Scientists zero in, but is choice a supernatural concept?

It seems scientists have pinpointed the part of the brain responsible for "self control." The article is a bit dense for the layperson, but ends with this observation:

"Imagine how much better life could be if we knew how to flex the willpower muscles in the brain and strengthen them with exercises," says Camerer.

Of course, this reminded me at once of a great article on Free Will in the New York times. Michael Silberstein, a science philosopher at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania is quoted:

...every physical system that has been investigated has turned out to be either deterministic or random. "Both are bad news for free will," he said. So if human actions can't be caused and aren't random, he said, "It must be — what — some weird magical power?"

The article immediately proceeds to investigate the various physicalist interpretations of what choice must then be. None of this is "wrong" in the sense that wherever they end up, those processes ARE happening.

But with these advances, ironically, an entirely parallel question seems ever more pressing: is our experience of choice - our insistence that we do have freewill - an experience of something outside the physical? Is choice a supernatural concept?

Think of just two common aphorisms we generally accept without controversy:
1. "No one makes you do anything" - in other words, you ARE able to overcome the environment, the sum total of inputs into your brain. You are not deterministic. Cause and effect stops when you decide to act. Human actions are not "caused."
2. "Judge someone by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin" - in other words, physical factors such as biology and genetics are irrelevant compared to the sum total of the choices we make, by our "character." This supposes that our choices, our "character" is not the inexorable result of biology, physics, environment. Neither is it random. We are each responsible for it, and to be judged by it, by the character WE develop in ourselves.

Consider the time in which we live, the pervasive language of President Obama; "Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time." WE are the cause (if we so choose), not the effect. Something similar can be found at the heart of just about every political cause right and left.

Even scientists, hardly known for advocating the spiritual, constantly admonish us to change our attitudes, on everything from the environment to our economic habits. Termites and bees? They're just doing what they do. Invasive species? They spread because they are hardwired to do so. It's pointless to blame them. But not us. WE have a choice, we must act now, we can choose to stop emitting greenhouse gases, to stop our expansion and development into pristine areas, to limit our use of natural resources. All those physical forces that shaped the universe, the Sun, planet Earth, and countless species, they all seem to stop when it comes to us. With us, it's neither nature nor nurture any more. We have a choice. We can be held responsible.

So, are these avowed secularists claiming that if you get enough atoms together in the right combination (i.e. our brain) that these atoms can suddenly disregard cause and effect, or random quantum probabilities, and all the other physical laws that dictates what all the other species do, what all the other atoms in the universe do? I doubt it. So then, what is it?

And even if we accept that our thoughts and choices are constrained by physical laws and the environment around us, if we hold ANY belief that our choices are neither deterministic, nor random then again we have to ask what are they - some "weird magical power?"

And if WE have this experience, why would it only exist in us?

Choice, Reality and The Matrix

The Matrix is a classic re-watch movie. Even if it's stuck on TBS with 37 minutes of commercials per hour you still stop and watch, at least for a while.

The central theme of the trilogy of course is that of "choice." At every major moment the character must decide - red pill or blue, Neo or Morpheus, Trinity or humanity.

Last night I stopped to watch the "red pill vs. blue pill scene" and of course made the analogy of how this is the same we all face. The universe acts in the role of Morpheus. It can hand us the red pill and blue, but it is up to US to make the choice. Do we choose to see a purpose? Or do we choose to remain ignorant?

Of course, in the Matrix the choice is between mind and body - both of which are still ultimately physical. For a parallelist (or any dualist) the choice is that of spirit and physical.

None of this is particularly new. The Matrix has long been cited as a pop culture philosophy experiment. But here was the part that really hit me last night.

Going with the red pill did NOT make the Matrix less real. Watching the scene I sat there thinking about how the final movie in the trilogy ends. That final sunrise for a new dawn of humanity takes place INSIDE the Matrix! It was only after choosing to embrace the parallel world outside the Matrix, did the world within the Matrix become fully realized.

Freewill - magic?

In another NYT article on the topic of human choice, the central issue of whether freewill exists is pondered. The crux of the issue shows up here:

The traditional definition is called “libertarian” or “deep” free will. It holds that humans are free moral agents whose actions are not predetermined. ... Whatever choice you make is unforced and could have been otherwise, but it is not random. ...

“That strikes many people as incoherent,” said Dr. Silberstein, who noted that every physical system that has been investigated has turned out to be either deterministic or random. “Both are bad news for free will,” he said. So if human actions can’t be caused and aren’t random, he said, “It must be — what — some weird magical power?”

... But whatever that power is — call it soul or the spirit — those people have to explain how it could stand independent of the physical universe and yet reach from the immaterial world and meddle in our own, jiggling brain cells...

There it is right there. Science, almost by definition, results in either "cause" (determinism) or "random" (probability) and nothing else. There is no way to even define or test the existence of "purpose" or "intent" or "choice" or "responsibility" and so on with a scientific investigation.

The real question is then, does that mean all of these are "magic?" Derived or illusory or "emergent behaviors" which we simply name choice to describe the result of a complex system?

And of course, if this is all magic, then so is reason or any thought you have right now. You're not "reasoning" you're just responding deterministically or randomly to a variety of inputs as am I. Does that seem right?

Reason vs.emotion sure, but is it a decsion?

In another great example of the mini-revolution going on in the science of how humans think, this article about some scientific underpinnings of morality found in primates appears. If you have doubts about evolution and "social biology" move right along. If not, and like me, you find the science compelling, pause for a moment.

What I find most interesting about the article is NOT the debate about emotion vs. reason that flows for example in this bit:

Many philosophers believe that conscious reasoning plays a large part in governing human ethical behavior and are therefore unwilling to let everything proceed from emotions, like sympathy, which may be evident in chimpanzees. The impartial element of morality comes from a capacity to reason, writes Peter Singer, a moral philosopher at Princeton, in “Primates and Philosophers.” He says, “Reason is like an escalator — once we step on it, we cannot get off until we have gone where it takes us.”
...
But biologists like Dr. de Waal believe reason is generally brought to bear only after a moral decision has been reached. They argue that morality evolved at a time when people lived in small foraging societies and often had to make instant life-or-death decisions, with no time for conscious evaluation of moral choices. The reasoning came afterward as a post hoc justification. “Human behavior derives above all from fast, automated, emotional judgments, and only secondarily from slower conscious processes,” Dr. de Waal writes.

No, the crux of the issue really is the contention over how the result occurs. Again from the article (emphasis added):

Dr. de Waal’s definition of morality is more down to earth than Dr. Prinz’s. Morality, he writes, is “a sense of right and wrong that is born out of groupwide systems of conflict management based on shared values.” The building blocks of morality are not nice or good behaviors but rather mental and social capacities for constructing societies “in which shared values constrain individual behavior through a system of approval and disapproval.” By this definition chimpanzees in his view do possess some of the behavioral capacities built in our moral systems.

“Morality is as firmly grounded in neurobiology as anything else we do or are,” Dr. de Waal wrote in his 1996 book “Good Natured.”

That is, whether you call the cause "reason" or "emotion" or "approval and disapproval" the definition reduces morality to something causal. That is, there was no free "choice" in the matter of something we inherently view as a choice. Moral decisions in this view seem indistinguishable from any other physical system - billiard balls, rain drops, atoms. The added complexity just hides the contention that no independent choice was involved - any more than an electron "chooses" to orbit a nucleus.

Hmm, start with an assumption that only physical processes are needed to describe and understand physical results (science), and it's nice to know that you end up with nothing but physical processes controlling everything. Is EVERY question really a scientific one?

Is design an illusion?

Listened to an interesting discussion over on Apologia. Sandwiched between a bunch of Philosophy jargon like "well I'm a substance dualist too" was a pretty lively debate on the nature of the mind, and thus, what it means to think, design, intend, or create. Essentially, can our thoughts be reduced to brain chemistry? If so, the impression we have that we "thought up" something, anything is really an illusion.

In fancy terms, the impression we have that we designed it could be called an "emergent behavior." The classic case of this is an anthill or beehive. The ants didn't have a central architect "design" the hive. Each ant just did it's thing according to very simple chemical signals and viola, out comes a very organized looking structure. So, it's possible to think of the synapses in your head as a bunch of ants just doing their thing, firing with some combination of chemistry and electricity. The resulting in consciousness you think you control, is no more your design, than the anthill was to the ants. It just emerged.

The implications of course are huge. Not only is free will out the window, but so is rationality, creativity, and pretty much every human endeavor. Doesn't seem right does it? But of course, at some level all there is in your head are those synapses, and beneath that atoms and other fundamental particles. They may be subject to strange quantum physics, randomness, and uncertainty, but no matter how closely science looks, there won't ever be magic down there - at least not scientifically speaking.

So where does that lead? Everything you think and feel and do is an illusion. You're not much different than a collection of rain drops falling through a complex turbulent storm. Or, is that persistent sense that you do create, design, intend and choose a kind of evidence of something beyond? Is that sense that you had a reason, mean that there is a reason possible?