Page - 126 - in Cyborg Mind - What Brain–Computer and Mind–Cyberspace Interfaces Mean for Cyberneuroethics

126 • Cyborg Mind Libet himself did not believe that these findings demonstrated that free will did not exist; instead, he argued that a person’s ability to make free decisions rested on his or her ability to exercise a conscious veto on any unconsciously generated action  – a so-called ‘free won’t’. If the ‘free-won’t’ veto existed, it would give the conscious self the final say in whether an unconsciously generated decision is acted upon. The Inexplicable Nature of Free Will Although neuroscience has made great progress during the last century in terms of understanding the human brain, its contribution to explaining the human mind remains limited. The minds of human persons transcend their brains or bodies and it is therefore impossible to reduce these minds to a purely scientific perspective. This means that free will may not be something that can be reduced to neurobiology. Albert Einstein (1879–1955), the German-American Nobel Prize winner in Physics, wrote in 1933: Honestly, I cannot understand what people mean when they talk about the freedom of the human will. I have a feeling, for instance, that I will something or other; but what relation this has with freedom I cannot understand at all. I feel that I will to light my pipe and I do it; but how can I connect this up with the idea of freedom? What is behind the act of willing to light the pipe? Another act of willing?115 For Einstein and many other scientists who endorse this view, there seems to be a difficulty in understanding the distinction between the physical mani- festation of human thoughts, beliefs and ideas in the brain, and the manner in which the thoughts, beliefs and ideas come to exist. They fail to accept that a difference in kind exists between the brain and the mind, and that any attempt to completely explain mental experiences solely in physical terms is doomed to failure. Though humans are psychosomatic unities, in which the brain and the mind are united, this does not mean that the mind can be reduced to biol- ogy; indeed, these aspects of the human being are all interdependent and mutually irreducible. Of course, human beings become aware that they are persons by means of the body, which, in a way, reveals the person. Moreover, many influences, both biological and environmental, will always have direct or indirect effects on the mental state, and consequently on the free will, of a person. Even concepts such as sentimental love are likely to have a strong biological basis. But free will cannot be reduced to biology, the social environment of a person or the effects of direct neuronal interfaces if these become more developed in 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.