Imagine a boundary, an interface between two worlds. On one side of this veil, everything is mechanical, deterministic, well-defined. On the other side, everything is free will, uncertain, aethereal, up for grabs. Right on the boundary is a button, which a genuine agent on the free-will side can push to set in motion some chain of inevitable events on the other side. Human beings are such agents, on the free-will side, right? Well, maybe.

The concept of the machine embodies the ideal of certainty and control. Before the machine there were slaves, whether human or animal, which lived on the other side of the boundary from their masters. There was no simple button to push to get slaves or animals to do what their masters wanted. Instead, there was the whip, chains of command and literal chains, bargaining and persuasion with rewards and punishments. Individual creatures could be dominated thus, but hardly the whole of nature. And it was always uncertain who would dominate society. So, magical incantations, prayerful supplications, prostrations and political stratagems were used to manipulate who or whatever lay supposedly on the other side. This was hardly a stable arrangement, for you could find yourself one day master and the next day slave. The boundary was fluid and ill-defined. Were the gods, after all, agents who control you or forces to be used?

Along came science, with a simple solution: let the whole universe be a machine, with push-button control. Everything was then available to use, including one’s own body. This was a lob-sided arrangement, however, for whole the mass of the material world lay on one side of that boundary, with mere ghostly agency on the other! But bodies and brains are also material, so what is this agent if not material? A soul? How do mind and body relate? Acknowledging this dilemma did not resolve the issue of control. If the brain is a machine, do “you” control it or does it control you?

The irony, of course, is that human beings invented the machine concept. Presumably invention is an act of free will, which should put us on the agent side. We create the boundary, with a button there to simplify control! By pushing a button, we can even destroy wholesale, at will. While thinking is also presumed an act of free will, we are trying to mechanize that too. Then you push a button and the machine thinks for you. How long will it stay on the mechanical side of the boundary?

While pushing a button requires a finger, with the right technology a mere thought can now serve to give a command. Still, what is a thought, and is it truly yours? If a thought is an electrical impulse in a fleshly computer, on which side of the boundary does it live? Who exactly pushes which figurative button to create the thought?