Students who have been exposed to the idea that free will is a cognitive illusion are more likely to cheat. No word on whether proctors who have been exposed to this notion are less likely to turn them in. Luckily, most of us were programmed, at the moment of the big bang, to ignore people who tell us that free will is an illusion.
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On Megan McArdle would claim one thing (that its absurd to think free will is just an illusion) and link to an article that presents evidence that suggests the exact opposite:
"As we reported in February, students who are exposed to the idea that free will is an illusion are more likely to cheat on tests. Not surprisingly, the notion that our actions aren’t truly controlled by our conscious mind seems to undermine our sense of personal responsibility. Well, our ethical foundations eroded a bit more this week.
Research by the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, provides additional evidence that our conscious minds are merely keeping up with (and, presumably, rationalizing) decisions our unconscious minds have already made. It is published in the April 13 issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience."
Anyone care to explain to me the evolutionary purpose of consciousness if its merely a post hoc rationalizer of decisions?
That's where the free will is an illusion argument always falters for me. What's the point of wasting all this neural hardware simulating free will and consciousness when we're just doing what our instincts tell us to do?
And I might be overstating the case, but referencing a forthcoming article with no content isn't really evidence... not does linking an article constitute a wholesale adoption of all its content.
So... sit'n'spin Rickm.
Sorry, my R-Cortex made me do that... then it made me apologize...
Not to mention that choosing which hand to slap a button isn't exactly a great moral decision relevant to free will.
Its interesting for other reasons, but merely observing that human beings are not ghosts manipulating never clusters from some context free heaven of perfect objectivity is hardly a big shocker.
Toxic,
No need to apologize. Rick has been acting up lately. Time for a hard drive wipe and reboot.
Free will ... free to do what? When you take into account genetics, upbringing, and the perception of payoffs for various actions in a given situation, I don't know what function free will is playing.
So you don't even have the free will to ignore people that tell you free will is an illusion?
My will wasn't free at all -- it cost me $300.
kenB,
You should have gone to Walmart- you could have gotten one manufactured by Tibetan slave labor for half that.
I'm not sure why free will has to be associated with the conscious, rather than unconscious, mind.
It should be obvious to anybody reading internet blogs that people make up their minds on habit then start making up rationalizations (rather than reasoning to a result) approximately 99.999% of the time.
Toxic - The cortex (which many people associate with free will, for good or ill) does have a "free won't" sort of function where it can interrupt and recast learned responses.
Most of these studies deal with knee-jerk responses anyways, not ones which have been deliberated over.
That experiment is almost uniquely bad for studying free will. If you ask someone to make a "random" choice, you're basically asking on them to call on their subconscious to spit something out, and then go with it. If you ask me to name a "random" number, and I say 19, the number came out of some process in my brain. I don't know exactly what that process is, because I was actively choosing not to think about it consciously.
My problem with the notion of free will is that I've yet to encounter a coherant definition of what, exactly, it's supposed to be.
Nearly every definition I encounter degenerate to infinite regress, appeals to randomness, mysticism, or special pleading.
No matter how hard I try to think of a coherant definition, or to find one in the literature, I run into the invariable paradox that any potential mechanism for free will is, itself, outside of and excluded from the will of the person that it is supposedly providing the freedom of.
As for Toxic's objection, I think he's jumping to the conclusion that the impression that we have free will is something that our neural hardward is actively simulating. The brain is subject to all sorts of cognitive illusions, most of which are simply the product of the brain taking mental shortcuts in order to deal with a realworld environment. I don't think that it's implausible that we would experience the illusion that our decisions are entirely conscious and unconstrained as a side-effect of deeper neural processes rather than the selected product of evolutionary pressures.
Finally, I think that the question is ultimately only of philosophical interest. Whether or not we have "free will" (whatever that may be), the illusion that our actions are unconstrained is sufficiently compelling and generally useful that we may as well continue to act as though they are. Indeed, I sincerely doubt that we could even if we tried.
My problem with the notion of free will is that I've yet to encounter a coherant definition of what, exactly, it's supposed to be.
Nearly every definition I encounter degenerate to infinite regress, appeals to randomness, mysticism, or special pleading.
No matter how hard I try to think of a coherant definition, or to find one in the literature, I run into the invariable paradox that any potential mechanism for free will is, itself, outside of and excluded from the will of the person that it is supposedly providing the freedom of.
As for Toxic's objection, I think he's jumping to the conclusion that the impression that we have free will is something that our neural hardward is actively simulating. The brain is subject to all sorts of cognitive illusions, most of which are simply the product of the brain taking mental shortcuts in order to deal with a realworld environment. I don't think that it's implausible that we would experience the illusion that our decisions are entirely conscious and unconstrained as a side-effect of deeper neural processes rather than the selected product of evolutionary pressures.
Finally, I think that the question is ultimately only of philosophical interest. Whether or not we have "free will" (whatever that may be), the illusion that our actions are unconstrained is sufficiently compelling and generally useful that we may as well continue to act as though they are. Indeed, I sincerely doubt that we could even if we tried.
If you ask me to name a "random" number, and I say 19, the number came out of some process in my brain. I don't know exactly what that process is, because I was actively choosing not to think about it consciously.
Point: a computer programmed as a random number generator will always spit out a number on command unless something goes terribly awry. A human, when requested to generate a random number, always has the option of saying "19" or "get lost, I'm not participating in any studies today."
Should I let this debate continue or not?
....I think, yes.
I think the two experiments should be combined. Did the subconscious know whether or not the students would cheat seven seconds before the conscious decision?
Similar to another commenter, I've never seen a description of free will that is coherent.
That's where the free will is an illusion argument always falters for me. What's the point of wasting all this neural hardware simulating free will and consciousness when we're just doing what our instincts tell us to do?
People who don't believe in free will (or who think the concept is incoherant) don't think that our consciusness is useless. Our actions are determined by our conscious decisions. Consciousness is useful for making complex decisions. It's just that those decisions ultimately spring from our genes, environment, current stimulus, and possibly some randomness. There is no room for some mystical concept of "free will".
People who don't believe in free will (or who think the concept is incoherant) don't think that our consciusness is useless. Our actions are determined by our conscious decisions. Consciousness is useful for making complex decisions. It's just that those decisions ultimately spring from our genes, environment, current stimulus, and possibly some randomness. There is no room for some mystical concept of "free will".
This statement is loaded with just as much mysticism as anything ascribed to free will, and reduces to nothing more than a complex way of denying personal responsibility for one's actions.
Only people with a wish for trouble buy a line like that on the open market, and if you don't believe me, try out the defense of "genes, environment, current stimulus, and possibly some randomness" on the cop next time you find yourself involved in a traffic stop. Even better, try it before the judge. I can guarantee an immediate order from the bench for a complete psychiatric evaluation.
If you ask me to name a "random" number, and I say 19
I always pick a prime number.
Isn't particle physics a really good argument against free will? Even if there are some quantum variations, how exactly does someone control them?
Or, alternatively, if you believe in free will, make yourself not believe in free will. I bet you can't.
Re: There is no room for some mystical concept of "free will".
I see nothing particularly "mystical" about free will. Seems to me it's just one of those basic givens about reality, like time or gravitation or consciousness itself. True, we can't integrate consciousness or free will with what we know about physics (yet) but we also can't integrate all of physics into one system (yet) either. I wouldn't dismiss gravitation as "mystical" or "meaningless" because it doesn't fit well with quantum mechanics and every attempt to make it fit has come a-cropper. So why act so scandalized about mental phenomena?
Why is there an assumption that the materialistic position is antithetical to the concept of free will, while a mystical, religious or metaphysical position is friendly to the concept of free will?
Most religions are highly fatalistic. Meanwhile, if I understand things correctly, particle physics has insisted that the future is not predictable, even in theory, ever since the 1920s.
I don't know what free will is meant to be, either. The article seems to presume that because decisions are considered and made subconsciously before being vetted by higher cognitive functions then free will in on shaky ground. Why does free will have to require conscious rather than unconscious decision making?
Just coming back to this point to note that the idea that thinking that all of your actions, and your ultimate fate, is predetermined would lead people to be publicly and privately immoral and irresponsible would come as a great surprise to one John Calvin.
But of course as we all know those Calvinist Swiss and Dutch are notoriously lazy, slovenly people who are incapable of following rules or laws. That's why Weber wrote that book about the Catholic work ethic.
This statement is loaded with just as much mysticism as anything ascribed to free will, and reduces to nothing more than a complex way of denying personal responsibility for one's actions.
Also unstated in the concept of "free will", as generally argued, is that free will is somehow required for us, as a society, to punish transgressions.
I don't see why this is the case. Even if we're free-will-less individuals merely reacting to stimulus, then punishment of transgressions is simply one of those stimuli that the rest of us are stimulated to provide by the stimulus of the transgression, in the first place.
Or, something. It's feedback, basically. Autonomous systems have feedback; free-will-less human societies would (or do), also.
This statement is loaded with just as much mysticism as anything ascribed to free will
How so? I've listed a bunch of factors that we know influence our decisions. Maybe you think I left some out. Which ones?
a complex way of denying personal responsibility for one's actions
Absense of free will has nothing to do with personal responsibility. There's nothing wrong with holding a deterministic agent responsible for its actions.
I see nothing particularly "mystical" about free will. Seems to me it's just one of those basic givens about reality, like time or gravitation or consciousness itself
How could you possible tell whether you had free wll or not? Deterministic entities would percieve themselves as having agency over themselves.
Why exactly is this thing called "free will" that you claim to have, and how does it make your experience different than what you'd experience if you were deterministic?
Brooksfoeb, this was in fact a huge problem that the Calvinists grappled with, and they had to engage in some fancy theologic gymnastics to get around it. The other way they got around it, AFAICT, was for 95% of the flock to totally ignore the implications of predestination.
The other problem is consciousness itself; it's just about impossible to define, let alone explain, it from a pure materialist perspective.
Now, you may answer that that, too, is an illusion, though what exactly is experiencing the illusion in that case is a bit problematic... I think you need to answer that question before you can even ask the free will one coherently, and right now we just can't.
There might be free will, but the way we experience free will is almost certainly an illusion. When we think we are choosing we are actually narating the reasons for having chosen. The human brain is a very complex machine and is too complex to understand with precision how it goes from stimulus to response but the fact that this information is somewhere between unknown and unknowable does not mean that the physical material of the nervous system is not subject to the same laws of physics as a domino falling or an electron passing through a resistor.
That people can lead entirely normal lives pretending that they have free will is not any more compeling than pointing out that people did just fine believing that sun revolves around the earth or that lightning bolts were tossed around by a muscle bound giant with a beard.
Martin Gardner, the science writer, has written about the impossibility of defining free will.
When faced with a choice between A and B, how do you decide between them? Any choice that you make is necessarily a product of all of your upbringing and life experience, telling you what seems right. Your "free will" is merely an expression of how the world has shaped your personality.
I think there is a huge confusion here, rooted in the naturalistic fallacy. Free will is not one thing. There are two free wills, going by the same name and only paying one set of taxes between them.
Metaphysical free will is free will that exists in some sense. It's a concept, or an object, or whatever. Call it emergent complexity, randomness, or Penrose's "im in yr quantumz pwning all yr nueronz", it's something we can talk about as existing in the world, like Communism or mashmallow peeps. What it does isn't an issue; if it is, is the issue.
Moral free will is a free will that says what you ought to do, not whether or not it exists. Moral free will says you're a bad person if you double-park, or stab your baby, or pick your nose in public. (The last might seem to be just a matter of etiquette, but it's part of free will and morality too.)
Now anyone who has read Hume knows what I'm going to say next, in big bold extra-shiny letters I got from the internetz:
You can't get an ought from an is.
(Or vice versa, but if I added that it wouldn't be punchy any more.) You can't go from saying 'free will exists' to 'therefore I should hate Nazis'*. Free will doesn't underwrite any system of morality. (If anything does, it's cause and effect, which Hume had a lot more to say on, too.)
--Devin
* I call Godwin's Law first.
"Anyone care to explain to me the evolutionary purpose of consciousness if its merely a post hoc rationalizer of decisions? "
Just because it is a post hoc rationalizer of decisions doesn't mean that's all that it is.
You can train a dog to do tricks upon being given the proper stimulus. The dog doesn't think "roll over now so I can get a biscuit". It does what is hammered into it by repitition.
Our concious mind plays the part of trainer. Our brains, being very nifty, insttantly recognize and prioritize situations without concious effort. The trivial, the easy and the familiar are rapidly assessed and proper responses are formulated. Without the groundwork laid by the conscious mind, those thoughtless responses would not be possible.
Think about driving. We hardly make any conscious decisions while driving after we've done it for a while. Everything is either repitition or reaction or trivial. However, when your primary route to work is closed, you're already late and your almost out of gas, you'll make a concious decision to deal with a new and non-trivial situation. If you think about it for a while, your mind will store a vast array of contingencies so that next time, you won't need to bother using that slow and cumbersome (but versatile) conciousness that is better dedicated to difficult problems.
This doesn't really have any impact on the free-will question though. Even more, the free-will question is pointless since people don't agree on what it means. Ultimately, the implications one extrapolates are more important than the yes-no answer. Given the definitions of "free" and "will", I think only a fool could possibly think we have free will. However, I don't think that's what philosophers mean by free will.
I believe that in philosophy, it is just this: Does a person (within a broad standard range of mental capacity) bear responsibility for their actions? If so, then they must have been free not to take them, otherwise we can not morally hold them responsible.
I don't even accept that though (feel free to ignore me). I don't really think of free will as an illusion, but as a very useful fiction. Societies comprised of individuals that believe in personal responsibility are much more likely to thrive. In this way, free will serves the same purpose as heaven and hell.
I think eventually people will realize this state of affairs and come to grips with it. The concept of "blame" for the purpose of correctly assigning hate is not very useful anymore. Recognizing "flaw" for the purpose of correction is useful. Flaw is innate though, not a matter of will.
"Luckily, most of us were programmed, at the moment of the big bang, to ignore people who tell us that free will is an illusion."
Unfortunately those Russians back in the day seemed to get suckered into the old party-line about false consciousness.
Oh well ... lesson learned.
(By the way: While what Obama said was certainly rude, I think we need to start worrying when his rhetoric shifts from the blathering of a garden variety liberal snob to Noam Chomsky/Plato's Cave type hyperbole - which is unlikely. This isn't early 20th century Russia, and our working classes don't like to be patronized)