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Making a Scientific Case
for Conscious Agency
and Free Will
Making a Scientific Case
for Conscious Agency
and Free Will
W. R. Klemm
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FOREWORD
All humans have the feeling that they consciously will certain things to
happen and that in the absence of external restrictions they are free
to choose among alternatives. This common experience makes us think
we have free will. Yet in the last 35 years or so, scientists have been
conducting experiments that they interpret as evidence that free will
is an illusion. Their idea is that everything is driven by an unconscious
mind that informs the conscious mind of the choices and decisions
made. Since free will would require consciousness agency, antifree will
advocates further claim a supporting corollary that consciousness can
only “observe” and cannot do anything. In addition to the problem of
trying to prove negatives, these experiments have major design and
interpretation flaws that have been identified by numerous scientists,
as I summarize in the chapter “The Scientific Case Against Conscious
Agency and Free Will.”
No coherent scientific argument has been made to support free will.

Typically, people want to defend free will on grounds of social, legal,
or religious perspectives. These arguments, appealing as they are, seem
specious because they appeal to consequences not causes of choices
and decisions (see chapter: Philosophical, Religious, Social, and Legal
Arguments). A series of arguments are made later on human behaviors
that are hard to explain without conscious agency and free will (see
chapter: Physiology of Mental States and Conscious Agency). The
treatise concludes with an examination of how conscious agency and
free will can emerge from the materialistic processes of brain function
(see chapters: Free-Will-Dependent Human Thought and Behaviors
and Neuroscience May Rescue Free Will from Its Illusory Status). The
best route for settling the debate lies in the neuroscience of the future,
and only then if better tools for system-level analysis become available.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Early drafts of this manuscript were critiqued by psychologist, Marc

Whittmann, at the Institut für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und
Psychohygiene e.V. in Freiburg, Germany and neuroscientist Robert
Vertes at the Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences at
Florida Atlanta University. The author wishes to thank them for their
specific contributions and, in general, thanks all those scholars who
have dared to publish in this controversial area—irrespective of their
conclusions.
CHAPTER 1
The Scientific Case Against Conscious Agency
and Free Will
1.1 ILLUSORY FREE WILL

Scientific and philosophical fashion these days claims that humans
have no free will. That is, we are basically biological robots, driven to
our thoughts, beliefs, choices, intentions, and actions by unconscious
forces in our brain. We are puppets controlled by the programming
from our genes and life experience. Free will is deemed an illusion.
Freudian psychology has been reborn in a revised framework of a pre-
eminent unconscious mind (Fig. 1.1).
Free-will deniers get their idea by extension of the fact that the brain
does make unconscious choices. If you accidentally touch a hot stove, it is
your unconscious mind that initiates the hand and arm withdrawal reflex.
Only afterwards are you informed, “Damn that hurts.” Even at more com-
plex levels of behavior, humans commonly make unconscious choices, as
when our behaviors are stereotyped or compulsive. Certain disease states,
such as obsessive/compulsive disorders, are driven unconsciously with little
or no conscious control (that’s why it is called a disease). Damage to
certain areas of the brain’s source of consciousness, the neocortex, can
change personality-driven choices. The problem is that such phenomena
are inappropriately extended to mentally normal people and the assump-
tion that conscious does nothing but observe, that it has no agency.
The word agency has many meanings, but the meaning used here is
the issue of whether human consciousness has the power to generate self-
directed causes of thoughts, feelings, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors—
and associated choices and decisions. A recent book explores a wide
range of theory about agency (Gruber et al., 2015) and I have a chapter
there on the neurobiology of agency. All neuroscientists agree that the
unconscious mind, when a person is awake, has agency in that it directs
reflexes and more complex behavioral responses that do not require con-
scious intervention. But neither scientists nor philosophers think much
Making a Scientific Case for Conscious Agency and Free Will. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-805153-5.00001-8
© 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
2 Making a Scientific Case for Conscious Agency and Free Will
Figure 1.1 Diagram of the modern notion of illusory free will. Unconscious mind generates willed action and
informs conscious mind, which acts only as an observer and has no capacity for agency.
about what the unconscious mind is doing during sleep and what it is
about wakefulness that gives agency to the unconscious mind. The crux
of the free-will debate focuses on whether any portion of a person’s
agency comes from conscious direction. I make a case for conscious
agency in chapter “Physiology of Mental States and Conscious Agency.”
The denial of free will has a centuries-old history, but is now popu-
larized by an influential clutch of activist scientists, such as Richard
Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Wegner, who have become intellec-
tual rock stars from their best-seller books arguing the case against free
will. Many philosophers also have joined the illusory free-will crowd.
Free-will deniers seem to believe there can be no ego, no real “I”

that we all erroneously think we are. Descartes’ “I think, therefore
I am,” can’t be right because there is no “I.” We are all “its.” When
we think we are making a decision or a plan or directing an action, it
is not our “I” that does this. To buttress their position, many deniers
have constructed the argument as follows:
1. Freely chosen actions would have to come from a conscious brain.
2. Consciousness is only an observer that has no agency.
3. Therefore, there can be no free will.
If consciousness is viewed only as an observer of a decision or
choice made by the unconscious mind, then the conscious brain must
The Scientific Case Against Conscious Agency and Free Will 3
not be the source of actions that occur during consciousness. This

book tackles the subject of free will with trepidation. The subject, as
Christof Koch (2012) puts it, “is a scholarly minefield.” An obvious
first step to counter the illusory free-will argument is to challenge its
premise that consciousness lacks agency, which this book does in chap-
ter “Physiology of Mental States and Conscious Agency.”
1.2 KEY DEFINITIONS: FREE WILL, CONSCIOUS AGENCY

What do we mean by “free?” Apparently there is no clear consensus.
One thing we can say with certainty: the brain’s network of networks
surely has more degrees of freedom than does a single neuron. The latest
book on the subject by Joaguín Fuster (2013), The Neuroscience of
Freedom and Dignity, makes a useful distinction between freedom of
action and free will. I can illustrate Fuster’s thesis this way: A mosquito
is free to fly, but is unlikely to freely will to fly because flying insects
lack the cortical network structure of humans. But humans are free
to fly—by consciously inventing and building balloons, planes, and
rockets. Fuster thinks that humans have an enormous amount of
freedom to make choices, but they cannot freely will anything because
such factors as genes and environment necessarily dictate brain function.
Before a case can be made for or against free will, we will need an
appropriate operational definition. Such definition is not self-evident.
Most scholars could probably agree on what free will is not: a decision
without cause. Many decisions are forced by circumstance, but humans
do make decisions that are caused by internal drives and preferences.
We could not necessarily predict an action from knowing the DNA
sequence, brain developmental history, and the programming from life-
time experience. Nor could most actions be totally free from the fac-
tors just mentioned. Nor could free will arise from strictly random
processes. The operational definition in this book is as follows:
Free will occurs when a person makes a conscious choice from multiple
options, none of which are predetermined or compelled.
Intentions, decisions, and choices are of course influenced by their

unconscious antecedents, but are not inevitably determined by them
because the conscious mind can intervene, veto, or otherwise control.
A simple parlor trick illustrates in a simplistic way a difference
between unconsciousness and conscious influences. Clasp your hands
together in front of your face with fingers overlapping. Raise each

index finger and move about one inch apart. Shut your eyes.
Amazingly, the fingers drift together, even though you did not con-
sciously issue such an instruction. This is your unconscious mind
exerting its will. (Actually, the movement is a spinal-cord-mediated
reflex mediated through the brachial plexus that did not involve the
brain.) Now repeat the process with eyes open but willfully try to pre-
vent the drifting. With some mental effort, you can stop the movement.
This is the “I” of your conscious mind freely exerting executive control.
We can also debate the definition of consciousness. It can be most
simply defined as the opposite of unconsciousness, which is not having
such agency of unconscious mind as reflexes and more complex auto-
mated behaviors. In this book, I will use as an expedient a colloquial
understanding of consciousness. Consciousness has two elements, one
of which is qualia (that is, the redness of red). More useful for the issue
of free will debate is the awareness aspect of consciousness that exists
explicitly in sensory perception, reason, anticipation, and planning for
the future, and the making of choices and decisions.
Descartes idea of “I” was chided by critics as requiring a “ghost in

the machine.” My position, outlined in the chapters 4 and 5, is there is
an “I” that is not a ghost but rather a materialistic process based on a
constellation of special nerve impulse signaling patterns in the brain.
Moreover, I suggest a way that consciousness can use the brain’s neu-
ral machinery to exert executive control.
Even deniers concede that there are executive control networks in

certain cerebral cortex areas, and these are unique for each individual
partly as a result of the programming produced by a person’s lifetime of
experiences, choices, and decisions. Efficient executive networks must
have some freedom to decide, plan, and act, even if they are constrained
by genetics, contingencies, and interactions with other parts of the brain.
Otherwise, the networks should not be considered as “executive.”
1.3 DETERMINISM AND QUANTUM MECHANICS

If free will is defined in the context of physical determinism, then it
cannot exist. Determinists may say that willed action that has a cause
cannot be free. I regard that as a specious argument, because the possi-
bility of free will is excluded by definition, not evidence or logic.
Determinism holds that a given process causes and predicts a con-

sistent result. But can this principle be applied to brain choices and
decisions? Many physicists claim there can be no free will because
brains are controlled by physics, and physics allows no free will.
Paradoxically, physicists show that quantum physics has uncertainty.
If the location of electrons is not predetermined, why can’t human
thought be that way too?
The uncertainty principle of modern physics seems to undermine deter-

minism. However, it may not be appropriate to invoke the same doctrine
at all levels of organization, ranging from inanimate physics to biosystems
to the human mind. While brain events are clearly caused, specific
outcomes from the same causal input are not inevitable. Even in the face
of constraints, a human can choose to do something else besides the
favored choice generated by strong biological or situational forces. Thus it
does not seem tenable to assert that determinism precludes free will.
Determinism can still be consistent with free will in that a freely
made decision can cause the resulting action. The making of the decision
also has a cause, as documented by abundant neurophysiological evi-
dence (see section “How the Brain Makes Choices/Decisions” in chapter
“Neuroscience May Rescue Free Will From Its Illusory Status”).
The causation models of physics are typically reductionistic, bottom-

up. Moreover, the essential determinism of Newtonian physics breaks
down in light of later discoveries of the unpredictabilities of quantum
phenomena at subatomic levels and chaos dynamics at system levels.
Some physicists presume that quantum mechanics (QM) relates to

brain function. Many physicists argue that the brain is a living quan-
tum computer (McFadden & Al-Khalili, 2015). One line of argument
argues that quantum consciousness actually provides evidence for free
will (Hammeroff & Woolf, 2003).
Quantum phenomena apparently operate in such living processes as

photosynthesis, enzyme biochemistry, and cytochrome energy transport
and capture. Some scholars suggest that life is defined as a balance
between quantum and classical physics phenomena (McFadden &
Al-Khalili, 2015). But nonliving matter also has a balance between the
two levels of physics. Life remains mysteriously different.
Quantum explanations exist for dynamical change in protein
conformation, and these have been used to develop QM theories of
consciousness (Hammeroff & Woolf, 2003). Subtle conformational

changes of protein in ion channels and second messengers are a proxi-
mate cause of nerve impulse generation. But what is serving as signal
for information processing and messaging? Most likely it is the propa-
gating steam of impulses in a spike train (Klemm, 2011c), which can
be explained by the nonlinear dynamics of traditional physics.
Quantum phenomena are not evident at this level.
Nonetheless, QM might have a profound indirect influence on con-

sciousness. Hammeroff and Woolf argue that the collapse of quantum
superposition is neither random nor deterministic and thus could
account for free will. Also, they note the vast computational capacity
provided by the enormous number of bit states of cellular proteins in
neurons and their synapses, an operation with some 103 operations/
second. But there is no evidence yet that this numerical computation
capacity determines consciousness. In fact, in so-called split-brain sub-
jects where the two hemispheres are surgically isolated, each hemisphere
is conscious with only half the neural machinery. Each hemisphere,
however, is conscious of fewer items than is the whole brain.
Physicists prove that light photons are “entangled,” that is, their
behavior in one place can be linked to behavior of photons in other
far-distant places. The problem for brain theorists is that no evidence
supports the idea that light has signaling properties inside the brain
(in fact, it is dark in there).
Likewise, entanglement and “tunneling” of electrons can be demon-

strated in certain physical systems, but electrons do not convey or
process information in the brain. Positively charged ions that have lost
electrons account for neural signaling. And the processing occurs in
macromolecular synaptic neurotransmitter and second messenger
systems.
Physicists show that subatomic particles have “superposition,” that

is, they can be in two different states at the same time. So . . .? What
has that got to do with neural information processing and messaging?
Scott (2003) questions QM’s relevance on the grounds that

brain function is nonlinear, whereas QM is linear, as expressed in
Schroedinger’s equation. Nonlinear functions can yield emergent proper-
ties that are greater than the sum of their parts. Maybe it is the nonlin-
ear neural processes that create the emergent property of consciousness.
In sum, there is no evidence that the brain is a quantum computer.

Though QM seems unpromising as a way to explain consciousness, we
must concede that classical physics has not explained it either. A major
purpose of this book is to suggest the kinds of research on classical
nonlinear neural dynamics that might lead us closer to understanding
consciousness.
Moreover, the history of science has demonstrated that knowledge

and understanding of reality can be illusory and transient.
Unpredictability need not imply randomness, but rather could “allow
the metaphysical possibility that there are further causal principles at
work in bringing about the future beyond those that are described by
science’s bottom-up notion . . .” (Polkinghorne, 2009, p. 84). In other
words, as Polkinghorne elegantly put it, “Science trawls experience
with a coarse-grained net, and much that is of the greatest significance
slips through its wide meshes” (p. 93).
The determinism of physics does not inevitably apply to the electrodynam-

ics that exists in the activity of neural circuits that compete with each other
to make a selection among nonmandatory multiple options.
1.4 MENTAL STATES ARE PHYSICAL STATES

The sense of self is the mental state most crucial to our perception of
free will. It is “I” who thinks, feels, decides, etc. Some critics of free will
seem to assert that willed action is caused by the brain and that there-
fore there can be no free will exerted by the self. But what is the self? Is
it not brain function? As I will elaborate in chapter “Physiology of
Mental States and Conscious Agency,” we cannot usefully address the
issue of free will until we resolve the questions about the neural basis of
self and whether conscious self has a capacity for agency.
What is meant by “mental state?” A major source of confusion
about free will arises because laymen and scholars alike commonly
make a distinction between neural and mental states. On what grounds
can we assert that mental state is somehow separable from brain func-
tion? “Mental” is simply a metaphor for human brain function. Later
in this book I will explain my view of “mental” in materialistic terms
of brain function. Considering mental and physical states as synony-
mous avoids the necessity for saying that mental states are incapable
of supervening brain function to exert free will.
Mental states are not epiphenomena; they are neural states. This com-
mon distinction originated centuries ago when enlightenment from
neuroscience was not available. Mental states are physical, neuro-
physiological, states with a capacity for agency because they are
neurophysiological. Lower-level unconscious causes do not rule out
higher-level conscious causes. Indeed, they may even operate conjointly.
Mental operations, because they are of materialistic origin, are

capable of some top-down control of bottom-up processes. The deter-
minism of physics does not inevitably apply to the electrodynamics
that exist in the activity of neural circuits that compete with each
other to make a selection among nonmandatory multiple options.
See chapter 5 for elaboration.
Another semantic trick used to reject free will imputes an immaterial
soul as a prerequisite. But free will does not depend on an immaterial
soul. Brain processes can come freely from internal self-organizing capa-
bilities of complex networks, as I explain in chapter 5.
The serious challenge of free will comes from assumptions that the
conscious mind has no agency, is only aware of choices and decisions,
without the ability to make or alter them. Searle (2007) argues the point
that consciousness helps the brain freely arrive at decisions. Conscious
thinking uses motives and reasons as a means to an end. Consciousness
creates an intention to arrive at an appropriate decision, free in the sense
that the final decision is neither preknown nor inevitable.
1.5 THE ORIGINAL FREE-WILL RESEARCH

In terms of biological science, research by Benjamin Libet and his
followers that began in the 1980s was the major source for the current
free-will debate. Many investigators interpret a series of related tests of
free will to indicate that certain brain activity increases not only before
a specific willed movement, as expected, but also a fraction of a second
prior to the conscious realization that the decision to move was made.
The untested assumption was that this early activity was solely due to
unconscious decision-making.
These studies generally used a similar concept and design, which

have been roundly criticized on objective criteria in publications
by more than a dozen other scientists (eg, see Baker, Mattingley,

Chambers, & Cunnington, 2011; Grill-Spector & Kanwisher, 2005;
Guggisberg & Mottaz, 2013; Haggard & Eimer, 1999; Herrmann
et al., 2008; Jo et al., 2014a, 2014b; Klein, 2002; Klemm, 2010;
Lages & Jaworska, 2012; Obhi & Haggard, 2004; Radder & Meynen,
2012; Restak, 2012; Schlosser, 2014; Schurger et al., 2012; Tempia,
2011; Trevena & Miller, 2010).
Flaws in the research fall into several categories: (1) premise deficien-
cies, (2) technical limitations in experimental design, (3) misinterpreta-
tion of events preceding the decision, (4) unreliability of self-reported
decision, and (5) overdrawn generalizations of the implications. By
category, the flaws include the following.
1.5.1 Premise Deficiencies

• Separation of our subconscious and conscious minds. Both exist
simultaneously and interactively in the same brain.
• All-or-none thinking. You either have free will or you do not, and
the possibility of partial free will is not accommodated.
• Experimental designs based on an inappropriate definition of free
will or that are testing something other than free will.
• Behaviors, such as button pressing, that are too simple and auto-
mated to be representative of most real-life decisions.
• The unproven assumption that a decision is a point-process that can
be reported with millisecond resolution.
• Failure to consider that reporting of when a conscious thought
occurred can be delayed from when it actually occurred.
1.5.2 Technical Limitations in the Design

• Statistical deficiencies, especially in the fMRI studies.
• Uncontrolled variables in many of the experiments.
• Experimental designs that did not provide opportunity for reasoned
analysis or planning.
• Averaged electrical signatures of “decision” data in most studies,
without tracking of individual trials (which did not always show the
purported effect).
• Limited use of different test designs that minimize the deficiencies of
the prevailing paradigm.
1.5.3 Misinterpretation of Antecedent Events

• Failure to explain why some individual trials produce an opposite
electrical signature of decision-making.
• Assumption that all antecedent events reflect sequential processes.
Some can occur simultaneously in parallel and some may be
conflated with the actual decision-making.
• Some antecedent events, especially those that have been recorded
in nonmotor brain areas, are an inextricable part of the conscious
component of decision-making processes, such as urges, intentions,
and plans.
• Failure to consider the possibility that a mixture of unconscious and
conscious processes generates a given decision, each with their own
antecedents and time relationships to the action.
• Inability to measure the relevant conscious introspection and
reasoning and especially its time relationship to the “moment” of
decision.
1.5.4 Unreliability of Self Reports

• Assumption that humans can accurately identify on a millisecond
timescale when they have a specific thought.
• Unrecognized illusions in the mental perception of time and
sensation.
• Short timeframes, often in milliseconds. Even simple decisions can
spread out over several or more seconds.
• Unwarranted assumptions about how long it takes to make and
then to realize that a conscious decision has been made.
1.5.5 Overdrawn Generalizations of the Implications

• Unwarranted extrapolation of results of simple, reflex-like responses
in a laboratory setting to the more complex decision-making
situations of real life.
• Untested rejection of conflicting data and interpretations.
In the interests of completeness, I should mention the work by

Wegner (2005) who provides a different kind of evidence for his claim
of illusory free will. He showed that under special test conditions a
person can wrongly assume they have willed a certain action, but this
by no means proves that this is the case under all conditions, especially
those that occur outside the laboratory.
The author of the most recent book on free will (Fuster, 2013) was
either unaware of the critical published research or willfully chose to
ignore it. Fuster claims that “99 percent of all actions will be uncon-
scious,” and therefore devoid of any free-will source. This strikes me as
unfounded, and the 99% statement is typical of the sloppy thinking in
this field. As an example of the common prejudice against free will, a
leading neurophilosopher, Patricia Churchland, provides a book cover
endorsement that calls Fuster’s work a “masterful accomplishment.”
Fuster and his sympathizers uncritically endorse Libet-style research
and conclude that consciousness can only participate in goal-setting,
reasoning, and planning, while intention, choice, and action are strictly
unconscious processes. Is it not strange that he fails to consider
that goal-setting, reasoning, and planning are inextricably bound to
decision-making?
Paradoxically, Fuster gives humans more social and political free-

dom, while denying that they have any freedom in deciding how to act.
For example, he says that people have freedom because genetics and life
experience create their cortical complexity. Specifically, “The individual
with a richly interconnected cortex, intelligent, well-schooled, and with
superior linguistic skills will have more options in life, and thus will be
in principle more free,” than individuals without these benefits. He
refuses to concede that a person could freely choose some of the options
that would affect schooling, linguistic skills, and even intelligence.
Most recently a report has appeared that free-will critics may glom
on to, a fMRI study that showed that connectivity patterns were
unique to each individual, personalized much like fingerprints (Finn
et al., 2015). The connectivity profile is intrinsic and independent of
task and rest conditions. But evidence for being unique is hardly
relevant to the issue of free will. First, the connectivity study shows
that it is the metabolism that is linked between brain areas and that
reveals nothing about linkage or permanence of neural signaling.
Secondly, one could argue with equal force that people can have
unique capabilities for free will, some more, some less. In fact, casual
observation reveals enormous individual differences in mental stereo-
typy and compulsivity, as opposed to flexibility, and creativity.
The free-will deniers’ hypothesis of conscious agency and free will

cannot meet the standard test of hypotheses: experiments should be
able to falsify a wrong hypothesis. To say there is no free will is a

negative, and you can’t prove a negative. Moreover, all evidence indi-
cates that conscious and unconscious minds in the awake state are
inextricably linked and without clear demarcation.
So, is there a reasoned counter-argument? Eddy Nahmias (2011)
thinks that the illusory free-will position is “too quick and glib.” He says
“It is like inferring from discoveries in organic chemistry that life is an
illusion just because living organisms are made up of non-living stuff.”
The ideology of illusory free will assaults morality, the law, reli-
gious belief, and common sense. Nonetheless, assaulting common sense
seems to delight many elitist scientists who find gratification in think-
ing that their sense rises above that of commoners and lesser intellects
who think they have free will.
I think the illusory free-will arguments have been dismantled by the

refutation of the experimental evidence. As long as Libet-type experi-
ments can’t pass analytic muster, free-will illusionists have no real
evidence for their assertion that all intentions are generated uncon-
sciously and are inaccessible to consciousness until after the moment of
decision. The importance of discrediting the supposed evidence for illu-
sory free will is the credence it gives to the only alternative that there
can be at least a degree of free will. I intend here to make a case that
humans do have some free will, existing at a significant level even if not
complete.
CHAPTER 2
Philosophical, Religious, Social, and Legal
Arguments
A long history of debates about free will can be found in the scholarly
literature. Lay people, and some scholars, sometimes defend free will
on the grounds of certain religious, social, or legal perspectives. Their
arguments are based on the consequences of not having free will and
provide no direct evidence for free will.
2.1 PHILOSOPHICAL ARGUMENTS FOR FREE WILL

When it comes to philosophical arguments about free will, there are
only three choices. You either believe it exists, does not exist, or
partially exists in conjunction with nonfree determinants. To many phi-
losophers, free will’s existence is a wide-open question (Balaguer,
2010). Philosophers generally are all over the map on this issue. On the
fringe are those who share the Buddhist view that there is no “self”
that can initiate any kind of will, free or not. Philosophers who advo-
cate for free will do so in the limited “compatibilist” sense that humans
generally lack free will but can sometimes have free will.
Philosophers who reject free will are often called “determinists,”
because they believe that every choice or decision is caused by prior
events. Of course, every mental choice or decision has a neural cause, but
whether a given choice is inevitable is the contested issue. When deter-
minist philosophers buttress their arguments with science, it is typically
the science of physics; namely, all physical events have physical causes.
They assume that a contrary view would invoke the idea of a nonmaterial
“mind.” I hope to show in later chapters that “mind” is material and can
also exert a degree of freedom. Determinist philosophers also rely on the
flawed neuroscience in the 1980s, as summarized in the chapter “The
Scientific Case Against Conscious Agency and Free Will.”
Making a Scientific Case for Conscious Agency and Free Will. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-805153-5.00002-X
Philosophy can support both sides of the free-will argument, even

both at the same time, as in compatibilist philosophy. Compatibilist
philosophers leave some room for free will. Their less rigid position
was apparently introduced centuries ago by Thomas Hobbes.
Prominent contemporary leaders in free-will philosophy like Daniel
Dennett (2014) and Alfred Mele (2014) take issue with the illusory
free-will idea on the grounds that harmonious social and moral behav-
ior would not be possible without free will. Dennett calls the illusory
free will conclusion a “morally pernicious idea.”
Compatibilists believe that the unconscious mind drives much of
what humans believe, think, and do, but that consciousness has an
agency that is not compelled to follow unconscious demands. Though
we owe gratitude to philosophers for championing the debate, philoso-
phy is not science. Philosophers are prone to play obscurant word
games about free will (Tye, 2009). Tye argues that consciousness has
to have a physical cause, but strangely argues for mental causation in
a material world, as if mind itself were not material. He speaks of
“phenomenal externalism,” which confuses me. But I am reasonably
certain this this view, whatever it means, does little to make a case for
conscious agency or free will. Conscious mind and free will need to be
considered in neuroscientific terms which neither Tye nor others do
very well. This present book does make that attempt.
The key to understanding is to realize that a conscious brain is aware

of and experiences life in the context of a conscious self-awareness.
Since free will, by definition, would require consciousness, the issue
becomes one of establishing that consciousness has agency. Then, if
consciousness has agency, the issue becomes one of establishing a degree
of freedom for that agency. All of this can be a material process, as
I suggest in the chapters that follow.
2.2 RELIGIOUS BASIS OF FREE WILL

Religion provides a main source of free-will doctrine. Ideas of moral
responsibility originate in religious views of right and wrong and the
belief that followers have the capacity to make the correct choices.
Their free-will capacity makes them morally accountable.
The materialistic view of consciously mediated free will that I will

present throughout this book does not address the primary essence of
Philosophical, Religious, Social, and Legal Arguments 15
all religions: an immaterial “soul” or “spirit” that survives death of

brain and consciousness. Free will does not have to involve souls or
some dualist conception, as I try to explain in chapter 5. Free will can
be mediated by materialistic processes that we already mostly under-
stand and know how to study. Scientists tend to insist that free will
requires dualism, and in the process make free will a strawman argu-
ment they can easily knock down. Today’s science has no way to test
for a soul. But, we have no obligatory need to assume that free will
requires an immaterial soul.
Religious believers will have a hard time accepting the view that
personhood resides in neural networks. This does not mean that “soul”
does not exist, but soul, whatever it is, cannot be neural networks as
we understand them. We have no idea how an immaterial soul could
be coupled to these interacting neural networks nor how a materialistic
mind in this world can be replicated or carbon copied in another
space time dimension. That is an issue of faith, not science.
Nonetheless, we have every reason to believe that the universe contains

material properties that we cannot describe or explain, such as the dark
matter and dark energy that are vastly more abundant than the “mate-
rial” things that we are still learning about. The existence of an “arrow of
time” involving how “material” things exist in past, present, and future is
not fully understood by physicists (Ellis, 2007). These are things we know
we don’t know. No doubt there are other phenomena that we don’t know
what we don’t know. Thus, it seems intellectually imprudent to reject
religious belief, as apparently most scientists do. Many of the prominent
anti-free-will advocates also happen to be atheists. Not surprising.
Otherwise, their position would be cognitively dissonant.
Many religions advance the argument that God has created humans
who are free to choose to worship or reject him, and eternal reward and
punishment depend on their choices. Religious doctrines that would
deny free will must accommodate the logic that a judgmental god sadis-
tically and unfairly punishes people who reject him, even though they
had no freedom to make such a choice.
Christianity is uniquely individualistic and demands personal

responsibility and accountability. Kierkegaard railed against growing
collectivism, including that of organized religion. His emphasis was on
the responsibility of individuals to be true to Christian ideals.
Yet religious doctrines are confused about free will. The Bible gives
license for Calvinism’s doctrine of predestination. The Qur’an explic-
itly rejects free will in many places but also stresses that God will judge
people according to their deeds.
The point remains: the issue of free will remains whether or not one
believes in God. Atheists make all sorts of choices and decisions just like
believers. The question persists: are any of their choices freely made?
2.3 SOCIAL AND LEGAL BASES OF FREE WILL

Defenders of free will often make the correct argument that we must
believe in free will or otherwise social consequences are meaningless.
Mele (2014), for example, argues that humans not only have free will but
a “deep” level of freedom to choose among many current options, based
on data showing that bad behavior increases as people come to disbelieve
in free will and personal responsibility. But such arguments are also
flawed. Whether or not people believe they have free will surely affects
their behavior, but that is not evidence for correctness of such a belief.
Accepting the illusory free-will world view would strip us of human

capacity and personal responsibility. Clearly, it makes sense to live as if
we have free will, believing in it or not, for otherwise we limit our chances
for personal growth and fulfillment. We limit our capacity for free will
by our willingness to claim and exert the free will we think we have.
Believing in free will has the enormously beneficial social, political,
and economic consequences of promoting self-improvement, account-
ability, and cooperation with others (Rigoni & Brass, 2014). But such
belief provides no evidence on whether or not free will actually exists.
Religious, social, or legal arguments for free will are merely statements
of supposed consequences of behavior without free will. I will propose
a better defense.
A robotocist world is not only morally pernicious, but would be an
affront to human dignity and personal development. People without
free will are more likely to be victims and less able to change maladap-
tive attitudes and behaviors. Thus, it is argued that society and govern-
ment must help people do what they cannot do for themselves. If we
can’t make conscious choices, then we can’t do much to improve our-

selves or our plight in life. We are just victims of genetics and circum-
stance. Or even if there are things that can be done to change us and
our situations, the approach will surely have to be different if we can’t
initiate the change by force of our free will. Without free will, some
outside force must program our unconscious.
We simply must hold people accountable for their actions, espe-

cially in the case of criminal and extreme antisocial behavior, like ter-
rorism for example. But this is an argument about consequences of not
having free will. The desired end of personal accountability does not
justify a conclusion about free will one way or the other. At a personal
level, people choose to avoid certain socially unacceptable behaviors
because of the likely penalty. For example, you decide not to rob a
bank because you are likely to go to prison. That doesn’t prove you
have free will. It may only mean you have learned about such scenar-
ios and that learning may operate unconsciously.
Religious, social, or legal arguments for free will are based on the conse-
quences of lack of free will. That does not provide evidence for free will.
Similar analysis applies to legal issues. Legal analyst Jeffrey Rosen

wrote in The New York Times Magazine, “Since all behavior is caused
by our brains, wouldn’t this mean all behavior could potentially be
excused? . . . The death of free will, or its exposure as a convenient
illusion, some worry, could wreak havoc on our sense of moral and
legal responsibility.”
People who conclude that no-one has free will must then hold
no-one responsible for criminal or evil acts. Free-will deniers would
not make much effort to change and improve themselves. They could
become intellectually and emotionally paralyzed. But again, the argu-
ment is about consequences of a belief, not whether or not there is
evidence for the correctness of the belief.
2.4 HOW SCIENCE HAS OBSCURED THE ISSUE OF FREE WILL

Many scientists regard a scientific defense of free will as taboo. On the
rare occasions when this happens, scientists tend to make specious
arguments. For example, the famous neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield

claimed that his experiments indicated the existence of free will
(Penfield, 1978, p. 77). They do not. During surgery, he demonstrated
that he could force people to make certain movements by electrically
stimulating specific areas in the motor cortex. Invariably, the subjects
said that they did not will the movements, that they must have been
forced by the stimulation. Penfield described the results this way:
When I have caused a conscious patient to move his hand by applying an

electrode to the motor cortex of one hemisphere, I have often asked him
about it. Invariably his response was: “I didn’t do that. You did.” When I
caused him to vocalize, he said: “I didn’t make that sound. You pulled it out
of me”. When I caused the record of the stream of consciousness to run again
and so presented to him the record of his past experience, he marveled that
he should be conscious of the past as well as of the present. . . He assumed at
once that, somehow, the surgeon was responsible for the phenomenon. . . The
electrode can present to the patient various crude sensations. It can cause
him to turn head and eyes, or to move the limbs, or to vocalize and swallow.
It may recall vivid re-experience of the past, or present to him an illusion that
present experience is familiar, or that the things he sees are growing larger
and coming near. But he remains aloof. He passes judgment on it all. . .If the
electrode moves his right hand, he does not say, “I wanted to move it.” He
may, however, reach over with the left hand and oppose the action . . . There
is no one place in the cerebral cortex where electrical stimulation will cause a
patient to believe or to decide.
Penfield not only assumed that people could freely will movements,
but that in such cases the commands were coming from outside the
brain. In addition to questioning his dualism, we should recognize
that, of course, no one place in the brain generates a willed action. It is
a system function, involving especially the primary components of the
cortex’s executive control system. Penfield could not discover this
because he was stimulating through single electrodes restricted to single
areas of cortex, not the multiple “upstream” areas that normally
activate the motor cortex. He was stimulating the final command path-
way for motion, not the areas of the brain that tell these final output
neurons what to do. In his time, the executive cortical control networks
had not been discovered. Even if Penfield had stimulated all the execu-
tive control areas with a battery of electrodes, he could not know in
advance what stimulus parameters would be relevant, unless they had
been determined by prior experiment. Situational context would surely
influence the consequences of a battery of stimuli.
Most scholars think that science should be the final arbiter over
free-will debates. The problem is that they typically pick the wrong
science: physics, in particular quantum mechanics (QM). QM holds
that subatomic particles, like electrons, have indeterminate positions.
Without apparent cause other than their inherent energy, they
randomly flit around the nucleus in unpredictable locations. Applying
such phenomena to human thought is a category fallacy, because
thought is a macrolevel process, not a microlevel one (Musser, 2015).
The problem with QM is the subatomic categorical level at which it

operates. The random flitting of electrons is clearly indeterministic, but
we should not assume that randomness scales with increasing the level
of function to cells, brains, and minds. In fact, I have had professional
statisticians tell me that hardly anything is random and independent in
the real world in which humans live.
So then, is this an argument that mental intentions, choices, and

decisions are deterministic? Well, maybe, but only in the sense that
these processes have a cause. But this is irrelevant, because the real
issue is whether any caused will can be freely made.
Physicists in particular like to argue that all information is physical

and that physical matter has no emergent properties: therefore there
can be no emergent free will. The problem is that the decisions
expressed in willed action come from information processing that
involves executive control over selection, predictive evaluation, and
recombination of alternatives. It is the processing that yields emergent
properties that distinguish thought from particle physics.
Intentions, choices, and decisions can be generated randomly, but

human thought is usually not random. Processes do not have to be
random to be indeterministic. Neural processing can yield varying results.
The results of deliberative processes are not inevitable and do not always
yield predictable results, especially when the thought is new or creative.
The universe at the macrolevel may be deterministic, but conscious

human thought resides in its own self-organized universe in which
information is processed in ways that are neither random nor predeter-
mined. This capability of the brain to process information provides a
way to generate free will.
If any physical science is relevant, it should be information

theory (IT). Inasmuch as the higher-level function of consciousness is
information processing, we should consider the standard IT, which is
expressed by the equation,
1
log I 5
p
What distinguishes thought from particle physics is that neural circuits

process information to yield emergent properties.
The amount of information, I, in a system can refer to the existence

of events, such as the number or defined patterns of nerve impulses.
The equation holds that the amount of information is inversely propor-
tional to the probability (p) of event occurrence. Thus, unexpected or
low-incidence events contain the most information. Events that are
deterministic carry relatively less information than indeterministic
ones. Thus, freely willed events have special informational value. We
might expect a highly evolved brain to have this kind of information
processing and messaging capability.
Notably, the information content of QM phenomena, like flitting
electrons, is never processed. They just exist as is. By processed, I
mean nonrandomly changed, in this case by other electrons or any-
thing else. Brain function, however, takes IT to a new, nonrandom
and indeterminate level by its processing of its information carrier, the
propagating nerve impulse trains and algebraic changes in synapses of
neural circuits.
However, it is a fair challenge to ask, “Computers process informa-
tion. Why don’t they have free will?” Here are my answers:
• Computers are not conscious of what they do.

• Computers process information digitally. Computations in the brain
are analog.
• The number of brain processing computational elements far exceeds
what is possible in computers, having 86 billion neurons, each with
100 1000 synaptic contacts, embedded in neural circuits that
flexibly adjust their mutual functional connectivities. A given neu-
ron may have multiple functions and be functionally recruited into
multiple circuitry. Brains can even change their “hardwiring” by

up/downregulation of synapses and in some regions by birthing
new neurons and circuit wiring.
• Computers have far less degrees of freedom and flexibility than
brain and thus have less capacity for self-adjusting their processing
operations.
• Unlike brains, computers cannot do anything they have not been
programmed to do.
• A computer has limited ability to self-organize its processing algorithms.
• Computers have no consciousness and thus much less awareness of
the feedback from their own processing and executive control ways
to consider choice options and adjustments.
• Unlike the stereotyped processing of computers, brains do not process
rigidly because brains have self-organizing capabilities that
process information in ways that can be new and not predetermined.
• The pervasive nonlinearity of brains enables emergent properties
that are greater than the sum of the parts.
CHAPTER 3
Physiology of Mental States and Conscious
Agency
3.1 THE AUTONOMOUS SENSE OF SELF

The brain situates itself in its body. An unconscious sense of self
resides in the topographical organization of how the brain maps the
body, both for sensation and for movement. This may remind readers
of the classical idea of “homunculus.” But this mapping is much more
than that—it registers self-hood. Sensations received from outside the
body are detected as “nonself.” The circuitry for self-identity allows
the brain to know it has body parts, where they are, and what they are
doing, both within the self and in relation to the nonself environment.
The conscious sense of self knows where its body input comes from
and knows when the input originates within or outside the self. The
feedback from musculature is likewise critical for distinguishing self
from nonself. The brain is made unconsciously aware of its body by
the feedback from tension sensors in muscles and tendons and balance
sensors in the inner ear. This mapped information allows the brain to
create body schemas and images that track changes in position and
movement.
Such a self is a unique being, sculpted over time by gene expression,

experiences, and learning and memory (Klemm, 2011a). This same
being has a periodic conscious state, in which the self and its environ-
ment are made explicit.
This mapping allows the brain to think, however unconsciously,

about the relationships of brain to body and body to the external
world. Throughout life a person’s sense of self, conscious and uncon-
scious, is sculpted by experience and learning. Choices, whether freely
made or not, affect life experiences and add to the sculpting of self.
Making a Scientific Case for Conscious Agency and Free Will. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-805153-5.00003-1
Physiology of Mental States and Conscious Agency 23
The sense of self begins its topographical construction in the womb

as the nervous system constructs sensory and motor maps of the body
that permit the brain to know where sensory information is coming
from and where to activate muscles for appropriate movements
(Klemm, 2012a). But the body mapping is not just confined to sensory
and motor cortex. Basal ganglia and the cerebellum participate in the
implementation of body mapping, as of course do the numerous fiber
pathways of these maps. In this way the brain forms bidirectional com-
munication links with its body and in the process learns that it exists
as an embodied self with its own identity.
As the fetal neocortex reaches its final development, such a brain

not only “receives” information about itself but likely “perceives” its
sense of self—consciously. Why do we think that late-stage fetuses
have a capacity for conscious realization of self? By 32 weeks of
human pregnancy, J.L. Conel’s histological studies (1963) reveal that
the neocortex, the seat of consciousness, is fully developed qualitatively
in terms of neuronal cell types and the structural layering. At around
the seventh month of gestation, human fetuses show bodily signs of
dreaming (muscle twitching, rapid eye movements), which we know
from the dream content of later life makes us aware of ourselves as
observers and participants in the dream. Electroencephalograms
(EEGs), which are not practical to record from human fetuses, show
clear evidence of dream sleep from implanted electrodes at the begin-
ning of the last trimester of sheep fetuses (Schwab et al., 2009). Dream
states are conscious states in that we are aware of ourselves as autono-
mous agents of decision and action in the dream.
“Conscious mind” is a metaphor for the bioelectric processes of

brain that create awareness that we are aware of certain things in the
environment and our internal feelings and musings. The word “mind”
has fogged our thinking about who we are. The word is a metaphor
for our personhood. Metaphors have so much utility in scientific com-
munication that scientists use them too casually. Metaphors are not
substitutes for reality. The physical reality is that what we call mind is
the set of electrochemical processes used by the brain to register
sensory input, process and memorize it, and exert control over physio-
logical function and behavior.
The reality of “mind” is that personhood resides in patterns of

nerve impulses or the stored capacity for generating those patterns
(Klemm, 2013). The real world does not exist as such in the brain.
What we consciously perceive is:
Selectively Attended at the expense of much that is not attended,
Deconstructed (via receptive fields, feature extraction, transduction),
Represented in nerve impulse patterns,
Mapped in sensory cortex (by topographical maps of the body),
and
Reconstructed (by binding of the deconstructed impulse patterns).
What we believe and think is:
Processed (by synaptic modifications in neural networks),

Related to Memory Stores (by working memory),
Reprocessed (by attending feedback from mental reflection and
actions), and
Selectively Incorporated Into Memory.
Conscious sense of self is a functional state, but it is also a state of
being. We see ourselves as agents, think we can be in control of our
self, and at least sometimes are in fact in control of our self.
When the sense of self emerges consciously, it permits a degree of
such processes as language, flexibility, reason, patience, will power,
memorization, and creativity in ways not demonstrated unconsciously.
When self emerges consciously, it operates as a reality check and aid
for unconscious thinking. Conscious sense of self would thus differ
from unconscious sense of self by having a different degree of auton-
omy and opportunity for flexible choice- and decision-making.
3.2 REFRAMING THE FREE-WILL ISSUE

Reframing the free-will issue needs to begin by understanding
consciousness, because by definition free will has to be exercised
consciously. Whenever decision and conscious agency are so inextri-
cably coupled, the issue becomes a matter of what consciousness is
and can do.
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while in that city. They found, that, during their absence, the mother-
in-law of Simon had been taken ill, and was then suffering under the
heat of a violent fever. Jesus at once, with a word, pronounced her
cure, and immediately the fever left her so perfectly healed, that she
arose from her sick bed, and proceeded to welcome their return, by
her grateful efforts to make their home comfortable to them, after
their tiresome pilgrimage.
“Immediately the fever left her.”――Matthew viii. 15: Mark i. 31: Luke iv. 39. It may seem
quite idle to conjecture the specific character of this fever; but it seems to me a very
justifiable guess, that it was a true intermittent, or fever and ague, arising from the marsh
influences, which must have been very strong in such a place as Capernaum,――situated
as it was, on the low margin of a large fresh water lake, and with all the morbific agencies of
such an unhealthy site, increased by the heat of that climate. The immediate termination of
the fever, under these circumstances, was an abundant evidence of the divine power of
Christ’s word, over the evil agencies, which mar the health and happiness of mankind.
During some time after this, Peter does not seem to have left his
home for any long period at once, until Christ’s long journeys to
Judea and Jerusalem, but no doubt accompanied Jesus on all his
excursions through Galilee, besides the first, of which the history has
been here given. It would be hard, and exceedingly unsatisfactory,
however, to attempt to draw out from the short, scattered incidents
which fill the interesting records of the gospels, any very distinct,
detailed narrative of these various journeys. The chronology and
order of most of these events, is still left much in the dark, and most
of the pains taken to bring out the truth to the light, have only raised
the greater dust to blind the eyes of the eager investigator. To
pretend to roll all these clouds away at once, and open to common
eyes a clear view of facts, which have so long confused the minds of
some of the wisest and best of almost every Christian age, and too
often, alas! in turn, been confused by them,――such an effort,
however well meant, could only win for its author the contempt of the
learned, and the perplexed dissatisfaction of common readers. But
one very simple, and comparatively easy task, is plainly before the
writer, and to that he willingly devotes himself for the present. This
task is, that of separating and disposing, in what may seem their
natural order, with suitable illustration and explanation, those few
facts contained in the gospels, relating distinctly to this apostle.
These facts, accordingly, here follow.
his first mission.
The next affair in which Peter is mentioned, by either evangelist, is

the final enrolling of the twelve peculiar disciples, to whom Jesus
gave the name of apostles. In their proper place have already been
mentioned, both the meaning of this title and the rank of Peter on the
list; and it need here only be remarked, that Peter went forth with the
rest, on this their first and experimental mission. All the first three
gospels contain this account; but Matthew enters most fully into the
charge of Jesus, in giving them their first commission. In his tenth
chapter, this charge is given with such particularity, that a mere
reference of the reader to that place will be sufficient, without any
need of explanation here. After these minute directions for their
behavior, they departed, as Mark and Luke record, and went through
the towns, preaching the gospel, that men should repent. And they
cast out many devils, and anointed with oil many that were sick, and
healed them. How far their journey extended, cannot be positively
determined, but there is no probability that they went beyond the
limits of Galilee. Divided as they were into couples, and each pair
taking a different route, a large space must have been gone over in
this mission, however brief the time can be supposed to have been.
As to the exact time occupied, we are, indeed, as uncertain as in
respect to the distance to which they traveled; but from the few
incidents placed by Mark and Luke between their departure and
return, it could hardly have been more than a few weeks, probably
only a few days. The only affair mentioned by either evangelist,
between their departure and return, is, the notice taken by Herod of
the actions of Jesus, to whom his attention was drawn by his
resemblance to John the Baptist. They then say, that the apostles,
when they were returned, gathered themselves together to Jesus,
and told him all things,――both what they had done and what they
had taught. As this report was received by Jesus, without any
comment that is recorded, it is fair to conclude, that their manner of
preaching, and the success of their labors, had been such as to
deserve his approbation. In this mission, there is nothing particularly
commemorated with respect to Peter’s conduct; but no doubt the
same fiery zeal which distinguished him afterwards, on so many
occasions, made him foremost in this his earliest apostolic labor. His
rank, as chief apostle, too, probably gave him some prominent part
in the mission, and his field of operations must have been more
important and extensive than that of the inferior apostles, and his
success proportionably greater.
It is deserving of notice, that on this first mission, Jesus seems to have arranged the
twelve in pairs, in which order he probably sent them forth, as he certainly did the seventy
disciples, described in Luke x. 1. The object of this arrangement, was no doubt to secure
them that mutual support which was so desirable for men, so unaccustomed to the high
duties on which they were now dispatched.
Their destination, also, deserves attention. The direction of Jesus was, that they should
avoid the way of the heathen, and the cities of the Samaritans, who were but little better,
and should go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. This expression was quoted,
probably, from those numerous passages in the prophets, where this term is applied to the
Israelites, as in Jeremiah l. 6, Isaiah liii. 6, Ezekiel xxxiv. 6, &c., and was used with peculiar
force, in reference to the condition of those to whom Jesus sent his apostles. It seems to
me, as if he, by this peculiar term, meant to limit them to the provinces of Galilee, where the
state and character of the Jews was such as eminently to justify this melancholy appellative.
The particulars of their condition will be elsewhere shown. They were expressly bounded on
one side, from passing into the heathen territory, and on the other from entering the cities of
the Samaritans, who dwelt between Galilee and Judea proper, so that a literal obedience of
these instructions, would have confined them entirely to Galilee, their native land. Macknight
also takes this view. The reasons of this limitation, are abundant and obvious. The
peculiarly abandoned moral condition of that outcast section of Palestine,――the perfect
familiarity which the apostles must have felt with the people of their own region, whose
peculiarities of language and habits they themselves shared so perfectly as to be unfitted
for a successful outset among the Jews of the south, without more experience out of
Galilee,――the shortness of the time, which seems to have been taken up in this
mission,――the circumstance that Jesus sent them to proclaim that “the kingdom of heaven
was at hand,” that is, that the Messiah was approaching, which he did in order to arouse the
attention of the people to himself, when he should go to them, (compare Luke x. 1,) thus
making them his forerunners; and the fact, that the places to which he actually did go with
them, on their return, were all in Galilee, (Matthew xi., xix. 1, Mark vi. 7, x. 1, Luke ix. 1‒51,)
all serve to show that this first mission of the apostles, was limited entirely to the Jewish
population of Galilee. His promise to them also in Matthew x. 2, 3, “you shall not finish the
cities of Israel, before the son of man come,” seems to me to mean simply, that there would
be no occasion for them to extend their labors to the Gentile cities of Galilee, or to the
Samaritans; because, before they could finish their specially allotted field of survey, he
himself would be ready to follow them, and confirm their labors. This was mentioned to
them in connection with the prediction of persecutions which they would meet, as an
encouragement. For various other explanations of this last passage, see Poole’s Synopsis,
Rosenmueller, Wetstein, Macknight, Le Sainte Bible avec notes, &c. in loc. But Kuinoel,
who quotes on his side Beza, Bolten, and others, supports the view, which an unassisted
consideration induced me to suggest.
“Anointed with oil.” Mark vi. 13. The same expression occurs in James v. 14, and needs
explanation from its connection with a peculiar rite of the Romish church,――extreme
unction, from which it differs, however, inasmuch as it was always a hopeful operation,
intended to aid the patient, and secure his recovery, while the Romish ceremony is always
performed in case of complete despair of life, only with a view to prepare the patient, by this
mummery, for certain death. The operation mentioned as so successfully performed by the
apostles, for the cure of diseases, was undoubtedly a simple remedial process, previously
in long-established use among the Hebrews, as clearly appears by the numerous
authorities quoted by Lightfoot, Wetstein, and Paulus, from Rabbinical Greek and Arabic
sources; yet Beza and others, quoted in Poole’s Synopsis, as well as Rosenmueller,
suggest some symbolical force in the ceremony, for which see those works in loc. See also
Kuinoel, and Bloomfield who gives numerous references. See also Marlorat’s Bibliotheca
expositionum, Stackhouse’s History of the Bible, Whitby, &c.
the scenes on the lake.
After receiving the report of his apostles’ labors, Jesus said to

them, “Come ye yourselves apart into a retired place, and rest
awhile:” for there were many coming and going, and they had no
leisure so much as to eat. And he took them and went privately by
ship aside, into a lonely place, near the city called Bethsaida. And
the people saw him departing, and many knew him, and went on foot
to the place, out of all the country, and outwent them, and came
together to him as soon as he reached there. And he received them,
and spoke unto them of the kingdom of God, and healed them that
had need of healing. It was on this occasion that he performed the
miracle of feeding the multitude with five loaves and two fishes. So
great was the impression made on their minds by this extraordinary
act of benevolence and power, that he thought it best, in order to
avoid the hindrance of his great task, by any popular commotion in
his favor, to go away in such a manner as to be effectually beyond
their reach for the time.――With this view he constrained his
disciples to get into the ship, and go before him to the other side of
the lake, opposite to Bethsaida, where they then were; while he sent
away the people. After sending the multitude away, he went up into a
mountain, apart, to pray. And after night fall, the vessel was in the
midst of the sea, and he alone on the land. Thence he saw them
toiling with rowing, (for the wind was contrary to them, and the ship
tossed in the waves:) and about three or four o’clock in the morning,
he comes to them, walking on the sea, and appeared as if about to
pass unconcernedly by them. But when they saw him walking upon
the sea. they supposed it to have been a spirit, and they all cried out,
“It is a spirit;” for they all saw him, and were alarmed; and
immediately he spoke to them, and said “Be comforted; it is I; be not
afraid.” And Peter, foremost in zeal on this occasion, as at almost all
times, said to him, “Lord, if it be thou, bid me come to thee upon the
water.” And he said, “Come.” And when Peter had come down out of
the vessel, he walked on the water, to go to Jesus. But when he saw
the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink, he cried,
“Lord, save me.” And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand,
and caught him; and said to him, “O thou of little faith! wherefore
didst thou doubt?” And when they were come into the ship, the wind
ceased; and they were sore amazed in themselves beyond measure,
and wondered. And all they that were in the vessel came and
worshiped him, saying, “Of a truth, thou art the Son of God.” This
amazement and reverence was certainly very tardily acknowledged
by them, after all the wonders they had seen wrought by him; but
they considered not the miracle of the loaves, the most recent of all,
which happened but a few hours before. For this thoughtlessness, in
a matter so striking and weighty, Jesus himself afterwards rebuked
them, referring both to this miracle of feeding the five thousand, and
to a subsequent similar one. However, the various great actions of a
similar character, thus repeated before them, seem at last to have
had a proper effect, since, on an occasion not long after, they boldly
and clearly made their profession of faith in Jesus, as the Christ.
“A lonely place.”――The word desert, which is the adjective given in this passage, in the
common English version, (Matthew xiv. 13, 15, Mark vi. 31, 32, 35, Luke ix. 10, 12,) does
not convey to the reader, the true idea of the character of the place. The Greek word Ερημος
(eremos) does not in the passages just quoted, mean “desert,” in our modern sense of that
English word, which always conveys the idea of “desolation,” “wildness” and “barrenness,”
as well as “solitude.” But the Greek word by no means implied these darker characteristics.
The primary, uniform idea of the word is, “lonely,” “solitary,” and so little does it imply
“barrenness,” that it is applied to lands, rich, fertile and pleasant, a connection, of course,
perfectly inconsistent with our ideas of a desert place. Schleusner gives the idea very fairly
under Ερημια, (eremia,) a derivative of this word. “Notat locum aliquem vel tractum terrae,
non tam incultum et horridum, quam minus habitabilem,――solitudinem,――locum vacuum
quidem ab hominibus, pascuis tamen et agris abundantem, et arboribus obsitum.” “It means
a place or tract of land, not so much uncultivated and wild, as it does one thinly
inhabited,――a solitude, a place empty of men indeed, yet rich in pastures and fields, and
planted with trees.” But after giving this very clear and satisfactory account of the derivative,
he immediately after gives to the primitive itself, the primary meaning “desertus, desolatus,
vastus, devastatus,” and refers to passages where the word is applied to ruined cities; but in
every one of those passages, the true idea is that above given as the meaning, “stripped of
inhabitants,” and not “desolated” or “laid waste.” Hedericus gives this as the first meaning,
“desertus, solus, solitarius, inhabitatus.” Schneider also fully expresses it, in German, by
“einsam,” (lonely, solitary,) in which he is followed by Passow, his improver, and by
Donnegan, his English translator. Jones and Pickering, also give it thus. Bretschneider and
Wahl, in their New Testament Lexicons, have given a just and proper classification of the
meanings. The word “desert” came into our English translation, by the minute verbal
adherence of the translators to the Vulgate or Latin version, where the word is expressed by
“desertum” probably enough because desertus, in Latin, does not mean desert in English,
nor any thing like it, but simply “lonely,” “uninhabited;”――in short, it has the force of the
English participle, “deserted,” and not of the adjective “desert,” which has probably acquired
its modern meaning, and lost its old one, since our common translation was made; thus
making one instance, among ten thousand others, of the imperfection of this ancient
translation, which was, at best, but a servile English rendering of the Vulgate. Campbell, in
his four gospels, has repeated this passage, without correcting the error, though Hammond,
long before, in his just and beautiful paraphrase, (on Matthew xiv. 13,) had corrected it by
the expression, “a place not inhabited.” Charles Thomson, in his version, has overlooked
the error in Matthew xiv. 13, 15, but has corrected it in Mark vi. 31, &c., and in Luke ix. 10;
expressing it by “solitary.” The remark of the apostles to Jesus, “This place is lonely,” does
not require the idea of a barren or wild place; it was enough that it was far from any village,
and had not inhabitants enough to furnish food for five thousand men; as in 2 Corinthians xi.
26, it is used in opposition to “city,” in the sense of “the country.”
his declaration of christ’s divinity.
Journeying on northward, Jesus came into the neighborhood of

♦Caesarea Philippi, and while he was there in some solitary place,
praying alone with his select disciples, at the conclusion of his
prayer, he asked them, “Who do men say that I, the son of man,
am?” And they answered him, “Some say that thou art John the
Baptist:” Herod, in particular, we know, had this notion; “some, that
thou art Elijah, and others that thou art Jeremiah, or one of the
prophets, that is risen again.” So peculiar was his doctrine, and so
far removed was he, both in impressive eloquence and in original
views, from the degeneracy and servility of that age, that the
universal sentiment was, that one of the bold, pure “spirits of the
fervent days of old,” had come back to call Judah from foreign
servitude, to the long remembered glories of the reigns of David and
Solomon. But his chosen ones, who had by repeated instruction, as
well as long acquaintance, better learned their Master, though still far
from appreciating his true character and designs, had yet a higher
and juster idea of him, than the unenlightened multitudes who had
been amazed by his deeds. To draw from them the distinct
acknowledgment of their belief in him, Jesus at last plainly asked his
disciples, “But who do ye say that I am?” Simon Peter, in his usual
character as spokesman, replied for the whole band, “Thou art the
Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus, recognizing in this prompt
answer, the fiery and devoted spirit that would follow the great work
of redemption through life, and at last to death, replied to the zealous
speaker in terms of marked and exalted honor, prophesying at the
same time the high part which he would act in spreading and
strengthening the kingdom of his Master: “Blessed art thou, Simon,
son of Jonah, for flesh and blood have not revealed this unto thee,
but my Father who is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, that thou
art a rock, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of
hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give thee the keys of the
kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be
bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, shall be
loosed in heaven.” In such high terms was the chief apostle
distinguished, and thus did his Master peculiarly commission him
above the rest, for the high office, to which all the energies of his
remaining life were to be devoted.
♦ “Cesarea” replaced with “Caesarea”
Who do men say that I am.――The common English translation, here makes a gross
grammatical blunder, putting the relative in the objective case,――“Whom do men say,” &c.
(Matthew xvi. 13‒15.) It is evident that on inverting the order, putting the relative last instead
of first, it will be in the nominative,――“Men say that I am who?” making, in short, a
nominative after the verb, though it here comes before it by the inversion which the relative
requires. Here again the blunder may be traced to a heedless copying of the Vulgate. In
Latin, as in Greek, the relative is given in the accusative, and very properly, because it is
followed by the infinitive. “Quem dicunt homines esse Filium hominis?” which literally is,
“Whom do men say the son of man to be?”――a very correct form of expression; but the
blunder of our translators was, in preserving the accusative, while they changed the verb,
from the infinitive to the finite form; for “whom” cannot be governed by “say.” Hammond has
passed over the blunder; but Campbell, Thomson, and Webster, have corrected it.
Son of Man.――This expression has acquired a peculiarly exalted sense in our minds,
in consequence of its repeated application to Jesus Christ, and its limitation to him, in the
New Testament. But in those days it had no meaning by which it could be considered
expressive of any peculiar characteristic of the Savior, being a mere general emphatic
expression for the common word “man,” used in solemn address or poetical expressions.
Both in the Old and New Testament it is many times applied to men in general, and to
particular individuals, in such a way as to show that it was only an elegant periphrasis for
the common term, without implying any peculiar importance in the person thus designated,
or referring to any peculiar circumstance as justifying this appellative in that case. Any
concordance will show how commonly the word occurred in this connection. The diligent
Butterworth enumerates eighty-nine times in which this word is applied to Ezekiel, in whose
book of prophecy it occurs oftener than in any other book in the Bible. It is also applied to
Daniel, in the address of the angel to him, as to Ezekiel; and in consideration of the vastly
more frequent occurrence of the expression in the writers after the captivity, and its
exclusive use by them as a formula of solemn address, it has been commonly considered
as having been brought into this usage among the Hebrews, from the dialects of Chaldea
and Syria, where it was much more common. In Syriac, more particularly, the simple
expression, “man,” is entirely banished from use by this solemn periphrasis, (bar-
nosh,) “son of man,” which every where takes the place of the original direct form. It should
be noticed also, that in every place in the Old Testament where this expression (“son of
man”) occurs, before Ezekiel, the former part of the sentence invariably contains the direct
form of expression, (“man,”) and this periphrasis is given in the latter part of every such
sentence, for the sake of a poetical repetition of the same idea in a slightly different form.
Take, for instance, Psalm viii. 4, “What is man, that thou art mindful of him? or the son of
man, that thou visitest him?” And exactly so in every other passage anterior to Ezekiel, as
Numbers xxiii. 19, Job xxv. 16, xxxv. 8, Isaiah li. 12, lvi. 2, and several other passages, to
which any good concordance will direct the reader.
The New Testament writers too, apply this expression in other ways than as a name of
Jesus Christ. It is given as a mere periphrasis, entirely synonymous with “man,” in a general
or abstract sense, without reference to any particular individual, in Mark iii. 28, (compare
Matthew xii. 13, where the simple expression “men” is given,) Hebrews ii. 6, (a mere
translation of Psalm viii. 4,) Ephesians iii. 5, Revelation i. 13, xiv. 14. In the peculiar
emphatic limitation to which this note refers, it is applied by Jesus Christ to himself about
eighty times in the gospels, but is never used by any other person in the New Testament, as
a name of the Savior, except by Stephen, in Acts, vii. 56. It never occurs in this sense in the
apostolic epistles. (Bretschneider.) For this use of the word, I should not think it necessary
to seek any mystical or important reason, as so many have done, nor can I see that in its
application to Jesus, it has any very direct reference to the circumstance of his having,
though divine, put on a human nature, but simply a nobly modest and strikingly emphatic
form of expression used by him, in speaking of his own exalted character and mighty plans,
and partly to avoid the too frequent repetition of the personal pronoun. It is at once evident
that this indirect form, in the third person, is both more dignified and modest in solemn
address, than the use of the first person singular of the pronoun. Exactly similar to this are
many forms of circumlocution with which we are familiar. The presiding officer of any great
deliberative assembly, for instance, in announcing his own decision on points of order, by a
similar periphrasis, says “The chair decides,” &c. In fashionable forms of intercourse, such
instances are still more frequent. In many books, where the writer has occasion to speak of
himself, he speaks in the third person, “the author,” &c.; as in an instance close at hand, in
this book it will be noticed, that where it is necessary for me to allude to myself in the text of
the work, which, of course, is more elevated in its tone than the notes, I speak, according to
standard forms of scriptorial propriety, in the third person, as “the author,” &c.; while here, in
these small discussions, which break in on the more dignified narrative, I find it at once
more convenient and proper, to use the more familiar and simple forms of ♦expression.
♦ “expresssion” replaced with “expression”
This periphrasis (“son of”) is not peculiar to oriental languages, as every Greek scholar
knows, who is familiar with Homer’s common expression υιες Αχαιων, (uies Akhaion,) “sons
of Grecians,” instead of “Grecians” simply, which by a striking coincidence, occurs in Joel
xiii. 6, in the same sense. Other instances might be needlessly ♦multiplied.
♦ “multipled” replaced with “multiplied”
Thou art a Rock, &c.――This is the just translation of Peter’s name, and the force of the
declaration is best understood by this rendering. As it stands in the original, it is “Thou art
Πετρος, (Petros, ‘a rock,’) and on this Πετρα (Petra, ‘a rock’) I will build my church,”――a
play on the words so palpable, that great injustice is done to its force by a common tame,
unexplained translation. The variation of the words in the Greek, from the masculine to the
feminine termination, makes no difference in the expression. In the Greek Testament, the
feminine πετρα (petra) is the only form of the word used as the common noun for “rock,” but
the masculine πετρος (petros) is used in the most finished classic writers of the ancient
Greek, of the Ionic, Doric and Attic, as Homer, Herodotus, Pindar, Xenophon, and, in the
later order of writers, Diodorus Siculus.
H. Stephens gives the masculine form as the primitive, but Schneider derives it from the
feminine.
After this distinct profession of faith in him, by his disciples,

through Peter, Jesus particularly and solemnly charged them all, that
they should not, then, assert their belief to others, lest they should
thereby be drawn into useless and unfortunate contests about their
Master, with those who entertained a very different opinion of him.
For Jesus knew that his disciples, shackled and possessed as they
were with their fantasies about the earthly reign of a Messiah, were
not, as yet, sufficiently prepared to preach this doctrine: and wisely
foresaw that the mass of the Jewish people would either put no faith
at all in such an announcement, or that the ill disposed and
ambitious would abuse it, to the purposes of effecting a political
revolution, by raising a rebellion against the Roman rulers of
Palestine, and oversetting foreign power. He had, it is true, already
sent forth his twelve apostles, to preach the coming of the kingdom,
(Matthew x. 7,) but that was only to the effect that the time of the
Messiah’s reign was nigh,――that the lives and hearts of all must be
changed,――all which the apostles might well preach, without
pretending to announce who the Messiah was.
his ambitious hopes and their humiliation.
This avowal of Peter’s belief that Jesus was the Messiah, to which
the other apostles gave their assent, silent or loud, was so clear and
hearty, that Jesus plainly perceived their persuasion of his divine
authority to be so strong, that they might now bear a decisive and
open explanation of those things which he had hitherto rather darkly
and dimly hinted at, respecting his own death. He also at this time,
brought out the full truth the more clearly as to the miseries which
hung over him, and his expected death, with the view the more
effectually to overthrow those false notions which they had
preconceived of earthly happiness and triumph, to be expected in
the Messiah’s kingdom; and with the view, also, of preparing them
for the events which must shortly happen; lest, after they saw him
nailed to the cross, they should all at once lose their high hopes, and
utterly give him up. He knew too, that he had such influence with his
disciples, that if their minds were shocked, and their faith in him
shaken, at first, by such a painful disclosure, he could soon bring
them back to a proper confidence in him. Accordingly, from this time,
he began distinctly to set forth to them, how he must go to
Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders, and chief priests,
and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day. There is
much room for reasonable doubt, as to the manner in which those
who heard this declaration of Christ, understood it at the time. As to
the former part of it, namely, that he would be ill-treated by the great
men of the Jewish nation, both by those ruling in the civil and
religious government, it was too plain for any one to put any but the
right meaning upon it. But the promise that he should, after this
horrible fate, rise again from the dead on the third day, did not, as it
is evident, by any means convey to them the meaning which all who
read it now, are able to find in it. Nothing can be more plain to a
careful reader of the gospels, than that his disciples and friends had
not the slightest expectation that he would ever appear to them after
his cruel death; and the mingled horror and dread with which the first
news of that event was received by them, shows them to have been
utterly unprepared for it. It required repeated positive demonstration,
on his part, to assure them that he was truly alive among them, in his
own form and character. The question then is――what meaning had
they all along given to the numerous declarations uttered by him to
them, apparently foretelling this, in the distinct terms, of which the
above passage is a specimen? Had they understood it as we do,
and yet so absolutely disbelieved it, that they put no faith in the event
itself, when it had so palpably occurred? And had they, for months
and years, followed over Palestine, through labors, and troubles, and
dangers, a man, who, as they supposed, was boldly endeavoring to
saddle their credulity with a burden too monstrous for even them to
bear? They must, from the nature of their connection with him, have
put the most unlimited confidence in him, and could not thus
devotedly have given themselves up to a man whom they believed
or suspected to be constantly uttering to them a falsehood so
extravagant and improbable. They must, then, have put some
meaning on it, different from that which our clearer light enables us
to see in it; and that meaning, no doubt, they honestly and firmly
believed, until the progress of events showed them the power of the
prophecy in its wonderful and literal fulfilment. They may have
misunderstood it in his life time, in this way: the universal character
of the language of the children of Shem, seems to be a remarkable
proneness to figurative expressions, and the more abstract the ideas
which the speaker wishes to convey, the more strikingly material are
the figures he uses, and the more poetical the language in which he
conveys them. Teachers of morals and religion, most especially,
have, among those nations of the east, been always distinguished
for their highly figurative expressions, and none abound more richly
in them than the writers of the Old and New Testament. So peculiarly
effective, for his great purposes, did Jesus Christ, in particular, find
this variety of eloquence, that it is distinctly said of him, that he
seldom or never spoke to the people without a parable, which he
was often obliged to expound more in detail, to his chosen followers,
when apart with them. This style of esoteric and exoteric instruction,
had early taught his disciples to look into his most ordinary
expressions for a hidden meaning; and what can be more likely than
that often, when left to their own conjectures, they, for a time, at
least, overleaped the simple literal truth, into a fog of figurative
interpretations, as too many of their very modern successors have
often done, to their own and others’ misfortune. We certainly know
that, in regard to those very expressions about raising the dead,
there was a very earnest inquiry among the three chief apostles,
some time after, as will be mentioned in place, showing that it never
seemed possible to them that their Lord, mighty as he had showed
himself, could ever mean to say to them, that, when his bitter foes
had crowned his life of toil and cares with a bloody and cruel exit,
he――even He, could dare to promise them, that he would break
through that iron seal, which, when once set upon the energies of
man, neither goodness, nor valor, nor knowledge, nor love, had ever
loosened, but which, since the first dead yielded his breath, not the
mightiest prophet, nor the most inspired, could ever break through
for himself. The figure of death and resurrection, has often been
made a striking image of many moral changes;――of some one of
which, the hearers of Jesus probably first interpreted it. In connection
with what he had previously said, nothing could seem more natural
to them, than that he, by this peculiarly strong metaphor, wished to
remind them that, even after his death, by the envious and cruel
hands of Jewish magistrates, over but a few days, his name, the
ever fresh influence of his bright and holy example――the undying
powers of his breathing and burning words, should still live with
them, and with them triumph after the momentary struggles of the
enemies of the truth.
The manner, also, in which Simon Peter received this

communication, shows that he could not have anticipated so glorious
and dazzling a result of such horrible evils: for, however literally he
may have taken the prophecy of Christ’s cruel death, he used all his
powers to dissuade his adored master from exposing himself to a
fate so dark and dreadful,――so sadly destructive of all the new-
born hopes of his chosen followers, and from which the conclusion of
the prophecy seemed to offer no clear or certain mode of escape.
Never before, had Jesus spoken in such plain and decided terms,
about the prospect of his own terrible death. Peter, whose heart had
just been lifted up to the skies with joy and hope, in the prospect of
the glorious triumphs to be achieved by his Lord through his means,
and whose thoughts were even then dwelling on the honors, the
power, the fame, which were to accrue to him for his share in the
splendid work,――was shocked beyond measure, at the strange and
seemingly contradictory view of the results, now taken by his great
leader. With the confident familiarity to which their mutual love and
intimacy entitled him, in some measure, he laid his hand
expostulatingly upon him, and drew him partly aside, to urge him
privately to forget thoughts of despondency, so unworthy of the great
enterprise of Israel’s restoration, to which they had all so manfully
pledged themselves as his supporters. We may presume, that he, in
a tone of encouragement, endeavored to show him how impossible it
would be for the dignitaries of Jerusalem to withstand the tide of
popularity which had already set so strongly in favor of Jesus; that so
far from looking upon himself as in danger of a death so infamous,
from the Sanhedrim, he might, at the head of the hosts of his
zealous Galileans, march as a conqueror to Jerusalem, and thence
give laws from the throne of his father David, to all the wide
territories of that far-ruling king. Such dreams of earthly glory
seemed to have filled the soul of Peter at that time; and we cannot
wonder, then, that every ambitious feeling within him recoiled at the
gloomy announcement, that the idol of his hopes was to end his
days of unrequited toil, by a death so infamous as that of the cross.
“Be it far from thee, Lord,” “God forbid,” “Do not say so,” “Do not thus
damp our courage and high hopes,” “This must not happen to
thee.”――Jesus, on hearing these words of ill-timed rebuke, which
showed how miserably his chief follower had been infatuated and
misled, by his foolish and carnal ambition, turned away indignantly
from the low and degraded motives, by which Peter sought to bend
him from his holy purposes. Not looking upon him, but upon the
other disciples, who had kept their feelings of regret and
disappointment to themselves, he, in the most energetic terms,
expressed his abhorrence of such notions, by his language to the
speaker. “Get thee behind me, Satan; thou art a scandal to me; for
thou savorest not the things which be of God, but the things which
be of men. In these fervent aspirations after eminence, I recognize
none of the pure devotion to the good of man, which is the sure test
of the love of God; but the selfish desire for transient, paltry
distinction, which characterizes the vulgar ambition of common men,
enduring no toil or pain, but in the hope of a more than equal earthly
reward speedily accruing.” After this stern reply, which must have
strongly impressed them all with the nature of the mistake of which
they had been guilty, he addressed them still further, in continuation
of the same design, of correcting their false notion of the earthly
advantages to be expected by his companions in toil. He
immediately gave them a most untempting picture of the character
and conduct of him, who could be accepted as a fit fellow-worker
with Jesus. “If any one wishes to come after me, let him deny
himself, and let him take up his cross, (as if we should say, let him
come with his halter around his neck, and with the gibbet on his
shoulder,) and follow me. For whosoever shall save his life for my
sake, shall lose it; and whosoever will lose his life for my sake, shall
find it. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world,
and lose his own soul? For the Son of Man shall come in the glory of
his Father, with his angels; and then, he shall reward every man
according to his works.” “I solemnly tell you, there are some standing
here who shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of Man
coming in his kingdom.”――“In vain would you, in pursuit of your idle
dreams of earthly glory, yield up all the powers of your soul, and
spend your life for an object so worthless. After all, what is there in
all the world, if you should have the whole at your disposal――what,
for the momentary enjoyment of which, you can calmly pay down
your soul as the price? Seek not, then, for rewards so unworthy of
the energies which I have recognized in you, and have devoted to far
nobler purposes. Higher honors will crown your toils and sufferings,
in my service;――nobler prizes are seen near, with the eye of faith.
Speedily will the frail monuments of this world’s wonders crumble,
and the memory of its greatnesses pass away; but over the ruins of
kingdoms, the coming of the Man to whom you have joined
yourselves is sure, and in that triumphant advent, you shall find the
imperishable requital of your faithful and zealous works. And of the
nature and aspect of the glories which I now so dimly shadow in
words, some of those who now hear me shall soon be the living
witnesses, as of a foretaste of rewards, whose full enjoyment can be
yours, only after the weariness and misery of this poor life are all
passed. Years of toil, dangers, pain, and sorrow,――lives passed in
contempt and disgrace,――deaths of ignominy, of unpitied anguish,
and lingering torture, must be your passage to the joys of which I
speak; while the earthly honors which you now covet, shall for ages
continue to be the prize of the base, the cruel, and the foolish, from
whom you vainly hope to snatch them.”
the transfiguration.
The mysterious promise thus made by Jesus, of a new and

peculiar exhibition of himself, to some of his chosen ones, he soon
sought an occasion of executing. About six or eight days after this
remarkable conversation, he took Peter, and the two sons of
Zebedee, James and John, and went with them up into a high
mountain, apart by themselves. As to the name and place of this
mountain, a matter of some interest certainly, there have been two
opinions among those who have attempted to illustrate the
topography of the gospels. The phrase, “a high mountain,” has
instantly brought to the thoughts of most learned readers, Mount
Tabor, famous for several great events in Bible history, which they
have instantly adopted, without considering the place in which the
previous account had left Jesus, which was Caesarea Philippi;
hereafter described as in the farthest northern part of Galilee. Now,
Mount Tabor, however desirable in other particulars, as the scene of
a great event in the life of Jesus, was full seventy miles south of the
place where Jesus had the conversation with his disciples, which led
to the remarkable display which followed a few days after, on the
mountain. It is true, that the intervening period of a week, was
sufficient to enable him to travel this distance with ease; but the
difficulty is, to assign some possible necessity or occasion for such a
journey. Certainly, he needed not to have gone thus far to find a
mountain, for Caesarea Philippi itself stands by the base of Paneas,
which is a part of the great Syrian range of Antilibanus. This great
mountain, or mountain chain, rises directly behind the city, and parts
of it are so high above the peak of Tabor, or any other mountain in
Palestine, as to be covered with snow, even in that warm country.
The original readers of the gospel story, were dwellers in Palestine,
and must have been, for the most part, well acquainted with the
character of the places which were the scenes of the incidents, and
could hardly have been ignorant of the fact, that this splendid city, so
famous as the monument of royal vanity and munificence, was near
the northern end of Palestine, and of course, must have been known
even by those who had never seen it, nor heard it particularly
described, to be very near the great Syrian mountains; so near too,
as to be very high elevated above the cities of the southern country,
since not far from the city gushed out the most distant sources of the
rapid Jordan. But another difficulty, in respect to this journey of
seventy miles to Tabor, is, that while the gospels give no account of
it, it is even contradicted by Mark’s statement, that after departing
from the mountain, he passed through Galilee, and came to
Capernaum, which is between Tabor and Caesarea Philippi, twenty
or thirty miles from the former, and forty or fifty from the latter. Now,
that Jesus Christ spared no exertion of body or mind, in “going about
doing good,” no one can doubt; but that he would spend the strength
devoted to useful purposes, in traveling from one end of Galilee to
the other, for no greater good than to ascend a particular mountain,
and then to travel thirty miles back on the same route, is a most
unnecessary tax upon our faith. But here, close to Caesarea Philippi,
was the mighty range of Antilibanus, known in Hebrew poetry by the
name of Hermon in this part; and He, whose presence made all
places holy, could not have chosen, among all the mountains of
Palestine, one which nature had better fitted to impress the beholder
who stood on the summit, with ideas of the vast and sublime.
Modern travelers assure us that, from the peaks behind the city, the
view of the lower mountains to the south,――of the plain through
which the young Jordan flows, soon spreading out into the broad
sheet of lake Houle, (Samachonitis lacus,) and of the country, almost
to lake Tiberias, is most magnificent. The precise peak which was
the scene of the event here related, it is impossible to conjecture. It
may have been any one of three which are prominent: either the
castle hill, or, farther off and much higher, Mount Bostra, once the
site of a city, or farther still, and highest of all, Merura Jubba, which is
but a few hours walk from the city. The general impression of the
vulgar, however, and of those who take the traditions of the vulgar
and the ignorant, without examination, has been, that Tabor was the
scene of the event, so that, at this day, it is known among the stupid
Christians of Palestine, by the name of the Mount of the
Transfiguration. So idly are these foolish local traditions received,
that this falsehood, so palpable on inspection, has been quietly
handed down from traveler to traveler, ever since the crusades,
when hundreds of these and similar localities, were hunted up so
hastily, and by persons so ill-qualified for the search, that more
modern investigators may be pardoned for treating with so little
consideration the voice of such antiquity, when it is found opposed to
a rational and consistent understanding of the gospel story. When
the question was first asked, “Where is the mount of the
transfiguration?” there were enough persons interested to reply,
“Mount Tabor.” No reason was probably asked for the decision, and
none was given; but as the scene was acted on a high mountain in
Galilee, and as Tabor answered perfectly to this very simple
description, and was moreover interesting on many other accounts,
both historical and natural, it was adopted for the transfiguration
without any discussion whatever, among those on the spot. Still, to
learned and diligent readers of the gospels, the ♦inconsistencies of
such a belief have been so obvious, that many great theologians
have decided, for the reasons here given, that the transfiguration
must have taken place on some part of Mount Paneas, as it was
called by the Greeks and Romans, known among the Jews,
however, from the earliest times, by the far older name of Mount
Hermon. On the determination of this point, more words have been
expended than some may deem the matter to deserve; but among
the various objects of the modern historian of Bible times, none is
more important or interesting, ♠than that of settling the often disputed
topography of the sacred narrative; and as the ground here taken
differs so widely from the almost universally received opinion, the
minute reasons were loudly called for, in justification of the author’s
boldness. The ancient blunders here detected, and shown to be
based only upon a guess, is a very fair specimen of the way in
which, in the moral as in the natural sciences, “they all copy from
one another,” without taking pains to look into the truth of small
matters. And it seems to show, moreover, how, when men of patient
and zealous accuracy, have taken the greatest pains to expose and
correct so causeless an error, common readers and writers too, will
carelessly and lazily slip back into the old blunder, thus making the
counsels of the learned of no effect, and loving darkness rather than
light, error rather than exactness, because they are too shiftless to
find a good reason for what is laid down before them as truth. But so
it is. It is, and always has been, and always will be, so much easier
for men to swallow whole, or reject whole, the propositions made to
them, that the vast majority had much rather believe on other
people’s testimony, than go through the harassing and tiresome task,
of looking up the proofs for themselves. In this very instance, this
important topographical blunder was fully exposed and corrected a
century and a half ago, by Lightfoot, the greatest Hebrew scholar
that ever lived; and we see how much wiser the world is for his
pains.
♦ “inconsistences” replaced with “inconsistencies”
♠ duplicate word “than” removed
Caesarea Philippi.――This city stood where all the common maps place it, in the
farthest northern part of Palestine, just at the foot of the mountains, and near the fountain
head of the Jordan. The name by which it is called in the gospels, is another instance, like
Julias Bethsaida, of a compliment paid by the servile kings, of the divisions of Palestine, to
their imperial masters, who had given, and who at any time could take away, crown and
kingdom from them. The most ancient name by which this place is known to have been
mentioned in the Hebrew scriptures, is Lasha, in Genesis x. 19, afterwards variously
modified into Leshem, (Joshua xix. 47,) and Laish, (Judges xviii. 7: xiv. 29,) a name
somewhat like the former in sound, though totally different in meaning, (‫ לשם‬leshem, “a
precious stone,” and ‫ ליש‬laish, “a lion,”) undoubtedly all three being from the same root, but
variously modified in the changing pronunciations of different ages and tribes. In the earliest
passage, (Genesis x. 19,) it is clearly described as on the farthest northern limit of the land
of Canaan, and afterwards, being conquered long after most of the cities of that region, by
the tribe of Dan, and receiving the name of this tribe, as an addition to its former one, it
became proverbially known under the name of Dan, as the farthest northern point of the
land of Israel, as Beersheba was the southern one. It did not, however, lose its early
Canaanitish name till long after, for, in Isaiah x. 30, it is spoken of under the name of Laish,
as the most distant part of Israel, to which the cry of the distressed could reach. It is also
mentioned under its later name of Dan, in Genesis xiv. 14, and Deuteronomy xxxiv. 1, where
it is given by the writer, or some copyist, in anticipation of the subsequent account of its
acquiring this name after the conquest. Josephus also mentions it, under this name, in
Antiquities book i. chapter 10, and book viii. chapter 8, section 4, in both which places he
speaks of it as standing at one of the sources of the Jordan, from which circumstance, no
doubt, the latter part of the river’s name is derived. After the overthrow of the Israelitish
power in that region, it fell into the hands of new possessors, and under the Greeks and
Romans, went by the name of Panias, (Josephus and Ptolemy,) or Paneas, (Josephus and
Pliny,) which name, according to Ptolemy, it had under the Phoenicians. This name,
supposed to have been taken from the Phoenician name of the mountain near, Josephus
gives to it, in all the later periods of his history, until he speaks of the occasion on which it
received a new change of name.
Its commanding and remarkable position, on the extremity of Palestine, made it a

frontier post of some importance; and it was therefore a desirable addition to the dominions
of Herod the Great, who received it from his royal patron, Augustus Caesar, along with its
adjacent region between Galilee and Trachonitis, after the death of Zenodorus, its former
possessor. (Josephus Antiquities book xv. chapter 10, section 3.) Herod the Great, out of
gratitude for this princely addition to his dominions, at a time when attempts were made to
deprive him of his imperial master’s favor, raised near this city, a noble monument to
Augustus. (Josephus as above quoted.) “He built a monument to him, of white marble, in
the land of Zenodorus, near Panium. There is a beautiful cave in the mountain, and beneath
it there is a chasm in the earth, rugged, and of immense depth, full of still water, and over it
hangs a vast mountain; and under the cave rise the springs of the Jordan. This place,
already very famous, he adorned with the temple which he consecrated to Caesar.” A lofty
temple of white marble, on such a high spot, contrasted with the dark rocks of the mountain
and cave around, must have been a splendid object in the distance, and a place of frequent
resort.
This city, along with the adjacent provinces, after the death of the first Herod, was given
to his son Philip, made tetrarch of Iturea and Trachonitis. This prince, out of gratitude to the
royal donor, at the same time when he rebuilt and repaired Bethsaida, as already
mentioned, “also embellished Paneas, at the fountains of the Jordan, and gave it the name
of Caesarea.” (Josephus Antiquities book xviii. chapter 2, section 1, also Jewish War, book
ii. chapter 9, section 1,) and to distinguish it from other Caesareas, hereafter to be
mentioned, it was called from the name of its royal builder, Caesarea Philippi, that is, “the
Caesarea of Philip.” By this name it was most commonly known in the time of Christ; but it
did not answer the end of perpetuating the name of its builder and his patron, for it shortly
afterwards recovered its former name, Paneas, which, probably, never went wholly out of
use. As late as the time of Pliny, (about A. D. 70,) Paneas was a part of the name of
Caesarea. Fons Paneas, qui cognomen dedit Caesareae, “the fountain Paneas, which gave
to Caesarea a surname.” (Pliny Natural History book v. chapter 15,) which shows, that at
that time, the name Paneas was one, by which even foreign geographers recognized this
city, in spite of the imperial dignity of its new title. Eusebius, (about A. D. 315,) speaks of
“Caesarea Philippi, which the Phoenicians call Paneas, at the foot of mount Panium.”
(Φιλιππου Καισαρεια ἡν Πανεαδα Θοινικες προσαγορευσι, &c. Church History book vii. chapter
17.) Jerome, (about A. D. 392,) never mentions the name Caesarea Philippi, as belonging
to this city, except in commenting on Matthew xvi. 13, where he finds it necessary to explain
this name, as an antiquated term, then out of use. Caesaream Philippi, quae nunc dicitur
Paneas, “Caesarea Philippi, which is now called Paneas;” and in all the other places where
he has occasion to mention the place, he gives it only the name of Paneas. Thus, in
commenting on Amos viii. 14, he says, “Dan, on the boundary of the Jewish territory, where
now is Paneas.” And on Jeremiah iv. 15,――“The tribe Dan, near mount Lebanon, and the
city which is now called Paneas,” &c.――See also commentary on Daniel xiii. 16.
After the death of Philip, this city, along with the rest of his dominions, was presented by
Cains Caligula to Agrippa, who added still farther to the improvements made by Philip, more
particularly ornamenting the Panium, or famous source of the Jordan, near the city, as
Josephus testifies. (Jewish War, book iii. chapter 9, section 7.) “The natural beauty of the
Panium, moreover, was still more highly adorned (προσεξησκηται) with royal magnificence,
being embellished by the wealth of Agrippa.” This king also attempted to perpetuate the
name of one of his imperial patrons, in connection with the city, calling it Neronias, in honor
of one who is well enough known without this aid. (Josephus Antiquities book xx. chapter 8,
section 3.) The perfectly transient character of this idle appellation, is abundantly shown
from the preceding copious quotations.
The city, now called Banias, (not Belinas, as Wahl erroneously says,) has been visited
and examined in modern times by several travelers, of whom, none has described it more
minutely than Burckhardt. His account of the mountains around the city, so finely illustrates
my description of the scene of the transfiguration, that I extract largely from it here. In order
to appreciate the description fully, it must be understood that Heish is now the general
Arabic name for the mountain chain, which was by ancient authors variously called
Lebanon, Libanus, Anti-Libanus, Hermon, and Panium; for all these names have been given
to the mountain-range, on whose slope Caesarea Philippi, or Paneas, stood.
“The district of Banias is classic ground; it is the ancient Caesarea Philippi; the lake
Houle, is the Lacus Samachonitis. Immediately after my arrival, I took a man of the village to
shew me the way to the ruined castle of Banias, which bears East by South from it. It stands
on the top of a mountain, which forms part of the mountain of Heish, at an hour and a
quarter from Banias; it is now in complete ruins, but was once a very strong fortress. Its
whole circumference is twenty-five minutes. It is surrounded by a wall ten feet thick, flanked
with numerous round towers, built with equal blocks of stone, each about two feet square.
The keep, or citadel, seems to have been on the highest summit, on the eastern side,
where the walls are stronger than on the lower, or western side. The view from thence over
the Houle and a part of its lake, the Djebel Safad, and the barren Heish, is magnificent. On

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Making a Scientific Case for Conscious

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For Information on all Academic Press publications

No coherent scientific argument has been made to support free will.

Early drafts of this manuscript were critiqued by psychologist, Marc

1.1 ILLUSORY FREE WILL

Free-will deniers seem to believe there can be no ego, no real “I”

not be the source of actions that occur during consciousness. This

1.2 KEY DEFINITIONS: FREE WILL, CONSCIOUS AGENCY

Intentions, decisions, and choices are of course influenced by their

together in front of your face with fingers overlapping. Raise each

Descartes idea of “I” was chided by critics as requiring a “ghost in

Even deniers concede that there are executive control networks in

1.3 DETERMINISM AND QUANTUM MECHANICS

Determinism holds that a given process causes and predicts a con-

The uncertainty principle of modern physics seems to undermine deter-

The causation models of physics are typically reductionistic, bottom-

Some physicists presume that quantum mechanics (QM) relates to

Quantum phenomena apparently operate in such living processes as

consciousness (Hammeroff & Woolf, 2003). Subtle conformational

Nonetheless, QM might have a profound indirect influence on con-

Likewise, entanglement and “tunneling” of electrons can be demon-

Physicists show that subatomic particles have “superposition,” that

Scott (2003) questions QM’s relevance on the grounds that

In sum, there is no evidence that the brain is a quantum computer.

Moreover, the history of science has demonstrated that knowledge

The determinism of physics does not inevitably apply to the electrodynam-

1.4 MENTAL STATES ARE PHYSICAL STATES

Mental operations, because they are of materialistic origin, are

1.5 THE ORIGINAL FREE-WILL RESEARCH

These studies generally used a similar concept and design, which

by more than a dozen other scientists (eg, see Baker, Mattingley,

1.5.1 Premise Deficiencies

1.5.2 Technical Limitations in the Design

1.5.3 Misinterpretation of Antecedent Events

1.5.4 Unreliability of Self Reports

1.5.5 Overdrawn Generalizations of the Implications

In the interests of completeness, I should mention the work by

Paradoxically, Fuster gives humans more social and political free-

The free-will deniers’ hypothesis of conscious agency and free will

able to falsify a wrong hypothesis. To say there is no free will is a

I think the illusory free-will arguments have been dismantled by the

2.1 PHILOSOPHICAL ARGUMENTS FOR FREE WILL

Philosophy can support both sides of the free-will argument, even

The key to understanding is to realize that a conscious brain is aware

2.2 RELIGIOUS BASIS OF FREE WILL

The materialistic view of consciously mediated free will that I will

all religions: an immaterial “soul” or “spirit” that survives death of

Nonetheless, we have every reason to believe that the universe contains

Christianity is uniquely individualistic and demands personal

2.3 SOCIAL AND LEGAL BASES OF FREE WILL

Accepting the illusory free-will world view would strip us of human

can’t make conscious choices, then we can’t do much to improve our-

We simply must hold people accountable for their actions, espe-