As several contributions to this volume make clear, the problem of free will engages us deeply because it seems central to our conception of who we are, our place in the world, and our moral intuitions.
Are we free agents? Can we be morally responsible for what we do? Philosophers distinguish these questions and have all the answers. Some say YES and YES (we are fully free, and wholly morally responsible for what we do). Others say YES and NO (certainly we are free agents - but we cannot be ultimately responsible for what we do). A third group says NO and NO (we are not free agents at all; a fortiori we cannot be morally responsible). A strange minority says NO and YES (we can be morally responsible for what we do even though we are not free agents).
Ordinarily, most of us don't consider the extent to which we are chemical creatures, which is probably as it should be. However, the recent influx of heroin into Massachusetts is a pointed reminder of our vulnerability to the addictive power of opiates. A number of unfortunate individuals, some of them adolescents, have received a crash course in the neurobiology of dependence, and its consequences aren't pretty.
Recent surveys, both in Canada and the US, have documented a dramatic rise in marijuana use among adolescents since 1992. This increase has caused much official consternation, and after four years of relative silence on the issue the Clinton administration is mounting a new, 195 million dollar media campaign against drugs, with adolescent marijuana use a major focus.
Ordinarily, we don’t suppose that people are to blame for their illnesses. That is, prior to discovery, many diseases develop independently of what the sick person does or thinks. This is why the disease model of addiction, widely espoused in the therapeutic community, is so controversial. Commonsense suggests that a person’s choice to start using an addictive substance is often voluntary, and often made with the knowledge, either vague or specific, of the risks of getting hooked.
To truly explain consciousness, we must find a convincing place for it in the natural world and ultimately in the scientific description of that world as expressed in physical, biological, and information theory. The default assumption when undertaking an explanation of consciousness should be that there is nothing ontologically special about it, nothing which sets it apart from the rest of nature as we presently conceive it.
