Free Imagination

Abstract

This book argues that the brain’s capacity to imagine is the fundamental basis of human free will. Laws of physics need not apply in our internal simulations so virtually anything is possible there. And since some of our actions can follow from that which we imagine, our actions inherit the wild freedom of our imaginings. The creative power of the human imagination may have evolved as a consequence of the demodularization of neural circuitry associated with volitional attentional operations over operands downloadable into a mental workspace where almost anything could be combined with anything else. This new cognitive architecture gave rise to the danger of psychosis. Our schizotypal form of imagination may have evolved only in humans by exapting from existing motoric and other operations involved in volitional hand dexterity to a domain of pre-motoric simulation. What is imagined into existence can be used for good or evil. Imagination is therefore our greatest tool and weapon. When applied to ourselves, it allows us the possibility of reimagining and then transforming ourselves in light of second-order desires. This gives us the ability to choose to become a new kind of chooser in the future. Other animals lack this second-order free will; although they can do otherwise, they cannot want to become otherwise than they are, making them amoral. Humans, in contrast, because they have second-order free will, can be moral or immoral.