Re: [evol-psych] Is Free Will a Diesel?

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Is Free Will an Illusion?
=20
- By Brandon Keim [image: Email Author] <brandon@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- April 14, 2008 |
- 7:32 am |
- Categories: Uncategorized
=20
Long before you=92re consciously aware of making a decision, your mind =
has
already made it.
=20
If that=92s the case, do people actually make decisions? Or is every ch=
oice =97
even the choice to prepare for future choices =97 an unthinking, mechan=
istic
procedure over which an illusory self-awareness is laid?
=20
Those questions are raised by a study conducted by Max Planck Institute
neuroscientists and published Sunday in *Nature Neuroscience*. Test=20
subjects
chose whether to push a button with their right or left hand;
seven seconds before they experienced making the choice, their brain
activity already predicted their final decisions.
=20
For more on the experiment, see my *Wired.com*
story
=20
for which I had the privilege of speaking to Martha
Farah<http://www.psych.upenn.edu/%7Emfarah/>,
director of the University of
Pennsylvania=92s Center for Cognitive Neuroscience and a prominent
neuroethicist. As is so often the case in journalism, we had a fascinat=
ing
(email) conversation that didn=92t fit into the article itself, and I d=
ecided
=97 ha =97 to publish it here.

There's a host of philosophers (philosophy of science) who believe
that behaviorism was a bad idea, not just because it supposes that
only physical (as opposed to intersubjectively reproducible)
events can qualify as scientific, but because it also supposes
that science is all about 'if this then that' types of conjunctions
(Humean constant conjunctions). I believe a more
productive way to address the free will issue is by applying some
of the abstraction, stratification and generalization that these
philosphers have argued for to the issue in which we examine the
fixed objective predicted by our best scientific theory relevant
to the issue, and see to what degree rational agents depart from
that fixed objective relative to other animal species. And
rather than lab experiments, I have opted to begin with
a premise and explore it's implications. Here is the one I have
suggested on various occasions:


++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Feelings of Worthlessness

An Outline of a Divergent Theory of Emotional Instability

Objective: To account for ego/self-worth related emotion (e.g.,
needs for love, purpose, meaning, acceptance, attention, moral
integrity, recognition, achievement, wealth, power, dignity,
fame, immortality, religion, autonomy, justice, etc.) and
emotional disorder (e.g., anxiety, depression, addiction,
suicide, etc.) within the context of an evolutionary scenario;
i.e., to synthesize natural science and the humanities; i.e.,
to answer the question: 'Why are members of one particular
species of naturally selected organism (Homo Sapiens) expending
significant amounts of effort and energy on the biologically
bizarre non-physical objective of maximizing self-worth?'

General Observation: The species in which rationality is most
developed is also the one in which individuals have the greatest
difficulty in maintaining an =93adequate=94 sense of self-worth,
often going to extraordinary lengths in doing so (e.g., Evel
Knievel, celibate monks, 9/11 terrorists, etc.).

General Hypothesis: Rationality is antagonistic to psychocentric
stability (i.e., maintaining an "adequate" sense of self-worth).

Explanation #1 (psychodynamics): In much the manner our rationality
allows for the subordination of lower emotional concerns and
values (pain, fear, anger, sex, etc.) to more global concerns
(concern for the self as a whole), so too, these more global
concerns and values can themselves become reevaluated and
subordinated to other more global, more objective considerations.
And if this is so, and assuming that emotional disorder emanates
from a deficiency in self-worth resulting from precisely this
sort of experientially based reevaluation, then it can reasonably
be construed as a natural malfunction resulting from one's
rational faculties functioning a tad too well.

Explanation #2 (rationality theory): Being the blind arational
process that she is, Mother Nature instills in all her creatures
a sense of their own importance (or of the importance of their
needs) that is rationally inordinate. And, as a species reaches
a certain stage in its rational/cultural/memetic development, its
members increasingly come to question this inordinancy, and
increasingly come to require reasons (justification) for
maintaining it (e.g., needs for love, purpose, meaning, etc.).

Normalcy and Disorder (consciousness studies): Assuming this is
correct, then some explanation for the relative "normalcy" of most
individuals would seem necessary. This is accomplished simply by
postulating different levels or degrees of consciousness. From
this perspective, emotional disorder would then be construed as
A VALUATIVE AFFLICTION resulting from an increase in semantic
content in the engram indexed by the linguistic expression, "I
am insignificant", which all persons of common sense "know" to
be true, but which the "emotionally disturbed" have come to
"realize", through abstract thought, devaluing experience, etc.

Indeterminism: "Free will" and the incessant activity presumed
to emanate from it is simply the insatiable appetite members
of our species have for self-significating/self-worth
enhancing experience (juxtaposed with the need to avoid the
pain of 'feelings of worthlessness') which, in turn, is simply
nature's way of attempting to counter the objectifying
influences of our rational faculties. As such, although "free
will" itself (the self-worth complex) is constrained within
parameters determined by natural selection (the maximizing of
self-worth), its presence in us, manifested in the need to
expend significant amounts of effort and energy on maintaining
emotional well-being (keeping up with the Joneses, climbing Mt.
Everest, posting to newsgroups, etc.) would, according to this
perspective, be construed as evidence that members of nature's
most rational species have become TOO VALUATIVELY OBJECTIVE
(requiring remedial measures) and, as such, LESS VALUATIVELY/
CONATIVELY DETERMINED by natural selection than members of
less rational more emotionally stable species. In this view,
indeterminism is manifested, not in the ability to change one's
mind about what to have for breakfast, but rather in a species
whose members appear less and less concerned with staying alive
(e.g., daily suicide bombings in the Middle East) and more and
more concerned with REASONS (justification) for staying alive
(e.g., needs for love, purpose, meaning, etc.).

Ethics: Since, according to this explanation, more rational equates
or correlates with more valuatively objective, the moral maxim,
'Love (intrinsically value) your neighbor as you love
(intrinsically value) yourself' could be construed as an
imperative of an implicit theory of rationality in which 'being
rational' is simply a matter of 'being objective'. This would
also mean that the author of Genesis got it right in referring to
an awareness of right and wrong as a form of knowledge.

Moral Sentiment: In this view, the emotive force of moral argument
apparently arises from the fact that perceiving ourselves as
rational is a crucial determinant in assessing self-worth which,
in a species that accomplishes its survival from a conscious
intention to do so (e.g., long range planning) rather than as a
cumulative effect of blindly responding to stimuli, is just
another way of talking and thinking about "the will to survive".

Incompleteness: Although no human is likely to measure up to the
standard of loving others as they love themselves (valuative
objectivity), another one of the myriads of implications of this
view of rationality is that no person, belief, objective, theory,
etc. is likely to be rational in any but a relative sense of the
term (the empirical analogue of Godel's logical discovery that
mathematical rationality can never be found in its entirety within
a formal system). Since this applies to the present theory as wel=
l,
it is one that implicitly predicts its own eventual demise.


Phil

www.rationology.net




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