At a restaurant recently I faced many temptations: a heavy stout beer, a buttery escargot appetizer, a marbled steak, cheesecake. The neural networks in my brain that have evolved to produce the emotion of hunger for sweet and fatty foods, which in our ancestral environment were both rare and sustaining, were firing away to get me to make those selections. In competition were signals from other neural networks that have evolved to make me care about my future health, in particular how I view my body image for status among males and appeal to females and how sluggish I feel after a rich meal and the amount of exercise I will need to counter it. In the end, I ordered a light beer, salmon and a salad with vinaigrette dressing and split a mildly rich chocolate cake with my companion.
Was I free to make these choices? According to neuroscientist Sam Harris in his luminous new book Free Will (Free Press, 2012), I was not. “Free will is an illusion,” Harris writes. “Our wills are simply not of our own making.” Every step in the causal chain above is fully determined by forces and conditions not of my choosing, from my evolved taste preferences to my learned social status concerns—causal pathways laid down by my ancestors and parents, culture and society, peer groups and friends, mentors and teachers, and historical contingencies going all the way back to my birth and before.
Neuroscience supports this belief. The late physiologist Benjamin Libet noted in EEG readings of subjects engaged in a task requiring them to press a button when they felt like it that half a second before the decision was consciously made the brain's motor cortex lit up. Research has extended the time between subcortical brain activation and conscious awareness to a full seven to 10 seconds. A new study found activity in a tiny clump of 256 neurons that enabled scientists to predict with 80 percent accuracy which choice a subject would make before the person himself knew. Very likely, just before I became consciously aware of my menu selections, part of my brain had already made those choices. “Thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control,” Harris concludes. “We do not have the freedom we think we have.”
True enough. But if we define free will as the power to do otherwise, the choice to veto one impulse over another is free won't. Free won't is veto power over innumerable neural impulses tempting us to act in one way, such that our decision to act in another way is a real choice. I could have had the steak—and I have—but by engaging in certain self-control techniques that remind me of other competing impulses, I vetoed one set of selections for another.
Support for this hypothesis may be found in a 2007 study in the Journal of Neuroscience by neuroscientists Marcel Brass and Patrick Haggard, who employed a task similar to that used by Libet but in which subjects could veto their initial decision to press a button at the last moment. The scientists discovered a specific brain area called the left dorsal frontomedian cortex that becomes activated during such intentional inhibitions of an action: “Our results suggest that the human brain network for intentional action includes a control structure for self-initiated inhibition or withholding of intended actions.” That's free won't.
In addition, a system has “degrees of freedom,” or a range of options that may result from its complexity and the number of intervening variables. Ants have a few degrees, rats more, chimps many more still, humans the most. Some people—psychopaths, the brain-damaged, the severely depressed or the chemically addicted—have fewer degrees than others, and the law adjusts for their lowered capacity for legal and moral accountability.
These vetoing neural impulses within a complex system with many degrees of freedom are part of the deterministic universe.Thinking of volition as a component of the causal net lets us restore personal responsibility to its rightful place in a civil society.
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Add CommentIn his recent article "Can Science Answer Our Ethical Dilemmas" (See the AAAS website, Paul Chiariello examines free will in terms of the dichotomy: "what is" vs "what ought to be". He points out the fatal flaw in Harris' arguments on morality, as well as free will, namely that science can only describe our nature and nurture (called cultural subjectivism), but science can never definitively answer the question "What has value?".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNeuroscience can ASSUME an answer, such as personal or social "well-being" as the paramount value, but others can validly argue a spectrum of other values. Chiariello asks if perhaps we should aim for the well-being of all intelligent life, or perhaps all sentient beings, or all life in the universe? These questions transcend science and enter the realm of philosophy, which always takes a larger view than parochial scienctific observations of the brain's current behavior. Neuroscience might answer questions about "What is?"; but the larger, transcendent questions about "What ought to be?" must be argued as a philosophical, and even theological question that has no empirical, scientific answer.
Michael says, “I vetoed one set of selections for another.” What “I” is this? Sam Harris already said that “There is no extra part of me which could have done otherwise.”
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo define free will as “the power to do otherwise” offers no escape from the classical question of “who or what” makes the choice. Others have long remarked that the implied homunculus would require in turn its own inner homunculus, and so on, giving only infinite regress, not an explanation. Presuming only natural explanations, we skeptics cannot depart from determinism, which predicates the issuance of every instantaneous stage of existence entirely from its antecedents. Even as we seemingly exercise “free won’t,” that very veto can issue only from its antecedents. Thus “free won’t” no more exists than “free will,” and other than fancifully your essay offers us each no escape from our own endless chain of causality.
However, in the purposeful wording of that last phrase lies our solution. Yes, we each have no escape from our own endless chain of causality; but, that chain is what we can claim as “our own.” It is what my “self” consists of, with the proviso that the feeling of “self” is a confabulation, a construct (See Patricia Churchland, 2002, and Bruce Hood, 2012) which comfortably accounts for the glimpse of my subconscious activity, my internal chain of causation, which reaches the conscious level in my brain. Embedded in which is the twin confabulation of “free will,” which is NOT an ILlusion; it is an ALlusion, a progress report on the body’s changing status, converging on the most (on its merits) dominant of several currently eligible action plans. The “winner” among these candidates is what “we” do physically undertake. And some other winner might soon shoulder aside the first, which accounts for “free won’t” — no homunculus required.
This fast-moving “survival of the fittest” neurologic interplay changes the brain even as it uses the brain; like the species itself, the system adapts according to its successful task completions. This is how we get to act “otherwise” — not other than “the self we were” would have acted, that being idle speculation, but as “the self we have become” must deterministically act. There is no “ghost in the machine,” for the ghost (such as it is) IS the machine. We act as we will, but we will as we must ...this time ...but, tomorrow is another day.
A. Granville Fonda, PE
King of Prussia, Pa, USA
Contact me at agfilosoph.webs.com
Sam Harris: "Free will is an illusion. Our wills are simply not of our own making."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMe: "And what made you say that?"
The argument over free will seems to be dominated by two opposite but equally absurd arguments. One is that there is some supernatural decider in the mind that is the seat of free will. The other is that every thing is predetermined and there is no such thing as free will. As to the first I would argue that everything has free will in the sense that it does what it does. A rock has free will in the sense that it does what rocks do – almost nothing. An oak tree may have some specific characteristics that are genetically determined, but every oak tree grows in it's own way and is influenced by the environment. Human behavior may be vastly more complicated and subject to far more environmental inputs, but people just do what they do. No two are alike in spite of many similarities. As for finding a seat of awareness in the brain that makes decisions, it is not there. Consciousness or awareness is the sum of all the processes in the brain. It is analogous the fact that no particular structures can be found in DNA but structures arise from the whole process of gene expression.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs to everything being predetermined, just who is it that has done the predetermining? That argument only makes sense if you postulate the existence of a supernatural, god like intelligence that has everything figured out already. So much for the uncertainty principal of quantum physics.
The eminent Dr. William Provine (Cornell) has studied free will for 40+ years. Recently, he polled 149 equally eminent evolutionary biologists about free will. He seemed disappointed when the results showed that they were equating human choice and human free will. He said that, although eminent, they had not thought about free will much beyond the level of his undergrad students! Harris, Shermer, and most neuroscientists are guilty of making the same mistake, whether they call it free will or free won't.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlfred Mele (Oxford Press, 2009) and many other scientists find these empirical claims of Libet, Brass and Haggard to be unwarranted and even disturbing. Did Harris report both sides of this debate? Mele says that neuroscientists seem inclined to unfairly dismiss critics as philosophers, even when the critics credentials and arguments are clearly scientific.
As a skeptic, Shermer is obliged to recognize the valid scientific criticism of Harris and associates, and not swallow whole these anti-free-will claims, just because he wants to believe them.
Sam Harris addresses this issue in his book Free Will and even in his first book The Moral Landscape.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHarris makes a great case for free will being an illusion. Using modern scientific research and many more recent breakthroughs and the sill infantile neurosciences, he eloquently makes the case that free will is in fact an illusion, and after reading his books and other articles on the subject, I tend to side with the case that free will is in fact an illusion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think its an amazingly interesting topic and I do not think it needs to be left as a philosophical argument and I think the very last thing it is is a theological argument. The idea of Free Will is seldom used in a secular discussion and is normally only brought up when you discuss god or religion. I think the fact so many people hold onto free will as a gift given to them by a higher power makes the argument against it much harder to swallow.
We can talk in circles about what free will is but science and scientific studies will continue to trump whatever we want to believe with whats true. like it or not.
Your endorsement of Harris' book is empty without reason; it merely says that you want to believe Harris, rather than the scientists who find Harris' science lacking. In his book, Alfred Mele explicitly protested this dismissive attitude toward other scientists who disagree with so-called "free will science". One cannot rationally dismiss all critics and skeptics as philosophers and theologians. Otherwise, this "free will science" becomes a religion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisyou couldn't be more wrong. i clearly said i tend to side with Harris on this subject because of his (and others research). Skeptics of free will (like Harris' own friend Daniel C Dennett) tend to only discuss opposition to free will on a philosophical level as does Mele.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisbeing critical and skeptical is what makes science so important and helps keep it free from bias. but that does not negate the fact that scientific research and evidence will still trump philosophical discussion. I merely said theologians tend to be the ones to pound their fists for free will being a absolute truth, but did not dismiss any skepticism as you claim I have done.
I am not saying Dennett or Mele are wrong, because even the scientific studies done by Harris and others is still new and the science itself is so young, but for me personally, after reading Harris, Dennett and others, I lean towards the side of free will being an illusion.
Nice reply. But you fail to see the irony (and dismissive tone) in your own statement: "... scientific research and evidence will still trump philosophical discussion." Isn't all evidence interpreted within a framework of philosophical discussion, whether it is verification, falsification, model theory, probability theory, social paradigms, naturalism, positivism, theology or your own personal world view. Evidence is only evidence FOR or AGAINST a particular philosophical outlook on the world.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo an independent observer, it appears that Harris gathers evidence to support his philosophy of knowledge, ... which falters if free will is NOT an illusion! This is why his results are suspect. Harris must prove that free will is an illusion, because a negative result would undermine his own philosophy.
One would think that a skeptic like Shermer would expose this obvious prejudice, but Shermer has admitted that he is a "true believer" in Harris' philosophy. He has shown his own "confirmation bias" in many earlier columns. So the whole claim of being a dispassionate, scientific observer of the evidence is nonsense. The interpretation of the evidence to support Harris philosophy is no more scientific than the same tactics by creation scientists who set out to prove their preconceived ideas.
no, evidence is not up for philosophical debate. evidence either supports or does not support a hypothesis. its not up for debate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisevidence for evolution supports the theory, you cannot then debate that you philosophically think it does not (though many theologians try).
Harris did not gather evidence to support his claim, that would be pseudoscience, he posed a hypothesis and tested it, the data he gathered supports his hypothesis. Other research in the same field has been cited that also supports his claim, but he is careful to not misuse this data to make his own claim sound more legitimate.
you clearly have not read harris' work because you think of it as philosophical, though he cites real studies that have been done to support this hypothesis. Harris himself doesn't even go as far as to call it a theory and acknowledges there is still a long way to go in gathering evidence to support his claim, but he presents in a short 90 page book why the current evidence on the "Free will illusion" supports his claim.
i have to assume you understand the scientific method, yet you write as though you do not. I do not mean to insult you and maybe I am just losing something you are saying since this is being done in text, but to call harris actual research nothing more than philosophical is a great misunderstanding of his work in neuroscience and his very careful use of the scientific method.
When we discuss free will in the philosophical and scientifically interesting sense, what we are really debating is whether or not whatever it is that we perceive as “me” has an original power of causation. This is to ask: are our actions wholly the products of the hereditary and environmental factors that shape our nervous systems, or are our actions determined, at least in part, by conscious processes that are essentially extra-physical.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Libet experiments strongly suggest that our actions are caused by non-conscious, physical precursors, but they do not prove this conclusively. Finding an 80% correlation in activity in a particular area of the brain with a particular motor behavior is a long way from proving that something one deliberates about for days is predetermined. However, though the experimental data is not utterly conclusive, I do not believe the free will hypothesis is tenable.
Shermer’s position seems especially weak. Having conceded that Libet is compelling, an alternate locus of neuronal activity that seems to be countermanding the first only points to further physical complexity, not to some extra-physical self. It hardly matters that it occurs a little closer to one’s conscious experience in time.
To express my position somewhat philosophically, the essence of self is consciousness rather than freedom. Consciousness may be retrospective, but it appears to provide the working material for all future decisions. If consciousness is essentially a memory function, then it is incorrect to say that it is epiphenomenal. Without awareness of past events the deterministic engine of the brain would have very little to work with.
My position is very similar to the one Albert Fonda posted earlier. I enjoyed his comment – though, of course, I had no choice…
e.m. cadwaladr
25 July 2012
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am late to this conversation so will start with the article and its simple examples and take it at face value: "Won't" is an exercise of a mental veto power over an "impulse," a veto power always neurologically available and so evidence of a "power to do otherwise" which is a "real" choice.
The "yes" or "no" examples concerning choices of food are hardly a demonstration of the workings of a mental system having the degrees of freedom and complexity of the human brain, later described.
Moreover the premise of an "impulse" is far different from an opportunity to consider alternative courses of action when faced with a situation requiring decision. In that regard, I commend the several books by Dan Ariely that carefully dissect the influences--mostly unconscious and almost always irrationally driven--that influence one to choose among a number of courses of action, not simply yes or no or this or that. ("The Upside of Irrationality," "Predictably Irrational," and his latest, last month, "The Honest Truth About Dishonesty.")
It is the irrational that cannot be eliminated from decision making, though hindsight is what provides the rationalization. Just about any book by Dan McAdams (but especially "Power, Intimacy and the Life Story") addresses the process of creating a coherent "story" from what otherwise are irrational "choices."
I keep nearby a fortune cookie admonition: "Depart not from the path which fate has assigned you." I can't think of a better summary of the conundrum which is "free will."
Willa France
What this shows is that a conscious process of deliberation does not cause actions which feel to us like free choices. Does this mean there is no free will? Consider this: This discovery doesn't show that people are prevented from doing what they want, because they want to do it. And doing what you want, because you want to do it, that just is what constitutes a free action. (Of course, the fact that you want X is encoded as some neural state, but just because it's a neural state doesn't make it any less a case of wanting, unless you had a very naive notion of how the mind works.) When that neural state ("the desire/resolution to do X") causes my X-ing, I'm X-ing freely. It's not difficult.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's sad to see educated people freaking out about the fact that our deliberate actions are caused by our brain states - as if this were a recent discovery. What's so hard about the notion that some brain-state-caused actions are free? Is that not good enough for you because there's no "soul" doing the causing? Sheesh!
Science is not equipped to answer the question of free will. By its very nature, science deals with the tangible, observable & measurable. It can trace lines of causality, but breaks down at the idea of uncaused events; thus it presupposes that such events cannot occur. Any scientific attempt to investigate free will is doomed to violate the scientific method by reaching a conclusion before the first bit of data is even obtained. It's ironic that science will take "dark energy" and "dark matter" more or less on faith, but categorically rejects the possiblity of a force (call it will, mind, soul or whatever you want) capable of overriding causality. If the Big Bang is acceptable as a "first cause" (as evidenced by the theories which claim there was no "before the Big Bang"), why isn't the mind?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is why we have philosophy - to investigate the intangible, unobservable and immesaurable.
Interesting, but you are essentially resolving the problem by redefining "free". You could as easily say a stone, having mass which causes it to fall in gravitational field, is falling “freely”. What is at stake here is whether or not anything influences the brain that in neither predetermined by physics nor random in some quantum sense.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOf course, you are correct that a belief in the reduction of decision making processes to brain states changes little about how we experience them. The elimination of free will from my worldview alters my behavior only slightly. I suspect what you may really be talking about a different sense of the word “free” -- the sense of being able to carry out one’s plans without external constraint. Again, an interesting comment. Thank you.
e.m. cadwaladr
If Harris is correct, consciousness would never have evolved, because it would confer no advantage to the organisms possessing it. If all conscious thought is just the playback of low level signals, why evolve large, expensive brain areas to handle it? It would be far more efficient for our brains to just bypass consciousness and react automatically.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe fact that did evolve is a clear indicator that Harris's arguments are incomplete.
Speaking subjectively, I think consciousness is a very efficient way to filter possibilities and that once the filter distills an "answer", that information becomes part of the underlying impulse feeding mechanism. It is highly doubtful that it's a one way street.
If a stone deliberately undertook actions, then yes, that stone's actions could also be free, so long as they were caused by the stone's desire to undertake them. The stone's lack of free will comes from a lack of volitions that cause its actions. But it is an odd consequence of my view that if you gave a stone enough internal structure - say, from etched silicon - so that it actually makes plans and acts on them, then yes, when its plans cause its actions, it's acting freely.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisShermer writes: "Research has extended the time between subcortical brain activation and conscious awareness to a full seven to 10 seconds."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf Shermer means that it takes the brain up to 10 seconds to bring an unconscious impulse to conscious awareness, this is a remarkable and in my view implausible, assertion. How is it ruled out that the brain might be taking time to make up its mind?
Do the experimental results Shermer refers to duplicate the methodology of the Libet experiments, which found sub-second time intervals? Shermer needs to explain more about this assertion and the experiments that demonstrate it.
try my digital camera for an analogy. I leave its default position as automatic because it work for most pictures. But sometimes I choose a dedicated mode, for instance portrait or sport. Just occasionally I take over full control so that I can set aperture and shutter speed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo I have levels of attention and choice -- though I am usually on default.Of course the range of my choice is boundaried by what my particular camera can offer me.This fits in well with the concept that we choose by excluding every other option.
But one alternative in a human being is the option of developing the virtues. Let's say that I have habituated myself to loving my neighbour. If so, it becomes an habitual motivational option.If I have decided to give it priority, it will exclude other options.
There is no free-will or "free-won't." This so called "ability" to veto certain impulses is not an ability, it is not "free-won't" It is just a programmatic overwrite determined by the conditions of one environment. The things you did not choose, were not freely denied. They were denied, but only because of your programming from the conditions of your environment combined with your biological influences. There is no freedom to won't or to will. "You" are a product of your environment and instructed by the conditions of it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"You will say, "I feel free." This is an illusion, that may be compared to that of the fly in the fable, who, lighting upon the pole of a heavy carriage, applauded himself for directing its course. Man, who thinks himself free, is a fly, who imagines he has power to move the universe, while he is himself unknowingly carried along by it." - Baron d'Hobach
Your argument, like that of Baron d'Hobach, is philosophical, but Harris is attempting to support your argument with scientific evidence. Unfortunately,he has not eliminated his "confirmation bias" from the interpretation of his results. Remember the warning: "Correlation does not equate to causation". Harris finds certain correlations between his data and choices made by subjects; but even neuroscientists do not all agree that this justifies his radical conclusion that free will has definitively been proven to be an illusion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe are still left with the same "opinion" as the Baron, and we still have no definitive scientific proof. We merely have some data that might provide a basis for further scientific study. In the end, Harris' (and Shermer's) main challenge, in my opinion, is to get most scientists to agree on a testable definition of free will (or free won't). As Feynman often said: "Good luck with that." For now, Harris and Shermer must rely on their philosophy of physicalism which is merely an opinion.
Michael Schermer’s article “Free Won’t” is a refreshing expansion of what it means to be “free.” His critique of Sam Harris would hold also for Michael Gazzaniga’s discussion of freedom in his book Who’s in Charge. Neuroscientists might do well to analyze human choice as a function of the whole person rather than a “faculty” called free will. The following phenomenological analysis by theologian Paul Tillich warrants such analysis:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this“Freedom is not the freedom of a function (the “will”), but of man, that is.
of that being who is not a thing but a complete self and a rational person.
It is possible, of course, to call the “will” the personal center nd to substitute it for the totality of the self. . . . But it has proved to be very misleading, as the deadlock in the traditional controversy about freedom indicates. One should speak of the
freedom of man, indicating that every part and every function which constitutes
man a personal self participates in freedom. This includes even the cells of his
body, in so far as they participate in the constitution of his personal center.
That which is not centered, that which is isolated from the total process of the
Self, either by natural or by artificial separation (disease or laboratory situation,
for instance), is determined by the mechanism of stimulus and response or by the dynamism of the relation between the conscious and he unconscious. However,
it is impossible to derive the determinacy of the whole, including the nonseparated parts, from he determinacy of isolated parts. Ontologically the whole precedes the parts and gives them their character as parts of this particular whole.”
Systematic Theology, Volume I, p. 183f.
Meredith B. Handspicker
North Bennington, Vermont
Michael Shermer's article states something that I thought was an established "fact" -- that between the highly parallel non-conscious process of determining what to do and the necessarily almost-serially organized acts involved in doing it is a phase in which the thought is converted to action, in about 300 to 500 milliseconds. I am unable to find the reference, but half-a-second is a number that comes up in experiments that study response times to a stimulus.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo it should not be a surprise that a deliberate veto exists at the initiation of the action sequence. However, we know that very often once an action sequence has started, it is difficult to stop -- i.e., the instructions to the muscles involved have already sent (if not received) and can only be stopped at externally-constrained junctures.
The degrees of freedom is determined by the number of independent actuators (hands, legs, thunbs, other body parts) that are involved in the process. Other degrees of freedom may come from environmental elements that could be used to deflect a previously initiated action, though this is a bit difficult to envusage.
If one insists on assigning the term "will" only to the non-conscious process of determining "what to do", then we may not be in possession of "free will". But the split between parallel cognition and serial action(s) gives us the happy illusion of free will through an opportunity to interdict those action(s).
After some musing, it's pretty easy to come up with examples that prove Harris's determinism wrong. For example: By both habit and genetics, I am a righty, but I could choose to write lefty from this day forth.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is nothing physically wrong with my right hand and I'm not bored with being a righty, or attracted to being a lefty because Obama is, or it somehow seems "cooler." There is no deep molecular, genetic or chemical explanation this decision, it's just an arbitrary shift caused by my ability to direct my own experience.
Switching to left handed writing would be very cumbersome, at first, but with a few weeks or months practice, it would become fairly natural as the muscles in my hand and areas in my brain rewired to actualize my decision.
In "Free Will" Harris uses the example of violent criminals to justify his claim that free will is an illusion, but if a righty can choose to disobey 50 years of habit and his own predisposition to right handedness, then a criminal can choose to break his habitual or genetic predisposition to violence.
I'm sorry, but Harris is just wrong.
Commenting before I lose the thought, and before I've read the previous comments; sorry if what I say is redundant. My comment/question revolves around the statement, "A new study found activity in a tiny clump of 256 neurons that enabled scientists to predict with 80 percent accuracy which choice a subject would make before the person himself knew. Very likely, just before I became consciously aware of my menu selections, part of my brain had already made those choices." There is at least one assumption here that requires further explanation. Why is consciousness assumed to be the agency by which our actions are determined, and the sub-conscious agency somehow "not us" and therefore contravening free will? Is it not more likely that consciousness is part of the story that the left-brain tells to explain everything that happens through the agency of the sub-conscious mind? In other words, consciousness is not the planner, just the Howard Cosell-type commentator. Agency arising, like all other thought, from non-verbal sub-conscious "calculation" could be just as much evidence of free will as a "conscious" decision. The key is that the sub-conscious decision making process is making use of a data set and algorithm/heuristics unique to the individual. This could be considered an argument in favour of free will.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@CliffClark - I think the 20% they couldn't predict is a strong argument for free will. If - as the determinists claim - all our actions are slaves to causality, they should be able to get much closer to 100% accuracy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat impresses me in this discussion is the obvious under appreciation of human self consciousness which is manifested by language. After all, we are carbon based beings who are entirely composed of inanimate elements that have not a spark of understanding. Yet out of these elements, words are drawn, and understanding is achieved. This is the paramount unsolved mystery of our existence.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf quantum theory teaches us anything profound, it is that consciousness is inextricably tied up with reality, and that being true, self consciousness may involve more than materialism. And, yes, may even involve a ghost in the machine.
If I'm to understand certain parties, the fact the human spine is imperfectly evolved for its purpose means it cannot exist.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisImperfection does not mean impossibility.
If there is no free will, what is the use of pain? Without pain a person would react to injury without suffering. But the pain stimulates the will to react.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll stimulation is manipulative to consciousness. But consciousness has the ability to ignore stimulation if it chooses. This is "free won't".
Jim2703's point, that language under-appreciates consciousness is the converse of what I believe is true -- that consciousness is a by-product of language, specifically, the invention of "We" and "I" has led directly to the homunculus theory of consciousness that we think (through language!) to be obviously true. And that error leads to the theory of free will (free wont) -- that there is an entity inside us that makes decisions independent of context.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA point worth making is that the author has confused at least two independent cosmological-theological-philosophical issues. The first is "free will-versus-will of God" and the second is "determinism-versus-non-determinism". There is a strain of New-Age/theological thinking that has equated Heisenbergian uncertainty (HU) to non-determinism (ND) and then equated FW to HU, as a result of which we get the opposition D-versus-FW. These are the same people who also believe in "consciousness" as an independent non-material quality that is the source of mind and situate "consciousness" in "quantum uncertainty".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is a lot of hairy thinking out there and sometimes they end up producing an issue that looks reasonable like D-versus-FW. That does not make it reasonable.
D-vs.-ND is actually a scientific issue. We experience "time" as a dimension that is different from the 3 dimensions of space. You cannot go back in time, entropy always increases in the forward time direction, cause-and-effect operates in the forward time direction, and so on.
Space is deterministic -- if you fix Time and any two of the three dimensions of space (call them Y and Z axes), then all points along that X axis are completely determined (barring Heisenbergian uncertainty that says you can't fix both time AND space). That is, the X-axis completely determined. The same is true of the Y and Z axes and in fact, you do not need to fix the space axes at all -- it is enough to fix time and ALL of space is determined (again, within HU limits).
So why isn't time deterministic in the same way? This is a genuine cosmological question that the Big Bang may or may not settle -- for instance, how does the Big Bang create time and space, or does it?
So D-versus-ND has to do with what "dimensions" are and what it means to be carried along one dimension.
FW-versus-WOG (will of god, if you will) has to do with "why" time might be D or ND. If time is deterministic, then there is no FW. Whoever or whatever caused time to be D is the prime cause responsible for all effects.
On the other hand, if time is ND, an issue arises for people who believe in G as the First Cause. The key property of the First Cause is that it is not an effect of a material cause. The FC is non-material. If the First Cause is responsible for ALL future effects there is no FW!
At this point we are well into theology and out of science. There is nothing a scientist can say that would resolve the issue.
Potential is dependent on the past or potential is dependent on the future or both. If neither, then where does potential come from?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlease clarify the reference to "potential". I searched for "potential" in the article, in my comments, or in other comments, and don't find it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNormally, potential would be a latent possibility but in determinism potential might be fixed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn a sense time is deterministic. Now is a function of the very latest past plus the present realization of potential.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNow is a point, not a dimension. Evidence of the past exists in the present as remnants. The remnants exist but does the past still exist?
The future may be an illusion caused by realizing that some things in the remnants of the past happened after other things.
A person can say that the realization of potential is fixed but the proof of that is difficult.
Anyway, determinism seems like a perspective rather than a scientific law.
Mike Schermer not withstanding, Harris is corect in one, and only one respect. Of course there is no free will in his "universe". He CHARGES a hefty fee for the drivel which masquerades as his opinion. In the full spirit of Mr. Harris, I hereby assert that free will exists, but Mr. Harris does not!! The supercilious reasoning which he uses to justify his conclusion of absolute fatalism can just as easily be turned on him, and in this regime he cannot prove absolutely that he exists, therefore I assert that he is a predetermined figment of some other mental power which controls his shade or phantasm. I am heartly sick of poseurs of this and similar ilk attempting outrageous imposition of the public in the guise of erudition.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOf course there is a proper scientific reply. A true scientist would use his scientific intellect to expose Mr. Harris' specious drivel for the sophomoric ranting that it is.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow much further along would society be if we were able to say, "I don't know."?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScientists are capable of the most amazing idiocies, especially outside their field of expertise.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRemember, it was Hoyle who discovered the universe is expanding.
I am reminded of B. F. Skinner's conviction that every new born's brain was a "tabula rosa", and all learning was a result of stimulus-response. Noam Chomsky, in a series of brilliant papers, showed that Skinner's theory could not account for the complexity of human language. Determinism cannot account for originality or the broad spectrum of human experience and will ultimately be shown to be a false doctrine.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe notion of “Free Won’t”, or “self-initiated
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisinhibition," does not represent support for “Free Will”
so much as it represents a Devil’s Advocacy, a kind
of fuzzy logic employed in a sentimental attempt to
rescue a cherished concept of “personal responsibility."
It does not really work, though, because “Free Won’t”
is still as mechanistic as “Free Will." The question
that neuroscientists should most ask themselves in
contemplation of “Free Will” largely answers itself:
In the brain activity that constitutes your
decision-making process, do you suppose that any of the
carbon, hydrogen, or oxygen atoms in the neurons of your
brain, or any of the subatomic particles that compose
them, have failed to obey the laws of physics?
The brain may not be a deterministic mechanism, but it
is still mechanistic in nature. The probabilistic and
statistical nature of the mechanism, and the
indeterminate nature of outcomes does not lend
“freedom” or “control” so much as it introduces a
measure of caprice and randomness. A complex
mechanism like the human brain is analogous to
a hybrid of a precise clockwork, a roulette wheel,
and a weathervane.
The forces that control the human brain as recognized
by science are the four fundamental forces-
electromagnetic, gravitational, strong and weak
nuclear force. What science does not recognize
is a fifth and sixth supernatural “force of good”
or “force of evil."
The neural decision-making process is not controlled
by virtue of our being proxies of angels, demons,
gods and devils sitting on our shoulders.
Tom Keske
It seems that what most advocates of “free will”
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisreally want is to feel good about themselves and
feel justification in their desires for revenge
and in the infliction of punishment, with blessings
of law, on persons whom they feel are wrongdoers.
They fear that if the brain is a mechanism, then
human beings cannot be “blamed” and therefore,
they imagine, cannot be punished as severely.
That is probably a non sequitur. The rational view
would be that if a human being is a danger to society,
that they be taken off the streets and kept from
doing further harm, by whatever means necessary.
If a person such as, say, Anders Breivik, murders
dozens of people, does it really matter if he is
"responsible" or not?
The bottom line is that you need to remove him
from ability to do further harm, regardless.
Science would not “blame” him. Neither would it
impose a requirement for kid gloves or an obligation
to provide comfort during incarceration. Hopefully
most human beings by instinctive nature would want
at least for humane conditions for warehoused
people.
Science does not make a judgment whether
death penalty is “justified” in such cases.
That is really up to our own preferences, whether
the money spent on warehousing psychopaths could
be better spent on society’s needs.
A rational view might well be that if “punishment”
is crude sort of “therapy” even for the profoundly
mentally ill, then we should refrain from it
only if there are more positive means of treatment
available that are equally effective.
By the same token, if it were possible to take
even a mass-murderer like Anders Breivik,
perform some of neural surgery, make him
into a model citizen, and release him as
a blissful, happy man, then it would be rational
and humane to take that approach rather than
to inflict punishment, no matter what the offense.
The notion of “legal responsibility” is probably as
much of an illusion as “Free Will”. The only real
distinction made is between causes of behavior
that are simple, identifiable, and understandable
as opposed to causes that are complex and
difficult to determine or to understand.
If the human brain is a mechanism, then all human
beings are essentially equal in whatever
“freedom” or lack thereof, that we have in
our mental decision-making process.
That fact does not constrain our "freedom",
or lack thereof, in how we approach our
legal system.
Tom Keske
Free Willy! Won't you?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBefore a rational discussion regarding the existence of free will can occur a lucid and unambiguous definition of free will is required.
So let's have it.
Free will is the freedom to choose among potential actions. The argument of determinists that this freedom is illusory are made in the face of what seems to be self evident examples of free choices. For example, I may decide that I am going to flex my left index finger ten times in rapid succession. As I begin, I may instead alternately flex fast and slow, varying the tempo as I choose. Instead of ten flexes,I might flex only nine or more than twelve times as I choose. Determinists would argue that it is an illusion that I am making these choices. I would argue that it is foolish to suggest that my brain had worked out all of these changes in my behavior before I was aware of them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe problem with much of science lies not in the observations made, but in how those observations are interpreted. Years ago a research came to the conclusions that cats engage in some sort of strange ritual when performing an action. A later researcher, after further observations, came to the conclusion that the observed feline behavior was how cats say hello to humans.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe more recent putative discovery of the Higgs Boson is based on the assumption that gravity is a force much like the strong and weak nuclear forces, and the electromagnetic force, and thus requires a mechanism much like theirs. However, the idea that gravity is an expression of space-time configuration (some call it geometry, but I prefer topography myself) would seem to make gravity as a force untenable, and so mediating agencies such as the Higgs Boson unnecessary.
Or consider the ether, once thought necessary for light to travel across a vacuum. It was thought to be needed, so people found evidence for it.
Which brings us back to the matter of free will, where interpretations very often depend on the needs of the observers. Some need free will to be true, so they interpret the data to support free will. Others need free will to be false, so the interpret the data as to disprove it. My positions is, that while personal experience says we do have some sort of free will, we have, as yet, insufficient data for a meaningful answer. Furthermorew observation has shown us that what free will we do have does not fit the most commonly expressed definition of what free will is, and that that definition needs to be discarded in favor of an interpretation that better fits observation.
Re jim2703:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Free will is the freedom to choose among potential actions."
Therefore free will = freedom to choose??
This is a circular defintion and therefore is neither lucid or unambiguous.
A testable definition of free will is required.
Any takers\|?
How about;
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFree will is the freedom to chose among potential actions when such a luxury applies.
The trick here is to remember how circular reasoning works. When somebody says that the Bible is the word of God because it says it is the word of God, that is circular reasoning. That is, no support for the claim outside the Bible is offered, other than assertions by human beings. Which is to say to no testable claims are made.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNow in the case of "Free will is the freedom to choose among potential actions." Kordate's interpretation of it as an example of circular reasoning can be seen as a case of Kordate interpreting it as circular reasoning, when it could be interpreted as a statement of fact, and with fewer mental acrobatics.
The impression I get is that one commenter does not want free will to be true, so he will spin the arguments of others so as to deny any validity the pro free will side may have. This is, to put it bluntly, a matter of denial and says much to Kordate's detriment.
As biologists keep trying to impress upon creationists; it's not that the evidence is not there, it's that you refuse to accept the evidence
THE WON'T IS ALSO NOT FREE!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBarring supernatural influences, the following description of a mental process is logically comprehensive and relevant to choice:
[State of a mind at time t] + [Changes between t and t+dt] = [State at time (t+dt)]
With dt a time interval of the order of immediate decision-making delays (no multiple deliberation cycles,) this is a deterministic difference equation typical of conservation laws.
It should be stressed that, subject to the causality principle, the changes to a mind's state in the interval [t, t+dt] can only depend on its state at t.
Let's examine Mr. Shermer's (MS) dining experience in light of the above equation. At time t-dt, a moment before he faces those temptations, his mind state includes everything accumulated and preserved in it since his brain began forming: not only innate and acquired drives, but also innate and acquired checks and balances; not only the capacity for craving certain foods, but also the belief they are deleterious and the capacity to act on this belief. In other words, MS's mind contains at time t-dt both the instruments that may "exert veto power over impulses," as well as those that create the impulses. His "power to do otherwise" is as part of the t-dt state as is the tendency to satisfy desire. The finding that these opposing forces light up different brain regions is irrelevant. Moreover, the forces of restraint final victory proves only that at t-dt they have been the dominant ones. But this dominance is also a feature of the t-dt mind, as is all else listed above.
In the interval [t-dt, t] MS becomes aware of the restaurant goodies and the need to choose — his mind's state has been changed. Thereafter, at time t, his mind is set to decide. Has he at that moment any choice?
No, he does not. That's because all elements necessary to decide, including the relative weights that determine which outcome will win, are already present in the time-t mind state. And this state is irreversible, because the unstoppable flow of time allows no respite for recycling. What must happen must happen immediately. Thus the actual choice has been a foregone conclusion for at least the last 2*dt. "The won't" is not free either.
For a statistically significant sample of MS's food choices it becomes possible to phenomenologically answer the question of his freedom of will: CONSISTENT, RATIONAL OUTCOMES OBSERVERS CAN PREDICT ARE THE HALLMARK OF DETERMINISTIC WILL. FREE WILL WOULD MANIFEST ITSELF IN BEHAVIOR WHICH IS UNPREDICTABLE, RANDOM-LIKE, AND INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM MADNESS.
We can always consider Hegel's "Freedom lies in the recognition of necessity".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this... urp...
The changes to a mind's state in the interval [t, t+dt] can only depend on its state at t+dt.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe present determines the past.
If I am eating the salmon, then I must have chosen the salmon. But the choice to eat the salmon only occurred because I actually ate the salmon.
I can see how determinists can get confused.
Surly the first point here is what definition of free will you are going to adopt.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFree Will. That is your will - desire, motive, belief ad values of the concious self - is free, without limit or constraint, to choose any possible outcome.
I would propose that by this description, we DO NOT have free will. If you have a different one, then surly it will be one that changes or limits the meaning of the word 'free'. The above description is more or less in line with what Harris describes.
Before I go on - I do not agree with all Harris promotes about this illusory state either.
Consider next a common argument about choices. If am doing a magic trick and ask you to pick a card from the deck, you know there are 52 options. However, if I tell you to pick 'ANY' card from the 'deck' but only fan out 3 cards, you might start wondering just how amazing this trick is going to be with some 'limited' options.
In this 'card trick' example, you are have choices, but you are 'aware' they are limited. You would fell less like you had 'freedom' to pick any card from the deck when only a few options were actually put forward for you. The choice is there - but it is not one made from 'ALL' options of the deck. You were not 'FREE' to pick any of the 52 cards because they were not all offered for selection.
We really need to define what the 'free' in free will means. Having choices alone does not constitute freedom if those choices are not comprised of all possible options. In my opinion, the common 'feeling' people have - not necessarily philosophers or scientists, is that their minds are making choices based all possible outcomes available.
Many simple variations of the choices we make are not even available to us for consideration when we make them. This is the freedom being challenged in the definition.
What I would like everyone to consider is this. Having absolute freedom in the context that we might say would exist in a mind that actually had free will, would not work very well in our world. The meaning of free will that we do not have would not even be one that we want. So this is why I don't understand why there is such concern and debate over this.
If we had absolute free will - would that not just equate to level of randomness, if such a thing could exist. In the Sam Harris example of picking a city out of all the ones in the world, imagine if you did have them all available to choose? If you had no compelling feeling or force driving you to any particular city, how would you come to select one? If the objective was to pick at random and you could, then I guess that is ok. However, there are few moments in our lives where we ever truly want or value a random selection.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEverything we do in life is valued due to connections and meanings that we either adopt or apply ourselves. We talk about the meanings and values and pass them on to people. When someone asks you what you want to do, the great thing about the result is this:
1. It is a reflection of that person and their (determined or not) life. It is what makes us individuals. Your friend 'Sandy' really likes movies and when you are with her she often suggests that and you love seeing movies together.
2. When we make selections (determined or not) we are able to include a reason why and tell story or explain a feeling that connects us to that selection. i.e. "Give em the red one, I am really into red at the moment". Now that might not be the 'true' reason you picked it, but that is far more enjoyable than having no reason at all. Better then pulling out a colour wheel and seeing what comes up - every single time!
Excuse me, but the notion of "free won't" seems to require "free will". Free won't is just a fantasy without free will. It's called cognitive dissonance: the sensation of free will where there is none. It is not you who has the free won't, it's your subconscious that already decided you to change your mind, meaning before you were aware of that.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think what you write is nonsense. Science can measure your emotional state, thus science can measure what people value, both quantitatively and qualitatively. So yes, science can tell us what we value. But you seem to elude to a "divine" valuation, a constant of the universe, which you suppose science cannot measure? In that case you'll have to prove that divinity exists at all before your argument gains credibility.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat I wrote was was the arguments of Paul Chiariello, on the AAAS website. Since Chiariello is a Coordinator of the Humanist Chaplaincy at Rutgers University, I hardly think that he is eluding to a divine valuation. So your attempt to change the topic to a discussion of divine existence has failed. Likewise, your assumption that a measure of "emotional state" equates to "what people value" is truly nonsense. Values can lead to emotional states, but what is the reason for the existence of values in the first place. Certainly, emotional states do not generate values.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisExamine the arguments of those who disagree with Harris. I have referred to many of them in the comments above. None of them elude to divine valuation. Similarly, you can find arguments for the source of values in both philosophical and theological reasoning, but these are not empirical arguments.