It is not your conscious mind that makes supposedly ‘free will’ decisions, but some structure or something much more basic and primitive that all creatures, great and small, share with what could reasonably be called a ‘brain’: a search for pleasure; pain avoidance mechanism: the “pleasure center” of the brain. Faced with one or the other choice, this pleasure center will make you choose involuntarily or at least unconsciously the option that gives you the most pleasure and the least pain, discomfort or anguish. So, faced with the choice of sitting down to a freshly cooked juicy steak or rotten raw meat complete with maggots, your pleasure center says what you will choose, not what your free will will choose: the steak.

There is no such thing as free will because free will almost always involves making a choice between equals and that never really happens. Free will is like saying you have the choice of having a hot dog and beer in the seventh inning at the ball game or a hot dog and beer in the seventh inning at the ball game. Closer to the truth, there is usually a fairly clear distinction between choosing this and choosing that, that the final choice is a no-brainer.

There is no such thing as a neural pathway that leads to a “T” junction where neural bits and pieces are forced to make left or right decisions. Rather, there are two (or more) parallel neural pathways that emerge in many cases from the memory’s database of options. All those options are unique and different and do not have the same possible value for you, or rather for your brain. All decisions that arise between these options are relative because the options are relative in terms of degrees of goodness or badness. You can choose between wine, women or songs; a choice between a harem, riches, or political power; a choice between the gallows, the electric chair or the firing squad.

What is your brain always trying to maximize? The brain tries to maximize pleasure and good times and comfort. The brain tries to minimize unpleasant things, bad times, pain, discomfort, etc. In your choice between wine, women, and songs, one of the three will appear to be the best of all possible options, and one of the three will appear to be the worst of all three options. The same applies to the choice between a harem, riches or political power. The same goes for the choice between the gallows, the electric chair, or the firing squad.

Your brain has a ‘pleasure center’ that always chooses the most pleasurable option when faced with a range of options. When you consider an option, often based on prior experience, a certain rush of neural transmitters (pleasure chemicals or other pain-blocking chemicals) goes to the pleasure center of your brain. Another option provides another burst of chemicals or pleasure particles or whatever. Whichever option delivers the most pleasure particles to your brain’s pleasure center wins. You ‘choose’ that option. It may seem like free will, but it’s the brain’s primitive pleasure center that rules. This applies even if the cosmos is a deterministic cosmos.

Also, your brain has a repulsion center that acts to move you away from repulsive things and towards pleasant things. You may innately respond to avoiding icky things, but when comparing two things, one will be relatively more icky relative to the other. Choices are all relative; never the same. Consider the five senses:

View: You are faced with the choice (if you are a man) of dating a Playboy pin-up girl or an 80-year-old woman. If you’re a woman, your choice is between a 20-year-old male model or a pot-bellied, balding, codger/dirty 80-year-old. Or maybe you have the option of seeing optical illusions or images of decomposing corpses.

Sound: You are faced with a choice between an hour of listening to a jackhammer, fingernails scratching a blackboard, a human scream, an album of Beatles songs, or a Mozart symphony.

Smell: You are faced with a choice between putting up with an hour smelling like rotting garbage, the classic smell of rotten eggs, ammonia, a rose, or salty sea spray.

Taste: You have to try either vinegar, a roach, wormy meat, beer, or pepperoni.

Touch: You have the choice: an hour of heating pad, an hour of acupuncture, an hour of tickling or an hour of very cold shower.

Now consider some of the following examples of supposed aspects of free will that might actually be better explained by reference to your brain’s pleasure center: self-control; planning; rational choice; change their behavior; initiative and a mixed bag ‘just for the hell of it’.

# You may decide to become a politician because the idea of ​​sticking your nose in the trough really appeals to your pleasure center.

# You might decide to do something you’d rather not do now, because your reward will be correspondingly greater later down the road from your current sacrifice.

# Whatever you decide, you decide because that choice maximizes your pleasure, though that might mean doing something you really don’t want to do just because your status will rise if you do.

# Some people may do bad things like rape, rob a bank, murder, etc. because that activity rewards your brain’s pleasure center more than not doing that bad activity.

# You might decide to raise your right arm as the very act shows you are in control and shows yourself that you can do it if you want to. That control over your own body gives you pleasure.

# Why do women love to go shopping almost all the time to buy clothes and especially shoes, even if they don’t need more clothes and more shoes? Because the shopping experience positively stimulates your brain’s pleasure center.

# If a $500 dress brings more pleasure than a $50 dress, you will buy the $500 dress. Although, if buying the $500 dress will cause a lot of conflict at home, you might not buy the $500 dress if avoiding conflict gives you more pleasure than the $500 dress. So you could go for the $50 dress or the no dress.

# Why do addicts of any kind (drugs, alcohol, gambling, tobacco, etc.) – always look for another solution? They do it to stroke the pleasure center of your brain.

# How hot do you like your shower? Probably as hot as what gives you maximum pleasure, given the feedback you get from your brain’s pleasure center.

# Do you get more satisfaction or pleasure from striking out on purpose or trying (but failing) to hit a home run? Definitely later.

# Buying a house is a big decision, so you really want to maximize stroking your brain’s pleasure center.

# Taking the short, direct route is more pleasant than the long, winding road because it’s quicker and cheaper, unless the goal is sightseeing, of course.

# Sexual fantasies stimulate the pleasure center in a way that mental stimulation does not when completing your taxes, but you still do your taxes since going to jail for tax evasion/evasion is still an alternative more unpleasant.

Now let’s say you have the choice of wearing a red tie or a blue tie to work. Are the ties the same? No, not if the red tie was a gift from your mother that you like and the blue tie was a gift from your aunt that you don’t like that much. Also, the red tie might go better with your wardrobe than the other, and the red tie might have attracted the complement of an attractive woman at work, while the blue tie never has. So what tie are you going to wear? Which tie has the potential to give maximum pleasure to your brain’s pleasure center?

What about unknown/untested options?

Even when making a choice between two things you have never experienced before, there will still be enough distinction, of distinctive clues, to decide the outcome. For example, consider two never-before-tried vacation spots. A never-before-tried potential vacation destination is a country that seems a little less desirable to you compared to the number two untried potential vacation destination in another country with which you identify a little more. Or maybe vacation choice number one costs more than vacation choice number two for the same set of experiences. Your pleasure center rewards getting more vacation value for your vacation dollar. As another example, take two plates of uneaten food. Maybe one sounds more appealing or maybe one has ingredients that you like a little less or are unfamiliar compared to the competing dish of your choice. [This reminds me of our local restaurant/food reviewer/critic where you (or at least I) need a gastronomic dictionary in order to understand the nature of the food dish she’s endorsing.] You are adventurous but not that adventurous and your pleasure center tells you that discretion is the better part of courage.

What about animal ‘free will’?

Laboratory animals are known to keep pressing a lever to deliver a constant stream of pleasurable stimuli to their own brain’s pleasure center.

I now have two cats who are faced with choosing between three different cat food bowls every day. How do cats decide? Do you have free will to choose? No, I suspect not, because they opt for whatever dish of food provides maximum enjoyment to their brain’s pleasure center. They, at a given moment, like one bowl over the other two.

In the winter, my cats will seek out the warmest spot they can find, whether it’s a sunny spot, under the blanket, on your lap, even lying directly on the gas pipe when the heat is on. Why? Yes, it is about stimulating the pleasure center of your brain.

Even if you don’t agree with all of the above, you can’t solve the free will problem because you can’t go back in time to make an alternative decision. You have one chance, one decision, and you can never be absolutely sure that it wasn’t your brain’s pleasure center that made the decisions.