Apparently the idea that we don't have free will is so scandalous that the LA Times decided it needed an opposing opinion. So they recruited John Martin Fischer, a philosopher at UC Riverside, who says "of course we do."
Well. I guess that's that. Argument over.
But maybe not quite. I wouldn't bring this up again except for this paragraph from Fischer's piece:
Some neurobiologists, including Sapolsky, hold that neurobiology supports determinism — that the brain activity science has uncovered reveals essentially mechanical procedures that cause human decisions. Other neuroscientists believe that at a fundamental level the brain works indeterministically, perhaps in accordance with quantum mechanics, which allows for randomness and unpredictability. In other words, whether the past and laws of nature dictate my choices and actions remains scientifically controversial.
I got a bunch of similar comments that brought up quantum mechanics. The suggestion is that since indeterminacy is a fundamental property of quantum mechanics, this means the future is not perfectly predictable and therefore there's room for free will.
But determinacy has nothing to do with free will, and it's remarkable that an experienced philosopher like Fischer would bring it up. Free will is solely a question of whether human beings can somehow interfere with the laws of physics. The human brain, at its deepest level, is of course based on quantum mechanics. This is not controversial. Everything, at its deepest level, is based on quantum mechanics.
So sure, we might not know how any particular particle in our brains is going to behave at any given femtosecond, but that's not the issue. The issue is whether the particle's fate is determined by the mathematical laws of quantum mechanics or whether a human being can somehow affect the outcome.
Unless you're religious or otherwise dedicated to metaphysical spiritualism, there's no evidence that humans have the ability to interfere with either quantum mechanics or any other law of physics. Particles do what they do, and when you add them all up they amount to human actions. End of story.
POSTSCRIPT: Fischer's biggest problem is the notion that if free will doesn't exist, then we can't hold people responsible for their actions. There's no point in punishing a murderer who's little more than a robot, but just letting people do whatever they want seems both intolerable and absurd.
That's a problem! But the solution is to simply ignore it. Intellectually, I'm a pure materialist. But emotionally I believe that I control my actions and so do other people. So what? Just go with it.
It's hard to understand a lot of these philosophical debates, not because they are too abstruse, but because they are too inconsequential. Often such debates become important, but the object of the debate is not apparent from the debating. For example, I've been reading up on the Jansenist heresy which, from my limited reading, seems to revolve around whether an omnipotent god could force someone to accept Grace or whether Grace had to be willfully accepted. It sounds like those arguments about whether an omnipotent god can create a rock so heavy that he can't move it. Jansenism was an area of serious contention in 17th & 18th century France, but it was tied in with arguments about Gallicanism, whether France could have its own special version of Roman Catholicism even if the Pope wasn't too happy about it. In the context of the religious wars and conflicts of the era and the rise of Protestantism this is a much more obviously salient issue.
I get the impression that free will arguments are a lot like this. Every field seems to have some of these philosophical debates. Mathematicians argue about whether numbers are discovered or invented. Then they do math the same old way as ever.
The problem is that if free will doesn't exist, that should have consequences. The consequence is not the one attributed to Fisher that there would be no reason to punish a murderer. (Oddly this mistake also appears in the quote from the previous post in a passage that was quoted positively. There it was the incorrect claim that there was no reason to treat a drunk driver differently than someone who had a heart attack while driving).
Of course it makes sense to punish murderers as a means to deter other murderers. (I suppose one might take punish more narrowly so that that doesn't count as punishment, where punishment only refers to actions done to respond to moral culpability. But then it isn't really a problem that we wouldn't treat the murderer dfferently than a robot that is deterrable. We would still imprison the murderer, and might even do worse than we currently do. If torturing murderers has a deterrent effect what is the argument against in the absence of free will?
But a belief that free will doesn't exist should have consequences. It should indicate that certain aspects of our criminal justice system are illegitimate. The only basis for punishment would be consequential. And that is simply not true of our actual penal systems.
"Of course it makes sense to punish murderers as a means to deter other murderers." Sorry but if their is no free will deterrence will do absolutely nothing.
No, you’re being some kind of predestinationist here. Fear of punishment could certainly be one of the factors determining behavior.
Absence of free will means the output is completely determined by the input and rules (or random factors beyond our control). Think of a computer program with a little random noise thrown in.
If the computer program takes as a new input that you will go to jail if you commit a crime, and a rule that jail is undesirable, then it becomes less likely that the output will be to commit the crime.
Re: Free will is solely a question of whether human beings can somehow interfere with the laws of physics.
No. Not at all. No one is suggesting that we can willfully violate natural laws (travel faster than light, create matter ex nihilo, make entropy reverse...) Free will is not a belief that we are gods! The issue that Kevin seems not to get is that the laws of nature are probabilistic, not deterministic. He's noted himself that humans seem not to understand the concept of probability (and statistics which is based on that), but here he runs afoul of the same lack of instinctual understanding.
Probabilistic phenomena don't create freewill. For example, dice dont have free will.
I was responding top Kevin;s claim that free will allows us to "violate the laws of nature", which, no, of course not.
The operation of our brains is a physical process - atoms and molecules moving around.
My "will" can't affect atoms and molecules moving outside my brain, because that violates natural laws. Why do you think it can affect them inside my brain?
The obvious argument against this is that my thoughts are part of the process, and my "will" affects my thoughts. But for that to work, you have to assume that your thoughts are the product of your "will". Which is drawing the conclusion of free will based on the assumption of free will.
One way around this is to assume that the processes in our brain operate outside the purview of natural laws we are aware of. If you can tell me how this explanation has more power than using the words "magic" or "soul", I would like to hear it.
The Libet experiment is irrefutable evidence that a behavioral response is the outcome of a cognitive process occurring exclusively below the level of conscious awareness, but conscious deliberation is a behavioral response, and our freedom to choose is within the conscious deliberation process. The question is, why does the unconscious mind choose conscious deliberation in lieu of a physical act as a behavioral response? Answer: because an individual unconsciously cares about (at least some) people and ideas that will potentially be affected by the individual's behavior.
The problem with you materialists is you erroneously assume that something that can't be seen doesn't exist. I can tell when two people are in a caring relationship, and I can tell that the people are comprised of material, but the relationship isn't comprised of material, and yet I know it exists based on its readily observable effects.
P.S.
And you don't really understand the concept of science, which is to be skeptical and open minded in lieu of being cynical and naive.
> The Libet experiment is irrefutable evidence that a behavioral response is the outcome of a cognitive process occurring exclusively below the level of conscious awareness
It is no such thing. While it is an immensely important experiment that reshapes our understanding of the relationship between conscious and unconscious brain activity, it has nothing to say about deliberative thought and the action that follows from it.
"Should I go shopping tomorrow or the day after?" ... there is no evidence that such questions are resolved in a Libet-like manner. Similarly for any reasoning-like task.
Libet rules out the idea that all of our behavior results from conscious considerations. But it does not speak to the question of whether or not any of our behavior arises from conscious considerations.
if free will doesn't exist, then we CAN hold people responsible for their actions, because we don't have free will, so whatever we do is justified because nothing requires justification because we don't have free will.
I'm a philosophy professor and next week in my Philosophy 101 class we will be tackling the free will issue. It's one of the hardest questions there is, and I have not yet managed to acquire a settled view on the issue.
Philosophers distinguish libertarian free will theories from compatibilist free will theories. (Don't think of "libertarian" in the political sense here.) According to libertarian theories of free will, we have free will only if our actions are somehow exempt from the laws of nature. I'm with Kevin here: it's just not plausible to attribute such supernatural powers to ourselves. Libertarian free will is a non-starter for me.
By contrast, compatibilist theories of free will allege that free will and determinism are compatible. Typically, such theories will say that our actions are freely willed so long as they're voluntary actions, and actions are voluntary so long as they're caused by our desires. (An example from the philosopher Walter Stace: Gandhi doesn’t eat during a hungry strike. A man lost in the desert also doesn’t eat. Gandhi goes hungry of his own free will since he *desires not to eat.* The man in the desert, by contrast, does not go hungry of his own free will. He *desires to eat* but he can’t do so since he can find no food.)
A determinist can agree that many, even most, of our actions are rooted in our desires. So, on this conception of free will, a determinist can agree that freely willed actions genuinely exist.
There are complications, of course. Animals act on desires too, but we don't think they have free will. Compatibilists typically reply by saying that human actions can be voluntary in a deeper way, in that our actions (unlike non-human animal actions) can be caused by very complex forms of interactions between various types and levels of desires. Different accounts of compatibilist free will then identify and argue for different desire-complexes as necessary and sufficient for free will. It's a large literature.
For myself, I want compatibilist theories of free will to be true. Sometimes I think I believe them, but usually there remains for me the nagging worry "BUT STILL, if I was pre-determined to behave that way since the beginning of time, what does it matter by which desires of mine the pre-determination operated? It’s still unfree behavior!"
That said, here's my best shot at a quick-and-dirty defense of compatibilist free will, by way of analogy. Imagine running your hand along the surface of a beautiful mahogany desk. Smooth, right? Now imagine a smart aleck who says "No! Not smooth! For in truth that desk is but a whirling assemblage of microscopic particles, each of which consists almost entirely of empty space in which its sub-atomic parts move. Thus, far from being smooth and continuous, that surface is mostly a void punctuated only occasionally by little bits of matter-in-motion."
My reply to the smart aleck: Look, the word "smooth" is just not meant to apply to the level of atomic theory. Its domain of application is the everyday macroscopic world. And *in its domain of application* it is TRUE that that mahogany surface is smooth, and it is FALSE that that piece of sand paper is smooth. It’s misleading to say that the smoothness is an illusion, since the concept marks a genuine and useful distinction between, say, the desk and the sandpaper.
Likewise, “freely willed” has as its domain of application the macroscopic world populated by beliefs, desires, intentions, cravings, urges, wishes, and the like. Those features of the world supervene on the atomic level, to be sure, like smooth and rough surfaces do. But just like “That surface is smooth” can be true despite this supervention, so too can “That action was freely willed” be true, despite its supervention on underlying atomic facts. It’s misleading to say that the free will is an illusion, since the notion of free will marks a genuine and useful distinction between, say, Gandhi’s choosing to starve and the starving man lost in the desert.
Most of the time I can convince myself to believe in compatibilist free will that way. That conviction then lasts for a while. Eventually, though, the “BUT STILL…” worry that I mentioned earlier rears its head again, and a new round of convincing myself is needed…
Thanks, well explained. I was an undergrad philosophy major but decided I didn’t have the right mental qualities; became an engineering psychologist.
I can’t remember where I read this, but in answer to “I can do as I please, but I can’t please as I please”, a writer replied, what does this person want, to please as he doesn’t please? And that reminds me of the child saying, “I’m glad I hate broccoli, because if I liked it, I’d eat a lot of it, and I hate it.”
That’s about as deep as I can manage in philosophy….
Re: Animals act on desires too, but we don't think they have free will.
Really? If we're talking about very simple animals (flatworms and the like), probably not. But mammals and other fairly intelligent animals?
A grizzly bear near Yellowstone was recently euthanized as a danger to humans after killing one person, injuring another person, and breaking into a home: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/09/07/grizzly-bear-home-attack-euthanized-yellowstone/
Notice that we didn't put the bear on trial for murder, as we would have done for a human. A trial supposes categories of guilt and innocent, which in turn presuppose responsibility and free will. Animals are capable of voluntary action in some sense -- and thus perhaps free action in some sense -- but not the deeper sort of freely willed action that moral responsibility requires.
we don't try the bear because we don't ascribe moral culpability to the bear, not because we insist it does not have free will.
we do this because we believe that the bear cannot be a party to our laws, not because of any lack of free will, but because of a lack of any way to communicate those laws and to signal its agreement to them.
if a bear could understand our language and communicate with us, we may well try to impress upon it what we consider its moral obligations are towards us, and the consequences of it not honoring them.
those consequences would likely still just involve killing the bear, because even with that communication in place, i'm not convinced we'd choose life in prison for the creatures.
Thank you for either having read Dennett or writings that take his position in Elbow Room into account.
Excellent presentation, btw.
I really like your analogy, thank you.
One nit to pick - I don't think it is misleading to say that free will is an illusion, any more than it is to say that smoothness is an illusion.
Maybe an alternative analogy is Newtonian vs. Relativistic physics. It is not misleading to say that mass being constant with varying velocity is an illusion. It really is an illusion, but we operate better 99% of the time assuming it is true.
The important thing is there are times when we need to acknowledge it is an illusion and use the more accurate model. I am not sure what situation would apply to free will, but if it ever comes up, we should be ready.
Yes, it’s misleading to say that smoothness is an illusion. There are instruments to measure the smoothness of surfaces, and an ISO standard. You can look these up. Newtonian physics isn’t an illusion, it’s an approximation which holds for almost all masses and velocities we deal with on Earth. ‘Free will’ is not everyday English, but ordinary language expressions such as “I chose …” vs. “I wasn’t given a choice” are well understood, and communicate just as clearly as “Sand this with 320 grit, it needs to be smoother”.
I kinda agree that saying "quantum mechanics" is not very meaningful.
However, I dislike the all-or-nothing quality of this debate. I think we have far fewer choices than we think we do, but that we still do have choices.
I'm glad that most of the comments have agreed that this is a meaningless debate that mostly boils down to semantics.
An amusing question as posed.
May I suggest that perhaps the mind is deterministic.
But:
- it is complex enough that prediction is problematic
- it is highly impacted by race conditions: which ever information gets acted on first determines the outcome and the speed of information is stochastic
Under these conditions:
- we might well have no free will and our outcome is deterministic
- we would never be able to determine this by measurement
And the argument then reduces to the form of arguing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. We are deterministic but it is impossible to actually measure this determinism.
At which point the question is moot.
Even if you believe in determinism, it still makes sense to discipline people for bad behavior, because we know that people respond to discipline with less bad behavior.
Whether humans have the ability to interfere with quantum mechanics depends on how you think about the wave function. In the Copenhagen Interpretation, humans damn well DO interfere with quantum mechanics because wave function collapse is pasted on after the fact. It does not emerge in any way from Schrodinger's equation.
I brought up quantum mechanics because you brought up the Newtonian clockwork universe. The important point is NOT, as you have it, whether the fundamental laws are deterministic. If it is formulated as a differential equation, it is deterministic.
The important point is can you use it to precisely predict the future and the answer to that is no. The evolution of the wave function is deterministic. The evolution of actual physical particles is not. I challenge you to demonstrate that the deterministic wave function is real but the non-deterministic particles it describes are not. Without those particles, there are no neurons.
If you want to see this in action, take a look at the volume in phase space. For deterministic particle evolution, the volume is constant. It can only change shape. But in quantum statistical mechanics, that is not true. The phase space volume gets larger even if you do nothing to the system. And that has nothing to do withe the quality of your data and everything to do with the fact that you cannot have sufficiently accurate data. Quantum mechanics prevents you from knowing that.
This, in fact, is one of the points that Boltzmann was criticized on. He tried to hand wave his way around constancy of phase space volume by arguing that the shape become so complicated that it looks like it has more volume as you can't measure the narrow crannies. Planck quite rightly replied that it doesn't matter what it looks like, it matters what it IS.
"Particles do what they do, and when you add them all up they amount to human actions. " Well that's just wrong. "Adding up" quantum particles creates superpositions of multiple states. If you believe that statement, explain to me how you are in a superposition of states. Or if you are not, how does the wave function for you collapse and stay collapsed? That, in fact, would be a violation of quantum mechanics.
"That's a problem! But the solution is to simply ignore it. Intellectually, I'm a pure materialist. But emotionally I believe that I control my actions and so do other people. So what? Just go with it." For most of us, and the dictionary, that is the definition of hypocrisy. Of course the world in one way, but I FEEL that it is the exact opposite so go ahead and execute them.
The LA Times published an op ed because no matter how much you want it to be, in neuroscience this is nowhere even close to a settled argument.
It is pretty obvious you haven't read Daniel Dennett. That's a thing you should do before you say more wrong things.
I notice that you quietly and sans explanation substituted free will for consciousness. That's the right thing to do but you really need to own up to it.
I should also add that there is one obvious counterexample to the notion that everything is predictable from deterministic physical laws: natural selection. And if there is one example, there is likely more than one example. In fact, Gerald Edelman has argued for years that a form of natural selection is essential to the functioning of neurons.
If it were deterministic instead, everyone would have the same neural structures for the same concepts and people with closely similar experiences would have closely similar brains at the neuron level. Needless to say, that is not even close to true. Just as Intel and AMD can make vastly different CPUs that execute the same instructions, so there are a vast number of ways of wiring up neurons to represent the same concept or produce the same behavior.
At one end of this 'delay' they placed a telescope, aimed at Chen’s galaxy; at the other end they placed a detector. ('The other end' optically speaking—physically, it was housed in the very same satellite as the telescope.) In their first experiments, the telescope was fitted with a shutter triggered by the 'unpredictable’ decay of a small sample of a radioactive isotope.
The sequence of the shutter's opening and closing and the detector’s rate of discharge were logged by a computer. The two sets of data were compared—and the patterns, unsurprisingly, matched. Except, of course, that the detector began discharging two seconds before the shutter opened, and ceased discharging two seconds before it closed.
So, they replaced the isotope trigger with a manual control, and took turns trying to change the immutable future.
Hazzard said, in an interview several months later: "At first, it seemed like some kind of perverse reaction-time test: instead of having to hit the green button when the green light came on, you had to try to hit the red button, and vice versa. And at first, I really believed I was 'obeying' the signal only because I couldn’t discipline my reflexes to do anything so 'difficult' as contradicting it. In retrospect, I know that was a rationalisation, but I was quite convinced at the time. So I had the computer swap the conventions -- and of course, that didn’t help. Whenever the display said I was going to open the shutter -- however it expressed that fact -- I opened it."
"And how did that make you feel? Soulless? Robotic? A prisoner to fate?"
"No. At first, just ... clumsy. Uncoordinated. So clumsy I couldn’t hit the wrong button, no matter how hard I tried. And then, after a while, the whole thing began to seem perfectly ... normal. I wasn’t being 'forced' to open the shutter; I was opening it precisely when I felt like opening it, and observing the consequences -- observing them before the event, yes, but that hardly seemed important any more. Wanting to 'not open' it when I already knew that I would seemed as absurd as wanting to change something in the past that I already knew had happened. Does not being able to rewrite history make you feel 'soulless'?"
"No."
"This was exactly the same."
How about an example closely adjacent to my field: weather forecasting.
You may have noticed that all forecasts are expressed as probabilities.
It's uncontroversial that the behavior of weather is deterministic, but that by no means implies that we will ever be able to make a perfect forecast for all future time. That is only partly because it is so complicated.
You can call it the "butterfly effect" or you can call it chaos, but what that describes is the sensitive dependence on the condition of every atom in the system, and what that atom will do in response to all the others around it. No matter how much data we have to describe the initial conditions, and no matter how powerful the computer, the result becomes unpredictable in a remarkably short time, probably less than 2 weeks.
So even in a "purely deterministic" system where free will is not an issue, our inability to ever predict how it will evolve over even a short period demolishes the utility of using deterministic ideas to predict our brains (comparably complex).
What is that unpredictable part of our behavior? Is it what we call "consciousness"?
The Wikipedia article "chaos" is useful.