9: The Neurology of Free Will
The chapter opens with a profile of a woman with empty-nest syndrome: she'd been a professional "mom" and when the children left home, she found herself with no sense of purpose and nothing to do with her time. She turned to riverboat gambling to fill the time, and eventually became addicted to gambling, going deeply into debt, bankrupting the family.
Back to the gambling topic: industry giant Harrah's uses a club-card program to track its players, and puts significant effort into predicting the lifetime value of a gambler to the firm. Those whom the firm expects to be profitable are treated well - offers of free hotel rooms, transportation, and even seed money to get them to the tables. The woman in the earlier example calculated her lifetime balance at negative $900,000 to the casino.
An experiment (Hazin 2010) is mentioned in which the brain activity of pathological gamblers were compared to nonpathological ones. The most significant difference was that of the "near win" in which two out of three symbols required for a win showed before a third non-matching one resulted in a loss. The nonpathological individual's brain reacted to it as a loss, but the pathological gamblers' brains reacted to it as if it had been a win. It is theorized that this is what keeps the pathological gamblers at the table, even when they are losing money: the emotional reward of "almost winning" keeps them engaged.
Then, switch to a man who strangled his wife while he was sleepwalking - which is highly unusual but not unique. For the legal system, it's a problem because a person who does something in a semi-conscious state is not deliberate or premeditated in their actions.
The author attempts to connect this to habitual behavior, suggesting that sleepwalkers are acting on habits "of the most primal kind." He concedes that we don't think of these behaviors as habits, but insists that they are because they are patterns of behavior that occur without conscious choice. (EN: I'd grant that there is a similarity, but it's stretching to equivocate.)
He then considers various legal arguments that people who have addictions should not be held responsible for their actions - that it is not a conscious choice for them to engage in behaviors that follow from their addiction. Ultimately, he concludes that habits must be cultivated - and when we recognize that we have a habit, we are morally responsible for changing it.
Switch to William James, a 19th century American philosopher, later a psychologist. He was the unsuccessful child of a wealthy family, inept at everything he attempted. In a particularly dismal moment, he resolved to spend the next year developing his sense of free well and personal responsibility, acting as if he was in control of his own destiny, even if he felt otherwise. And what resulted was a complete turnaround. (EN: I think this was meant as a call-to-action for the reader.)