Why I (Still) Believe in
Free Will and Responsibility
Edited version published under the
title ‘Partly free’ in The Times Literary Supplement on 6 July, 2007.
David
Hodgson[1]
It’s widely asserted by scientists
and philosophers that our decisions and actions are wholly determined by
physical processes of our brains; and many also assert that this means we
cannot have free will and cannot, in any real sense, be responsible for what we
do. In recent times, this has led to
some questioning of the basis of criminal responsibility.[2]
I too feel
the force of reasons supporting these assertions. Science since the time of Newton has progressively explained more
and more of what happens in the world in terms of laws of nature; and over the
last century these explanations have increasingly been applied to the
operations of the human brain. It’s
reasonable to believe that our conscious experiences, including visual and auditory
experiences, thoughts and feelings, are wholly caused by and correspond with
physical processes of our brains; and neuroscience suggests that these same
physical processes wholly cause our decisions and actions.
However, I
believe there are stronger reasons for holding that, while our conscious
experiences do correspond with physical processes of our brains, these
experiences can themselves have effects beyond those explicable in terms of
physical processes and laws of nature, and that this enables us to have free
will and to be responsible for our actions.
And I believe these reasons should be more widely known: scientific and philosophical challenges to
free will and responsibility have been much publicised in recent times, but
contrary views have not.
I will
outline these reasons here, in three sections:
first, a positive argument centred on plausible reasoning and conscious
experiences; second, an argument that science can accommodate free will; and
third, some conclusions about responsibility.
In this first section, I
will state and support six assertions about human reasoning, and in particular
how it differs from computational information-processing and how it may use
conscious experiences; leading to a seventh assertion that I suggest is a
reasonable conclusion from these six premises.
(1) Human beings have the ability to make
reasonable decisions about what to do and what to believe.
I don’t think
many people will dispute this. We all
live our lives in the belief that we have this ability, and our experiences of
our own decisions and those of other people generally confirm this. Of course everyone makes mistakes, and
people do and believe silly things; but generally reasons for this can be
found, reasons that are consistent with the existence, in most persons at
least, of the ability to make reasonable decisions. Any intellectual enquiry must assume that those engaged in
the enquiry have the ability to make reasonable decisions about what to
believe. The rejection of this
assumption would make all intellectual endeavours pointless.
(2) An important part of this ability is the
ability to engage in plausible reasoning, in which premises or data do not
entail conclusions but rather support them as a matter of reasonable judgment.
Most human reasoning is not algorithmic. That is, it
does not (overtly at least) proceed in accordance with rules of logic and/or
mathematics and/or probability, or any other rules that could be incorporated
into a computer program. Rather, it is
informal plausible reasoning, in which the premises or data do not entail the
conclusions by virtue of applicable rules, but rather support them as a matter
of reasonable (albeit fallible) judgment.
It’s widely accepted that the most reliable knowledge comes
from application of the scientific method, involving the formulation and
testing of hypotheses; but even this method depends heavily on plausible
reasoning, in the formulation of hypotheses to be tested, the devising of
experiments to test them, and the selection of which unrefuted hypotheses
should be provisionally accepted (because while experiments can refute
general hypotheses, they cannot prove them to be true). If plausible reasoning could not support
reasonable decisions about what to believe, science and philosophy would be
impossible.
(3) Plausible reasoning cannot be reduced to any
kind of algorithmic process using discovered or invented rules for good
reasoning.
Arguments of
Hume, Popper and others, particularly as developed by the American philosopher
Hilary Putnam, show that plausible reasoning cannot be fully explained in terms
of rules for good reasoning, whether they be rules of logic or mathematics or
probability or whatever. Putnam
concluded that human rationality cannot be formalised without formalising
complete human personality, and possibly not even then.[3]
Consistently
with this, consciously-held reasons for decisions and actions are often
inconclusive, and there is an apparent gap between reasons on the one hand and
decisions and actions on the other.[4] Hume said we always act in accordance with
the preponderance of our desires; but that assumes that desires, like forces in
Newtonian physics, are commensurable, so that there is always a single
‘resultant’ desire that can direct our decisions and actions; whereas in truth
there is no common scale on which (say) a feeling of hunger can be explicitly
weighed against a feeling of obligation to carry out a promised task. If ‘desires’ such as these conflict, the
outcome is not determined by any overt preponderance of one over the other
(because there can be no preponderance of incommensurables), but by plausible
reasoning to a decision that takes account of their different characters.
Now I can’t
altogether rule out the possibility that plausible reasoning might be explained
as an expression of unconscious computational processes that don’t have any
validity on the basis of discovered or invented rules for good reasoning, but
which work because they have been selected in evolution for their
effectiveness in promoting survival and reproduction; but I believe the
following premises show this is unlikely to be a complete explanation of
plausible reasoning.
(4) A person’s conscious experiences (including
visual and auditory experiences, thoughts and feelings) can contribute
positively to plausible reasoning.
Our brains are capable of performing marvelous
unconscious algorithmic procedures, for example in the pre-conscious processes
required to achieve three-dimensional vision, and also stability of a viewed
scene despite voluntary movements of one’s head and eyes. If optimal decisions on matters important
for our survival and reproduction could be made without a positive contribution
from conscious experiences, it could be expected that evolution would have
ensured that decisions be made by using just this prodigious unconscious
computing capacity, particularly when our conscious processes seem clumsy and
fallible by comparison.
And yet, we are so constituted that, whenever in life
we are faced with a novel situation requiring some significant decision or
action, our conscious minds are automatically brought to bear. Much unconscious information-processing seems to be finely tuned
to support conscious experiences in which currently important information is
presented simply and vividly, in the manner of an executive summary prepared
for a decision-maker in business or government. (Computer scientist Marvin Minsky once
dismissed consciousness as an imperfect summary of what is going on in the
brain; but he failed to recognize that there must be an evolutionary advantage
in having this summary.) We have feelings like pain to
motivate us, when it would be absurd (even if possible) to use pain or any
other feelings to motivate a computer, or any other performer of unconscious
algorithms.
So although there is no doubt that
unconscious processes play an indispensable role in our decision-making, there
are very strong reasons for holding that part of that role is to give rise to
conscious experiences which also contribute positively to decision-making.
Also, the
contrary view is not supportable. If we
couldn’t rely on our plausible reasoning as the conscious non-algorithmic
process it seems to be, then any confidence we could have in plausible
reasoning would have to depend on the belief that it is supported by
computational processes whose reliability is assured by the evolutionary tests
they have passed; yet this belief would itself have to depend on extensive
plausible reasoning, giving rise to a vicious circle.[6] Conscious appraisal could not then be
trusted to deal with unconscious biases. And disagreements in matters of plausible reasoning could not
then be addressed rationally: so long
as identifiable fallacies were avoided, there could be no basis on which one
process of plausible reasoning would be preferable to another.
(5) If plausible reasoning proceeded precisely
as determined by rules of any kind, there could be no positive role for a
person’s conscious experiences in that reasoning.
Any conclusion that
can be reached by the operation of general rules on existing circumstances can
be reached without consciousness: this
seems obvious, and it is confirmed by Alan Turing’s arguments about
computation,[7] and by the
existence and performance of computers.
Neuroscience itself assumes that the operation of the brain needs no
assistance from conscious experiences.
No one has suggested any plausible positive role that conscious experiences
could have, if brain processes were precisely determined by rules.
The closest I have
found to such a suggestion is that made by Daniel Dennett[8]
and others to the effect that, in order for human beings to monitor and
communicate some of their own mental processes, evolutionary selection has
developed brains able to produce simplified ‘user-friendly’ accounts of these
processes, in terms of the existence of an integrated conscious subject or self
that has conscious experiences, has goals and purposes, and chooses between
available alternatives. But unless
these user-friendly accounts have effects otherwise than as precisely
determined by rules, this suggestion too gives no role to conscious experiences
as such.
(6) There can be a positive role for a person’s
conscious experiences in plausible reasoning, if that reasoning proceeds
otherwise than as precisely determined by rules; namely, by contributing to
appropriate decisions through gestalt experiences to which we can respond, even
though they are too feature-rich to engage as wholes with general rules.
My support for this premise is an original argument of
mine,[9]
which I will briefly summarise here.
I accept that
our conscious experiences correspond with physical processes of our brains, and
I accept there is accordingly a sense in which any information contained in our
experiences must be contained or encoded in those physical processes; but it is
important that this information, as experienced consciously by us, is
characteristically combined into unified wholes or gestalts. My suggestion is that, although these
gestalts cannot, as wholes, engage with laws or rules of any kind, they may
plausibly as wholes make a positive contribution to our decisions, because
we can respond to them.
It is
characteristic of laws and rules that they apply generally over a range of
circumstances, and engage with types or classes of things or features
that different circumstances have in common, including variable quantities;
so that while laws and rules apply to individual unique circumstances, they engage
with features of these circumstances only in so far as each of these features
is of a type or class, and/or is a variable quantity. Thus, the feature-rich gestalts we normally experience, such as
gestalts comprehending many features of an observed scene, or of a unique
melody, cannot as wholes engage with laws or rules, and they cannot as
wholes have effects through engaging with laws or rules.
Consider for
example George Gershwin’s melody The Man I Love. This melody has general and quantitative
features in common with other melodies; and these features, being general and
quantitative, can engage with general rules, so that the melody can readily be identified
by application of computational rules.
No doubt such an appealing melody has constituent features that can push
buttons in our emotional make-up that have been established by evolution and
environment. But the way this melody
sounds, and even the way some 2- and 4-bar chunks of it sound, is unique
to this melody; and an experience of such a unique melody or chunk of
melody, as a whole, is an example of what I mean by a gestalt that cannot
engage with laws or rules.
When Gershwin
was composing the melody, possibilities for how it should proceed must have
been thrown up by unconscious processes.
But Gershwin must surely have consciously appraised these
possibilities as he composed, in order to decide whether to adopt them or
modify them or look for other possibilities; and ultimately he must have
consciously appraised the melody itself, in order to decide whether to assent
to it as his composition or to refine it further; and I suggest that, in
appraising the possibilities and the melody, Gershwin was responding to
gestalts of the possibilities and of the melody and/or chunks of it, which
because of their uniqueness and feature-richness could not engage as wholes
with pre-existing rules of any kind.
Similar comments apply with even greater force in the case of
ground-breaking aesthetic creations that depart from existing aesthetic
standards, such as Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and Picasso’s Les
Demoiselles d’Avignon.
This is the
kind of positive contribution that I suggest conscious experiences can make to
our plausible reasoning, if that reasoning proceeds otherwise than as
precisely determined by rules; and it is in this way that these experiences may
be able to have effects beyond those that can be explained in terms of physical
processes and laws of nature. I can’t
explain how we can respond to gestalts in ways not determined by rules –
this would require a far greater understanding of consciousness than is
available at present – but that we can do so is supported by the very
fact that we do experience gestalts ‘all-at-once’, and by the other reasons I
have given.
(7) Therefore (probably) human beings can make
reasonable decisions that are not determined by pre-decision circumstances and
laws of nature.
Those six
premises make it reasonable to believe that plausible reasoning enables us to
make judgments on the basis of inconclusive reasons, that this reasoning
depends in part on experiences grasped as gestalt wholes, and that these
experiences can make a contribution to reasonable decision-making that is not
random (it is a positive contribution) yet not wholly determined by rules. I believe this is what gives us free will.
II
The plausible argument of
the first section might have to give way if science were strongly against
it. In this section, I state and
support six assertions indicating that science is far more accommodating of
free will than is often supposed.
(8) Locality of causal influences, assumed by
Einstein, has been decisively refuted.
A famous article[10]
published in 1935 by Einstein and two co-authors argued that quantum mechanics
must be incomplete, on the basis of an assumption, supported by relativity
theory, that a measurement made on one particle could not affect another
particle that was distant from it. A
theorem formulated by John Bell and experiments conducted in the early 1980s by
Alain Aspect[11] have
decisively refuted that assumption, and have shown that, where particles of
matter have interacted and are correlated by that interaction, a measurement
made on one of them can affect the other, even though they may be widely
separated in space and could not communicate at light speed or less.
(9) Strict determinism is highly unlikely.
Although some
theorists, such as physicist Gerard ‘t Hooft,[12]
have tried to formulate deterministic versions of quantum theory, a theorem
devised recently by mathematicians John Conway and Simon Kochen shows that the
results of certain measurements performed on correlated particles cannot
be fixed in advance (as required for determinism) unless Nature somehow
prevents experimenters from making those particular measurements that would
disclose contradictions.[13] Such a conspiracy of Nature is highly
improbable, and it would also undermine the scientific method by denying
experimenters access to random samples.
Any suggestion that the scientific method supports strict determinism is
thus self-refuting.
(10) The block universe is also highly unlikely.
Some scientist and
philosophers have contended that free will is precluded by the so-called ‘block
universe’ suggested by relativity theory, according to which the past and
future exist in space-time no less than the present; but this view is equally
vulnerable to the Conway/Kochen theorem, and is further undermined by the
refutation of locality of causal influences.
Also, it cannot plausibly
account for changing conscious experiences.
In a well-known account of the block universe view, Hermann Weyl[14]
wrote:
The objective world simply is,
it does not happen. Only to the
gaze of my consciousness, crawling upward along the lifeline of my body, does a
section of the world come to life as a fleeting image in space which
continuously changes in time.
But any reasonable view of
consciousness requires a close association between ‘the gaze of consciousness’ and
brain events; and the block universe view gives brain events, and thus ‘the
gaze of consciousness,’ a tenseless existence in space-time. If our changing experiences were produced by
a gaze of consciousness that moved through space-time, then the gaze must leave,
and thus cease to exist at, earlier times as it moves to later times,
and must arrive at, and thus come to exist, at those later
times; and this is inconsistent with the block universe view.
(11) The physical sciences can accommodate the
existence of unified conscious experiences, corresponding with events in widely
separated regions of the brain, having effects, not determined by rules, in one
of those regions.
This follows from assertions (8), (9)
and (10). It means that conscious
experiences could be efficacious despite the absence of any localised
headquarters in the brain where consciousness occurs; so that Daniel Dennett’s
arguments against the existence of a localised ‘Cartesian theatre’ are not to
the point.
(12) Neuroscience does not exclude the existence
of such effects.
It is true that current neuroscience
does not suggest that unified conscious experiences can have effects on brain
processes, and does tend to suggest that indeterminism associated with quantum
physics occurs at too small a scale to accommodate such effects. But this is precisely why neuroscience fails
to account for or accommodate conscious experiences, and the understandable
tendency of neuroscientists to minimise the significance of what they do not
understand (that is, consciousness) is indicative of limitations of current
neuroscience rather than inefficacy of conscious experiences.
Experimental results of Benjamin Libet
and Daniel Wegner[15]
have been claimed as refuting the efficacy of conscious experiences, the former
showing that unconscious processes precede some conscious decisions, and the
latter showing that people sometimes claim to have made decisions in
circumstances where no decision could have been made; but these results do no
more than show that unconscious preparation is needed before there can be
conscious decision-making, and that we can make mistakes about our own mental
processes. As suggested by assertions
(1) to (4), Libet and Wegner must themselves have relied heavily on their own
conscious reasoning in reaching their results.
(13) Accordingly, science can accommodate free
will.
Responsibility has been
challenged by Galen Strawson’s ‘luck swallows everything’ argument:[16]
we do what we do because of the way we are, so we can’t be responsible for what
we do unless we are responsible for the way we are; and we can’t be responsible
for the way we are when we first make decisions in life (that must be
all down to genes and environment), so we can never become responsible (through
earlier decisions) for the way we are later in life. The following five assertions answer this argument.
(14) Our formed
characters, our circumstances and laws of nature restrict the alternatives
available to us, determine consciously-held reasons on the basis of which we
decide between these alternatives, and also determine some unconscious
tendencies.
Any
reasonable view of how the physical world works must accept that physical
circumstances and laws of nature constrain what can happen, at least to within
a spectrum of possibilities. And it is
reasonable to believe that conscious experiences and unconscious behavioural
tendencies are caused by and correspond with physical processes of our brains.
(15) However,
because our decisions are made in part in response to gestalts that cannot
engage with rules, we have the capacity to make decisions that are not wholly
determined by the engagement of laws of nature with our formed characters and
our circumstances.
This follows
from the argument of part I.
(16) Thus, the sense in which it is true that we
do what we do because of the way we are is that (a) the way we are plus our
circumstances plus laws of nature provide alternatives, inconclusive reasons,
and unconscious tendencies, and also the capacity to decide between the
alternatives on the basis of the reasons; and (b) what we do is what we decide
in exercise of that capacity.
This adapts
assertions (14) and (15) to the wording of Strawsons’s argument.
(17) That leaves us
at least partly responsible for what we do, even if we were not responsible for
the way we are.
The
constraining effect of the way we are is limited to determining alternatives,
reasons and unconscious tendencies.
Subject to that, our decisions are not constrained by any distinguishing
features of the way we are, and to this extent we are truly responsible for
them.
(18) We do become partly responsible for the way
we are, as our decisions, for which we are partly responsible, come to
supplement the effects of genes and environment on the way we are.
There is no doubt that we can train ourselves to have
capacities and capabilities, and that (more generally) our decisions and
actions can affect our characters.
Thus, while our genes and early environment enormously affect the way we
are, decisions and actions for which we are partly responsible can also do so.
Life is a handicap event, but most of us have some capacity to modify
our handicaps and, within limits, to make our own luck and to shape our own
lives. And while the criminal law
should take full account of what science can tell us about genetic and
environmental influences on character and conduct, the law should not abandon
the notion of criminal responsibility, which protects the innocent from
coercion by the State, as well as informing what can fairly be imposed on the
guilty.
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[1] David Hodgson is the author of two philosophical books published
by Oxford University Press, Consequences of Utilitarianism (1967) and The
Mind Matters (1991), and of numerous published philosophical articles,
including the entry on free will in the Macmillan Encyclopedia of Cognitive
Science; and he is a Judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales. A selection of his published philosophical
articles can be found at http://users.tpg.com.au/raeda.
[2] For example, J. Rosen ‘The brain on the stand’, New York Times
Magazine, 11 March 2007.
[4] Cf. D. Hodgson, ‘Hume’s mistake’, in B. Libet, A. Freeman and K. Sutherland (eds) The Volitional Brain (Thorverton: Imprint Academic, 1999) and J. Searle, Rationality in Action (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2001).
[5] Kahneman, D., Slovic, P., and Tversky, A. (eds) (1982), Judgement
under Uncertainty: Heuristics and
Biases (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press).
[6] T. Nagel, The Last Word (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1997), Ch. 7; A. Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1993), Ch. 12
[7] ‘On computable numbers with an application to the
entscheidungsproblem’ (1937) Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society,
42, 230-65; ‘Computing machinery and intelligence’ (1958) Mind,
59, 433-60.
[9] My
gestalt argument, introduced in my article ‘Constraint, empowerment, and
guidance’, (2001) Philosophy, 76, 341-70; and developed in
my articles ‘Three tricks of consciousness’, (2002) Journal of Consciousness
Studies, 9, 65-88 and
‘Making our own luck’, (2007) Ratio forthcoming.
[10] ‘Can quantum-mechanical description of physical reality be
considered complete?’ (1935) Physical Review, 47, 777 – 780.
[11] A. Aspect, J.
Dalibard and G. Roger, ‘Experimental test of Bell’s inequalities using
time-varying analyzers’ (1982) Physical Review Letters, 49,
1804-7.
[12] ‘How does God play dice?’ (2001) arXiv:hep-th/0104219v1; ‘On the
free-will postulate in quantum mechanics’, (2007) arXiv:quant-ph/0701016v1.
[14] Philosophy of Mathematics and Natural Science (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1949), 116.
[15] B. Libet, C. Gleason, W. Wright, and D. Pearl, ‘Time of conscious intention
to act in relation to onset of cerebral activities (readiness potential): the
unconscious initiation of a freely voluntary act’, (1983) Brain, 106, 623-42; D. Wegner, The Illusion of Conscious Will (Cambridge
MA: MIT, 2002).
[16] See ‘Luck swallows everything’, Times Literary Supplement,
26 June 1998, 8-10, and ‘The bounds of freedom’ in R. Kane (ed.) Oxford
Handbook of Free Will (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).