Image: Photoillustration by Aaron Goodman
In Brief
- Most of us believe that we are free because, under identical circumstances, we could have acted otherwise. Determinism—the idea that all particles in the universe follow set trajectories—challenges this idea.
- Theories to explain the potential origins of free will draw on physics, including Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.
- Whether or not free will exists, psychology and neuroscience are beginning to explain why we feel as if we can influence our destiny.
In a remote corner of the universe, on a small blue planet gravitating around a humdrum sun in the outer districts of the Milky Way, organisms arose from the primordial mud and ooze in an epic struggle for survival that spanned aeons.
Despite all evidence to the contrary, these bipedal creatures thought of themselves as extraordinarily privileged, occupying a unique place in a cosmos of a trillion trillion stars. Conceited as they were, they believed that they, and only they, could escape the iron law
of cause and effect that governs everything. They could do this by virtue of something they called free will, which allowed them to do things without any material reason.
Can you truly act freely? The question of free will is no mere philosophical banter; it engages people in a way that few other metaphysical questions do. It is the bedrock of society’s notions of responsibility, praise and blame. Ultimately it is about the degree of control you exert over your life.
Let’s say you are living with a loving and lovely spouse. A chance meeting with a stranger turns this life utterly upside down. You begin talking for hours on the phone, you share your innermost secrets, you start an affaire de coeur. You realize perfectly well that this is all wrong from an ethical point of view; it will wreak havoc with many lives, with no guarantee of a happy and productive future. Yet something in you yearns for change.
Such gut-churning choices confront you with the question of how much say you really have in the matter. You feel that you could, in principle, break off the affair. Despite many attempts, you somehow never manage to do so.
In my thoughts on these matters of free will, I neglect millennia of learned philosophical debates and focus on what physics, neurobiology and psychology have to say, for they have provided partial answers to this ancient conundrum.
Shades of Freedom
I recently served on a jury in United States District Court in Los Angeles. The defendant was a heavily tattooed member of a street gang that smuggled and sold drugs. He was charged with murdering a fellow gang member with two shots to the head.
As the background to the crime was laid out by law enforcement, relatives, and present and past gang members—some of them testifying while handcuffed, shackled and dressed in bright orange prison jumpsuits—I thought about the individual and societal forces that had shaped the defendant. Did he ever have a choice? Did his violent upbringing make it inevitable that he would kill? Fortunately, the jury was not called on to answer these irresolvable questions or to determine his punishment. We only had to decide, beyond a reasonable doubt, whether he was guilty as charged, whether he had shot a particular person at a particular place and time. And this we did.
According to what some call the strong definition of free will, articulated by René Descartes in the 17th century, you are free if, under identical circumstances, you could have acted otherwise. Identical circumstances refer to not only the same external conditions but also the same brain states. The soul freely chooses this way or that, making the brain act out its wishes, like a driver who takes a car down this road or that one. This view is the one most regular folks believe in.
Contrast this strong notion of freedom with a more pragmatic conception called compatibilism, the dominant view in biological, psychological, legal and medical circles. You are free if you can follow your own desires and preferences. A long-term smoker who wants to quit but who lights up again and again is not free. His desire is thwarted by his addiction. Under this definition, few of us are completely free.
It is the rare individual—Mahatma Gandhi comes to mind—who can steel himself to withhold sustenance for weeks on end for a higher ethical purpose. Another extreme case of iron self-control is the self-immolation of Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc in 1963 to protest the repressive regime in South Vietnam. What is so singular about this event, captured in haunting photographs, is the calm and deliberate nature of his heroic act. While burning to death, Duc remained in the meditative lotus position, without moving a muscle or uttering a sound, as the flames consumed him. For the rest of us, who struggle to avoid going for dessert, freedom is always a question of degree rather than an absolute good that we do or do not possess.
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Add CommentThere are some philosophical-religious comments about the subject of free will, for example: "When your'e young, you tie yourself and go where you want going, as you become older, other will tie you, and will make you go where you don't want to", or "Video meliora proboque, deteliora sequor", or "For not doing the good that I want to do, I make the evil I didn't want". A complex subject...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe may have a limited "free will" but we also have all the animal instincts and inherited genes, along with sex hormones surging through our body that makes us act the way we do. In addition to this we have the storytellers of the cultures we live constantly bombarding with their stories. Listening to our parents, our friends, peers, teachers, government, authors, the media, songwriters, neighbors, rabbis, priests, mullahs, philosophers, etc., all become a part of our self. All these influences create the overall path which we follow throughout our lives. Just imagine yourself , how differently you would think if you lived among the Inca civilization when they were sacrificing people by the thousands, or in Germany under the Nazi hate ideas or if you were born very rich or very poor, etc..
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://novan.com/freewil3.htm (How human imagination effects our freewill.)
A better title would be:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow Physics and Neuroscience "Dictate" Your Free Will
Even a possibility of adapting to various external conditions entails freedom, and with many possibilities one has a choice. Also, it might be hard to view the development of cultures as automatic. Finally, there are notorious difficulties with physical theories of everything.
Since this seems to be a repeat topic, I'll repeat my response.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHaving recently read the book "Free Will" by Sam Harris, I'm ready for this.
No, I don't feel I have a "soul" that is free of the laws of cause and effect, therefore totally random, which would seem to be the only alternative to determinism. But as long as I can't see all of my past programming, or the real future, the present "me" feels free to act as I "want". So what if my wants are programmed partly by forces I can't see?
Recent brain studies suggest that some decisions are made before my conscious mind is aware of them. So what? My eyes and other senses perceive happenings outside me after they happen, but before any part of my mind goes to work on responding to them. I define "I" as not only the observer, but also the perhaps subconcious decision-maker. Many decisions are made over a longer time period, giving time for my conscious mind to also be involved.
Mention of genetics also brings to mind that genetic evolution is for animals. The essence of humanity is our level of community, our "memes" as well as genes, which allow us also cultural and technological evolution, which operate much faster, though sometimes not more sensibly.
Since Libet's findings started to trickle out -
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthere was a lot of nonsense about our free will...
What??? My free will is useless!?! I'll give it up!
Here my friend, take it and tell me what to do...
Now, how could I give up something I did/do not have???
-----
I have started this joke in May last year. Since then, I have not received a convincing counterargument. The best were speculations about "there must have been some internal or external causes"...
With all respect, puppets on strings of causes and effects have lost a common sense. In a sense, they seem to obey self-fulfilling prophecy: http://pss.sagepub.com/content/22/5/613.abstract...
If you do believe that you are a puppet on strings pulled by causes and effects --- please consider what kind of psychological damage your musings could have on others...
Have a nice day,
Damir Ibrisimovic
The author’s attempt to derive free will from uncertainties in quantum arena resembles this one: http://www.amazon.com/Large-Small-Human-Mind-Canto/dp/0521785723. For this, Penrose et al were heavily criticised and empirically refuted...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDescartes was probably one of the greatest scientists. He crystallised the ancient notion about repeatable causes and effects and since his time the notion was perpetuated by generations of academics. The picture is now established as an old habitual thought --- and old habits are hard to break. That’s why we utter direct opposites in a single breath. “Deterministic chaos”, “unpredictable predictability” etc. etc. Why all of the trouble to maintain the old habitual thought? It’s obvious that the picture of the cause and effect driven has passed its expiry date...
That said, we still can have similar phenomena following other similar phenomena. But, the similar is not the same. Even physicists agree that each particle is unique. And, as such, impossible in the picture of the universe driven by repeatable causes and effects. (Probability = 1/∞.) Unfortunately, physicists haven’t noticed that yet and stick to this habitual thought...
Descartes observed Libet’s .5 sec delay centuries before Libet. To explain this he introduced human soul and treated other living forms as simple automatons driven by causes and effects. I now wonder, would he change his mind after viewing this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6KvPN_Wt8I. I also now wonder, would we now talk about agents driven universe --- rather than about cause and effect driven universe...
Old habits are hard to break, but rewards of breaking addiction could be breathtaking...
Have a nice day,
Damir
All we need for a deliberate act is to intent perceptual/motoric actions. Yes, we do have intents for perceptual acts also. And the same .5 sec delay can be experienced when we view an ambiguous graphics. We first see one interpretation of the graphics almost immediately. However, we need to intent to see an alternative interpretation --- to actually see it after at least .5 sec. Sometimes we need others to outline alternative features for us --- to actually see the alternative...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe do not have two different types of intents for perceptual and motoric acts. We rather have a single intent for series of perceptual and motoric mini-acts --- all directed towards single goal --- to achieve the best possible outcome. In this, looking at isolated mini-acts will rather confuse the issue...
We are creatures of habits. We do perform our acts in rather habitual, predictive way. We could say that the most of our acts are made up of more than 99% of habitual, predictive mini-acts. But, there are always mini-acts that we need to invent on the fly. And that’s where our real freedom is hidden...
If we can see ambiguous graphics differently --- we can see the whole world differently. And when we change how we see the world --- a miracle happens --- the whole world is changed...
Have a nice day,
Damir
Attempts to link the spontaneous indeterminacies of subatomic physics to the indeterminacies of the thought process are doomed from the start. There is no way to causally link two indeterminate processes without compromising the indeterminacy of one of them. A co-incidence of indeterminacies is the most you could hope to prove, but prove how? As the philosopher Richard Double put it: "The question of why quantum indeterminacies should occur just when we manifest libertarian free will strikes me as unanswerable."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJonathan Bricklin
jonathan@opencenter.org
I applaud Christof Koch for looking with fresh eyes into the puzzle of "free will". He is certainly correct that many of our overt actions are led by brain events we have no awareness of, and this can be a good thing. As William James once remarked its a good idea (sic.) to run from the bear before you have a fully conscious experience of "bear". Drop a fragile object and you react without getting tangled up in thought. The latter would be way too slow. And certainly don't worry about what your individual muscles are going to do. Automatic pilot can work well....indeed is often if not always essential. But that says little about "the will to action", to choose this or that "freely", etc.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo the points of Koch's article are well taken, and I am delighted that he has both the courage and skills to pursue a topic that is as important as it is confusing.
The paradox, if there is one, is that I feel - right now - I am freely writing this. That is my internal response at the moment. Who knows what developmental histories in my life also contributed to this "free choice"? So scribble I do. (Its my parents' fault, you know.)
Neuroscientists and psychologists (and others) are becoming more alert to the fact that many of our critical brain "decisions" are non conscious ones. The stories we construct come later, and these in themselves may have little to do with the true causal network that has been activated. In our stories we are free. Stories are stories. That may be it. But the phenomenology of sensed freedom is real.
I have no great (if any) insights into this, but am delighted that the issues are being explored with the best tools we currently have available. I will not be surprised if, as the result of future analytical efforts, more surprises come down the road. I will be surprised if they don't.
Maybe in the everyday business of me living my life I should go back to Paul Tillich's phrase of "finite freedom" in my actions. That's a paradox, at least on the surface, but it will do for now.
I look forward to the next chapter of research.
John C. Fentress
Eugene, Oregon
All this paradigm is nonsense.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScientist are so tied to the materialism ideology (saying this is a contradiction itself, cause matter doesn't has ideas), that they make all this absurd theories to fit in.
If we are not making the choices (forgot there is no me), who is? Gravity? Electromagnetic fields? Electrons?
If anyone has an answer, I'd like to know, cause sometimes this nature laws make great symphonies and make good paintings (also do -not in this case- good science). We should give them a Nobel prize.
We must change this paradigm or continue living with the absurdity this ideology leads to.
Dear Jamie,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis paradigm cannot be changed --- it has to be replaced --- just like Ptolemaic system had to be replaced by heliocentric system. Practically everything we learned about physics in school and later revolve around causality paradigm --- and needs reworking with a new paradigm. And this takes time. Meanwhile, even thinking about our old knowledge will be handicapped...
We already do have the new paradigm, but it is messed up by "the iron law of cause and effect that governs everything". The new paradigm in the making is Complex Adaptive Systems theory. But, even people working on it are addicted to the old paradigm. That is why we often hear absurdities, like "unpredictable predictability"...
Theoretically, it seems easy to say "Agents Driven Universe" has to replace "Cause & Effect Driven Universe". But the required rework of our existing knowledge is impressive. In addition, we need to start bridging over huge chasms between particle physics and chemistry, between chemistry and biology etc. etc. Take salt (NaCl), for example that looks nothing like sodium and chlorine... At the moment, we do not even know how much properties of salt we can derive from properties of sodium and chlorine. And that is the start only...
Currently, we only assume that there are properties of a system that cannot be derived from properties of subsystems. However, current simulations do indicate that there are emergent properties (qualia) that cannot be derived from properties of constituent parts...
A particle can be an agent by simply being unique. At our level also a puppet can be an agent by simply being unique. But to really have free will, we need other emergent properties --- and be a bit creative when cultivating new ones. That is how I wrote this reply to you...
Have a nice day,
Damir
An interesting possibility is to deliberately teach for insight. To do this we begin with what looks like a routine task, for example: "You want to do something special for yourself, but a significant other give you a distasteful chore to do first; write a first-person short story about it." The students write their stories and share them -- everything is fine!!! Then you pull the plug -- you give them the Tom Sawyer "painting the fence" item to read. Remember, Tom sold the "privilege" of painting the fence to his friends. Freedom lies in the development of the ability to spontaneuosly shift frames of reference in ways that expand options. Our present educational system doesn't do as much of it as it could because it is constrained by the accountability necessity of supplying acceptable answers on feedback instruments.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisActually the unacceptable answers provide more than three times as much performance information as do the expected answers because these expose how the task was interpreted differently by the student's answers.
My book, "Making Peasants into Kings," (ISBN: 978-1-4490-0634-1) relates how my unusual life and the teaching skills that emerged from it which led to surprising increases in learning successes by my students. Using the "unacceptable" answers as the feedback for teaching is a frame shift that leads to the empowerment of students. The become flexible multidimensional thinkers when ideas are explored instead of information being transmitted in classrooms.
Essentially, I agree that much of what we do comes from habits of body or mind.
This equation can be altered educationally by teaching our students how to shift reference frames and how to recognize deceitful and inaccurate reference frame being presented by other to them.
I guess I am saying that "freedom" though never complete is learned and is not innate. To endeavor to get others to think the way wee do, is indoctrination.
At the moment, I see schooling as instruments of indoctrination, not education because we are seeking conformity and not releasing the diversity inherent in many of our students so that they can find their "calling" to the service of others in the direction of their talents.
This present approach produces a huge loss in human potential, filling our prisons, our bureaucracies and our governments with endless wasted talent; more bent upon personal power and privilege than upon contribution.
I will be happy to provide a reading list and research reports for those interested.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf all human behaviour is driven causally by past events then it seems inevitable that we have no free will. But does neuroscience and physics really dictate that? The neurophysiology of the nervous system indicates that we can anticipate future events and act accordingly despite a history of social conditioning. Of course our behaviour is largely automated according to how we have been conditioned. Otherwise we would have to learn to walk all over again with every step. But we can also anticipate how large a step we need to take to hop across a mud puddle and integrate that anticipated action with our conditioning. We have a proprioceptive nervous system that allows us to simulate an action prior to taking it. Nearly every muscle in our body has tiny neuro-muscular spindles that have separate gamma motor innervations distinct from collateral branches of the motor nerves that actuate muscles. The spindles have two sets of large rapidly transmitting proprioceptive sensory feedback to the central nervous system that monitor the body’s position in space. This allows the spindles to simulate a patterned action prior to actually acting it out. This simulation anticipates a desired future that is reconciled with conditioned causal input from the past. We can feel the rhythm to a dance before we take each dance step. In this way we can span space and time and integrate past and future. We can learn with conscious intention.
The neo-cortex is functionally distinct from our ancient emotional limbic brain and the left and right hemispheres are also functionally distinct from one another. Each hemisphere has both a major and a minor sensory integration area and a major and a minor motor integration area. This allows each hemisphere to assemble sensory ideas distinct from their motor execution, thus allowing alternate complementary patterns of action on one side with respect to the other, both sides being harnessed to the same emotional input from the limbic brain. With the development of left brain language neo-cortical brain function has bifurcated, with a left brain generally committed to language based logic and an intuitive right brain committed to holistic integrating world views. The latter tends to lead the former and it is subject to the learning process through our capacity to consciously simulate anticipated futures that span and integrate events in space and time. This capacity for intuitive reflection allows us to graduate beyond our social conditioning. We are more than conditioned robots. We are also free to believe we are causally conditioned robots not responsible for our actions as many behavioural psychologists (following B. F Skinner et al) would have us believe. But they have made a simplistic choice that would deny them and us a subjective mind that can relate creatively to the objective world.
See: http://www.cosmic-mindreach.com/Three-Brains.html
Also: http://www.cosmic-mindreach.com/System4_Sequence_Steps.html
See my articles on this...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://t.co/7E51NxMc
http://t.co/bwhG4Ul1
Please see my articles on this...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://t.co/7E51NxMc
http://t.co/bwhG4Ul1
Dear Jay,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI wrote in my book that we are turning our kids into tired clones of ourselves and I thank you for your insights about how prevent this. Our kids do need freedom to flourish. In this, I am giving them the knowledge that they do have free will, with my joke. But for that, we need generational change...
But, with freedom, we need a strong ethics. Being aware that we are free brings responsibility into spotlight. And that means abandoning the idea that "I know the best". Hopefully, our kids will realise that they need to listen to others --- carefully, very carefully. Only this can prevent good intentions paving the path to hell...
This might seem as a minor change in the psyche of our cultures. But the implications are staggering.
Have a nice day,
Damir
For thousands of years the Religious have made the case for the special place of man in God's universe.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI find it so sad when rational individuals are so afraid that they aren't driving the car, that they attempt to deform science such that it supports a similar premise.
Just because you want there to be free will does not mean that there is free will.
We are all the products of everything we are made of -- physiologically, genetically, materialistically -- which has interacted over time with all of the experiences we have had. Added to that are all the random events of internal synaptic firings, or events in the universe.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe difference between humans, and probably any other species on earth, is the extent to which we have the capacity for self-refelction. Of course much of our behavior is driven by the more primitive parts of our bodies and brains. Our hormones, our emotions and our neurotransmitters create fast protective responses, often before we consciously "choose" how to behave.
But as Dr. Kahneman describes in "Thinking, Fast and Slow" we can learn to use the rational parts of our mind to create new experiences for ourselves. It is these self-created experiences that can change our behaviors at our own direction.
Years ago that was called "ego-strength." Today it is referred to as "mindfulness." It is the basis of cognitive-therapy.
Humans can have free-will, can take control of much of their lives, and should take responsibility for themselves. But they have to put the effort into it.
But you can get by being a porcupine.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this'Zooming' the picture by "pressing" "+" or "-" is a cognitive technique of hidden persuation. So what – in this case – “your freedom does not exist”.
You press “- - - - - -“ and freedom vanishes /for the watching public/. They give it up “here and today” (the hidden “++++++++” picture) and the persuador gets it for himself to decide FOR them (the succelfully foolished and self-excluded public) and AGAINST them. Cute.
Dear Akai,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust because religious were talking about free will --- we cannot discard free will as religious nonsense. If you read other comments I wrote here - you will see that we do not need soul to have free will. You will also see how determinists cannot even think without a picture of universe driven by causes and effects - ending up with absurdities like "unpredictable predictability"...
Have a nice day,
Damir
This point of view is not going to be popular, but I think the author made a serious logical error in the first paragraph that undermines everything else.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn common usage "Begging the question" is used as "raising the question" or "makes me think of a question." What it really means is asking the other side of an argument to concede a point that is actually up for debate. As an example, if you said "since we can all agree that abortion is murder, the abortion should be illegal." "Abortion is murder" is begging the question.
In this case, this sentence "Conceited as they were, they believed that they, and only they, could escape the iron law of cause and effect that governs everything. " is begging the question.
Scientifically, philosophically, and spiritually I am not ready to concede the point that cause and effect is iron clad and governs everything accept my ability to have free will. I think that the most fundamental force in the universe is in fact consciousness, and everything arises from that.
Consciousness is not an epiphenomena of matter, matter is an epiphenomena of consciousness. Seen from that point of view, free will is less implausible.
Materialists seem to think that consciousness is something soft and fuzzy and vague, while matter is solid and real and here. Matter is nothing of the sort. Stable patterns of energy and empty space, that's what matter is. We still have an outdated Newtonian view of matter that skews our perception of how important it is.
The free will "absolute" is not possibly to happen.If we have one is a limit one by genetic, culture,the time we live, the social level ,the richness we have and other parameters . Maybe science will have access to knowledge of the "mediation" of mental and brain structures in the arose of the will in concrete situations ,but not more.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHmm ... absent from this discussion is the challenge 'neurobiology' has: small samples, and inherent study biases. MRI & CT scans are expensive, and obviously difficult to put subjects in anything approaching 'natural' situations. Hence, these studies are more 'theoretical' & exploratory rather than practical - lacking most of the indicia of 'gold standard' science.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't really care if I have free will or not. I'm going to do what I need to do. If I need to do something because a few trillion subatomic particles inter-relate in a specific way well, I don't really care.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWithin the context of modern science this debate should no longer be of consequence. Free will can now be clearly seen to be an evolutionary necessity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSimply that feature of an organism which allows optimization of interaction with its external environment. Which, of course, bears directly on its chances of survival and hence of positive natural selection. This is the point which is consistently missed so many.
Certainly there is the deterministic component of decisions provided by internal molecular mechanisms.
But there is also the equally deterministic component that is input from the external environment. There is, as it seems with all natural processes, the element of chance.
Early philosophers, of course, just did not have sufficient information from chemistry and biology that now makes such an analysis rather trivial.
An additional point that we should always bear in mind is that although the free will of our own species is remarkably high because of the extreme level of interaction of our kind with the external world, it is in absolute terms still very limited.
Similar considerations, by the way, apply to the closely related concept of "consciousness". That, too, is a mystery no more.
The broad evolutionary model that very informally provides a wider background for such matters can be found in "The Goldilocks Effect: What Has Serendipity Ever Done For Us?", a free download in e-book formats from the "Unusual Perspectives" website.
Christof Koch talks about free will vs determinism in terms of a clockwork (Newtonian) universe. Then he says that the randomness of quantum mechanics leads to indeterminacy. But randomness just means that we can’t predict what will happen in the future. It doesn’t give me any more control over what I do. There’s still no free will even if there isn’t determinism.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI believe there’s no way to determine (pun intended) whether we live in a world of determinism, indeterminacy or free will. I feel that I have free will, but in a deterministic world it could be determined that I will feel that I have free will and that we will be having this interchange. In a world of indeterminacy, most things can be approximated by determinacy (e.g., Newtonian mechanics) so that, to a large extent, the world will appear to be determined.
I could continue along these lines, but I choose (I think) to stop here.
Scientific American; Shame on the Universe that Caused You to Publish Such a Mistaken, Obfuscated Piece.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust got back from B&N where I bought the May/June 2012 issue, and absolutely had to immediately do a more comprehensive review. We begin on page 1 where Managing Editor Sandra Upson proclaims, referring to whether or not we humans have a free will, “we do not have an answer yet.” This invites the question, “who are the ‘we’ to whom she is referring?” If nothing happens without a cause, including the human brain, and every human act is the result of a causal regression that goes back at least to the Big Bang, that obviously makes free will impossible. WE understand that quite clearly and strongly.
On to Christof Koch’s piece, where on page 24 he writes, “you are free if, under identical circumstances, you could have acted otherwise.” He doesn’t explain how impossible this is, so allow me to do so for him. What Chris neglects to follow up with is that different circumstances could only arise if the universe had evolved differently. It obviously did not, and to the best of our knowledge, could not have. Seven love.
Chris gets the essence of the matter right on page 25 where he writes “Chaos does not invalidate the natural law of cause and effect, however. It continues to reign supreme.” This bears restating. Cause and effect, or causality, reigns supreme. But Koch then goes on to confuse us with the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle by writing “In its most common interpretation, (He’s referring to Copenhagen, but some surveys now have it in second place- my note) it avers that any particle, say, a photon of light or an electron, cannot have both a definite position and a definite momentum at the same time. If you know its speed accurately, its position is correspondingly ill defined, and vice versa. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle is a radical departure from classical physics.” That we can’t see beyond what our strongest telescopes allow us does not mean there’s nothing there. Ignorance provides no basis for conclusion. The salient point here is that particle behavior is completely causal, making the matter of predictability inconsequential to our question. Again, causality, and not unpredictability is what makes free will impossible.
Fourteen love.
A bit further down, on page 25, Koch writes “The universe has an irreducible, random character. If it is a clockwork, its cogs, springs and levers are not Swiss-made; they do not follow a predetermined path. Physical determinism has been replaced by the determinism of probabilities. Nothing is certain anymore.” No, Chris already correctly explained that cause and effect reign supreme. While we must rely on probabilities to predict the behavior of single particles, these probabilities are derived from the completely deterministic measurement of groups of particles. NO PREDICTION COULD BE POSSIBLE WERE NOT THESE SINGLE PARTICLES BEHAVING COMPLERTELY ACCORDING TO CAUSE AND EFFECT. Sorry for yelling.
Thirty Love.
Koch is using the word random as meaning “unpredictable.” But, it’s not unpredictability by humans and machines that makes free will IMPOSSIBLE. Again, what makes free will impossible is that every one of our decisions has a cause, and that cause has a cause, etc. etc., and the ensuing causal regression spans back to before we were born, and before the Earth was born, and before the Sun was born.
Forty Love.
The online version of this article is titled How Physics and Neuroscience Dictate Your "Free" Will- How Physics and Neuroscience Dictate Your "Free" Will. Koch, or Scientific American, titled the print version “Finding Free Will. Physics and neurology can help us understand whether we choose our own destiny. Who else detects a disingenuous, obfuscation (I love that word). But let’s not assign any blame except to the causal chain of events that led up to such confused writing. Yes, Sandra; we have an answer. Cause and effect make free will IMPOSSIBLE, and the only other alternative to cause and effect is that events, like human decisions, would be random in the strongest sense of occurring without cause, in which case we could certainly not claim them as having been caused by us human beings.
Game, set, match.
There are at least two aspects of reality that are more fundamental than, in that they are absolutely required by, scientific method for it to work. The first is that reality, or the universe, exists. The second is that change is THE fundamental process in the universe. Change is an expression, or result, of causality, or the law of cause and effect, (i.e. no change is possible without causality). We can therefore PROVE, with ABSOLUTE certainty, that free will is impossible by invoking these two axiomatic, a priori, FACTS in considering human will . Game, set, match for successfully PROVING that human will is causal, and free will is an illusion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDear Georgeo,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou are obviously deeply religious person. You fervently believe in the religion called causality. It is, therefore, quite unlikely that the following will make a sense to you. So, consider this reply to you as something that will make sense to others...
Causality is a dogma - just like a Catholic dogma. No matter what - we were NEVER able to replicate an experiment and have the 100% same outcome. Now, we may choose (free will) to believe that there are hidden causes - we are unable to observe. But, such belief is not different from a belief into a soul, for example...
If we really wish to present ourselves as scientists - we must rely on observable phenomena. In this, we may speculate about hidden causes. But, these speculations cannot be sustained indefinitely...
The simple empirical fact is that similar phenomena may occur after different similar phenomena. To explain this --- we have two options. The first, generally agreed one, is that a little devil called chance - spoils otherwise perfectly predictable outcome...
The second option is much simpler. It takes similarity as it is. If causes are similar - then effects will also be similar. In this, we do not need a little devil that spoils otherwise perfectly predictable outcome. All we need is a difference in a cause...
This difference is a consensus in particle physics also. In simple terms, each particle is unique per definition. Consequently, each particle will have unique outcomes of interplays with other particles. These interplays do fit in a statistical distribution curve - but this does not make the particles the same...
Another example of causality religion failure can be seen in chemistry. If we consider elements as causes - properties of molecules are impossible to derive. The simplest example is common salt. The most of its properties are impossible to derive from properties of sodium and chlorine...
Have a nice day,
Damir Ibrisimovic
Christof Koch’s inquiry into the neurobiology of free will (May/June 2012) was inconclusive, as discussions of free will versus determinism tend to be. When inquiries are consistently inconclusive, we perhaps are asking the wrong questions. Perhaps a better question is “What are we doing when we decide?” We all experience making decisions. We notice that actions that are temporally subsequent to these decisions are highly correlated to these decisions. How do we formulate a decision? What is the relationship between decision and action?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe may notice that many of our conscious actions do not seem to flow from decisions. I may have decided at one point to brush my teeth every morning, but did I decide to brush my teeth this morning? I navigated heavy traffic to go downtown with hardly a thought to my driving. How is it that some of our conscious actions are marked by decisions and others are not? Should we speak of weak decisions and strong decisions? Is the decision to go to college the same thing for a single mother whose parents did not go to college, compared to the daughter of two college professors.
These questions are subject to systematic investigation. The answers to them shed light on how consciousness relates to action. This, after all, is the question of free will.
"Finding free will" (Christof Koch) is an interesting, but futile search I'm afraid. To stay within limits I have to go directly to the core issue. Our western civilization rests on what the writer/thinker Robert M. Pirsig calls "Subject/Object Metaphysics" (SOM) It has many offshoots of which mind/matter is the chief one, but mind/body, soul/body, mental/corporeal, culture/nature, nurture/nature - and surely some more - are of the same root. Metaphysics because it means that we regard the schism between the subject mind and the its objective matter world as reality's deepest ground. The strange thing however is that SOM has done nothing but create paradoxes since its birth with the Greeks in the last half millennium BC, and paradoxes are the sure sign of something wrong with the premises. We know classic physics' famous paradoxes (Achilles and the Turtle f.ex.) yet even if these were obviously in conflict with experience it took until modern physics (Newton & Leibniz) before the source of the trouble was understood and then the paradoxes weren't resolved, they just dissolved. Likewise we know that all SOM paradoxes - there are more than free will - for instance the long sought interface between mindish thoughts and matterish acts . Yet like the Greeks could the not see a way out of their self-induced paradoxes, we see no way way out of the subject/object paradoxes. Koch's conclusions were a bit feeble to say the least. Pirsig has however offered a new metaphysical premises that starts with the axiom that Reality = Quality and that this dynamic quality has spawned static levels - inorganic, organic, social and intellectual - whereof the latter is the present SOM. This makes SOM's paradoxes dissolve.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMr. Bodvar Skutvik
Bodö, Norway
The question "Is free will an illusion?" begs asking what we ought to mean by "free will". We are macroscopic agents; so it's reasonable to ignore non-deterministic quantum effects and accept that we are chaotic, deterministic, autonomous, goal seeking agents. (Being autonomous is consistent with being deterministic -- determined by our inputs – if by “autonomous” we mean the inputs are independent of how an agent processes them.)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThen "free will" simply means the scope of choices that such agents can consciously make at any given moment -- i.e. choices (including doing nothing) for which they can express a reason(s) for choosing or not choosing them. In some circumstances, an agent may have no free will -- the scope may be zero -- e.g., when actions are externally forced, or done without conscious awareness.
The fact that the conscious awareness of an intent may lag what may be detectable with brain probes is a red herring. Almost all mental processes are subconscious, so yes, such a process may decide on a course of action well before the agent's conscious mind becomes aware. But this is irrelevant to that agent's ability to make a choice subconsciously for which the conscious part of the agent later gives/confabulates a reason.
The importance of this meaning of free will is that whenever autonomous, goal seeking agents have it they can behave unpredictably -- agents will usually be unable to predict even their own choices correctly, which is where confabulation enters the picture. Unpredictability combined with autonomy explains why free willed agents are and ought to be accountable for their actions.
Dear Schoenfeldt
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe "begging a question" issue may apply to the statement "... they believed that they, and only they, could escape the iron law of cause and effect .." but I think you beg another question with "... the most fundamental force in the universe is in fact consciousness." I said in my entry above that the Subject/Object Metaphysics (AKA Mind/Matter) has alternated between the subjective (all is mind or consciousness) and the objective "consciousness is a by-product of biological brain matter) since its birth with the Greeks (the Sophists the subjectivists and Plato the objectivist). From their own premises both conclusions are "iron law"-like, yet can neither co-exist nor be separated. No sooner have you said that the fundamental force is consciousness, the question arises what matter is? Consciousness too? Well, in that case you have mind-consciousness and matter-consciousness. You will know that this enigma occurred with Descartes and reached a climax with the empiricists - Berkeley primarily - who found that there was no qualities "out there": sound was just frequencies of pressure waves, colors just ditto of the electro-magnetic spectrum .. and so on for all sense organs. Reality was created subjectively or by consciousness if you like. Then Kant who felt this went completely wild, his conclusion was that most of our experience is created subjectively (time,space. causation) but there was an objective reality "out there". And Kant's authority was so great that this has been the last word on this issue for more than 150 years - only that this created a host of paradoxes and that the two parties never were reconciled - this article on free will leaned to the objective side, and then you entered the predictable subjective view. But as said the American writer/thinker Robert M. Pirsig has offered a resolution with his Metaphysics of Quality that has a different fundamental split than subject/object, namely dynamic/static and in which light all SOM paradoxes dissolves among them the Free Will one. However, academy won't touch his MOQ anymore than the Pope would look into Galileo's telescope.
Bodvar Skutvik
Interesting article, however I'm ambivalent about accepting the certainty of Libet's experiment. It would seem to me that that the participants who volunteered for the experiment (keyword volunteer) would already be in a cooperative state of mind when prompted to carry out any command by the experimenter. Hence, the mind would have acted before the brain because the volunteer made the decision of their own free-will to participate in the study in the first place. The ready potential measured would only be the result of the conscious decision made by person's mind to voluntarily cooperate in the study, right?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI wonder how Mr. Koch diagnosed Anders Breivik. In the article he wrote that Breivik was a schizophrenic. However when following the trial I learned that Breivik was said to be perfectly sane on his mind and there was clearly stated that he was NOT a schizophrenic. I would like to strongly oppose to label mass murderers as schizophrenics unless it is clear they are ones. I think SCIAM articles should be free from stereotypes. Later people do not want to hire people with schizophrenia since they see a potential mass murderer on the loose. Please be more careful with the wording in the future.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPdrazek.
Interesting topic to another Norwegian, but it merely proves that our vaunted Subject/Object Metaphysics (SOM) - here in the Mind/Body form is useless in understanding things. Of course Breivik is sane and intelligent, more so that most people, he is just devoted to a big cause and as such is just as crazy as the 9/11 "pilots" or any other terrorist, only that he is not a religious terrorist so he did not arrange for the ultimate sacrifice. Again to understand his and/or any such act we must switch to Pirsig's "Metaphysics of Quality" with its Dynamic/Static dualism (instead of the Subject/Object one) and its 4 static value levels : Inorganic-organic-social-intellectual . 1 and 2 are more or less self-evident but the 3rd and 4th are the crucial ones in a human context, particularly as the 4th level is the mentioned SOM and that the 3rd "patterns" aren't mere "societies" but also THEIR COMMON CAUSE and explains the strange metamorphosis that men undergo from civilian to soldier when murder switches from crime to duty, This event called "war" is plain, but a human being can take on grander causes as when Bin Laden found hat Islam was threatened by "Western values" (which are the intellectual ones.) It's two much for this forum to delve into the level relationship, but let it suffice to say that the upper one tries to control the lower and use it for its own purpose, yet even if the West is intellect-steeped the lower levels are part of our constitution. Thus ABB (as we call him) found that our Western culture was threatened by Islam via the immigration of Muslims to Europe, and this conviction is that makes him immune to guilt and remorse, a grander cause has called him to action. Our peacetime High Court and its judges are oblivious to this context and the psychic expertise twists their brain to understand this SOM-induced enigma which is so simple in the light of the MOQ.
Bodvar Skutvik .
There is 'thought about free will' and actual movements, actual action, actual happenings. The format on which mind operates is challenge and response from moment to moment. It translates the challenge as good or bad. If this judgment is kept at bay, one is one with the challenge.The response is relaxed. One sees auto disturbance and auto adjustment from moment to moment, which is the movement of Life.Thought about free will is no longer as there is no one separate from happening to question 'what is happening'.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisQuantum electrodynamics + Biology = Who am I ?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this==.
Cells make copies of themselves.
Different cells make different copies of themselves.
Cells come in all shapes and sizes.
Somehow these different cells are tied between themselves
and during pregnancy process of 9 months gradually ( ! )
and by chance ( or not by chance ) they change own
geometrical form from zygote to a child.
Cells come in all shapes and sizes, and then . . . they are you.
Cells they are you ( !? )
This is modern biomechanical /chemical point of view.
#
Maybe 99% agree that ‘Cells - they are you .’
But this explanation is not complete.
Cells have an energy / electrical potential.
Cells have an electromagnetic field.
Therefore we need to say:
‘ Cells and electromagnetic field - they are you.’
===.
Is this formulation correct?
Of course it is correct.
Why?
Because:
Bioelectromagnetism (sometimes equated with bioelectricity)
refers to the electrical, magnetic or electromagnetic fields
produced by living cells, tissues or organisms.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioelectromagnetism
What does it mean?
It means there isn’t biological cell without electromagnetic fields.
It means that in the cell we have two ( 2 ) substances:
matter and electromagnetic fields.
And in 1985 Richard P. Feynman wrote book:
QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter
The idea of book - the interaction between light
( electromagnetic fields ) and matter is strange.
He wrote: ‘ The theory of quantum electrodynamics
describes Nature as absurd from the point of view
of common sense. And it agrees fully with experiment.
So I hope you accept Nature as She is — absurd. ‘
/ page 10. /
#
Once again:
1.
Cells and electromagnetic field - they are you.
2.
We cannot understand their interaction and therefore
we don’t know the answer to the question: ‘ who am I ?’
==.
Where does electromagnetic field come from ?
=.
In 1904 Lorentz proved: there isn’t electromagnetic field
( em waves ) without Electron
It means the source of these em waves must be an Electron
The electron and the em waves they are physical reality
Can evolution of consciousness begin on electron’s level?
==.
Origin of life is a result of physical laws that govern Universe
Electron takes important part in this work.
#
1900, 1905
Planck and Einstein found the energy of electron: E=h*f.
1916
Sommerfeld found the formula of electron : e^2=ah*c,
it means: e = +ah*c and e = -ah*c.
1928
Dirac found two more formulas of electron’s energy:
+E=Mc^2 and -E=Mc^2.
According to QED in interaction with vacuum electron’s
energy is infinite: E= ∞
Questions.
Why does the simplest particle - electron have six ( 6 ) formulas ?
Why does electron obey five ( 5) Laws ?
a) Law of conservation and transformation energy/ mass
b) Maxwell’s equations
c) Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle / Law
d) Pauli Exclusion Principle/ Law
e) Fermi-Dirac statistics.
Nobody knows.
====.
What is an electron ?
Now nobody knows
In the internet we can read hundreds theories about electron
All of them are problematical.
We can read hundreds books about philosophy of physics.
But how can we trust them if we don’t know what is an electron ?
====.
Quote by Heinrich Hertz on Maxwell's equations:
"One cannot escape the feeling that these mathematical formulae
have an independent existence and an intelligence of their own,
that they are wiser than we are, wiser even than their discoverers,
that we get more out of them than was originally put into them."
==.
Ladies and Gentlemen !
Friends !
The banal Electron is not as simple as we think and, maybe,
he is wiser than we are.
=====.
According to Pauli Exclusion Principle
only one single electron can be in the atom.
This electron reanimates the atom.
This electron manages the atom.
If the atom contains more than one electron (for example - two)
then this atom represents a " Siamese twins".
Save us, the Great God, of having such atoms, such children. ( ! )
Each of us has an Electron, but we do not know it. ( ! )
==.
Question: Can consciousness be introduced into physics?
Understanding what electron is, gives the answer to this question.
=.
Brain and Electron.
Human brain works on two levels:
consciousness and subconsciousness. The neurons of brain
create these two levels. So, that it means consciousness and
subconsciousness from physical point of view ( interaction
between billions and billions neurons and electron).
It can only mean that the state of neurons in these two
situations is different.
How can we understand these different states of neurons?
How does the brain generate consciousness?
We can understand this situation only on the quantum level,
only using Quantum theory. But there isn’t QT without
Quantum of Light and Electron. So, what is interaction between
Quantum of Light, Electron and brain ?
Nobody knows.
Maybe therefore Michael Talbot wrote:
‘ Contrary to what everyone knows it is so, it may not be
the brain that produce consciousness, but rather consciousness
that creates the appearance of the brain - . . . .’
/ Book ‘ The Holographic Universe’ page 160.
by Michael Talbot ./
#
Conclusion:
We are cells + Electron. ( ! )
We must understand not only the cells, brain but electron too.
And when we understand the Electron
we will know the Ultimate Nature of Reality.
===.
Best wishes.
Israel Sadovnik Socratus
===========.
We have no opinion. Unless you have telekinesis you cannot move particles and arrange them in a logical order any more than the moon can decide to turn left.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe only way to change the course Matter is on---is supernaturally. There simply is no allowance in physics for the thing you call a Self to DO anything.
So the question's doesn't demonstrate just how devoid of logic Materialism is-- as NO ONE actually thought up materialism--it was a random electrical grouping.
I mean, when I see my beautiful child I see not even a hint of design there. I know the parameters of the universe are said to be in the probability of effectively zero and that almost every human being that has ever lived has believed we were created..but they're just all stupid..
Even though random particles are making me spew out this opinion, I think the particles must be right--after all.....they randomly clumped together to form my consciousness so they must know something. The chemicals and electrical signals knew exactly where to go to store my memories and constantly recycles them for me at a certain speed so I can remember my wife told me pick up the kids later
So again, all my thoughts are based on Reason and Logic, nicely ordered by matter and matter alone(which I have ascribed god-like powers to)
I also pride myself on goodness as I surf the internet for filth as morals dont really exist. Its perfectly logical for an explosion to create laws and parameters that are so fine tuned that even a pimples width diversion would make the universe collapse.
Is this not reasonable? I think it makes a perfectly reasonable argument. In fact, its the Pinnacle of Human Thought and will go down in history as the most coherent grouping of particles ever assembled not by me.
Sorry I was bored. But I blame matter.
People...this is only ever been question because of God. We all the know the real answer but cant accept it.
Actually, considering how often artists speak of themselves as being merely a sort of ''conduit'' for their work, the arts are a pretty good example of just how ''unconscious'' our actions really are. And BTW, studies going back more than 30 years ago revealed much the same thing, in patients who had their corpus callosum surgically severed (e.g. the nerve bundle connecting the R & L hemispheres of the brain). This was once a radical treatment for schizophrenia, and later research with such patients has shown that whenever each ''disconnected'' eye saw a separate picture, it was really the eye that was 'connected' to the Right hemisphere (aka, the ''unconscious'') that dominated the combined visual interpretation... while the Left hemisphere merely ''explained'' it!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo perhaps we do have ''free will'', except that it's not our ''conscious'' side that's really doing the ''choosing''!
http://cwx.prenhall.com/bookbind/pubbooks/morris4/medialib/readings/split.html
''We then asked the left hemisphere - the only one that can talk - why the left hand was pointing to the object. It really did not know, because the decision to point to the card was made in the right hemisphere. Yet, quick as a flash, it made up an explanation. We dubbed this creative, narrative talent the Interpreter Mechanism.''