More nonsense on free will from scientists

Here. An anecdote. A prominent neuroscientist gave a talk I attended about moral responsibility. In question time, I pointed out that compatibilism exists as a view. The prominent neuroscientist said "Oh, I know that philosophers say something like that. But they don't really believe it, do they?"

Comments

[Joe Campbell]

I believe it!

[Neil]

Well you say you believe that you believe it. But you don't really believe that you believe it, do you?

[Tamler Sommers]

I believe that Joe believes that he believes it.

[Drake]

Predictably, I find myself unable to believe it.

[Jonathan Jong]

I believe! But I'm just a psychologist.

[Eddy Nahmias]

Actually, I think this discussion contains less nonsense than usual, especially by the psychiatrist Paul McHugh. The neuroscientist, Mark Hallet does make the usual, mostly mistaken, moves, taking Libet's experiment to show that "conscious will" (which he uses as the "location" of free will) does not cause actions, and concluding that "up to now, no experiment involving 'free will' has identified a factor other than the routine operation of different parts of the brain." Once again, we see an argument by a neuroscientist that invokes not determinism but the causal closure of the physical:
1. The proximate cause of all human behavior (including thinking) is brain activity.
2. So there is no room for free will.
Crucial missing premise: free will cannot be identified with brain activity.

McHugh's view is much more interesting. He offers something like a compatibilist reasons-responsive view that emphasizes the importance of consciousness, which he (correctly) thinks neuroscience has yet to explain. He also correctly thinks this is a philosophical problem that will not be solved by scientific researcch alone.

Not only do I believe compatibilism is true, but I *know* that many philosophers believe compatibilism is true.

[quidnunc]

"Some have argued that this situation is artificial, that everything is really controlled by the experimenter, and that the free choice occurs earlier. So could it be that while the proximate initiation of movement is actually unconscious, the real free will can be found earlier? Could it be manifest in the thinking that we do before getting to the movement situation? For example, we decide, when sitting at the dinner table, that we want to eat rather than talk, and thus our hand “automatically” brings the fork to our mouth.

[...]

The best we can say now is that consciousness is awareness, and this awareness appears to be composed largely of perceptions and “qualia.” Only if further research shows that free will is also a force that drives behavior can it actually be what we all naively think it is. While scientists must remain open-minded, since we have no evidence for a force of free will at the present time, I must take the position that free will exists only as a perception."

Seems reasonable to me. It's a methodological statement.

[Neil]

Eddy, I doubt McHugh is defending some kind of compatibilism. He says that the view that what "people do—and believe they choose to do—is inexorably determined by brain conditions present and past" rests not "presumption not neuroscience"; for all we know, a non-reducible consciousness may play a role in behavior. This sounds like emergentism plus libertarianism. Now the position itself is not entirely unreasonable; what annoys me about these guys is that they simply don't know what they're talking about. They're offering solutions to problems that they don't understand. A libertarian like Kane or O'Connor (or Searle, whose view is somewhat like McHugh's) has a right to their views; these guys don't.

[Eddy Nahmias]

Oh, but if these guys didn't have their views--and manage to get them into the public sphere more than any philosopher writing on free will (even Searle!)--then I wouldn't have a book to write about why their views are confused!

[Adam Leonard]

Dr. Michael S. Gazzaniga's discovery of and writing about (most recently in The Ethical Brain) the left-brain interpreter function has kicked the classical "free will" philosophical debate into a new arena -- one in which cognitive and evolutionary biologists and psychologists are major players.

Awareness that the interpreter function automatically generates conscious explanations for any unconsciously motivated behavior (or feelings) makes it possible to recognize that much human behavior is actually driven by tribal territorial animal instincts. … The interpreter provides "rational" explanations for our irrational (instinct-driven) warring and religious and political brawling.

This of course raises the specter of our being "automatons" with no free will, but that is not the case: our behavior is merely predisposed, not predestined, and we have the ability to override our hardwired species programming with softwired restraints. (Witness the wide range of behavior from ascetic to hedonistic in response to our sexual instincts.)

With apologies for "self promotion," I recommend my book, "Man by Nature: The Hidden Programming Controlling Human Behavior," for a thorough discussion of these issues.

Adam Leonard

[Adam Leonard]

Dr. Michael S. Gazzaniga's discovery of and writing about (most recently in The Ethical Brain) the left-brain interpreter function has kicked the classical "free will" philosophical debate into a new arena -- one in which cognitive and evolutionary biologists and psychologists are major players.

Awareness that the interpreter function automatically generates conscious explanations for any unconsciously motivated behavior (or feelings) makes it possible to recognize that much human behavior is actually driven by tribal territorial animal instincts. … The interpreter provides "rational" explanations for our irrational (instinct-driven) warring and religious and political brawling.

This of course raises the specter of our being "automatons" with no free will, but that is not the case: our behavior is merely predisposed, not predestined, and we have the ability to override our hardwired species programming with softwired restraints. (Witness the wide range of behavior from ascetic to hedonistic in response to our sexual instincts.)

With apologies for "self promotion," I recommend my book, "Man by Nature: The Hidden Programming Controlling Human Behavior," for a thorough discussion of these issues.

Adam Leonard

[Seidl]

I agree--that debate was total nonsense. (And riddled with embarrassingly crude fallacies.)

Those guys really need to catch up on the free will debate, starting with Frankfurt. It seems clear that neither are familiar with free-will concepts that working philosophers teach to the merest of their undergraduate students.

With regard to the debate and to above comments, my understanding of free will is "the ability to want one's desires," which is not at all what is being discussed in the debate.

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