Tibor R. Machan RRND Column: Political Crime
Paul Wakfer
Tibor R. Machan wrote:
> Despite all efforts to deny it, by philosophers, natural scientists,
> and psychologists, there is little doubt that human beings have free
> will. That is one way they are so different from the rest of the world.
To begin by stating "there is little doubt that human beings have free
will", *before* he has even defined or described in what sense he means
such a highly ambiguous and controversial term as "free will" (or doing
so immediately afterwards), is a fundamental error in any credible
attempt at a logical presentation of an argument. Furthermore all
evolutionary knowledge clearly shows that humans are *not* "so different
from the rest of the world". Indeed it is just such thinking that lends
credence to the extremes of the green/ecology movement who consider
humans to be an unnatural blight upon a natural Earth.
Before beginning any discussion of a phrase such as "free will" with all
its social bias and emotional baggage it is absolutely imperative to
have a definition.
1 : the power asserted of moral beings of willing or choosing within
certain limitations or with respect to certain matters without the
restraints of physical or divinely imposed necessity or outside causal
law : spontaneous will or partially causeless volition
2 : the ability to choose between alternative possibilities in such
a way that the choice and action are to some extent creatively
determined by the conscious subject at the time
"free will." /Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged/
. Merriam-Webster, 2002. http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com (29 Mar.
2010).
The second definition above is totally reasonable in the sense that it
describes the observed phenomena and is not inconsistent with reality.
The conditional "to some extent" even allows for the effect, on the
choice which is made, of the genetics and previous environmental
modification of the being making the choice. So this definition is
logically and scientifically acceptable.
The first definition is the problematic one, because of its reference to
"without the restraints of ... causal law" and "causeless volition".
Such notions are not consistent with reality because all scientific
evidence about reality at the level of operation of human personal and
social action shows that all actions and effects have causes. The only
possible exception to all scientific evidence relates to matter/energy
at the extremely small sizes of fundamental particles and energy quanta,
but there it is only total unpredictable chance which may reign rather
than anything reasonably describable as the "volitional choice" of a
"moral being".
Furthermore there is a kind of evolutionary proof that no such
"causeless volition" can logically exist, a proof which I devised, at
least before 1970 and which I except others have also done, since it is
really quite obvious, given that one accepts the theory of evolution of
the species on Earth.
1. It is clear that the simplest lifeforms do not have any behavioral
attribute resembling "free will" - not even in the correct second
definition sense above and most certainly not in the sense of "causeless
volition". This means that such lifeforms are not "moral beings" nor do
they make "choices" of any kind, but rather all their actions are caused
solely by the sum total effect of their genetics, the contributions of
their environmental history to their current state and their current
environmental parameters.
2. The evolution of species (for which there is enormous supportive
evidence for its occurrence if not for its exact mechanisms) shows that
all lifeforms on Earth developed in successful stages of increasing
complexity from inanimate matter, to the simplest single celled
lifeforms, to complex multicellular lifeforms and, finally, to all the
species currently existing on Earth, including homo sapiens sapiens of
which I, Tibor and presumably everyone reading this are examples.
3. Since the simplest lifeforms do not have any behavioral attribute
resembling "free will" (and did not in the form that they had at the
beginning of life on Earth many 100s of millions of years ago), given
that all scientific evidence shows that all behavioral attributes of a
species must result from causal effects on the genes of its evolutionary
progenitor species, there is no logical manner in which a totally new
attribute such as "free will" can result except as an "emergent
property" related to the complexity of the new species. But even then
one should be able to find simpler forms (traces) of any such attribute
in immediate progenitors and evolutionarily close cousin species (as has
been observed with primates or social mammals such as chimpanzees and dogs).
Note again that the fundamental paradigm of science since it began is to
observe phenomena and to seek causes for such phenomena.
The notion of an "emergent property" simply means that the operation of
the new attribute is very difficult (perhaps so difficult as to be not
conceivably possible) to reduce to the sum of the effects of the
operations of other simpler attributes. Modern chaos theory provides
some theoretical grounds that, given sufficient complexity,
predictability (and therefore reducibility) becomes essentially
impossible, which would be grounds for saying that a human has "the
ability to choose between alternative possibilities in such a way that
the choice and action are to some extent creatively determined by the
conscious subject at the time" (MW definition 2 above).
> The impetus to deny free will is not difficult to appreciate. For many
> people nothing would be more convenient than to reduce everything in
> the world to just one kind of stuff. It used to be atoms; then it was
> matter-in-motion; later some more complicated subatomic stuff took
> front and center; today the candidate that is getting some traction is
> strings. But the basic message is always the same: the world is made
> of just one kind of stuff (like we are all made up of dust).
Here Machan starts to set up a "straw man" - a caricature of the most
ignorant, unscientific and moronic of humans (if any such really exist),
and then he proceeds to malign and castigate such "people" for their
ignorance and idiocy. No one is saying or has ever said that the world
is made of "one kind of stuff" (certainly not without a definition of
the details of what is included in that "stuff") nor that humans are
"all made up of dust" (unless within the meaning of dust one accepts all
the chemical elements)
> This idea has its advantages. If it is true, then one need but learn
> just one science, that of the stuff of which the world is made. No
> need for different disciplines like chemistry, physics, biology,
> psychology, sociology, economics, ethics and such. Just one principle
> of motion will do the trick since everything is the same. Differences
> among things are an illusion. And the same causal principle drives it
> all, so no need to figure what makes different things tick in, say,
> chemistry or biology, as if there were different kinds of things
> making up reality.
Now I ask the reader, do you know of *anyone* who actually thinks the
way that Machan describes here? I certainly don't!
> The evidence doesn't support this view. Just check around and see if
> everything is the same. Major differences are observable between, say,
> rocks and fish, birds and lions, people and donkeys and so on and so
> forth. Lumping them all together seems to me the lazy way to study them.
Again a straw man since no one does lump them all together. Furthermore
none of the examples that Machan gives, except humans, support his case
that "free will" is unique to humans, since the major differences
between all the others are well accepted. Again the straw man argument
that any scientific thinking person who rejects freewill (in whatever
sense Machan means it) actually is "lumping them all together", and then
even the pejorative, "lazy", used to malign such non-existent people.
> Now if there are genuine, bona fide differences among things in the
> world, it would not be odd at all that human beings are different in
> the important respect that they can exercise a unique capacity of free
> will, to direct their own conduct by their own initiative.
What Machan appears to miss here is the problem of the appearance of
"free will" caused by the fact that humans have a continuous line of
progenitors going back to some ancestor in common with some other
primate species currently existing. So the questions are:
1) If humans have some "unique capacity of free will", with which
progenitor did it arise?;
2) What were the causes of such "unique capacity of free will" within
that first lifeform to have it? and furthermore,
3) What were the causes of the antecedent slightly less complex/advanced
attributes within the progenitors of those progenitors?
> Apart from the fact that this is very difficult to deny even as we
> discuss the issue - how would one explain all the different ways people
> behave, believe, hope, wish, etc?
All those "different ways" are fully explainable in terms of the
following well known scientific facts.
1) Each individual person that has ever lived and ever will live has a
different operation genome. This even extends to individuals who are
clones of each other because epigenetic change begins in the early fetus
and continues to differentiate the genomes throughout development and
life (just as epigenetics causes differentiation of cell types within
any given individual).
2) Each individual has uniquely different environmental input to hir
body/brain throughout development and life, which compounds the initial
and growing operational genetic differences.
Rather than the "different ways people behave" being incapable of
explanation without the introduction of notion of "causeless volition",
based on the extreme uniqueness (vast differences with others) and
extreme complexity of each human individual it would be hard to explain
why any two of them would *not* behave in different ways relative to the
enormous spectrum of possible behaviors.
> -it also makes sense of how differently we see the free will issue.
Yes, the existence of "free will" (as "causeless volition") would "make
sense of how differently [individual humans] see the free will issue",
but so would many other such non-scientific and illogical assumptions,
such as eg. all such differences are put into individual minds by a
supreme being. However no such mystical explanation is necessary for the
reasons give before and the logic of Ockham's razor, if nothing else,
should cause one to eschew any such notion.
> What other plant or animal has such a wide variety of opinions,
> religions, politics, and so on, on some topic?
Human species direct progenitors (and their progenitors?) were capable
of all that Machan lists above, at least to the extent of their personal
and cultural accumulated knowledge and ability to think about such
things at all. With regard to the latter condition (the at least), at
some historical stage before human civilization developed, there were no
humans who held any such opinions as are held by humans today because
the topics on which those opinions are held had not yet been created (as
witness primitive tribes who are none-the-less fully human with respect
to species and, most importantly, with respect to "free will" in the
sense of definition 2 above).
> This is best explained by the postulation of human freedom of thought.
Here Machan substitutes another phrase, "freedom of thought", for the
original "free will". This is a logical error very often committed by
writers, sometimes intentionally in order to make a case by distorting
or metaphorizing it into something more acceptable. But I think that it
is most often made unintentionally because the writer simply does not
understand the need for definitions and exact technical terms to which
one must scrupulously adhere if one is to be fully logical.
Furthermore without fully defining that very ambiguous and slippery word
"freedom" (not to mention "thought"), Machan is guilty of slipping in a
phrase which sounds like "motherhood and apple pie" - something that no
reasonable person can reject that humans all have. Does Machan mean
"freedom" in the sense of "unconstrained by others or by reality", or
does he mean it in the sense of "available/possible choices"? Only with
the meaning of "unconstrained by reality" would "freedom of thought"
have the same meaning as "free will" in its meaning of "causeless
volition", but as I have made clear above there is no scientific
evidence whatever that anything is unconstrained by reality, which
attribute is therefore tantamount to non-existence.
> Now why is this important just now? Because our free will also makes
> it understandable that people are able to be good and bad and move
> along the continuum between those two opposites.
Again while "free will" (as "causeless volition") may make such a
continuum of different actions "understandable", such understanding
would be no different than if the choices were made by *chance*
considerations alone (the only thing that is truly "causeless" and which
in its pure form does not actually occur in reality except perhaps on
the smallest matter/energy scales). But again, no such conjecture is
necessary since the vast differences in each human from any other human
can fully make this continuum of choices/actions fully understandable.
Furthermore human choices and action being solely the result of chance
is certainly not what Machan wants, since then it would be completely
wrong to blame such people for their harmful actions - to impute these
actions to something over which they have volitional control.
The rest of Machan's column is wholly valid, although little that he
states is novel and, unfortunately no solutions to the raised problems
are presented. For those reasons, I have deleted its appearance here.
Note that another criticism of Machan's column is that it is titled
"Political Crime", yet he says nothing about political crimes until the
very end and makes no obvious connection with his first part about free
will. In fact while some people do use the argument of denying free will
in order to absolve some others of responsibility for their crimes -
with the implication that it is really society, the parents and/or the
environment of childhood that is responsible, very few if any people
ever use that argument to excuse dictators and tyrants of *their*
heinous crimes. So here again Machan's piece is not logical.
I was somewhat surprised to see the poor logical, persuasive and
informative level of this column from Tibor R. Machan, given the great
amount of work that he has written and the high reputation he appears to
hold among libertarian intellectuals. I have also seen excellent letters
to the editor from him in comments to articles in the general science
magazine "Science News" to which I have subscribed for decades and he
obviously does too. So I was again surprised to see both his apparent
lack of understanding and apparent disdain for the many, many scientists
who continue to debate and attempt to understand the "free will" issue. (A
search of PubMed <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez> alone with
"free will" shows 274 peer-reviewed journal articles.)
Finally I wish to point out that Tibor R. Machan is far from the only
libertarian who is writing in this logically sloppy manner and/or making
false assumptions/statements and/or using logically faulty tactics to
try to persuade others. My point here (and the whole point of
Libertarian Critique) is that such habits and methods are *not* going to
persuade intelligent others whose viewpoints are highly different, and
will even less enable and promote the discovery and elucidation of a
consistent and complete philosophical basis for a fully self-ordered
free society.
--Paul Wakfer
MoreLife for the rational - http://morelife.org
Reality based tools for more life in quantity and quality
The Self-Sovereign Individual Project - http://selfsip.org
Self-sovereignty, rational pursuit of optimal lifetime happiness,
individual responsibility, social preferencing & social contracting
Paul Antonik Wakfer
Although Tibor Machan's column at RRND has no commenting capability, I
did send him and invitation to join this group together with a link to
my critique posted here of his column message. Machan did have the
courtesy to respond to my invitation and the following is the dialog
which ensued:
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: No thank you!
Date: Fri, 2 Apr 2010 22:56:23 -0700
From: Tibor Machan <tma...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: TMa...@gmail.com
To: pa...@morelife.org
Dear Mr. Wakfer,
Since I have written both a full book* as well as numerous
peer reviewed papers on this topic (see my attached CV), unless
someone comes up with a fully informed criticism of my views instead
of a comment on a newspaper column(!), I have much better things to do
than to spend time on this.
Sincerely,
Tibor R. Machan
*Initiative--Human Agency and Society (Hoover, 2000)
--
Machan holds the R. C. Hoiles Chair in Business Ethics and Free
Enterprise at the Argyros School of Chapman University and is a
regular columnist for The OC Register. A recent book of his is The
Morality of Business, A Profession of Human Wealth Care (Springer,
2007).
--------------- End of Machan's first reply ----------------
my top posted reply to Machan:
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: No thank you!
Date: Sat, 03 Apr 2010 00:14:09 -0700
From: Paul Wakfer <pa...@morelife.org>
Organization: MoreLife
To: TMa...@gmail.com
References:
<n2r800215cb1004022256h7...@mail.gmail.com>
Dear Tibor,
Perhaps you do not realize that during my 72 years of life I have also
accumulated a very large CV (if I were to want to invoke such appeal
to authority) and most certainly vastly more widespread experience
than you in many subject areas. At the least you might read my "fully
informed criticism" of this snippet of yours to see if I had anything
novel to say rather than "sit back on your laurels", as it were. I too
"have much better things to do than to spend time" doing a full
critique of your entire referenced book.
--Paul Wakfer
MoreLife for the rational - http://morelife.org
Reality based tools for more life in quantity and quality
The Self-Sovereign Individual Project - http://selfsip.org
Self-sovereignty, rational pursuit of optimal lifetime happiness,
individual responsibility, social preferencing & social contracting
[Machan's original omitted]
----------------- End of my reply to Machan ------------------
And Machan's top posted final reply to me:
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: No thank you!
Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2010 03:07:36 -0700
From: Tibor Machan <tma...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: TMa...@gmail.com
To: Paul Wakfer <pa...@morelife.org>
References:
<n2r800215cb1004022256h7...@mail.gmail.com>
<4BB6EAC1...@morelife.org>
I am not interested.
Enjoy,
TRM
--------------- End of Machan's reply -----------------
Obviously there is nothing more to be done at the present time.
Whether or not I will critique Machan again depends on my scarce time.
I am only one person trying to critique the entire libertarian
establishment and since Machan is philosophically a minimal
governmentalist libertarian, I think that my time will be better spent
elsewhere.
--Paul Wakfer
MoreLife for the rational -http://morelife.org
Reality based tools for more life in quantity and quality
The Self-Sovereign Individual Project -http://selfsip.org
Tibor Machan
"I wrote a column on political crime in which I mentioned (although
did not defend) that there is little doubt that free will exists.
This was ambiguous--I should have said that I had no such doubt and
cited my book Initiative--Human Agency and Society (Hoover, 1999) to
indicate where I back this up. Of course, I couldn't do much more in
a brief column which didn't deal with the topic mainly. However,
given this inordinately long reply to my column, I should point out
that it contains numerous references to how sloppy my arguments are,
and how I ought to think differently from how I do and did. Yet, of
course, these are elements of the critique directed at me that cannot
make sense if determinism is true since from a determinist viewpoint
what I did is what I had to do, there was no other option. Indeed,
whatever anyone does is all that he or she can do--human action is,
for a determinist, no different from the flow of a river. It goes as
it must due to the forces of nature that drive it. Everyone does what
he or she must, everything occurs as it must; no choice to do things
well or badly, sloppily or not, exists if determinism is true. It is,
thus, pointless for me to reply in greater detail since the criticism
implies that I can have no choice about what I think, how I think,
etc., etc."
--
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Paul Wakfer
Tibor Machan wrote:
"I wrote a column on political crime in which I mentioned (although did not defend) that there is little doubt that free will exists. This was ambiguous--I should have said that I had no such doubt and cited my book Initiative--Human Agency and Society (Hoover, 1999) to indicate where I back this up.
Of course, I couldn't do much more in a brief column which didn't deal with the topic mainly.
However, given this inordinately long reply to my column,
As with the following dialog:
Emperor Joseph II: My dear young man, don't take it too hard. Your work is ingenious. It's quality work. And there are simply too many notes, that's all. Just cut a few and it will be perfect.
Mozart: Which few did you have in mind, Majesty?
Which words should I remove? :)
I should point out that it contains numerous references to how sloppy my arguments are, and how I ought to think differently from how I do and did.
BTW, I did find a substantial amount of your _Initiative_ book online at: http://tinyurl.com/39rsu52 (books.google.com) and have been reading the preface (and other articles about "free will") as I wrote this response (to the extent that this is possible on a dial-up, all I can get in rural Ontario). So if you wish to quote from your book, please do so and I will respond with a detailed critique. I could also start right off with some of your statements in the preface.
Note that I have put "free will" in quotes everywhere because I do not consider it to be well-defined and most likely not existent.
Yet, of course, these are elements of the critique directed at me that cannot make sense if determinism is true since from a determinist viewpoint what I did is what I had to do, there was no other option.
Indeed, whatever anyone does is all that he or she can do--human action is, for a determinist, no different from the flow of a river.
1) The human evaluative and decision making process is enormously more complex even than the flow of a large river, and has a vastly much larger number and, particularly, number of *types* of causal inputs.
2) Just as with human choice and action, while fully determined, the flow of a river is not fully determinable. Note that there is a difference between something being fully determined (by reality itself) and being fully determinable (by any bounded computational means). This last is something that has been shown by the modern mathematical Chaos Theory (eg the "butterfly effect"), but it was already clear from the indeterminability of the general three body gravitational problem already posed shortly after the time of Newton.
It goes as it must due to the forces of nature that drive it.
Everyone does what he or she must, everything occurs as it must; no choice to do things well or badly, sloppily or not, exists if determinism is true.
It is, thus, pointless for me to reply in greater detail since the criticism implies that I can have no choice about what I think, how I think, etc., etc."
What is all important here is the concept of modifying and continuously varying feedback from the environment in which one is immersed. And since the brain operation is a highly randomized set of processes (all of reality is), there will be continuously varying internal feedback also. Any action is the resultant computed evaluation of the inputs from all sources at the given time of the action. The resultant choice/action is very similar (maybe identical) to the probabilistic quantum wave function for a particle which collapses to a given position, energy or momentum only at the time that such a quantity is observed.
Enough of answering your response. I will now turn things around and put the onus on you to show me just *how* "free will" can exist and specifically from *where* it could possibly have arisen.
But first I want to point out the inherent self-contradictory nature of the phrase itself. The word "free" is apparently meant to signify that a human is somehow able to choose from available alternatives - that which s/he "wills". Now this "free will" choice is either caused or uncaused. If it is uncaused then it must be effectively chance - the only known source of such chance is the indeterminate reality which became clear for atomic sized particles, but must also affect macroscopic objects given that sufficient accuracy of measurement is sought and obtainable. If it is caused then either this is a "first" cause (from where and how does such an attribute exist, and, even harder, just what is such a thing? - other than just one more kind of "god") or the logic leads to an infinite regress of causes - similar to all else in reality.
Now I will again present the strong evolutionary argument for the non-existence of "free will" (an expansion of what was in my first posted critique message) and I ask that you explain to me where it is faulty.
1. Assumption: Standard evolutionary theory - humans evolved from non-life by successive stages of increasing complexity during which certain "higher" attributes, which are various parts of what is called "life", emerged as a kind of summation of the complexity causing the operation of the whole to be different in kind to the sum of its parts.
2. Given this evolutionary assumption, there did exist in the past (theoretically could still currently exist) *all* human progenitors in the evolutionary tree.
3. Now I ask the question, "which of these progenitor species had 'free will' and which did not?".
4. For all other emergent complex attributes there exist reasonable biological understandings about how these emerged from some modification of progenitors, but the idea of "free will" (similar to "self-awareness", which may in fact be equivalent relative to the human mind) is not of this biological form, and it is not logical for it to simply appear from nowhere (without some kind of "divine" intervention, that is).
Note that just as has been argued relative to the human belief in "God", it may well be that evolution has caused the strong development of a mental belief that one acts with "free will", since such a belief may very well be beneficial to the survival, procreation and progress of the species.
Finally, I wish to refer again to the definition for "free will" which I quoted in my first post of this thread (the original critique of your column):
1 : the power asserted of moral beings of willing or choosing within certain limitations or with respect to certain matters without the restraints of physical or divinely imposed necessity or outside causal law : spontaneous will or partially causeless volition
2 : the ability to choose between alternative possibilities in such a way that the choice and action are to some extent creatively determined by the conscious subject at the time
"free will." Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. Merriam-Webster, 2002. http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com ( 24 May 2010).
I think that the first is close to your viewpoint. And the second is very close to mine - of course the meaning of "to some extent" is in critical need of expansion.
Paul Wakfer
I deleted my initial previous responses and start where I wish to make an alteration to previous statements. I then start my new idea right after the portion from which it springs and continue with connections which this new idea makes with my other previous comments.
Paul Wakfer wrote:
Tibor Machan wrote:
[big snip]
Yet, of course, these are elements of the critique directed at me that cannot make sense if determinism is true since from a determinist viewpoint what I did is what I had to do, there was no other option.
This may be what is currently known as a "determinist viewpoint", but it is a mistaken description of my own viewpoint and, I am convinced, of a truly logical and scientific viewpoint on the subject. What you or anyone else does (the end action that you take) is determined by a highly complex evaluative process affected by and caused by information (both that derived from your environment and that which is a part of your internal inherited and developed character). Yes, it is true that from a given prior set of information there is only one possible evaluation and resultant action, however a vitally important part of the operations of the inherited and developed character of any human is to search out, find, analyze and act on all possible new information - information that may well cause a different result than if it were not found and used. Therefore my critique of the logic of your arguments is effectively saying that you have not sufficiently searched out, examined and fully evaluated all the important information that is to be found before taking action. (My qualifier "important" is necessary because one obviously can never examine *all* information about a subject of any complexity - there simply is not enough time.)
Indeed, whatever anyone does is all that he or she can do--human action is, for a determinist, no different from the flow of a river.
Two things here.
1) The human evaluative and decision making process is enormously more complex even than the flow of a large river, and has a vastly much larger number and, particularly, number of *types* of causal inputs.
2) Just as with human choice and action, while fully determined, the flow of a river is not fully determinable. Note that there is a difference between something being fully determined (by reality itself) and being fully determinable (by any bounded computational means). This last is something that has been shown by the modern mathematical Chaos Theory (eg the "butterfly effect"), but it was already clear from the indeterminability of the general three body gravitational problem already posed shortly after the time of Newton.
[snipped some previous dialog]
It is, thus, pointless for me to reply in greater detail since the criticism implies that I can have no choice about what I think, how I think, etc., etc."
This is incorrect. The input of information from my criticism constitutes a potential change in your thinking processes - it is one of a multitude of feedbacks that affect your ultimate actions.
What is all important here is the concept of modifying and continuously varying feedback from the environment in which one is immersed. And since the brain operation is a highly randomized set of processes (all of reality is), there will be continuously varying internal feedback also. Any action is the resultant computed evaluation of the inputs from all sources at the given time of the action. The resultant choice/action is very similar (maybe identical) to the probabilistic quantum wave function for a particle which collapses to a given position, energy or momentum only at the time that such a quantity is observed.
Enough of answering your response. I will now turn things around and put the onus on you to show me just *how* "free will" can exist and specifically from *where* it could possibly have arisen.
But first I want to point out the inherent self-contradictory nature of the phrase itself. The word "free" is apparently meant to signify that a human is somehow able to choose from available alternatives - that which s/he "wills". Now this "free will" choice is either caused or uncaused. If it is uncaused then it must be effectively chance - the only known source of such chance is the indeterminate reality which became clear for atomic sized particles, but must also affect macroscopic objects given that sufficient accuracy of measurement is sought and obtainable. If it is caused then either this is a "first" cause (from where and how does such an attribute exist, and, even harder, just what is such a thing? - other than just one more kind of "god") or the logic leads to an infinite regress of causes - similar to all else in reality.
My argument relies on some modern developments in knowledge of brain functions and consequent understanding of the operation of the brain/mind. Any attempt to fully describe and reference these developments would require a major review which is out of place here, so I will simply summarize them and leave it to the reader to delve into the experimental evidence behind them.
In summary, it is now very clearly that the brain/mind contains what are generally called subconscious processes running outside and apart from the conscious (many years ago I coined the phrase "background processors" for these multiple subconscious brain/mind autonomic functions). These background processors (of which emotions are one type) are all trainable (to be more or less rational, logical and effective), but they function constantly and generally without direct conscious control (autonomic means without volitional control). In fact the original experiment showing these facts, clearly showed that the conscious brain/mind is merely a window on the content of the whole brain/mind, in that conscious awareness of something was always preceded a few hundred milliseconds by clearly related brain changes. Such experiments have now been replicated many times. Therefore even if something that might be called "free will" does exist, it is not part of the consciousness but rather of the brain/mind's background processors.
Based on this picture of brain/mind function, here is my proposal of just what "free will" amounts to:
1. The human brain is exceedingly complex and has exceedingly many and minute portions and processes constantly taking place in it. We are talking about 100 billion neurons, 1,000 to 10,000 synaptic potentials for each of these neurons and 1000's of individual chemicals creating those potentials, not to mention the even larger number of supporting glial cells with all their sub-components. Note that this is far more complex and numerous than the largest computers available today, particularly in terms of "processors".
2. Even though quantum effects have little connection with normal macroscopic biological processes (at the level of protein effects), the enormous complexity and sheer number of processes constantly occurring in the brain suggests that there will be sufficiently frequent quantum fluctuations occurring within them that these *will* have some modifying effects on their contents and their consequent effects on other such processes.
3. These minute fluctuations in brain/mind contents effectively result in a continuous stream of randomly generated new input from within the brain to itself.
4. This input does not directly cause actions, but since the brain/mind is highly trained to be scanning and reassessing all new input (the more effective brains are more highly so trained), this new input is critically evaluated and, if found to be pertinent, does indeed affect the decisions made by the background processors both communicated to the consciousness and potentially becoming actions actually taken.
Now I will again present the strong evolutionary argument for the non-existence of "free will" (an expansion of what was in my first posted critique message) and I ask that you explain to me where it is faulty.
1. Assumption: Standard evolutionary theory - humans evolved from non-life by successive stages of increasing complexity during which certain "higher" attributes, which are various parts of what is called "life", emerged as a kind of summation of the complexity causing the operation of the whole to be different in kind to the sum of its parts.
2. Given this evolutionary assumption, there did exist in the past (theoretically could still currently exist) *all* human progenitors in the evolutionary tree.
3. Now I ask the question, "which of these progenitor species had 'free will' and which did not?".
4. For all other emergent complex attributes there exist reasonable biological understandings about how these emerged from some modification of progenitors, but the idea of "free will" (similar to "self-awareness", which may in fact be equivalent relative to the human mind) is not of this biological form, and it is not logical for it to simply appear from nowhere (without some kind of "divine" intervention, that is).
Note that just as has been argued relative to the human belief in "God", it may well be that evolution has caused the strong development of a mental belief that one acts with "free will", since such a belief may very well be beneficial to the survival, procreation and progress of the species.
My new explanation also clearly shows why "lower" lifeforms do not have any such "free will". The complexity (effective number of parts and multiplicity of interconnections) of their nervous system (pre-brain) is not sufficient that quantum fluctuations will often appear and even when such fluctuations do have some effect, such brains are not trained to constantly evaluate new input to the same extent as are the brains of "higher" lifeforms. Thus, there is some level of brain complexity at which the background random quantum fluctuations will start to have some noticeable effect on the behavior of the lifeform. This also now explains how "free will" is an emergent property of brains and why one can observe some kind of "free will" at play in many of the more intelligent non-human species.
Finally, I wish to refer again to the definition for "free will" which I quoted in my first post of this thread (the original critique of your column):
1 : the power asserted of moral beings of willing or choosing within certain limitations or with respect to certain matters without the restraints of physical or divinely imposed necessity or outside causal law : spontaneous will or partially causeless volition
2 : the ability to choose between alternative possibilities in such a way that the choice and action are to some extent creatively determined by the conscious subject at the time
"free will." Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. Merriam-Webster, 2002. http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com ( 24 May 2010).
I think that the first is close to your viewpoint. And the second is very close to mine - of course the meaning of "to some extent" is in critical need of expansion.
I look forward to comments and critique, here or on another public venue, about what I think is an original and scientifically consistent explanation of the source of the human idea of "free will".
Tibor Machan
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