Forced Moves Define Our Freedom

We are not controlled by a neural zombie within. We are controlled from the outside. But this control actually explains our freedom and is not a threat to it.

by Alva Noë

Streeter Lecka/Getty Images for DAGOC

A few weeks ago we discussed the anxiety that science now teaches us that (in James Atlas's words) the "choices we make in day-to-day life are prompted by impulses lodged deep within the nervous system" and that, therefore, in some sense, we are not really the authors of our own actions, responses, choices. We are governed by a zombie within. I return to this theme now. I suspect that Atlas, and the authors he was describing, have got it wrong. We are governed, but not by a neural zombie within. We are governed from without! The best way to find out what people will do is not to look into their hearts, or their brains; it's simply to understand the situation they are in. Social psychologists have shown this again and again. Who will be more likely to perform an ...