M408  

Free Will

In November 2006 New Scientist magazine published an article by Patricia Churchland, professor of philosophy at the University of California, San Diego campus.  It was called 'Do we have free will?' with the subheading 'The more we find out about how the brain works, the less room there seems to be for personal choice or responsibility'.[i]

In early January 2007 there was a follow-up article in New Scientist by the philosopher John Searle, Professor at Berkeley, a rival campus of the University of California.  His article was called 'Between a rock and hard place'.[ii]

The subject has continued to play on my mind ever since, with these arguments about free will interlinking with thoughts on Damasio and the importance of emotion in rational decision-making, with ideas of quantum theory and chaos at the molecular level leading to emergent interaction; with Freud's theories of identity and ego opposing those of poststructuralism; and even with thoughts that the 'death of the author' is being taken to extremes, science having successfully evicted the 'God of the gaps', now concentrating on the 'self of the gaps' and the 'death of the subject'  as well.[iii]  The topic of free will seemed to link directly to much of my earlier research on occupation and motivation, and various ideas concerning the construction and meaning of self.

Patricia Churchland’s stance in this article appeared to be more scientific than philosophical, using medical evidence to demonstrate the non-existence of free will.  She began with the case study of a normal, reasonably adjusted man who started to collect child pornography and developed an unhealthy interest in little girls, which got him into trouble with the courts.  He then started complaining of headaches, which when investigated were found to be caused by a benign tumour in the frontal area of his brain in regions known to affect sexual behaviour.  Once this was operated upon, the man's behaviour returned to 'normal'.  Some time later, when his obsession re-appeared, a brain scan revealed that tumour tissue still remained and was developing rapidly.  When this was also removed his behaviour again returned to normal.  The question that Churchland posed was - did this man have free will?  And if he did not, do we who are 'normal' have free will?  Research is revealing biological causes for ordinary human behaviour in genetics, and in the molecular biology of the human body.  Maternal-offspring attachments, and mate attachments in mammals, for example, are known to be caused by peptides released in the brain.  If even our social and affectionate behaviours are biologically controlled can we continue to believe in free will?

Churchland thinks that we should re-frame the problem and discuss the issue of self-control rather than free will.  This redefines the problem from a difficult philosophical definition of a term, to a down-to-earth behaviour that we can observe.

As regards biology, at the level of the autonomic functions such as heart rate and breathing we have no direct self control.  At the level of behaviour we have biological drives, emotional affects, and conscious control subject to maturation.  Humans learn to limit their behaviour through self-control, which is a biologically useful tactic for a number of reasons.  From the safety aspect, we learn to avoid harm and develop useful habits; don't touch the hot stove, avoid wasps, and try not to make other people angry, for example.  Self-control is important for social animals such as humans who must live in groups, and it is a feature shared with other mammals.  But Churchland also asks what is 'self'; and finds some biologically useful answers.  A sense of self is a useful tool for making sense of the world; for monitoring our physical selves, maintaining the separation between inside and out, or making use of the concept of past and future as tools.  A sense of self is necessary for successful social interactions, including a sense of respect, love and accomplishment - although these are equally affected by the biology of temperament, hormones and serotonin.

Her general conclusion is that there can be no such thing as free will because humans are biologically driven, and a sense of self and of free will is merely a useful tool that assists our social survival and successful mediation with the outside world.

John Searle begins his article by saying that although it looks as though neurobiology can provide scientific explanations for free will, he does not think that human beings will be able to live with the result.

Our general approach to reality, writes Searle, is to presuppose causal determinism.  Nothing happens in our experience without something causing it.  It rains because of pressure systems.  The Oakland Freeway collapsed because of an earthquake (his example).  I am reminded of my earlier research on motivation, driven as it was by the question of why we do things.  When searching for a logical explanation for biology the current scientific framework always brings our thinking back to the 'causally deterministic' evolutionary benefits to survival.

Searle says, 'because we assume there must be some such story for all events, including human actions, there seems to be an easy solution to free will: it does not exist.'  'Why can't we just accept that and go home?'  The answer is that our conscious experience of voluntarily intentional action makes us unable to accept it.  One cannot live life on the basis that free will is an illusion.  Even if determinism is accepted, lived conscious experience is different.  Searle introduces the idea of gaps in causality as the cause of our feelings of free will and says there are two hypotheses: hypotheses one, there are no gaps in causality at the neurobiological level; the process is predetermined: if there is no indeterminism in the brain there can be no indeterminism in behaviour resulting from it; there must therefore be no free will.  Free will is an illusion, which is consistent with our scientific view of how the world works.

Hypothesis two; there must be indeterminism, or gaps in determinism, in brain structure, and our experience of free will reflects something real in the brain.  His rather weak explanation of why this must be so is that evolutionarily and socially, it makes no sense to deny free will.  So much biological capital has gone into the development of the human brain, consciousness and creativity that it cannot have been for nothing (a thoroughly causal explanation).  Similarly, so much social capital goes into education, and we have not yet discovered it to be a waste of time due to a predetermined output.  He mentions indeterminacy at the quantum level, which is the 'natural' nature of the universe, but quantum indeterminacy is perceived as producing randomness, which does not exactly fit with the production of rational decisions.

I do wonder why he doesn't mention emergence, which I have come across in two quite separate discourses; that of design and of occupational therapy.[iv]  Emergence itself feels incomplete as an explanation, but that is because it makes assumptions from observations of complex systems, rather than breaking those systems down into a molecular state where one is actually analysing something different.  Personally I am quite happy to accept that there are no indeterminate structures in the brain – that one thing always directly causes another – but that thinking is an emergent process, not 'highway one'; that the random nature of lottery balls (a closed, random system) is a reasonable metaphor for the decision making brain, which is then limited and organised by habits, fears, preferences, emotions, biology and genetics.  But then I am an artist, not a neurologist or a philosopher.  I am happy to support a little cognitive dissonance.

Searle gives a very elegant, final demonstration of why we can't live with the idea that free will does not exist, which I shall quote below:

When I discussed these issues in a lecture in London, someone in the audience asked: ‘if hypothesis one were demonstrated to be true, would you accept it?’ Notice the form of the question: if it were demonstrated that there is no such thing as free, rational decision-making, would you freely and rationally decide to accept that demonstration?

Emergent interaction 

Emotion and Rationality

Theories of Motivation