Free Will in the NYT

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Comments

[Kip Werking]

I want to comment on what Wegner says at the end of the article:

“We worry that explaining evil condones it. We have to maintain our outrage at Hitler. But wouldn’t it be nice to have a theory of evil in advance that could keep him from coming to power?”

“A system a bit more focused on helping people change rather than paying them back for what they’ve done might be a good thing.”

That's a lovely quote. And I think it fits well with the theme of my previous post (Free Will and Cognitive Biases Part 2).

He also said:

“It’s an illusion, but it’s a very persistent illusion; it keeps coming back,” he said, comparing it to a magician’s trick that has been seen again and again. “Even though you know it’s a trick, you get fooled every time. The feelings just don’t go away.”

This quote is remarkably consistent with the dual process theory: there is one aspect/system in the brain producing one response, but another slower and more thoughtful aspect/system can override that response. It also echoes comments made by Nagel and Watson and Strawson to the same effect.

What interests me about Wegner is: I've read his book and it didn't impress me. It seems to focus on the intersection between the mind-body problem and the free will problem (I tend to think that the free will problem, in the sense that is most interesting, is orthogonal to the mind body problem). But in these quotes, I think Wegner reveals himself as someone who largely shares my own sympathies in this area of philosophy.

[Al Mele]

It’s great that free will has made it into the New York Times. I thought I’d correct a claim that the NYT article makes about Libet’s studies and then say a bit more about those studies.

According to the NYT article, “The order of brain activities” in the study by Libet at issue (reported, e.g., in Libet’s 1985 BBS article) “seemed to be perception of motion, and then decision, rather than the other way around.” Not so. I will explain.

In some of Libet’s studies, subjects are regularly encouraged to flex their right wrists whenever they wish. In subjects who do not report any “preplanning” of their movements, electrical readings from the scalp – averaged over at least 40 flexings for each subject – show a shift in “readiness potentials” (RPs) beginning at about 550 milliseconds (ms) before the time at which an electromyogram shows relevant muscular motion to begin. These are “type II Rps.” Subjects who are not regularly encouraged to aim for spontaneity or who report some preplanning produce RPs that begin about half a second earlier – “type I RPs.” The same is true of subjects instructed to flex at a “preset” time.

Subjects are also instructed to “recall . . . the spatial clock position of a revolving spot at the time of [their] initial awareness” of something, x, that Libet variously describes as a “decision,” “intention,” “urge,” “wanting,” “will,” or “wish” to move. On the average, in the case of type II RPs, “RP onset” preceded what the subjects reported to be the time of their initial awareness of x (time W) by 350 ms. Time W, then, preceded the beginning of muscle motion by about 200 ms. I represent the results as follows:

-550 ms: Onset of type II RP
-200 ms: Time W
0 ms: Muscle begins to move

(Libet finds independent evidence of a slight error in subjects’ recall of the times at which they first become aware of sensations. Correcting for it, time W is -150 ms.)

As you can see, “The order of brain activities” is *not* “perception of motion, and then decision.” Instead, it’s this: beginning of brain activity correlated with type II RP; awareness of a decision (or an intention, urge, etc.) to flex now, muscle motion.

A striking thesis of a 1983 article by Libet and coauthors is that “the brain . . . ‘decides’ to initiate or, at the least, prepare to initiate [certain actions] at a time before there is any reportable subjective awareness that such a decision has taken place.” The brain’s deciding to do this is allegedly signified by the beginning of the type II RP. In a 2001 article, Libet pointedly asserts: “If the ‘act now’ process is initiated unconsciously, then conscious free will is not doing it.” He also contends that there is about a 100 ms window of opportunity for free will to get involved and veto the brain’s decision.

I suppose I shouldn’t mention the little window without explaining it. Here goes. Libet contends that after a subject becomes conscious of his intention to “flex now,” he can freely veto the intention. If the person becomes aware of his intention at -150 ms, and if by -50 ms his condition is such that “the act goes to completion with no possibility of its being stopped by the rest of the cerebral cortex” (quoting from Libet’s 2004 book, *Mind Time*), his window of opportunity is open for 100 ms. In a 1999 paper, Libet writes: “The role of conscious free will [is] not to initiate a voluntary act, but rather to control whether the act takes place. We may view the unconscious initiatives as ‘bubbling up’ in the brain. The conscious-will then selects which of these initiatives may go forward to an action or which ones to veto and abort.” Here things start to get spooky: Libet seems to be substance dualist. So it is not surprising that many people who accept his claim that “the brain . . . ‘decides’ to initiate . . . [certain actions] at a time before there is any reportable subjective awareness that such a decision has taken place” reject the window of opportunity for free will as an illusion.

Back to the main experiment. One line of reasoning about it runs as follows: (1) all overt intentional actions are caused by decisions (or intentions); (2a) the type II RPs, which emerge around -550 ms, are correlated with causes of the flexing actions (because they regularly precede the onset of muscle motion); so (3) these RPs indicate that decisions are made (or intentions acquired) at -550 ms. Someone who doesn’t believe in unconscious decisions or intentions may instead conclude from the data simply that the brain activity signified by the beginning of the type II RP ensures that a muscle burst will occur at 0 ms and that, because a conscious intention to flex doesn’t appear until about -200 to -150 ms, it is just along for the ride: it plays no role in producing the flexing (See Daniel Wegner’s take on Libet’s experiment in Wegner’s 2002 book). There are problems with both of these ways of thinking about the data. But rather than slogging through the details here, I raise a question and give an answer.

How tightly connected is the brain activity registered by, say, the first 300 ms of type II RPs – call it *type 300 activity* – to subsequent flexings? In fact, *we don’t know*. In the study at issue, it is the muscle burst that triggers a computer to make a record of the preceding brain activity. In the absence of a muscle burst, there is no record of that activity. So, for all we know, there were many occasions on which type 300 activity occurred in Libet’s subjects and there was no associated flexing. Type 300 activity may raise the probability that a muscle burst will occur at about 0 ms without raising it anywhere near 1. Activity of this kind may be correlated with *a potential cause* of an intention to flex now. In fact, I believe that it *is* correlated with this. But I lack the space to explain why here. Interested readers should have a look at chapter 2 of my *Free Will and Luck* (Oxford UP, 2006).

Some of Libet’s subjects reported that they vetoed some of their conscious urges to flex. No RPs were recorded for these episodes – for the reason just mentioned. As Libet points out in*Mind Time*, “In the absence of the muscle’s electrical signal when being activated, there was no trigger to initiate the computer’s recording of any RP that may have preceded the veto.” So, for all we know, there were, in these cases, RPs that matched type I or type II RPs until the veto. Because there was no muscle burst, no record was made of the brain activity. And what is vetoed, rather than being a decision that was unconsciously made or an intention that was unconsciously acquired, might have been a conscious urge.

I would say something about Wegner’s work here too, if I had not already gone on too long. Interested readers might have a look at my “The Illusion of Conscious Will and the Causation of Intentional Actions,” *Philosophical Topics* 32 (2004) or at the good work on Wegner’s *The Illusion of Conscious Will* (2002) by, for example, Eddy Nahmias or Tim Bayne that I cite there.

[Mr. Bonkers]

I am sure I am one of the few people who have written a novel containing a playful tryst with the concept of determinism at it's cosmic soul. The original title (The Elegant Illusion) even reflected this before more pragmatic marketing concerns led to it being called A Million Little Pieces of Feces. (This was a search return strategy and, when viewed as a pseudo-parody of the Frey book echoed the fact that this is a laugh-out-loud comic novel by intention. Moreover, I indicated to potential buyers that it indeed was not really a parody but I garnered their eyeballs for a short while to review what I, in fact, did have to offer.)

My ultimate intention (outside of making people laugh) was to have readers believe that they did not have free will as they turned the final page. That is, as they put the book down in their laps that they believed that this was a predetermined action. A very tough assignment, as the biggest obstacles are that people do not understand the concept of randomness and, more challenging, they find they are unable to detach the physics concept itself with moral culpability and resulting nihilism, even though these things are simply not connected, if you understand the reasoning behind the idea and science of determinism. At least as I explain it.

Sincerely,

Mr. Bonkers

A Million Little Pieces of Feces

[Tom Clark]

The Garden gets a mention in Overbye's response to readers, see
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/05/science/05askscience.html and he responds to my query about Saul's illusionism at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/05/science/05askscience.html?pagewanted=6