It is not your conscious mind that is supposed to make “free will” decisions, but some structure or something much more basic and primitive that all creatures large and small share with what could reasonably be called a “brain”: a search for pleasure; pain avoidance mechanism: the brain’s “pleasure center”. Faced with one or another choice, this pleasure center will make you, involuntarily or at least unconsciously, choose the option that gives you maximum pleasure and minimum pain or discomfort or anguish. So, faced with the choice of sitting down to eat a juicy freshly cooked steak or raw meat rotten with worms, your pleasure center says what you will choose, not what your free will chooses: the steak.
There is no such thing as free will because free will almost always involves making a choice among equals, and that never really happens. Free will is like saying you have a choice between having a hot dog and beer in the seventh inning at the ball game or a hot dog and beer in the seventh inning at the ball game. Closer to reality, there is generally a clear enough distinction between choosing this and choosing that that the final choice is a no-brainer.
There is no neural pathway that leads to a “T” junction in which neural bits and pieces are forced to make decisions to the left or right. Rather, there are two (or more) parallel neural pathways that emerge in many cases from the memory data bank containing your options. All those options are unique and different and do not have the same possible value for you, or rather for your brain. All decisions that arise between these options are relative because the options are relative in terms of degrees of good or bad. You can choose between wine, women or songs; a choice between harem, wealth, or political power; a choice between hanging up, the electric chair or firing squad.
What is your brain always trying to maximize? The brain tries to maximize pleasure and good times and comfort. The brain tries to minimize unpleasant things, bad times, pain, discomfort, etc. In your choice between wine, women and song, one of the three will appear to be the best of all possible options and one of the three will be the worst of the three options. The same applies to the choice between a harem, wealth, or political power. The same goes for the choice between hanging up, the electric chair, or the firing squad.
Your brain has a ‘pleasure center’ that always chooses the most pleasant option out of a range of options. When you consider an option, often based on previous experience, a certain burst of neural transmitters (pleasure chemicals or other pain-blocking chemicals) goes to the pleasure center of your brain. Another option provides another wave of chemicals or pleasure particles or whatever. Whichever option delivers the most pleasure particles to your brain’s pleasure center wins. You ‘choose’ that option. It may seem like free will, but it’s the brain’s primitive pleasure center that rules. This applies even if the cosmos is a deterministic cosmos.
Also, your brain has a center of repulsion that works to move you away from disgusting things and towards pleasant things. You may innately respond to avoiding disgusting things, but when comparing two things, one will be relatively more disgusting relative to the other. The options are all relative; never the same. Consider the five senses:
View: You are faced with the option (if you are a man) of dating a Playboy pin-up or an 80-year-old woman. If you’re a woman, your choice is between a 20-year-old male model or a pot-bellied, bald, cocky / dirty 80-year-old. Or perhaps you have the option of viewing optical illusions or images of decomposing corpses.
Sound: You are faced with the choice between an hour of listening to a jackhammer, nails scraping a slate, a human scream, an album of Beatles songs, or a Mozart symphony.
Smell: You are faced with the choice between enduring an hour smelling rotten garbage, the classic smell of rotten egg, ammonia, a rose, or a salty sea spray.
Taste: You have to try vinegar, a roach, meat stuffed with worms, beer or pepperoni.
Touch: You have a choice: one hour of a heating pad, one hour of acupuncture, one hour of tickling, or one hour of a very cold shower.
Now consider some of the following examples of so-called aspects of free will that could actually be better explained by referring to the pleasure center of your brain: self-control; planning; rational choice; change your behavior; initiative and a catch-all ‘just for the fun of it’.
# You could decide to become a politician because the idea of sticking your nose in the trough really appeals to your pleasure center.
# You may decide to do something that you would rather not do now, because your reward will consequently be greater in the future for your present sacrifice.
# Whatever you decide, you decide because that choice maximizes your pleasure, although that could mean doing something you really don’t want to do just because your status will rise if you do.
# Some people can do bad things like rape, rob a bank, murder, etc. because that activity rewards your brain’s pleasure center more than not doing that bad activity.
# You can decide to raise your right arm, as the same act shows you that you are in control and shows yourself that you can do it if you want to. That control over your own body gives you pleasure.
# Why do women love to go shopping for clothes and especially shoes almost all the time, even if they don’t need more clothes and more shoes? Because the shopping experience positively stimulates the pleasure center of your brain.
# If a $ 500 dress brings more pleasure than a $ 50 dress, you will buy the $ 500 dress. However, if buying the $ 500 dress will cause a lot of conflict at home, you may not buy the $ 500 dress If avoiding disputes gives you more pleasure than the $ 500 dress. Then you can go for the $ 50 dress or no dress.
# Why addicts of any kind (drugs, alcohol, gambling, tobacco, etc.) – Are you always looking for another solution? They do it to caress the pleasure center of your brain.
# How hot do you like your shower? Probably as hot as what gives you the most pleasure given the feedback you get from your brain’s pleasure center.
# Do you get more satisfaction or pleasure if you hit on purpose or try (but fail) to hit a home run? Definitely the last.
# Buying a home is a big decision, so you really want to get the most out of your brain’s pleasure center.
# Taking the short, direct route is more enjoyable than the long, winding route because it is faster and cheaper, unless of course your goal is sightseeing.
# Sexual fantasies stimulate the pleasure center in a way that mental stimulation does not to complete your tax return, but still file your tax return, as going to jail for tax evasion / evasion is a even more unpleasant alternative.
Now let’s say you have the option of wearing a red tie or a blue tie to work. Are the ties the same? No, not if the red tie was a gift from your mother that you like and the blue tie a gift from your aunt that you don’t like so much. Also, the red tie tends to go better with your wardrobe than the other, and the red tie might have attracted a snap of an attractive woman at work, while the blue tie never has. So what tie are you going to wear? Which tie has the potential to bring maximum pleasure to your brain’s pleasure center?
What about unknown / untested options?
Even when making a choice between two things you’ve never experienced before, there will still be enough distinction, of distinctive clues, to decide the outcome. For example, consider two vacation spots that have never been tried before. A never-before-tested potential vacation destination is a country that you find a bit less desirable compared to the untested and potential number two vacation destination in another country that you identify with a little more. Or perhaps option number one vacation costs more than option number two vacation for the same set of experiences. Your pleasure center rewards you getting more vacation benefits for your vacation money. As another example, take two plates of untouched food. Maybe one just sounds more appealing or maybe one has ingredients that you like a little less or are unfamiliar with compared to the competitor’s dish of your choice. [This reminds me of our local restaurant/food reviewer/critic where you (or at least I) need a gastronomic dictionary in order to understand the nature of the food dish she’s endorsing.] You are adventurous but not that adventurous and your pleasure center tells you that discretion is the best part of value.
What about animal “free will”?
Laboratory animals are known to keep pressing a lever to provide a constant stream of pleasurable stimuli to the pleasure center of their own brain.
Now I have two cats that face every day choosing from three different cat food bowls. How do cats decide? Do you have free will of choice? No, I suspect not because they opt for any plate of food that provides maximum enjoyment to their brain’s pleasure center. They, at any time, like a bowl over the other two.
In winter, my cats will look for the warmest place they can find, be it a sunny spot, under the quilt, on the lap, even lying directly on the gas duct in hot weather. Why? Yes, it is about stimulating your brain’s pleasure center.
Even if you don’t agree with all of the above, you cannot solve the free will problem by arguing that you cannot go back in time to make an alternative decision. You have a chance, a decision, and you can never be absolutely sure that it was not the pleasure center of your brain that made the decisions.
