The apparent lack of free will and its social consequences

Włodzisław Duch

Department of InformaticsNicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń, PL

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8th Congress Societas Humboldtiana Polonorum, Toruń 2010

Who am I?Who am I?Quis ego et qualis ego?Who am I and what kind of man am I?

St. Augustin (400 AC)

What is the self? Where then is this self, if it is neither in the body nor the soul?

Pascal (1670)

How can we answer such questions?

Your are nothing else but a bunch of neurons (Crick).

You are your synapses (LeDoux).

Is that a satisfactory answer? Not for all ...

If “I” = brain, then “I” do not exist. I am then an automaton!

Traditional viewTraditional view“I” decide in a conscious and free way, I am responsible for

Popper & Eccles in “The Self and Its Brain” (1977) think that self can’t be just the brain, going back to the idea of souls animating bodies.

The illusion of “ghost in the machine”, or homunculus, is very strong.

S. Pinker: Tabula Rasa. The modern denial of human nature (2002).

• Tabula Rasa (J. Locke) – only environment matters. • Noble savage (J.J. Rousseau) – nature (including human) is good.• Ghost in the machine (Descartes) – soul controls the body.

Ancient viewAncient viewGilbert Ryle, The concept of mind, Univ. of Chicago Press (1949)Is there a ghost in the machine? Or is mind a product of the brain?Is there a horse inside the steam train?

Mind is a process, succession of brain states.Bible: psychosomatic unity of human nature.

Soul, spirit: dozens of meanings! Things do not move by themselves, bodies are animated by spirits/souls.Egyptians: 7 immortal souls, including shadow and personal name!

Aristotle (De anima) and St Thomas (Summa Theologica): 3 souls: vegetative or plant soul (growth), an animal soul (response), philosopher’s soul (mind) – but these concepts lost their reference.

M. Heller: we had Galileo case, now Darwin, and sooner or later neuroscience case, theologians should not abide in ancient times.

History of concepts: Duch W, Soul & spirit, or prehistory of cognitive science. Kognitywistyka 1 (1999) pp. 7-38

Astronomy and neuroscienceAstronomy and neuroscienceAncient view of the world has been replaced by modern astronomy, infinitely more sophisticated.

We do not believe in flat earth in the center of the Universe, although our direct experience favors such beliefs. Our view of the Universe is much more interesting than the ancients had.

But the ancient view of a person has still not changed in the folk psychology and in religions. The fight for better understanding of human nature has just started … neuroscience results are at its front.

Early developmentEarly development• Thomas Hobbes, Human Nature, 1651: For what is the

heart but a spring; and the nerves but so many strings; and the joints but so many wheels, giving motion to the whole body.

• “Will” is just a verbal label we use to describe the attractions and aversions we experience while interacting with the environment.

• Descartes, 1637: animals are automata, but men has soul.

• David Hartley, „Observations on Man” (1749): brain damage, neurological problems lead to changes in perception and thinking. Sensory experience are caused vibrations in the nerves. reaching the brain and causing vibrations in the “infinitesimal, medullary particles,” which cause sensations and ideas.

• Thomas Reid, „Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense” (1764), „Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man” (1785) & „Essays on the Active Powers of Man” (1788): mind has 43 faculties, all different aspects of the same substance.

NeurologistsNeurologistsThomas Laycock (1812–1876): Mind and Brain, Or, The Correlations of Consciousness and Organisation (1860), reflexes in the seat of soul!

“... the brain, although the organ of consciousness, was subject to the laws of reflex action, and that in this respect it did not differ from the other ganglia of the nervous system. I was led to this opinion by the general principle, that the ganglia within the cranium being a continuation of the spinal cord, must necessarily be regulated as to their reaction on external agencies by laws identical with those governing the functions of the spinal ganglia and their analogues in the lower animals.”

Fascinating history leading to acknowledgement that automatisms are not only in the spine, but also in the brain, is described in: J. Miller, Going unconscious. New York Review 42(7), 1995.

I.M. Sechenov, Brain reflexes (Refleksy golovnago mozga ,1866):

all conscious & unconscious acts are reflexes in terms of their structure. Subversive to public morals and social order, Sechenov was indicted.

More historyMore historyIn 1873 Sir John Ericksen, Surgeon Extraordinary to Queen Victoria: “The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon”.

T.H. Huxley, On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, and its History (1874):

“... the feeling we call volition is not the cause of a voluntary act, but the symbol of that state of the brain which is the immediate cause of that act. We are conscious automata ... “

William James, Does 'Consciousness' Exist? (1904)

Pure monism:

... primal stuff or material in the world, a stuff of which everything is composed, ... we call that stuff 'pure experience‘.

...the stream of thinking ... consist chiefly of the stream of my breathing.

AutomatismsAutomatismsMarshall Hall (1832): reflexes only in the spine, not in the brain, the seat of soul, sensory experiences require consciousness, function of soul.

Benjamin Carpenter (1874): experiments of James Braid with hypnosis (he cured everything) shows cerebral automatism. Perceptual system almost completely operates outside of conscious awareness. Mechanism of thought also operates largely outside awareness.

These positive unconscious automatisms were forgotten when Freud came with his id, ego and superego ideas, that may be roughly mapped to the triune brain of MacLean (brain stem, limbic system, cortex).

Hard fight to keep illusions that are dear to our mind has been lost.

Reaction: radical behaviorism, no mind, just behavior.B.F. Skinner, The Behavior of Organisms (1938).

Brain => finite automata => behavior.

Gap between psychology and brain science, 1st and 3rd person view.

Various selvesVarious selvesNorthoff et.al, Self-referential processing in our brain - a meta-analysis of imaging studies on the self. Neuroimage 31, 440, 2006

CMS, Cortical Midline Structures, are all involved in the verbal, spatial, emotional and face recognition test when self and others are distinguished. These structures are rarely damaged and are in between the rest of the cortex and limbic/brain stem structures.

Proto-self: body; autobiographical: memory; social: relations.

Intentions in the brainIntentions in the brainJ-D Hayens et al, Reading Hidden Intentions in the Human Brain. Current Biology 17: 323-328, 2007. You will see two numbers and you may add or subtract them. Activity of the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) shows what are your hidden intentions (perhaps even before you begin) ...

Private thoughts?

Predicting Human Brain Activity Associated with the Meanings of Nouns," T. M. Mitchell et al, Science, 320, 1191, May 30, 2008

• Clear differences between fMRI brain activity when people read and think about different nouns.

• Reading words and seeing the drawing invokes similar brain activations, presumably reflecting semantics of concepts.

• Although individual variance is significant similar activations are found in brains of different people, a classifier may still be trained on pooled data.

• Model trained on ~10 fMRI scans + very large corpus (1012) predicts brain activity for over 100 nouns for which fMRI has been done.

Overlaps between activation of the brain for different words may serve as expansion coefficients for word-activation basis set.

In future: I may know what you’ll think before you will know it yourself! Intentions may be known seconds before they become conscious!

Observer may know first ...Observer may know first ...

B. Libet et al. The Volitional Brain: Towards a Neuroscience of Free Will (2000). Libet experiments: wait for the will to act, press the button, and show the moment when the will arouse.

Observation of ERPs shows 300 ms before the feeling “I want to press a button” arises, first movement is planned and then decision and awareness of that decision follows.

New experiments (H.C. Lau et al., 2006-08), with TMS in pre-SMA area: “We conclude that the perceived onset of intention depends, at least in part, on neural activity that takes place after the execution of action.”

.. even 10 seconds earlier!.. even 10 seconds earlier!C.S. Soon, M. Brass, H-J. Heinze & J-D. Haynes, Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain. Nature Neuroscience, April 2008.

”There has been a long controversy as to whether subjectively 'free' decisions are determined by brain activity ahead of time. We found that the outcome of a decision can be encoded in brain activity of prefrontal and parietal cortex up to 10 sec before it enters awareness.

This delay presumably reflects the operation of a network of high-level control areas that begin to prepare an upcoming decision long before it enters awareness.”

Will is just another feelingWill is just another feeling

Wegner DM, The illusion of conscious will. MIT Press(2002)

We may be acting but do not realize that we are: ex: ouija board,

facilitated communication; water divination and hypnotism.

We are not acting, but think that we are: subjects may be induced to believe that they have performed some actions, or that their actions are achieving far more than they in fact are.

Conscious acts of will are never the direct causes of our actions, instead, both conscious willing and action are the effects of a common unconscious cause.

TMS stimulations: even if one side is selected 80% of times the choice is felt as free ... we could be radio controlled!

Will is just another feeling resulting from attention to the state of the pre-supplementary motor cortex (Pre-SMA).

Who is acting?Who is acting?Farrer & Frith, Experiencing Oneself vs Another Person as Being the Cause of an Action: The Neural Correlates of the Experience of Agency, Neuroimage 15, 596, 2002.

Awareness of intentional acting correlates with anterior insular cortex (AIC), and passive acting when other person makes the movements with activity of inferior parietal cortex (IPC).

AIC: may be concerned with the integration of all the concordant multimodal sensory signals associated with voluntary movements.

IPC: represents movements in an allocentric coding system that can be applied to the actions of others as well as the self.

BCI: wire your brain …. BCI: wire your brain …. You must know what to do before you know what you are doing. With access to your brain areas that do the planning I may know it first!

Do we know ourselves?

We are not aware of most processes that go on in “our” head. We are unable to describe our mental processes (failure of phenomenology).Million voices compete for conscious attention.

James C. Christensen

Brains are formed by experienceBrains are formed by experienceEach brain is unique, due to genetic and environmental factors.Brain fingerprinting? Return of phrenology?

Sporns O, Tononi G, Kötter R (2005) The human connectome: A structural description of the human brain. PLoS Comput Biol 1: 245–251

Brain and antisocial behaviorBrain and antisocial behaviorMobbs D, Lau HC, Jones OD, Frith CD, Law, Responsibility, and the Brain. PLoS Biol 5(4): e103 (2007)

Prefrontal cortex (PFC) makes us moral and rational. Damage to PFC leads to acquired sociopathy, impulsive affective criminals. Damage to amygdala leads to poor empathy and low fear, typical of psychopathic emotionless criminals.Estimation ~25% of all imprisoned in the USA fall in these two categories, frequently due to birth complication and trauma.

GESGESGenetic + neural determinism + stochastic factors. GES = Genes, Environment, Stochasticity.

Mental life = succession of brain states. What “comes to our mind” is fully determined by the flow of neural activations, erosion of the brain pathways.

Biologist conclude …Biologist conclude …Shortly before he died Francis Crick asked if “decisions …. concerning your scientific choices ... were made by underlying mechanical deterministic processes, and the feeling of will is an illusion,” Crick replied, “That’s right. I think it must be deterministic”.

Anthony R. Cashmore, PNAS 107, 4499-4504, 2010.

Legal system should confront reality that we are indeed “mechanical forces of nature … We have no more free will than a bowl of sugar. … we are nothing more than a bag of chemicals … a belief in free will is nothing less than a continuing belief in vitalism – a concept that we like to think we discarded well over 100 years ago! It is my concern, that this vitalistic way of thinking about human behavior serves only to hinder what should be a major onslaught on determining the molecular genetic and chemical basis of human behavior.”

Voluntary action in the brainVoluntary action in the brainAction= primary motor cortex (M1) activation.

The frontopolar cortex forms long-range plans and intentions using inputs from basal ganglia and parietal- premotor circuit s.

The pre-SMA area prepares for action (red readiness potentials), inhibiting M1 activity in conflict situations, rather than causing it. Lesions in pre-SMA area may lead to automatic actions like grasping objects without the will to do so (Nachev et al. 2007).

Is consciousness causing actions?Is consciousness causing actions?Bargh (1997b) estimates: Our psychological reactions from moment to moment… are 99.44% automatic.

Dijksterhuis et al. (2005): sequential conscious thinking in comparison to the unconscious parallel processing cannot accomplish much; “strictly speaking, conscious thought does not exist”, conscious thought is merely some unconsciously processed information or brain state that wins the competition to enter awareness (highest control level).

Baumeister, R. F., Masicampo, E. J., & Vohs, K. D. (in press). Do conscious thoughts cause behavior? Annual Review of Psychology.

Answer: yes, but not directly, we have no conscious control over what comes to our mind, but conscious thoughts influence mental states.

Is it good for you?Is it good for you?R.F. Baumeister et al. Prosocial benefits of feeling free: Disbelief in free will increases aggression and reduces helpfulness. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 35: 260-268, 2009.

Belief in free will may foster a sense of thoughtful reflection and willingness to exert energy, promoting helpfulness and reducing aggression. Disbelief in free will may make behavior more reliant on selfish, automatic impulses and therefore less socially desirable.

• Induced disbelief in free will reduced willingness to help others.

• Chronic disbelief in free will was associated with reduced helping behavior.

• Induced disbelief in free will caused participants to act more aggressively than others.

Conclusion: belief in free will seems to promote socially desirable and harmonious behavior, contributes to feeling of empowerment.

Brain and willBrain and will

What are the options? Naive, reflexive and mechanical.

Brain exists solely for its own survival, not to understand ourselves. Only by looking from outside we can understand the brain and draw conclusions about its nature and functions.

Edward Osborne Wilson

Consciousness

Brain

Will

BehaviorGensEnvironmentStochastic eff.

Consciousness

Brain

Will

BehaviorG ES

Consciousness

Brain

Behavior

GES

NeurolawNeurolaw

In 1995, the Supreme Court of Georgia heard a lawyer describing violent behavior shared by several generations of men in a Dutch family. A mutated gene shared by all the violent men, predisposed his client to violence; he did not have free will and was innocent of the murder.

In another case brain scan evidence showed that he had an overactive amygdala (supposedly suggesting increased aggression) and underactive frontal lobes (supposedly suggesting reduced ability to inhibit aggression).

Should the courts take genetic/brain anatomy information as excuses?

In the USA the insanity plea requires that the accused does not know, because of mental illness, that he did wrong.

The insanity plea derives from a case from English law. In 1843, a man named Daniel M'Naghten attempted to assassinate the British prime minister; at his trial, he was found to be insane and the trial was abandoned. From that point on, lawyers saw the power of mounting an insanity defense, and many such claims were made.

Michael GazzanigaMichael Gazzaniga• M. Gazzaniga, The Ethical Brain (1998).

Law and Neuroscience Project (MacArthur Foundation)

The physical world is determined => brains must also be determined.

Humans have ego-centric view of the world, with personal selves seemingly directing the show most of the time.

Recent research shows this is not true, but simply appears to be true, because of a special device in our left brain called the interpreter, creating the illusion that we are in charge of our actions.

Brains are automatic, rule-governed, determined devices, but people are personally responsible agents, free to make their own decisions, because personal responsibility is a public concept.

Those aspects of our personhood are – oddly – not in our brains. They exist in the relationships, interactions with other automatic brains.

But what kind of brains are able to obey the rules?

Personal responsibilityPersonal responsibility• Traditional view breaks down: there is no “self”

or ghost in the machine pulling the strings. • Self is one of many processes that brain is

implementing, conscious of a small subset of brain processes. • If self is not in control then how can it be responsible? • My brain made me do it, I am not responsible? • To what degree and in what sense can we speak of free choices?

Solutions: even more responsibility?

• Whole person is responsible, not just the ego or self. • We are responsible for our actions, good intentions are not enough. • We are responsible for who we become, our own development!• The brain has to educate itself and to “know oneself” better. • We are responsible for the development of our children, setting out

examples and model roles.• Spiritual development is our moral obligation.

Educational questions

How strong is neural determinism? How strong are influences from learned behavioral patterns? Khmer Rouge children were given “leadership in torture and executions”, practicing torture on animals.

Religious conversion between different religious traditions is quite rare.

Should free choice be enforced on small babies?

From Greece to China positive and negative behavioral patterns have been provided through legends, dramas and religious stories, helping to learn virtues and values through personifications (arete, persona, bodisatwa), helping in self-regulation of behavior.

Where is the source of values for young generation? Where are their heroes, role models? Harry Potter?

“Self" without limits“Self" without limits• Decisions are made by the whole brain, not all decisions

or resolutions are consciously realized. • I can control my behavior according to my values,

but first I should make it conscious = understand myself.• Free will (compatibilist style) = conscious control of

behavior in accord with acquired beliefs and values.

Environmental relationsSocial relations

Big mind

I =model of

self

All processes in the brain that influence behavior

Self is a complex of brain states and relations between these states.

Boundaries of self do not make much sense, all strongly coupled processes are part of big mind.

Strong willStrong will

• Strong will, perseverance, can be trained as any other personality trait.• In the past this was done by physical training, competition, motivation to

win social approval and prizes. • In ancient Greece the concept of paidea (preserved in encyclopedia”)

meant training for liberty (freedom) and nobility (the beautiful), the sum of physical / intellectual achievement to which an individual can aspire.

• Learning to control motivation and emotions is very important. Free decision may be taken as a result of reflection, in agreement with our beliefs … that result from genetic and neural causes … can I be held responsible for my education, life experiences?

• It is almost impossible to get out of the getto People, don't you understand the child needs a helping hand or he'll grow to be an angry young man some day

Elvis

Biology => psychologyBiology => psychology

The "Naperville“ Effect.

Changes in one of the primary schools in 2005 after adding 45 min/day for physical exercises, instead of one hour per week.

The school was poor, students came from mixture of minorities.

PE4LIFE program used a few fitness machines, bikes, dancing classes, standard equipment, physiological checkups.

Physical => IntellectualPhysical => IntellectualAttention and motivation = regulation of dopamine & noradrenaline.

Mens sana in corpore sano ! Movement is crucial. Rock & Roll !

PE results are clearly positively correlated with grades in class 5 & 9.Tsinghua University – 2 hours of physical training per day ….

Self-controlSelf-controlE ective self-control is highly beneficial to individuals and ffto society, but it is rather difficult to achieve.

• Mead et al. (2009). Too tired to tell the truth: Self-control resource depletion and dishonesty. J. of Exp. Social Psychology, 45, 594-597.

• Baumeister R.F, Alquist J.L (2009). Is there a downside to good self-control? Self and Identity, 2/3, 115-130.

Self-control ability predicts academic performance better than IQ.

Self-control requires mental energy that is limited! Without energy (blood glucose) ability to perform many adaptive behaviors is compromised: this a ects intelligent thought, e ective decision making, taking initiative. ff ff

Trait (dispositional tendency) self-control appears to have few or no downsides, but requires long training.

EEG & creativityEEG & creativityHow can one increase creativity of musicians and dancers? -a q neurofeedback has brought “significant improvement”

in the self-regulation of the q/a ratio correlated with creativity measures including sung improvisation assessed using the consensual assessment technique, a divergent production task, and the adaptation innovation inventory (John H. Gruzelier , Society for Applied Neuroscience).

Why results have improved? Shifting dominant frequency to lower values allows for:

• music and dancing requires synchronization of many distant brain areas and longer EEG waves help to create coordinated activity;

• many parasite processes are turned off.

Can one create neurofeedback procedures specific for motivation, strength of will, regulation of emotions?

“Investigating the Mind” MIT- Cambridge, MA (2003)

“The Science and Clinical Application of Meditation” SFN-Washington (2005).Regulation of emotions requires training – and who has the best methods?

Meditation and emotions

Monk in the scanner

Richard Davison & Matthieu Ricard

Brain Imaging Laboratory, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Even happiness can be learned!

Regulation of will and emotions is one of important components of this process.

Matthieu Ricard, Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill (2006).

Some questionsSome questions• Brain is a substrate of all mental processes. It contains the whole

evolutionary history (phylogenesis) as well as personal history.

• My brain is responsible for my decisions, I consciously understand only some of brain states, or needs, as seen in “stronger than me” drives, the need to learn about myself, or in split brain, lesions, etc.

• Brain is a physical device, so “I” do not exist? No! Identify with the brain, it is much more than “I”, or your ego! It is the brain that has me, not I that have the brain.

• Buddhist tradition sees ego as illusion since 2500 years. Illusion that “I” act is strong, but we can deprogram ourselves. What is then left? Whole human, bigger self, capable of selfless strong empathy, natural interactions with others and environment, without neurotic impulses.

• We should be able to build brain-like artificial systems and this will open the Pandora’s box; will they still be automata?

Long and winding road …Long and winding road …Ants (termites, bees) do not know much, but their collective behavior has sense from social point of view.M. Maeterlinck wrote about the spirit of the anthill.

• How social structures influence individual cognition: beliefs, taboos, morality, customs, culture … Top-down causation and emergent properties.

• How can we understand ourselves, various aspects of our brain states, how to regulate our emotions.

• How can we create desired patterns of behavior, increase motivation, use neurofeedback in education.

• What is the role of imagery, how good role models serve as a reference to define goals, increase self-reflection, choose “greater good” instead of instant gratification.

• Why certain styles in music, art and literature become popular, and what do they do to our brains.

Thank you for

synchronizing your neurons!

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