Mele in the NYT

The good stuff is here. 

Comments

[Bob Doyle]

I am reading Al Mele's new book and find it an excellent criticism of the Libet experiments, but more important, a criticism of those who think that the experiments prove the non-existence of free will.

(I started reading the Harvard library copy - I was first to check it out - but now I have my own copy with Al's daughter's artwork on the dust jacket)

Al describes "effective intentions" which are either "occurrent" or proximal (near to the decision time) or "standing" distal (intentions that are to be acted upon at some appropriate time).

Libet's studies are proximal - subjects are told to push a button at a random time and report the position of a sweeping clock hand when they are conscious of deciding to push.

Al imagines a spatial proximal intention (rather than Libet's temporal version) to emphasize the "liberty of indifference" or Buridan's Ass nature of the decision. He describes reaching for a half-pound jar of Carl's Cashews with the proximal intention of reaching out for an arbitary one of the many jars on the shelf, but wearing a Libet wristwatch to report the intention.

Let me excerpt from a few paragraphs to whet your appetite. These points seem relevant to our recent discussion of Mark Balaguer's "torn decisions." They too are Buridan situations.

I agree with Al that describing these decisions as "uncaused" - by including some indeterminacy in the decision itself, as Balaguer, Kane, Ekstrom and others think necessary - is a serious mistake,

"To the extent that Libet studies free will, he studies it in the sphere of proximal decision making in Buridan situations or situations of a similar kind. Generalizing from results obtained in this domain to a view about distal decisions made about important issues in situations of a very different kind would be extremely bold, to say the least. Even so, Libet is inclined to generalize: "our overall findings do suggest some fundamental characteristics of the simpler acts that may be applicable to all consciously intended acts and even to responsibility and free will" (1985, p. 563).

"Within the sphere of the liberty of indifference, one sees oneself as having no reason for deciding to A rather than to B and vice versa. Given that fact, and given that decisions are caused, it is difficult to see why it should be thought that an agent not being conscious of the relatively proximal causes of his decisions in this sphere is interesting or important. Someone who assents to the following three propositions will conclude that we never decide freely: (1) the only possible location for free decisions is in the sphere of proximal decisions made in Buridan situations; (2) in such situations, both proximal decisions to A and proximal decisions to veto these decisions have their "origin [s] in preceding unconscious processes" (Libet 1999, p. 52); and (3) no decision that has its origin in preceding unconscious processes is free. Libet rejects proposition 2: he denies that the proximal decisions to veto at issue have unconscious origins. But whether proposition 2 is true or false is not of much consequence if proposition 1 is false. And Libet has given us no reason to believe that proposition 1 is true. (This is not the place to defend a position on the range of situations in which free decisions and other free actions are possible. On this issue, see Mele 2006.)

"I turn to distal decisions. I have given more than a few talks on Libet's work; and more than once I have heard the suggestion that even if the objections I have raised to his claims about when proximal intentions to flex are acquired by his subjects are telling ones, Libet's work points to a serious worry about free will. The worry, it is said, is that we are not conscious of the relatively proximal causes of any of our decisions — including distal decisions — and, consequently, we never decide freely. Well, neural events are among the relatively proximal causes of our acts of deciding to A, and we are not conscious of those neural events as neural events. That we lack this consciousness should neither surprise nor worry anyone. The prospect that decisions have causes at all worries people who contend that (free) decisions must be uncaused. I have argued elsewhere against the possibility of uncaused decisions (Mele 2003, chap. 2) and for the possibility of decisions that are both free and caused (Mele 2006); and most of the philosophical views of free decisions currently in the running do not require that such decisions be uncaused. All free decisions are caused by events and states according to typical compatibilist views and event-causal libertarian views, and events and states are among the causes of all free decisions according to mixed or "integrated" agent-causal views. Also, in situations in which we do decide an important issue one way or the other, we typically are aware of at least some of the considerations that influence us at the time." (pp. 85-7)

Al's book provides us with substantial arguments against Libet, not just from a narrow philosophical point of view, but from a careful examination of the data and interpretation.

He warns against just mocking the neuroscientists.

"Scientific evidence is accessible to philosophers, and philosophical argumentation and analysis are accessible to scientists. Even so, some members of each group are dismissive of what the other group has to offer. After writing that "many of the world's leading neuroscientists have not only accepted our findings and interpretations, but have even enthusiastically praised these achievements and their experimental ingenuity" and naming twenty such people, Libet adds: "It is interesting that most of the negative criticism of our findings and their implications have come from philosophers and others with no significant experience in experimental neuroscience of the brain" (2002, p. 292)...

"More than a few philosophers, after hearing a talk of mine on Libet's or Wegner's work, have suggested, on a priori grounds, that they could not have been right anyway. One moral of this book is that this dismissiveness is a mistake—on each side." (p. 2)

I can only wish that Al had made his subtitle the main title and vice versa - "The Power of Conscious Will: Effective Intentions" might have attracted a lot more invitations to debate Wegner, and I bet it would sell more books.

[Fritz Warfield]

The comments to the NYTimes story should provide much useful input for further experimental-philosophical work on free will.

[Al Mele]

I think Fritz forgot to add a smiley face symbol after his comment.