suggest that even our most intimate sense—bodily ownership—is malleable, easily deceived, and largely unconscious.
Empiricism affirms that knowledge comes from sensory experience—and that experience is governed by natural laws. The sciences, especially physics and biology, operate under the assumption of causal closure: everything that happens is caused by prior states of affairs. Human beings, composed of atoms and molecules like everything else in the universe, must be governed by these same causal laws.
The brain is not exempt. The predictive power of neuroscience increasingly shows that what we call “decisions” are often made unconsciously before we are even aware of them. Studies measuring readiness potentials in the brain suggest that by the time we believe we've made a decision, our brain has already initiated the action. The most famous research demonstrating this comes from the lab of Benjamin Libet. If this is true, then the experience of making a choice is merely that—an experience, not an act of agency.
Philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty offers a phenomenological framework that challenges the Cartesian subject-object split. In his view, we do not have bodies—we are bodies. Consciousness is not something housed within the brain like a ghost in a machine, but rather ‘emerges’ (but even this concept is very problematic) from our embodied experience in the world. Yet, this bodily consciousness is fragmented and fluid.
The illusion of a unified self is further dismantled by the work of Iain McGilchrist. He argues that the left and right hemispheres of the brain offer fundamentally different perspectives on the world. The right hemisphere, or “the master,” is holistic, emotionally attuned, and socially intelligent. The left, “the emissary,” is analytical, theoretical, and more prone to overconfidence. The corpus callosum, the neural bridge between hemispheres, is largely inhibitory. This means the two halves of the brain not only specialize in different tasks—they suppress each other’s influence, creating the possibility of multiple, semi-independent centers of consciousness.
This leads to a radical conclusion: even within a healthy brain, there may be multiple islands of consciousness, some aware of one another, others not. The 19th (early 20th) century philosopher and psychologist William James draws attention to the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon as a demonstration of this fragmented awareness. You know you know something, but you cannot access it. Some part of your brain has the answer; the currently conscious “you” does not.
Returning to Aristotle’s De Anima, we find an ancient idea that may offer a modern resolution. Aristotle posits that the soul is the form of the body—that is, the totality of the body’s functional organization. Mental phenomena are not floating entities separate from the body but are emergent properties of bodily life. This functionalist view contrasts with Plato’s idealism and resembles today’s physicalism.
Rather than insisting on a metaphysical “self” that controls the body, we might reconceptualize the body as a system of relations and processes—neither entirely self-contained nor entirely autonomous. Consciousness, agency, and freedom are not properties of an inner ego, but modes of being in the world, arising from biological and environmental interplay.
If we examine the evidence—from neuroscience, philosophy, and empirical science—it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain belief in free will as traditionally conceived. We are not captains of our bodily ships, steering deliberately through life’s currents. We are, rather, the currents themselves—patterns of motion shaped by winds we do not control. This realization is not a call to despair, but a prompt to humility. It forces us to rethink morality, justice, and identity in a world where control is largely illusory. True freedom may not lie in asserting dominance over our bodies, but in recognizing the body as what we are—not what we own—and learning to live wisely within that constraint.
From the Buddhist perspective, mental events—thoughts, desires, impulses—are not conjured by a sovereign self. They arise unbidden, the product of prior causes and conditions, much like clouds forming in the sky. In this view, the core of practice is not the impossible task of choosing which thoughts appear, but the possible and crucial act of deciding how to relate to them. Freedom lies in the cultivation of awareness and skillful response: to witness anger without letting it dictate one’s actions, to notice craving without being consumed by it.
Dennett’s compatibilism complements this stance by reframing free will in terms of the capacities that matter for moral responsibility: rational reflection, the ability to deliberate, to consider reasons, and to act in accordance with one’s considered values. Even if our mental life unfolds within a causal web, what makes us “free” is that we can reflect on our impulses, endorse some, reject others, and reshape our future behavior accordingly.
Viewed together, these two traditions converge on a practical, grounded account of freedom. We do not control the arising of thoughts (as Buddhism reminds us), but through reflective capacities (as Dennett emphasizes), we can govern our responses. This form of freedom is neither mystical nor illusory; it is a cultivated skill—a disciplined interaction between awareness, finely-tuned attention, and deliberation. In this synthesis, the self is not an omnipotent originator of thought, but an active participant in the ongoing process of selecting, shaping, and enacting intentions.
