Lecturer explains free will illusion

[rug]

By Mollie Shultz
Updated 7 hrs ago

A well-known member of the atheist community visited Iowa State on Monday to speak about his belief that humanity can be improved if everyone believed in the illusion of free will.

August Berkshire, director-at-large on the Minnesota Atheists board of directors, spoke in the Pioneer Room of the Memorial Union about his free will beliefs. Berkshire has been active in the atheist community since 1984.

Berkshire, who grew up in a devout New England Catholic family, was heavily involved in his church as a youth. He was an altar boy and was able to experience what he believes are the theatrics of the church. During his senior year of high school, he began following more scientific trends, which led to him becoming agnostic.

His beliefs caused him to have a brief family estrangement after revealing his newfound activities to his family.

http://www.iowastatedaily.com/news/article_3c525260-f550-11e5-9ba1-731e78ceedb3.html

I had no idea that free will is incompatible with atheism. Fortunately, everyone was free to get up and leave.

[Jim__]

1. There is some ambiguity in the article.

For instance:

Free will is the belief that every decision humans make is a conscious choice. Berkshire believes every action people make is programmed in them and is triggered by their environment.

I'm not sure exactly what that means. Suppose I am about to step into the street and see a car speeding toward the spot where I would step. I will decide not to take that step and I can believe that that decision was programmed. So, I don't believe that every decision that I make is a conscious choice. Yet, I do believe that if I am sitting at my desk and decide that tomorrow I will deposit $100 into my bank account, that that is a conscious choice, made freely. So, I believe that some decisions are made freely. Do I believe in free will?

Berkshire used science throughout the lecture to support his beliefs. He highlighted three scientific studies conducted during the last 30 years that showed the brain reacted before the person being tested consciously decided to comply with the study. He believes this is proof of the illusion of free will.

I'd be curious to know what studies he's talking about. Libet did some studies that he interpreted as showing that certain decisions were programmed. These tests had no external inputs, and no consequences for the decisions. So, even if we accept that the decisions made in this test were programmed, does that imply that decisions that involve external inputs and have important consequences are also programmed?

[rug]

3. He doesn't explain his position well and what he does explain is untenable.

[struggle4progress]

2. He only said that because he had to say it!

[MisterP]

4. usually if someone persists in screaming that everyone's really a robot they have to use Clozapine

[Albertoo]

5. Free will is both a misleading term and a necessary convention

If one could replicate the exact genetic make-up and environment of someone (place, time, everyone around, etc), we would get his exact attitude and behaviors, so free will is determined (which can provide attenuating circumstances)

But for practical purposes, in everyday, normal life, we have to take the actions someone 'freely' makes as free will, no matter what genetic or environmental coding might have influenced the actions of that person.

Which is why the religious claim of gods giving humans 'free will' is so imprecise, ambiguous and, at the end of the day, inconclusive. Like most religious claims.

[rug]

6. Nontheistic Calvinism.

Determinism is the conclusion that all human history is no more than the reaction of a molecule to heat.

You don't need a concept of a god to reject that notion.

[Albertoo]

7. My point was indeed independent of the inexistence of a god

But the word determinism makes it sound as if it was some profound theory when it just states obvious. What is there to us other than us as beings, molecules and genes, and our environment?

Determinism is a fancy word to express the chain of causes and effects in a material world.
Any 'free will' that would not directly stem from this chain would need the intervention of an additional agent of which there is no indication.

[rug]

8. The flaw is that it believes a cause can have only one effect

and that humans, and animals, can effect only one cause.

The word is choice, whether or not it's draped in the wrappings of free will.

[Albertoo]

9. There is no indication of any causality other than what is

Choice is the result of our past, be it nature or nurture.
There is no reason to support the idea that our choices are independent of that past.
It cannot be otherwise or you have to suppose an external element.
Free will is an abstraction. Like I initially mentioned, a useful approximation.

[rug]

10. What supernatural entity or inevitable natural process will lead you to butter this morning's toast?

Or not?

[Albertoo]

11. We are biological computers, period

We are the result of our past, all the inputs we are made of (nature, nurture, events)
Just like Google's DeepMind computer. DeepMind plays according to data and rules which have been fed it, including 'rules' to learn from its 'experience'. DeepMind's moves are the result of its past. Just like what will lead you to butter this morning's toast. If you see a difference of nature between DeepMind's choice of move and your choice of toast, you will have to show me where the difference lies.

All I see is a difference of hardware (DeepMind is made of inorganic materials, while we are organic beings) and a difference in degree of reasoning (DeepMind is specialised, more in-depth, but lacking the ability to reprogram itself for new activities beyond Go).
But the mechanism of making choice is not different.

[rug]

12. So, you are compelled by nature to butter your toast.

Or not.

OK.

[Albertoo]

13. Depending on what you call nature, yes.

As a biological computer, you are compelled to butter your toast at instant x based on the total sum of your past, physical and informational.

As I mentioned before, to assume differently would be to assume an external agent which is not part of nature (nature defined as the total sum of the physical world, immaterial information conceived by physical beings included)

[rug]

14. You should then be able to predict.

One of the attributes of science is predictability.

Can prophecy be far behind?

[Albertoo]

15. No, you couldn't.

We, as biological computers, are 'programmed' by 'nature' (our body and environment).
So any decision at instant x (toast+butter) is 'programmed'
However, that programming is fantastically complex. It involves that of your brains, of your cells, notably of your stomach, nerve and brain cells, but it also includes the environment..

Suppose that, while you're buttering your second toast, a chill wind blows on you. It might cool some cells or trigger an associated memory/idea/programming that will cause you to desist from eating a second toast.

Summary: the complexity our body with its programming added to the complexity of the surrounding universe makes prediction illusory (just for a toast)

Not to mention prophecy, which would involve society, compounding the complexity by the number of biological computers involved (animals included).

[rug]

16. Biology is subject to understanding.

Biological functions are able to be predicted.

By your thesis, future behavior (which you do not consider to be choices) should be subject to prediction, at least gross prediction.

[Albertoo]

17. You are reaching the limit of the 'brain in a vat' argument

Theoretically, you and I could be 'brains in vats' a la Matrix. All we perceive are electrical impulses releasing molecules from the axons to the dendrites of our neurons.

Now, be you and I 'brains in vats' or real organic computers, in both cases, the complexity of data involved is gargantuan. I have no idea of the number of supercomputers which would be needed to simulate one individual plus all the nature we perceive, but it would be phenomenal.

Hence the impossibility to predict. Far too big numbers involved.

[struggle4progress]

18. The notion that people's utterances are merely inevitable mechanical results

pre-determined by prior processes rather reduces human communication to the level of the noises my refrigerator sometimes makes -- a view that inappropriately elevates the moral status of my refrigerator

There are, of course, techniques that, when applied, will often work effectively to reduce humans to automata in some respects: these techniques are widely -- though not universally -- regarded as immoral; and those, who are willing to use such techniques, should be regarded as sociopaths

[Jim__]

19. BF Skinner's book, "Verbal Behavior", made that type of claim.

Noam Chomsky wrote a somewhat scathing review of that book. Chomsky's review is worth reading.

An excerpt:

...

Skinner’s thesis is that external factors consisting of present stimulation and the history of reinforcement (in particular, the frequency, arrangement, and withholding of reinforcing stimuli) are of overwhelming importance, and that the general principles revealed in laboratory studies of these phenomena provide the basis for understanding the complexities of verbal behavior. He confidently and repeatedly voices his claim to have demonstrated that the contribution of the speaker is quite trivial and elementary, and that precise prediction of verbal behavior involves only specification of the few external factors that he has isolated experimentally with lower organisms.

Careful study of this book (and of the research on which it draws) reveals, however, that these astonishing claims are far from justified. It indicates, furthermore, that the insights that have been achieved in the laboratories of the reinforcement theorist, though quite genuine, can be applied to complex human behavior only in the most gross and superficial way, and that speculative attempts to discuss linguistic behavior in these terms alone omit from consideration factors of fundamental importance that are, no doubt, amenable to scientific study, although their specific character cannot at present be precisely formulated. Since Skinner’s work is the most extensive attempt to accommodate human behavior involving higher mental faculties within a strict behaviorist schema of the type that has attracted many linguists and philosophers, as well as psychologists, a detailed documentation is of independent interest. The magnitude of the failure of this attempt to account for verbal behavior serves as a kind of measure of the importance of the factors omitted from consideration, and an indication of how little is really known about this remarkably complex phenomenon.

The force of Skinner’s argument lies in the enormous wealth and range of examples for which he proposes a functional analysis. The only way to evaluate the success of his program and the correctness of his basic assumptions about verbal behavior is to review these examples in detail and to determine the precise character of the concepts in terms of which the functional analysis is presented. Section 2 of this review describes the experimental context with respect to which these concepts are originally defined. Sections 3 and 4 deal with the basic concepts — stimulus, response, and reinforcement, Sections 6 to 10 with the new descriptive machinery developed specifically for the description of verbal behavior. In Section 5 we consider the status of the fundamental claim, drawn from the laboratory, which serves as the basis for the analogic guesses about human behavior that have been proposed by many psychologists. The final section (Section 11) will consider some ways in which further linguistic work may play a part in clarifying some of these problems.

...

[struggle4progress]

21. Thanks for the link. I had never read that review before.

[Albertoo]

20. No, not just utterances: everything

I am merely stating what I would have believed to be obvious: we are the result of all the inputs we have received (nature, nurture, environment, all) and keep receiving permanently.
Who we are, what we think and do can only be the product of all these past inputs.
Unless, as I initially stated, that one wishes to claim the intervention of an agent external to the physical world. Other than that, I do not think my point is complicated or controversial.