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Articles

Free Will in the Age of Neuromodulation

Nayef Al-Rodhan explores some of the implications of our increasing ability to chemically and technologically alter our moods and thoughts.

Are we really free, and responsible for our actions? Or are our choices determined by our environments, our upbringing, our genes, or other factors beyond our control? Debates about free will date back at least to the pre-Socratic philosophers of ancient Greece. Two and a half thousand years later, the tools of neuroscience permit us to study the notion of free will in a less speculative way. Moreover, neuropharmacology, which has developed in tandem with our ever-increasing knowledge of the brain, has evolved to modify and in some cases even create human experiences in ways once conceivable only in the abstract or in science fiction. ‘Neuromodulation’ refers to the alteration of specific neuronal activity by employing either drugs or technology in a targeted manner. The contemporary capacities for artificial neuromodulation raise many of the questions in the free will debate with renewed force.

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