Flickers of Freedom

Free Will and Neuroscience Redux

Via Massimo Pigliucci's  (CCNY/CUNY) Plato's Footnote:

Free Will and Neuroscience: From Explaining Freedom Away to New Ways of Operationalizing and Measuring It

by Andrea Lavazza (Centro Universitario Internazionale, Arezzo, Italy)

I found this to be a great overview of much recent research as well as a fascinating proposal for an empirically based indexing of degrees of free will.  It's lengthy but worth a read.

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)?

Free Will and Neuroscience in the New York Magazine

How the times have changed! There is an interesting piece over at New York Magazine entitled, "Neuroscience and Free Will Are Rethinking Their Divorce." It's not clear to me why the recent findings are taken to show that we have free will (rather than merely free won't). It's also not clear to me what these new findings add to the discussion above and beyond the important clarificatory conceptual work already done by Mele and others who have challenged the traditional interpretation of the Libet findings. But I am curious to see what the folks here at Flickers think!

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!

The Place of Agency in Mental Health

Hi, everyone. First of all, thanks for sharing this opportunity with me! As Thomas mentioned, I’ve been thinking about the place of agency in mental health recently, and I’m excited to get to work through some of my most recent questions and conundrums with you. From what I can tell, this topic is a bit peripheral (might we say, ‘refreshing’?) for Flickers, so I hope you’ll have as much fun thinking about it as I plan to.

Let me start with some background. In my work, I’m concerned with the discipline of psychiatry as both a scientific and an evaluative enterprise. Because of this dual nature, it is simultaneously our most critical and most dangerous tool for alleviating the harms caused by mental illness. As I’m sure I don’t have to rehearse here, psychiatry has historically been used as a tool of social oppression. That being said, I find myself principally motivated to address the very real and pernicious effects of mental illness. The goal is to heal or to help people flourish psychologically.

So what, then, of agency? One thing which is frequently remarked upon is the perception that healthy people have a kind of control over their lives which sufferers of mental illness lack. We often say of the compulsive person that ‘she just couldn’t help it’, or of the addict that ‘he slipped’. First person accounts of depression can invoke the complaint from the agent herself that she her behavior is ‘idiotic’ or ‘unreasonable’. Here, then, is a speculation:

A theory of mental health might be cached out in terms of agency. Perhaps, what is significant about mental disorders is the way in which they impair agency.

As philosopher of psychiatry George Graham likes to put it, mental disorders “gum up the works” (2010).

As perhaps no one knows better than readers here, our perceptions of what it means for human beings to exercise agency are changing—and this only makes this issue more complicated. Here then, is my basic question. In light of recent empirical evidence from the sciences of the mind, what is it (if anything) that sufferers of mental illness lack, and what does this imply about the aim of therapeutic intervention? This is a huge subject of course, and over the next few weeks I hope to examine only a few pieces of the puzzle. I hope also that you all will offer more! Until next time, here are a few questions to mull over:

1. What does it mean to be a ‘competent’ patient?
2. In what sense must we be rational?
3. What kind of self-directedness is valuable?
4. What is in our best interest?

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!

Free Will Around the Interwebs

There are two recent pieces about free will that should be of interest to the readers of FoF:

1. New Scientist: "What if...We have no free will." Unfortunately, it requires a subscription I don't have.  But I am intrigued by the title and the preview they have posted.
2. IEET: "Did My Brain Make Me Do It? Neuroscience and Free Will (Part 1)" by John Danaher.

I also wanted to alert people to the fact that David Rose, Wesley Buckwalter, and Shaun Nichols have published an interesting piece in Cognitive Science entitled, "Neuroscientific Prediction and the Intrusion of Intuitive Metaphysics." Here is the abstract:

How might advanced neuroscience—in which perfect neuro-predictions are possible—interact with ordinary judgments of free will? We propose that peoples’ intuitive ideas about indeterminist free will are both imported into and intrude into their representation of neuroscientific scenarios and present six experiments demonstrating intrusion and importing effects in the context of scenarios depicting perfect neuro-prediction. In light of our findings, we suggest that the intuitive commitment to indeterminist free will may be resilient in the face of scientific evidence against such free will.

I read an earlier draft and saw them give a great talk about this work at the recent SPP. It's well worth the read!

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...

 

Causation via criterial resetting

Interventionist/Manipulationist models of causation (e.g. Pearl, 2000; Woodward, 2003) are rooted in the intuition that if some event A causes some event B, then one should be able to manipulate A in some way and see corresponding changes in B after changing A. If A is modeled as causing B, then there should be an intervention on A (in at least some state of the model) that results in B changing its value. These kinds of models of causation basically describe what scientists already do to determine causal relationships among variables. Scientists have for centuries tried to control for all independent variables (Woodward calls this “screening off” the other variables besides A that likely partially cause B, by holding their values constant) save one, A, which they vary, in order to see the consequences or changes expressed by some outcome or dependent variable B. If B changes with an intervention on A, it is concluded that A causes B.

A counterfactual formulation of interventionism would be: "If A had not occurred, with all screened off variables that may cause B held constant, then B would not have occurred." A core point of criterial causation is that we need to enhance the interventionist account by saying : "If A had not occurred, with all screened off variables that may cause B held constant, **and with the parameters by which B evaluates its inputs also held constant**, then B would not have occurred."  

To sum up, standard interventionist models of causation carry out some intervention on A to determine what effects, if any, there might be on B (and other variables). If instead of manipulating A, or A’s output to B, however, we instead manipulate the criteria, parameters or conditions that B places its input (including on input from A), which must be satisfied before B changes or acts, then changes in B do not follow passively from changes in A as they would if A and B were, say, billiard balls. Inputs from A can be identical, but in one case B changes in response to A, and in another case it does not, depending on B's criteria for responding. This reparameterization of B is what neurons do when they change each other's synaptic weights, such that a neuron now responds optimally to different inputs than prior to the act of reparameterization or criterial resetting. Criterial causation emphasizes that what can vary is either outputs from A to other nodes (the traditional and I would say incomplete view of causation), or how inputs are decoded by receiving nodes B, B’, B’’ and so on. On this view, standard interventionist (hearkening all the way back to ‘Newtonian’ models of causation that emphasize energy transfer and conservation; e.g. P. Dowe’s views (1992)) are a special case where B places no particular conditions on input from A that have to be met before B changes state. But the brain, if anything, emphasizes causation via reparameterization of B, by, for example, rapidly changing synaptic weights on post-synaptic neurons. Let me emphasize that I do not think that Woodward or Pearl are wrong. But they also make no mention, as far as I can tell, that causation might partly depend on reparameterizations of B.

Changing the code or parameters or criteria that B uses to decode, interpret or respond to input is a manipulation that might make no apparent changes to A or any other variable in the system for long and uncertain spans of time, until just the right pattern of inputs comes along. For example, the Mossad might program a cellphone to explode only when a particular phone number, known 'only' to their target, is dialed. Manipulating ‘A’ here appears to have no effect on any dependent variable ‘B’ and might not, in principle, for as long as you like (think of a booby trap in a king's tomb set by the pharaoh’s builders that only kills archaeologists millennia later). It might take years to get this phone into the hands of their targeted Hamas leader. But when the bombmaker dials his ‘secret’ number to call his uncle in Paris, his head is blown off. This kind of reparameterization of B need not have immediate noticeable or measurable effects within the system, so seems to violate the assumption on the traditional view that causation is transferred at some fast speed (say the speed of light). But reparameterization of B is a causal intervention nonetheless, even though this subclass of causation has been relatively ignored so far.

I believe, however, that it was the ‘discovery’ of this class of causation by evolution that really led to the explosion of physical systems that we now call biological systems. Once causation by reparameterization came not only to involve conditions placed on physical parameters (e.g. molecular shape of a neurotransmitter before an ion channel would open in a cell membrane), but also conditions placed on informational parameters (fire iff the criteria for a face are met in the input) that were realized in physical parameters (fire iff the criteria on the simultaneity of spike inputs are met), we witnessed a further revolution in natural causation. This was the revolutionary emergence of mind and informational causation in the universe, as far as we know, uniquely on Earth, and perhaps for the first time in the history of the universe.

Things to Come

Dear Flickers community, it nice to be back. Let me begin by thanking Thomas for allowing me to post again on this wonderful forum. It is approaching a year since I last posted here. I enjoyed interacting with you all very much and found the interchanges both valuable and challenging. I enjoyed it so much in fact that I asked if I might have another go at it, and Thomas kindly obliged.

In the spirit of having an open conversation between philosophers and neuroscientists, let me ask that you be quite straight with me, if you think I write anything in error this month. I am working on another book on philosophy and neuroscience, and would appreciate the feedback. In return, let me offer to answer anyone’s questions about Neuroscience on this first thread. If there was ever something you wanted to ask a brain scientist but were afraid to ask, or did not have a chance to ask, I will try my best to answer you. Certainly I have my own biases and likely misconceptions about how the brain works, but I probably share a core understanding about the basic models of brain function with most other neuroscientists, and can at least, I hope, give you the standard views. So in this first thread, please ask me anything about neuroscience or psychology, and I will try my best to answer it. That said, I won’t be able to answer any questions till the 7th of the month, because I am on the road.