1. Chance or Choice 1
Chance or Choice: How Much Control Do We Really Have Over Our Lives?
Sofia Pavlova
pavlovasophie@gmail.com
ENG 290 Advanced Writing And Research
Miles White
Exploratory Essay
February 11, 2013

2. Chance or Choice 2
I am a firm believer in choice. I believe anything can be changed or learned, if there is
desire. In other words, I believe that ultimately, choice is superior to chance. If a person chooses
to change, he will eventually change, even if it means going against the odds. That being said, it
also means I believe that one has control over one's life, which ultimately means I hold the
assumption of free will as true. This same assumption is also the basis of our legal system.
However, the assumption that an individual does have control over his life in itself remains a
highly debatable claim. Opposing to this assumption is the notion of determinism commonly
accepted by scientists. Determinism states that given past events, there is only one way things
can turnout (McKenna, 2009). In fact the debate of free will and determinism is one which has
been around since ancient times, and still remains controversial. According to Melton et al.
(1997), the most noticeable difference between the law and behavioral sciences is that “the
former is predicated on the assumption of free will whereas the sciences are generally solidly
deterministic.” Why does such an important question remain unanswered in the present day? As
Tom Chivers (2010), a journalist for The Telegraph, suggests in his article about neuroscience
and free will, definitions of “individual” and “free will” are of great significance if we are to
come to some consensus. Apparently, the reason why experts are unable to come to a consensus
is the fact that they have different views of the concepts of “individual” and “free will.” So it
seems any findings about this topic are subject to interpretation.
For example, in a study by Haynes, a neuroscientist at the Bernstein Center for
Computational Neuroscience, volunteers were put into a brain scanner to examine the brain
activity when they were making decisions. They were told they had to decide whether to use
their right or left hand to press a button whenever they felt the urge to do so. The results were
surprising as they showed that there was a pattern of brain activity 7 seconds prior to the

3. Chance or Choice 3
conscious decision. Haynes and his team interpreted these results with the conclusion that our
brains make decisions long before we are aware of it (Smith, 2011). This and other scientific
studies with similar findings are usually interpreted by scientists in the same way, favoring
determinism. Peter Clarke (2010), associate professor of neuroscience at the Université de
Lausanne, describes the logic of scientists with the following sentence: “Our brains determine
our thinking and behavior, and our neurons obey the laws of physics and chemistry, so how are
we different from neural machines?” However, he also agrees with Tom Chivers that definitions
are important. So here it comes down to what scientists define as “we.” Are “we” as humans
wholly defined by our brains? The different viewpoints of philosophers are commonly divided to
“libertarians” and “compatibilists.” Libertarians argue that there must be something
indeterminate in our brains and most of them point out Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which
basically states that particles cannot be measured with absolute certainty (Clarke, 2010). If this is
true, then libertarians argue that scientists cannot be certain that humans are only defined by their
bodies, which are deterministic matter. The other viewpoint is the one of “compatibilists” who
are not so much concerned with the definition of the “we” as with the definition of free will. As
Clarke says, “They make the distinction between external and internal constraints.”
Obviously, it is not for me to prove whether or not we have souls, or whether our actions
are already determined by external forces. However, even if we accept the scientific notion of
determinism as true, and agree that there is no such a thing as free will, clearly there is such a
thing as perception of it, and it varies among individuals. As was already mentioned, in the
judicial system free will exists for example. The individual perceptions of free will are
commonly referred to as "locus of control," or in other words, how much control does an
individual believe he has. Could this locus of control have a significant influence over our lives?

4. Chance or Choice 4
If yes, it could be said that simply a perception of control, can give us more control? In her book
The Art of Choosing, Sheena Iyengar (2010) suggests that our perceptions of how much control
we have do not depend only on external factors. She claims “we have the ability to create choice
by altering our interpretations of the world.” She provides the example of Steven Callahan, who
is one the very few people who have lasted alone at sea for more than a month. Callahan later
describes his experience in his book Adrift: Seventy-six Days Lost at Sea, where he writes about
his interpretation of his situation in terms of choice: “I now have a choice: to pilot myself to a
new life or to give up and watch myself die. I choose to kick as long as I can” (as cited in
Iyengar, 2010). This choice clearly indicates a feeling of willpower.
To understand where this willpower comes from, the concept of free will and choice,
Iyengar (2010) points to the experiments with rats conducted by psychobiology researcher Curt
Richter in 1957. In the first experiment a dozen rats were placed in glass jars full of water and
the researchers measured how long they would swim – “without food, rest, or chance of escape”
before giving up and drowning. The surprising findings were that even rats which were equally
fit, and had the same conditions, greatly differed in the length of time they continued to swim
for, as if the rats had different “convictions.” In the subsequent experiments, the researchers first
picked up the rats several times, each time letting them run around free. After getting adjusted to
this treatment, the rats were put in the jars with water for a few minutes, then removed and put
back into their cages. This process was repeated a few times before the rats were put in the sink-
or-swim test once again. This time, none of them gave up; on average they swam for 60 hours
before they became exhausted and drowned. Iyengar suggests that these rats, just like Callahan,
had made a choice to live, based on their “beliefs” that they could break free. Another significant
research Iyengar refers to in her book, is the one done by psychologist Martin Seligman in 1965.

5. Chance or Choice 5
In this experiment, dogs were divided into pairs and placed in cubicles, and subjected to painful
electrical shocks. One dog could put an end to the shock pressing its head to the side panels,
while the other was not able to turn it off. The shocks were the same for each pair ending when
one dog pressed its head to the side panels. The dogs that could do nothing to stop the shocks
began to show signs of anxiety and depression, while the ones who could put an end to the
shocks learned how to control it. Subsequently, the dogs were put in a different situation where
the dogs could apply what they had learned from being in-and-out of control. Each dog was put
in a large black box, with two parts, divided by a low wall. On the side where the dog was, the
floor was electrified, while on the other side, it was not. The dogs that were previously able to
stop the shocks figured out that they could jump to the other side, but most of the ones who were
previously unable to control the shocks lay on the floor and suffered, not trying to free
themselves, even though they saw the other dogs jumping to the other side (as cited in Iyengar,
2010). So it seems that it did not matter how much control they had, but how much control they
perceived they had.
Iyengar argues that “in order to choose, we must first perceive that control is possible.”
(2010). In a decade-long research by Professor Michael Marmot of UCL, it was found that the
degree of control employees felt over their work directly influenced their health and well-being
(as cited in Iyengar, 2010). And this research again indicates that the perception of control can
powerfully influence a person’s reality, similarly like with a placebo pill, which shows how
patients simply by believing they are getting better they actually do get better. However, it does
not always work. As Sheena Iyengar points out, although the rats “believed” they could escape
from the jars full of water, they eventually drowned, and similarly many people who are ill die,
in spite of the fact that they have faith. But then again, what do we have if not optimism. We

6. Chance or Choice 6
have already seen that whatever the actual results are, they are subject to interpretation. The
results of the brain studies were also a subject to interpretation by the scientists, and so it is with
life, it is a subject to interpretation. As Joan Didion would say,
We tell ourselves stories in order to live. We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the
social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most
workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the
imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the ‘ideas’ with which we have
learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience (as cited in
Iyengar, 2010).
Such stories are indeed crucial for us to maintain our sanity, as there is uncertainty all around us.
Another great example of how telling stories can help us make sense of reality can be seen in the
book Life of Pi, where the main character, Pi, is stuck on a boat with a tiger after a shipwreck
where his whole family dies. After he is rescued, he tells a story how he is on the boat with a
tiger, a hyena, an orangutan and a zebra with a broken leg. The hyena kills the orangutan and the
zebra, and Pi then kills the hyena, and stays on the boat with the tiger. The reporters find this
story too fantastic to believe, so he tells another story with humans, where the orangutan is his
mother, the zebra is a wounded soldier and the hyena is a cruel cook from the ship, and he asks
the reporters which story they prefer. The reporters write down the story with the animals, and Pi
says “And so it goes with God” (Magee, 2012). And so it is with life. Regardless of how much
control we have technically, we can choose to perceive the external forces differently and with
that lies our true control over the course of our lives.

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References
Clarke, P. (2010, October 18). Neuroscience and free will: religion and science do not always
disagree. The Telegraph. Retrieved from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science
/8070361/Neuroscience-and-free-will-religion-and-science-do-not-always-disagree.html
Chivers, T. (2010, October 12).
Neuroscience and free will: when definitions become important.
The Telegraph. Retrieved from http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tomchivers
/100047972/neuroscience-and-free-will-when-definitions-become-important/
Iyengar, S. (2010). The Art of Choosing. The decisions we make every day – what they say
about us and how we can improve them. Little Brown.
Magee, D. (2012). Life of Pi. Retrieved from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0454876/
McKenna, M. (2009). Compatibilism. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (Winter 2009
Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/archives
/win2009/entries/compatibilism/>.
Radin, D. (2012). Consciousness and the double-slit interference pattern: Six experiments.
Physics Essays, 25(2), 157-171. Retrieved from Psychology and Behavioral Sciences
Collection database.
Smith, K. (2011). Neuroscience vs philosophy: Taking aim at free will. Nature, 477(7362), 23-
25.