Asses and Free Will

It’s hard to please my readers. Some of you want more naughtiness in the service of humor, and some of you want more of my brain stimulating thought experiments. Rarely do I get an opportunity to combine ass-related content with the topic of free will. Today is special.

Recently, to my complete surprise, I got away with publishing this comic:

But my syndication company, United Media, balked at this next one and sent me back to the drawing board because it was too explicit.

I resubmitted it with the most explicit part of the third panel clipped off. That strategy worked. The comic ran and no one complained, as far as I know.

This is a perfect segue into the topic of free will, in the sense that I’m an ass who can’t stop himself from publishing the following link. It describes some experiments that a-a-a-almost completely prove that free will is an illusion.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/81bc32e4-d5e3-11db-99b7-000b5df10621.html

What amused me most about the article is that the best argument it cites in favor of free will comes from philosopher John Searle. From the article:

“He is puzzled by why, if we have no free will, we have this peculiar conscious experience of decision-making. If, as neuroscience currently suggests, it is purely an illusion, then ‘evolution played a massive trick on us.’ But this ‘goes against everything we know about evolution. The processes of conscious rationality are such an important part of our lives, and above all such a biologically expensive part of our lives’ that it seems impossible they ”play no functional role at all in the life and survival of the organism”.

Is it my imagination, or is that the worst argument ever?

[Update: The illusion of free will helps make us happy. Otherwise, consciousness would feel like a prison. Happiness in turn improves the body's immune response. What more do you need from evolution? -- Scott]

Comments

[prefabrik evler]

I also wonder if it matters -- even if we don't have free will, we can all act as though we did, since I would imagine we may never get to the point of accurate advance prediction of our decisions.
http://www.aryol.com.tr/ofisler.html

[prefabrik yapi]

I thought the strip where the guy got his ash kicked was pretty good.

[Vano]

quite interesting! and it is light reading

[Dawn]

Is it possible that consciousness is in the whole body, and not just in the brain? If that is true, then it disproves the assumption that we have no free will based on the experiment.
Dawn

[ücretsiz ilan]

interesting :)

[Mark]

I think the issue is more with what is consciousness than what is free will.

Penrose wrote a book some years ago called the Emperor's New Mind. In this book there was discussion about the measured difference between an event happening neurologically and the person actually being conscious of the event. Added to this was the very repeatable observation that the person was not conscious of this apparent lag time between the event and the recognition of the event.

It leads to some interesting ideas, like the concept that we are all a half second behind in everything we do, but since it is a pretty uniform lag time, no one notices. It also, possibly, explains why a highly trained athlete can perform certain feats "without thinking". Their training has eliminated the advantage of remembering and reconstructing what is going on. It's not so surprising in this context that people performing at a high level don't have very clear memories of what they actually did.

Consciousness, in this context, seems to provide a kind of running monologue reporting events almost as they happen, to allow us perhaps to have memory, and sidestep for a moment the flow or so-called stream of consciousness events for later analysis and perhaps decisions to make different decisions or have different reactions in the future.

All of this thought, all of the language associated with it, is a function of symbolic abstraction. When someone says 'give me a pencil' 10 different people may have 10 different, or more, ideas of a particular pencil in their head, but they can find a pencil in the drawer. They can do this because we have a generalized concept of a pencil that is adaptable to the moment. It would however take an enormous amount of time to describe a particular pencil down to it's location in the drawer. So we abstract the concept and deliberately leave a lot of information out.

Consciousness may simply be the continuous abstraction of our surroundings such that we can deal with all the input. There is a trade-off. Some efficiency is gained at the loss of accuracy. We ignore things like the 60 cycle hum of electricity that we can hear in our houses, but usually don't notice. But all of this involves some processing, and is therefore going to lag behind the actual event. It may only lag a split second, but it is always going to be after the fact, no matter how you slice it. Consider that the speed of a neuron firing has a top speed limit which is anything but instantaneous. This enforces a delay if only for that fact.

I'm not sure this disproves free will. The fact we develop an abstraction of whatever happened and make it available to our conscious mind for further review, and the fact that there is an inevitable physical time lag in the construction of this abstraction, does not mean at the non-verbal level we didn't make a decision.

Mark

[Azdırıcı Hap]

This one is actually a pretty good argument, I think. Although it's one of those peculiar cases where it sounds like there MUST be something wrong with it because there's no way it's that simple, yet I can't quite put my finger on why at the moment.

[Azdırıcı Damla]

I'm unable to vote as to if it's the worst argument ever, at least until I figure out what he's trying to say and which side he's on. I'm sure it's in there somewhere, unless it's an early April Fool's joke. Damn this absence of free will when thinking about free will. And exactly where is Free Willy playing these days. Sorry, I just had to add that. And that.

[Max]

Wonder how many people will notice that you say, "Later, at the Library", but there's still toilet paper in the shot?

[kavak yelleri]

lol, niiiice. I love these free will discussions, since i think i'm the only one right and you are all wrong. that, of course, is posible because Yes I'm that bright.

Here's it: you ll never now. and if you come up with the answer, you'll never now anyway.

it's an endless circle, like the doughnut universe.

i'm not pro free will, but i find scientific studies insufficient to solve a philosophical question. science needs to establish certain limits to work; and philoso(tainment) needs to go around those boundaries, in its futile attempts to gather all knowledge.

there will always be an argument for each side, some stronger and some weaker, like the one posted today.

[bedava ödev indir]

No, the worst argument ever is "We have free will because God says so."

This one is actually a pretty good argument, I think. Although it's one of those peculiar cases where it sounds like there MUST be something wrong with it because there's no way it's that simple, yet I can't quite put my finger on why at the moment.

[tijned]

Wonder how many people will notice that you say, "Later, at the Library", but there's still toilet paper in the shot?

[oyun,Online oyunlar, game, games, Online oyun , Aksiyon Oyunları, Araba Oyunları, Barbie Oyunları]

Wonder how many people will notice that you say, "Later, at the Library", but there's still toilet paper in the shot?

[oyun,Online oyunlar, game, games, Online oyun , Aksiyon Oyunları, Araba Oyunları, Barbie Oyunları]

Wonder how many people will notice that you say, "Later, at the Library", but there's still toilet paper in the shot?

[çeviri]

I also wonder if it matters:

www.tercumehizmeti.com

[Rozie]

These were so freaking hilarious - both days are printed and sitting on the counter at my desk. Especially funny is the fact that the guy is researching management ideas out of Cat Fancy - who else but Catbert, Evil HR Director, could have set THAT up???

[gr8hands]

Scott, you wrote me: "[If you keep asking questions you'll find that the scientists define free will in the way that an ATM has free will. Depending on the inputs, it can choose to give you different amounts of money. -- Scott]"

I am a scientist, and I disagree with you. Neither I, nor anyone I've ever worked with, studied with, or read the book of, defines free will like you state we do.

Please supply the names of "the scientists" who "define free will in the way that an ATM has free will." I bet you will find they are not seriously regarded by their peers, and perhaps are not actually scientists at all. (Of course, without you supplying their names and where you read/heard their theories, this is just a guess.)

[John]

Hi Scott,

I must say you have lost your free will to United Media. The 1st un-edited cartoon is much better. In the second I didn't realise he was sitting on the can, especially since you wrote Library at the top.

Pity that, at least UM doesn't seem to control your blog, good stuff!

John

[gr8hands]

Scott,

I spoke with Dr. Benjamin Libet (and Dr. Susan Blackmore) about the tests, and they are clear they've been misunderstood.

They emphatically do NOT say there is no consciousness or free will. They state their experiments clearly show that a person clearly turns off signals to move their hands prior to the hands moving, after the signal had been started to move their hands -- an act of free will (or free won't).

They say that they are misquoted as saying "consciousness is an illusion" but leave out the part where they say they mean that "by illusion, we mean it isn't what it appears to be." They are referring to the Cartesean Theatre concept Daniel Dennett dismissed (no screen and no audience).

Again, Scott, you're a celebrity. You can easily speak with the experts directly. I did, and I'm not nearly as famous as you (only more curious).

The leading neuroscientists are in agreement that we have free will and consciousness. There are a few fringe people whose work has been sensationalized by ignorant members of the press prior to peer review and verification. And you choose to believe them rather than the truly dedicated scientists.

[If you keep asking questions you'll find that the scientists define free will in the way that an ATM has free will. Depending on the inputs, it can choose to give you different amounts of money. -- Scott]

[John]

Oh yeah, about the experiment . . . Libet did this experiment ages ago. What he was really testing was amount of time necessary to notice the awareness of the decision we have already made. It is a convoluted design, but the best he could do. After all, there is no way to measure human awareness outside of the subjective first-person reporting of the event. The reporting system introduces delays into the model.

Furthermore, the concious state is not an off/on switch. Rather, it seems to come gradually, in different stages. There is a sub-conscious state, that in this case, was primed and ready to perform the given task. This automation may certainly account for the electrical build up; and it should not be interpreted as a lack of free will. The brain goes into an auto-pilot mode so it does not have to focus on every single stimuli, and the consious decision to act can emerge from this state. The brain has seperate modes for processing these different types of information. It is irresponsible to interpret free will as only applicable to conscious stimuli.

[Jason]

Scott, I am a little surprised. I expected the leading scientific minds to overlook the obvious explanation, but not you.

The article you refer to: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/81bc32e4-d5e3-11db-99b7-000b5df10621.html

...says that brain activity begins before the conscious decision is taken.

Obviously the reason is covered in one of your earlier blogs: http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/03/retrocausality.html

Far from retrocausality proving we do not have free will, in my opinion it explains how we do in fact continue to have free will. You think, and that thought shoots back in time to start the necessary brain activity required for the action.

So, lets not start using the findings from the "I think therefore I am, I think" article as a defence in court just yet...

[Argenbert]

[It's a good thing I never made the argument that the laws of the universe are exact. Randomness is allowed. -- Scott]

interesting.

in one hand, if that random is included in the decision calculations, as it should, how would you call that?

in the other hand, we cannot control that random either, so that is not proof enough for free will.

here we go again with the circle. if we were to control that random, we would do that for a reason, that can be determined by logic.

Borges said: "Destiny is fatal like an arrow, but in the cracks there is god, lurking"

borges wasn't talking about god exactly, and surely not about free will either

[Argenbert]

lol, niiiice. I love these free will discussions, since i think i'm the only one right and you are all wrong. that, of course, is posible because Yes I'm that bright.

Here's it: you ll never now. and if you come up with the answer, you'll never now anyway.

it's an endless circle, like the doughnut universe.

i'm not pro free will, but i find scientific studies insufficient to solve a philosophical question. science needs to establish certain limits to work; and philoso(tainment) needs to go around those boundaries, in its futile attempts to gather all knowledge.

there will always be an argument for each side, some stronger and some weaker, like the one posted today.

[Romby]

I'm not going to talk you into changing your position Scott, cause that isn't worth while doing very often with humans. We are very stubborn. First off, I appologise cause english is a foreign language to me, so the flow in my post may seem a little strange :)

Even though you haven't explained well enough what free will is, I'm sure the position you take isn't stupid. Dualism has its problems, and I'm sure that is your take on the matter aswell.

However, physichalic perspective focus on what is inside space and time, and that these are the only real existing content. Conciousness is a fake in that perspective, and of course free will too since it is an effect caused in a sentient mind.

My take is that subjekts are important for the character of these things, wich makes the matter in space partly mental. The way for example an apple looks is dependent on what it is and what the subjekt is in its objective. (even the subject must have a factual character. A character wich isn't subjective in itself).
Could you explain why the factual subject doesn't count in the truth at some perspective? I see no objective truths when I consider this. Only truths in perspectives. I agree with you Scott (I think) if I understood your materialistic perspective correct. Im sure you would, if you got my perspective here right, agree with this too. It is not an argument for souls or dualism.

If you got my perspective. Then you might see how the free will actually develops from birth as the factual character of the subject is groing with the body. You start to percieve your surroundings and you start to reflect on both it and even your own thoughts.

I'm not into contradicting argumentation cause that doesn't lead to understanding. It leads to angry statements on how wrong others are (who might even agree, but you fail to see it).

[chitrak]

i don't know about the actual experiments, but at least the info provided within the article is not enough to reach the conclusions within the same.