Determinism - You Decide?

There is a new book out advocating an old idea, that humans possess no free will. Determined by Robert Sapolsky. I don't wish to engage his arguments directly, but rather quickly review the basis on which those arguments must be assessed.

First, the idea that humans do not possess free will is hardly a new idea. It is found in the oldest forms of Buddhism (Therevada) based on careful analysis of the laws of cause and effect in relation to the human mind that creates the samsara world. Mahayana Buddhism tackled some of the inherit problems in that system and came up with alternative answers. 

Another kind of determinism was put forward by Christian and later Muslim theologians who asserted that for God to be omnipotent and omniscient no human volition could exist. It was an argument based in logic that appeared impenetrable unless one considers that the axiomatic assumptions are unproven and contradict human experience. 

More modern forms of determinism were put forward by Bertrand Russel, Richard Dawkins, and E.O.Wilson among others.  In one form or another they assert that the material world, which includes humans and the things that humans do, is created by chains of physical cause and effect impinged upon by random chance. Explicit in this assumption is that the human mind (or any mind) is created by the brain in a one-way process in which biological processes create the mind nanosecond by nanosecond while the mind has no return influence on these processes. It is the end of a chain of cause and effect, not a cause of physical effects.

That we are making choices is an illusion arising in the brain as it creates the mind through a combination of deterministic and random physical processes. 

Underlying these concepts is some evidence from neuroscience. It appears, for example, that in some cases decisions are made before a person is conscious of making them. In other words, mind follows brain. 

The problem with such experiments is that they cannot actually trace the patterns of interaction within the brain over time and then compare those to a report on what is happening consciously. While the brain is accessible (in very small measure) to measurement, the mind is accessible only through the conscious report of its possessor. Which takes time to move from mind to muscles for purely physical reasons. This makes tracing anything other than the simplest relationship between brain and mind fraught with difficulty. We can take a crude snapshot of the inner chatter of neurons that make up the brain at work. But we can't actually follow an inner conversation as both neuronal activity (brain) and conversation (mind) to see if they are related. 

Another way to look at this is to note that current AIs are "black boxes" whose reasoning cannot be discerned from outside. And they are many orders of magnitude more accessible and simpler than a human brain. Can we make dogmatic assertions about the relationship of brain to mind when we can't even examine the silicone brains we ourselves create?    

But there is a deeper problem with the assertion that humans lack free will and are entirely determined by natural forces. It is based in the claim that nothing exists beyond the measurable physical world. In short it denies that the human experience of being a conscious self, transcending the physical body constitutes evidence of anything. 

There are a couple of problems here. First, there is a breathtaking denial of human experience as a valid indicator of reality, not least the human experience of reasoning out a determinist position and then writing a book about it. 

This depends, in turn, on a hard core materialism, the assertion that nothing outside the physical exists. This is disputed even within the scientific community, see for example Putting Ourselves back in the Equation by George Musser. (His Spooky Action at a Distance is also a useful read, as is Marcel Gleiser's The Island of Knowledge.)

There is also a problem from within the determinist position itself. Given an evolutionary perspective, how does the rise of consciousness, and in particularly self-consciousness, actually benefit an organism in reproducing, surviving, and adapting to changing environments? After all, the brain is doing all the executive work of acting and interacting with the world. Why does it need to generate a deluded observer that thinks they are in charge? There is little question that the portions of the brain associated with consciousness are costly from the standpoint of resource use. If the mind doesn't influence the brain then this is a waste of resources, something that evolution strictly denies is sustainable over the long run. 

This argument isn't such a problem for Buddhist analysis because it doesn't begin with the material world and move toward consciousness, but instead assumes that consciousness creates the illusion of a material world. Nor is it a problem for theological determinism that makes God the sole cause of all effects, including the existence of the material world, consciousness, and everything beyond. Because nothing in the physical world is a cause of effects independent of the Divine will. God isn't bound by evolutionary theory, so if God wants to create a delusional consciousness of free will that is God's business. 

But it is a problem to begin with materialism and then offer a conscious, rational, argument that everything in that process rational argument including its conclusion is an illusion created by the brain. To make such an argument one must be able to stand outside the interaction between brain and consciousness, including one's own consciousness, to examine how they are related. But it is that very ability to stand outside the relationship between brain and consciousness that the determinist argument denies. Because it denies that there is an "outside" to the material world of cause, effect, and random chance. 

Back in the 20th century a brilliant mathematician named Kurt Gödel showed that there could be no complete system of true statements because there is one statement that can only be found outside the system. And that is the statement, "This system is complete." 

In one form or another all assertions of determinism rest on sleight of hand that comes from claiming to simultaneously stand inside and outside a system of true statements. This is why Buddhism eventually developed into a system of practices for altering unhappy psychological states, leaving esoteric and largely useless metaphysical speculation aside. What use are the speculations of a deluded mind? 

It is the reason that Muslims and Christians live as if they have free will even as they nod to the incoherent dogma of predestination when they need an excuse for doing harm. Do the theologians really know the mind of God? And who exactly could stand outside both the theologians and God to make that judgment? 

It is time for the determinist dogmaticians in the realm of religion, science and philosophy to admit that their speculations are built on a contradiction, and move the considerable power of reasoning they have expended to something more useful for the flourishing of our world.