Seite - 122 - in Cyborg Mind - What Brain–Computer and Mind–Cyberspace Interfaces Mean for Cyberneuroethics

122 • Cyborg Mind 1. have different alternative possibilities from which to choose and to act; 2. have a responsiveness to reasons for appropriate actions; and 3. be the original and internal source or authors of any actions.94 It is also important that persons have the possibility to bring about whichever of the options they will, when they want, for the reasons they want, without being coerced or compelled in doing so, or otherwise controlled by other agents or mechanisms.95 Likewise, the American legal philosopher Robert Kane indicated that free will involves ‘the power of agents to be the ultimate creators (or originators) and sustainers of their own ends and purposes’.96 This entails the ability for persons to critically think through their desires, beliefs, reasons, as well as their intentions, and either reject or endorse them as the free authors of their actions.97 The will is then the effective desire that moves a person all the way to action without further consultation with any possible higher-order desires.98 In this regard, the political scientists Robert Blank explains that: ‘Rationality has come to mean the conscious, goal-oriented, reasoned process by which an individual, expressing and thus also revealing his or her prefer- ences, chooses a utility-maximizing action from among an array of alterna- tive actions.’99 However, it is also possible to consider free will as a concept whereby at the moment that a decision is made, given everything that has happened in the past, it is possible to reach a different decision. Some com- mentators even believe a nonphysical ‘soul’ is directing decisions.100 In light of these perspectives, developments in neurosciences have given weight to discussions relating to the existence of free will between two dif- ferent groups: those who support a physical and mechanistic explanation (that persons can be compared to machines controlled by their brains) and those who believe that human beings cannot be reduced to material bodies. As such, a number of different positions can be taken, which will now be examined. Incompatibilists Those who have an incompatibilist position believe that determinism (which accepts that all decisions are predetermined by the brain) is not compat- ible with free will. These include two further groups called Libertarians and Determinists. Libertarians Libertarians believe that free will exists and that determinism must therefore be false. Their basic position is that a person can only be free if he or she This open access edition has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license thanks to the support of Knowledge Unlatched. Not for resale.