I love how philosophy creeps into all kinds of modern media....or maybe I'm so obsessed I just want to see it in everything....
Today's Horizon ('The Creative Brain: How Insight Works') is a great example of psychological and philosophical fusion. I was hooked by the time the title flashed up to be honest, this could have been created as inspiration for my grad work :P
The discovery of thought-brain correlation was one of those paradigm shifting moments in philosophy - effectively the nail in the coffin for the Cartesian conception of mind and laying the ground for neuroscience to have a real effect on our philosophical theories. I think we've been fighting scientific advances for too long in the worry that they threaten our metaphysical ideals.
Funnily enough this whole documentary would be a great starting point for a discussion of the philosophy of mind ("look! Correlation between white matter and intelligence/creativity!" It really is an identity theorists dream). But it was my neurotic obsession with free will that was ticking away for me while watching...
I had a conversation about free will with a colleague not long ago. I'm sure there will be many of you reading this who disagree (my friend surely did), but believe it or not 'free will' isn't really held in much regard these days in many philosophical circles. Yet its something which the majority of people hold onto with all their might, especially in the face of my protests and after a couple of beers...
My reasons for disregarding it obviously require a little more argument than this blog can accommodate but this Horizon documentary helped me create a nice neat analogy in my head. The kind of freedom people generally mean when they use the term 'free will' is that freedom which would allow us to have acted otherwise in some given situation. Say I decide to rob my local bank (I'm a thrill seeker - and broke). Most people will want to argue that, in order to be morally responsible here I must have been able to do otherwise....
....So here's the issue I see. imagine we rewind time. I go back to just before the robbery. Has anything changed? My environment? My thoughts? My motivations? My character? nope. So why on earth this idea that I could have done otherwise? I would be the same person, in exactly the same situation, with none of that oh-so-helpful hindsight we get after robbing banks and the like.
Basically, the common idea of 'free will' is the idea that I could have done otherwise, regardless of the fact that every moment leading up to the robbery was the same, I had no motivation to do otherwise, on a subatomic level all my neurones and synapses are exactly the same....can you see the issue?
For my very insistent colleague to be correct (But of course you could have chosen not to rob the bank! You chose to rob it godamit!) there would need to be something totally un-caused in the chain of events that led to the robbery in order for him to keep his stranglehold on this conception of free will. To me this sounds a lot like the 'flash of inspiration' which is the focus of the documentary...Alas, the crux of the programme is to explain the fascinating way in which scientists have tied even this elusive idea to causal chains within the brain. Nothing spontaneous or mysterious here in afraid. + 1 to materialism.
This conception of free will is something so many people defend, even though it would require them to throw out all science, physics...all Newtonian laws and really argue that something can stop causality in its tracks. Something would need to pop into my head, that wasn't governed by the causes before it, to make me choose otherwise...and if someone can demonstrate that something like this could exist...I'll buy them a pint :)
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I like!
ReplyDeleteI just wanted to interject one little concept that you failed to mention. I don't want to get into detail here so I'll sum it up:
Quantum physics states that any situation given the chance to evolve and propagate through space and time will do so with a dash of casuality... So theoretically, considering that quantum physics is reliable, an action-potential send off by a neurone, A, in your brain did not cause an excitation of a nearby neurone, B. Never the less the second time (After warping back in time) there could have been a minute change in the quantum reality of that could cause, say, one little chloride Ion to infact cross the neuronal mebrane and this time cause an excitaiton of neurone B.
Neuro-scientist have found out that there are infact single neurones that are influental enough to change the following state of your brain solely by the chance of it firing or halting a signal which could be the reason for you to suddently achieve an insight of a completly different truth that you depict as righteous in that moment, stopping you from comitting that crime and spending your days with far worse thrill seekers than you are. :P
I've been reading a very interesting article about cerebral networks and neurones.
hmm I guess we will never find out.
Best regards, Vitto.
PS: I think you owe me pint! :P
ReplyDeletePPS: One more thing. Eventhough we believe that our mind is a more or less rigid construct that will react to a stimulus in way somewhat similar to a second equal stimulus at a different point in time... Yet our brain is sooo unbelievably dynamical that it most certainly will not produce the exact same response.. due to the stimuli that occured between the first and last. Which leaves the question if we can - at all - grasp the concept and complexity of our brains and how an inanimate network gives rise to character, feelings and interpretation of a kind.
ReplyDeleteThis is all really interesting :)
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure my challenge still stands though :P In response to your first comment,the key word that troubles me is 'chance'. If a neurone can change my brain state 'solely by the chance of it firing' and effecting a different neural pathway, I don't see how this leads us to a helpful conclusion about free will.
What your describing are very interesting facts about the indeterminacy of the microscopic world. Lets suppose for a minute then that this indeterminacy effects the way our brains work like you have described, with minute changes at the quantum level occuring to effect different outcomes. I don't think this brings us any closer to the conception of 'free will' that so many people are stuck to. Its a great basis for random, indeterminate behaviour..but not behaviour that people have chosen or 'freely willed'
And on the other hand if the minute changes do not occur by chance, then they are caused...and you havn't really answered my challenge to find something un-caused that pops into my head and makes me act differently to how I am determined to act...
Basically, chance changes at a quantum level that seem to escape the causal path dont pathe the way for freely willed behaviour. Chance behaviour isn't free behaviour - 'God doesn't play dice'...
What Im tying to say is: if in that particular moment of choice, all the planets (here neurones) align, your, apparent, free choice may be something completly different to the pattern your brain would have usually brought up... Which doesnt mean to say you will not commit the crime a couple of minutes later.. Because over all your brain is not a single unpredictable quantum particle but a huge number of quanti that will overall sustain a certain thought pattern.. the one that your brain attained during your life. So free will is not actually free since the experiences you had made it that way... You did not choose to think in a certain way but the world you live in made you do so.. Is that free will or only psudo-free will?
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