The Illusion of Free Will

by I M Probulos

  For many, free will means we have full autonomy to decide to be good or evil. This debate has raged for centuries with philosophers and more recently, with John Searle, Ted Honderich, Sam Harris, Michael Shermer, and Daniel Dennett.

  This version of free will implies that we are sitting down with our “T chart,” listing all the benefits of being evil on one side, and the benefits of being good on the other. On the evil side we include: be like Satan, hating is good, and I like to hurt people. On the good side we include: be like Jesus, loving is good, and I like to help people.

  Does any rational human being actually believe this? For many, once the crime is too horrible to imagine any sane person doing it, we click over and determine that the perpetrator is “not in their right mind,” and a group of psychologists determines the person to be “clinically insane”, and the guilty party goes to a mental hospital instead of prison.

  Imagine a super, super-computer, beyond anything yet imagined, or even a god, that could know every variable in our brain, every synapse, every physical connection, every neurotransmitter, and every electrical pulse. Imagine that every parallel route in our neural network was known instantly. Also add other biochemical influences on our behavior such as our endocrine system (thyroid, pituitary, adrenal medulla, testes, ovaries, and pancreas). Also add in any effect from an external source, like alcohol, mercury, or lead for example.

  If this computer or god could know every possible variable of our genetic makeup, our propensities, every memory, and every fear we had ever felt, it would know the sum total of who we are, and what makes us who we are. If every bit of data were known, then when we were presented with a stimulus, whether it was a spider crawling on the wall, a driver cutting us off at an intersection, or a decision to fight or flee an robber, our next action would be known. Our thought, decision or action could be predicted. We are therefore deterministic.

  The concept of every event simply unfolding, in deterministic fashion from the millisecond of the Big Bang is counter-intuitive. We feel like we are actively making choices and we are captains of our own ship. While we cannot control the wind we can control our level of expertise in using the wind, learning the properties of the wind, and when to stay out of the wind. The wind can blow us down or propel us forward. But we no longer believe the wind is the work of the gods and we can now accept our causal nature.

  If we can wrap our head around determinism; that any agent could not have done otherwise, it provides a secular road toward forgiveness. While some non-theists assert that they don't "have to love their enemy" like a Christian is advised, there is a psychological benefit from freeing ourselves from negative self-talk and regret from perceived wrongs. I think this is a profound, reasoned explanation for forgiveness, which is what religion has been teaching for thousands of years.

  More Definitions

  Nomological determinism is the notion that the past and the present dictate the future entirely and necessarily by rigid, all-encompassing natural laws, that every occurrence results inevitably from prior events.

  Reductionism is a philosophical position which holds that a complex system is nothing but the sum of its parts, and that an account of it can be reduced to accounts of individual constituents. This can be said of objects, phenomena, explanation, theories, and meanings. This is in contrast to the concept from gestalt therapy with the ubiquitous statement "the total is more than the sum of its parts." Most free will apologists assert than humankind is more than “molecules in motion” or just matter and energy. I am a reductionist and proud of it.

  Physical determinism (being incarcerated).

  Psychological determinism (brainwashing).

  Predeterminism: God knows I am going to kill someone on Tuesday so I am not free. There is only one outcome. If there is only one possible outcome then how could the choice be free?

  Compatibilism asserts that we have free will when caused by internal states (bad brain chemistry); but not free if something external caused me to do it (a gun to head).

  Incompatibilism is a judgment that someone is morally responsible could never be true if the world were deterministic; thus praise and blame would be meaningless.

  Semicompatibilists assert only their belief in moral responsibility. They are agnostic on free will and argue that moral responsibility exists whether determinism or indeterminism is "true."

  Metaphysical Libertarianism is under the umbrella of incompatibilism and that free will requires an agent to be able to take more than one course of action at any given decision point. This is the exact opposite of hard determinism and what most believe when they assert we have free will. The non-physical theorists believe that free will is not part of the brain, you are not your brain, and that it is a supernatural, unknown entity similar to a soul. This requires that the world is not closed. Some adopt the quantum mind theory to explain free will if they wish to keep it based on their religious faith. Another term for this concept is Interactionist dualism. Most religious apologists adopt a theory similar to this. My belief, physical determinism is compatible with libertarian free will. Also, adding a quantum element, in my opinion, does not make us freer, it just makes us unpredictable–which I feel is worse than the illusion of free will.

  Consequences argument: This is the contribution to the free will debate from Van Inwagen's 1983 book An Essay on Free Will." The bottom line, he argues, is that “that free will doesn't make any sense–that it is a hopeless thing to try to account for.” You can read more detail at this [Link].

  Dualist: Mind and body are separate.

  Monist: Mind and body are still matter and energy.

  Neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) constitute the minimal set of neuronal events and mechanisms sufficient for a specific conscious percept.

  Scientists are uniformitarians, which holds that natural law is universal and eternal. This concept is important because apologists always wish to insert that we cannot know the laws of nature billions of years or at the moment of the Big Bang.

  Fate: a power or agency that predetermines and orders the course of events. Fate defines events as ordered or "inevitable" and unavoidable.

  Destiny is a predetermined course of events with regard to the finality of events as they have worked themselves out.

  The Ghost in the Machine (our spirit or soul). There is no evidence for ghosts, spirits or even a soul. Formulating them one would have to determine if they were a natural phenomenon with some yet to be discovered characteristics, or truly supernatural. Once we introduce the supernatural to the free will equation it becomes a scientific and intellectual dead-end. There is no way we can advance our scientific knowledge once we insert “God did it.”

  Some Unusual Definitions

  Below are some more esoteric or unusual definitions that relate to the issue of free will.

  Qualia refers to individual instances of subjective, conscious experience. Examples of qualia are preferences for music, wine, or a color. The importance of qualia in philosophy of mind comes largely from the fact that it is seen as posing a fundamental problem for materialist explanations of the mind-body problem. This is part of the Hard Problem of Consciousness.

  Aboulia refers to a lack of will or initiative and can be seen as a disorder of diminished motivation (DDM). A patient with aboulia is unable to act or make decisions independently.

  Akrasia is the state of acting against one's better judgment. Some consider this a “weakness of the will”. Psychologist George Ainslie argues that akrasia results from the empirically verified phenomenon of hyperbolic discounting, which causes us to make different judgments close to a reward than we will when further from it. This simply means that we favor short term rewards over long term gains.

  Panpsychism means the universe is alive and like a god.

  Consciousness

  Another common apologist argument for free will and the uniqueness of man is consciousness. They assert that no one knows where consciousness resides. The argument is tha
t somehow consciousness is outside and separate from the organic, chemical, and electrical nature of the brain. Consciousness is a function of our brain, the connections in the brain, and the chemical and electrical activity in our brain. When the brain dies, you die. All that you are, all that you ever were, disappears as the electrical activity in the brain is sequentially shut off. No connections, no electrical activity, no memories or thoughts or consciousness, and no mind–no you.

  The mountain of research in both the areas of psychology and neurobiology doesn’t indicate this separate nature of consciousness. The faithful have a gut feeling that they are more than just a “bunch of atoms.” They feel a spiritual connection to the environment or to all of humankind. To someone who values reason, this type of spiritual thinking resembles the world as we would like it to be: full of angels and psychic John Edwards talking to “dead people,” telling us they’re happy in the afterlife.

  Ph.D.’s and medical degrees are not much help here. Numerous, highly educated academics argue for free will. For example, there is an ongoing debate between Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett on their definition of “free will.” (See Sam Harris’ blog, “free will, and ‘free will’, How my view differs from Daniel Dennett's.)

  Our increasing knowledge of the origins and cause of aberrant behavior cast doubt on traditional concepts of free will and morality. Areas of the brain that have been implicated in mental disorders include the:

  Prefrontal cortex

  Parietal lobe

  Hypothalamus

  Insula Cortex

  Occipital lobe

  Hippocampus

  Amygdala

  Temporal lobe

  In addition, the prefrontal cortex, parietal lobe, and temporal lobes have been implicated in “out of body” experiences and religious experiences.

  From imaging studies, neurobiologists know approximately where the centers in the brain that dictate moral behavior reside. Dr. James Fallon, a neuroscientist at the University of California-Irvine, has studied the brains of psychopaths for over twenty years.[i] Research performed on sociopaths indicates that when they are presented with moral dilemmas there is little activity in the orbital cortex, the area that many neuroscientists believe is involved in ethical behavior, moral decision-making, and impulse control.

  The orbital cortex applies impulse control on the amygdala, the part of the brain involved in aggression and appetite. If these areas are not operating properly then more primitive areas of the brain that control rage, violence, eating, sex, and drinking can exert more influence or dominate our behavior.

  Another definition of consciousness is: It is a first person subjective world known only to you. For example, only you know how you perceive red, which is a wavelength.

  The Hard Problem of Consciousness

  How do we explain why we have qualia or phenomenal experiences—how sensations acquire characteristics, such as colors and tastes. The term was introduced by David Chalmers in his book The Place of Mind. The "hard problem" of consciousness, contrasts with the "easy problems" of explaining the ability to discriminate, integrate information, report mental states, and focus attention.

  The basic question is: Can consciousness be wholly described by the aggregation of neural processes in the brain? If not, then that opens the door to non-physical, essentially supernatural explanations. There are certainly many things we don't understand about the human brain but with the accelerating advances in neurobiology, imagine what we will know 100, 200 and even 1,000 years in the future. Given that span of time, much that is unknown will be known and what may seem impossible today will become possible.

  I don't see consciousness as a hard problem at all. Given billions of neurons, a massively multi-tasking neural network, numerous sensory and information processing systems–all working together–I don't find it difficult at all that they produce what we experience as consciousness.

  Our best glimpse into this process is research with brain-damaged individuals and functional MRI studies. We can see how systematic and discrete damage to a specific area, can dramatically impact behavior in very predictable ways. With fMRI, we can test for areas involved with cheating, disgust, sense of self, transcendence, and other factors associated with morality. If we can selectively find these traits in the brain and remove them, why would anyone suggest they exist outside of our brain?

  Near-Death Experiences (NDE)

  NDE’s are often cited as proof that consciousness is separate from our material body. They prove we have a soul, that we are not just a bunch of molecules in motion and that there is a heaven. This all allows for the addition of free will. It is that “other” that we cannot measure and even survives our death. But can these supernatural previews of the afterlife be explained scientifically? In a September 12, 2012 article in Scientific American, “Peace of Mind: Near-Death Experiences Now Found to Have Scientific Explanations”, the author notes:

  Near Death-like Experiences can be triggered by powerful magnetic fields.

  Near Death-like Experiences can be triggered by sleep deprivation.

  Out-of-body experiences can be artificially triggered by stimulating the right temporoparietal junction in the brain, suggesting that confusion regarding sensory information can radically alter how one experiences one's body.

  History and Background

  Blame and Punishment

  In a deterministic world there is no blame. There are now positive and negative outcomes and there are consequences but no longer blame, guilt, and vengeance. There is still responsibility and even punishment but not because the person is evil, wicked, or deserves to feel pain.

  The only value of punishment is to prevent future acts or to remove someone from society who would harm others. Corporal punishment is the least effective means of increasing positive behavior, especially in children. It’s curious how the Biblical authors were not aware of this. You would think a deity would have known better and told them.

  We need to better understand causal events that can prevent undesirable outcomes. Based on a causal world, the bronze-age concept of vengeance has no role.

  Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”

  –Romans 12:19 ESV

  Is this any way for a deity to behave? I hope not.

  In a causal world, perpetrators should compensate their victims for their crime, if they are able. The focus is on what we do next, not on what we have done. If we have harmed someone, we need to right the wrong.

  One question is whether a perpetrator understood what they were doing at the moment. They might have had a psychotic break with reality. Do they understand it now? This is essentially how the insanity defense is used today. If someone is determined, by a panel of experts, to not understand the charges against them, they are legally determined to be mentally unfit. Again, they are still responsible and there will be consequences. We already have adjustments for diminished free will but it’s applied arbitrarily.

  History

  The debate over free will and determinism and their role in understanding human behavior and moral responsibility goes back as far as the Ancient Greeks. The modern argument has migrated to the field of neuroscience. Most apologists argue that morality is not in the realm of science. I disagree and agree wholeheartedly with Sam Harris on this–our morality has clearly evolved over the last 10,000 years–based on reason, not religious dogma.

  1. The weather was controlled by the gods and they prayed and supplicated to the gods using sacrifice to gain favor.

  2. To the ancient Greeks the gods controlled their lives so they had no free will.

  3. Aedipus kills his father and marries his mother... it is assumed he has no free will because he cannot control himself.

  4. Greek Philosophy: How do we have free will if god knows what I am going to do before I do it?

  5. Aristotle (384–323 BCE) seems to have been the first to construct
explicitly a theory of moral responsibility. His general proposal is that one is a candidate for praise or blame if and only if the action and/or disposition is voluntary and not externally coerced. He also argues that it must be voluntary (read conscious). Considering the time period, this is well thought out.

  6. Based on the Christian Bible we are given free will to make our own choices. We choose to love God or not, and we choose to be disobedient or not.

  Good and Now Bad

  This list serves several purposes concerning free will. It’s a list of behaviors or social actions that were once considered either good or normal and now are not. Many of the bad behaviors were in religious scripture so I am dumbfounded by the incessant rhetoric stating that we need more Biblical values. The faithful pick and choose what values they want. Few follow the laws of Leviticus or Deuteronomy–we have evolved as moral animals. Yes, outcomes matter and some outcomes are better than others.

  Genocide (during war)

  Women as property.

  Africans as slaves

  Jews as slaves

  Slaughter of the American Indians

  Slaughter of the Mayans

  Torture

  Female genital mutilation (still practiced in areas of the world)

  Child abuse (exploitation, used for labor)

  Women could not vote

  Worker abuse

  Bigotry

  Racism

  Despots.

  Rulers based on birthright and not earning it.

  History of Man

  Unless you believe the Adam and Eve fable, we are to believe, that there was a specific day and time when modern humans became unique and unlike all other living things. If modern humans are different from all other animals/humans because we have a soul, immaterial consciousness and free will–exactly when and where was it infused?