Neuroscience and Free Will

John Perry
Coming up on Philosophy Talk…

John Cleese
We scientists have now located a gene which we scientists believe is a big step forward in our quest to show that every bit of human behavior can be explained away mechanically.

John Perry
Neuroscience has looked deep into the brain.

Ken Taylor
It’s found neurons and neurotransmitters galore.

John Perry
But it hasn’t found a will that is free.

Ken Taylor
Could freedom really be just an illusion?

Daniel Dennett
Free will is sometimes an illusion.

John Perry
Our guest is Daniel Dennett, author of Freedom Evolves.

Daniel Dennett
If neuroscience can predict what we’re going to do, are the neuroscience is going to share their predictions with us in advance?

Devo
Freedom of choice is what you got, freedom from choice is what you want.

Daniel Dennett
“My brain made me do it”—Well, what would you want to make you do it?

Ken Taylor
Neuroscience and Free will

John Perry
…coming up on Philosophy Talk.

Ken Taylor
This is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions, everything…

John Perry
…except your intelligence. I’m John Perry.

Ken Taylor
And I’m Ken Taylor. We’re coming to you from the campus of Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon, part of their 19th annual undergraduate philosophy conference.

John Perry
Our thinking originated philosophers corner down south at the Stanford University campus. That’s where it can hear teaches philosophy and where I taught philosophy for 40 years/

Ken Taylor
Quite well, I have to say. So welcome, everyone, to Philosophy Talk.

Now, today, we’re thinking about neuroscience and free will.

John Perry
As our knowledge of the human brain grows, some neuroscientists have come to the shocking conclusion that there’s no such thing as freewill, that it’s just all an illusion. Frankly, Ken, I don’t buy it.

Ken Taylor
You don’t buy it? What are you, some kind of Cartesian dualist stuck in the 16th century? You think the mind is free because it’s not part of material nature or something like that?

John Perry
No, I’m not a dualist. Just the opposite. The mind is just a part of nature. It’s basically the brain the central nervous system, its physical. But you know, we philosophers have been dealing with the problem of freewill for a century.

Ken Taylor
Without much progress. You have to admit I’m pregnant haven’t made much progress.

John Perry
No, I don’t admit that at all. I think philosophers have made all kinds of progress clarified the concept come up with interesting theories of freedom and responsibility. No, scientists just ignore what philosophy has to say. And as a result, they made a complete hash of things.

Ken Taylor
John, neuroscience is really cool. It’s showing us some really surprising and personally, I think, quite disturbing things about the nature of the freewill and these disturbing things. That things that philosophy could never have anticipated on its own. Yeah, like why Oh, cool. Well, like neuroscience shows us. But here’s an example. Not the brain, you know, actually decides what we’re going to do before we’re consciously aware that we’ve even made a decision.

John Perry
And that shows us what about freedom of the will?

Ken Taylor
It shows that it’s an illusion, John. Look, yeah, admittedly, we have this subjective impression that our decisions are somehow entirely up to us. But you know, it’s really all done by the brain. Without a sliver of our conscious awareness.

John Perry
I think you’re somewhat alienated from your brain can I mean, it’s really part of you. You’ve been reading too much Benjamin Libet.

Ken Taylor
I have been reading Libet and that’s groundbreaking work. I mean, he did this cool experiment. A while ago, he measured his subjects brain activity, while they repeatedly pressed a button at random intervals. Okay. Now, the subjects were asked to make a note on a clock when they first became aware of their own intention to press the button. And you know what he found? He discovered that a couple of 100 milliseconds before the subjects became aware of their intentions to press the button before they even formed that conscious and tension to press a button. Their brains were already preparing the finger to move. It’s That’s really amazing.

John Perry
Somehow, it doesn’t amaze me. I like to leave a lot of stuff up to my brain, including moving my fingers most of the time. On the basis of this little teeny experiment. Libert drew the wildly implausible conclusion that free will is an illusion. And that consciousness plays no role in what we decide to do not just in movements of our little fingers, no role at all, except possibly to veto decisions already made by the unconscious like wildly implausible. Well, I hate to break it to you, but libbets experiments are totally irrelevant. Could you say that? Well, first of all, brains don’t make decisions people do. Second, we don’t need liquid to tell us that our brain of course, is involved in our decision making somehow or another who would deny that and besides his experiments tell us next to nothing about how exactly the brain and consciousness are involved in decision.

Ken Taylor
Okay, look, take more recent experiments by turn soon. And colleagues we think about this, they were able to accurately predict us so called free choice, up to 10 whole seconds done before their siblings were even aware of their own choice.

John Perry
Big deal. I’ll make a prediction right now. Tomorrow night. If you have a choice. You won’t take the beaten kale salad for your main course. Wow, who knew it? How can I do that? It must be magic. mental events have antecedent causes. They’re just like every other event in nature. Decisions don’t just happen randomly in some vacuum.

Ken Taylor
Why are you being so sorry, I don’t like this, okay?

John Perry
Because unlike what you seem to be assuming, being free is not being uncaused as compatibilist, like Hume argue that is people who think that freedom is compatible with determinism and causation. Free actions are caused they’re caused, but the ones that are free are the ones that are caused by our own beliefs and desires. Of course, our decision making is unmatched in a network of inner and outer causes. Freedom is a distinction made within that. So showing that something played a role in causing a decision, couldn’t possibly do anything to undermine the reality of freewill.

Ken Taylor
I see what’s going on. I see what’s going on here. You’re citing the authority of Hume, but he was a piker compared to Kant. Kant said compatibilism is a wretched subterfuge, it’s a cheat. It’s an attempt to have your free cake and eat your deterministic causation to it won’t work, John.

John Perry
I think if you have cake eating it is quite reasonable. Now, I understand your fetish for neuroscience. You start off with this libertarian that’s libertarian with a little l not a political position, just a wacko position. notion of freedom. You think that real freedom requires some kind of crazy non physical causality. You’re the Cartesian. So of course, neuroscience threatens to upset your Cartesian applecart because it finds only physical causes, doesn’t find mysterious causes. But who cares? Who takes that libertarian freedom seriously anymore? Neuroscience apparently hasn’t gotten the news.

Ken Taylor
I’m not sure it’s so cut and dry. I mean, you’re saying if you’re a libertarian, well, then you should worry about neuroscience. But if you’re a compatible list, like God, you needn’t worry, you just gonna stick your head in the sand. You know, I’m not willing to concede that, but I am going to admit, there’s a lot more to think about here.

John Perry
To give us even more food for thought, we sent our roving philosophical reporter, Shuka Kalantari, out to find out what we can learn about how our choices are really caused by looking at the psychology of magic. She files this report.

Jay Olson
I’m going to flip through this deck. And I want you to see one card and not this one that’s too obvious. Pay close attention.

Shuka Kalantari
We’ve all seen magic tricks before. You see a card from a deck and some magician always knows which card you’re thinking about. It’s like they’re reading your mind. Of course they’re not. They’re just manipulating your choices.

Jay Olson
I can’t share the secret of this trick, but I can talk about the principle behind it. And I’m trying to influence their decision without their awareness.

Shuka Kalantari
That’s Jay Olson, a professional magician and a grad student in psychiatry at McGill University in Montreal. Olson took a classic car trick and conducted a psychological study to understand why people think they have freewill in situations where they’re clearly being influenced. In the study. Austin exposes people to one card in the deck more than the others. It’s called forcing. And it’s a way to control people’s selections, whether that’s a card a number a letter.

Jay Olson
Magicians have been doing forcing for quite a while. Although we don’t really understand why it works. We don’t really understand why magicians can influence people so well without noticing that influence. So we figured that we could study this feature of magic using the tools of psychology.

Shuka Kalantari
98% of the participants in the study chose the card that Olson wanted them to pick, but only 9% realized he was affecting their choices. They thought they had the freewill to pick the card they wanted. And it’s not just magic tricks. Olson says this happens every day.

Jay Olson
So if somebody gently taps your shoulder when they’re making a request, you’re more likely to comply to the request. Or sometimes if people slightly rush your decision, then you’ll be more likely to choose some particular options over some other ones.

Shuka Kalantari
Like at a restaurant. A study from Cornell University shows people spend more money when menus don’t include the dollar symbol next to the price. People are also more likely to buy the first or last menu item because it attracts the most attention. But when asked, people always say they order something because that’s what they want. Think about that the next time you buy a $40 filet mignon.

Jay Olson
I think what we’re finding more and more in psychology is that a bunch of the decisions that we make for life are heavily influenced by situational factors.

Shuka Kalantari
Does this mean we don’t have free will? Olson says that depends on your definition.

Jay Olson
When you just ask people casually on the street what they mean by free Well, in some studies, they found one of the core components that they often mentioned Is that the decision is relatively free from influences. So they’re not being coerced or they’re not being highly persuaded.

Shuka Kalantari
But we are being highly persuaded quite often. Of course, that doesn’t mean free will doesn’t exist at all. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. Olsen says that’s way beyond the scope of his study.

Jay Olson
I would say, though, that this feeling of a free choice or this feeling of a free will that we have doesn’t necessarily match the situation.

Shuka Kalantari
But it doesn’t have to be that way. Austin says the takeaway is to pause before making big choices. If we don’t rush into our decisions, we’re less likely to be affected by situational factors, and more likely to have some semblance of freewill. Or at the very least, we won’t be tricked into buying a $40 steak, just because it’s at the top of the menu. For Philosophy Talk, I’m Shuka Kalantari.

John Perry
I’m John Perry. Thanks for that interesting investigation to the magic of freewill. I’m here along with my fellow philosopher at Stanford. I’m watching my words carefully. So I’m not overly influenced by Ken Taylor. We’re coming to you from Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon.

Ken Taylor
Now our guest today is a professor of philosophy from Tufts University, where he’s also co director of the Center for cognitive studies. He’s a really prolific author, including relevant to our talk today “Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking.” Please welcome to the Philosophy Talk stage the one and only Daniel Dennett.

John Perry
So Dan, many years ago, when we first met in 1968-69, you were already a published authors. I remember you, you’d publish content and consciousness. And with all the different things you’ve done consciousness, the mind. That’s that’s a thick thread through all your work. Absolutely. But you’re good at a lot of things. You could have been a neuroscientists yourself, why was philosophy so lucky that you chose us?

Daniel Dennett
I think it’s because I was better at the questions than the answers, I’d say.

John Perry
Well, you provided a lot of answers over the years—a couple have been fairly plausible!

Daniel Dennett
Those are the ones that are weak. You know, the good ones are the ones that are really counterintuitive.

John Perry
Okay. I’m pretty skeptical about some of these sweeping claims neuroscientists make about freewill, I’ll say yes. Which is not to say that they don’t do a lot of good work, or that the brain is unimportant, or the neurons are unimportant or anything like that. But when they say something like conscious will is just an illusion. My problem is I, I can’t bear to read how they defend this. So I don’t really know what they have in mind. But but you’ve got this willpower. You read all these things. Okay. Can you take us into the mind of a neuroscientist? Who thinks that that because I’m not conscious of which way I’m going to switch my finger before my brain decides to switch my finger that I don’t have free? Will? What are they thinking of things?

Daniel Dennett
Well, that’s a good question, John, because I think they haven’t thought very carefully about the philosophical underpinnings of what they’re doing. They take their concept of freewill from the sort of from the man in the street from something they read when they were in high school, or who knows when. And so they tend to be to think that what freewill is, is making decisions that aren’t caused that are caused by anything but that so if determinism is true, or even roughly true about the brain, then I think that shows us no free will—crazy idea.

John Perry
Some years ago, you wrote a very readable book, about 120 pages, called “Elbow Room.” What more can we do?

Ken Taylor
Wait, wait, wait, wait a minute, guys. Well, you just the neuroscientists, for taking their concept of freedom from the person on the street. Well, who this was taken from you two guys, you guys, look, freedom is free. The notion of freedom is part of what sellers calls a manifest image as part of our common sense furniture. We’ve had it for a long, long time. And if the guy on the street is a libertarian, about freedom, because that’s how it appeals to us. The New Scientist isn’t a fool for taking the concept of freedom over from and then showing that no, that concept doesn’t quite apply.

Daniel Dennett
There’s two features of the everyday notion, the manifest image notion of freedom, and they have been intention for 2000 years and more. One of them is the libertarian idea of absence of causation. And the other one is, it’s a necessary condition for moral responsibility. And it’s the second one, which is the important one, I think, and that’s just as much a part of the manifest image as the other. So I think it is true that In the manifest image has made a mistake and has made a mistake for several 1000 years, going way back to Democritus, on the absence of causes.

Ken Taylor
So neuroscientists are doing something good to be applauded that wait a minute, they’re either correcting the manifest image, right? Or they’re saying the manifest image has something deeply wrong and needs to be revised. And somehow we better revise it.

Daniel Dennett
And you know what, one of the ironies is that the scientists turned to the philosophers who are least interested in science who know no science, who don’t care about science. And those are the ones they go to for their view of free will. And no wonder they say that it’s an illusion.

Ken Taylor
Well okay, we’re gonna have to dig into this. I don’t really want to hold a brief for the Libertarians in the manifest image, but I feel like I need to. This is Philosophy Talk, coming to you from Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon. Our guest is Daniel Dennett from Tufts University.

John Perry
Has neuroscience shown that there’s no such thing as a free choice? Could it ever show this? What can neuro science tell us about the problem of freewill?

Ken Taylor
Free choice, the illusion of conscious will, and neuroscience—along with questions from our free and conscious audience, when Philosophy Talk continues.

The Rolling Stones
I’m free any old time to get what I want.

John Perry
Welcome back to Philosophy Talk. I’m John Perry.

Ken Taylor
And I’m Ken Taylor, I guess is Daniel Dennett from Tufts University. And we’re thinking about neuroscience and freewill.

John Perry
Does the subjective feeling of freely choosing show that you really have free will. Do you think it’s possible to be mistaken about how you can make decisions? Could neuroscience ever convince you that you’re not free? You can join the discussion by stepping up to the microphones in front of the stage.

Ken Taylor
So that I would ask you, okay, so we are trying to get into the neuroscientists head? I think I know the answer to that. I know what John thinks, and I think I know pretty clearly what you think. But I’m gonna ask it anyway. How seriously, should we take these claims from the neural scientists about how we make choices? I mean, do they do you think they show anything? To the extent that free will is an illusion? I mean, all this stuff that we don’t know the real causes, the causal correlates of our behavior.

Daniel Dennett
Actually, I don’t think the neuroscientific experiments show much of anything of interest. They’re interesting, theoretically, but they don’t show anything about about freewill, it matters, the magician, and some psychologists that work on things like psychological forcing. Now that’s where it gets more interesting.

Ken Taylor
So why do you? What’s the difference between Why do you think the psychological forcing stuff is more relevant or more interesting than the neuroscience stuff? What’s wrong with the neuroscience stuff? I mean, neuroscientists are fond of saying they shown that free will is an illusion.

Daniel Dennett
So they are but but their experiments only show what in in reflection, you should realize is obvious. You know, somebody says, my brain made me do it. Well, what would you want to make you do it? That’s I want my brain to make me do it. And the only thing that’s at all striking is that it turns out, there are patterns in your brain under some conditions, but only very weird and special conditions, where a so called prediction can be made. Let’s take the soon article that you mentioned. First of all, the examples of free choices that started with limit and that others have done are bizarre examples, because they are deliberately chosen as choices, which don’t mean a thing. They are supposed to be absolutely arbitrary. on sheer whim. Just when the spirit moves, you push the left button, push the right button, flick your wrist, nothing hangs on them. So they are deliberately drained of all meaning and all purpose. Well, now, suppose I asked you, can I write right now? Give me a string of eight random numbers. Quick, quick, quick.

Ken Taylor
6 7 9 12 6 32.

Daniel Dennett
It’s hard to do. In fact, people are badat that. And how did you do it? You don’t know. But who knows whether those what happened in your brain started 10 minutes ago.

Ken Taylor
Sothe thing that limit at all study is that sort of paradigmatic intentional action because free actions are intentional actions. They’re not just randomly caused thing they’re things done for reasons for purposes. And so if you’re if you say, Well, I’m interested in some doings that people but not they’re not intentional reason.

Daniel Dennett
Of course, we don’t know what the story is. Now but But back to the magic again. We all know the game Rock paper and scissors. If you ever get in a situation where somebody’s just got your number, and they’re winning and winning and winning and winning, it’s very spooky because apparently in Most cases, you see that somebody really is either anticipating your choices very well, or in some subtle way manipulating you. And that’s what magicians are actually very good at. And there’s been an arms race of sort of covert manipulation that human beings have been engaged in, you know, since the Stone Age.

Ken Taylor
Are you willing to say on the basis of that kind of study? Because they’re all you’re right. There are tons of studies that show that all these things seem to be controlling our behavior of which we’re entirely unaware. And when we offer an explanation of why we did what we did, it’s mostly confabulation and it’s missing. Does that help convince you that free will is an illusion?

Daniel Dennett
No, it convinces me that freewill is sometimes an illusion, because some people set out to manipulate other people knowing that if you now that you are a target of manipulation, you can. And if you know the latest stuff about what’s being done, you can fend this off. And that is actually an important part of your freedom.

John Perry
Yeah, I want to go back to the end of the first session where you guys were distinguishing the manifest image, the scientific giants, very good distinction. The language comes from sellers, good example is solidity. Or we have there’s really three things involved, we have a term solid, we make distinctions all the time between liquids and solids, we put these distinctions to good use, we have the word solid, it’s been part of the human vocabulary. Since humans had a vocabulary, then there’s a picture of solidity that we have. That turns out not to be right, it turns out that things that we think of as solid are at the microscopic level at big spaces in between. And so the scientific image is different from what’s called a manifest image. But that third thing, the actual working concept, really, was formed in innocence of the scientific image. And it’s pretty independent of the manifest image. Now, it seems to me that when we think about freewill, the key term is not solidity. But can we have this word? Can we use it all the time? incompatible, say that I can’t convince Dennett of anything? Right. And I think the mistake is not looking at the manifest image. It’s interesting to, to say some things about it. But mostly it comes from Christianity. It didn’t really exist till St. Augustine worried about why God was so mad at Adam when he created him. But the word can I’m sure it’s been around since words were around. And I think when you say we don’t have free will, that cash value is added when we say I did this, but I could have done that. It’s false. And that’s what the neuroscientists haven’t touched.

Ken Taylor
I think this is deep and right and important, because and Dan sort of hinted at this because he talked he just said there were two things talked about moral competence and and something else, independence of independence of causation. And the moral competence is, obviously there. And I think abilities are obviously there. And, and but I think what the manifest image did, and what philosophy did for some is kind of merge these things together. But that is separable. And one of the things science, not just neuroscience, but psychological science, is helping us to show is oh, these two things don’t necessarily go together. Now, what do we do about the concept? You know what I think? I don’t know why you don’t think this because you think this in so many domains? Oh, let the old concept go. Who cares? Let’s start new. Let’s have better.

John Perry
You can junk the word free will if you want. I don’t use it. I give it to Augustine. You can even junk the word free if you want. I don’t think we need it. But let’s not junk. The word can Oh, I told him. I told him the idea if I get home and and I brought home whole milk and said a skim milk and my wife is mad at me. And I say they were out of skim milk. I couldn’t get any.

Ken Taylor
I totally agree with that.

John Perry
That I ought to be treated differently than if I say, well, they had it but it was kind of on a high shelf and I would have had to reach.

Ken Taylor
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk and we’re talking about neuroscience and freewill in front of a live audience at Pacific University at the 19th annual undergraduate philosophy conference. We got some questions from that live and autonomous and free and conscious audience, I think and we’ll start go I’ll go back and forth. Welcome to Philosophy Talk.

Big Daddy Bauer
Thank you. My name is Big Daddy Bauer. I’m from Boise State University. My question is simply this is it maybe that in a compatible this framework we have freewill in certain things and not in others? And in the compatibilist framework, if we don’t have freewill? Could we know it?

Ken Taylor
Sort oflike being a little pregnant—freewill in certain things but not others.

Daniel Dennett
That’s a very good question because we obviously have variable freewill. Sometimes we’re overcome with emotion we’re overcome with gluttony with with an obsession with whatever And we recognize that in ourselves, we recognize it’s a human problem. And, in fact, one of the interesting things to me about freewill in this area is that over the centuries, we’ve invented helps prosthetic aids to improve our freewill, for instance, and we all know them. It’s, you know, don’t buy the junk food and have it in the house because you won’t be able to resist it if it’s there. Or one of my favorites is the farmer who drops a quarter down the outhouse. When he’s pulling up his pants, and he swears and throws a $5 bill down after the quarter. Somebody says why are you doing that? He says you don’t think I’m going down there for a quarter Do you?

Ken Taylor
That’s called volitional engineering. Exactly. Welcome to philosophy.

Speaker 1
Thank you. My name is Matt network crutch. I teach electrical engineering at Oregon Institute of Technology in Klamath Falls. A couple minutes ago, you said something about throwing out the old concept and I wonder what your take or your various takes might be on gasm? A guy I think is the name neuroscientist who does an Khazanah. Okay, never heard him say it. In one of his books, he says something like what would you want your will to be free from? And he seems to continue to say that the question of do we have it or not is a bit pointless? You know, he kind of goes into the idea of emergence a little bit, and he seems to be taken a third path. What do you think?

Daniel Dennett
I’m glad you raised Michael Gazzaniga, because I exempt him from my blanket criticism of neuroscientists, he is one neuroscientist who’s thought hard about this and has gathered legal scholars and philosophers around and had run workshops. And his writing on this topic is adroit and careful. And he knows better than to make the mistakes that a lot of others do.

Ken Taylor
But Dan I want to try something else out on you. You written a lot about the self, you say the self is the center of narrative gravity, right? And that’s supposed to mean centers of gravity is our kind of fictional calculation on devices. So you know, I mean, it’s sort of exists as an abstraction, but it’s not really real neuroscience or the psychology of the mind, or something has helped convince you that he talked about you have this multiple drafts theory of consciousness that you contrast to the Cartesian theater and all that. You don’t believe in qualia, you don’t believe in the self, you don’t believe in consciousness, as many people understand it. So what’s the big deal about giving up on freedom? Why don’t you just give up on freedom to?

Daniel Dennett
Well, sometimes I think that that’s the thing to do just the term is so bandied about, and I’m tired of talking about how to define the term. So recently, I’ve been experimenting with just saying, let’s just talk about moral competence instead. And that’s what to me is the heart of freewill anyway. And of course, we use the term freewill when I signed a legal document recently, the notary asked me to do sign that of your own freewill. And I knew just what she was asking. And I said, Yes.

Ken Taylor
So I think you have a view it’s kind of like this too, because you say you can have a bunch of it but don’t take away my cat.

John Perry
I would say the two of you’re barking up the wrong treat. You should treat self like I want to treat can self is a perfectly good word makes perfectly good sense. Myself is me the person the live human being, you know, as I’m going to do it myself, I don’t saying that some inner principal is going to do it or some fictional narrative, blah, blah, blah, blah. I mean, I’m gonna do it. The word I doesn’t stand for something inside the stands for me know if St. Thomas Aquinas and and Ludwig Wittgenstein and Miss Handscomb. Wanna say that that’s wrong. They’re wrong. Don’t give them our words. Keep our word. Well, I didn’t give up the self. I said, Here’s what a self is. It is. It is not an organ of the brain. And you don’t think that either? No, I think it’s you. Yeah. And, in fact, the most important sentence in elbowroom was one I put in parentheses stupidly. It was if you make yourself really small, you can externalize virtually everything. Oh, wow. Welcome to philosophy. That’s a deep thought.

Trevor
I am Trevor from Boise State University. And my question was, if we’re supposed to be okay, with the brain being the cause of some actions, but the brain is just basically physical matter in particles unless the brain is made up of particles that somehow move or behave differently for some reason. Why isn’t the old incompatibilist line that the laws of physics and the past since we can’t control them, do cause our actions today?

Daniel Dennett
Well, why would you want anything else to cause?

Ken Taylor
Yeah, what’s so bad about that?

John Perry
Well, because he’s nodding at consequentialist argument. And we shouldn’t just have a love fest about compatibilism. So I’ll push the consequence argument, right? So you can’t change the laws of nature. You can’t change facts about the past facts about the past and laws of nature entail, what you’re going to do next if determinism is true. So if you were to do other than what you do do, either the laws of nature would have to be false, or the facts about the past would have to be false. You can’t do anything about those, therefore, you can’t do anything other than you’re going to do. Right.

Ken Taylor
Yeah, that’s what they say. And that seems true enough. But you know, what? Yes.

Daniel Dennett
And I have a short answer, which is, so what?

Ken Taylor
Yeah, because this is, I have a long version of the sowhat. Because the way that facts about the past and the laws caused me to do what I do is by causing me a whole bunch of things happen, I have beliefs, part of the having beliefs is chains of reasoning through those chains of reasoning or cause of causal events in my head, but nothing that doesn’t result from a chain of reasoning in my head is my action. And how else would my actions—

John Perry
But you haven’t answered the argument, we got the word can’t say, Well, I can do this, I’m not going to do this. But I can do this. So we’ve got two possible worlds. There, we got the actual world, which is the world in which the things entailed by the laws of nature in the past happened. And we got another possible world which you’re somehow using to describe your ability. What is it? Where is that possible World Man in that possible world? Either the laws of nature are violated, or the past? How do you get yourself into that?

Ken Taylor
I’m gonna pull a John Locke on you, but I’m gonna do it after a break. Because I think John Locke said this one a long time ago, and then Harry Frankford got credit for it, several 100 years later, but I’ll remind folks that you’re listening to Philosophy Talk, we’re thinking about neuroscience and freewill with the one and only Daniel Dennett, author of many things, including intuition pumps and other tools for thinking.

John Perry
What difference does it make whether or not we have freewill,?we can still hold people morally responsible for their actions. If there’s no free will matter of fact, we’ll have to because determinism says we will?

Ken Taylor
We’re coming to you from the 19th annual undergraduate philosophy governance at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon. We’ll take more questions from our free autonomous conscious thinking audience when Philosophy Talk continues.

Oasis
How long’s it gonna be before we get on the bus and cause no fuss, get a grip on yourself it don’t cost much.

John Perry
Welcome back, I’m John Perry. This is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Ken Taylor
…except your intelligence. I’m Ken Taylor. Our guest is Daniel Dennett from Tufts University. And we’re thinking about neuroscience and freewill. And before we go, I want to I want to try something on John. Okay, because he said, Oh, the 10 You haven’t answered the consequence argument. And Dan said, so what I’m gonna give a longer so what but I’m gonna borrow it from John Locke. Suppose you’re in your study in your room, you smoking your opium drinking your steak, sitting by a fire having a grand old time, and you think, should I get up and leave this room? Yeah, I think I’ll stay here. I think I’ll stay here. Did you stay there freely? I told you a lot of stuff. But I didn’t tell you the next thing. The room is locked. If you had gotten up to leave the room. You couldn’t have left the room. You could not have done otherwise. Did you stay in the room freely? John? Yes, you stayed in the room freely. You stayed in the room of your own free? Will you smoking your opium? You’re having a good time?

John Perry
I’m hesitating because you’ve got locked wrong block said are you morally responsible for staying in a room? Are you morally if something is happening out? So you’re sitting in a room and you hear somebody being beaten outside and you think I should get up and do something about that, but screw it. You might say, well, we hold him morally responsible. But it turns out the door was locked. He couldn’t do anything anyway. Well, we still hold him morally responsible. So that to be held morally responsible, it doesn’t have to be the case that you could have done something other than you did. But the question I’m interested in, I mean, moral responsibilities is fine. But I want to claim that we often in spite of determinism can do things different than we did. We don’t live in a room of locked doors.

Daniel Dennett
And oddly enough, I think the can concept we need is one of the which really sort of comes from engineering, and it’s degrees of freedom. If you have a robotic arm with four degrees of freedom, that means it can move in four different ways. And you got to control all four of them. And the idea of degrees of freedom is a non metaphysical perfectly sound idea, and it applies to us too. If you’ve got free will, it’s because you control the degrees of freedom.

Ken Taylor
You guys confusing me a little bit. Okay, the consequence—

John Perry
We can’t help it.

Ken Taylor
Because I’m confused a consequence arguments supposed to show that somehow, determinism. The laws of the facts together strip us of certain abilities, says the ability to do otherwise, I think and I think, Wait a minute, what does it really, you know, if I raise my hand, I let the condemned men go, but I don’t raise my hand, I decided to, I decided to keep it down and the condemned man dies. What did the laws do? Well, I didn’t want to let the man go. So I didn’t have the motivation to let the man go, I had the opportunity to let the man go. I had the ability to raise my hand because look, I can raise my hand. Right. So when the universe stripped me of what did the universe stripped me off in the consequence arguments that seems to distribute only stripped me of the motivation, but stripping me of the motivation. Does that stripped me of my abilities?

John Perry
Well, I can’t argue with your intuitions. But I mean, the way the consequence argument works, so here, I got my hand, if I raise my hand, the man will be let set free. Now Dennett would say and I would agree with him that you got to separate the general ability to raise your hand, which I have a person who was paralyzed, didn’t have an arm wouldn’t, then there’s the opportunity. The circumstances are such that if I raise my hand, it will have a certain effect, given those two things to compatible says I can free the guy. The incompatible says no. In fact, I’m not going to raise my hand could be predicted if determinism is true. It was already settled years ago, by the laws of nature and that, and so that I have the general ability, I don’t have the specific ability in this case, to free the guy. Now, I think it’s a serious argument. I don’t have anything that works. But I think it’s a series of arguments.

Ken Taylor
Determined from the beginning of the universe that I don’t have the motivation to raise my hand. Not that I don’t have the ability to raise Well, you know what, let’s—

John Perry
You’re just appealing to us. Yeah, I think what you’re really semi-compatibilist like John Fischer.

Ken Taylor
Yeah. Welcome to philosophy Talk.

Clint
Hello, I’m Clint from beautiful North Idaho college. And my question is in the deterministic sense, is it possible to learn anything at all?

Ken Taylor
Well, if John’s an example… Yes.

Daniel Dennett
You know, I’m glad you asked that. Because every now and then you find a philosopher who sort of should know better, who thinks, you know, if if determinism is true, then my hopes are constrained? No. If determinism is true, then, you know, can you teach an old dog new tricks? Well, maybe you can. And maybe you can’t it all depends. Maybe determinism shows that you can teach old dogs new determinism is pretty loose about Yeah, what happened?

Ken Taylor
I want to ask you to Old Dogs then. So do you think Kant just was flapping his lips when he called compatibilism a wretched subterfuge? Yeah, I mean, do you think there’s any thing to that, that that that thought?

John Perry
No, I think he was about as wrong as a philosopher can be. But even more impressive. William James tissue, call it a quagmire of evasion. I’m writing a book on this. And I’m calling it Richard subterfuge. But But quagmire of evasion might be a good title to

Ken Taylor
There’s a female voice for the first time. Welcome to Philosophy Talk.

Caitlin
Thank you. I’m Caitlin for Lewis & Clark College. Um, so if neuroscience did show that all our actions could be predicted before we decided to do them, and so seemed to indicate that we didn’t have freewill. Do you think it would impact society beyond philosophy at all? Or is it just far too useful for us to think and act as though we have free will? And so we always will?

Daniel Dennett
Well, there’s a lot packed into the IFS there. First of all, if if neuroscience can predict what we’re going to do, are we are the neuroscientists gonna share their predictions with us in advance. And think about what that does, this is actually a subtle point. If they’re going to publicly predict what we’re going to do, then they have to calculate the effects of their public prediction on us. And that turns out to be an intractable problem. They can’t do it. So there’s a certain sense in which, even if determinism is true, and even if they can gather the evidence, they can’t tell us.

Ken Taylor
Yeah, cuz there’s a little puzzle there, right? I mean, because it looks like if you predict my behavior, right, and then you tell me your prediction, I can confound your prediction. That seems I don’t know what that suggests. Is that consistent with determinism, or is it not? It seems to me like I can always confound your prediction. You say you’re gonna swerve left? Okay, then I’ll swerve, right?

John Perry
You know, there’s a similar point, that a brilliant philosopher whose name is escaping me for a moment, but she’s back at Johns Hopkins. Even in your own deliberation, if you had some kind of magic thing that said, what you were going to do, or what you were determined to do, it wouldn’t help that much. What you really have to do is think things through abstracting from your desires, looking at your general abilities and circumstances, and then and only then go to your desires. And if you think about that, that’s

Ken Taylor
compatibilism. So I’m gonna say, I haven’t really said My own view. But I want to say briefly, I actually think freedom is a red herring. And I think but I see I was trying to get both of you guys to agree with me subtly, but you won’t, right? Because I think I think you’re both on the, on the on the, I don’t know, who gets to keep the concept freedom, who gets to keep the word what it’s whatever you gave the analysis of our ordinary talk of freedom, but in our ordinary geography, so many things go together, that can be separated and have to be separated. And they don’t it’s just like your view about qualia. They don’t form so freedom and that sense doesn’t exist. Now, what does exist some kind of control? And but does that deserve to be called freedom? I don’t know. But it’s real. And it’s worth thinking about. If we were starting from scratch, we invent a concept to cover exactly that without all this other baggage. Why not think of freedom as a kind of a red herring?

John Perry
Well, but certainly freedom as Hume says, the opposite of freedom is not necessitate but coercion. And that concept of freedom, whether the man on the street has it right or not, that’s an important concept. Political freedom and effect.

Ken Taylor
Yeah. Welcome to Philosophy Talk.

Craig
Hi there. I’m Craig from Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada. And I was just curious, it’s always seemed to me that the idea of the self and the idea of freewill are closely linked. So can we have a self without the concept of freewill?

Ken Taylor
That was good. That’s a good question for Dan Dennett, who’s sort of tempted to revise the concept.

Daniel Dennett
That’s what a self is. The self is, what does those actions, just think about something very simple for a moment, think about looking at yourself in the mirror? How do you know that’s you? Because you know what you look like no, but because you can, you can go like this, and watch the mirror reflection, do the same thing. It’s because you know, what you are doing. And you’re know that you can perform these actions in the world. And when you see the the mirror image, perfectly in sync with it, that’s how you know that you’re looking in the mirror. And, and I think that right there, we see that self recognition, and the capacity. The can do, as John says, to act, and to choose to act, are really very tightly linked.

Ken Taylor
Welcome to Philosophy Talk.

Kenny
Hi, I am Kenny from Pacific University. And I have a simple question and the respective like intention, you know, I intend to raise my hand. And it appears I have the belief that I do this willingly. I’d like of my own volition. So my question is, how do you define a belief or each of you are all of you?

Ken Taylor
That’s not going to get on the air, you know.

John Perry
That got an answer, but it’s too long.

Ken Taylor
It’s too long. It’s too long. Ask us afterwards.

John Perry
A belief is an internal state that motivates an action in conjunction with a desire that will satisfy the desire if the belief is true.

Ken Taylor
Oh, that’s pretty good. That’s a radio worthy answer. Yeah, and this has been a great conversation. I wish we could continue. But we’ve got to draw too close. I’m going to thank you for joining us.

Daniel Dennett
Well, thank you. I’ve enjoyed it very much.

Ken Taylor
I guess it’s been Daniel Dennett. He’s a professor of philosophy and, and co director of the Center for cognitive studies at Tufts University. He’s a very prolific author, he’s author relevant to this discussion of intuition pumps and other tools for thinking and, and many other great reads. So John, what do you think now I know you’re a hoarder. compatibilist

John Perry
Oh, I’m I’m a compatibilist. And it always worries me. Dan’s written two books on free will, the short and elegant elbow room and a longer book on the evolution and freedom and I wonder, do I have anything to say, in addition to what has already been made clear, and the answer I was come up as well. I’m not writing this book, because I think I have something new to say I’m writing this book because before I die, I want to get straight in my own mind what the answer is, all those problems that pushed me into philosophy are and if somebody else wants to read it, that’s fine. But he’s one great philosophers.

Ken Taylor
No, he is one great philosopher. He’s a great conversationalist. And you know, I’m pretty much a compatibilist but I’m really serious man. I I think freedom is a red herring. We get wrapped up in all these debates, because you know, all this stuff is mushed together. I just I like it philosophy that just starts over. started inventing concepts are new to this, just like science starts over there. You’re not moved by that kind of thought.

John Perry
No, not at all. Not at all. I mean, it’s understanding how these red herrings have managed to, to create culture and help us fend with reality. And even worse under people for millions of millennia. That’s what interests me.

Ken Taylor
Well, we differ in that way this conversation will continue at philosophers corner at our online community of thinkers where our motto is now get this koja toe Ergo Blago, I think, therefore I blog for those of you who don’t speak Latin, and you too, can become a partner in our community by visiting our website, Philosophytalk.org.

John Perry
Now we peer into the synapses of a fast talking free agent—it’s Ian Shoales the Sixty-Seconf Philosopher.

Ian Shoales
Ian Shoales… I’ve never quite understood what is meant by “free will.” I assume it means that you make a decision to act – unencumbered. But unencumbered by what? We are all of us encumbered. I mean say you want to buy an ice cream cone on a hot summer day. Already your free will has been compromised. You’re not buying an ice cream cone in a vacuum. The desire for the ice cream cone has been TRIGGERED. By the hot summer day, the effects of which you wish to both mitigate and enhance by the act of eating ice cream. And what kind of ice cream? You know what you want. Chocolate. Vanilla. Butterscotch. But what you want has been ordained. You have a history of ice cream eating. Perhaps a joyful history. Perhaps a tragic history, seasoned by memories of ice cream headaches, the despair of settling for a sugar cone, when you had your heart set on the waffle, and they didn’t have one. Perhaps you are even lactose intolerant, but are willing to swap the intestinal discomfort to come for the momentary joy of the lick. Joy, then lingering despair. That’s why you chose to be a Vegan, wishing to replace the ice cream with a fruit smoothie. You can do that, of course, but it will leak all over the cone. And everyone will laugh at you, not only because you’re a Vegan at an ice cream stand, but a sticky Vegan. Which presumably you chose to become of your own free will. But again, did you? To conquer your lactose intolerance-ness, maybe you were hypnotized by your therapist to become Vegan, but he left a post hypnotic suggestion that you wouldn’t remember it. It could happen. How would you know? You don’t remember. They say you can’t be hypnotized to do something against your will, but how would you know that? Especially if you’ve forgotten being hypnotized in the first place. And especially, as we have seen, free will is already hampered by your massive character flaws. But forget all that, if you can…. Do you even have the will power to do without your ice cream? When it’s ninety in the shade, the ice cream trucks’ bells are tinkling, coming nearer and nearer, your exact change clutched in your sweaty hand? How do you even know the ice cream truck is real? What if it’s a trick by a confidence man to get all your spare change and leave you sweating on the curb with nothing but a cheap soy substitute dripping on your tee shirt? See where your free will got you? On the other hand, does the con man have free will when he made the choice to rob you of your money in exchange for counterfeit ice cream? Was that money worth your pain? Or are we all just trapped in an endless cycle of volition and thwarted desire, momentary pleasures, and regret? Can you even get butterscotch ice cream any more? I gotta go.

John Perry
Philosophy Talk is a presentation of Ben Mennella productions and the trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University copyright 2015.

Ken Taylor
Our executive producer is David Demarest Special Thanks to Dave Boersema; Windy Stein; the Philosophy Department at Pacific University; and the staff of the Tom Miles Theater.

John Perry
Thanks also to Joel Groves and Kevin Hasenkopf.

Ken Taylor
The program is produced by the one and only Devon Strolovitch. That’s Laura Maguire, the brilliant one, is our director of research. Our marketing director is smooth and suave Dave Millar, and Spencer Giel is our research assistant.

John Perry
Support for Philosophy Talk comes from various groups at Stanford University and the partners at our online community of thinkers

Ken Taylor
aAd from the members of K LW local public radio in San Francisco, where our program originates,

John Perry
The views expressed (or mis-expressed) on this program do not necessarily represent the opinions of Stanford University or of our other funders.

Ken Taylor
Not even when they’re true and reasonable. The conversation continues on our website, philosophytalk.org, where you can become a partner in our community of thinkers.

John Perry
I’m John Perry.

Ken Taylor
And I’m Ken Taylor. Thank you for listening.

John Perry
And thank you for thinking.