S15, E12/0: 'No-Free-Will' Whack-A-Mole
S15, E12/0: 'No-Free-Will' Whack-A-Mole
Series 15: How to Remain Blameless~E12/0: 'No Free-Will' Whack-A-Mole
It’s easy to take cheap shots at determinists, because to establish their case, they are obliged to use the mechanisms of free-will they are attempting to disprove. Active verbs are more than a linguistic convention. They describe how we interact with the world and the concept of agency is wrapped up in them.
Of course, that’s not reason enough to assume our model of free-will is correct, but it is certainly not ‘meaningless’, as it is becoming fashionable for determinists to say. You see, even if you think our thoughts and decisions are determined, the construct of free-will, be it active or passive, is still in the causal chain. This does not mean our innate model of free-will is correct (spoiler alert, it is) but it behooves us to have a decent replacement before denouncing what we have.
The way a western barbastelle bat experiences its sonically-encoded world is likely to be very different from our perception. It’s reasonable to at least wonder how closely our model of reality approximates the environment, but no answer could change the fact that we are stuck with the sensory model we have, hardwired in biology. Being a ‘free-will denier’ and living accordingly is like someone who, disbelieving their sense of reality, walks into traffic.
So far in this series the main focus has been on Robert Sapolsky who says that we need to re-engineer society. What he doesn’t tell us is how we are meant to do that without the free-will to execute the intention. I think he is more of a factoid magpie than a details man. As with any belief system, behind the unjustified certainty, is a ‘pick ‘n’ mix’ of ideas. Sapolsky’s book is really a compendium of confirmation bias, strawmen and also what I think are better described as piñatas, or bad arguments for free-will that he elects to take on.
Of course being ‘correct’ and ‘bad’ are not mutually exclusive. For example, Daniel Dennett’s views on free-will were correct, but poorly explained in my view. I confront the general lacklustre defence of free-will in a future set of episodes. This episode begins my whistle stop tour of other free-will denier views. I didn’t want to cherry pick the worst examples because that would be unconvincing. I therefore spent considerable time trying to find books, videos and podcasts that were good enough to critique. There’s surprisingly little out there.
Bottom Up Argument
The common model of determinism is bottom up, viz.
Particles are deterministic
Everything is made out of particles
Everything is deterministic
The effect of this is that free-will counter-arguments tend to centre upon emergence and uncertainty. These positions slide past each other without touching.
This in part explains what Michio Kaku said in favour of free-will which can be summarised as:
Albert Einstein was a determinist
Einstein said that god doesn’t play dice
Einstein was wrong and therefore free-will is true
What it doesn’t explain is why he seems to be so pleased with himself as he says it. I kid you not - receipts to follow in a later episode. For now it serves as another reminder of how it is possible to be right for the wrong reasons.
The operation of genetics is bottom-up but the emergence of organisms cannot be understood in those terms alone. DNA ‘seeks’ opportunities to replicate, which is scaled-up and made more reliable by creating organisms that can negotiate the macro-level environment and sexually reproduce. Environmental stressors act on organisms forcing them to adapt or die.
An adult human body consists of colonies of around 30 trillion cells and 38 trillion bacteria. How useful is it to think of ourselves in those terms? If you want to get physically fit you might improve your diet and go to the gym which would be a top-down solution. I am doubtful you would try to re-engineer every cell and bacterium in your body.
Learning is also top down - almost our entire lives are lived top-down; if it’s your wish to acquire a better golf swing it is of no use to think about how to whip your atomic structure into shape.
The top-down model is the most useful starting point for attribution too. Sapolsky advocates for social engineering and what could be more top-down than that? Regardless of the problem you are engaged with it’s a basic requirement that you tackle it at the correct level of abstraction. Sapolsky thinks that free-will amounts to a causeless cause and he challenges the ‘free-willers’ with this [my annotation] -
… show me that somebody just did a behaviour [sic] and suppose it was due to the action of this one neuron, it really doesn’t work that way, but show me that neuron [still doesn’t work that way] did what it did completely independent of hormone levels last morning what the person ate today, what the genes are that make up that …neuron, what developmental adversity was, which neurons were caused by environment to connect up to this, show me the neuron made that decision independent of any of those factors and you’ve just proven Free will.
Robert Sapolsky
Why would it have to be independent of all those other factors to be free-will? Our free-will is always constrained by the environment both external and internal and this is also known as context. You can jump off a tall building because you want to fly but what your free-will cannot do is prevent you from decorating the pavement (sidewalk).
Yes it is possible to remove the context in order to make a superficially convincing case that the context is the determining factor, or for that matter, suppose that a decision must be reducible to a single element.
It would be like saying to a tennis player
“Show me you executed that rally yourself by doing it again without your opponent or the help of the ball.”
Yes that is absurd but not anymore than the sort of logic I am parodying.
Hossenfelder makes one of the more coherent arguments for determinism but frankly, if you bother to get to grips with what her fellow travellers are saying, you’ll see it’s not much of a complement.
The video embedded below is the one I will be discussing in S15, E12/1: No-Free-Will Whack-A-Mole - Sabine Hossenfelder. You may find it helpful to watch it before reading my commentary in the next episode.
Determinism is a self-referencing ideology that smuggles the idea that most people in the world are too stupid to understand it. This is what makes the ‘no-free-will’ argument is so seductive and it’s also why even those who believe in free-will, tend do so half-heartedly - they are terrified of looking silly. Too late!
