In mid-February, Michael Shermer wrote a piece in Quillette called “The truth about free will,” the truth being that we have it, but in the compatibilist rather than the libertarian sense. This article was a shortened version of a free-will chapter included in Shermer’s new book, Truth: What It Is, How to Find It, and Why It Still Matters.
I thought that Shermer’s article was confusing, largely because his own definition of free will seemed to smuggle in a bit of libertarianism, but also because the argument for free will seemed to say this: “We have free will because we feel like we have free will.”
Shermer then responded in the pages of Skeptic, the magazine he founded in 1992 and still edits; his response was called “Free will, determinism, and compatibilism: Shermer responds to Jerry Coyne.” He once again argued for compatibilism, buttressing his argument with statistics showing that most philosophers accept compatibilism (59.1%), with minorities being libertarian free-willers (13.7%), determinists (12.2%, I’m in this camp though I’m not a philosopher), and those who are “other” (14.9%). The gist of his argument seemed to be this:
I agree with Jerry and Dan that we live in a determined universe governed by laws of nature. But I disagree with Jerry that this eliminates free will, or if you prefer “volition” or “choice” (again, this entire field is, to use Jerry’s term, “muddled” with confusion of terminology). My compatibilist work-around is “self-determinism,” in which while we live under the causal net of a determined universe, we are part of that causal net ourselves, helping to determine the future as it unfolds before us, and of which we are a part. My compatibilist position is based on the best understanding of physics today. Let me explain.
Physicists tell us that the Second Law of Thermodynamics, or entropy, means that time flows forward, and therefore no future scenario can ever perfectly match one from the past. As Heraclitus’ idiom informs us, “you cannot 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, 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. Thus, our universe is not pre-determined in a block-universe way (in which past, present, and future exist simultaneously) but rather post-determined (after the fact we can look back to determine the causal connections), and we are part of the causal net of the myriad determining factors to create that post-determined world.
Free will, Shermer wrote, is somehow to be found in billions and billions of neurons, (to paraphrase Sagan):
Coyne is unhappy with my invoking of “emergence” and says I’m being rude to him and Sapolsky and Harris in accusing them of “physics envy,” but that’s what it is! Here, for example, is 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 (or volition or free will) arises. This is why I like to ask determinists: Where is inflation in the laws and principles of physics, biology, or neuroscience? It’s not, because inflation is an emergent property arising from millions of individuals in economic exchange, a subject properly described by economists, not physicists, biologists, or neuroscientists.
I found that confusing because I saw no freedom in simply saying that humans are part of the “causal net of a determined universe.” And I was confused by the claim that “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.” I didn’t understand that, and it seemed to smuggle some magic into the definition. And, as I’ll show below by quoting Sam Harris, I think that compatibilism misses the key feature of most people’s view of free will (yes, there are surveys): “We could have done other than what we did.” If you say, “yes,” then you are a free willer, but have to specify what aspect of the universe enables us to have done otherwise. If you say, “No, never,” then you are either a determinist or a compatibilist. Determinism needs no further explication, but compatibilism demands that you confect a new definition of free will—one that insists that we have it despite physical determinism.
Now there are at least a half-dozen versions of compatibilism, each proposing a different definition of the “free will” we supposedly have, so compatibilists themeslves have incompatible views about free will! It’s my belief from reading Dennett and others that compatibilism is pursued by people who think that if we don’t think we have some sort of free will, society will fall apart. People will think that without free will, we lack moral responsibility, and apart from that, we’ll all become nihilists unwilling to even get out of bed. After all, what’s the point if everything’s determined?
I have answered both of these assertions before, saying that determinists like me are not nihilists, that society can function even realizing that determinism is true, because people still feel like they have free will, and that we can have “respnsibility” without needing to have “moral responsibility,” which assumes we could have behaved otherwise.
But I’ve written about all this before. Michael was kind enough to allow me to respond to his response in the pages of Skeptic, and you can read my 2000-word response by clicking the screenshot below, or reading the article archived here. (The title comes from an old novelty song, “Yes! We have no bananas,”)
I’ll give just a few quotes from my piece; it’s short enough that you can read it in a few minutes.
[Shermer’s] smuggled-in dualism becomes clear when Shermer claims that although the action of individual neurons may be determined, “billions of interacting neurons is exactly where self-determinism (or volition or free will) arises.” But how can one neuron be governed by the laws of physics but a group of interacting neurons not be governed by the laws of physics. If they are, then there is no freedom, no volition, no “willed” control of our behavior, and no ability to have done otherwise. Yet Shermer argues that when a group of neurons cooperates, some kind of “will” arises. This dilemma won’t be resolved until Shermer explains the relevant difference between the behavior of one neuron and of a group of neurons.
. . .As Shermer notes, 59 percent of surveyed philosophers are compatibilists while the rest are almost equally divided between libertarians, determinists, and those with no opinion. He deems philosophers the “most qualified people” to pronounce on the problem, but are philosophers more qualified than neuroscientists or physicists? As Sam Harris (a neuroscientist and a determinist) said:
[Compatibilism] ignores the very source of our belief in free will: the feeling of conscious agency. People feel that they are the authors of their thoughts and actions, and this is the only reason why there seems to be a problem of free will worth talking about.
. . . Compatibilism amounts to nothing more than an assertion of the following creed: A puppet is free as long as he loves his strings. [JAC: I love that line.]
Importantly, the “folk” conception of free will—the libertarian version—is what most people think they have. It is that version that permeates society, the legal system, and, of course, religion, and is therefore the most important version to discuss.
And my ending:
Finally, Shermer poses what he sees as an unassailable challenge to my determinism:
In fact, billions of interacting neurons is exactly where self-determinism (or volition or free will) arises. This is why I like to ask determinists: Where is inflation [of the monetary sort] in the laws and principles of physics, biology, or neuroscience? It’s not, because inflation is an emergent property arising from millions of individuals in economic exchange, a subject properly described by economists, not physicists, biologists, or neuroscientists.
That is a red herring. Like all phenomena in human society, you won’t find monetary inflation in the laws of physics. Nor will you find academics, music, sports, or any other human endeavor. The question is not whether these phenomena are in the laws of physics, but whether they result from the laws of physicsas emergent phenomena wholly compatible with underlying naturalism. And Shermer himself said yes, they do: “we live in a determined universe governed by laws of nature.”
The problem of free will is “insoluble” only insofar as Shermer, trying to retain an idea of self-control, and ignoring the massive body of data on affecting volition, has confected a new definition that simply redescribes human behavior. The important question is this: “Is there physical determinism of human behavior or not?” Both Shermer and I agree that there is. In the end, however, Shermer seems to argue that we have free will because we feel like it. One might as well say that there’s a God because we feel like there is one.
That’s it; you can read the argument and come to your own conclusions. For some reason I can’t stop arguing about free will. I guess my persistence is also determined. . .
This is a superb ongoing discussion.
IMHO / “thinking fast” (D. Kahneman) :
“Free” is completely false. Nothing is “Free”.
“Will” is not equal to agency. It is “trying to do” something.
There’s every reason to conclude will can be predetermined by external factors. This does not mean the external factors are everything. The outcome is bound by likelihood.
Thus, “Constrained Will” is more precise than “Free Will”.
I almost wrote that “Free Will” (I’ll have to find when and where this appeared in the literature – Google Ngram isn’t super clear on this) is a null hypothesis, but it’s not even that.
It’s .. not even an hypothesis.
“Meat Puppets” (see below) might be an hypothesis that works in some conditions – e.g. an indy rock band concert, but not all.
Meat Puppets
Rock band founded in 1980
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meat_Puppets
As a long time Michael Shermer fan, I was surprised by the confusing opacity of his stance on free will. Your rebuttal is a beautifully written, laser focused analysis of the subject – and it really helped me to clarify several points. Please don’t stop arguing about free will, each time you do I learn something I thought I had known but then realized I hadn’t fully grasped.
Thank you.
I agree that Shermer’s stance is confused. He needs to bite the bullet and declare that, yes, the “self-determined” decisions of a brain are indeed the product of the prior physical state of the system.
In the same way, in a self-driving car, it is indeed the car doing the decision-making (choosing which way to steer, when to brake, etc), even though those decisions are indeed determined by the prior physical state of the system.
I disagree with Jerry that compatibilism arises out of the fear that “if we don’t think we have some sort of free will, society will fall apart”. It’s more basic.
The point is that we do need concepts of agency, volition, choosing, responsibility, and morality — we use them all the time. So, given that determinism is true, we thus need to properly understand those concepts. And that means accepting that those concepts do not require “uncaused choosing”, they work just fine as “physically caused choosing”. That’s what compatibilism is about: ensuring that the concepts we use are compatible with the truth of determinism.
While it is true we use these concepts routinely, the needing is a bit of an assertion.
Using your self-driving car as an example:
agency: I suspect it is, in some sense, aware of its shell, and the direction and route it is taking.
volition: No doubt it has a built-in will to avoid hitting other objects, pedestrians, etc
choosing: I suspect it will choose which lane to navigate and bypass obstacles, which route to take, when to brake
responsibility: I doubt the car explicitly has a sense of responsibility, but may have an implicit awareness that it is a proximate cause.
morality: I doubt the car has any morality built into it, but it may have a volition programmed into it to avoid hitting pedestrians and prefer inanimate objects.
So all in all, that may be compatibilism, but it in no way addresses the free will discussion.
We do, and we do need to, routinely treat other humans as moral agents who make choices and are responsible for their decisions and actions. Given determinism, given that all of what humans do is fully physically caused, we thus need to realise that concepts of “choosing”, “responsibility”, “agency”, “morality” etc are not wrapped up with notions of un-caused-ness. To suppose that they are fundamentally misunderstands how the world works (and yes, many people do have that misunderstanding). That is what compatibilism is saying.
Well, it is also a bit of a confusing concept. I mean, from the point of view of a “Free Will”-believer, what would it feel like to have this “Free Will” turned off. Would that agent even notice it or is it only noticeable from outside (i.e. by an other agent that has its “Free Will” still operational)?
And what kind of agents have this “Free Will”? Do animals also have it or only humans?
If it’s the former, then where does it start? With insects, or do the animals have to be a bit brainier for the “Free Will” to manifest itself (e.g. dolphins, great apes)?
But if only humans possess “Free Will”, then why does a human baby have it while an adult chimp does not?
Or do human newborns not have “Free Will” either and only develop it as they mature?
And is that a sudden event where the full “Free Will” kicks in all at once or does it develop gradually over time (i.e. the “Will” becomes freer as the person grows up)?
Then does this mean that some people have “Freer Will” than others? And if that’s the case, by which criteria can we tell the different levels of “Free Will” apart?
I’m not sure what you’re asking. A compatibilist is not a “free will believer” in the sense that Jerry defined “free will”. That is, our will is caused, not uncaused. (Anyone trying to fudge that point is not actually a compatibilist.)
Well, it wasn’t so much addressed at compatibilists but more at libertarian “Free Willers” and those who believe that only humans have “Free Will”. And I think with the latter two there’s a significant overlap.
I couldn’t really get why they think that some agents (e.g. humans) should have this “Free Will” whereas others (e.g. insects) do not.
I read Shermer’s original Quilette piece and his response to Jerry several times. I like the man; I loved his Scientific American columns. I think he’s wrong about free will and that Jerry’s article addresses the problems well.
It seems to me that Shermer’s claim to free will hinges on his point that humans are part of the causal net and that being part of the causal net—what Shermer calls “self-determinism”—is all that’s necessary for compatibilist free will.
Here’s the critical quotation:
—
My compatibilist work-around is “self-determinism,” in which while we live under the causal net of a determined universe, we are part of that causal net ourselves, helping to determine the future as it unfolds before us, and of which we are a part.
—
It is undoubtedly true that we are part of the causal net, but being part of the causal net does not mean that we have any special determinative status other than being made of atoms and molecules in motion. Yet Shermer seems to imply just that. This is the critical flaw in his case. In pointing out that we participate causally in the universe Shermer fools himself into taking the further step of granting ourselves special status for which he provides no support.
At the end of his rejoinder to Jerry, Shermer tries to make peace by saying that the “problem” will never be solved and we’re really just talking past each other. This suggests that Shermer is aware of the weakness of his anrgument and hopes that he can escape unscathed.
Look what I found 🙂
https://youtu.be/KAt8lJJUc78?si=qHnNjCQEnWRitDkv
Boss looks good in this one.
I’ll read the essay tonight. Thx
D.A.
NYC
I absolutely believe that we do not have free will. I also absolutely believe that we do not NOT have free will. Both require an impossible duality. With free will we feel ourselves to be separate from and in control of our properties. With determinism we see ourselves as separate from and controlled by our properties. Both are dualities and illusions of consciousness.
It’s helpful to think of our properties not as matter but as information and logic. Static matter is information. But matter changing states in consistent ways over time forms the foundation of a particular logic. To have free will we would have to act on information and logic from outside of it. But once outside of info and logic upon what would we form our actions? It takes info and logic to operate on info and logic. If we separate ourselves from our own properties we have nothing upon which to act. However, if we separate ourselves into two separate sets of info and logic either set may exert control over the other but neither can operate independently of its own properties. And in that case both sets operate as a single info/logic system and there is no duality. No thing can separate itself from itself and in any given realm of info and logic no such duality can occur.
Emergence cannot effect free will. That would require the dualistic control of the ground out of which the emergence arises. And that can’t happen.
Mars: “It’s helpful to think of our properties not as matter but as information and logic.”
Very clarifying idea – 🎯 – all the way down to DNA in bits of information :
“If you want to understand life, don’t think about vibrant, throbbing gels and oozes, think about information technology.”
-Richard Dawkins
The Blind Watchmaker
1986, Norton, p. 112.
as cited on Tom Schneider’s website :
“Biological Information Theory
and the Theory of Molecular Machines”
by Tom Schneider
users.fred.net/tds/lab/
See also:
https://ccr.cancer.gov/staff-directory/thomas-d-schneider
If I understand you, then consciousness is an illusion. If consciousness is an illusion, then so too would be altered states of consciousness (ASC). My problem is equating “will” and “consciousness.” Even if predictable, isn’t consciousness a different kind of “thing?” As a different kind of thing, it would account for the changes in behavior that last long beyond the psychoactive chemicals that effected the change.
Behavioral changes involve neuronal wiring, not just an initial jolt of neurotransmitters.
I am a determinist. I cannot see the justification for asserting that free will emerges magically from billions of determined neurons. I can see how the sum of billions of deterministic neurons might soften the appearance of the hard edges of determinism. But it strikes me that the argument for the ’emergence’ of free will is rather like the god of the gaps argument.
Harris has the (best) last word.
At a restaurant, I could choose between ordering one dish and another by flipping a coin. The way the coin falls is wholly determined by physics, but we characterize its fall as “random”. This is because nobody can predict how the coin will fall, so the dish choice appears to reflect a sort of free choice—the chances having been 50% one way or the other. Perhaps many of my decisions arrive in the same way, by mechanisms in my brain analogous to the coin flip. Is this way of looking at it compatibilist Free Will? This view doesn’t depend on any need to keep the society of coins orderly. I’m not sure what it does depend on, other than equal (or roughly equal) chances of the choice going either way.
I think you’re onto something – check comment 7 :
bits of information.
And my theory which is mine :
Not “Free”, but Constrained Will.
Constrained by bits of information down to the molecular or atomic (e.g. calcium / calmodulin) levels.
We all know that we don’t have free will because we can’t choose not to have it.
I can’t speak for Shermer, but speaking for myself, Shermer’s statement:
is exactly right. Will, aka volition, is the product of billions of interacting neurons, not an individual one. Likewise the ability to imagine various actions, and to assess their consequences. Likewise the desires for some consequences and aversions to others.
Contrary to Jerry, this doesn’t require that the brain be exempt from the laws of physics – that’s almost irrelevant to free will. Actually it is relevant, but in the opposite direction, because free will requires laws of physics for choice to be a thing. Otherwise the brain’s preference for one action over the other would not reliably lead to executing the preferred action.
You were able to do otherwise, not because of any gaps in the laws of physics, but because you are part of the physics that matters here. You have abilities, grounded in the physics of your body, and most of the actions you consider are things you are in fact able to do.
Perhaps most important, ability to do otherwise does not require “ability to do otherwise even holding your past constant.” It doesn’t, for roughly the same reason that it would be silly to say that it requires “ability to do otherwise even holding your future constant.” The laws of nature are bi-directionally (in time) deterministic. The arrow of time / arrow of causality is an emergent property, and doesn’t go all the way down to fundamental physics. Grasping the implications is hard, but well worth it, because they go to the heart of the “free will problem”.
It’s not clear to me how free will emerges from deterministic forces and then circles back to become the determining cause. Each domino falls until it reaches…what, something called the will, which then determines which domino will fall next? And next? And next? How many dominoes does free will cause to fall before physics takes back control?
I don’t recall who said it but “You can want what you choose but you can’t choose what you want.” Determinism is the most parsimonious explanation for human behavior. Once accepted, at least from my perspective, it brings peace of mind, not existential dread.
The article is excellent — a pleasure to read.
I wonder if the idea that high-level organisms have more freedom than low-level ones, which in turn have more freedom than inanimate matter, is exactly backwards. My intuition is the opposite: once life emerges, a new set of rules begins to govern matter, making bacteria more constrained than a rock, not less. Sentient life adds another layer of constraints, and the human brain — with language, logic, and reason — adds yet another. Rather than a ladder of increasing freedom, what we seem to have is a ladder of increasing constraint.
I don’t understand this. Humans can do a lot more stuff than rocks can.
Determinism arguments rest on the assumption that the laws of physics are deterministic but they aren’t. Quantum Mechanics is a non-deterministic set of laws. If this is correct then determinism is not. It’s not quite the same as saying there is free will but it refutes determinism as a first start.
Also implicit in determinism arguments centred around physics is that we fully understand physics, and I would argue that we just don’t. There are so many areas of physics we just don’t understand, like the collapse of the wave function, that there seems to be ample room to let in something under the rubric of ’emergent’ behaviour.
This would look something like ‘yes there are laws of physics, some of these are non-deterministic and we don’t fully understand them, bulk properties of some physical entities like neutrons appear to exhibit emergent behaviour that is non-deterministic and even quantum in nature, but this is still allowed by physics’. This opens the possibility of libertarian free will.
Note that I don’t necessarily think all humans have free will. If emergence is real, then it’s likely that different species with different levels of brain complexity and IQ would exhibit different levels of emergency. Anecdotally we all know of people who never learn from their experience, cannot self reflect, and persist in self destructive behaviour.
No, determinism simply claims that all phenomena, most especially human behaviors, result from the working of physics. It can be probabilistic physics, as in quantum mechanics, or more predictable classical mechanics.
Emergent behaviors that come from the working of physics do not give us libertarian free will, which depends on some magical “will” that we have never seen and is subject to human manipulation.
I’m not quite sure that you know the difference between “emergence” and “magic”!
My point is more subtle than this. Determinism is rooted in physics as you note, but the common view of that seems to be ‘hard determinism’ ie totally predictable, clockwork-universe style, hence no free will. This seems to be what the majority of physicists believe. I’m saying that physics itself has non-deterministic laws like quantum mechanics and areas we can’t yet explain with known laws. By just admitting in the fact there is non-determinism we eliminate the possibility of hard determinism, which removes THAT argument against libertarian free will. I make no claim as to the mechanism of free will if it exists, except that it must be grounded in physics because everything is. Emergence seems to be a short hand way of labelling behaviours that we have no explanation for under our current incomplete understanding of physics, which likely has something to do with scaling complexity laws driving behaviours evident in highly complex systems where the difference between behaviours exhibited by whole/part relations of physical systems is very wide – the single versus billions of neurons issue someone raised earlier. None of what I say requires magical thinking which I abhor.
I’m entirely with Jerry on free will and determinism. It’s been a long journey for me, finally reached when I found I couldn’t answer the question who am “I”?
I find that question answered every time I look in a mirror. I might not like everything I see there, but there I am. There’s more that can be said, but the rest is straightforward.
Maybe I’m looking at it more deeply but I look in a mirror and see me too, but then I might ask myself is there a “me” that is separate from the neurons, receptors, and senses that is viewing the image. So I’m not sure it’s so straightforward if you ask yourself these questions. If you don’t then it is, I agree.
I don’t see any evidence for a “me” that is separate from neurons and senses and the body, so I go with the naturalistic explanation. But here’s the kicker: Once you let it sink in that Thou Art Physics, the free will “problem” allegedly posed by naturalism begins to disappear.