Free Will

Free Will

Hi Michael:  I am enjoying our conversation about free will.  However, I detect from the tone of your replies that you are upset about the course I am taking to review your discourse on the presence or absence of free will in humans. 

In my basic scientific training, I was taught to perform thought experiments.  First, formulate a hypothesis through discussion about what we already know, and then search the literature to see if we could answer the question without doing any experiments.  If it has already been done, why repeat it?  Usually, the answer was available, and then we would formulate a new hypothesis, and so on, until we arrived at a question for which there was no answer.  We would then do that experiment.

As David Brooks said recently, “Scientific inquiry requires candor, intellectual rigor, and a willingness to follow an idea to its logical conclusion.”  I agree.

So, to me, you are talking about the intersection of philosophy and neuroscience.  I am an expert on neither.  As a result, I defaulted to my training.  I have attempted to survey the terrain of a centuries-old debate, so as to get up to some semblance of speed on this issue.  The ground is well-trampled in this area of inquiry, and I was not sure there was anything new worth saying on this issue.  But, science marches on, and it doesn’t hurt to keep an open mind.  So, if I can do a thought experiment, and then look to science for data to support or reject it, I will.  Thus, this attitude results in my methods, which seem to irritate you.  So be it.  I reserve the right to exercise my free will, and perform my actions my way.

First, I believe that consciousness and free will co-exist, if they exist at all.  If a quality, such as consciousness, cannot be quantified using current scientific tools, (temporal location in space, temperature, mass, velocity, etc.) does it nevertheless exist, even if there is no objective proof?   
 I say yes.

I have done a brief, on-line survey, and list a sampling of what I found. 


Definitions of Free Will include:

Free Will:  Consciousness in action.

Free Will: Conscious generation of intentions, choices, or decisions.

Free Will:  The power to change the world according to our intentions.

Free Will: The capacity to produce one’s own behavior.

The human activity of planning implies free will.  Humans clearly make choices.

Scientific experiments studying decisions made over a short time-frame, such as finger-twitch experiments, are not the same as studying free will decisions made over many hours or days of study and reflection.

This last one, which I believe to be true, goes to the heart of current neuro-scientific research into decision making.  While this research is interesting, I am not convinced it studies the problem at hand, rather it studies what can be quantified at this stage in scientific evolution.  It is looking where the light is, rather than where the problem is.

So, what do I know?  One area of interest of mine has been the genetics of memory.  I believe there are two types of behavior:  genetic behavior and conscious behavior.  Several years ago, I discussed this observation with a psychiatrist friend of mine.  His response:  “How can you tell the difference?”  Good question.  I think genetic behavior is what you are referring to when you say our behavior is determined by our Sphere of Influence.  I am here referring to unconscious behavior.  My favorite analogy for this kind of behavior is the ant colony.  Ants exhibit many group behaviors which favor the colony, but not the individual ant.  How can this be?  I believe the group-oriented behavior is coded in their genes, and they cannot act otherwise. 

After studying Francis Crick’s work on consciousness, I have come to the conclusion that human-lifetime memories, as well as genetic memories, are stored in DNA molecules located in specialized brain cells.  As we know from studies of brain energetics, approximately 90% of energy expenditure of the human brain goes towards unconscious and subconscious processes involved in the activity and maintenance of the body, with the other 10% available for conscious thought.  So, for me, if you want to say that the preponderance of brain neural activity is unconscious, I would agree.  I would also insist that 10% is available for conscious decisions based on facts over time.  Do many people not avail themselves of this potential planning activity?  Sure.  So, is your analysis mostly right?  Sure, most of the time.  Is conscious planning/free will available to most humans most of the time?  I say yes.

Hope this helps, Robert

Determinism vs. Free Will

                                                              Determinism vs. Free Will

'Ought-implies-can', causal determinism

and moral responsibility

JOHN MARTIN FISCHER

(1)Suppose some individual, John, does something morally wrong.

(2) If John's Xing was wrong, then he ought to have done something else instead.

(3) If John ought to have done something else instead, then he could have done something else instead.

(4) So John could have done something else instead.

(5) But if causal determinism is true, then John could not have done anything other than he actually did.

(6) So, if causal determinism is true, it cannot be the case  that John's Xing was wrong.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Ought implies can is an ethical formula ascribed to Immanuel Kant that claims an agent, if morally obliged to perform a certain action, must logically be able to perform it: For if the moral law commands that we ought to be better human

beings now, it inescapably follows that we must be capable of  being better human beings.^[1]

The action to which the "ought" applies must indeed be possible  under natural conditions.^[2]

Kant believed this principle was a categorical freedom, bound only by the free will, as opposed to the Humean hypothetical freedom ("Free to do otherwise if I had so chosen").^[3]

In the context of philosophy of mind, the problem of free will takes on renewed intensity. This is certainly the case, at least, for materialistic determinists.^[2] According to this position, natural laws completely determine the course of the material world. Mental states, and therefore the will as well, would be material states, which means human behavior and decisions would be completely determined by natural laws. Some take this reasoning a step further: people cannot determine by themselves what they want and what they do. Consequently, they are not free.^[93]

This argumentation is rejected, on the one hand, by the compatibilists. Those who adopt this position suggest that the question "Are we free?" can only be answered once we have determined what the term "free" means. The opposite of "free" is not "caused" but "compelled" or "coerced". It is not appropriate to identify freedom with indetermination. A free act is one where the agent could have done otherwise if it had chosen otherwise. In this sense a person can be free even though determinism is true.^[93] The most important compatibilist in the history of the philosophy was David Hume.^[94] More recently, this position is defended, for example, by Daniel Dennett.^[95]

There seems to be as many theories about the presence or absence of free will as there are philosophers.  I find two views about the presence or absence of free will to predominate in the literature concerning the subject.

The older view, based on the classical Newtonian physics of cause and effect, maintains that a person’s background, such as their genetic inheritance, their up-bringing, and their culture, determines their behavior in its entirety, much the way gravity determines a planet’s trajectory around the Sun.  “Determinism” dictates that there is no “free will”, as all behavior is determined by prior events, all the way back to the Big Bang.

The newer view, based on Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle as contained in quantum physics, is called “compatibility”, in that the truth of cause and effect is accepted, but that “free will” also exists, or is compatible with the theory.  Future acts cannot be predicted with certainty based on past events because of the uncertainty inherent in the structure of Nature.  The ability to choose exists, but must be exercised for it to be realized.  This is where Kant’s dictum “Ought implies Can” comes into play.  If moral imperatives exist, then the ability to choose is implied, meaning “free will” exists.  If the compatibilists are correct, then one has the freedom to choose a course of action otherwise than what has been chosen. 

Determinism assumes physical determinism and psychic indeterminism are incompatible.   Given the quantum uncertainty inherent in the billions of neurons and trillions of molecules which make up the brain, psychic indeterminism, or the inability to predict future behavior based on past behavior, becomes possible.  Does this imply that human behavior is random?  No, it implies that choice exists, that it is not entirely determined by past events, that the outcome is not predictable in advance.  Choice is free and unpredictable, not predetermined by prior events.  I view the right of Free Will as analogous to the right to vote.  One has to exercise each to make them real.

If Determinism is correct, then there is no basis for morality, no basis for right or wrong, no basis on which to “choose”.  Personally, I reject this notion.  I make moral choices every day, and the freedom to do so is inherent in me.  I must exercise my rational mind when doing so, and I accept the consequences of my choices as they manifest themselves in my life.  I concede it is possible to proceed through one’s day in a mindless fashion, simply doing what one is “told” by outside forces.  The opposite to this kind of behavior is “mindfulness”, where one pays attention in a willful fashion to the choices one makes each day, with an eye on outcomes and consequences, and with morality in play.

“Mindfulness redirects the brain’s resources away from lower level limbic responses and toward higher level prefrontal cortex functions and this does not happen passively.  Rather, it requires both willful training and directed mental effort.”  Schwartz,  Quantum Physics and Consciousness, 2001.

Quantum Equations

Quantum Equations from:  Quantum Physics in Neuroscience and Psychology.

Schwartz, J., Stapp, H., Beauregard, M.  In: Phil. Trans. Royal Soc. B  doi:10.1098/rstb.2004.1598.

AB = BA       where A and B are numbers

AB =/ BA      where A and B are actions.

Reality is not based solely on numbers.  Actions also determine reality.

Process One:  The act of choosing what to observe, or the psychologically described “Observing system”, or P.     The stream of consciousness of the observer. 

Process One action changes the state S of the system being acted upon into a new state S’, which is the sum of two parts.

Process Two creates a “cloud” of possible worlds.  Process One produces the “one world” we actually experience.

Process Three is Nature’s choice of the change in state S that actually occurs.

S = the prior state of the system being acted upon.

à    =  some intentional action by  P

S’ =  the new state resulting from being acted upon.

Process One:   S à S’ 

P = Operator performing the action

I =  Unit operator  (multiply by one)

S  à S’ = PSP  +  (I-P) S (I-P)  +  PS (I-P)  +  (I-P) SP

                 Collect the identities and all terms but S should cancel out.

Sà S’  =  PSP + (I-P) S (I-P)

        PSP  =             Yes, experimental feedback occurs as expected

        (I-P) S (I-P) =  No, experimental feedback does not occur as expected.