Earlier this year, University of Toronto psychiatrist Ralph Lewis wrote a two-part series at Psychology Today titled “The Strongest Neuroscience Arguments in the Free Will Debate” (here and here).

He looked at Mitchell (yes) and Sapolsky (no), both of whom published serious books on the topic in 2023. And he concluded,

For now, for practical purposes, given our current level of incomplete understanding of the complexities of the brain’s decision-making processes, and our inability to predict human behaviors in most situations, we might as well regard ourselves as having free will—or rather, degrees of freedom.

We do know that our brain has highly evolved systems for self-control—even for those of us who struggle with this relatively more than others, and even if the ultimate reasons for our choices are not fully knowable to us. It would be foolish to be fatalistic and passive and not attempt to control our actions and choices at all.

Still, we would do well to be acutely aware that whatever degrees of freedom we may have are far more constrained than we realize. February 7, 2024

Now, the remarkable part is what Lewis concedes, not what he qualifies, especially considering his other views. Lewis is, at least on most topics, a Darwinist. He tells us that one of his interests is “the physical and evolutionary basis of consciousness” and his signature book is Finding Purpose in a Godless World (Prometheus 2018).

Here’s where it gets complex: If he sees consciousness as of purely physical origin, he is a physicalist (that is, a materialist, full stop). Then it’s difficult to escape from the objection lodged against free will by both theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder and California Institute of Cosmology cosmologist Sean Carroll: If physics rules, there is no free will.

Quantum physics might make a difference but it is still physics, not magic. If we are just computers made of meat, we are still just physics.

But, all that said, it is becoming obvious that there is considerable evidence for free will, as neuroscientist Cristi L. S. Cooper explains in an excerpt here from Minding the Brain (Discovery Institute Press, 2023).

So Lewis comes down, prudently, in the middle

He is saying, essentially, that something that is not supported by physics somehow evolved. But surely that is not the position a physicalist would wish to be in. Consider some other things he has said in the same venue:

Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. The gradualism of evolution has explained and dissolved life’s mysteries—life’s seemingly irreducible complexity and the illusion that living things possess some sort of mysterious vitalizing essence. So, too, evolution is likely to be key to demystifying the seemingly inexplicable, ethereal nature of consciousness.

“Learning May Be the Key to the Evolution of Consciousness,” (November 3, 2022)

and

We have already known for a long time from clinical neurology and from my own field, clinical psychiatry, that without a shadow of a doubt there is no aspect of the mind that is not entirely the product of, and utterly dependent on, the physical brain. Disruption, disassembly or enhancement of brain circuitry (subtle or major) can radically alter any aspect of the mind. And yet the mystery of how exactly the brain produces consciousness has remained unexplained …

How can a purely physical thing feel like something? Surely consciousness is some kind of otherness? Perhaps consciousness is an as-yet undiscovered fundamental property of the universe, pervading the universe like electromagnetic radiation? If so, perhaps it exists ‘out there,’ independent of the physical brain, just requiring a brain to receive and transmit it—like a radio in relation to radio waves? I have explained elsewhere why such ideas are regarded by mainstream scientists as utterly incompatible with what science actually tells us. The prevalence and popularity of such folk-science ideas point to the failure to translate modern neuroscience insights into terms accessible to the general educated public.

“What Actually Is Consciousness, and How Did It Evolve?,” October 7, 2023

Probably, the best way to understand what’s happening here is that the evidence from science is not confirming physicalism. That’s big news but it is not the sort of big news that we should expect to be treated in a straightforward way. If anything, it will probably be difficult to get a serious discussion going about it for some time.

But, as Michael Egnor and I will detail in our upcoming book, The Immortal Mind (Worthy June 3, 2025), many similar instances are cropping up — things that shouldn’t be true if physicalism (materialism) is correct.

You may also wish to read: How neuroscience disproved free will and then proved it again. In this excerpt from Minding the Brain (2023), neuroscientist Cristi L. S. Cooper discusses the discovery of “free won’t” — the decision NOT to do something.

and

Modern neuroscience does NOT disprove free will. If you’ve heard the latest from pop science, you probably “know” that science disproves free will. Actually, after decades of research on the topic, it doesn’t.