Self and the Paradox of Free Will

Abstract

The belief in the freedom of human will has experienced a resurgence of interest in the past years, following important contributions from the physiological study of decision-making and voluntary control of action. Neuroscience shows that the brain initiates and determines the course of motor actions even before the ego becomes aware of them. This result flies in the face of our intimate conviction that we are in control of what we do and seems to undermine the very foundation of our society based on moral responsibility. In this article, we argue that if free will is an illusion, it is a necessary and paradoxical one that stems from a resolution of opposites, determinism and indeterminism, control and choice. In this light, the psychological experience of free will is grounded in the process whereby egoconsciousness does not break its bond from all determination, but becomes subordinate to something greater than itself that Jung called the Self. We review Jung's position on free will, further illustrating it with a physical phenomenon inspired by quantum mechanics. In a second step, we report on modern studies on the quantum structure of cognition, which supports Jung's insight that there is an ineradicable level of indeterminism in the psyche, a creative place within us which places us in the vicinity of the wisdom of nature.