Sadly, I think we should take this article seriously. Not because I agree with Mr Holden's position but because what is now called neurosecience poses some real threats to individual freedom. There is a very strong deterministic streak in most reporting of neuroscience research and this streak is starting to become evident in some government departments in Australia. I have listened recently to bureaucrats from departments concerned with children, their safety and development, with increasing alarm. They all seem to want to use neuroscience research to intervene in the lives of families, not to overcome instances of abuse but to modify the effects of family circumstances, both genetic and environmental on children. I regard this as a gross breach of human rights and a distinct threat to our freedom, driven by the best of intentions but based on half-understood science.

I agree with the basic premise of this essay. It's a topic that should receive a lot more public discussion. Free will is the ultimate compassion killer.

The 'free will' or self-determinism premise fits neatly into the western economic and political arenas - in which those at the top of the pole must be there because of their own 'choices'. On this basis, global free trade is the ultimate expression of universal free will, and protectionism merely the manifestation of the weak. Ditto libertarian self-reliance versus the welfare state; small government versus big government; the deserving rich versus the undeserving poor.

Also, the rise and rise of the 20th century counselling industry drew much of its methodology from the free-will premise - in the form of 'taking responsibility for' and 'owning' one's feelings or actions; there are no 'victims', only 'survivors' etc etc. Not always the best therapy for people genuinely damaged by childhood abuse.

You might at least have defined free will, Brian, so that we would have some idea of what you are talking about.

Jung made a remark which is no doubt pertinent to your train of thought: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

I agree with the author to a point. Our will is far less free then
we think. Hormones, ligands, neurotransmitters all have an input
at the subconcious level. We can easily rationalise away what
we feel and claim it as "free". But how free was it really?

Take a woman yearning to have a child. All her genetic input is
affecting the final outcome. Those deep instincts are not just wished
away.

Take the sex drive of a young man, compared to an old fart.
Testosterone clearly has an input in the decision making process.

The point is, we might have a will, but its not as free as we
imagine it to be. We are simply unaware of the effect of the many
chemical inputs, at the level of the subconcious.

Brian, your article is an accurate discussion of the way our genetic inheritance and environment combine to create an unconscious self; the unconscious self that as Jung noted, we need to understand before we can be free.

And the way that we can develop free will is by understanding our motivations, attitudes and behaviour. We can change these things by encouraging our brains to develop new neurons and new connections. We can seek out new information and challenge ourselves by reading things that we don't agree with. We can argue with our unconscious and try and be rational and that is the way to develop free will.

An interesting book with examples of how our unconscious determines our behaviour is "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell.

Another good read on brain and mind is "The Brain That Changes Itself" by Norman Doidge.

Bugsy, dogs are not programmed to crap on the carpet. It's quite easy to train a dog, even a dog damaged by cruel owners, to do the right thing.

It may an old argument, and that is because it is so true that many pilosophers have made that realisation without the new scientific evidence that now proves the argument is true. And the fact is that because of the combination of their particular brain chemistry, and their particular environment, some people don't even understand that they are able to make choices.

And King Hazza why are some people just weak-willed? Genes is it? God made them that way? And if we slap them down, call them stupid and lazy, they will pull their socks up and be a great bloke like you who knows it all and clearly should have been the model for the human race.

Mollydukes, I hardly care if people are weak-willed or not;
All I'm doing is debunking a mindset of self-pitying and outward-blaming thought that some people frequently use to justify their own misbehavior.

Especially when people insist that poor self-regulation is a rock-solid fact of humanity- rather than the result of an under-achieving individual who is simply failing to hold themselves to standards plenty of other people do, without even trying.