Coming To Grips With Free Will
Agency
Michael Tomasello didn’t write about the evolution of free will. His book is called The Evolution Of Agency. Even so, I think we should understand Tomasello’s model as a partial defense of free will.
The idea behind the book is that the psychological processes that characterize our species are the result of evolution and evolutionary pressures. That includes agency. Recall from this post that Tomasello gives this description of agency:
…[I]n the current case, we may say that agentive beings are distinguished from non-agentive beings … by a special type of behavioral organization. That behavioral organization is feedback control organization in which the individual directs its behavior toward goals—many or most of which are biologically evolved—controlling or even self-regulating the process through informed decision-making and behavioral self-monitoring. Species biology is supplemented by individual psychology. P. 2,
This description of what we mean by agency doesn’t explain how we set goals. But I think as a first approximation that we set goals “through informed decision-making and behavioral self-monitoring”, heavily influenced by our families and communities through what Tomasello calls socially normative agency. We examine as many aspects of our situation as we can think of and handle, we apply our decision-making tools, we decide. Among the constraints for decision-making we consider the incentives and constraints of our society.
Once our goals are set, we consider the ways we might reach them, and choose the one that seems most likely to enable us to reach the goal. We monitor our results, and make adjustment as we go along, including changing the method of reaching the goal, or the goal itself, if that seems better to us.
Determinists
Some scientists deny the existence of free will, including Robert Sapolsky, a Stanford neurobiologist. He explains why he thinks we have no free will in this LA Times interview about his recent book Determined.
Here’s an essay in The New Yorker by Nikhil Krishnan, a philosopher at Cambridge, discussing the book in the context of philosophy. This article says that Sapolsky doesn’t define the term free will, but offers
a challenge. A man, Sapolsky invites us to imagine, “pulls the trigger of a gun.” That’s one description. Another is that “the muscles in his index finger contracted.” Why? “Because they were stimulated by a neuron,” which was in turn “stimulated by the neuron just upstream. . . . And so on.” Then he throws down the gauntlet: “Show me a neuron (or brain) whose generation of a behavior is independent of the sum of its biological past, and for the purposes of this book, you’ve demonstrated free will.”
First, how exactly would that kind of free will have evolved?
Second, that’s not how people think of free will. In normal usage free will is about the ability of the individual to make choices among alternatives, a view central to Tomasello’s model. I could shoot my gun, or I could not shoot my gun. Both are within the range of possible actions, and I can choose between them. Sapolsky thinks the fact that I don’t shoot is the result of every bit of experience in my past, and that I had no real choice. Someone else with a different past might not have any choice but to shoot. Tomasello, I think, would say that I can think rationally about whether or not to shoot the gun, examine the possible consequences, determine which action accomplishes my goals, and act on that reasoning
Examples
1. If someone had asked me 30 years ago what my favorite color is, I would not have had much of an answer. I might have said I don’t have one, or I might have said British Racing Green; or maybe blue, which is close to a non-answer. Today I would say jewel tones: ruby red, dark blue sapphire, intense emerald green. I can point to several reasons for this change. One is seeing the lapis lazuli blues of early Renaissance Sienese paintings of the Virgin Mary, and a ring we bought, gold with tiny sapphires.
2. Lake, a deeply conservative Trumpish Republican, attends a work-related dinner with their partner. Lake doesn’t know anything about the people at the table. The conversation turns to politics. Lake doesn’t want to impede their partner’s career, and keeps quiet.
3. Albert Einstein at the age of 16 imagines what he would see if he were riding side by side with a beam of light. A few years later he suddenly realizes the implications of the answer.
Analysis of examples
1. Favorite color doesn’t implicate goals. It seems to be about recognizing a thing that gives us pleasant feelings. The example asks if we can know whether a thing gives us pleasure, not whether we can choose what gives us pleasure.
It seems likely that we can train ourselves to take pleasure in things. I like opera, but that wasn’t always so. I learned to like opera by attending operas, listening to opera singers, and eventually singing opera chorus. How exactly does that relate to free will? Would Sapolsky say I had no choice in the matter?
2. This example seems fairly close to the foraging examples used by Tomasello, including the ones about our early modern human ancestors. Each person in the group has to play a role. Lake’s role is not to irritate the other people at the table and hurt Lake’s partner’s ability to bring home the bacon. Was that an exercise of free will by Lake?
3. I chose the Einstein example because I’ve always thought it was a singular insight into an otherwise intractable problem. The greatest works of art, music, literature and inquiry also show us a singular insight into our world, other people, and ourselves.
This example seems to combine elements of the first two. Why was Einstein thinking about this bizarre hypothetical at age 16? How much of the solution he eventually reached depended on the fact that other people were thinking about and working on that problem? Would Sapolsky agree that this is so far outside normal human behavior that it qualifies as free will? Is the concept of free will relevant to this example?
Conclusion
Of course, there isn’t an answer to this disagreement, so here’s what I think. Our bodies, including our cognitive processes and our psychological processes, co-evolved in a way that encouraged collaboration as a survival tactic. We learned to cooperate in gathering food, making simple tools and clothing, and protecting the group. It turns out that the cognitive and psychological processes we evolved are useful for other things, like making music, decorating plates and bowls, and inventing airplanes. They can be used for darker purposes. They can be used for highly abstract purposes, like set theory and surreal poetry.
We can also act rationally, just like Einstein thinking about the nature of light. We can force ourselves to examine as best we can the likely outcomes of our actions. We can use that skill to decide what we want and how best to get it. We can choose to act on the results of that rational thought or not. That’s enough free will for me.
It appears that Robert Sapolsky’s name has been omitted in the first paragraph under the “Determinism” subheading. (That’s as far as I’ve read so far. I assume Sapolsky, in that L.A. Times interview, has given the matter enough thought to address the point that, if he’s right, then contra the title of the interview, he didn’t “conclude” anything.)
Thanks, fixed. My bad eyes need all the help they can get.
And good one. The funny part is he admits he doesn’t practice what he says he “knows”.
“Free will” is too amorphous of a concept to be useful. “Agency” and “volition” are much better terms. “Free will” implies no constraints on decision making, but I can, with a little prep, make you pick the option I want you to choose without deceiving you in any way whatsoever.
“Free will” as commonly discussed doesn’t exist. “Agency” does.
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Excellent point.
Sapolsky’s neuron argument sounds like an updated version of one I got from a behaviourist long ago. “Show me a happy. Can you weigh a happy? What colour is a happy?” and so on and so on. I was never convinced that happiness couldn’t exist because you couldn’t physically measure it. It seems to me that all Sapolsky has done is move the argument down a level or two.
What irks me about such arguments is the sense their proponents often give me that a cause X will always entail and effect Y. In human terms, however, it’s simply an observational fact that if we take two humans, subject them both to cause X, we will not always have both of them suffer or express effect Y. So if that entailment turns out not to actually be entailed, then the argument needs to be rethought; but the determinists – at least the ones I’ve met and argued with, most of them psychologists – generally refuse to do so, insisting that they are correct because – science. Which seems to me a clear case of free will, of their making a choice.
Apologies for another cheap paradox……
This doesn’t really grasp Sapolsky‘s argument he lays out in his book. He states it is turtles all the way down, in your example, those two humans just have different turtles. 🐢
I think these sorts of things commit a category error. Science is a third-person descriptor of mechanical processes that opts for explanation of things in their most reductive, simplistic form (Occam’s Razor). It is a method of investigating certain elements of our reality – it is not the same thing as a grand metaphysics of the entirety of reality.
Consciousness is a first-person phenomenon. We all know the thought experiments used to demonstrate qualia – reading about colours is not the same thing as experiencing them, etc. It may be the case that some elements of reality – consciousness being one of them – is simply not amenable to a materialist, deductive explanation that truly satisfies what we all instinctively know about it, being people that are all constantly experiencing it.
That’s why you end up with these – honestly – fairly batty “scientific” diatribes on the consciousness and free will being somehow illusory. Because they proceed from the assumption that if something cannot be described using a human discursive practise developed in the past few hundred years, then it therefore doesn’t, or cannot, exist.
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I’ll respectfully disagree with you on this point: “Consciousness is a first-person phenomenon.” No, our current definition and expression of experience is a first-person phenomenon. It’s even a stretch to say “our” because there are humans who have attempted to express the ability to experience more than one and/or group/collective consciousness. If you understand the concept of qualia you should also understand how difficult it may be to convey to another one or more humans the experience of dual/multiple consciousness or collective consciousness.
Consciousness as humans currently understand and express the experience is a local phenomenon, and it may be a non-local phenomenon as well but we don’t have adequate understanding or tools to communicate with consistency the non-local phenomenon.
The meaning of “free will” seems to be shifting over time, and this is a good thing. It used to mean some form of non-determinism, and was strongly connected to ideas of mind-body dualism, going back to the Greeks and the notion of “soul”. The problem with this is that there’s no evidence for it at all, and as we get better at understanding the deterministic physical processes underpinning all our actions, it loses its meaning. You may feel that you have a soul, but feelings are not evidence: to paraphrase Wittgenstein, “What would it feel like if it felt like you didn’t have a soul?”
Twentieth and twenty-first century philosophical dualists use words like “consciousness” in place of “soul”, and invent absurdities such as the “zombie”, a being physically and behaviourally identical to a human but without consciousness (this idea is brilliantly mocked with the “zombike”: an object physically identical to a bicycle in every way, but if you turn the pedals then the wheels don’t go round). Again, you may feel that you have consciousness, but what would it feel like if it felt like you didn’t have consciousness?
It sounds as if Tomasello’s book usefully discards these worn-out ideas such as “soul” and “consciousness” to focus instead on “agency”: something which can be clearly defined, observed, and agreed upon by the most materialist and most dualist of thinkers. Hurrah. I’ve added the book to my list.
I’ve been reading from many varying sources about some of the newer discoveries in neuroscience.
Neuroscience has something to say about ‘free will’ or conscious decision making.
This reference isn’t meant to be the best source, but it can start someone thinking about some newer findings.
Free Will and Neuroscience: From Explaining Freedom Away to New Ways of Operationalizing and Measuring It
Andrea Lavazza
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2016.00262/full#:~:text=Neuroscientists%20identified%20a%20specific%20aspect,free%20will%20does%20not%20exist.
…and Ed, come on, …if Lake is a Trumper, …she’s already blurted out some inanity/insanity.
Thinking rationally is neurons firing. What else can it be? Neurons fire when they are stimulated. Two different humans have different backgrounds, different genetic components, different social upbringings, different meals at different times of the day right before subjecting them to cause X. There is no way to control for this in a simple experiment. In Sapolsky’s words, “every bit of behavior has multiple levels of causality” from the second before the neuron fires to eons of evolution. “[F]ree will is what we call the biology that hasn’t been discovered yet.” Free will of the gaps, if you will.
The part about the meal time is not being facetious. Sapolsky cites a review of Israeli parole judges, the strongest predictor of their decisions being how soon they’d had a meal before making their decision. Not the only one! Only the strongest.
All quotations from https://www.npr.org/transcripts/545092668 However, I would recommend reading one of his books to get what he’s saying, and not a short interview. I think there’s room for what Tomacello is saying within Sapolsky’s work. Well, Sapolsky would say there’s not a shred of something called agency that would withstand scrutiny. But what Tomacello is describing, the mechanics of the pursuit of a consciously set agenda, would be describable in Sapolsky’s framework. There’d only be no homunculus.
Sapolsky, in addition to his books, has at least two lecture series on Great Courses now called Wondrium. In those lectures he emphasizes the influence of glucocorticoids on our behavior based on prior conditions. Too much cortisol can have deleterious effects on actions.
Adrenaline and cortisol can unleash a cascade of effects that we have no control over.
freebird, your comment gets at what has been wrong with much of western medicine and philosophy for millenia: the mind/body split. We humans, meaning exclusively men until recently, like to think ourselves rational actors–meaning that we operate on pure intellect, unaffected by mere emotion or other animalistic/bodily degradations.
There is no barrier between the mind and the body. The mind is part of the body, even in white men. When things get out of balance, that affects how we assess and perceive our options, even those of us considered sane and rational. Does this mean the will is never free? I would say the body influences and can constrain reason in ways we must consider.
I’ve toyed with the idea that the conscious mind is an emergent quality of the brain, which is just another part of the body. Maybe I just like the sound of the phrase “emergent quality”.
Thank you for a great post, Ed. For my part, philosophy of science has always been an interest, but I’m not expert. I’ll try to share my reaction to Sapolsky’s thesis.
Here’s a brutal review in “Philosophical Reviews” of Sapolsky’s book, which I thought was a good read. The author takes Sapolsky to task for completely neglecting any real philosophical counterarguements, such as compatibilism, the idea free-will and determinism are compatible.
https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/determined-a-science-of-life-without-free-will/
For my part, thoughts come to mind from thinking over the years about this stuff in my amateur way. People say that biochemistry supervenes over organic chemistry, and organic chemistry supervenes over physics. Biochemistry entails physics facts, but physics facts do not entail biochemistry facts.
In a similar way, consciousness, and conscious processes such as free will, supervene over biochemistry. Changes in consciousness do not occur without changes also occurring biochemically, but chemistry facts do not entail consciousness.
Concepts like computational equivalency are proposed to explain how consciousness may arise from physical process, but I think that is simply borrowing from the observation that consciousness occurs and appears to arise from physical processes. Consciousness supervenes on computation and iteration.
I think in analytical philosophy it has been shown you will not be able to trace formal causation from chemistry to consciousness. How can physical causes produce nonphysical effects? People call this the hard problem of consciousness.
For me I am always thinking about Heidegger with stuff like this. Being and Time blew me away years ago. I didn’t choose to think about consciousness this way. Heidegger distinguishes between what is present-at-hand and what is ready-to-hand. In Heidegger, I think the scientific approach to consciousness would be to treat consciousness as an existentiell, an aspect of the world which is identifiable in particular delimited questions or issues, materially describable reality, while consciousness and free-will are existential. Scientific facts are ontically determined, while consciousness and its processes are inherent to the meaning of human existence.
W-R-W,
Loved the ‘’brutal” review. Enjoyable in itself, but also useful in considering the topic. An anecdote illustrating the same idea; I seek out the negative reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. They are more useful in identifying movies I’ll like, not just one I want to avoid.
Somewhat tangential to the post, but since you bring up consciousness…there’s a real split between hardcore “scientific materialism” who contend that consciousness is a byproduct of biological brain processes and those who, as you mention, regard consciousness as coincident with, but not caused by same. One big proponent of the latter is Edward F. Kelly of the U of Virginia who has been toiling away, mostly in obscurity, to make the case for that. His 3 books (in chronological order): 1) Irreducible Mind (2009), 2) Beyond Physicalism (2019) and 3) Consciousness Unbound (2023) are very interesting reads and a definite counter to the majority of scientific materialists out there…until the hard problem is actually solved…which may be never, or not in our lifetimes.
Each of us feels like we are somebody. Experience and feelings accrete as individual memories. We have a self as our form for existence. Nonphysical things like ideas do exist. Or they don’t and everybody is nobody.
Recommended reading: Dan Dennett’s “Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting”. The key point is that we use the term “free will” in various, often incompatible ways. Some of these make sense, others not so much.
I’m still pondering what I’ve read, but I’m wondering, Ed, if you’ve read any J.G. Bennett’s writings on free will (it’s definitely dated somewhat now (relative to the science etc. known now than at that time), but he seems to hit a few moments of great clarity on the matter of free will. I have to move on right now, but JGB argues that there are three types of Will (and three types of Time). Anyway, I found it worth reading (even the four volume slog through The Dramatic Universe ).
I can’t remember if I’ve read Bennett on these categories of will, but there’s a strong intuitive argument that “will” and “free will” are opposites and incompatible. I.e. there can be no freedom in willful behavior. Once you commit to a trajectory, you’ve strapped yourself to the mast, voluntarily relinquishing freedom for the duration of the ride. This course might basically last a lifetime (see James Comer, presumably), or one could figure out how to periodically visit one’s “free will,” which is actually a condition of consciousness.
“Will” is an abdication of consciousness when consciousness is defined as fundamental to the material world (see quantum mechanics). Willfulness is machine behavior (consistent with Sapolsky). This seems pretty clear. The harder question (because it relates to the hard problem of consciousness) is how someone who really wants to engage “free will” can actually find a foothold, since it’s not nearly as stable as being a machine. (E.g., there can be no free will without “doubt,” which means doubt is fundamental to consciousness…)
“Why was Einstein thinking about this bizarre hypothetical at age 16?”
My dad (passed in 2017) was an art collector and amateur artist himself. He always used to say that man was a problem-solving animal. His assertion was that it was evolved into our DNA.
One of the ways he demonstrated this, which you can easily repeat, is to set on his desk near the guest chairs a number of puzzle toys of some kind that few people had seen at that point in time. See which visitors almost compulsively pick them up and try to figure out what it was. It works on all types, from belligerent punked-out emo kids to stuffy old seniors. And you will also detect who has had all curiosity just beaten out of them.
As for Einstein, the problem he was contemplating was not at all bizarre — for him — for him at that time. A lot of work was going on then in that field, and he was well aware of Maxwell’s equations. The fact that he was bright enough to contemplate theoretical physics is besides the point — he was just solving problems as biology dictated.
Yes, problem solving was obviously useful from an evolutionary standpoint.
Problem solving requires us to imagine different outcomes, which requires consciousness (?).
I am not sure what consciousness would look like if we didn’t have the sense that our conscious selves were choosing the solution to the problem. That “sense” is, I think, what is commonly thought of as free will.
Thus the feeling of free will (or agency) is an evolutionary outcome – although it’s surely true that decisions are made at a deeper, more subconscious level, than we feel.
Perfect Brilliant Stillness
By David CarDr
The most enlightening reading spontaneously encountered on free will
“Surfing Uncertainty” – Andy Clark – Oxford University Press
More a neurological viewpoint which treats consciousness as an add-on.
More light-weight: “Being You” – Anil Seth – Farber and Farber
Melding some of Tonino’s ideas and others. Could be condensed quite a bit.
Sapolsky is just pushing a special case of the physicalist argument that “God doesn’t play dice”; if we understood the present in enough detail we could predict the future (or examine the past) without limit. But these days we have reason to doubt that. So we can reify the question about free will as “Does consciousness have a quantum nature? Can we only examine it in terms of probabilities?” Ie, what happens when we envision a superposition of possible outcomes which collapse towards actualizing one in particular?
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The higher animals make decisions in the same way. Mice are driven by their instincts and are easily trapped and killed. But the crow evaluates things in its childlike manner and patiently waits for its opportunity.
But the squirrels live longer and become clever in testing the limits of human gratuity.
I suspect if we could accurately observe the elephants, the large carnivores, and the orcas, we would observe choices that seem free and seem driven by competitive decisions that seem like will.
Our freedom consists of being able to arrange words, tools and behavior in complicated ways in which the end to be achieved is not immediately connected to the start of the process.
On the other hand, there are hot burners on stoves.
I encourage everyone to read or study Bruce Perry, and his neurosequential model of therapeutics. I’ve been in the child welfare field for 38 years as a social worker and attorney and can’t believe how ignorant i was until i saw him speak, see his slides of brain scans, and understand how people and social systems function. . The book Born for Love is instructive. He has a series of short videos that explain his concepts well.
again i have explained this poorly, i encourage others to read his works or see him if possible.
My oversimplistic way of breaking this down (and likely poorly done but i will try anyway). The brain has 4 parts to it, from the bottom (heart rate, body temperature–survival) to the cortex at the top (thinking). If one is hungry or scared you are more likely using the bottom part of your brain, and not thinking. why when you yell “calm down” at someone who is upset (dysregulated) they don’t calm down, they continue with their fight or flight reactions. when you are regulated, safe, comfortable and well fed, you use your cortex. Why poor hungry school children (and those traumatized like foster kids removed from parents) don’t learn as efficiently–they are in survival mode. Those with safe environments and safe home lives and communities – they learn well at school.
My take is that “free will” has a lot to do with your environment. And whether you are surrounded by those who help provide a safe and nurturing environment. when you aren’t stuck in survival mode you are free to achieve more as a human.
Perry’s model coincides with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and with many other models of human emergent states of consciousness.
I recommend Beck & Cowan’s Spiral Dynamics to understand how human’s emergent consciousness affects society.
My belief in free will has evolved over the course of my life. In my twenties, I was sure it existed. But as the decades passed, my experiences and observations compelled me to take a less definitive point of view. And, as I aged, my decision making abilities were similarly subdued.
But when I was 6, I remember that I had a series of recurring nightmares that involved the staircase in our home. I dreamed I was a baby trying to crawl up the stairs but I could never get to the top.
My conscious mind tried to resolve my frustration and fear by exercising free will in the form of me trying various ways to avoid bedtime. But that didn’t work. Then, after a few weeks, out of the blue I realized the staircase in the nightmare represented my three older brothers. And I understood that I could never be at the top. After that, I never had the nightmare again.
So, it was my subconscious mind that both created and resolved the problem, not my free will. Cooperation with others did not come into play to effectuate anything. The 1% to 5% of poems or lyrics I’ve written that I think may have merit happened this way, too. It was as if they wrote themselves and my hand just ensured the words were typed. So, it feels like this might be more in line with what Sapolsky is saying.
Out of curiosity, how did the other 95-99% happen? If I were to try to write a poem about subject A, I think my conscious self would ask my less conscious self to come up with some thoughts about A and then my conscious self would sift through the (non)sense that popped or crawled out.
(How I came to choose to attempt the poem, how I selected A but not B or C, and how I sifted good ideas about A from bad, takes us back to what free will really is.)
This is the point of the Einstein example. We think about an idea for a while and slowly work out why one explanation or answer after another is wrong. Then suddenly we see the answer. We might think that’s somehow a matter of free will in action, but maybe the free will part is the effort it takes to focus on a problem for an extended period marked by failure.
Oh, that makes sense. Thanks, Ed. Still, I think I’m going to have this spinning around in my head awhile before it might settle in.
I’m wondering if the comment I left last night got stuck in the pokey. It got poofed away when I pressed the post comment button. Or should I try posting it again?
[Hang tight until 10:00 am ET – I’m still digging through the bin to free comments caught by auto-mod. Thanks! /~Rayne]
Thanks, Rayne. It’s not at all urgent and no problem to post again. I’ll come back later in the day. Thanks for all you do.
[It cleared, SL, was in the Spam bin. I’m still examining that comment to identify the trigger, it’s not obvious to me unlike one of our commenters this past week who used a word referring to medical pot. /~Rayne]
My thoughts on the subject of free will (at least tonight) center on the following observation:
A couple of TV channels regularly re-run what I guess are best referred to as documentaries about both WWI and WWII (and their origins).
Occasionally I tune in.
Twice now, I’ve seen the following snippet–Hitler is on a train. It is sometime in the 1930s, I think. I think he is campaigning for national office.
A cameraman is in Hitler’s train car, and his/her camera pans from Hitler…who is looking out the window of his train (as it slowly moves away from the station)…and focuses on a young, smiling German girl, standing alone on the train platform, waving at Hitler, hoping to get a glimpse of the man.
Did this young lady (I estimate her age at about 16)…was she exhibiting ‘free will’ when she hoped to get a glimpse of this monster of a man?
Broadly, then, on the role adult German women played in Hitler’s Germany:
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/women-in-the-third-reich
There’s a lot out there to be learned, some of which applies to our world today.
What role do American women play in the rise of our own, home-grown monster? A man who, by some accounts, had a copy of Mein Kampf on his nightstand?
Free will?! I’m terrified.
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To divert briefly toward literature,* I’d like to note that the subject of free will and determinism has been a frequent subject in studies of J.R.R. Tolkien’s work (and discussions of Tolkien’s work by his fans), particularly following the publication of “The Silmarillion” in 1977 (because it implies that human have free will but elves don’t), and that fifteen years ago, a fragmentary essay on that topic by Tolkien himself was published with the title “Fate and Free Will”. The essay was reissued in 2021 as part of a collection of other miscellaneous writings by Tolkien titled “The Nature of Middle-earth.” The essay spun off of a linguistic analysis in which Tolkien was explaining the relationship between the Elvish words he created for “fate” and “world,” and in a limited way, it makes some of the same points being discussed above.
*To be sure, more than a few critics would say that Tolkien’s work is not really “literature.”
You might be interested in a recent article:
“The consciousness wars: can scientists ever agree on how the mind works?”
“There are dozens of theories of how the brain produces conscious experience, and a new type of study is testing some of them head-to-head.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00107-7