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[[subject::''Free Will'']]
 
[[subject::''Free Will'']]
 
</hide>
 
</hide>
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==Introduction==
+
==Conclusions==
−
Harris starts out using the phrase "[[free will]]" as if the definition were uncontested and unilateral. From various discussions of this book online, however, there seems to be substantial ambiguity surrounding the term, and much of the disagreement with Harris's thesis arises from [[conflation]] of the possible definitions.
+
''(See [[/fisking]] for a chapter-by-chapter breakdown.)''
  
−
Tentatively, there are two main usages of the term: '''academic''' and '''lay'''. It has been argued that Harris is discussing only the ''academic'' usage of the term, but Harris's very first paragraph leaves me thinking that he's actually referring to the ''lay'' understanding of it (emphasis mine):
+
The key problem with Harris's argument in this book is that he never defines its topic, "free will". This leaves him free to continually [[move the goalposts]] of what "free will" allows and requires (possibly without realizing he is doing so) as he identifies arguments which support it -- until he is left with a definition which is not [[falsifiable]]. Worse, he [[conflate]]s different possible usages of the term, and then is forced to gloss over the inconsistencies between the conclusions he reaches from each one.
  
−
<blockquote><p>...most of what is distinctly human about our lives seems to depend upon '''our viewing one another''' as autonomous persons, capable of free choice.</p></blockquote>
+
Harris's basic conclusion is that "free will is an illusion".
  
−
Just a few sentences later, he makes it clear that he is referring to a real-world understanding with direct consequences for our legal and ethical systems:
+
He would have done much better, I think, if he had said something like this:
−
<blockquote>
 
−
 
−
</blockquote>
 
  
−
From this, we can derive one fact about "free will" in the sense that Harris means it: its absence means that cognition is not just deterministic, but "clockwork".
+
''Free will is a very elusive concept. It is both less than we think it is, and more complex than we generally imagine. At the edges, it blends smoothly into that which we consider to be "outside" of us, with no clear boundary; at its core, it operates (and sometimes malfunctions) by means beyond our direct control or understanding. This has profound implications for society, which tends to view "free will" as being much more of a discrete component in our cognition; our view of what is and is not voluntary tends therefore to be very all-or-nothing: either we '''are''' responsible for any given action, or we '''are not''' -- but this is a [[false dichotomy]], and one we would do well to address with all the scientific rigor we can bring to bear.''
−
{| align=right style="border: 1px solid blue; margin: 1em;"
+
 
 +
Instead, he leaves himself to defend one end of ''another'' false dichotomy -- the idea that free will doesn't really exist at all -- and consequently is unable to make any meaningful statements about how we should proceed, his (often very sensible) suggestions for modifying social mores (with regard to personal achievement and criminal rehabilitation) supported only by hand-waving.
 +
 
 +
If, instead, he had started by defining his terminology, perhaps he would not have led himself down that dead-end path, and we would see a clear argument for some very badly-needed reforms.
 +
==Definition==
 +
{| style="border: 1px solid blue; margin: 1em; float: right;"
 
|-
 
|-
 
|
 
|
 
For convenience, I'll use the following shorthand to refer to specific meanings of "free will":
 
For convenience, I'll use the following shorthand to refer to specific meanings of "free will":
 
* '''FW!aca''' = academic usage (yet to be defined)
 
* '''FW!aca''' = academic usage (yet to be defined)
−
* '''FW!lay''' = lay usage (how most people understand it -- real-world consequences for ethical and legal systems; see [[free will]])
+
* '''FW!lay''' = lay usage (how most people understand it -- real-world consequences for ethical and legal systems)
 
* '''FW!SH''' = Harris's usage, as derived from statements in this book
 
* '''FW!SH''' = Harris's usage, as derived from statements in this book
 +
* '''FW!DD''' = free will as explained by [[Daniel Dennett]]
 +
* '''FW!W''' = my definition, as spelled out [[free will|here]] -- an attempt at defining FW!lay
 
|}
 
|}
−
===Hayes and Komisarjevsky===
+
Tentatively, there are two main usages of the term, which I'll refer to as '''academic''' (FW!aca) and '''lay''' (FW!lay).  
−
I see at least a couple of logical flaws in the discussion of the two murderers. My position on this matter is not one that is (yet) part of the cultural mainstream, but I believe it follows rationally (and compassionately) from what we now know about crime.
 
−
 
 
−
<blockquote>Upon hearing about crimes of this kind, most of us naturally feel that men like Hayes and Komisarjevsky should be held morally responsible for their actions.</blockquote>
 
−
Well, if we hadn't heard the details, then of course that's how we would feel. Harris gives additional details, however, and claims our need for revenge would not be tempered by them:
 
−
* Hayes (H) has since shown signs of remorse and has attempted suicide
 
−
* Komisarjevsky (K) was repeatedly raped as a child
 
−
 
−
* K "claims to have been stunned by his own behavior in the Petit home: He was a career burglar, not a murderer, and he had not consciously intended to kill anyone."
 
−
 
 
−
My attitude towards any criminal (by which I mean someone who commits crime not for some reasonable good end, or accidentally, but instead deliberately, for personal gain, and in excess of their basic needs) -- murderers and killers included -- is that they did not ''choose'' to have a temperament which predisposes them to such activity. '''This is not to say that they should be forgiven and set free''', which is the usual [[straw-man]] given as the [[false dilemma|only alternative]] to traditional punitive measures. Clearly society needs to be protected from such people -- and if anyone's freedom is to suffer as a result of this need, it should be the perpetrator, not everyone else. '''This is the only useful purpose that prisons currently serve.'''
 
−
 
 
−
Further: to the extent that we have any (affordable) methods of reducing the "criminal" aspect of any criminal's personality, those methods should be offered to the criminal -- with the possibility of eventual release if they are successful -- on a voluntary basis, as an alternative to indefinite detention. (For most criminals, I suspect that simply having their basic needs met would negate most of their criminal tendency.)
 
−
 
 
−
"Such details might begin to give us pause.", says Harris, but then adds:
 
−
 
 
−
<blockquote>Whatever their conscious motives, these men cannot know why they are as they are. Nor can we account for why we are not like them.</blockquote>
 
−
 
 
−
This is a naked assertion, without any evidence; since we're still in the introduction, presumably Harris will defend it later... but on the face of it, it seems clearly wrong: Certainly through studying the brain -- as Harris himself describes in his book ''[[The Moral Landscape]]'', if I understand that book's thesis correctly -- we can gain an understanding of what particular features lead to various types of criminal behavior. We have already begun to do this, and progress in brain science is accelerating rapidly. Saying "we can't account" for their behavior is absurd.
 
−
 
 
−
Even without brain science, however, we can make some accounting of how we are different, or why we behave differently, from many criminals:
 
−
* Much crime is situational: an individual got into a bad situation with a loan shark, desperately needs a lot of money very quickly, and can't appeal to the law for succor without severe negative consequences.
 
−
* Some criminals, conversely, are criminals because they lack a sense of empathy, and therefore have no compunction against harming others as long as they can get away with it. While the cruelty with which they treat other people makes it difficult to feel any direct sympathy for them, we may recognize on an intellectual level that they have other positive attributes (as I understand it, many psychopathic killers are otherwise quite competent people -- often even warm, personable, and friendly whenever this helps them to get what they want) which are wasted if the criminal is either executed or imprisoned in a way that prevents them from using their skills.
 
−
 
 
−
Harris then makes a circular argument:
 
−
<blockquote>I have to admit that if I were to trade places with one of these men, atom for atom, I would be him: There is no extra part of me that could decide to see the world differently or to resist the impulse to victimize other people.</blockquote>
 
−
 
 
−
Sure -- if you were that other person exactly, then there wouldn't be any part of you that was different from them. How is this a meaningful statement?
 
−
 
 
−
Wouldn't it be more useful to ask "if I had the exact personality of one of those men but knew everything that I know now about psychology and neurology, would I behave differently?" I think the answer would be "yes", although exactly ''what'' would be different is a separate discussion. The point is that we are not helpless in the face of these mental differences. We can, at the very least, ask questions and do thought-experiments. Given more resources, we can do real-world experiments with situations and pharmaceuticals and re-education, and perform brain-scans and other evaluations to figure out what is going on and how we can affect it.
 
  
−
Harris's subsequent arguments are based on the assumption that we feel no sympathy towards these criminals -- as I have just stated that I ''do'', in a very particular way -- except in the unusual case of clear brain damage of some kind (such as a tumor). I argue, however, that a [[functional defect]] is a functional defect ''whether or not'' you can identify its physical source. If we define "defect" as "that which causes someone to be unable to engage successfully with society", then clearly criminals have a mental "defect" in the same sense that mentally retarded people, or people with autism or epilepsy, have a "defect". (There may rightly be some objection to my use of the word "defect" to describe autistics or epileptics; I'm using it in a very specific way that does ''not'', or at least is not intended to, [[defective/label|devalue anyone]] regardless of what "defects" they may have. Please read the next paragraph before reacting.)
+
However vague Harris may be about exactly what he thinks "free will" ''is'' (even as he argues that it doesn't really exist), it does seem clear that he is talking about it in the sense that most people understand it (FW!lay): the idea that we make choices to optimize our own experience, and that sometimes we need to set up deterrents* in order to prevent people from acting in ways that benefit themselves while harming others. (I have attempted to more precisely define this concept [[free will|here]].)
  
−
The '''difference''' between (a) "hard-wired" criminals and (b) epileptics, autistics, etc. is that the "defects" of the latter do not pose a serious danger to others merely by their existence, while the "defect" of criminality clearly ''does''. (I'll note that epileptics may pose a threat if they have a seizure while operating heavy machinery -- which is why we generally don't let epileptics have drivers' licenses unless they have their condition under control. The idea of selectively preventing behaviorally-caused harm due to brain "defects" is not a new one.)
+
(* actually, it's not clear that this is why he thinks FW!lay calls for "punishment"; investigating this further.)
−
===It's an Illusion===
 
−
Without even reading the argument in defense of this claim, there's a problem with it:
 
  
−
<blockquote>Free will is an illusion. Our wills are simply not of our own making. Thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control. We do not have the freedom we think we have.</blockquote>
+
From all the clues Harris has left scattered through his book, here is what we know about FW!SH (my understanding of the assertions contained within each quote is written in boldface):
 +
* <cite title="page 14, first paragraph">"...most of what is distinctly human about our lives seems to depend upon our viewing one another as autonomous persons, capable of free choice."</cite>
 +
** '''Society bases its rules on the idea that people have free will.'''
 +
* <cite title="page 14, first paragraph">"Without free will, sinners and criminals would be nothing more than poorly calibrated clockwork, and any conception of justice that emphasized punishing them (rather than deterring, rehabilitating, or merely containing them) would appear utterly incongruous. And those of us who work hard and follow the rules would not "deserve" our success in any deep sense."</cite>
 +
** '''Free will is required in order for people to be something other than clockwork.'''
 +
** '''Free will is required in order for punishment to be <s>an effective deterrent</s> necessary in some way ''other than'' as deterrent, rehabilitation, or containment.'''
 +
** '''Free will is required in order for individuals to deserve the fruits of their efforts in any meaningful way.'''
 +
* <cite title="page 16, 4th-to-last paragraph">"Thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control."</cite>
 +
** '''Free will requires conscious awareness of our decisionmaking process.'''
 +
* <cite title="page 21">"Consider what it would take to actually have free will. You would need to be aware of all the factors that determine your thoughts and actions, and you would need to have complete control over those factors."</cite>
 +
** '''Free will requires not just conscious awareness of our decisionmaking process, but conscious awareness of every detail of that process.'''
  
−
Saying that "thoughts and intentions emerge from [things] over which we exert no conscious control" implies a couple of things:
+
(Note: I'm unclear what use he thinks punishment is within FW!lay if it's not as a deterrent.)
−
* our consciousness has a will (which is simply not able to express itself through our actions)
+
===awareness of decisionmaking===
−
* conscious control is required for "free will"
+
One argument Harris returns to repeatedly is the idea that if we are not aware of ''every detail'' of the process by which we make a decision, then we are not truly the author of that decision. The decision was made by the atoms, chemical processes, and neurons that our brains are made of, and which science has demonstrated pretty conclusively to be "all we are".
  
−
<blockquote>Free will is actually more than an illusion (or less), in that it cannot be made conceptually coherent. Either our wills are determined by prior causes and we are not responsible for them, or they are the product of chance and we are not responsible for them.</blockquote>
+
This is a [[scope error]]. It's like saying that if we cannot enumerate and explain every muscle movement we make while riding a bicycle, and the process by which we decided to make each movement, then we aren't really in control of the bicycle. It's like saying I didn't really write the words you're reading now, because all I did was move my fingers up and down a lot; my computer actually did the work of noting the pattern of keystrokes caused by those finger-movements, recording them for later recall, and sending them through the internet to be available on the web.
 +
===acting solely on past experience===
 +
Another one is the idea that we act solely on past experience rather than on some spontaneous inner drive, which somehow (to Harris and apparently to others) implies the nonexistence of free will.
  
−
Finally we start to get to the argument behind Harris's thesis. This is an obvious [[false dichotomy]]. Why can't our wills be the end product of ''both'' prior causes and chance? Less trivially, even if our wills were entirely the product of prior causes, how does this contradict the idea that we have free will? He's right that FW!SH is conceptually incoherent, but that does not mean it cannot be defined in a coherent way; he has simply failed to do so.
+
I think perhaps the error here is one of scale. We have a hard time imagining, in a systematic way, just how complex "acting on past experience" can be:
  
−
<blockquote>The popular conception of free will seems to rest on two assumptions: (1) that each of us could have behaved differently than we did in the past, and (2) that we are the conscious source of most of our thoughts and actions in the present. As we are about to see, however, both of these assumptions are false.</blockquote>
+
'''We project those experiences into the future, and attempt to simulate the consequences of actions we are considering''' -- even if we have never taken those actions before.
  
−
I'll be interested to see his arguments for both of these.
+
Yes, this is still acting on experience -- but so are the moves in a chess game. We now have computers powerful enough to beat the best human players -- but we still can't say for sure who will win, much less name the exact moves that will be played. The algorithms used are run like clockwork, yet they aren't exactly what one would call "deterministic". Due to limitations on computing due to limitations of the size of the universe, there no purely deterministic way to know the best countermove for any given move in chess. The real-world constraints on processing and storage make it ''impossible'' to ever calculate all possible chess games, even though ''in theory'' it could be done. (Perhaps quantum computing will make it possible, but that's a separate discussion.)
  
−
<blockquote>Seeming acts of volition merely arise spontaneously (whether caused, uncaused, or probabilistically inclined, it makes no difference) and cannot be traced to a point of origin in our conscious minds. A moment or two of serious self-scrutiny, and you might observe that you no more decide the next thought you think than the next thought I write.</blockquote>
+
'''We communicate our understanding of reality via symbolic and representational means.'''
  
−
How does this contradict the idea of free will? (Or, in other words, "so what?")
+
Person A can warn Person B about an otherwise-invisible danger, causing Person B to avoid it. Is Person B "acting on the basis of one's past experience", "acting on the basis of someone ''else's'' past experience", or something more complex? In any case, it's not the simple stimulus-and-response image that "acting on one's past experience" summons. It is complex and dynamic and unrepeatable and (at some level of precision) unpredictable.
 +
==Meta-Conclusions==
 +
I can only wonder if I'm misunderstanding Harris's argument in some significant way; hopefully someone will set me straight if this is the case.
  
−
{{draft}}
+
'''My more detailed fisking of the book is [[/fisking|here]].'''
 +
==Related Posts==
 +
* '''2012-05-06''' [https://plus.google.com/u/0/102282887764745350285/posts/YK8NRxrMKd2 G+ announcement of this page] with extensive discussion in comments
 +
* '''2012-05-07''' [https://plus.google.com/u/0/102282887764745350285/posts/MDxTHc9Co2C The Knot Illusion]

Latest revision as of 23:07, 14 February 2015

Conclusions

(See /fisking for a chapter-by-chapter breakdown.)

The key problem with Harris's argument in this book is that he never defines its topic, "free will". This leaves him free to continually move the goalposts of what "free will" allows and requires (possibly without realizing he is doing so) as he identifies arguments which support it -- until he is left with a definition which is not falsifiable. Worse, he conflates different possible usages of the term, and then is forced to gloss over the inconsistencies between the conclusions he reaches from each one.

Harris's basic conclusion is that "free will is an illusion".

He would have done much better, I think, if he had said something like this:

Free will is a very elusive concept. It is both less than we think it is, and more complex than we generally imagine. At the edges, it blends smoothly into that which we consider to be "outside" of us, with no clear boundary; at its core, it operates (and sometimes malfunctions) by means beyond our direct control or understanding. This has profound implications for society, which tends to view "free will" as being much more of a discrete component in our cognition; our view of what is and is not voluntary tends therefore to be very all-or-nothing: either we are responsible for any given action, or we are not -- but this is a false dichotomy, and one we would do well to address with all the scientific rigor we can bring to bear.

Instead, he leaves himself to defend one end of another false dichotomy -- the idea that free will doesn't really exist at all -- and consequently is unable to make any meaningful statements about how we should proceed, his (often very sensible) suggestions for modifying social mores (with regard to personal achievement and criminal rehabilitation) supported only by hand-waving.

If, instead, he had started by defining his terminology, perhaps he would not have led himself down that dead-end path, and we would see a clear argument for some very badly-needed reforms.

Definition

For convenience, I'll use the following shorthand to refer to specific meanings of "free will":

  • FW!aca = academic usage (yet to be defined)
  • FW!lay = lay usage (how most people understand it -- real-world consequences for ethical and legal systems)
  • FW!SH = Harris's usage, as derived from statements in this book
  • FW!DD = free will as explained by Daniel Dennett
  • FW!W = my definition, as spelled out here -- an attempt at defining FW!lay

Tentatively, there are two main usages of the term, which I'll refer to as academic (FW!aca) and lay (FW!lay).

However vague Harris may be about exactly what he thinks "free will" is (even as he argues that it doesn't really exist), it does seem clear that he is talking about it in the sense that most people understand it (FW!lay): the idea that we make choices to optimize our own experience, and that sometimes we need to set up deterrents* in order to prevent people from acting in ways that benefit themselves while harming others. (I have attempted to more precisely define this concept here.)

(* actually, it's not clear that this is why he thinks FW!lay calls for "punishment"; investigating this further.)

From all the clues Harris has left scattered through his book, here is what we know about FW!SH (my understanding of the assertions contained within each quote is written in boldface):

  • "...most of what is distinctly human about our lives seems to depend upon our viewing one another as autonomous persons, capable of free choice."
    • Society bases its rules on the idea that people have free will.
  • "Without free will, sinners and criminals would be nothing more than poorly calibrated clockwork, and any conception of justice that emphasized punishing them (rather than deterring, rehabilitating, or merely containing them) would appear utterly incongruous. And those of us who work hard and follow the rules would not "deserve" our success in any deep sense."
    • Free will is required in order for people to be something other than clockwork.
    • Free will is required in order for punishment to be an effective deterrent necessary in some way other than as deterrent, rehabilitation, or containment.
    • Free will is required in order for individuals to deserve the fruits of their efforts in any meaningful way.
  • "Thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control."
    • Free will requires conscious awareness of our decisionmaking process.
  • "Consider what it would take to actually have free will. You would need to be aware of all the factors that determine your thoughts and actions, and you would need to have complete control over those factors."
    • Free will requires not just conscious awareness of our decisionmaking process, but conscious awareness of every detail of that process.

(Note: I'm unclear what use he thinks punishment is within FW!lay if it's not as a deterrent.)

awareness of decisionmaking

One argument Harris returns to repeatedly is the idea that if we are not aware of every detail of the process by which we make a decision, then we are not truly the author of that decision. The decision was made by the atoms, chemical processes, and neurons that our brains are made of, and which science has demonstrated pretty conclusively to be "all we are".

This is a scope error. It's like saying that if we cannot enumerate and explain every muscle movement we make while riding a bicycle, and the process by which we decided to make each movement, then we aren't really in control of the bicycle. It's like saying I didn't really write the words you're reading now, because all I did was move my fingers up and down a lot; my computer actually did the work of noting the pattern of keystrokes caused by those finger-movements, recording them for later recall, and sending them through the internet to be available on the web.

acting solely on past experience

Another one is the idea that we act solely on past experience rather than on some spontaneous inner drive, which somehow (to Harris and apparently to others) implies the nonexistence of free will.

I think perhaps the error here is one of scale. We have a hard time imagining, in a systematic way, just how complex "acting on past experience" can be:

We project those experiences into the future, and attempt to simulate the consequences of actions we are considering -- even if we have never taken those actions before.

Yes, this is still acting on experience -- but so are the moves in a chess game. We now have computers powerful enough to beat the best human players -- but we still can't say for sure who will win, much less name the exact moves that will be played. The algorithms used are run like clockwork, yet they aren't exactly what one would call "deterministic". Due to limitations on computing due to limitations of the size of the universe, there no purely deterministic way to know the best countermove for any given move in chess. The real-world constraints on processing and storage make it impossible to ever calculate all possible chess games, even though in theory it could be done. (Perhaps quantum computing will make it possible, but that's a separate discussion.)

We communicate our understanding of reality via symbolic and representational means.

Person A can warn Person B about an otherwise-invisible danger, causing Person B to avoid it. Is Person B "acting on the basis of one's past experience", "acting on the basis of someone else's past experience", or something more complex? In any case, it's not the simple stimulus-and-response image that "acting on one's past experience" summons. It is complex and dynamic and unrepeatable and (at some level of precision) unpredictable.

Meta-Conclusions

I can only wonder if I'm misunderstanding Harris's argument in some significant way; hopefully someone will set me straight if this is the case.

My more detailed fisking of the book is here.

Related Posts

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