Thanks, James. I look forward to the rest of the series. When I read Harris' book I thought that the Libet experiment seemed a bit sketchy. Thanks for connecting me with the latest research.
I was going to make a black humour joke but it would be at Harris's expense. Thanks for all the work you do to enlighten us with updated information. It is crucial. This new info makes more sense to me.
"He posits a binary: either our actions are predetermined by a chain of prior events, or they are the result of random chance. In both scenarios, the traditional notion of free will, as an independent and self-determining force, crumbles." There's his problem right there.
For me, he's all philosopher on this subject. His other half as neuroscientist is going to need some empirical studies and physical proof beyond flexing my wrist, for my satisfaction.
I would ask Mr Harris, as someone who asserts that free will is an illusion, why would he bother wasting his time and brain cells pondering philosophy? if all things are predetermined, why contemplate anything deeper than that which is observable?
'The existence of such survival mechanisms does not in any way preclude the existence of free choice: our free will can also override our baser instincts'.
^^ very important point, Dr Jack. if our actions are merely the sum of predetermined biological mechanisms, then what else would explain someone's decision to go back into a burning building to rescue others?
Talking about "Harris has chosen" and "his decision" appears to be assuming your conclusion is correct from the outset. Harris would say that choices (as from a menu) and decisions are predetermined. Determinism does not rest on the Libet experiments. Why are you focused on Harris? Have you considered other determinists, such as Robert Sapolsky?
Personally I think neuroscientists make things too complicated in this area, but I suppose it sells books. If we live in a deterministic universe, one of cause-effect, as it appears we do, why should the human brain, or the complete nervous system, be any exception? Why are the myriad choices and decisions we make not a result of complex cause-effect? Do other creatures have free will? Do great apes? Did our pre-human ancestors, or any extinct hominids?
It seems obvious that quantum uncertainty cannot confer free will.
Dennett is a compatibilist (and a a singularly annoying one, though he can't help it), which seems akin to wanting to have your cake and eat it too.
An alternative might be that decisions are not a physical process or thing. That the realm of ideas we all experience all the time indeed has existence. In other words, that consciousness cannot be reduced to physical correlates just like radiowaves will not be found lying inside a radio device. This would mean that decisions aren't made in the physical world and that any observations made of physical correlates of decisions would not allow direct conclusions about the decisions themselves.
Personally, I cannot even see how one might think there is no realm of ideas. Indeed, I find it much more plausible that this non-physical world is primary to the physical universe than the inverse, being what most people tend to assume. A thinking entity can come up with an entire physical world with all its laws calibrated just right to keep it livable, which seems to be the nature of our physical universe, but a lifeless physical object could never come up with a thought.
Hmm... But radio waves exist in the physical world, and anything messing with the brain can change ideas. I don't know why you think your idea is more plausible. There'd have to be a way of testing it. Until then, like string theory, it remains a theory.
What if we do not have free will, but rather "free won't"? What if your brain sent the impulse automatically but your conscious control, your will, decided to quash it? It would effectively be free will, personal choice, but how could it be measured? Have they even taken this into account?
Love it. Thank you for raising quite a bunch of salient points.
I would add what I see as the most fundamental criticism of the viewpoint of Gazzaniga (whom you spelled Gazzinga at one point, FYI), Harris and so many others who have built their homes in the most bleak and boring worldview they could conjure up:
Why on earth would even a fully decision-specific neural correlate, robustly measured as occurring clearly and significantly prior to a robust measure of awareness of intention, have to be proof of the absence of a free will guiding said action?
The silent assumption certainly seems to be that what can be measured earlier must be the causative element. That, in my view, is utter nonsense. Why would free will have to follow such a tight, pedestrian notion of temporality? Is the argument that (free or unfree) will is part of the physical universe and therefore has to follow the laws we believe to be valid for the physical universe? How would we even begin to study this question?
Compared to the idea that will strictly follows the physically observable timeline, I find it just as plausible that free will, from whatever plane it resides on, would be able to affect neural networks at a point earlier in the physically obersable timeline than that timepoint which it focally refers to. A branching out into different temporal directions from a nexus of decision-making, if you will. The fact that none of these questions are even considered shows how flat the thinking done truly is.
I've long had an intuitive disgust of the personality known as Sam Harris. He symbolises a passage in Herman Hesse's Siddhartha where the Buddha notices the intellect of the wannabe and says - "Be careful"
Intellect and the play of ideas aint shit to the deep silence of mediation. The emptiness is beyond the body, the self and the foolish play of words that do nothing more than make a feeble attempt to make an illusory world feel more real.
I am not above such bullshit but I am much more inclined to know it's bullshit than the mind identified by the term Sam Harris.
Thanks for putting this together. I get frightened when I meditate too much and this really helped me get back into my own analytical and judgement based framework.
Every professional athlete, who needs to perform physical acts at speeds that preclude deliberation, is perfectly well aware that your unconscious self can be trained. And in many sports, it's a matter of constant adjustment. Baseball is a good example. The pitchers change what they are throwing to a given batter, and the batter makes an adjustment, which means the pitchers make another change, and so it goes. Sometimes it goes badly. The neurologists have completely missed this? (I haven't read Sam Harris, but have read Robert Sapolsky, who also seems to have missed this one.)
I've always had an issue with Sam Harris' takedown of free will but do think that at the very least free will is more rare than we realize. With a lot of after the fact narrative building we don't really let the higher voice of our mind, the part that says this is me, this is what I'm doing, make executive decisions as often as we think we do. But I do think we do. From my understanding Harris would argue even if this voice in my head makes a decision it is also downstream of our parents, our genetics, our culture. But I'd argue those factors are what makes up the 'I' that on rare occasion does make a decision. I am my parents, my cutlure, my friends, the substacks a read, the substacks I hate read, etc. That voice often loses to compulsion in face of a late night desert but it gets some wins. :)
Nice to hear a takedown of the underlying science.
Thanks, James. I look forward to the rest of the series. When I read Harris' book I thought that the Libet experiment seemed a bit sketchy. Thanks for connecting me with the latest research.
I was going to make a black humour joke but it would be at Harris's expense. Thanks for all the work you do to enlighten us with updated information. It is crucial. This new info makes more sense to me.
"He posits a binary: either our actions are predetermined by a chain of prior events, or they are the result of random chance. In both scenarios, the traditional notion of free will, as an independent and self-determining force, crumbles." There's his problem right there.
For me, he's all philosopher on this subject. His other half as neuroscientist is going to need some empirical studies and physical proof beyond flexing my wrist, for my satisfaction.
I would ask Mr Harris, as someone who asserts that free will is an illusion, why would he bother wasting his time and brain cells pondering philosophy? if all things are predetermined, why contemplate anything deeper than that which is observable?
'The existence of such survival mechanisms does not in any way preclude the existence of free choice: our free will can also override our baser instincts'.
^^ very important point, Dr Jack. if our actions are merely the sum of predetermined biological mechanisms, then what else would explain someone's decision to go back into a burning building to rescue others?
Very interesting, thank you.
Talking about "Harris has chosen" and "his decision" appears to be assuming your conclusion is correct from the outset. Harris would say that choices (as from a menu) and decisions are predetermined. Determinism does not rest on the Libet experiments. Why are you focused on Harris? Have you considered other determinists, such as Robert Sapolsky?
Personally I think neuroscientists make things too complicated in this area, but I suppose it sells books. If we live in a deterministic universe, one of cause-effect, as it appears we do, why should the human brain, or the complete nervous system, be any exception? Why are the myriad choices and decisions we make not a result of complex cause-effect? Do other creatures have free will? Do great apes? Did our pre-human ancestors, or any extinct hominids?
It seems obvious that quantum uncertainty cannot confer free will.
Dennett is a compatibilist (and a a singularly annoying one, though he can't help it), which seems akin to wanting to have your cake and eat it too.
You appear to believe that decision-making is part of the physical universe. Why?
Because of where and with what decisions are made.
So you would consider it obvious that decisions are made by neural networks or some other functional group inside the brain, then?
I'm open to suggestions for alternatives.
An alternative might be that decisions are not a physical process or thing. That the realm of ideas we all experience all the time indeed has existence. In other words, that consciousness cannot be reduced to physical correlates just like radiowaves will not be found lying inside a radio device. This would mean that decisions aren't made in the physical world and that any observations made of physical correlates of decisions would not allow direct conclusions about the decisions themselves.
Personally, I cannot even see how one might think there is no realm of ideas. Indeed, I find it much more plausible that this non-physical world is primary to the physical universe than the inverse, being what most people tend to assume. A thinking entity can come up with an entire physical world with all its laws calibrated just right to keep it livable, which seems to be the nature of our physical universe, but a lifeless physical object could never come up with a thought.
Hmm... But radio waves exist in the physical world, and anything messing with the brain can change ideas. I don't know why you think your idea is more plausible. There'd have to be a way of testing it. Until then, like string theory, it remains a theory.
What if we do not have free will, but rather "free won't"? What if your brain sent the impulse automatically but your conscious control, your will, decided to quash it? It would effectively be free will, personal choice, but how could it be measured? Have they even taken this into account?
Love it. Thank you for raising quite a bunch of salient points.
I would add what I see as the most fundamental criticism of the viewpoint of Gazzaniga (whom you spelled Gazzinga at one point, FYI), Harris and so many others who have built their homes in the most bleak and boring worldview they could conjure up:
Why on earth would even a fully decision-specific neural correlate, robustly measured as occurring clearly and significantly prior to a robust measure of awareness of intention, have to be proof of the absence of a free will guiding said action?
The silent assumption certainly seems to be that what can be measured earlier must be the causative element. That, in my view, is utter nonsense. Why would free will have to follow such a tight, pedestrian notion of temporality? Is the argument that (free or unfree) will is part of the physical universe and therefore has to follow the laws we believe to be valid for the physical universe? How would we even begin to study this question?
Compared to the idea that will strictly follows the physically observable timeline, I find it just as plausible that free will, from whatever plane it resides on, would be able to affect neural networks at a point earlier in the physically obersable timeline than that timepoint which it focally refers to. A branching out into different temporal directions from a nexus of decision-making, if you will. The fact that none of these questions are even considered shows how flat the thinking done truly is.
I've long had an intuitive disgust of the personality known as Sam Harris. He symbolises a passage in Herman Hesse's Siddhartha where the Buddha notices the intellect of the wannabe and says - "Be careful"
Intellect and the play of ideas aint shit to the deep silence of mediation. The emptiness is beyond the body, the self and the foolish play of words that do nothing more than make a feeble attempt to make an illusory world feel more real.
I am not above such bullshit but I am much more inclined to know it's bullshit than the mind identified by the term Sam Harris.
Thanks for putting this together. I get frightened when I meditate too much and this really helped me get back into my own analytical and judgement based framework.
Ego is my comfort zone.
Every professional athlete, who needs to perform physical acts at speeds that preclude deliberation, is perfectly well aware that your unconscious self can be trained. And in many sports, it's a matter of constant adjustment. Baseball is a good example. The pitchers change what they are throwing to a given batter, and the batter makes an adjustment, which means the pitchers make another change, and so it goes. Sometimes it goes badly. The neurologists have completely missed this? (I haven't read Sam Harris, but have read Robert Sapolsky, who also seems to have missed this one.)
I've always had an issue with Sam Harris' takedown of free will but do think that at the very least free will is more rare than we realize. With a lot of after the fact narrative building we don't really let the higher voice of our mind, the part that says this is me, this is what I'm doing, make executive decisions as often as we think we do. But I do think we do. From my understanding Harris would argue even if this voice in my head makes a decision it is also downstream of our parents, our genetics, our culture. But I'd argue those factors are what makes up the 'I' that on rare occasion does make a decision. I am my parents, my cutlure, my friends, the substacks a read, the substacks I hate read, etc. That voice often loses to compulsion in face of a late night desert but it gets some wins. :)
Nice to hear a takedown of the underlying science.