Michael Shermer has a new book out called Truth: What it is, How to Find it, and Why it Still Matters, and I’ve mentioned it before. I’m reading it now, and there’s a lot of good stuff in it. But one of the twelve chapters—the one on free will—is, I think, misguided and confusing. In the preceding link you’ll find a video he made about free will, as well as my critique of it. You may not want to read this post if you’ve read the previous one, but the video differs slightly from the article I discuss below.
So here’s my take 2 on Shermer’s views, recently expressed in a longish article in Quillette. (Michael was kind enough to send me a pdf, so I presume he wants my take.) Read it by clicking on the screenshot below, or find it archived for free here.
In short, Shermer is somewhat of a compatibilist—or so I think, for though doesn’t seem to fully on board with libertarian “you-could-have-done-otherwise” free will, but neither does he accept physical determinism. Further, he doesn’t seem to think that “you could have done otherwise” is even testable, as we’re never in the same situation twice.
He’s right about the untestability criterion. But that doesn’t matter, for even if we were in the identical situation, with every molecule in the universe exactly as it was the first time, there are fundamentally unpredictable events of the quantum kind that might lead to slightly different outcomes. And the more distant in the future we look, the more divergent the outcomes will be. I’ve already noted that the future is probably not completely determined because quantum events could be cumulative. In evolution, for instance, natural selection depends on the existence of different forms of genes that arise by mutation. If quantum effects on DNA molecules can lead to different mutations, then the raw material of evolution could differ if the tape of life is rewound, and different things could evolve.
Further, if quantum phenomena affect neurons and behavior, it’s possible—barely, possible, I’d say—that in two identical situations you could behave differently. I don’t believe that, and neither does neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky, but quantum phenomena that affect molecular movement or positions do not give us free will, as our “will”, whatever that is, doesn’t affect the physical behavior of matter. And so, if we use Anthony Cashmore’s definition of “free will” as given in his 2010 paper in PNAS (the paper that made me a determinist), fundamentally unpredictable quantum effects do not efface free will. Cashmore:
I believe that free will is better defined as a belief that there is a component to biological behavior that is something more than the unavoidable consequences of the genetic and environmental history of the individual and the possible stochastic laws of nature.
Cashmore takes care of quantum effects by lumping them as the “possible stochastic laws of nature.” (Some physicists think that quantum mechanics is really deterministic though it seems otherwise.)
But Shermer doesn’t talk much about quantum physics—in fact, he doesn’t mention it at all. He simply argues by assertion, saying that yes, we could have done otherwise, and we could have done so on the rather nebulous bases of “self-organization” and “emergence”. Let’s take the assertions first. I’ll have to quote at greater length than usual:
Since philosophers love to employ thought experiments to test ideas, here’s one for you to consider (feel free to plug yourself and your spouse or significant other into the situation): John Doe is an exceptionally moral person who is happily married to Jane. The chances of John ever cheating on Jane is close to zero. But the odds are not zero because John is human, so let’s say—for the sake of argument—that John has a one-night stand while on the road and Jane finds out. How does John account for his actions? Does he, pace the standard deterministic explanation for human behaviour (as in Harris’s and Sapolsky’s definitions above), say something like this to Jane?
Honey, my will is simply not of my own making. My thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which I am unaware and over which I exert no conscious control. I do not have the freedom you think I have. I could not have done otherwise because I am nothing more or less than the cumulative biological and environmental luck, over which I had no control, that brought me to the moment of infidelity…
Could John even finish the thought before the stinging slap of Jane’s hand across his face terminated the rationalisation? If free will is the power to do otherwise, as it is typically defined by philosophers, both John and Jane know that, of course, he could have done otherwise, and she reminds him that should such similar circumstances arise again he damn well better make the right choice… or else.
This is argument against free will by assertion alone. What his wife is evincing here is her illusion of free will. Nobody denies the fact that we feel that we could make real choices. But that doesn’t mean that we do.
But where’s the evidence that John Doe could have refrained from his one-night stand? He is correct in thinking that he could have not done otherwise (how could he unless some undefinable, nonphysical “will” affected his libido?), but his wife, subject to the universal illusion that our behavior is more than “the unavoidable consequences of the genetic and environmental history of the individual and the possible stochastic laws of nature”, believes in some undefinable property called “will” that could change the outcomes of a given situation. She thinks that John could have chosen not to fall prey to the allure of that other woman.
So Jane gives John a slap (that slap, too, was determined). And the slap could change John’s future behavior so that he refrains from other affairs, for, like all vertebrates, we learn from experience. That’s the result of evolution. (Keep kicking a friendly dog and see how long it remains friendly!). He concludes what’s below (bolding is mine): But nobody with any neurons to rub together argues that changing behavior via learning somehow violates determinism.
More from Shermer:
But this is not the universe we live in. In our universe (unlike the one in which thought experiments are run), the Second Law of Thermodynamics and entropy means that time flows forward and no future scenario can ever perfectly match one from the past. As Heraclitus’ idiom informs us, “you can’t step into the same river twice,” because you are different and the river is different. What you did in the past influences what you choose to do next in future circumstances (the technical name for this is “learning”), which are always different from the past. So, while the world is determined, we are active agents in determining our decisions going forward in a self-determined way, in the context of what already happened and what might happen. Our universe is not pre-determined but rather post-determined, and we are part of the causal net of the myriad determining factors to create that post-determined world. Far from self-determinism being a downer, it’s the ultimate upper because it means we can do something about the future, namely, we can change it!
I don’t really understand this paragraph, nor the part in bold. In what sense are we active agents in determining our decisions in the future? Shermer doesn’t tell us, but he seems to be thinking of some nonphysical power of “will” to change the physics that governs our brains and behaviors. In fact, there is redundancy here: we determine our decision because our behavior is self-determined!
Apparently Shermer rejects physical determinism because, given the present, more than one future is possible. The laws of physics are likely to be, at bottom, unpredictable, though their effects on “macro” phenomena are probably minimal, and their effects on the behavior of human and other creatures is unknown. Shermer is even somewhat rude to determinists like Sam Harris and Robert Sapolsky (and, implicitly, me, as I’m with them): we are hidebound reductionists plagued by “physics envy” (bolding is mine):
Do determinists really fall into the trap of pure reductionism? They do. Here is the determinist Robert Sapolsky defending his belief that free will does not exist because single neurons don’t have it: “Individual neurons don’t become causeless causes that defy gravity and help generate free will just because they’re interacting with lots of other neurons.” In fact, billions of interacting neurons is exactly where self-determinism arises. But Sapolsky is having none of that: “A lot of people have linked emergence and free will; I will not consider most of them because, to be frank, I can’t understand what they’re suggesting, and to be franker, I don’t think the lack of comprehension is entirely my fault.”
Determinists like Harris and Sapolsky have physics envy. The history of science is littered with the failed pipe dreams of ever-alluring reductionist schemes to explain the inner workings of the mind—schemes increasingly set forth in the ambitious wake of Descartes’ own famous attempt, some four centuries ago, to reduce all mental functioning to the actions of swirling vortices of atoms, supposedly dancing their way to consciousness. Such Cartesian dreams provide a sense of certainty, but they quickly fade in the face of the complexities of biology. We should be exploring consciousness and choice at the neural level and higher, where the arrow of causal analysis points up toward such principles as emergence and self-organisation.
So what is there to behavior beyond atoms moving around according to physical principles? Shermer doesn’t tell us, but he seems determined (excuse the pun) to convince us that we do have free will, and it seems to be of the libertarian sort! He even evokes the mysteries of consciousness, which many people, including Francis Crick, think is best studied not from a “top down” approach, but from a reductionist “bottom up” approach. And we know from various experiments and observations that we can affect our notion of “will”, making us seem like we have it when we don’t (people who suddenly confabulate a purpose when they behave according to stimulation of the brain), or making us seem like we lack it when we are actually acting deterministically (e.g., ouija boards). We can take away consciousness with anesthesia, restore it again, or alter it with psychedelic drugs. All this implies that yes, consciousness and “will” are both phenomena stemming from physics.
Shermer rejects bottom-up approaches, raising the spectres of “self-organization and emergence” as arguments against Cashmore’s form of free will:
This we have through the sciences of complexity, in which we recognise the properties of self-organisation and emergence that arise out of complex adaptive systems, which grow and learn as they change, and they are autocatalytic—containing self-driving feedback loops. For example:
Water is a self-organised emergent property of a particular arrangement of hydrogen and oxygen molecules.
Complex life is a self-organised emergent property of simple life, where simple prokaryote cells self-organised to become more complex eukaryote cells (the little organelles inside cells were once self-contained independent cells).
Consciousness is a self-organised emergent property of billions of neurons firing in patterns in the brain.
Language is a self-organised emergent property of thousands of words spoken in communication between language users.
That list goes on, but it’s muddled. First, what do we mean by “self-organized” properties? Is water “self organized” beyond behaving in a glass in ways that are consistent with, but not necessarily predictable from, the behavior of a single water molecule? Ditto for complex life. In what sense are life and water “self-organized” rather than “organized by physics”? Yes, there are emergent properties, like the Eroica emerging from the pen of Beethoven, himself an admirable collection of organic molecules with the emergent property of writing great music.
Let’s dismiss “self-organization,” which seems like a buzzword that doesn’t advance Shermer’s argument, and concentrate instead on “emergence.” Yes, water is wet. “Wetness” is a quale evinced in our consciousness, yet the properties of water that make it feel wet are surely consistent with, and result form, the laws of physics, just as the “pressure” of gas in a container is an emergent property of a bunch of gas molecules acting as a group. But nobody says that gas molecules have free will, even though some of their properties are “emergent.”
The issue here is not whether emergence is something predictable from a reductionist analysis, but whether it is something physically consistent with its reductionist constituents. If the laws of physics be true, then that consistency does nothing to efface determinism. Shermer’s failure is that he neglects to tell us the nature of something called a “will” that interposes itself between molecule and behavior. And often, with greater knowledge of physics we can predict emergent properties from a reductionist analysis. (The gas laws are one such thing.)
I’ll draw this to a close now, adding one more note. Shermer’s failure is twofold. He fails to suggest how an undefined “will” can affect the behavior of matter, and he mistakes determinism for predictability, a rookie error. If quantum mechanics is a good explanation of physics, then the future is not 100% predictable, even if we had perfect knowledge of everything, which of course we don’t. And physicists tell me that quantum effects were important at the Big Bang, so at that moment the future of the entire universe was unpredictable. That says nothing about free will.
Shermer closes with another paragraph that I don’t understand; it sounds in some ways (this may anger him, but I apologize) like Deepak Chopra:
It may seem odd to think of yourself as a past-self, present-self, and future self, but as suggested in this language, your “self” is not fixed from birth, destined to a future over which you have no control. We live not only in space, but in time, and as such no matter the pre-conditioning factors nudging you along a given pathway—your genes, upbringing, culture, luck and contingent history—there is always wiggle room to alter future conditions. The river of time flows ever onward and you are part of its future.
Act accordingly.
This is more argument by assertion alone. I’m not sure what he means by “act accordingly”, much less “wiggle room.” Of course we can be influenced by what we read, but we don’t have a “will” that could alter what we do at any given moment. As Cashmore said in his article:
Here I argue that the way we use the concept of free will is nonsensical. The beauty of the mind of man has nothing to do with free will or any unique hold that biology has on select laws of physics or chemistry. This beauty lies in the complexity of the chemistry and cell biology of the brain, which enables a select few of us to compose like Mozart and Verdi, and the rest of us to appreciate listening to these compositions. The reality is, not only do we have no more free will than a fly or a bacterium, in actuality we have no more free will than a bowl of sugar.
I don’t mind being like a bowl of sugar, or, rather, a complex piece of animated meat. I admire Shermer for all he’s done to further skepticism and attack quackery, but I think that on the issue of free will he’s gone awry.
From AI:
I agree that Shermer’s scheme is muddled and does not work, but just on nomenclature:
He’s not a compatibilist, since he needs to reject full determinism in order to try to make his scheme work. By definition a compatibilist is someone whose account of these things works just fine under full determinism.
Thus, unless someone is giving an account of human choices wherein the choice is entirely the product of the past state of the system, then they’re not giving a compatibilist account.
Yes, but I was pondering WHAT he is. You’re correct that he’s not a “classical” compatibilist since he rejects determinism, but I think he’d say that he does accept some form of physical determinism. We shall see as he says he’s going to write a reply.
Shermer starts along the right lines. He (correctly) thinks that humans are agents, in that our neural-network brains assimilate lots of information and make decisions.
He could then say that human brains make choices in the same way that chess-playing computers choose a move (or call that “select” a move or “compute” a move, if you don’t like “choose” — they’re only words). Yes, the chess-playing computer does choose (“select”/”compute”) the move — what makes that selection if not the computer? — and yes this is entirely the product of the prior state of the system.
The entire point of brains is to be deterministic, to make choices/computations based on genetic programming and information from the sensory organs (random decision making, from quantum indeterminacy or whatever, would be dumb, just as random moves of a chess board would quickly lose).
But Shermer shies away from this. He intuitively thinks this must be wrong (it isn’t, it’s an entirely coherent account of what’s happening, and also the correct one), so thinks that he needs to make it non-deterministic somehow. So he makes a vague and hand-wavey (and unnecessary) appeal to non-determinism, which serves only to fudge things.
Chess or computers are superb models for this.
I think the “free will” comes into focus on moves with multiple unproductive moves or almost equal scores. I’m not sure what that’s called in chess but chess dot com shows the scores and users can see the results by running multiple steps.
I think it’s in the puzzle section, but maybe not in playing the computer.
Could a high-scoring checkmate move be rejected to throw a game? Maybe if the right setting is chosen.
My guess is there’s a “temperature” or entropy setting. I think AI works like that too. Temperature – like in simulated annealing.
Oh man I love the topic of free will — or, “free will” — OR — “Free Will” 😁
Mostly because I like all these new, raw thoughts which occur to me. Here’s one :
I think one difference between a bowl of sugar and the fly is reaction velocity. “Free will” seems like it could be the qualitative experience of high reaction velocity.
IMHO Shermer is right to point at self-assembly. Dan Dennett had a superb photo of a ring of rocks formed by maybe freeze-thaw cycles.
I’m not agreeing with the conclusions thereof, I’m agreeing with the observations’ salience.
All very handy objects for gedankenexperiment!
🪰🍨
Molecules and atoms are coursing along their merry ways in the brain (some having had their courses set by antecedent events internal to the brain, some having been set by events outside). For there to be free will, there needs to be a way to stop those molecules and atoms in their tracks so that the “will” can work its magic. That “will” would need the power to take stock of the current state of molecular events, evaluate alternative possibilities, make a “choice,” alter the molecular and atomic states in the brain if necessary and, finally, turn events back on so as to bring about the “chosen” outcome—one that might be different from the one that would have taken place had the “will” not intervened.
But how can a person do these things: (1) stop the course of molecular events in the brain, (2) evaluate the possibilities (with molecular events stopped, such a “person” would have to be operating outside of physics), (3) change the state of molecules and atoms, and (4) restart molecular events again such that the new outcome might be different from one that would have originally taken place?
These are the things that (it seems to me) need to be explained for there to be free will—the freedom to choose a course of events different from what would have otherwise happened. All this would seem to require divine intervention.
(Just kidding about the divine intervention part.)
I think “divine intervention” is exactly the right way to describe it. Free will means decision would have to be made outside the Universe. If it is made within the Universe, the process of making the decision would happen according to laws of physics just like everything else. The cognitive difficulty of accepting that every action is part of overall bouncing of quarks etc. is an amazing blind spot.
We ARE our brains, and our brains evolved as decision-making biological machines. So even if physics says every action is ultimately the product of chains of causation going back to the Big Bang, we nevertheless do make decisions because that’s what we’ve evolved to do. Free will must be assumed in the sense that the prospect of rewards and punishments (to put it simplistically) can influence the choices we make. If not for this, society would be impossible. When the decision-making organ is diseased, as in schizophrenia, we acknowledge that the decisions made were on the basis of that disease rather than normal processing by healthy brains, so the legal systems take this into account.
“Shermer’s failure is that he neglects to tell us the nature of something called a “will” that interposes itself between molecule and behavior.” – Dr. Coyne
I don’t have this problem because I regard the brain as a physical decision-making organ. Our subjective experience of making decisions is the brain doing what it evolved to do. Like our subjective experience of colors (which physics tells us is the brain’s complex processing of wavelengths of light and their relationships to each other), we experience the brain’s actions of calculating the best move to make as our own decisions. And we are our brains, so they ARE our own decisions.
As for the concept of determinism, I find it inadequate when applied to complex systems such as brains in ever-changing environments because we cannot “determine” behavioral outcomes from physics. So it becomes an angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin type debate. An untestable assertion is unscientific, fun to debate but ultimately useless.
It is difficult (but I think necessary) to maintain a clear distinction between “I act and make decisions” and “what is actually happening as I act.” Of course we make decisions and are responsible for them. No one turns every decision into a navel-gazing session meditating over “life is pointless because what will happen must.” We simply live. Nonetheless, deterministically or in the quantum uncertainty sense, every decision is a result of the prior state of the Universe as a whole, the person and its brain included. I think people cling to the sense of being a free agent because they are afraid to lose the feeling of being in control of one’s life. Perhaps they are also not sure that judging what others do is entirely justified.
Your reference to the “state of the Universe as a whole” brought to mind the psychedelically-influenced lyrics of a song I was listening to yesterday:
Now you know you really are
One with all the love that is
Feeding every single star
Every star you see tonight
You are everlasting love
You are everlasting light
You are both forever bound
True messenger
Only if you can see the love and the light
Only if you can be just who we are
Only if you can see the love and the light
Only if you can be just who we are
Who we are
True Messenger by Jon Anderson
Excerpting two clear ideas above from PCC(E) and mike into one :
“… something called a “will” that interposes itself between molecule and behavior.”
“[..] I regard the brain as a physical decision-making organ.”
And if the stomach is empty, it’s almost dinner time, or the body just woke up – is there still only one organ making the decisions?
Can something in that difference be said to be “between molecule and behavior”?
Very clear points, but I’m thinking in rhetorical way just for the exercise of it.
“I think “divine intervention” is exactly the right way to describe it. Free will means decision would have to be made outside the Universe.”
But even if that’s the case, you run into the same problem.
Ultimately, the ghost in the machine is a machine as well.
From the little I have read I was reminded of the theological arguments for the existence of god.
Assume the answer (that Free Will exists) and then bolt on various bits of ‘evidence’ that support your assumption and ignore the bits that don’t support your assumption.
Fascinating. It does seem to me that free will is all about consciousness as I would imagine that a philosophical zombie would not ‘feel’ free will. In which case does that mean that consciousness has no function? If not, what is it for?
IMO that’s a very productive point of view. Without conscious awareness there would be no “I” (René D’s cogito ergo sum) to experience anything, much less any will, free or not. Computers make decisions; so do animals; so do we. We’re special in that we know we do, because we experience some of the decision process. Julian Jaynes goes further and argues that experiencing the process of making decisions by imagining various plausible outcomes is not only what consciousness is useful for but is the very process by which humans acquired consciousness in the first place. (FWIW I am convinced by his arguments.)
The good news is that free will can be understood in functional terms. The bad news is that to do so we must also understand consciousness, including the “hard problem” of subjective experience. (And also FWIW I believe that that is doable.)
Doable how? Please explain. (Genuinely curious here)
Humans are not the only beings with brains and consciousness. The same brain correlates of consciousness are seen in many different species according to brain imaging studies. The idea that humans uniquely have consciousness or “soul” is a very Christian-Islamic religious idea with no empirical foundation.
My view is that humans are the only land animals¹ which are manifestly conscious², and that the various empirical brain correlates of consciousness do not imply consciousness itself. Correlation ≠ causation.
The view that self-aware conscious experience is something ineffable and special is not just an ancient religious one. The whole “soul” business is a clumsy just-so story trying to eff the ineffable, with about as much current plausibility as the classical Greek just-so story of Athena and Arachne. Current views of consciousness include Panpsychism (IMO hogwash) and Spiritualism (IMO toxic hogwash).
Regarding my optimism about the actual non-hogwash effability of conscious expeience, I actually do have a rough outline of a research project. Until recently it was infeasible, but advances in other fields have changed that. I am not in a position to attract funding or institutional support for such an outside-the-box venture, but it’s plausible that I will run out of less-crackpot things to do in my retirement and will make a start at it myself. Plus, there are significant ethical issues. Don’t laugh, yet.
…………
¹ The evidence for or against cetacean consciousness is very weak. They don’t show the sorts of activities that we consider hallmarks of our consciousness; but OTOH such activities might be of very little use to them, and their big brains could be conscious in some more inward manner. Om.
² Yes, I am an unabashed Human Exceptionalist.
The theological fantasy that only humans are conscious is (to use your phrase) full-on toxic hogwash – and especially toxic with regard to non-human animal suffering. It also suggests a toxic lack of empathy. Unfortunately this view is still to be found in some corners of Christian theology and among Christian philosophers.
Your claim that brain activity does not have a causal relationship to consciousness is about as far as one can get from modern neuroscience and does indeed imply a “soul” separate from the physical brain – presumably there are only human ones, as theologians have claimed for millenia.
Out
There are those who think
That life has nothing left to chance
A host of holy horrors
To direct our aimless dance
A planet of playthings
We dance on the strings
Of powers we cannot perceive
The stars aren’t aligned
Or the gods are malign
Blame is better to give than receive
You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill
I will choose a path that’s clear, I will choose free will…
Rush! The ability to choose free will opens up another can of worms.
Not really. It’s not like he had any real choice. 🙂
I cited those very same lyrics in a previous debate on free will here! When Geddy (the singer) sings “I will choose free will” he means he chooses to live independently of religious dictates. At least that is how I understand it.
I see a different paragraph in Shermer’s article (difference in bold) than what you quoted:
This passage strongly indicates that Shermer is some kind of compatibilist. But I think he is the wrong kind. He mentions entropy – so close, but no cigar! – but misses they key point about the relationship between entropy and causality.
Namely, entropy provides the arrow of time* which turns mere law-patterned connections into causality. (*: The laws of physics, as far as we know, are equally determinative in both directions of time.) And entropy is only non-trivial for coarse-grained states/descriptions. Because of that, the standard “free will problem” is imaginary, and the standard incompatibilist argument breaks down. Nomological determinism – the idea that things are correctly described by non-probabilistic laws – may well be true for the whole universe (or Everettian “multiverse”). But causal determinism – the idea that there is a time-asymmetric push from past to future which empowers the early events and disempowers the later ones – does not apply all the way down to the micro-level.
To see why mere nomological determinism doesn’t undermine free will, imagine that a philosopher argued that because he sees you emerge from an O’Hare jetway early today, you didn’t have any choice about getting on that plane to Chicago late last night. He points out that given the laws of nature and the policies and capability of airport security, it’s inevitable, given the fact that you arrived just now, that you must have boarded that plane last night. Perhaps you think he’s right that you didn’t board the plane of your own free will, but this is not a good argument. It’s flawed because the fact that you arrived just now is not independent of your choice to board the plane earlier.
Because the laws of physics are equally determinative in both time-directions, one can start a physical analysis at any point in time, and (in principle) derive the consequences both forward and backward in time. Such as right now, and right around here, with your current decision. Make your decision, and the past will (by physical law!) go along with it. The ideas that time itself is in motion, and that the past is utterly fixed, are intuitive, but not scientific.
More fun thought experiements – like Betting On The Past – on request.
IANA physicist, and much of modern physics boggles my intuitions as much as higher mathematics does (which is A LOT); but AIUI, PT symmetry does not always apply — it’s broken (the actual technical term). Does that affect some of your argument?
Shermer’s arguments for the existence of free will are unpersuasive, to put it mildly. His main flaw is that he seems to think he has succeeded where everyone else has failed.
The arguments against free will, based on determinism, make more sense, but they are weak as well. Current laws of physics are incomplete, because they will never be able to explain consciousness. As Thomas Nagel wrote:
https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/the-core-of-mind-and-cosmos/#more-148050
“Mind, I suspect, is not an inexplicable accident or a divine and anomalous gift but a basic aspect of nature that we will not understand until we transcend the built-in limits of contemporary scientific orthodoxy.”
You are arguing from authority, and Nagel is not particularly authoritative on on neuroscience. And I cannot take you seriously when you claim that materialism (laws of physics instantiated through biology) WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO EXPLAIN CONSCIOUSNESS. Seriously? How do you know that with such certainty? Are you saying that there is something numious or non-physical that is needed to explain consciousness?
No one has even been able to describe how something physical could explain consciousness. In other words, we have no idea what it would take for us to say, “Yes, that explains it.” So, no, I’m not certain, but my claim is plausible enough to weaken the argument from determinism.
You make no claim except that “We do not understand how it works, so there can be no naturalistic explanation.“ They used to say that about lots of things, including lightning and plague. We are just at the beginning of understanding how the brain works, so you are obtusely equating ignorance with nonmaterialism. And that is all you do: you fail to proffer another way that consciousness arises. And no, your claim, to me, is not plausible enough to weaken the argument that consciousness arises from materialistic properties of the brain.
I am tired of such assertions and please do not continue along these lines.
The argument that, since we do not completely understand a process, there must be a supernatural component to the process, simply does not hold water. It implies that we already know everything about that process, and there is nothing left to discover. Even among the most extreme anti-materialists, I cannot imagine anyone holding that view about consciousness.
It may well be that, to understand the transition from neural networks to consciousness, some new scientific or mathematical paradigm currently beyond our capabilities will be needed. So what? That has happened before in scientific history, and will certainly happen again. I have no trouble thinking of experiments that would push us further in this process—though they are currently beyond our technological capabilities. But hell, many scientists that I know have done experiments that were impossible for their mentors.
You can substitute “libertarian free will” for “self-determinism” and nothing changes because Shermer’s self determinism is indistinguishable from libertarian free will.
“In fact, billions of interacting neurons is exactly where self-determinism arises.”
Same thing:
“ In fact, billions of interacting neurons is exactly where libertarian free will arises.”
We know that consciousness emerges from billions of interacting neurons, but free will? When exactly? It must be a much more recent emergence.
I like Shermer and his show a LOT (notwithstanding his stance here).
For the record he is a personal friend of Chopra. Which is strange, but then we all have some strange friends I think…
D.A.
NYC
It seems to me that arguing that quantum mechanics (QM) supports determinism is also simply an assertion. I understand and accept that we are made up of fundamental particles whose “behaviour” can be precisely predicted by QM but, and I’m skating on thin ice here, there’re a couple problems.
First, I believe it was Richard Feynman’s mathematical trick (sleight-of-hand?) of renormalisation that makes QM so predictable – IOW, QM’s predictability does not arise naturally. If that’s true, then we are clearly missing something about the fundamental structure of nature. Maybe readers with more QM knowledge than I have could correct me if I’m wrong.
Second, do we have any empirical evidence – experimental for e.g. – that QM supports determinism? To my knowledge we don’t, and if that’s true, we are talking assertion.
I’d also be surprised if there is a physics textbook in the world that mentions free will and/or determinism. Isn’t that a deafening silence?
Just my .02% of a $.🙂
(a ta risk for being chastised for third comment)
If determinism then Universe is like a movie (what will happen must happen)
If quantum indeterminism then either:
a) (Copenhagen) Timeline is chosen by random selection of physically possible outcomes, OR
b) (MWI) All physically possible timelines exist, in which case every possible future happens (and every possible past too) but we only see one timeline so just like a) subjectively.
There’s a lot of controversy over “interpretations” of QM (some of which, like Ghriardi-Rimini-Weber, are actually slightly different theories). Some (G-R-W for example) are indeterministic, while others (e.g. Everett) are deterministic at the fundamental level. For what it’s worth, the official WEIT website physicist Sean Carroll argues that Everett’s is the simplest and most credible account. I should mention a complication: within any observable universe, QM will act as if it were indeterministic, according to Everett.
Thanks Paul. I’m not aware of GRW but I have heard of Everett’s Many Worlds interpretation which strikes me as another “not even wrong” theory – how can that be tested?
So the fact that there are many different takes on how to interpret QM raises a 3rd objection to invoking it to support determinism. To wit, if there is so much disagreement on QM amongst physicists, how can we be justified in using it to explain a puzzle of human psychology?
Shermer: “What you did in the past influences what you choose to do next in future circumstances (the technical name for this is “learning”), which are always different from the past. So, while the world is determined, we are active agents in determining our decisions going forward in a self-determined way, in the context of what already happened and what might happen . . . we are part of the causal net of the myriad determining factors to create that post-determined world. Far from self-determinism being a downer, it’s the ultimate upper because it means we can do something about the future, namely, we can change it!”
Blaise Pascal: “‘I am made in such a way that I cannot believe. What, then, would you have me to do?’ That is true. But at least realize that your inability to believe comes from your passions, since reason brings you to this and yet you cannot believe. Work, then, on convincing yourself, not by adding more proofs of God’s existence, but by diminishing your passions. . . . Learn from those who were bound like you . . . Follow the way by which they began: they acted as if they believed . . . This will make you believe naturally and mechanically.”
Perhaps this is a case of an unconscious influence upon Shermer rather than intentional adaptation, but the parallels are clear. I haven’t read Shermer’s book—and I am neither vested in nor deeply knowledgeable about the details in this debate—but I would be curious whether Shermer thinks that we can not only change our future selves but do so in a calculated and intentional way that is not itself determined. It seems he is arguing less about the nature of the “choice” than about our perspective of it from differing points in time.
The question “Does the I have free will?” is misframed and we will NEVER resolve it. Why, because it presupposes a stable agent standing outside the causal stream. But since the SELF is itself a process within that stream—an emergent pattern rather than an entity—then asking whether it “has” free will is like asking whether a whirlpool has autonomy apart from the water that constitutes it.
A few thoughts about neural function:
I was mentioned above that the brain must be “deterministic”, by which I assume is meant that understanding of stimuli must be reliable.
However, if we are talking about cerebral cortex, only a small percentage of synapses (even in primary sensory cortex) come from inputs carrying sensory information from the periphery. The vast majority of cortical synapses come from other cortical neurons—the cortex is mostly talking to itself.
The activity of these cortical neurons is not deterministic: It is stochastic. The output of these neurons can best be modeled as a doubly stochastic point process, and matters become more complex when discussing the activity of neural networks.
That stochastic “noise’ has been shown to improve sensory signals. There mechanism for this is not completely understood.
There is a large gap between the “bottom-up” knowledge of neuronal activity and understanding consciousness. That does not imply that we cannot eventually bridge that gap by use of scientific methods: increasing the resolution of biophysical methods along with better computational models based on actual measurement of biological processes.
It is of no surprise that each choice we make is weighted by experience, beliefs and every other variable that might have an effect. To some extent we can choose how much weight we give to any of those factors that are conscious. No one is suggesting that in a deterministic world we do not send people to prison!
What does not impress me is the evidence that a decision is made fractions of a second before we become consciously aware of it. We have known about the unconscious for a long time, and surely it surprises no one to think some part of each decision we make occurs in unconscious processes? I think of a decision as like watching an election night result on TV: as information trickles in it is often obvious which way the election is going to go long before the last vote is counted. What if all the factors impinging on a decision are ‘casting their votes’ in our heads and like the election we see how it is going to pan out before the official result appears in the conscious part of our mind?