A la Samuel Johnson, I refute #determinism thus

Inspired by Daniel Klein's new book, "Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It," I came to an "a ha moment" on philosophical determinism.

Yes, a lot of people call it physical determinism, but, I generally believe they're wrong. And, I'll state that bluntly. More on that further down the road.

First, though, another reason they're wrong. Per good, common-sense epistemology, like Raymond Smullyan's "An Epistemological Nightmare," most don't believe in their own claims to be determinists.

Along the lines of that claim of mine, I present these rhetorical thoughts.

For determinists, if you really think all your life is determined, do you:
1. Stop consciously desiring things?
2. Stop consciously planning things?
Etc.

If you claim that such desires and plans are themselves determined,
1. How do you justify that?
2. Do you really believe that means you shouldn't stop consciously desiring and planning things, because you can try to hide what seems like willingness in a "meta"?

And, I'm quite confident that, whether I have in mind evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, a couple of commenters on blogs of philosophy professor and online friend Massimo Pigliucci, or a Facebook friend and lover of Sam Harris, that they of course do not cross any of those hurdles. To riff on Johnson, I have kicked their "determinism" rock and found it to be made of papier-mâché.

So, what gives?

I don't know whether it should be labeled more as a Wittgensteinian misuse of language, or a Gilbert Ryle category mistake, but I am pretty sure of "what gives."

Such people think that the rejection of ontological dualism and embrace of philosophical naturalism necessarily entails philosophical dualism. Note: I am using "necessarily" not in an everyday general language sense but more precisely in its logical sense.

And, of course, philosophical or metaphysical naturalism in no way entails philosophical determinism on matters of the will.

Now, that said, in some narrow, quasi-tautological sense, does non-dualistic naturalism lead to some narrowly defined physical dualism? Of course. Again, that's quasi-tautological at most, and straight-out tautological at least.

This is why, once again, the likes of Jerry Coyne should leave philosophy to philosophers, and the likes of Slamming Sammy Harris, if he's promoting philosophical or mental determinism himself, should stop claiming to be a philosopher.

Beyond that, as regular readers here know, I've strongly rejected the whole "polarities" of the "free will vs. determinism" issue by saying "mu" to it, as well as noting that determinism's central physicalism claim has the same problem as Aristotle's Prime Mover on infinite regress, noting that human evolutionary biology and the evolution of consciousness would give determinists yet another thought experiment hot potato, riffed on Dan Dennett (I'm a better thinker than him on this issue, and that's that, Dan) to say that there are varieties of both free will and determinism not worth considering, said "mu" to the polarities again, called determinism of the Coyne type "simpleminded," and, most recently, said free will might be a spandrel, using that word just like Stephen Jay Gould.

Free will, a confabulation? Or "mu," part 4

I've written two previous, or even three, blogposts on saying "mu" to the old, tired ideas of "free will versus determinism." (That doesn't count a sidebar piece.)

Now, per a new piece at Massimo Pigliucci's Scientia Salon, and comments there, including from Massimo, to whom I may not be as close on these issues as I thought a year ago, it's time for No. 4.

And, evolutionary psychology (done right, and not close to Pop Ev Pysch) is going to be even more part of the issue than in previous posts.

I want to pick up further on the issue of “confabulation” and free will.

The evolution of the brain to produce “pattern detectors” and “agency imputers” could also, whether as a spandrel, or a deliberate add-on for better running of the pattern and agency “programs,” have also created the idea of free will.

Per the likes of Elizabeth Loftus, on things like memory, our brain is a great big confabulator. Along with that, why wouldn’t we also confabulate our own sense of agency at times? In short, that “agency inputer” of evolutionary psychology fame may be imputing agency to ME, myself, as well as YOU.

Simple, simple concept. But, again, one that traditional defenders of a more robust version of free will might not like.

Wikipedia's piece on the neuroscience of free will addresses this, this issue of post-temporal confabulation, to some degree. Specifically, it's under the section on "retrospective construction," if one wants something more scientific than "confabulation."

It also leads into robust defenders of classical free will seemingly wanting to say that Benjamin Libet's famous experiments have very little to do with issues of free will. And, to keep on saying it, and saying it.

They are true to a degree. But not the degree that they believe, and would have others believe.

In one response, I've said it before and will say it again now. I think at least some of Eddy Nahmias’ claims are overstated. As part of that, I’ll stand by my idea that, at a minimum, Libet has shown (along with others, such as Daniel Kahnemann from psychology with his "fast" and "slow" thinking systems, and others with similar ideas) we need to narrow our ideas about the amount of human mental activity that is fully conscious.

So, for Massimo and others who look at free will to fair degree through the lens of consciousness, he and follow-ups do make a degree of difference. That’s especially true per my idea of self-imputation of agency, above.

This, in turn, is another reason I say “mu” to the issue more and more. Consciousness is of course not the same as free will. But, they are entangled enough that lack of knowledge in consciousness affects lack of knowledge elsewhere.

I think until we know more about the details of how tasks that start becoming habitual are eventually pushed into semantic memory to be run automatically, we should be a bit leery about talking about free will and conscious vs. autonomic, or subconscious or whatever term you prefer for less than fully conscious behavior.

Also, given the amount of follow-up experiments to Libet’s originals, and the interest in them by philosophers, too, I think this claim of commenter David Ottlinger:

It’s the the common opinion of philosophers that Libet is very little obstacle to free will.

Is overstated. I've said that before, too, and noted that I've tussled with Massimo over this issue before, too.

On my essay, I used the phrase “free willer of the gaps.”

As for the fact that Libet and post-Libet experiments only cover a limited range of actions? Well, that’s about current limitations in neuroscience research; it doesn’t mean that what Libet found is guaranteed to only apply to such a limited range of mental actions.

And, again, let’s note that phrase “post-Libet.” Per Wiki, there has been a lot of additional study here. A lot.

Defenders of a robust version of "classical" free will who say the "Libet experiments" don't prove much? Libet's initial experiments are 30 years old. Even with neuroscience still being limited, even only in the Early Bronze Age today, it has still built on that — including with research experiments that have addressed the issue of whether people had enough time to "decide" to undertake an action.

Beyond that, I’ve read Daniel Wegner and others who have built philosophizing ideas about free will on post-Libet experiment findings. Update: Wegner's "The Illusion of Conscious Will" is reviewed by me here.

First, as for the issue of consciousness?

To riff on the New Agey mantra, while we use much more than 10 percent of our brain at a time, the amount of our brain that is engaged in conscious deliberational processes may be closer to 10 percent than 90 percent, and surely isn’t 90 percent.

This relates to issues of free will as choice, and choice based on modeling alternative behaviors and their likely playouts.

First, of course, we often don't have time for such detailed modeling.

Second, when we do, if the situation's not totally novel, the modeling is usually at least in part subconscious.

I think much of the “choice” being made is not at a fully conscious level. Modern psychology would indicate this is certainly true in things like habitual behavior, which somewhat shades into my article here (thanks for the link) about psychological determinism.

Per that, and bringing in the evolutionary angle, we know that our brain tries to automate, or at least semi-automate, as many processes as it can, to save energy consumption. And, this process results in some of this modeling being done at a less than fully conscious level.

Libet-type experiments, as I note, yes, have their limitations. That doesn't mean they're foundational limitations; they're quite possibly just structural limitations of the current level of research ability. As for those structural limitations, per the fact that we're 30 years on from the actual Libet experiments, when neuroscience was, if not Paleolithic, then Mesolithic, says something. The Early Bronze Age of today may not sound fantastic, but it's steps forward.

(After all, did we reject Dalton or Mendeleev because their theories about periodicity in chemistry had structural limitations?)

Martin Seligmann would try to rescue free will with the idea of prospection, back-formed off retrospection. Big problems, though, as I see it.

It's heavily invested in teleology, which is no wonder he's getting Templeton money for it. Beyond the religious overtones of Templeton, not to mention the fundraising overtones (and other ethical issues in his past) of Marty Seligmann, I have non-religious issues with teleology.

In ev psych done right, while we may have evolved "pattern detectors" and "agency imputers" hundreds of thousands of years ago, I doubt that we have evolved "teleology focusers" before the last 100,000 years, if we have at all. I think homo sapiens would have had to evolve not only at least a firm level of second-order thought, but even a tentative degree of third-order thought, for such. (A blue jay may be able to think about another blue jay stealing nuts, but not (at least not non-instinctually) about how it should try to prevent that in a goal-oriented way. In turn, this is why, although I have no problems seeing some degree of consciousness in many "higher" mammals and birds, I don't see something like volitional action in most of them.

A rise in third-order thinking among humans would then likely have gone hand in hand with, among other things, a rise in teleological thinking. But teleological foci wouldn’t have happened before that, I don’t think.

Of course, these are all just speculations on my part; fMRIs of animals that can't communicate with us avail nothing, and while old fMRIs showed action in the brain of a dead salmon, real fMRIs, should we find the brain of a dead Homo erectus, will show us nothing.

That said, if neuroscience can't necessarily tell us a lot about what IS involved with issues of volition in general, and what variety of free will, or something like free will, we may have actually evolved, before that, it can tell us more and more what varieties of free will we don't have.

And, to riff on Dan Dennett, it can tell us about what varieties of free will, or something like free will, that we may actually have, whether we consider them "worth having" or not. It will certainly contribute, per a blog post on this issue a month ago, about the varieties of free will worth discussing.

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Finally, and once again, none of these critiques of current ideas of free will mean that determinism is “the default option.” Again, let’s please stop thinking inside old two-position polarity boxes. And, let's not forget that determinism, as classically stated, is simplistic in the extreme and has worse issues than classical versions of free will.

This cannot be stressed enough. The limitations in various ways of current theories on free will have nothing to offer to boost the viability of determinism.

Nothing. Period.

Another way of putting this is that determinists are like Jesus denialists. They think that every brick removed from the wall of classical versions of free will not only proves classical free will in its various incarnations wrong, but proves the possibility of anything like free will wrong, and proves determinism right.

Well, nothing could be further from the truth.

The varieties of free will – and determinism – not worth discussing

To riff on Dan Dennett, in part, with that title, that's my take on two paired essays by the same person, Gregg D. Caruso, a professor of philosophy at Corning Community College.

Somewhat in the first, and even more in the second, essay, he insists that free will — or certain types of free will — are connected with what he calls retributive justice.

(In all of this, I'm trying to practice the principle of charity to suss out the argument that I think Caruso actually is trying to make, which is discussed near the end. That said, I've only gotten there through repeated comments by him, and others. And, if I'm coming to a wrong conclusion by that principle of charity, then we have a bigger issue.)

That right there, the retributive justice, sounds like we're in John Rawls territory, but with the addition of explicitly connecting this to free will.

In response to the second essay, specifically, and in connection with the issue of "retributive justice," I set out a laundry list of both logical and empirical or epistemological objections.

The logical one is that there is no logically necessary connection between the two. And, I wasn't alone on this, either. I said:

There may (or may not) be empirical connections, based on psychology; hence my references to neuroscience. But, that’s a different matter. 

It’s like reading Rawls as if Rawls trying to justify his ideas by appeal to certain versions of free will. And, what Rawls says about issues of ethics and justice has no logically necessary connection with free will. 

I can be a hardcore determinist, yet still believe in the value of retributive justice.
I can be a compatibilist, and believe in retributive justice. I can be a libertarian free willer and believe in… I can be some sort of free will optimist-skeptic and believe … I can be like I actually am, thinking the whole free will “versus” determinism issue wrongly framed …. 

and believe in retributive justice. 

Or, I can be any of the above, and reject that idea. 

Or, I can be any of the above, and reject the idea of objective morality in general.

His response?

Essentially to offer a stipulative definition of free will. 

Well, if someone wants to put forth a stipulative definition of free will that insists it contains free-will actions for which one can be held morally accountable, then I guess ethics and free will are logically connected, especially if one insists that that's a two-way if-and-only-if connection.

The two-way direction of an if-and-only-if is part of the key here.

Let's take the three main schools of normative ethics — consequentialism, deontology and virtue ethics.

The details of how to be ethical in consequentialism and deontological ethics are compatible with any school of thought on volition from the hardest of classical determinists to the most libertarian of free willers. Virtue ethics, in that it lays stress on the individual more, and the psychological stance of the individual, is seemingly incompatible with full-on determinism.

But, two of three major schools of normative ethics say that claims that ethical actions in general must be linked to free will are simply wrong.

And, given that justice is a subset of ethics, two of three major schools of normative ethics say that claims that ethical actions in general must be linked to free will are simply wrong.

Some people may think that a hard determinism dehumanizes people.

Actually not, or at least not necessarily. As long as determinism is applied to theories of ethics in a non-Randian way, it should treat all people as equally human. What that means for all people may be different than in a free will system, but, still, it's not proposing to treat all people like livestock or something.

That said, back to Caruso.

There seems to be further deck-stacking. And, rather than try to shoehorn comments into a 500-word limit, there's my blog post, right here!

First, Caruso goes on to sometimes talk about "harsh retributive justice" or "just deserts." It's almost like he's at a pipe organ that has stops and ranks that are all conservative dogwhistles of some sort.

And, to boot, I think he knows that.

He talks about conservatives who believe in free will having harsher views on “just desserts” than those who don’t.

But, he doesn’t talk about political liberals and their stances on justice being influenced, or not, by their thoughts on free will

I doubt that most liberals reject free will. Rather, it’s either that they think it’s more attenuated by circumstances than conservatives do — but NOT obliterated by circumstance.

Related? An old chicken or egg argument — for conservatives, does insistence on free will come first, or a just world? To be honest, I don’t most conservatives even consider that.

The fact that Caruso only posts analysis of conservatives' relationship to free will and certain theories of justice makes me think he's pulling a Chris Mooney by implying that only conservatives, and not liberals, engage in motivated reasoning.

He also ignores that political conservatives in the rest of the developed world don't necessarily have a lot in common with US conservatives. (This, too, is a mistake Mooney also makes.) I do agree that religious overtones often influence discussions of free will, and theories of justice. But, again, religiosity, or lack thereof, is precisely where conservatives in the rest of the developed world most differ from their American compadres.

So, outside of America? False move, Prof. Caruso.

Back to the arguments against linking free will and theories of justice.

Walter Kaufmann’s book “Without Guilt and Justice” critiques Rawlsian theories of justice and ethics in general, and Rawls himself in particular. It rejects both “retributive” AND “distributive” justice alike, on other grounds. People are individuals, and we cannot treat them like data points in population genetics, therefore there is no way of being “fair.”

Thus, I can — and do — reject ideas of retributive justice in general based on anything that smacks of Rawls’ version of ….

Let’s call it liberal moral redistribution, with a deliberate riff on socialism, even communism, in that “redistribution.” And, that's quite deliberate, and yet another reason I call myself a skeptical left-liberal.

So, with Caruso, I reject (for now) retributive justice, but with a reason that is 180 degrees opposite of the reason that Caruso wants to reject retributive justice.

And, I do so without throwing out babies with the bathwater.

Then, we have what I’m going to call “folk philosophy,” paralleling “folk psychology,” on the issue of free will. And, frankly, I think some professional philosophers engage in it, too.

Caruso, while referencing Libet, doesn’t really appear to wrestle with the idea that neuroscience is still in the Early Bronze Age, if that. We’re going to need science to tell us more about consciousness in general, and volition in particular — without going down the road of scientism — before we can talk about free will in general with any great degree of clarity.

In addition to wrongly linking a cart and horse that doesn’t necessarily go together, Caruso is putting an ill-defined cart ahead of that horse.

And, again, it’s unnecessary. To riff on Gilbert Ryle's "category mistake," I am inventing the term "conjunctive mistake."

As I mentioned in my first comment to him on his first essay, I covered a lot of this — the uncertainties of talking about free will in all its glory — in the essay I did at Scientia Salon about saying “mu” to the idea of “free will vs. determinism.”

In that issue, like Caruso in his two essays and in other writings, wrestled not only with Libet, but also Daniel Wegner and others. Do we have a conscious free will in the classical sense? I think Wegner has, at a minimum, raised some good questions.

 

Update: Wegner's "The Illusion of Conscious Will" is reviewed by me here.

That said, if he's right, or to the degree that he's right, that doesn't leave some sort of determinism as a  default. And, that, in turn, gets me back to Caruso's thinking.

I think Caruso’s still stuck to a degree (but not necessarily a huge degree) of viewing this issue in terms of polarities.

Finally, as I also noted, consciousness is not a “hard” problem in the sense of David Chalmers. But it is, and will continue to be, a difficult problem, and we shouldn’t pretend otherwise.

As for that "conjunctive mistake"? Theories of ethics are complicated enough, even if we stay on the side of moral realism, without committing philosophical entanglement of mixing them with free will.

That said, to parse out Caruso.

You want to talk about more humanistic justice? Let's set aside free will. Here's my thoughts.

Can we adopt a less all-encompassing pragmatic utilitarianism toward justice? Yes. And we should.

If, without dehumanizing people, retributive justice has at least some value for the person upon whom it’s administered, as well as larger society, to the best our limited, non-Rawlsian point of view can tell, then retributive justice is what we need. (Note that this largely does not describe the current American retributive criminal justice system.)

If retributive justice doesn’t have such value, then we need to do something else.

Simple pragmatism. No particular stance on free will involved.

Does this treat people as “automatons”? I think not. It treats them as persons with some degree of freedom. On a free-will oriented stance, it can also lead to them being more conscious about “drivers” of their behavior. On a less free-will stance, it can simply work on those unconscious drivers, while offering the possibility of more, including possible enlightenment of their consciousness.

And that's not all. Caruso could have — and should have — brought in Daniel Kahnemann's "fast" vs. "slow" thinking into the issue. Even without tying it directly to free will, it would directly tie to issues of degrees of consciousness. But, it didn't.

Back to the logical disjunction. It's possible that some varieties of free will might be MUCH more averse to retributive justice than might a quasi-determinism. Any sort of theory of free will that sees free will as something evolving would likely favor a theory of justice that aided that evolution, even with cases like criminal behavior. Per my "dehumanizing" notes above, that's that type of free will.

And, as for Caruso's case for free will being an illusion, in essence for committing to some broad variety of determinism, beyond my issue-by-issue, action-by-action partial psychological determinism? Per a good (well, decent) review of his book on the subject, I think I'm far from alone in finding him wanting, even if it's for other grounds, and beyond those, of the review. That said, the reviewer is Jonathan MS Pearce. In addition, I disagree with his take on Wegner.

So, Caruso can claim until the cows come home that retributive justice, and a desire for it, are based on free-will stances on volition. He'll still be wrong.

And, yes, he writes a lot about free will. So, I'm not sure if he thinks attacking retributive justice — his claims aside — is a winning "move" because it will appeal more to liberals, whom secularists are more likely to be, or what.  But, it seems he also has legitimate concerns about retributive justice.

Fine. Write a separate essay about that. And, I would likely love to discuss it with you.

As for engaging with, or not, the idea that belief in free will could be harmful to society?

First, the shorter answer, as I Tweeted Caruso: How would one even begin to try to scientifically prove such a claim? Surveys would offer correlation evidence, of course, and might point to causation. But that's not guaranteed.

Second, you cite what you do note as "a few studies," while noting that they're limited in what they indicated, but not noting whether they wrestle with either of the two issues noted above:
1. Distinguishing US conservatives from those elsewhere and
2. Looking at how belief in free will may affect liberals' thoughts.

Third, a belief in the existence of free will is about as much like the actual existence of free will as belief in Santa or Jesus is the same as actual existence of Jesus or Santa. If Caruso can't differentiate between the two, or ...

If THAT is his premise for claiming a logical connection between free will and theories of justice, that it's actually some connection between a BELIEF in free will and theories of justice, then I don't want to go further down a rabbit hole about making assumptions to clarify his thinking, assumptions which he might reject even though they seem true.

That said, per that principle of charity, I think that's what Caruso is trying to argue. He may have a point.

Let's assume that we can do research, and ignoring liberal/conservative issues to start, we just confirm that, for society in general, in the US and elsewhere, that a belief in free will leads to a belief in the efficacy of retributive justice.

Let us say that criminology studies show retributive justice in general is not efficacious, and generally becomes less efficacious the more harsh it is.

We can then discuss this in terms of ethics, and relatedly, in terms of political philosophy.

Perhaps Caruso will actually wend his way to that in final comments, or maybe will be given an opportunity by Massimo Pigliucci to write a third essay that comports with my charitable interpretation of his first and second ones.

As for the rest of what's actually in his two essays?

I would say, or write an essay on issues in volition, but ...

On my "mu," not just with Caruso but in general, I'm at the point where I think we should just stop talking about free will for, oh, about another century or so.

Seriously.

Cognitive neuroscience in particular, and science of mind in general, isn't going to move from the Early Bronze Age into the Iron Age for at least that long, and it's ridiculous, ultimately, to talk about issues of volition, and theories of them, before then.

The simplemindedness of #determinism

Since I'm talking about philosophical determinism, the idea that we have no volition, free will, or what I think will eventually be discovered to be "something like free will," there's a pun in that header. Consider this an extension of my series on saying "mu" to the polarities of free will vs. determinism.

A touch of background to this.

As I've said elsewhere, and you can just click the tags below to find details, I think that cognitive science and science of mind are, at best, in the Early Bronze Age of understanding, and perhaps in the Neolithic. That's part of why I've said "mu" in those previous posts. We just don't know enough about the mind to say exactly what we should call decision-making. I am going to call it that, though, with the clear implication that we will find that "something like free will" exists.

In other words, like the young Wittgenstein, we should be quiet until we can say more. Or, in the line of logical positivism, we should recognize that "free will" is a phrase without definition.

Determinism? We can speak about that, and quite easily refute it with some simple intellectual judo.

Here's the analogy.

The cosmological argument for the existence of God argues that everything has a cause, and this can be traced back to a First Cause or Prime Mover. The obvious failure here is, "What caused the First Cause?" "What moved the Prime Mover?"

Well, you may be thinking with or ahead of me.

Determinism is normally, in everyday English, expressed as "All our thoughts are determined."

My reply, of course, is:

"What determined the first determinor?" Oops!

So, determinism is simple-minded, or simplistic, if you will.

It also seems to rely on a very black-and-white view of consciousness, namely, that either one has it, or not.

Let me illustrate.

If I asked you, "Does a dog have free will?," you'd scratch your head for a minute, then maybe say, "Well, maybe something like free will." (If you're like me, you'd say, "It has something like something like free will," of course.) You'd then go on to explain that a dog has some degree of consciousness, and you think it has enough to make decisions in some things and is not a purely instinctual animal.

If I asked you, "Is a dog determined?", you'd probably think the question is at least twice as ridiculous as asking if a dog has Buddha nature. I know I would.

Or, another example.

Take two homo erectus, one male, one female. My gut tells me that a determinist would say that if both of them crossed a magic line to consciousness level X, their kids would be determined, period, and that none of them could have a lesser degree of consciousness that would fall below X.

But, if one combines the "something like free will" (or even a more robust free will, which I don't) with consciousness as embodied cognition and as an embodied-based emergent property, than degrees of "something like free will" are free to evolve and develop.

That then leads to another point.

I just don't see determinism as being very compatible with an emergent property understanding of consciousness.

This month in philosophy: Rejecting old ideas on free will

For new readers, this is actually a roundup of my philosophy-related postings for January.

At the start of the year, I talked about New Year's resolutions, and how ideas behind the making of resolutions relates to issues of free will and consciousness. 

Next, I took a look at the philosophy of fallacies and fallacious reasoning, especially the "informal" fallacies that most people think about when they talk about this issue.

Back in December, I did a second installment on what is becoming a bit of a series: saying "Mu" to the old polarities, old dichotomies and old inadequate definitions of the increasingly stale and sterile "free will vs. determinism" debate. Thoughts here are inspired in part by David Hume and his "fleeting self" ideas, which supplements theories of the likes of Dan Dennett about subselves and multiple drafts of consciousness.

I followed that at the end of January with Part 3, which focuses on problems I see with compatibilist ideas of free will. As often is the case when I write on these issues, there's usually an allusion to Dennett. That's especially here, since this is his modern baby. But, he's just as wrong on a lot of issues of free will as on a lot of issues of consciousness.

Problems with determinism — mu to free will vs determinism, part 3

As a result of my blog posts about saying "mu" to the old free will vs. determinism battles, I've gone beyond talking about what I call "something like free will" that, decoupled from a Cartesian meaner and a Cartesian free willer, that we will find at the core of an eventually messy picture of what human consciousness is about.

I've started taking a bit more of a look at determinism. I've already said that classical determinism is undermined by quantum mechanics. Well, it's also undermined by things like chaos theory. Related to that, my ideas on "something like free will," as well as consciousness itself, is that both are going to prove out to be emergent properties, and with multiple layers of emergence. Hence, as we might talk about the consciousness of a gorilla, while noting that's not on the same level of consciousness as a human, ditto, the "something like free will" of a gorilla, if we think a gorilla has enough consciousness to manifest this, will be of a different level as that of a human.

But, back to determinism and its being undercut by quantum mechanics, chaos theory, and other things.

A blog post I saw on Facebook via a Facebook friend of a friend gave me a philosophy "aha" moment a few days ago.

Per this blog post, isn't determinism subject to Aristotle's worries about an infinite regress, until it posits an undetermined Prime Determiner? I had never thought of that before, but at least more simplistic versions of determinism seem capable of shooting themselves in the foot on this.

Beyond that, I have some psychology-related concerns with determinism. Or, rather, with how many of its ardent backers present it, as well as with determinism itself.

They can come off as too black and white, often not just about determinism vs. free will but about issues in consciousness in general. In turn, this can reflect a broader overly black-and-white approach to issues scientific, manifested in things like a hard or greedy reductionism.

And, people who read me on philosophical musings are probably aware that I say not "mu" but a flat "no" to greedy reductionism. That includes accusing the likes of Dan Dennett of being a greedy reductionist even as he denies that he is.

That, in turn, is why I reject his compatibalist version of free will, and others' as well. Why should free will be bent into a pretzel to be made compatible with some classical or classical-like version of determinism? Why shouldn't determinism be made to move at least halfway itself? Other than the narrowest idea of, what's logically possible or not in terms of action given a particular human's physical state X within a surrounding physical state Y, I don't think free will needs to bend itself to be compatible with determinism at all.

So, if we use the word "compatibilism" narrowly, call me a compatibilist. If not, don't. But, I'm not at all an incompatibilitist, so don't call me that.

The problem is, per this piece by Smith on libertarian free will, most compatibilists, in my opinion, define both it and incompatibilism badly. And, he goes further down that route in his next piece in his series, undercutting libertarianism and contra-causal issues. (I'm not a libertarian free willer, let me stress.)

The failure? It's at core a failure to distinguish between hard determinism, on the one hand, and what I've called psychological constraints or similar, on the other. I don't consider past elements of our lives, and the degree to which they've implanted and developed certain tendencies, likelihoods and directions within us, to be "determinism" at all. And, we may be differently constrained, by degree of constraint, on different current issues at different times in our lives by different specific issues from our pasts. It could be 90 percent at some times, near but not at one pole, 10 percent at other times, and 40 percent at yet other times.

Hence, I can voice some quasi-libertarian argument for "something like free will" without being an incompatibilist. Call me a "soft libertarian" or whatever. Maybe an "emergent libertarian." Or, per my first phrase, a "quasi-libertarianian."

Anyway, more on how Smith and others like him go wrong?

It's like the nature-vs-nurture argument in human development. Defenders of all-nature are like compatibilists, and defenders of all-nurture are like incompatibilitists. (And we haven't even talked about a philosophy of mind analogy to epigenetics yet!)

Anyway, that in turn gets back to my original "mu." Within saying "mu" to free will vs determinism, I now officially say "mu" to compatibilism vs incompatibilism.

I think I've made myself as clear as I can on why I say that, within the constraints of language on philosophy of mind that's already badly muddied.

Finally, while Smith's series has enlightened my thinking a bit, and sharpened my thinking a fair degree, I find him about as wanting as Dennett, ultimately, and for similar reasons.

Per Tractatus-era Wittgenstein, can't philosophers of mind in general be more precise with their language on this issue, and shut up if they can't?

New Year's resolutions: It's OK for "you" to fail

Great piece here from the New York Times' "The Stone" series of online op-eds devoted to matters philosophical, "In Praise of Failure."

The piece isn't primarily about failure and New Year's resolutions, to which I will get in a minute. It's about accepting, even embracing, the possibility of failure in general. And, it's NOT about embracing failure from some New Age "positivity" point of view, either.

Costica Bradatan has three main points:

1. Failure allows us to see our existence in its naked condition. 

(F)ailure also possesses a distinct therapeutic function. ... We insatiably devour other species, denude the planet of life and fill it with trash. Failure could be a medicine against such arrogance and hubris, as it often brings humility. 

2. Our capacity to fail is essential to what we are. 

Ultimately, our capacity to fail makes us what we are; our being as essentially failing creatures lies at the root of any aspiration. 

3. We are designed to fail.

No matter how successful our lives turn out to be, how smart, industrious or diligent we are, the same end awaits us all: “biological failure.” ...

A better model (for how to face failure) may be Ingmar Bergman’s Antonius Block, from the film “The Seventh Seal.”   

Read the whole thing, though, not just that summary.

And,  now, relating this to New Year's resolutions, to a newspaper column I recently did, and why "you" is in scare quotes.

Why do so many of us make New Year's resolutions only to break them? In fact, why do so many of us continue to make them, based on the likelihood that we broke similar ones in the past and expect ourselves to break the new ones, often quickly, in the future?

It’s pretty simple, if you will: That may not be “all of us” making those resolutions.

Modern philosophy of mind and psychology talk about things like “subselves.” In the Christian Bible, Paul said, “What I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” Sounds like a bit of the same thing. Another hallowed Christian leader, Saint Augustine, famously prayed, "Lord, grant me chastity, but not yet."

Some part of ourselves, often, really doesn’t want to fulfill these regulations. I think that’s even more the case if they’re phrased in a “negative” way, like promising to “stop” or “quit” something rather than “start” something. 

Some part of us does want to quit, but another part doesn’t. And, so, we are of two minds. Or three, when we start feeling guilty about actual failure, or potential failure before it happens. Or four, if we’re conditioned to somehow, perversely, like feeling guilty, or at least anxious.

Beyond that, nature abhors a vacuum. Including a mental one.

So, promising to quit a bad habit is often doomed to failure if we don’t also promise to replace it with a good one. Part of the trick is finding the right good habit related to that.

Or, if not to directly replace it, to reward yourself in some other way. And that’s because, besides nature abhorring a mental vacuum, our inner selves don’t like being scolded, lectured, or otherwise made to have no fun. And, to the degree the "subselves" idea has truth behind it, some part of our selves is a young child, ready to rebel against such lecturing and scolding.

That said, why do so many of us, or "us," make these resolutions in the first place?

In part, some portion of our self believes we do legitimately need to make a change. On things like quitting drinking or smoking, or other health-related matters, that belief may be absolutely correct.

But, there may be another part of ourselves that is afraid of failing to achieve that change.  And, here’s where another phrase, that isn’t necessarily a cliché, comes into play — “self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Sometimes, below the level of full consciousness, we move almost inexorably toward some result we expect to happen, or even want to happen, but don’t want to consciously discuss.

Related to this is the idea that free will, or "free will," since we're still in the Early Bronze Age on cognitive science, is, as a part of consciousness being "embodied cognition," a social phenomenon. In other words, "free will" is influenced by our interactions with our environment. 

That said, not all New Year’s resolutions are ones that are necessary. 

Maybe we’ve decided to resolve to be kinder to friends, neighbors, coworkers or other family members. We’re not going to have a heart attack or cirrhosis of the liver if we don’t follow through on that one, though.

But, the resolution itself may not be fully our own idea. Maybe it’s something we think we “should” do. Or, more to the point, it’s something that somebody else thinks we “should” do.

In this case, some inner part of our selves drags our feet, passively resists, or otherwise decides not to go along with the program. And soon enough, the resolution fails.

So, to sum up?

The way I see it is that, if you want a resolution to succeed, it should be one you want to do, that you can fully get yourself behind, that you can reward yourself for achieving, and where you can not only change something by keeping the resolution but replace it with something better.

And, if not?

To riff off what Hawkeye Pierce said on an episode of M*A*S*H many a year ago, make a resolution to not make more resolutions!

Mu to free will vs determinism, part 2

I've had a bit of running discussion with philosopher Massimo Pigliucci about this issue for some time, with much of my original thoughts on this issue to be found in this blog post. He asked me to give it my best shot, as to why I reject free will in the sense of being associated with a unitary self, and also why I say mu to the whole dualistic issue of free will versus determinism, going beyond my original thoughts, with which he indicates he has some degree of sympathy.

What follows is what I said on a recent post at his excellent blog, Rationally Speaking, and further developed and edited. 

My best shot? Probably nowhere near perfect, but...

First, I'm a country newspaper editor, Jim, not a professional philosopher! (Cue old Star Trek music.)

OK, that said, let's build on the thoughts in that original piece and go from there.

A couple of baseline notes, first.

1. Traditional free will does have metaphysical overtones, so I reject it in part on those grounds.
2. Ditto for determinism. (Stoicism's Logos is just as metaphysical as John Calvin's double-predestinarian God.)

I am also a non-dualist in general. That's true not just about dualism of ontological categories, like body-soul dualism. Using dualism more generally, as a term for polarities, I generally reject them, too. I am not a big black-and-white person. In philosophy, this is especially true. I look for nuance. I question theories and ideas that seem to lack it, and more.

That, in turn, relates to my "mu."

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, it comes from Zen Buddhism. There's no precise translation in English, but a good, direct one is that using the word "unasks" a question or idea stated immediately in front of it. In other words, saying "mu" to "free will vs. determinism" rejects the dualism, that these are the only two ways of looking at decision-making in human consciousness. Related to that, to the degree that these are ever useful terms, it rejects the polarity behind them, that is the idea that a particular action is either 100 percent determined or 100 percent of free will.

And, since Zen is pretty non-dualistic, I use the particular word "mu" to deliberately underscore that I'm rejecting a way of thinking as much, if not more, than traditional uses of two concepts.

The reason I say "mu" gets back to the ideas of subselves, multiple drafts of consciousness, and even Hume's "fleeting impressions." In short, I take Dennett one step further, in the same direction Daniel Wegner does. (And I'm sure you're familiar with his writings on free will.)

Update: Wegner's "The Illusion of Conscious Will" is reviewed by me here.

In other words, to use Dennett's language, if there is no "Cartesian meaner" in a "Cartesian theater," there's no "Cartesian free willer" there either. There's no unitary conscious self with a free will at the center of the controls.

Now, might our subselves, or whatever of the "multiple drafts" is in the driver's seat at any particular moment, be engaged in something that might be called quasi-free will, is another question. I think something like that does happen. But, it's as ephemeral as that particular subself, "draft," or whatever, is in the driver's seat.

So, in that sense, I'm not totally against all of the ideas that are lumped under the rubric "free will."

Reason No. 2 that I oppose the idea of "free will" linked to a single unitary conscious self is somewhat related. I do believe there's a fair amount of value to the Libet experiments and related, even if sometimes, some people have overstated them.

Here, I disagree with John Horgan, who in a new Scientific American column about free will and New Year's resolutions, says:

Libet’s clock experiment is a poor probe of free will, because the subject has made the decision in advance to push the button; he merely chooses when to push. I would be surprised if the EEG sensors or implanted electrodes did not find neural anticipation of that choice.

See, I don't understand Libet that way. I've always understood it, and his work to separate subjective feelings of, and belief in, personal volution, from a (theoretically) objective idea of something called "free will," as refuting the existence of any such objective idea.

And, per a reader, this take on Benjamin Libet's famous experiments is in general line with what I'm saying.

And hence, with Pigliucci, when he uses volition, I get the feeling that it is for something still akin to traditional versions of free will, and something he believes actually exists, not Libet's idea of a subjective belief.

That said, that veto power?

We may still have a "veto" over such actions, but even then, that veto may vary from subself to subself as to what a particular subself would veto or not, degree of veto power it has, etc. Beyond that, that veto itself may be at such a deep layer we wouldn't associate it with a quasi-formed subself, let alone a fully formed self. In short, Libet has some good ideas, but they need further developing.

In short, so far, part of what I am saying is that what's actually happening in the human mind is far too complex to reduce to "free will," too. It's another instance where the human brain's predilection for facile labeling of things draws us astray.

I think Libet's discussion of antedating and backdating, subconsciously, our understanding of temporal order of events, relates to that. His ideas here are certainly compatible with Dennett's multiple drafts theory of consciousness, for example, but Dennett chooses not to go down that direction, just as he chose not to go down Wegner's direction in rejecting a Cartesian free willer.

In short, ideas of consciousness in general, and volition in particular are far too complex, and our understanding today far too limited, to cram into a particular philosophical system.

(Sidebar: This is why I also talked about neo-Humean ethics. I'm in general an anti-system builder, and a neo-Humean ethics would be a variation on situational ethics based in some way on studying how different particular subselves constructed primarily for different predominant social relations, such as work life, family life, life with friends, etc., have different ethical values, and how said different ethical values are constructed.)

3. Without saying this is part of my answer for how the subselves that produce the appearance of a self act, there's also the question of how all this evolved. Is what appears to be free will an adaptation, or is it, shades of Dennett vs. Gould ... a spandrel? Or, at least, is our belief that we have a unitary self, with unitary free will, a spandrel? I side somewhat with Gould on this issue of spandrels in general, as it has some ties with issues of ev psych, and over-the-top claims in ev psych, etc.

====

Here's the biggie, now. I say "Mu" to the dualism that's part and parcel of the "free will VERSUS (emphasis needed) determinism" issue. Just because conscious, unitary-self free will doesn't exist, there's no need to believe any sort of determinism, whether Coyne's physical determinism, or somebody else's psychological determinism, exists.

A good way to further explicate this is per the post you just put up about the year in books, and namely, Susan Blackmore's new book. I'm sure that, were she to write in detail on this issue, she would have at least a few broadly similar ideas, above all, rejecting the whole **dualism/duality** present in traditional framing of this as a "free will vs. determinism" issue.

I feel the same. That's at the core of my "mu," and per Hofstadter first tipping me off on the word years ago, why I deliberately use that word in this situation. With your word "volition," or whatever, I think we have to see this whole issue of apparent intentionality in human actions in a non-dualistic way.

That said, per all of the above, I do see some degree of psychological determinism, on an action-by-action basis, somewhat related to more crude statements of this issue, based on MRIs, in legal defense in certain criminal cases.

That is, can something like, say, childhood sexual or physical abuse psychologically determine some of our actions?

I'd say yes, **to a degree.** Here, I'm rejecting not dualism, narrowly speaking, but something analogous, polarities.

In other words, Action X may be 23 percent psychologically determined and 77 percent volitional, or whatever word you prefer. Action B may be 42 percent psychologically determined and 58 percent volitional. Action C may be 8 percent psychologically determined, and 92 percent volitional.

If you don't like the word "determined," let's borrow a word from genetics and developmental psychology, and talk about "tendencies." That way, it sounds less like a classical version of psychological determinism. Just like we have a 90 degree heritable tendency to be tall, a 50 percent one to intelligence, etc., but this still has an element of environmental expression related to it, ditto on having Z degree of psychological tendency in Action X.

As for physical determinism, of the type that drives Coyne? It's not worth even bothering with. Among other things, how anybody in the modern quantum world can believe in a classical version of physical determinism is beyond me. (That said, I don't even come close to accepting Penrose's idea of consciousness arising through quantum effects in the brain!)

===

There's one more major reason I say "mu" to the whole issue.

Cognitive science, neuroscience, etc., are perhaps in the Early Bronze Age. Maybe the Neolithic. But, our knowledge curve here, if even from a low base, hints at exponential growth.

Within a decade or two, we will realize how little we have known about the mind, and to the degree that we have gained new knowledge, we will realize how anachronistic "free will" is, as well as seeing even more that "determinism" is not just anachronistic, it's out of the picture. 

I mean, ever since Hume's famous quote from "A Treatise on Human Nature," quoted above in the poster quote: 

For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception…. If any one, upon serious and unprejudic'd reflection thinks he has a different notion of himself, I must confess I can reason no longer with him. All I can allow him is, that he may be in the right as well as I, and that we are essentially different in this particular. He may, perhaps, perceive something simple and continu'd, which he calls himself; tho' I am certain there is no such principle in me.

The two ideas have been at least somewhat anachronous philosophically, long before Dan Dennett dressed up ideas originally from Gilbert Ryle (who, in turn, ultimately traced back to Hume).

At times, to be honest, I become a bit frustrated with professional philosophers who are forgetting that ideas related to "subselves," "multiple drafts," or similar, are more than 250 years old. The fact that free will, determinism, and the paired polarity of insisting that the guiding of human actions is one or the other is shown to be anachronistic in the history of Western philosophy by the man who was, arguably, the world's first professional psychologist. 

And, per searching my own blog, there's another, similar reason to the above. In fact, here, I analogized between current postulations of free will and the old "god of the gaps" idea.

====

Massimo, and others, hope this provides food for further thought.

Again, I want to stress once again that the "mu" is about rejecting the duality of free will vs. determinism, and that, rejecting ideas of free will associated with a unitary conscious self doesn't mean that determinism is therefore the only answer left to choose.

====

Meanwhile, as of early 2015, it's become time for a third installment on this issue.

Mu to free will

And to determinism, too.

For those of you not familiar with this word “mu,” I’m not being a cow with a French accent. Rather, I’m “unasking a question,” so to speak. The word comes from Zen Buddhism.

If you’re read the magisterial “Gödel, Escher, Bach” by Douglas Hofstadter, of course, you ARE familiar with the word.

Anyway, by “unasking the question,” the word says that the premises upon which a question is based are false.

And, in the case of free will VERSUS determinism, I believe that is very, very true.

First, per Dan Dennett, and many other students of Gilbert Ryle and others, there is no such thing as a little “Cartesian demon” in the middle of our brains, choosing what thoughts in our minds rise to the level of consciousness. Rather, although Dennett at least, here as elsewhere, overextends Darwinian parallels, different subselves are competing, if you will, for which one of them rises to the top. Arguably, more fragmentary sub-subselves are a level lower, but I’m not going to do a Hofstadter-type eternal expansion! Of course, dissociative identity disorder is a case of extreme lack of connection between these subselves.

In short, there’s no “Cartesian meaner” running the projector of a movie theater.

However, Dennett doesn’t go to the logical next step, even though I know he full well knows it IS the logical next step.

If there is no Cartesian meaner generating consciousness, then there’s no Cartesian free willer generating consciousness-level free will. (Or, pace Massimo Pigliucci, no "Cartesian volitioner.")

Now, per David Hume living comfortably every day despite his inability to “grasp” a “self,” we, too act “as if” we have conscious free will. But, that doesn’t mean we actually do, contra the Massimo Piglicccis of the world.

But, just because we don’t have conscious free will, even of a fairly weak sort of compatibilism, doesn’t mean that it’s all determinism, contra the Jerry Coynes of the world. Certainly not in his neo-atomistic physicalist, "hard" determinism.

Nor, pace Massimo, do we have to go down the route of dualism if we reject conscious volitionism. That's especially true if:
A. We see something like free will as developing as an emergent property;
B. We reject "hard" physicalist determinism, too;
C. We see whatever this "quasi-free will" is, and a "softer" psychological determinism as being two endpoints on a continuum, and not two poles of a polarity.

As for what this means?

How “free” or how “determined” our actions are is a case-by-case basis issue, and it depends on which subself seems to be in the saddle at the moment, and how determined or not a particular aspect of that subself is.

I wish we, both amateurs and professionals of the philosophical world alike, could move beyond the “free will VERSUS determinism” issue. It has religious-type moral baggage, at least to a degree, on the free will side, on issues of guilt and responsibility. More and more, it has scientism baggage on the determinism side. Beyond, Jerry Coyne's a good enough scientist, or he should be, that he should know that quantum theory, if nothing else, undercuts the stance of people like him. It’s so unproductive. But, I’m not holding my breath.

On the free will side, in comments within his latest post on the matter, Massimo admits the issue of guilt and responsibility is why he continues to defend free will VERSUS determinism (or other attacks, or "attacks").

(A)ny talk of free will and consciousness being illusions is a threat to humanism, since among humanist's cardinal principles are that we are responsible for our actions and that we can use reason as a guide to life.

Well, then, per the ways in which I've previously chastised Joseph Hoffmann, humanism, whether explicitly secular or not, without embracing scientism, needs to embrace scientific advances.

Massimo also, which I hadn't noticed until this late-2013 update, mischaracterizes my postion on free will:

Several readers of course brought up dualism, even accusing me of being a crypto-dualist. Here is Gadfly:

"If there's no Cartesian meaner, there's no Cartesian free willer."

True enough, but this assumes that the only way to meaningfully talk about volition (again, my and others’ preferred term instead of the metaphysically loaded “free will”) is in dualistic terms, a position that has been rejected pretty much by all compatibilist philosophers, from Dennett down.

Actually, no, it doesn't assume that.

Per my whole line of reasoning, it assumes that, as currently expressed, this is an outdated issue. Rather, speaking of Dennett, I mean just what Massimo quoted me as saying. If something akin to Dennett's multiple drafts theory of consciousness is true, then we simply can't talk of a unitary volitional self. Per the detailed outline I list above, it assumes that the degree of volition involved with a certain action must be determined, as best we can, on an action by action basis.

There's nothing dualistic about that, whether in the broad idea of substance dualism or the narrower idea of property dualism, on my part, nor do I assume Massimo entertains such ideas on his part. The only idea I entertain about Massimo is that, in fair part because he doesn't buy into multiple drafts or subselves ideas, he's wedded to traditional ideas about volition for the wrong reasons.

That said, he does admirably refute, again, the nonsense that Jerry Coyne spouts in support of dualism. And he's right that science currently has little to say on this issue. And, per the likes of him, John Horgan, myself and many others, likely will have little to say about this issue for decades if not longer. My thoughts, Dennett's, and others, on the nature of consciousness, are psycho-philosophical theories untestable now or any time soon.

And I'm sorry that, for whatever reasons, Massimo inferred I thought he was a crypto-dualist. My stance on a multiple drafts and multiple subselves view of consciousness is entirely compatible with the non-dualistic emergentism that's central to Massimo's views on human consciousness. We just arrive at different finish lines.

That said, a regular, tendentious commenter on his blog has inferred, from the post above that Massimo is a full-blown dualist, and thinks that emergentism pretty much necessitates dualism. That's a far bigger error that Massimo's incorrect inference.

Anyway, speaking of Massimo's take on Coyne? Ian Pollack, writing a guest post at Massimo's blog, appears to move a step in this direction, with an analytic philosophy type approach that includes saying Coyne is ... insufficiently reductionistic, of all things, in his use of language.

Here's the core of his thoughts:

So how would I tackle the issue of free will/volition?

Suppose I am driving along an undivided highway when the stray thought
comes into my head that I could steer into the opposing lane, resulting
in a horrible, deadly accident.

Of course, I don’t do so, because... well, I like living and I don’t
much want to kill others, either. And I just washed my car. But I could
have done it.

...Wait, was I right to say that I could have done it?

Yes and no. As we have seen, the pivotal word in that sentence is
“could,” and “could” has at least two meanings that are relevant to the
question of free will.

Meaning #1 maps physical possibility, and in this case returns the clear
answer “No, the physical state of the universe was such that you could
not have steered into oncoming traffic, as evidenced by the fact that
you did not, in fact, do so. QED.” Jerry sees this clearly, and I have
absolutely no argument with him.

Meaning #2 of “could” maps counterfactual statements. To say that you
“could” have done something in this sense is (roughly) to say that IF
circumstances had been otherwise, a different outcome would have
resulted. Meaning #2 returns the answer “Yes, you could have steered
into oncoming traffic, if you had wanted to.”

Meaning #2 is what people actually mean by “could,” most of the time.

If you’ve been sleeping through this post, pay attention now, because
the entire click of compatibilism lies in this realization.

Proposition #1: “No, the state of the universe was such that it was physically impossible for you to have steered into oncoming traffic.”

Proposition #2: “Yes, you could have steered into oncoming traffic (if you had wanted to).”

However, to my mind, he still fails. He addresses only the Coyne-type physicalist determinism, not "softer" versions, first. Second, he's committed to the "versus" stance, continuing to defend a compatibilist version of free will versus determinism.

For more excellent thoughts in this general vein, I strongly suggest Walter Kaufmann's book "Beyond Guilt and Responsibility."

And, for broader background, here's a bit of information on where we are at on studying consciousness issues in general.

And, per a reader, this take on Benjamin Libet's famous experiments is in general line with what I'm saying.