A five-part descent into the illusion of autonomy, where biology writes the script, reason provides the excuse, and the self is merely the echo of its own conditioning.This is a follow-up to a recent post on the implausibility of free will.
Manipulability as Disproof
If your will can be altered without your consent, was it ever truly yours?
“If a button on the outside of your skull can change your morality, then where, exactly, is your autonomy hiding?”
Audio: NotebookLM podcast of this topic.
We’ve heard it all before:
“Sure, I’m influenced — but at the end of the day, I choose.” But what happens when that influence isn’t influence, but modulation? What if your very sense of right and wrong — your willingness to forgive, to punish, to empathise — can be dialled like a radio station?
And what if you never know it’s happening?
Your Morality Is Neurochemical
Studies using Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) and Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) have shown that moral judgments can be shifted by stimulating the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC).
Turn it up: the subject becomes more utilitarian.
Turn it down: the subject becomes more emotionally reactive.
They make different decisions in the exact same scenarios, depending on which neural pathway is dominant.
The kicker?
They always explain their choices as though they had made them deliberately.
There is no awareness of the manipulation. Only a retrospective illusion of authorship.
A|B Testing the Soul
Let’s run a thought experiment.
Scenario A: You’re well-fed, calm, unprovoked. Scenario B: You’re hungry, cortisol-spiked, primed with images of threat.
Same moral dilemma. Different choice.
Query both versions of you, and both will offer coherent post hoc justifications. Neither suspects that their “will” was merely a biochemical condition in drag.
If both versions feel authentic, then neither can claim authority.
Your will is not sovereign. It’s state-dependent. And if it changes without your knowledge, it was never really yours to begin with.
Even the Observer Is a Variable
To make matters worse: the person judging your decision is just as susceptible.
An irritated observer sees you as difficult. A relaxed one sees you as generous. The same action — different verdict.
And yet both observers think they are the neutral party. They are not. They are chemically calibrated hallucinations, mistaking their reaction for objective truth.
You’re a Vending Machine, Not a Virtuoso
This isn’t metaphor. It’s architecture.
You input a stimulus.
The brain processes it using pre-loaded scripts, shaped by hormones, past trauma, fatigue, blood sugar, social context.
An output emerges.
Then the brain rationalises it, like a PR firm cleaning up after a CEO’s impulse tweet.
Reason follows emotion. Emotion is involuntary. Therefore, your reasoning is not yours. It’s a post-event explanation for something you didn’t choose to feel.
TL;DR: If It Can Be Tweaked, It’s Not Yours
Your “moral core” can be adjusted without your awareness.
You justify manipulated choices with total confidence.
Your assessors are equally chemically biased.
There is no neutral version of “you” — just shifting states with internal coherence.
And if your choices depend on state, and your state can be altered, then freedom is a costume worn by contingency.
Philosophics 