Natural Sciences and/in Moral Theology: The Case of Free Will

Abstract

The issue of free will, supporting moral responsibility in various accounts of Catholic moral theology, is in a particular way situated at the crossroads of theological and non-theological disciplines. Because of its connection to philosophy, as well as to natural and empirical sciences, the topic enjoys growing interdisciplinary attention. Early studies in cognitive neuroscience of volition, inspired by the experiment of Libet (1983), suggest that free will is an illusion because our conscious intentions do not cause corresponding actions: these are initiated earlier by the unconscious brain processes. While this seems to conflict with fundamental anthropological and ethical assumptions, a closer look renders such a worry immature. The more traditional, pre-modern notion of what willing, intending and choosing actually means – and how does it relate to us having free will or not – proves largely intact by the Libet-style argumentation. At the same time, new developments within a multidisciplinary science of volition highlight several aspects of freedom and agency that could be central to the way humans produce actions and control their lives. Implications from these studies might provoke some reformulations on the side of theological ethics. They might also set forth some particular schools and traditions, such as Christian virtue ethics, as theologically preferable. All this on the condition that a kind of knowledge coming from natural sciences – which often already contains a measure of (theological) interpretation– can be seen as both relevant and integrable in theological methodology and insight. Anthropological and ethical realms strike as particularly suitable for such integration: the essential embodiment of personal agency definitely deserves more attention, also for clarifying its free and indeed moral predicate.