Do we have free will?

Question

A middle-aged Virginian man with no history of any misdemeanour began to stash child pornography and sexually molest his 8-year-old stepdaughter. Placed in the court system, his sexual behaviour became increasingly compulsive. Eventually, after repeatedly complaining of headaches and vertigo, he was sent for a brain scan. It showed a large but benign tumour in the frontal area of his brain, invading the septum and hypothalmus - regions known to regulate sexual behaviour.

After removal of the tumour, his sexual interests returned to normal. Months later, his sexual focus on young girls rekindled, and a new scan revealed that bits of tissue missed in the surgery had grown into a sizeable tumour. Surgery once again restored his behavioural profile to "normal".

This case renders concrete the issue of free will. Did the man have free will? Was he responsible for his behaviour? Can a tumour usurp one's free will?

Answer 1

In the case you present, the tumor usurped the man's free will as surely as a spastic does not choose to suffer seizures. No person who is by reason of organic or psychological defect unable to conform his actions to the law may be held legally responsible for such failure, although commitment to a mental health facility until and unless he is found mentally healthy is permissible.

Answer 2

The example you pose isn't really as thorny as it appears. The one central fallacy that mars all psychological and psychiatric thought is the reliance placed on observation and speech. How do we know the tumor caused the behavior? Well he says so and there was no history that could be observed. Of course we have only his word that he's never done it before, never had child pornography before, and never harbored that obsession before without acting on it. Because we can never see what goes on inside somebody else's head we can never truly know the truth about these matters. Perhaps he'll never return to this kind of vile evil again; time will tell. But that might be nothing more than his terror at what happened when he was caught. He might only have been 'scared straight' and is grasping at the tumor like a get-out-of-jail free card.

But leaving that aside, even if this obsession and behavior were entirely caused by this tumor, how exactly did it control the rest of his behavior. Surely there was a moment when he first noticed that little girls suddenly became sexual objects to his mind, or at least a realization of how drastically things had changed. While I can easily imagine such a realization would be terribly shamedful, I myself would walk in front of the nearest bus 5 minutes later. At least he could've gone to a psychiatrist or priest or reasonable fascimile thereof--in other words tried to get help before the obsession ran its course. While I can buy the idea that a tumor or a metal bolt can change a mind drastically, I find it unlikely that all rational thought vanishes while leaving the person able to maintain a facade of normalcy. There are too many different changes in too many directions for the tumor to be the entire cause.

That said, I certainly (I suppose obviously) believe in free will. The idea that all our choices are illusions provided by blind evolution is both wrong and preposterously silly. Those who believe that everything is as God wills are also up in the night. The very fact that we can ask the question is evidence of free will, and when you look at the myriad choices that are required of us daily, free will becomes obvious. What instinct makes me opt for ranch dressing instead of thousand island? Why won't I eat guacamole but love every other kind of Mexican food?

Kitchen examples are always best, because food is something everbody can relate to, and something that everybody makes choices about every single day. It is impossible to believe that insticts make us prefer one food over another when they're equally bad for you. Think about it.

Answer 3

Of course we have the _capability_ for free will, but circumstances--external or internal--may prevent us from exercising it.

The fact is that our brain is essentially an electrochemical neural net, and its "normal" functioning can be altered by damage from physical trauma (like this man's cancer), by chemicals (such as hormonal imbalances or drugs), or by some areas in the brain being mis-wired (such as with some mental illnesses or genetic defects).

The question of personal responsibility is a tough one. If a man drinks & drives and injures someone as a result, he is responsible because he deliberately impaired himself. The fact that he may not have intended to harm another is irrelevant. With a tumor, obviously the man had no say in that. I think he should be held responsible at least to some degree, but maybe not fully, for the same reason we now consider it immoral to execute retarded people who didn't really comprehend what they were doing.

Free will is not an either/or thing. It is possible to have it in degrees, and for it to vary over time or by circumstances. The best we can do is to try and live so as not to decrease our own free will. (Which is one of the reasons I'm a teetotaler.)

Answer 4

In a sense, yes, the tumor could have usurped his will to control his urges. Acknowledging any physicality of how behavior is controlled makes it so that "free will" is necessarily always limited.

However, that's irrelevant to the general question of personal accountability for crime, because a clear line cannot be drawn between "willful" behavior and non-willful. We have to be treated as though we each have direct control over our own behavior, barring cases where organic causative illness is provable, and criminals should be given the opportunity for rehabilitation through appeal to their will. There may be an organic basis for desire to change and for morality -- but since we don't often understand it at all, I think we must think of each other as willful beings. If we're automatons, we're still moral ones.

Otherwise you're looking at some very confusing and scary ethical territory.

Answer 5

Hmmmmm......great question. Looking at from the standpoint of the "common" beliefs re: God and free will I would say no, in this case because of a physical problem he did not clearly have the "freedom" of choice. So yes the tumor usurped his free will.

However, I have a different point of view than most.....I believe we choose to come here to grow our spirit and so we choose the circumstances (sometimes undesirable challenging circumstances) which will help us to grow. From that standpoint, maybe (before he was actually born) he chose to experience a physical illness during his life here. In this case, his free will would not have been usurped.

Answer 6

The Brain is a very complex Organ.
If damaged bad enough one can forget things, or become paralyzed. It sounds like this man was influenced by this tumor. We have no control over our brains, the brain has complete control over you. If the brain was altered in anyway we can do nothing. We cant help it if we become Paralyzed as a result of a brain injury. We cant help it if some part of our brain does not function correctly. I would say that he should be Equitted, he had no control of himself.

Answer 7

We certainly have free choice. Sexual behaviour can be regulated by force of will. This guy knew that assaulting an 8 year old child was prohibited by every moral and legal code.
So yes, the guy was fully responsible.

Answer 8

Free will is free will. Even if the outcome is detrimental to society. If we accept free will that is hurtful to the general public is another matter.
This man had free will (tumor and all) and we decided to take away his free will by operating on him. Thats a decision society as a whole takes.
Or are we going o say only the perfect human being (in our eyes) has free will?

Answer 9

YES we do have free will.
And this case does NOT, in any way, say anything to prove or even imply that we don't.

WHY am I saying this?

ONE case!
Possibility of:
Skewed facts!
Skewed or corrupt studies so that MONEY can be made from operations and pharmaceuticals!
Placebo effect!
Lack of truth regarding what they really knew about the man before he was caught!
Time too short between the second operation and now....
(If "surgery once again restored his behavioural pattern to 'normal,'" we'd need a good deal of TIME to see, if that's true, or it's "normal," because the man is still recuperating from open brain surgery, and if he's being more careful about his behavior being found out--laying low, so to speak....)

And:

1) We don't really know how "normal" the man was before his porn was discovered and the child molestation came out; we don't really know how he was BEFORE he was "discovered" again. The fact that he had "no HISTORY of midemeanour," doesn't mean there was no behavior that warranted it. How many driving tickets does a person get for violating the laws of the road? The U.S. figure says approximately 80 violations for each ticket earned.

2) So, who says he wasn't doing this "behavior all along" without getting caught?

3) Also, how many children out there have been molested by people who never got caught? Zillions of child porn users aren't caught.

3) The hypothalmus and the septum rule just about everything. What other SUDDEN behaviors did this man have--which also SUDDENLY disappeared after surgery? Did he suddenly start drinking, smoking, climbing trees, eating with his hands--get my drift?

4) Sooooooo: I'm thinking placebo effect, meaning everyone HOPED this would change his behavior; HE thought it might, but it simply didn't; he was caught again--they were all now on the lookout for him.

5) Second operation he went through with to keep out of jail and make everyone think he'd changed--so far nothing says he still isn't misbehaving or wanting to (and of course, because he was getting dizzy and having headaches again). He's more careful and more afraid now. And, he, himself, may want to change, and for awhile is able to do so, because the placebo effect said he would....because perhaps the doctors said what you stated,

"We're sure that when we remove this brain tumor, you'll be all fine and dandy, " and he believed that for awhile, himself.

Also, you speak of "history" of the man, but A HUGE NUMBER OF child molesters don't NEED to go to children or EVEN start to think of this until mid and later life--too long to explain here, but let me say that the greatest % of child molestation is done by grandfathers.

6) This ONE CASE, therefore says nothing about free will to me. It says a lot about people CREATING a study to get published, about the MONEY that could be made, if corrupt doctors and hospitals get people thinking that all they need are brain operations to rid themselves of bad behavior, and it says that POSSIBLY the man actually hoped to be better--like all the people who get better from placebo pills--but he couldn't keep it up, because it was a lie, in the first place: sugar pills or operations, in this case.

7) And, lastly, were it even true, one case cannot cause any scholarly person to make any concrete theory regarding free will, or just about anything else.

I hope this doesn't sound harsh, but I have worked for years within the medical community, and I know about all the bad meds and the un-needed operations that are created for profit and profit, alone--there's much money involved here!!!

I know well about all sorts of falsified "studies" printed in medical journals, just for the sake of getting published--by your spelling, I take it that you're from England, and The Lancet is a great medical journal, but we have many here not much more thorough than tabloids--in fact what you describe sounds tabloidal to this reader. Hmmmmm. Where was this study published, I wonder....

I know that doctors still use stents, for example, though they've been proven to be useless; it's the opening up of the veins and the clearing of plaque that works, not the stents, but a zillion dollars goes to the stent-makers, and doctors get another zillion more for putting them in.

P.S. Also the TIME between the first operation and the second was only months; he was still not feeling all that great after open brain surgery, so to me, he simply started up again, after beginning to heal and before needing another operation for his vertigo and headaches.

We do KNOW that a tumor on the brain causes those symptoms, but behavioral symptoms, no.
.

Answer 10

What we do is because of our environment. I think maybe that everything is cause and effect, and that none of us have real control over a situation. We don't know what we are doing till we actually do it, then we learn from it. Maybe that's the fate that we live out and don't even know it.