Concepts and conceptions of the Free Will - Part I.
Do we have a free will? Are our decisions mainly controlled by our conscious self (free will) or by our unconscious self? Or do we only think, or have the feeling, that our choices and decisions are made by our conscious self? Is conscious choice just an illusion? Can our conscious self influence our unconscious self? Do we have a free will or is everything predetermined? The concept of the free will is, at least for me, an intriguing topic from a philosophical and scientific point of view. After posting the blogs Lateral Thinking (by far the most popular) and Serendipity I do think it's about time for another one in the series related to thoughts and thinking: the Free Will. An overview about topics related to Thinking can be found at the Thinking Portal.
Passage (see also Scientific American: Free Will versus the Programmed Brain) in a popular science book by Francis Crick (co-discoverer of the DNA double helix):
“‘You,’ your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. Who you are is nothing but a pack of neurons.…although we appear to have free will, in fact, our choices have already been predetermined for us and we cannot change that.”
Wired: Brain Scanners Can See Your Decisions Before You Make Them
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| This schematic shows the brain regions (green) from which the outcome of a participant's decision can be predicted before it is made |
The concept:
Citations from Wikipedia:
Wikipedia (Free Will): "Free will is the apparent ability to make choices free from certain kinds of constraints"
Wikipedia (Neuroscience of Free Will): "Neuroscience of free will refers to recent neuroscientific investigations shedding light on the question of free will, which is a philosophical and scientific question as to whether, and in what sense, rational agents exercise control over their actions or decisions. The principle of free will has religious, ethical, and scientific implications.
One significant finding of several studies is that a person's brain seems to commit to certain decisions before the person becomes aware of having made them. Early studies found delays of about half a second; with contemporary brain scanning technology, scientists in 2008 were able to predict with 60% accuracy whether subjects would press a button with their left or right hand up to 10 seconds before the subject became aware of having made that choice. These findings may not be sufficient to contradict free will, as it would be quite likely that a large range of cognitive operations are necessary to freely press a button.
Another proposed explanation is a 'forward model of motor control'. The idea is that our conscious self does not cause all behaviours. Instead, the conscious self is alerted (through various sensations) to behaviours that the rest of the brain and body are already planning and performing. To be clear, this model does not deny that consciousness affects behaviour; it does not forbid conscious experience from being used as input by unconscious processes - information that might modify a behaviour in progress. The key is that the unconscious processes play a much larger role in behaviour. This model thus challenges some conceptions of free will, since self awareness may only recognize a feeling of will, which appears before an action."
Unconscious and Conscious Self:
The Dutch columnist Roos Vonk has a balanced, thoughtful and fresh point of view about the free will as she demonstrated in her column. A translation by me is briefly summarized below.
It would be interesting to find out whether our decisions are controlled by our conscious self (free will) or by our unconscious (subconscious) self. In this respect, research results from monitoring brainactivity suggest that, whatever you are planning to do, the decision was already made in your brain long before you have the impression that you made the decision yourself.
Thus, the order is: 1) decision (brains), 2) awareness of the decision and at the same time 3) acting. Because 1) is unconsious and 2) is always accompanied by 3), it feels as if we decide just before acting.
However, choices are made mainly by our unconscious self. In fact the majority (95%) of what we do is mainly unconscious. This suggests that people don't have a free will: we have the illusion that we make our choices by ourselves, but decisions are made by unconscious motives, that in turn are influenced by social, genetic and environmental factors that we even can't control ourselves. Actually, we don't always need these conscious considerations, because the real decisions are not made consciously at all. This does not imply we don't have a free will at all or contradict free will. More important is that our conscious self is running behind the facts. Nevertheless, we are able to deliver input to our unconscious self. Our unconscious self is not controlled only by genetic or other forces, but also by our own conscious thoughts which in turn can influence an unconscious decision. Even if only 1% of the decisions are made consciously, it will be of significant and essential importance for our self.
Conscious choice and the free will. An illusion?:
In the blog BrainBlogger the 'button-press' experiment is criticized. In addition, the functions of the unconscious and conscious minds are quite well explained as follows. The conscious and unconscious minds interact and fulfill different tasks. Simple or well-learned tasks, like habits or ingrained prejudices, are controlled by the unconscious mind, whereas tasks that are more complex or novel, like new learning are processed by the conscious mind, the unconscious/subconscious mind has not yet had a chance to learn. The free will mediates in what we do want to learn. In this respect, the existence of the free will can't be ruled out. From this it can be concluded that the free will is not an illusion.
Stimulating the free will:
From a column in Lifehacker: "Having free will depends on whether or not you believe you have it. According to a recent study published in Psychological Science, when you deny the existence of free will you're actually hindering your brain's ability to perform voluntary action. If you're feeling like you're not in control of your actions, it may be worth reaffirming your belief in voluntary action. Maybe it'll make the difference."
Examples dealing with choice:
- Surprisingly, voting for a political candidate is independent of the free will and rationality. The decision is made within a split second and is mainly determined by the first impression of the candidate's face. Whether or not it does look reliable enough for the voter is by far the most important criterium. Thus, the choice is not based on the election program or other rational considerations, but based on the impression at first sight. However, it does feel if we do have conscious control over our choice, but it in fact it's only a choice made unconsciously.
Note:
Can agree that the very first impression is important for preference. However, our decision can be reconsidered in time by conscious experiences e.g. if we gather more cognitive information.
- Faqt: It will take only a millisecond for men to judge a woman, but the other way around it takes much longer. A man searching for a potential partner decides within a second whether he likes or prefers a particular woman and the decision depends mainly on the looks. Man can get instant information from a woman's body and face, such as potential fertility. For women it takes longer to make a choice. They will judge men on loyalty, character and futureplans. With this information they seem to be able to estimate whether a man will possibly commit to her and her children.
Note:
Do think that the explanation above is highly implausible. Can't imagine that a man can instantly judge a woman's fertility. In that case women could, when in doubt, then just ask any man to get a reliable answer about her fertility, a medical examination would then be unnecessary.
Personal comments:
One should be skeptical about the interpretations from the flawed 'button-press' experiment. Extrapolating from such an experiment to all mental life is not justified. The 60% prediction accuracy is significant, but only 10% more than fifty-fifty. Nonetheless, it's remarkable that decisions can be made before we are aware of the decision. The timegap mentioned in the experiment could probably be needed for neuron transport through the brain nerves to the 'self awareness' part of the brain. Choices and decisions are mainly made by our unconscious self, our conscious self (awareness) is running behind the facts.
Personally, I do believe we do have a free will. Choices or decisions are at least influenced by our conscious Self. Our unconscious self is controlled by our own conscious thoughts which in turn can influence an unconscious decision. This point of view is based on the following findings. The conscious and unconscious minds interact and fulfill different tasks. Furthermore, our conscious mind can influence our unconscious mind by experiences from environmental factors. These factors are to some extent (or at least not marginal) influenced by our conscious self. Therefore, the findings do not necessarily contradict free will.
Moreover, learning and reasoning are complex and novel tasks that are controlled by our conscious mind, because the unconscious mind has not yet had a chance to 'learn'. The free will mediates in what we do want to learn. In this perspective, we can assume that not everything is predetermined and that Free Will is NOT an illusion.
