Flickers of Freedom

Closer to Truth: Free Will

A few years ago, during one of the meetings at FSU that were part of Al Mele's Templeton grant on free will, Closer to Truth filmed a piece on free will as part of their Big Questions series. Several philosophers and psychologists who will be familiar to our readers were interviewd--e.g., Mele, Bertram Malle, Eddy Nahmias, Thalia Wheatley, Peter Tse, Roy Baumeister, Adina Roskies, and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (to name a few). It's well worth a watch for the readers of Flickers!

Two Pieces on Free Will

My Google Alerts has alerted me to two popular press pieces on free will. The first is in Spectator. It's called, "Will There be Free Will in a Brave New Bioenginered World?" by Steven Poole. The second is over at The Conversation. It's called, "Beleiving in Free Will Makes You Feel More Like Your True Self" by Elizabeth Seto. They're both worth a read. Thoughts?

 

Vargas Interview in APA Newsletter

The latest APA Newsletter on Hispanic/Latino Issues in Philosophy contains a terrific interview with fellow Flickerer Manuel Vargas.  Along with some nice revelations about his philosophical biography, it also contains some pretty intriguing reflections about his APA-award winning book Building Better Beings:

Neuroscience vs. Free Will? (Redux) Go....

Here is the abstract from a new paper by Adam Bear and Paul Bloom entitled, "A Simple Task Uncovers a Postdictive Illusion of Choice":

Do people know when, or whether, they have made a conscious choice? Here, we explore the possibility that choices can seem to occur before they are actually made. In two studies, participants were asked to quickly choose from a set of options before a randomly selected option was made salient. Even when they believed that they had made their decision prior to this event, participants were significantly more likely than chance to report choosing the salient option when this option was made salient soon after the perceived time of choice. Thus, without participants’ awareness, a seemingly later event influenced choices that were experienced as occurring at an earlier time. These findings suggest that, like certain low-level perceptual experiences, the experience of choice is susceptible to “postdictive” influence and that people may systematically overestimate the role that consciousness plays in their chosen behavior.

Unsurprisingly, the paper is generating some buzz in the popular press.  See here, here, here, here and here. Adam Bear has even written a popular press piece about this research in Scientific American entitled, "What Neuroscience Says about Free Will: We're convinced that it exists, but new research suggests it might be nothing more than a trick the brain plays on itself." So, it appears we go once more into this breach. What say you Al, Eddy, Neil and the usual crew of folks working on neuroscience, free will, etc.?

Related articles

Nahmias on Free Will at Scientific American

Consciousness and Moral Responsibility

Is Consciousness Important for Free Will? Why (Not)?

The Causal Powers of Absences?

By now you might have heard of Tyron Goldschmidt's paper “A Demonstration of the Causal Power of Absences” in which he aims to do just that. In case you have yet to see it, the paper tries to do so by having nothing more than a title: the body of the paper is entirely lacking in text. 

The blank page appears to have had numerous causal effects, including that of causing a few written replies, which seems to demonstrate the point in question: namely, that the lack of written text, the absence of written words on the page, has the power to cause real change.    

I like Goldschmidt’s paper and, contrary to what Nathan Wildman and Neil McDonnell say here and in the comments here, I think Goldschmidt’s paper does, in fact, demonstrate the causal power of absences.

Nathan and Neil suggest that Goldschmidt’s paper fails to demonstrate the causal power of absences. Their reasoning is simple: they claim that there is no absence here, only an actual positive property had by the paper in question, namely, the property of having no body text.

Unfortunately, Nathan and Neil have offered little reason to think that (a) this property actually exists and (b) is positively had by the paper. Notice, they claim that the property in question is that of having no body text. But, we can also truthfully claim that the paper does not have body text: the descriptive claim ‘not having body text’ does not suggest that there is a positive property that actually exists and that is had by the paper. Compare (1) the paper has no body text, with (2) the paper does not have body text.  Arguably, the latter claim is made true by the very absence in question, i.e., the paper’s demonstrable absence of written text, not, pace Nathan and Neil, by its having of an actual positive property.  

However, and crucial for those interested in causal powers, the demonstrable absence of text does not produce the relevant effects by itself. The causal power of this absence of text results from the simultaneous operation of multiple causal powers that are working together to produce an effect. Specifically, in this context a paper that is absent any written text has the power to cause real change, due to that very absence, by working together with our collective expectations. In particular, it is by thwarting those very real expectations that the absence of text causes real change. But, again, it does not do so because it has the actual positive property of having no body text. It does so by not having body text within a context where blank pages thwart our expectations.

Welcome back!

Free will is back, y'all. 

The latest from SCIENCEY people: 

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2016-01-free-mechanisms-involved-decision-making.html

(Actually, a pretty cool if not-entirely-unexpected result.)

Enjoy!

CfA: Gothenburg Responsibility Project

Call for Abstracts*, Gothenburg Responsibility Project Conference #1, 24-27 August 2016, University of Gothenburg.

We are pleased to announce the first of our biennial conferences on agency and responsibility. These conferences will bring together philosophers working on agency and responsibility, including both established figures and those early in their careers and those working in both "theoretical" and "applied" areas of these topics. 

Below the fold are our confirmed keynote speakers:

 

Free Will and Cheating Revisited

The New York Times has been covering the recent attempt to replicate a number of well-known psychology studies.  See here for details (and here for the original report). Perhaps unsurprisingly, a number of findings failed to replicate (which is a general problem in social psychology that has been gathering steam during the past few years). One study that failed to be replicated that is especially relevant to the readers of this blog is the Vohs & Schooler (2008) piece that purported to show a connecting between disbelief and free will. Because the original paper has been cited more than any of the other studies that were part of the recent attempts to replicate, The New York Times just published a new piece on three of the more popular studies that didn't replicate (see here for details).  So much for my rival explanation of the original findings!

The Holmes Trial: Some Concluding Remarks

So the curtain is drawn on the James Holmes theater massacre trial, and the final call on punishment is life without parole.  With the death penalty off the table, appeals won't be in the offing, so there can be no higher court ruling on the death penalty as applied to someone mentally ill, and I bet lawyers on both sides of the aisle (and the probably 4-5er Supreme Court on this) are relieved.

Let's recall how we got here.

 

Superorganisms and Skepticism about Free Will

Over at Daily Nous and Practical Ethics, there are posts about this interesting piece by Peter Kramer and Paola Bressen entitled, "Humans as Superorganisms: How Microbes, Viruses, Imprinted Genes, and Other Selfish Entities Shape Our Behavior." Here is the abstract:

Psychologists and psychiatrists tend to be little aware that (a) microbes in our brains and guts are capable of altering our behavior; (b) viral DNA that was incorporated into our DNA millions of years ago is implicated in mental disorders; (c) many of us carry the cells of another human in our brains; and (d) under the regulation of viruslike elements, the paternally inherited and maternally inherited copies of some genes compete for domination in the offspring, on whom they have opposite physical and behavioral effects. This article provides a broad overview, aimed at a wide readership, of the consequences of our coexistence with these selfish entities. The overarching message is that we are not unitary individuals but superorganisms, built out of both human and nonhuman elements; it is their interaction that determines who we are.

Here is a table from the paper (also posted over at DN):

I have a longstanding interest in toxoplasma gondii (here is an old post of mine over at the Experimental Philosophy blog from all the way back in 2005!)--especially the controversial claim that the "manipulation hypothesis" purportedly applies to humans and not just other animals (see here and here). Needless to say, as a skeptic about free will and moral desert, I find the suggestion that we are not unitary agents but rather superorganisms intriguing when it comes to our agency and responsibility. From the manipulation question to the issue of whether we have a unified self, the data summarized by Kramer and Bressen seem relevant to the issues we explore here on this blog.  

It's no surprise that this issue has peeked the interest of scientists who are interested in free will.  For instance, here is a piece by Cristoff Koch in Scientific American entitled, "Protozoa Could Be Controlling Your Brain"--which begins with the following lead in/hook: 

THE ANCIENT DEBATE surrounding the existence of free will appears unresolvable, a metaphysical question that generates much heat yet little light. Common sense and volumes of psychological and neuroscientific research reveal, however, that we are less free than we think we are. Our genes, our upbringing and our environment influence our behaviors in ways that often escape conscious control. Understanding this influence, the advertisement industry spent approximately half a trillion dollars worldwide in 2010 to shape the buying decisions of consumers. And extreme dictatorships, such as that in North Korea, remain in power through the effective use of insidious and all-pervasive forms of propaganda. Yet nothing approaches the perfidy of the one-celled organism Toxoplasma gondii, one of the most widespread of all parasitic protozoa. It takes over the brain of its host and makes it do things, even actions that will cause it to die, in the service of this nasty hitchhiker. It sounds like a cheesy Hollywood horror flick, except that it is for real.

Another eminent scientist (and free will skeptic) has taken a similar line.  Here is an excerpt from an interview with Robert Sapolsky as Edge.org:

In the endless sort of struggle that neurobiologists have — in terms of free will, determinism — my feeling has always been that there's not a whole lot of free will out there, and if there is, it's in the least interesting places and getting more sparse all the time. But there's a whole new realm of neuroscience which I've been thinking about, which I'm starting to do research on, that throws in another element of things going on below the surface affecting our behavior. And it's got to do with this utterly bizarre world of parasites manipulating our behavior. It turns out that this is not all that surprising. There are all sorts of parasites out there that get into some organism, and what they need to do is parasitize the organism and increase the likelihood that they, the parasite, will be fruitful and multiply, and in some cases they can manipulate the behavior of the host.

As we learn more about "toxo" and other organisms that may influence our macro-behavior without our awareness, it is unsurprising that some might suggest we reevaluate the traditional way of viewing human thought, agency, and behavior. It is surprising, then, that there is no mention of toxoplasma gandii in all of the Philosopher's Index. While the aforementioned manipulation hypothesis was initially met with skepticism when applied to humans, the science has steadily pushed further towards that conclusion. Now this paper by Kramer and Bressen has compiled the findings on various other micro-organisms that (may) influence our behavior in ways that satisfy their interests while running counter to our own.

So, what say you, philosophers of action? What sense are we to make of the gathering data on microorganisms and macrobehavior? Can these findings be summarily dismissed? If so, why? If not, how should it affect what we say about agency and responsibility? If you hate headlines like "My brain made me do it," just think of how you'll respond to "My toxo made me do it"! For skeptics, this is just more grist for the mill. But for the rest of you? You may have some explaining (away) to do...