Quantum free will
Zeeya Merali reports what appears to be a sarcastic retort by Antoine Suarez to Gerard ‘t Hooft’s proposal that “free will as it is commonly understood” is wrong (4 August, p 10). Suarez’s comment that “maybe his Nobel prize should rightfully have been presented to the big bang” flows from the current understanding of determinism operating from the beginning of time 鈥� precisely what ‘t Hooft says must be wrong.
When two people walk up to a food counter at the same time when there are two main courses left, one person gets a choice and the other has their dinner predetermined 鈥� if they choose to take the remaining dish and use their free will to give up their free will to choose dinner that evening. They could have easily used free will to go somewhere else, but that doesn’t change the fact that the decision at that particular counter was predetermined.
Whether the predeterminism occurred a millisecond or a week before arrival at that counter is irrelevant, because it doesn’t change the outcome. Our past is determined, and our future has a probability-based predetermination dependent upon each individual’s determined experiential frame of reference.
From Norman Bacrac
Some of the points made about free will imply that if nature turned out to be deterministic we would be deprived of the capacity to do what we wanted 鈥� that is, lose the only form of free will we should want to have, freedom from external compulsion. Freedom to act as we wish is, however, not only compatible with determinism but requires it: we need things to behave predictably to have any chance of realising the simplest intention.
We cannot, though, wish our choices to be free from internal compulsion, for this is just how we formulate our own desires. Our conscious reasoning is just an outcome (or an epiphenomenon) of the brain’s causal processes. Hence if quantum or other randomness in micro events did significantly alter neural processes, our desires would cease to be an expression of our character. If human action were truly causeless then no one could be expected to account for what they had done.
We may safely assume that natural selection has seen to it that animal brains (including human ones) operate above the level at which any quantum randomness can affect them. Otherwise their memories and instincts would be unreliable, and learning would be impossible. We shall have to ponder the philosophical consequences of de facto determinism without any help from experimental physics.
London, UK
Farther lands
The article describing the “megaflood” that created the English Channel demonstrates once again that the Dutch are ahead of the game where the issues of water management and land reclamation are concerned (21 July, p 11). It was very heartening to see in the accompanying map that between 450,000 and 200,000 years ago the Dutch had already built the Afsluitdijk, which turned the Zuider Zee inland sea into the Ijsselmeer lake, and had reclaimed the Flevoland polder.
Case for treatment
It is a huge mistake to dismiss attention deficit hyperactivity disorder as “a psychiatric convenience, a culturally created delusion” as Richard House does (14 July, p 22). I am a young adult who lives with the condition. This description limits perceptions of my attributes, and those of others with the condition, to a diagnostic list of negative symptoms. It disregards the amazing positive qualities 鈥� creativity, humour, tenacity, spontaneity, intuition 鈥� that come with it.
There is strong scientific evidence of a neurological difference between people with and without the condition. Magnetic resonance imaging, for example, shows differences 鈥� see , and . Genetic studies suggest inheritable susceptibility to the condition. It is unfair to suggest that the blame lies with families, who are often struggling with a difficult situation.
Psychiatry may be a field greatly stunted by its turnstile, pigeon-holed approach, with medication being the simplest 鈥� and most profitable 鈥� solution, and misdiagnoses are clearly an issue. However, this situation does not invalidate ADHD as a condition, regardless of its label. I have often encountered people who regard my condition as insubstantial or non-existent; this is worse than the “medication fixes all” attitude.
Sushi speared
You introduced the feature on the first migrants into the Americas by suggesting they were likely “in search of sushi” (11 August, p 40). Sushi cannot be found swimming in lakes, seas or rivers. It is cooked rice, flavoured with a vinegar produced by fermenting rice. Rice is thought to have been introduced to Japan between 5500 and 3200 years ago, well after any migration eastward.
Raw fish in Japanese is sashimi.
For the record
鈥� We said the wavelength of the microwaves that in their “faster-than-light” experiment (18 August, p 10) was 33 centimetres: that should have been 33 millimetres.
Social free will
We are social animals whose survival depends on living with a large group. One of the most important modules in our mind is associated with modelling our colleagues 鈥� who are also our rivals. In them, we see a mixture of predictable behaviour 鈥� we are all subject to gravity, for example, and no one can see through walls 鈥� and unpredictable. We call the latter free will.
It matters not that this may be predictable at some deep physical level. At the level of everyday experience, it passes what could be called the duck test: it walks like free will, it quacks like free will, it is indistinguishable from free will.
Then we turn that same module we use to model others to modelling ourselves. We have to do so in order to perform the high-order analysis that psychologists tell us we perform: “He thinks that I think that she wants…” This differs from analysis of others only in that we have vastly more information about ourselves. If our working model of others is that they have free will, it is surely remarkably self-denigrating not to accord ourselves that same “honour”.
We certainly have less free will than we would like to think: advertisers and propagandists are able to manipulate us to an extent we sometimes find horrifying. But as long as the best working hypothesis, fallacious as it may be, is that others have free will, we will continue to believe that we too have it.
I propose that no entity is capable of perceiving its own lack of free will, though a more sophisticated being may find it obvious that it is following a fixed rule. For example an imprinted gosling may believe it is following its mother of its own free will 鈥� whereas we can track, describe and pervert the imprinting process.
A beef with driving
There is a critical flaw in Chris Goodall’s idea that beef-eaters may be more polluting than gas-guzzlers (11 August, p 20). The beef is in its disposal phase; the car is not. If you wish to compare carbon emissions you must take into account the entire life cycle carbon cost of the car, from raw material to disposal. You must of course also factor in what the driver had for lunch.
From Bernie Harris
In the walker’s case, you need to calculate the carbon dioxide costs for their meals taken as a whole. It makes no sense to choose the beef, any more than it would to focus on the driver’s intake of potatoes or carrots, or indeed morning porridge.
In the driver’s case, you need to include the portion of the lifetime CO2 costs of the car attributable to travelling 3 miles; the impact of the production of the petrol used during that journey and, since cars traditionally require drivers, the costs of the driver’s calories, again taking account of their diet as a whole.
Add that lot together and it is a pretty safe bet that driving 3 miles does indeed add more CO2 to the atmosphere than walking the same distance fuelled by beef.
Oxford, UK
The editor writes:
鈥� As several readers have spotted, we introduced an error into Gudrun Freese’s letter. Akifumi Ogino and colleagues found that producing 1 kilogram of beef emits not 6 kilograms, but the equivalent of 36.4 kilograms of carbon dioxide, as we reported earlier (21 July, p 15). The calculations follow from that.
Time after time…
Living on a crowded island, I find the idea of our universe evolving into an empty, starless, bleak, cold nothingness 鈥� with odd little objects popping up occasionally 鈥� rather intriguing (18 August, p 26). As Mason Inman says, anything could emerge 鈥� a rock, a chair, even a brain.
Wait long enough and maybe we’d get an entire planet Earth, complete with sun to warm it and other planets (as optional extras). Wait a really long time and we’d get all the stars in the heavens, too. Then someone in my office on a crowded island under those stars will be writing you a letter about how their universe will thin and empty, and odd little objects will pop up, like rocks, brains, another Earth, another sun…
Nervous free will
When I think of “free will” I have the image of arriving at a fork in the road and taking a decision which is caused but not determined. Benjamin Libet’s 1983 experiment, as described by Chris Frith (11 August, p 46), does not seem to have any bearing on this, and I am baffled as to why so many neuroscientists and philosophers are seized by it.
A subject whose brain is being monitored is instructed to “lift your finger whenever you feel the urge to do so”. What happens after this must hinge on how the brain unconsciously interprets this philosophically problematical but morally inconsequential instruction into something it can implement. The “whenever” implies that the urge should be felt, but not immediately, while the danger of boredom discourages a lengthy delay.
Within these constraints, this pseudo-decision has absolutely no consequence, so the only practical implementation involves self-programming to wait a random interval between, say, 5 seconds and a minute, and then deem the urge to have been felt.
Frith only reports half the story about Libet’s free will experiments. Libet did indeed apparently show that the brain anticipates actions like bending a finger a split second before the person doing the bending is conscious of it 鈥� the observation that could undermine the concept of free will.
He subsequently withdrew these conclusions when more subtle research showed that the same individual could also cancel the unconscious anticipation of the movement right up to the moment when it would have occurred. In short, conscious and unconscious elements of the action are part and parcel of the same event 鈥� just one of the complex features of free will that philosophers and theologians have been discussing for centuries.
鈥� I entirely agree with John Hind that, for example, the subject knows that Dr Libet will not be pleased if the urge to lift the finger never comes. Also, the decision may be inconsequential, but we are restricted in what sorts of experiments we can do. The key problem lies with the suggestion that something 鈥� and I would ask what 鈥� initiates both the motor action and the report of the urge to act. Would it be surprising if this something were quicker to cause the action than the report? Consider the other component of Libet’s 1983 experiment: on some trials subjects were asked to indicate the time at which they lifted their finger, rather than the time at which they had the urge. They reported lifting their finger slightly earlier than the finger was actually lifted.
I think Mark Vernon is referring to Libet’s idea of “free won’t”: that, although consciousness of will occurred after the relevant brain activity, the conscious decision to veto the action could still occur before the action occurred. Unfortunately, this conscious veto is also preceded by brain activity, so the problem remains.
Cloning people
In the last sentence of his article Hugh McLachlan asks his readers to act rationally and legalise human cloning (21 July, p 20). But an irrational style of argumentation is exactly what major parts of his article are flawed with.
It is wrong to base a claim for legalisation of human cloning largely on the fact that it involves risks “that we accept 鈥� and are right to accept 鈥� in other methods of reproduction”.
This is a textbook example for ignoring the philosopher David Hume’s point that “is” does not imply “ought”: normative statements cannot be deduced exclusively from descriptive statements.
In other methods of artificial reproduction, such as IVF, embryos that have been gained from a sexual process are used, which creates offspring that are genetically different from their parents. If the parents’ inability to have children in the natural way is based on genetic factors, their IVF children, through the process of meiosis, at least have the chance to inherit genes that will give them a natural fertility.
This is clearly not the case for cloning. The only way that infertile children produced through cloning will themselves be able to have children is to clone themselves again. Hence, cloning could result in whole lines of individuals who are infertile, and it is in no way guaranteed that “only a tiny percentage of people would take it up”.
Discussion on cloning should deal with these special features and implications of the technique, not the ones that are analogous to other technical reproduction methods.
Nervous free will
Chris Frith made a good case for questioning the existence of free will, in ways that have been circulating the neuroscience community for some time (11 August, p 46).
But he lost his argument thoroughly when near the end he writes: “But for scientists to prove free will is not an illusion, they will have to solve the hard problem of exactly how a desire in the mental realm can cross into the physical world…” I find this a bizarre statement for a neuroscientist to make 鈥� in what way is the “mental realm” anything other than physical?
This sounds like good old-fashioned mind-body dualism. Does that explain the involvement of the () in the meeting?
From Michael Miller
The case against free will as presented in Chris Frith’s article contains several serious difficulties.
First, the idea of believing we don’t have free will demands some heavy logical work to escape recursiveness.
If our every thought is determined physically, as the belief in absolute determinism states, then my beliefs are not based either on choice or rationality. So to what extent is the belief in absence of free will a rational one?
To accept that mind states are predetermined is to deny that beliefs are based on assessing evidence and coming to a logical conclusion. In fact, in this epiphenomenonalism, beliefs are formed despite us: the relationship between belief and truth is no longer mediated by intellect. So what can the word “belief” mean, without the freedom to alter it along any lines I should choose? In this system, beliefs have become just another element of facticity, just another mechanically generated material property.
Or are proponents of determinism merely denying the link between action and consciousness? If our minds are still free to think above the predetermined material world, we escape this problem. But what if I should freely make up my mind to a belief 鈥� say in atheism 鈥� which no longer correlates with my brain’s predetermined actions, of churchgoing? How could we account for the inevitable divergence between free minds and determined actions?
Even from a purely material-reductionist point of view, determinism is an unsatisfactory bedfellow with consciousness. For what reason would consciousness have evolved if it were not in order to influence our actions and therefore make us more successful beings? If we accept that consciousness is something that has developed steadily throughout the animal kingdom, as a thin passive layer on top of predetermined physical-biological processes, we are still no closer to understanding either the purpose of its existence, or the mechanism by which physical processes cause non-physical experiences.
Perhaps the most insidious aspect of this trend though, is the moral one. Frith asks whether, without free will, without individuals holding the responsibility for their actions, “is there any basis for morality?”. Without free will there is no basis for anything: reality becomes meaningless if we are not agents but merely passive observers. As the “miniature societies” experiments show, apathy is the ultimate result of not believing our thoughts lead to our actions.
Of course, as Frith states, the scientific search for a proof of free will is a long way off. But this is more to do with the boundaries of science than anything else. Science essentially is limited to what it can measure and quantify, what it can examine materially: if we accept that the mind is non-material then it will always be beyond the realms of hard science.
When the philosopher Ren茅 Descartes articulated his dualism, which has so informed the current paradigm, he placed the material sphere wholly in the hands of science, and the mental wholly in the hands of the Church. Although the specific institution may be a lot less relevant in modern society, the idea that there are some areas beyond the tools of science is an important one to keep in mind. That, or let the self-fulfilling prophecy of deterministic physicalism become the whole of the agenda.
Birmingham, UK
Climate scandal
I read with total disbelief a series of items in the 11 August issue on the subject of climate change: “Volcanic approach to solving climate woes goes up in smoke” (p 16) and two letters under the heading “Sunblock blowback” (p 20) replying to David L. Chandler’s feature on technologies for “fixing” climate change (21 July, p 42).
Have we gone absolutely barking mad? Are scientists seriously considering ways to reduce the amount of sunlight reaching Earth, looking at technologies for manipulating the atmosphere?
This strikes me as just as ridiculous as piling on drug after drug to treat symptoms and then to treat drug-induced symptoms until the body collapses. But imagine for a moment that we go down this route 鈥� where would it lead? A once-glorious planet wrapped up in an artificially induced “protective” barrier against the very star that gives us life, with humankind inside this barrier continuing to broil and fester in its own noxious fog.
I find it outrageous that funding could even be considered for projects such as these. It is shocking beyond words that we are causing the collapse of the polar regions and the destruction of other habitats, but attention and resources should be kept firmly on the root cause of our climate illness 鈥� to make every individual, corporation and government take responsibility for our respective contributions and to change destructive behaviour.
I have hope, however, that in the end all will be well. This hope is not born out of trust in any government or scientific solution, but rather because I sense a sea change, a collective rejection of where humankind is currently at, that has its roots in the common sense of free-thinking individuals. Could we be on the verge of the kind of “phase transition” in group behaviour researched by Robert Wicks and pals at the University of Warwick, UK (11 August, p 9)?