Posted on 12/30/2002 5:04:18 PM PST by RainDog
December 31, 2002
More Than Good Intentions: Holding Fast to Faith in Free Will
By JOHN HORGAN
When I woke this morning, I stared at the ceiling above my bed and wondered: to what extent will my rising really be an exercise of my free will? Let's say I got up right . . . now. Would my subjective decision be the cause? Or would computations unfolding in a subconscious neural netherworld actually set off the muscular twitches that slide me out of the bed, quietly, so as not to wake my wife, and propel me toward the door?
One of the risks of science journalism is that occasionally you encounter research that threatens something you cherish.
Free will is something I cherish. I can live with the idea of science killing off God. But free will? That's going too far. And yet a couple of books I've been reading lately have left me brooding over the possibility that free will is as much a myth as divine justice.
The chief offender is "The Illusion of Conscious Will," by Dr. Daniel M. Wegner, a psychologist at Harvard. What makes Dr. Wegner's critique more effective than others I've read over the years is that it is less philosophical than empirical, drawing heavily upon recent research in cognitive science and neurology.
Dr. Wegner also carries out his vivisection of free will with a disturbing cheerfulness, like a neurosurgeon joking as he cuts a patient's brain.
We think of will as a force, but actually, Dr. Wegner says, it is a feeling — "merely a feeling," as he puts it — of control over our actions. I think, "I'm going to get up now," and when I do a moment later, I credit that feeling with having been the instigating cause. But as we all know, correlation does not equal causation.
When neurologists make patients' limbs jerk by electrically zapping certain regions of their brains, the patients often insist they meant to move that arm, and they even invent reasons why. Neurologists call these erroneous, post hoc explanations confabulations, but Dr. Wegner prefers the catchier "intention inventions." He suggests that whenever we explain our acts as the outcome of our conscious choice, we are engaging in intention invention, because our actions actually stem from countless causes of which we are completely unaware.
He cites experiments in which subjects pushed a button whenever they chose while noting the time of their decision as displayed on a clock. The subjects took 0.2 seconds on average to push the button after they decided to do so. But an electroencephalograph monitoring their brain waves revealed that the subjects' brains generated a spike of brain activity 0.3 seconds before they decided to push the button.
The meaning of these widely debated findings, Dr. Wegner says, is that our conscious willing is an afterthought, which "kicks in at some point after the brain has already started preparing for the action."
Other research has indicated that the neural circuits underlying our conscious sensations of intention are distinct from the circuits that actually make our muscles move. This disconnect may explain why we so often fail to carry out our most adamant decisions. This morning, I may resolve to drink only one cup of coffee instead of two, or to take a long run through the woods. But I may do neither of these things (and chances are I won't).
Sometimes our intentions seem to be self-thwarting. The more I tell myself to go back to sleep instead of obsessing over free will, the wider awake I feel. Dr. Wegner attributes these situations to "ironic processes of mental control." Edgar Allan Poe's phrase "the imp of the perverse" even more vividly evokes that mischievous other we sense lurking within us.
Brain disorders can exacerbate experiences of this kind. Schizophrenics perceive their very thoughts as coming from malevolent external sources. Those who have lasting damage to the corpus callosum, a neural cable that transmits signals between the brain's hemispheres, may be afflicted with alien-hand syndrome.
They may end up, Dr. Wegner says, like Dr. Strangelove, whose left hand frantically tried to keep his right from jutting out in Nazi salutes.
Perfectly healthy people may lose their sense of control over actions their brains have clearly initiated. When we are hypnotized, playing with Ouija boards, or speaking in tongues, we may feel as though someone or something else is acting through us, whether a muse, ghost, devil, or deity. What all these examples imply is that the concept of a unified self, which is a necessary precondition for free will, is itself an illusion.
Dr. Wegner quotes Arthur C. Clarke's remark that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Because we cannot possibly understand how the fantastically complex machines in our skulls really work, Dr. Wegner says, we explain our behavior in terms of such silly, occult concepts as "the self" and "free will." Our belief in our personal identity and self-control does have its uses, Dr. Wegner grants; without it, "we might soon be wearing each other's underclothing."
Maybe I should lighten up and embrace my lack of free will and a self. That's what Dr. Susan Blackmore, a British psychologist and a practitioner of Zen, advises. In her book "The Meme Machine," she contends that our minds are really just bundles of memes, the beliefs and habits and predilections that we catch from one another like viruses. Take all of the memes out of a mind, and there is no self left to be free.
Once you realize you have no control over your destiny, says Dr. Blackmore, you will expend less energy regretting past decisions and fretting over future ones, and you will be more appreciative of the vital present. Be here now, and so on. In other words, true freedom comes from accepting there is no freedom.
Dr. Blackmore's reasoning strikes me as less spiritual than Orwellian. To me, choices, freely made, are what make life meaningful. Moreover, our faith in free will has social value. It provides us with the metaphysical justification for ethics and morality. It forces us to take responsibility for ourselves rather than consigning our fate to our genes or God. Free will works better than any other single criterion for gauging the vitality of a life, or a society.
Theologians have proposed that science still allows faith in a "God of the gaps," who dwells within those shadowy realms into which science has not fully penetrated, such as the imaginary time before the Big Bang banged. In the same way, maybe we can have a free will of the gaps. No science is more riddled with gaps, after all, than the science of human consciousness.
As I lay in bed this morning, however, my faith in free will wavered. Scanning my mind for something resembling will, I found a welter of roiling thoughts and antithoughts, a few of which transcended virtuality long enough for closer inspection. One thought was that, no matter what my intellect decides, I'm compelled to believe in free will.
Abruptly my body, no doubt bored with all this pointless cogitation, slipped out of bed, padded to the door, and closed it behind me.
Actually, the two are connected. If you do away with God, free will eventually vanishes too, into scientific determinism. Some people think Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle can undo the determinist dilemma and leave room for chance and choice, but it really doesn't--it only complicates it.
Hence your screen name:)
I am free to do so, complications and all. It is my will.
That is, determinism.
When someone claims to have free will, I tranlate it into English: "My outputs are not functions of my inputs."
Very well. What are your outputs functions of? Cosmic rays?
A random robot is still a robot, and Heisenberg offers no shelter.
If the universe is causal then it is deterministic.
If the universe is random then it has no room for free will.
(And yes, I am "reading" Wegner's book, and I find it difficult, tendentious, and boring.)
Personally I wish it were otherwise but there you have it.
However in the case of free will and determinism there is a tighter bind (or so I see it).
If your mind is simply an emergent function of your brain, and your brain is a piece of meat which functions solely according to the laws of physics, then where is your free will?
You order a vanilla ice-cream cone; I order chocolate. You claim to have "chosen" vanilla and I (in my guise as a 'hard determinist') assert that no, the entire history of the universe from the big bang to that instant has made it necessary that you order vanilla.
"But I like vanilla!" you protest.
Um hmm. "And what has caused you to 'like' vanilla?"
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You may not be able to tell me the cause of your vanilla-preference but the prima-face case is that there is (or was) a cause even if it is not accessible to you.
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BTW there is a 'trap' (which I don't accuse you of having fallen into). Many people confuse "predictability" with "determinism". A system can be deterministic while remaining unpredictable. "Predictability" is a statement of our capacity to predict future events. Prior to Copernicus, Brahe, Bode, and Newton the motions of the planets were unpredictable--yet fully deterministic.
--Boris
What do I mean by "causal"? Merely that every effect has a cause.
Denying causality in the special case of free will seems [to me] like a slippery slope into a black hole.
As already pointed out, quantum effects ("uncertainty") and randomness cannot rescue free will in a causal universe.
And I'd like you to address my "translation" and rejoinder: "My outputs are not functions of my inputs."...then what are they functions of?
If they are functions of nothing whatever, how can this be free will?
--Boris
Well there you have it: the Cretan Paradox, about as consisely as I have seen it.
If free will is an input, it comes from some exterior source ("God" if you like). If it comes from some exterior source, then it is not self-generated.
If free will is indeed an input, how can responsibility gain purchase? Congratulating someone for good deeds is then silly. Condemning him for evil deeds is equally silly. He is merely the instrument of the 'Great Inputter'...
If "free will" is to have any meaning then it must (at least) be self-generated, or so it seems to me.
Hence if free will is an "input" it is determined by some exterior force. Ergo, 'free will' is not free.
We act and feel as if we have 'free will' but this is as much an illusion as the illusion that time 'flows'.
--Boris
If free will is an input, it comes from some exterior source ("God" if you like). If it comes from some exterior source, then it is not self-generated.
The key factor is defining the system, to determine input and output. If we're speaking of the mind, then the "will" is said to be intrinsic with it, from birth or conception, so it is not an input in terms of the system of the mind.
But in terms of the system of a decision, it is an input. There, one weighs one's experiences (input) with one's tastes (previous decisions and experiences) (input) and determines the likeliest, best possible output. The will weighs the inputs, and selects the output, consciously or not.
Let's define what we mean by "free will": given a set of alternatives, the will chooses one and pursues it.
This is our universal subjective experience, which argues for free will.
The counter argument is that we're just fooling ourselves, that our lives are determined by our birth, but we're not aware of our inputs and then make up our intentions after our decision is made.
I don't see why I should reject my subjective experience and that of every human being in favor of this theory.
Deterministic explantions always seem to be handy ways of explaining away our immoral behavior and the accompanying guilt. I am suspicious of self serving explanations like this.
We act and feel as if we have 'free will' but this is as much an illusion as the illusion that time 'flows'.
What is your evidence that free will is an illusion? Or has your mind been predetermined to believe this and it is useless discussing it??? ;)
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