Part 4: “How Free is Your Will”
http://thebeautifulbrain.com/2010/07/ledoux-amygdaloids-free-will/
July 15, 2010 by Joseph LeDoux
Are we free to choose? Is all behavior determined? Do you have to be
conscious of a decision in order for it to be considered volitional?
Are we better off with or without free will? These are some of the
issues touched on in my song, “How Free Is Your Will.” Note that there
are no question marks in the song. I just decided to leave them out. No
particular reason. I just freely chose to do that (or at least I
believe I did).[1] <#_ftn1>
The problem of free will is closely tied up with the problems of
consciousness and personal responsibility, which are themselves knotted
together. You have to be aware of what you are doing (conscious) in
order to be responsible for your actions. Christian theology says that
humans but not other animals can gain or lose access to the Kingdom of
Heaven by their actions. Rene Descartes, a devout Catholic and one of
the founders of modern philosophy, brought consciousness in when he said
that only humans are responsible for actions because they have
consciousness. Other animals, in his opinion, are reflex machines. They
are pulled this way and that by their circumstances and are not free to
choose right from wrong. And since they cannot choose, they cannot gain
or lose heaven by their actions.
For Descartes, the terms consciousness and mind were equivalent. If it
is not conscious, it is not mental in Descartes’s scheme. But things
have gotten a little more complicated in modern times, with the
emergence of the idea that the mind has conscious and unconscious
aspects. Are we responsible for actions produced by unconscious
processes in our brain? I’ll talk about this in a later post when I
consider the song Crime of Passion. For now, I simply want to explore
the nature of free will.
Free will is a really hard problem for a dualist, one who believes that
consciousness (mind, soul) is distinct from the brain. How can an
immaterial thought, a thing of consciousness, cause neurons to fire in
such a way as to produce willful actions? This is the problem of
“downward causation.” The flip side of this question is the problem of
“qualia.” How can the material brain create a mental experience, such
as the feeling of pain or the serenity of the red glow of a beautiful
sunset? While these issues are not so easy for materialist-inclined
brain researchers either, at least we have the advantage of being able
to work within one realm, the material realm, rather than having to try
to forge a relation between two realms (material and mental).
“How Free is Your Will” by The Amygdaloids
http://thebeautifulbrain.com/2010/07/ledoux-amygdaloids-free-will/2/
How free is your will
Do you have control
Are you in charge
Who’s running your soul
How free is your will
Are you automatized
Just a bundle of habits
Is your freedom disguised
How free is your will
Do you make up your mind
Do you decide
Or are your choices blind
How free is your will
Perhaps an illusion
A mystery
Convenient delusion
How free is your will
Once you decide
Are you compelled
Do you have to abide
How free is your will
Can you change your mind
Reverse direction
Leave a choice behind
How free is your will
Well of dignity
Fountain of pride
Sea of grandiosity
How free is your will
The stuff of lore
The source of evil
The reason for war
How free is your will
A truth to behold
The secret of peace
A story to be told
How free is your will
The way to stand tall
The basis of good
The hope for us all
Free will
A truth to behold
The secret of peace
A story to be told
Free will
The way to stand tall
The basis of good
The hope for us all
Let’s go back to the song. Each of the first ten verses repeats a
question in its first line: “how free is your will.” The refrain of
these verses then elaborates on the question. For example, the first
verse goes: “How free is your will, do you have control, are you in
charge, who’s running your soul.” The music under the verses is a very
simple two-chord vamp that goes back and forth between A and G. There’s
a fun little instrumental movement that breaks up the repetitiveness of
the chords and lyrics every now and then.
After verse ten, there’s a longer instrumental segment that ends with
the vamp flipping for the last two verses. This change of the chord
sequence, which now goes from G to A, adds a burst of forward momentum
since the chord interval, instead of going from high to low pitch, as at
the beginning, now goes from low to high pitch. Corresponding with this
is a change in the first line of the last two verses. Instead of asking
“how free is your will,” they exclaim, “free will.” The refrains, which
are the same as from the previous two verses, now become demonstrative
conclusions under the influence of the forward moving sound.
The song ends on an instrumental chords sequence that I have no clue
about. I wrote the song with willful intention all the way through,
until I reached the end. At that point the song took over. The chords
just emerged from my fingers (in other words, unconscious processes in
my brain took over and allowed this set of chord changes to unfold). I
was surprised by these chords, since the sequence was more a more
intricate and complex than what I typically write. I scrambled for a
pen to make some notes as I didn’t have confidence that I could recreate
the sequence spontaneously.
When we use the term “I” we are usually referring to our conscious mind.
So can “I” take credit for that chord sequence? Did I willfully produce
it? I think this problem, like some other issues in philosophy, is
about how the words are used. Of course I wrote the song and came up
with the chords. I just didn’t do it completely consciously. The fact
is, though, I didn’t do it completely unconsciously either. As the
sequence began to unfold, the music being made was feeding into
consciousness and creating qualia that allowed some good ole downward
causation to help refine the efforts of my unconscious mind. So, like
many things we do in life, it was a collaboration between conscious and
unconscious processes. It’s hard to separate them sometimes. Since
introspection alone can’t give us all the answers, we need scientists to
do experiments and figure out how they work the various processes above
and below the surface. Don’t worry, even if we figure this stuff out,
your will is going to be as free, or determined, as it is today. We may
just know a little more about what that means.
_________________
"For every thousand hacking at the leaves of evil, there is one striking at the root."David Thoreau (1817-1862)
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