Free will - real or illusionary?

[OutwiththeOutCrowd]

I have an interest in free will. (Whether that interest is freely willed is a moot point!)

As a student, I read Roger Penrose’s book The Emperor’s New Mind about minds, machines, quantum mechanics and consciousness. Several sections in the book attracted my attention at the time but one part that I have been thinking about more recently discussed the experiments of Benjamin Libet. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Libet

Libet’s work involved monitoring the timing of brain signals associated with actions perceived by the subject to be voluntarily willed. His experiments appear to suggest that the subconscious mind is already gearing up for an action before the conscious mind is aware that it has made a decision to execute that action. If the results are taken at face value – and many scientists do so – they seem to suggest that free will is just an illusion.

Here is the well-known neuroscientist Susan Greenfield being a guinea pig for a reproduction of one of Libet’s experiments.

What is your reaction to these results?

Atheists, suppose you adopt this scientific view and accept that free will doesn’t exist. Suppose you are up a creek without a paddle. If you then find a floating plank and use it as a paddle, your solution is not down to your own ingenuity, it’s predetermined. And as you start to paddle your canoe, it’s not really you that’s doing it. You are trapped in a paddling automaton with the mere illusion that you are controlling it.

Does that sound satisfactory to you?

Theists, suppose you refute the scientific view that Libet’s experiments seem to push us towards. Suppose you are also up a creek without a paddle. You know that your sinful nature – or that of others – has brought this bad situation into being. If you then find a floating plank to use as a paddle, it’s down to divine providence. And, as you start to paddle, you know that God wants you to paddle home safely but you still have the free will to mess up.

Does that sound satisfactory to you?

Personally, I find myself resisting the apparent implications of Libet’s work. I don’t think the results are wrong – just that they might be being misinterpreted. Why would consciousness evolve in the first place if it was an entirely passive construct and there were no evolutionary advantage to it? I find it hard to accept that I am a spectator watching my own biopic rather than a player participating in it.

What do you think? Do you care? Do you think Outwith should cease cogitating and make the (illusionary?) choice to start cleaning her house instead?

Thanks for reading this far!

I guess I think that experiment is not as interesting or significant as it is made out to be.

Firstly, it's a reductive account of free will. It reduces free will to the motivation for actions, motivations that are consciously-willed, temporally close to the action and with a simple motivation. But that doesn't cover a large number, perhaps most, of our actions which are not as simple as simply lifting an arm.

What about decisions that do not result in an action? If I decide to go out and buy a tin of beans but put it off while I finish listening to the Archers, I have exercised my free will, but I have not done anything - yet. How could we test whether my brain decided that for me before I didn't do anything?

What about decisions that have no associated action with them at all? If I am reading a The God Delusion and decide that Richard Dawkins's account of grief and consolation morally nugatory, I have exercised my free will but with no associated action at all (although, who knows, I might throw the book across the room ).

Secondly, there is a real question, philosophically speaking, about whether the conclusions that can supposedly be drawn from this experiment are at all significant. Since we believe we have free will, and act as if we have it, to all intents and purposes we do have it. If we have no access to whatever is making the decisions for us, then our belief that we have free will comes to the same thing as actually having it.

Finally, your scenario as you have addressed it to Theists betrays quite a serious misunderstanding of the Christian understanding of free will -- I cannot speak for people of other faiths, who may have an entirely different understanding for all I know. (I assume you are conflating theists and Christians, since your misunderstanding does seem to be related to Christian ideas of providence.)

So, I would say that being up the creek is indeed a matter of my own free will, but I wouldn't say that it is determined by my sinful nature. After all, I could have given my paddle to someone in another boat who had lost their paddle. I could have been paddling for hours and become too weak to hold it any longer. If I find a floating plank, then I may well give thanks to God for it, but I don't think it has been specially put there by God to save me. Rather, it is part of the infinitely complex web of possibilities of God's providence. God may want me to paddle home safely, or he may not discerning God's will in any given situation is not simple! and there are all sorts of factors that may either help me or prevent me from getting home, some of which are to do with my free will and some of which are not.

Thank you for responding to my post in some detail Niminy.

I think the reason that the decision involving the movement of a finger was chosen for investigation was exactly because it was a straightforward testable decision. It took place at one particular instant from the point of view of the subject and was associated with an unambiguous measurable brain signal. Many decisions – as you say - are not of this type.

Daniel Dennett – although he’s an atheist - has written that he feels free will is preserved for more complex and deferred decisions of the type you describe. However, some other scientists believe Dennett has adopted a misleading conception of what free will is and don’t agree with him. They think the idea of free will can be killed off in its entirety. Sam Harris, for example, belongs to this camp.

Richard Dawkins, surprisingly perhaps, is quite reluctant to let go of the idea of free will. He downplays the significance of the difference between having free will and the mere illusion of having it.

So does it matter whether we have free will since we act as if we have it anyway?

There have been studies that demonstrate that, irrespective of whether we have free will or not, our belief in having it makes a difference. It has been shown that people who have been given literature to read that suggests we don’t have free will are more prepared to cheat and to behave in antisocial ways in subsequent experiments than those who are not shown such literature. It would appear that people become more immoral if they think they aren’t responsible for what they are doing. If free will really doesn’t exist, it seems that it might be better for society if this information didn’t become common knowledge!

On the other hand, knowing whether free will is a real characteristic of human beings or not is useful to people working in AI who would like to find out just how much of our behaviour and how many of our attributes could in principle be replicated by a machine.

It would also be helpful to understand if there is a way in which free will could be allowed for by biochemical processes in the brain. If mind is a function of processes in the brain, then it is very hard to see how completely deterministic processes can permit free will. Do we need to invoke quantum mechanical processes since they have a probabilistic non-deterministic character when some sort of measurement is involved?

If we discover incontrovertibly that we are without free will, then the concept of evil and other such moral ‘choices’ would lose their power and perhaps attitudes to crime and punishment might change.

Finally, aside from any practical considerations, the existence or otherwise of free will cuts to the core of our identity and what it means to be alive. I, for one, would like to get to the bottom of the mystery of free will out of sheer curiosity!

The paddlers in the canoes were not particularly serious but served to show contrasting and somewhat exaggerated and simplified outlooks on a bad situation, I described a scenario for theists based on what believers have said about their attitudes and beliefs to me in RL and on-line rather than on doctrine itself.

I have to admit that from the point of view of an outsider, it often looks like theists ascribe good things happening to God and bad things happening to human beings - except when the bad thing is clearly brought about by natural causes in which case a scientific explanation is given. So this is the mindset that appeared in my description.

It should be stressed that this is a tendency I have noted amongst a group and is not necessarily the case for a particular individual.

Who's to say the 'brain signals' were a sign that a decision was being made?

I think there are flaws in your opening gambit, starting with the points made in niminy's excellent post. Moving a finger isn't a straightforward testable decision. Because the person moving the finger brings a lifetime of experiences and associations. For example, I used to be a pianist, and I tend to imagine I'm playing a piano when I type, which would probably cause brain activity.

Furthermore, making a decision isn't one simple thing. Sometimes it requires the processing of brand-new information and unfamiliar stimuli. Sometimes it involves calling on existing memories, whether that's repeating an action you've done before, experiencing a feeling you've had before and/or recalling other memories such as images you've seen or anecdotes you've heard.

For example, when I see a dog my reaction is based on the actual dog in front of me and all the memories and experiences I already have. There are already neural pathways in my brain relating to seeing a dog (I am scared of dogs). It's also worth differentiating between explicit and implicit memory, functions that actually occur in different parts of the brain.

The process of deciding to do something isn't one simple thing, is my point. That said, I personally don't believe we have conscious free will. I'm a trainee psychotherapist, and I believe - from my own experience and observations of others - that our reactions, thoughts, hopes, beliefs etc are often unconscious. We often act on motivations of which we are unaware, and react according to unconsciously held beliefs. That limits our ability to consciously determine what we do.

But there's more than one kind of free will. You could mean the ability to choose your own actions in a given moment, which none of us do because we are always calling on past memories, experiences etc, using the neural pathways we have. Is that free will? It's not fully conscious and known and deliberate. Does that mean we are or are not free? Maybe this is a question about whether we have free will - or maybe it's just about what free will looks like.

So are we self-contained systems who can produce decisions independently? Does free will have to be conscious and known - if it's unconscious does that mean it's not free? If my unconscious mind determines which key I press is it not still my mind, freely deciding? Why do I have to consciously know about it - to have a genuine experience of choosing - for this to constitute making a choice? If my unconscious mind makes a choice, is that not still a choice that I have made? Why would I disown my unconscious mind and deem it to be outside of the concept of free will?

If I react to a dog with fear because other dogs have frightened me in the past, and my reaction is not conscious and is essentially pre-determined, am I a) acting independently and exercising my free will or b) acting autonomously without free will?

Then there is the ability to determine your own actions, consciously or unconsciously, without external control. To draw on those memories and experiences and react according to our own internal systems, rather than someone else pulling a string. I am a theist, and I believe I have free will - that I may sometimes get a tap on the shoulder, but I can choose whether I pay attention to it. Does God have a plan? To an extent, but he guides, he doesn't control. He's kind of like a GPS - when we screw up, he recalculates.

So anyway, I think a lot of things get muddled and must be defined when we talk about free will. Does it mean freedom from internal or external control? Do we need to have a conscious experience of making a decision? Do existing reactions and memories - existing neural pathways - constitute not having freedom because we are not free to process the information or stimuli as if it was new? Is the question of whether we have free will a question about the process that occurs in the brain or conditions external to that process?

What if I choose to do something even though I don't want to, as I feel I should? Did I use free will to decide that, as I could have not done it? Or am I not free because I feel unable to make the decision I want?

Lastly I personally do not ascribe good or bad things to God in the way you describe. I think things happen, and he walks with us as they happen. But that is my faith, and others may differ in theirs.

To put it more simply: why does an unconscious process mean you do not have free will if you are the person pressing the keys?

Thank you Peppermintcrayon for taking the time to respond. I know you do not agree with my position but I appreciate that you have replied thoughtfully – as has Niminy - even if it is to criticize what I have written!

Who's to say the 'brain signals' were a sign that a decision was being made?

The electrical signal measured was a readiness potential that can be detected on the scalp when the brain is revving up to instigate bodily movement – so I don’t think the signal was a sign of a decision being made by the subject unless you count the subconscious doing something as a decision.

If somebody hits me under the knee with a hammer, my leg will rise but it doesn’t feel like it is ‘I’ who made the decision to raise my leg in that case. If I see chocolate cake and I start salivating, that also doesn’t feel like I’ve made a decision to salivate. I think of a decision as something voluntary.

I agree with you that most of what we do is carried out at the subconscious level. There are probably many feedback loops between the conscious and subconscious minds, so that there is a complex two-way influence between them.

As I wrote in my original OP, I accept the results of Libet’s experiments but I also hold out the hope for alternative interpretations of the results that will allow for free will. There are many scientists who seem happy to accept the computer model of a brain. Personally I find it difficult to accept. That is why I am interested in the work of Penrose and Hameroff. They suggest that free will might be dependent on non-deterministic quantum effects. Their work is highly speculative for the moment but I would love to see a scientific rationalization for the reality of free will.

why does an unconscious process mean you do not have free will if you are the person pressing the keys?

If I could summarise your position, then, Peppermintcrayon, and excuse me if I have picked this up wrongly, you are suggesting the possibility of free will at the subconscious level because your subconscious mind is also part of you. I would agree that you have autonomy in this case – freedom to act unhindered by external influences unless a brain surgeon is tampering with your brain at the same time. But for me, free will is a stronger condition bound up with the ability to make conscious voluntary choices and the requirement that the alternative pathways I sense are indeed possible in principle.

I’m also interested to hear from any atheists out there who have mulled over the enigma of free will. I find the orthodox scientific/atheist position of free will being an illusion unappealing. Have you had any enlightening thoughts on the matter?

You are welcome. It's a really interesting debate!

"If I see chocolate cake and I start salivating, that also doesn’t feel like I’ve made a decision to salivate."

This is a perfect example of why this is such a problematic issue. Your body produced that reaction freely; nobody held you down and chemically induced the physical reaction. You were free to react or not react. You happened to salivate but someone who is allergic to chocolate would not have done; your reaction is not a given, and you are technically free to not have it, yet you also were not yourself able to do anything but have it. It was a given. Was that free will or not??

"you are suggesting the possibility of free will at the subconscious level because your subconscious mind is also part of you."

Yes, exactly. It is surely still you you making the decision, even if you are not consciously aware of it. So I think it is worth differentiating between a) the ability to act and react without, as you say, someone tampering with your brain and b) how much awareness you have of that process - whether you have an experience of making a decision.

You talk about a more conscious process. I'm not sure you are really describing free will at all, actually. If free will is the ability to make choices unimpeded then I don't think any of us can ever do that as we do not start afresh with a new brain each time.

I think a much more useful concept is that of agency, which is the capacity to act within the world, to act on our own will and to do so with freedom from external forces. It's a term used in - among others - philosophy and sociology. It can be used to describe a person's ability, or lack thereof, to take control of their own life. For example some people could improve their situation but lack the agency to do so.

The difference between agency and free will, as I see it (and this is my own opinion as it's a long time since I studied sociology) is that agency is concerned with what we can do - can we act on our own will, can we decide what to do and do it - and free will is concerned with the amount of choice we have over what it is that we choose to do, on whether our choices are real or an illusion.

So we might have agency (be able to act) with or without free will, as I see it.

Surely the subconcious mind performs many autonomic functions. You don't have to will yourself to breathe. In a situation where you might be required to make a fight or flight decision it makes sense for the more basic processing centres of the brain to prepare for a decision - by increasing adrenalin flow for example. The free will comes in when the higher brain functions consider the event, including the possibility of overriding the lower levels.

Say you are startled by a dog barking, the immediate response is to ready your body to run, but you can then either run or you can force yourself to be calm when you see the dog is behind a fence.

Its surely a simple evolutionary process, our ancestors whose brain kicked in the adrenalin right away survived better than the ones who were still thinking about it when the lion bit them.

Good to see a contribution from you cdtaylornats!

Yes, a lot of our reactions and 'just being' actions are not under conscious control. I’m glad you mentioned the fight or flight mechanism and the role of the conscious mind as an inhibitor of subconsciously initiated responses.

In the free will experiment I mentioned earlier, Libet himself suggested that the subconscious mind was initiating the finger lift action but the role of the conscious mind was as a potential inhibitor. Sometimes the brain signal measured was not associated with finger movement and Libet explained this as the conscious mind inhibiting the already initiated subconscious ‘decision’ at the last moment. This has led some people to say we don’t really have ‘free will’ but we’ve still got ‘free won’t’!

I think most of us are happy to accept that much of what we do is under the control of parts of the mind not within our awareness. But we do get a jolt of surprise when what we feel is a voluntary conscious decision turns out not to be.

A more up-to-date version of Libet’s experiment was performed relatively recently using MRI scans rather than readiness potential scalp measurements and the experimenters were able to predict whether test subjects would choose to press a button with their left or right hand a full seven seconds before the subjects thought they were making a choice of hand.

For me, the bigger question is about our status in a seemingly deterministic universe. Does the mind – conscious or subconscious as suggested by Peppermint – make real choices, in the sense that there is more than one possible future for us?

We are collections of atoms/molecules – very complex collections but still just the same stuff that inanimate matter is made of. The classical laws of mechanics are deterministic – the past state of a classical system evolves into a predetermined future state. A quantum mechanical system also evolves in time deterministically until a measurement is performed on it.

What about human beings? Could a large enough computer predict our future state unambiguously from our current state? We feel like we are constantly choosing between alternatives but do we really have any choice in the matter? Since our mental states are correlated with material states of the brain, are we just collections of molecules evolving through time according to natural laws from one predetermined state to the next with only the illusion of self-determination and choice?

If you believe you’ve got a high level choice in terms of one action selected over another, I think there has to be a low level mechanism involving biochemical brain processes to reflect that.

Something tells me free will and quantum mechanics don’t quite have the popular appeal of cauldrons and crystals!

Being out with the OutwiththeOutCrowd crowd might seem a bit too mind-frazzling, I suppose. I’ll try to sound a bit more ‘normal’ and chunter on a bit less – maybe that would help!

Moving away from the abstract physics stuff, how clever do you think your subconscious mind is? Do you regard it as being part of you? I have tended to think of my subconscious mind as a minion doing low-level stuff I’m not aware of. I’ve never really felt it was part of my identity. But I’m wondering if I’ve been getting it wrong.

I’ve sometimes had the experience of consciously trying to recall a name, not being able to, carrying on with some other activity and then finding the name popping up unbidden - perhaps that’s not too high level.

But I’ve also had experience of working on a scientific problem, getting nowhere and turning my attention to other matters, only to find, hours or even days later, some insight jumping into my conscious mind seemingly from nowhere as I’m busy doing something else entirely.

Have you had any interesting experiences with your subconscious mind?

Aww - please don't think your thread isn't interesting to anyone. I've been reading, but it is a question that requires a bit of thought though. I'll try to post something a bit more meaningful later.

That's kind of you Velvet - and quite in keeping with other posts I've seen from you on MN!

I'm happy with deep, shallow and everything-in-between contributions!

out it is a very interesting subject but it hurts my small brain! I will try to think on it and reply later.

TooBusyByHalf - it does my head in too and I wish I could stop thinking about it but I can't!!

Is that proof free will doesn't exist?!

I have no specialist knowledge here so i suspect my response is going to be at the shallow end of the equation (and thanks for your kind words, Out)!

I don't see thoughts or actions originating at a subconscious level as a barrier to free will. I would go as far as saying that the subconscious is more of the real 'us' than the conscious mind. I practice meditation and yoga, both with the aim of quieting the conscious mind so that the subconscious can be observed. I tend to think that my subconscious is far wiser and more reliable than my more easily observed thought processes, that are often not very reliable.

Some actions are clearly biologically driven, and others may be determined by societal constraints. I'm an atheist so clearly don't believe a deity is pulling my strings. The greatest barrier to true free will as i see it is our own experiences, and our thoughts and feelings around them. I think, much like Peppermint was saying, our learnt experiences may close down a possible course of action through e.g. fear, so while we have free will not all actions may be available to us. Anxiety is my personal barrier. Mindfulness teaches us that thoughts are not facts, and as such the fact that thought processes are consciously available to us is no indicator of reliability.

I'm probably sounding a bit woo, but my experience with deep meditation is that the wisdom and real essence of 'us' does lie deeper. I am not my thoughts, my feelings or emotions. They are often wrong and change from one moment to the next. I would certainly agree that the conscious mind can inhibit the subconscious.

How about this for a really simple explanation? The so-called pre-conscious activity that the experiment purports to demonstrate is just the thought process that occurs before the decision has been articulated in the mind. So the decision happens a fraction of a second before it is articulated, and also of course before it is acted upon. The subject if the experiment conflates the decision and the action and so calls the time of the decision by reference to the decision though that has in fact happened earlier.

Subject of the experiment...
By reference to the action ... Sorry. Go to bed, me.

Oh dear, ToobusybyHalf – you’ve been thinking about this in the wee small hours. I hope you at least had a nice cup of tea by your side.

So let me see if I’ve got this right:

Here is your sequence of events:

1. Action initiated in brain -->
2. Action is articulated as a decision in the brain -->
3. Subject acts on decision

Now, you are saying that 2. and 3. occur so close together that the brain believes they are simultaneous and dates the decision to the time of action 3. So the subject is mistakenly dating the decision too late.

I think I can see where you are coming from in this – but I’m not sure it quite works and it’s my fault because I’ve probably not given you all the information you need!

In the experiment, it was actually clear that the subject was dating the decision to occur before the action occurred as measured by the tester.

So the sequence of timed events in Libet’s experiment were:

1. Brain signal (readiness potential) associated with voluntary movement starts to build (tester timed) -->
2. Subject believes they make a conscious decision to move (subject timed) -->
3. Brain signal (readiness potential) tails off and movement takes place (tester timed)

The time interval between 2 and 3 is small – as you suggested - but measurable - around 200 milliseconds. The time interval between 1 and 2 is also small but a bit longer – around 350 milliseconds.

More up-to-date experiments using MRI scanners have allowed scientists to see initiating activity for the intention to move in the brain around seven seconds before the subject is aware of the intention to move widening the gap between 1 and 2.

I don’t know if that’s any clearer TooBusybyHalf – I hope so!

Velvet – thanks for posting. I’m going to respond a bit later free will willing!

If the subconscious mind was static / unchanging the occurrence of an action being begun before the conscious decision being made would indeed compromise the idea that we have free will.

However I am inclined to think there is feedback between the conscious and subconscious. So conscious thoughts affect the subconscious which in turn affects our 'instinctive actions'. Our conscious choices / thought can affect our brain development. Surely this is how 'conditioning' / certain therapies work? This would mean, through our conscious thought, we have free will but that our free will can affect our 'instinctive' reactions.

This, as I understand it, links with the Biblical ideas of being 'free in Christ' or a 'slave to sin', and that 'faith comes by hearing', also themes of 'heardening' of the heart.

^so I tend to think the subconscious as being a culmative result of our thoughts (reflections on experiences). So because we can direct our subconscious, through our thoughts and reflections, even though the subconscious may control our quick 'instinctive' reactions, we still have free will.

^although along with this some our subconscious will also be innate, inherited. Although there is still room for a certain amount of meta stability in the state of our subconscious as we can change it through our conscious thought, I believe.

Hi Capsium, thank you for joining my thread! I was just about to go out but I wanted to respond quickly to you as you are making an important point and you’ve inspired me!

Yes, absolutely I agree about the feedback between subconscious and conscious parts of the mind and sometimes it is difficult to trace back the origin of an action. It’s a sort of chicken and egg situation.

In Libet’s experiment I said the decision was straightforward and testable. I think it was Peppermintcrayon that pulled me up on calling it straightforward. I suppose I meant straightforward compared to other decisions you might think of. But Peppermint is right – there is a context in which the decision is being made. The mind of the subject is not a tabula rasa – the subject is going into the experiment knowing in advance that there is a lift the finger game about to occur.

So I think the subconscious is acting a bit like a backroom boffin bursting into the office of the managing director (conscious mind) saying that the team are all set for finger movement now and the managing director signs off on the action but he/she’s not entirely surprised by the appearance of the backroom boffin because the managing director has already let it be known to everyone in advance that finger lifting at some point is his/her intention for the company so he/she finds it easy to take ownership of the action. But the actual timing of bursting into the office is in the hands of the backroom boffin!

Now if the backroom boffin had burst in saying that the team were all set for toe tapping, the managing director might have vetoed the decision at the last moment.

I like your analogy. And ultimately the managing director can choose to direct the background boffin, regarding their boffin related activities - although it may take some time for the new policies to become standard practice.

I take your point out about stages 2 and 3.

The other point I was trying to make was one about language. We don't really know if we can think without words. Conscious thoughts we articulate in our minds -including decisions whether to lift a finger or press a button -are thought in words. That is what happens at stage 2. My point - I suppose it is similar to the idea of the subconscious thought preceding the conscious in a sense but I think about it differently - was simply that we don't know whether in fact we make the decision before we put it in words in our head. So maybe its possible that at stage 1 we're at a kind of pre-verbal place in the decision making process which only gets recognised when it is articulated at stage 2. I admit that this doesn't prove anything about whether we are in control of the decision at stage 1 or not, but I think it leaves open the possibility that we might be.

Yes, I understand you a bit better now TooBusyByHalf. (I think!) Thanks for the clarification. So a pre-verbal intention followed by a verbal awareness of that pre-verbal intention followed by action.

Interesting. I'm going to think about it.

TooBusy it is interesting what you say about thoughts being verbal / thoughts being connected with language.

I personally have some very early memories, from when I was a few months old. They are largely connected with a sense of wanting to touch things, that I saw, that I liked, but not being able to because I had been put down somewhere else. Not particularly verbal but just wanting something.

I don't know whether the desire was conscious choice or not...