Thursday, August 30, 2007
I Am Pretty Sure I Freely Decided to Write This Post
So Benjamin Libet is dead. He wouldn't have seen that one coming, unless he decided to die, but, then, he can't have decided to die because nobody ever really decides to do anything. Libet, you see, is the scientist who discovered that, prior to our conscious decision to respond to a command to perform an action, our brain kicks into action. Many have concluded from this that free will is an illusion, an after-the-fact rationalisation. Well, maybe. But I suspect this is another case of scientists drawing unwarranted conclusions from their work. Apart from anything else, the anti-free-willers would need to show that the pre-conscious brain activity specifically encoded this particular decision. It might simply be activity signalling that a decision is to be made. I know the reponse to this - that this still compromises free will - but anybody can play games of infinite regressions. As I have written before, free will is an issue that obsesses contemporary science. If real, it threatens materialism; if not, it threatens faith of course, but also our sense of ourselves as autonomous, fully-conscious creatures. But I have always doubted that this is a real issue, rather it is an artefact of language and it can, therefore, never be resolved, only forgotten.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
I have never understood the enormous value placed on Libet's work - or rather this single claim about pre conscious 'decision making'. Surely it is likely to be a phenomenon of the measurement process anyway?
ReplyDeleteThe fact is that we are a somewhat pathetic unit of free will plonked on top of a mass of confusing, inherited physical processes we call 'our' bodies.
No wonder we aspire to be machines.
Quite, Chris. I think this is an example of the familiar phenomenon of the spurious radicalism of certain scientists. They want to believe they have overturned the world and everything in it.
ReplyDeleteI felt an overwhelming urge to comment but forgot what I was going to say by the time I started typing. However, what I would say if I could remember is that there is no such thing as a free will - we pay for our choices eventually.
ReplyDeleteI vaguely suspect the trouble comes from confusing free will as it operates (or not) in the mental arena with an absolute notion of an absolutely free will - which can only be some kind of philosophical abstraction. The debate probably belongs with the one about the existence of God - i.e. essentially a waste of time. Anyway, as Isaac Bashevis Singer said, 'We must believe in free will, We have no choice.'
ReplyDeleteNobody believes radical determinism applies to them, except when they are trying to explain why they did something shabby. Consider the position of the fellow trying to decide whether to leave his wife and kids for another. He sees himself as confronted by a great and torturously complex existential dilemma that only applies to him and only he can understand and resolve. Two years later, he will tell you how he really had no choice--she drove him away by not understanding his needs.
ReplyDeleteYes indeed - determinism only seems to work post facto. What happens had to happen. Circular.
ReplyDelete