Free will matters but it may not be what you think

Latest video on the Unlocking Behaviour Change Channel which goes into the thorny and emotive topic of 'free will'. I discuss the concept with Dr Chris Horner, author of Thinking Through Philosophy www.amazon.co.uk/Thinking-thr...
The video is 50 minutes so may be better listened to like a podcast while doing the housework or travelling to work. But if this topic is of interest to you do listen through to the end because we discuss a couple of what I think are neat ideas that I have not come across before.

[@mariannehitchen2224]

A very lucid and enjoyable presentation of the ways in which we think about free will. I agree with Dr Horner’s concluding remark - that freedom is so much more than mere freedom of choice. More please!

[@daveedwards7833]

Wonderful discussion. I hope there will be a part 2 to take up the conversation where this one ends!

[@unlockingbehaviourchange]

Thanks Dave. Actually Martin's really interesting points made me thinking of doing something about how theories and models of behavioural science treat free will and agency. Thus we have Self Determination Theory, Perceived Behavioural Control, Self-efficacy, Locus of Control and many others. And of course we do have pretty good data on the influence of these factors on behaviour - much of showing that increasing perceived control and agency facilitates behaviour change.

[@reasontruthandlogic]

It has often been pointed out that the only alternative to physical determinism is physical indeterminism, and that if things only happened at random then no kind of deliberate control, conscious or otherwise, would be possible - which it most certainly is. The fact is that physical and psychological explanation are very different ways of describing exactly the same world. In so far as the world as experienced by any conscious being, it is entirely subjective. Yet within that world we infer the coexistence of an external objective world. Descartes himself, the often supposed main proponent of mind-body dualism, pointed out that at the point where these worlds interact, where the objective impinges on the subjective via the senses, and the subjective on the objective via free will, motor control and the limbic system, there is a transitional state between these two modes of existence which is neither wholly subjective or objective. The moment of subjective-objective transition, where the past meets the future in the present, is momentary and can by definition never be either experienced or observed because the processes of wilful control and of observation both require order 10 milliseconds to occur. It is within this neither mind nor body transition state of existence that certain other-worldly phenomena arise, including mathematics, weird quantum physics effects, consciousness and meaning. In particular, the subjective meaning of all words and concepts fade out and cease to exist, along with their subjective instantiation, disappearing via non reflective pure animal experience. The closer the wilful action of any kind is observed, the more completely determined it becomes. Crime first appears due less to evil and more to lack of education, ingrained ideology, poverty, mind altering drugs or mental disease. Even closer and all wilful behaviour is directly due to electro-chemical reactions between brain cells, complex molecules, atoms, sub-atomic particles, quantum effects and, finally, the mathematical rules of physics - whose outcome, even when the present physical state is accurately measured, are generally beyond practical computation.

[@caricue]

It is an unreasonable standard to require 100% ontological surety in what we can know about the external world. It's not untrue that our experience is subjective, but we have many ways (like the scientific method) to interrogate nature and arrive at a reasonable level of confidence in what we know. One thing I know for sure is that the concept of determinism is not how the world works. The parts do not control the whole and the past does not control the present. Even our human level idea of causation is just an artifact of our minds, even though it is the most useful illusion ever. We are able to use our prodigious memories and fanciful imaginations to look back in time and construct elaborate chains of causation which inevitably lead to whatever actually happened, but these chains don't actually exist. The most you can say is that everything causes everything, which isn't particularly useful.

[@martinbutler1075]

One distinction that seems to have been ignored is that between responsibility and punishment. It seemed to have been assumed that if someone is seen as responsible for a bad action then they must be punished. Surely the mental state of acknowledging responsibility is a first step to behaviour change. It may well be enough for acknowledgement of responsibility. That individual may or may not be punished but this is a different question.

[@chrishorner7679]

Responsibility: I think it might or might not be, since some behaviour isn't 'willed' in any sense of the term; quite where willing starts if it really does, is part of the question being addressed. Some we will view as chosen in our ordinary use of language, some not. How we view what we do, and acknowledging our role in past events can certainly change what we do next. As for punishment, yes, that's different again. I see no justification for retributive punishment. Maybe deterrence is a justification for inflicting the harm we call 'punishment'. Maybe. But to quote Nietzsche: ' I distrust all those in whom the urge to punish is strong'.

[@martinbutler1075]

@@chrishorner7679 Yes well of course there are some acts we might fully acknowledge were not within a person's control and so not their responsibility. Someone sleep walking or under the influence of a powerful drug. But such cases only make sense because we understand cases where we can ascribe full responsibility. There are indeed borderline cases. The legal category of 'diminished responsibility' acknowledges this. But again this reinforces the idea that there must be some cases where there is no dimished responsibility. I agree retribution as an official motive for punishment is not a good idea. But it would be difficult to extinguish in extreme cases. If someone murders your child it would be very difficult to extinguish all feelings retribution.

[@chrishorner7679]

@@martinbutler1075 One's feelings might be strong, and still wrong. In less extreme cases focusing on the action/behaviour rather than the moral turpitude of the person who performed them might be a way to go.

[@martinbutler1075]

@@chrishorner7679 What I have a problem with is the assumption that an enlightened criminal justice system is incompatible with the ideas of free will, responsibility or autonomy. Of course from the societal point of view crime is very strongly linked to all sorts of risk factors such as poverty, social class, and poor education. Without serious change in these areas progress is impossible. However from a subjective point of view when dealing with offenders it is degrading and completely unhelpful to treat people as the passive victim of circumstances. Empowering offenders to take responsibility for their own actions is to give them dignity. This goes together with social support, better education, etc.

[@caricue]

The problem I have with all of these discussions is that they start out talking philosophy, but by the end they are describing physical attributes of nature. If you want to know about nature and how it works, you have to start with observation and go from there, but at no point will you find ethics or morality since these things don't exist in nature.

[@martinbutler1075]

With regards to our own actions and those we directly interact with, I don't think there is a serious option of denying freewill. Now this might ultimately only be a matter of seeing the world as if free will exists, nevertheless this 'as if' is unavoidable. As soon as we do treat others behaviour (or our own) as inevitable we are dehumanising them. Responsibility is baked into our notion of human being.

[@chrishorner7679]

We certainly act 'as if', I do agree. But awareness of Hume's point, and other similar ones, might make us less quick to moralise when we don't need to. It might increase compassion, or at least temper our desire to hang and flog. Especially when we reflect on our own actions, and contemplate the tendency to find extenuating factors for the Dear Self, while typically withholding them when considering the actions of others.

[@unlockingbehaviourchange]

I think this is what Chris refers to as the 'pragmatist' position and it is beguiling but it comes with problems as Chris points out. As a behavioural scientist, I think there is a way of finessing the issue of attributing agency and responsibility with the idea that there are many areas in our life where we make choices and many where we don't. Precisely BECAUSE those choices (and behaviours in which we just act) are subject to the laws of cause and effect, if we want to influence behaviour, as we so often do, we should consider when and how ascribing responsibility will achieve the desired outcome. What we should not do is to automatically turn to responsibility as the primary or only means of influencing behaviour - partly because there are so many occasions when we are not in a position to make choices and partly because when we are in a position to do so, there may be much better ways of influencing behaviour (e.g. creating an environment that constrains the choice).

[@martinbutler1075]

@@unlockingbehaviourchange We perhaps need to distinguish the professional role of trying to help someone change their behaviour where the relationship is that of professional to client, and our relationships with friends and family who we relate to on an equal footing. In the first case we can try to identify problem behaviours and change the causes that lead to them. But we would surely not want to manipulate our partners behaviour using operant conditioning. If our partner behaves badly towards us (or vice versa) it would be very odd to treat this as simply the result of a complex set of causal conditions! To interact with someone as a human being is to have feelings of praise, resentment, gratitude, annoyance, anger, love, and so on. These feelings only make sense if we give that person the status of an autonomous being.