Actor and director Lee Grant is well known for her quote, “I’ve been married to one Marxist and one Fascist, and neither one would take the garbage out.” With this phrase, she questions a widely accepted structure of a two-sided political spectrum, with each end being complete opposites, and encourages us to question whether there are more similarities than we think. One example is the influence of patriarchy and its views on the roles of women. I would like to explore another famous dichotomy where a woman’s perspective is missing, and deconstruct the debate of the existence (or absence) of free will.
Humans have a unique state of awareness of their own existence and consciousness, and this is proposed as being an essential part of free will. However, some neuroscientists, such as Michael Gazzaniga, have performed studies that lead them to believe that consciousness is no more than an illusion, and it cannot directly influence behaviour in real time. Absence of consciousness implies that free will is also an illusion, as our brains make decisions for us before we are consciously aware of them.
The results of this research underlie a philosophy called determinism. Determinism is the belief that all events in the universe, including human decisions, are inevitable and that they are simply the results of a chain of events. It rose in popularity around the time of the scientific revolution, around the early 1600s. Many philosophers have grappled with the intense discomfort of the idea that we might exist in a world in which we have no control over our decisions and actions. However, they neglected to notice the women right next to them, living out this thought experiment in the real world. In this era in Europe, the lives of women were strictly dictated by patriarchal rule.
A man might engage in a philosophy where he experiences a sense of what it might be like to be truly out of control, but this is not his experience in the world. He has the privilege to make his own decisions and autonomy over his body, not the other way around. The fear that the primary threat to free will is our own brains and bodies, could only come from people who have never had to experience a true lack of control and autonomy because of their bodies. This leaves us questioning why, supposing consciousness is in fact an illusion, determinists still do not consider free will to be a reality– if for all intents and purposes it is their reality?
Determinism can also easily be used to justify oppression, as it promotes the idea that humans are controlled by their bodies. Women for centuries have fallen victim to discrimination due to the belief that women’s role in society is completely defined by the capacity of their bodies, for sex, and for pregnancy.
The other side of the spectrum is no better. Mind-body dualism, a philosophy proposed by René Descartes, attempts to reconcile the seemingly deterministic world with our perception of free will. Mind-body dualism holds that the body (and the physical brain) is a mechanical creation, while the mind exists outside the body. Mind-body dualism asserts that our physical brains are a part of our body, not the immaterial realm of the mind. We have very detailed information on how brains and the nervous system are developed in utero, as well as the rest of the body– but what about consciousness? When does consciousness begin, and how are conscious beings born from an “unconscious” body? This question remains unanswered.
In addition, this idea of a clear divide between mind and body is not entirely representative of the lived experiences of women in the 17th century. The philosophy of mind-body dualism is very closely linked to the philosophy of rationalism (also supported by Descartes), which believes innate rationalism to be the primary source of knowledge. If rationalists believe that conscious structures such as logic exist innately, then they should exist innately in every being. However, women were not included as rational human beings, and this distinction between rational males and irrational females, of course, arose from their physical differences. This generates a contradiction, wherein men’s consciousness may align with mind-body dualism, as they are permitted to have separation from their conscious minds and their mechanical bodies, but women are restricted to one inextricable entity.
The question of whether humans have free will and whether consciousness is an illusion remains unanswered. But new, innovative hypotheses for investigating this topic cannot be developed without contributions from more diverse minds. Whether or not you personally consider yourself more of a determinist, or a mind-body dualist, sometimes a third perspective is helpful in reminding us that it’s not all black and white.
