Brains Are Automatic, But People Are Free

[Chris]

Recently finished Michael Gazzaniga's Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain. He's a leading researcher in cognitive neuroscience. The book is fascinating, very readable, and I highly recommend it.

To give you a taste, here he is summarizing his argument in about 3 minutes.



To paraphrase: Free will, he says, comes to us from 1000s of years of thought, but now we know tons about mechanistic nature of the brain. Free will just isn't there. Instead, he argues, it exists at the social level in the rules and laws that exist in the various groups we join. For every social network--even the Internet--accountability is essential or else the whole thing just falls apart.

To summarize his book: Contrary to the old intellectual conflict whether the individual or society exists, the way he sees it, in his book, is somewhat Hayekian in the sense that out of the complex, dynamic interaction of individuals in groups emerge social orders, iow, society, society that is not just the sum of parts but something more, a very real entity that forms an environment that evolutionarily selects for behavior, in fact in this way selects for the sorts of individuals whose genes survive.

[Chris]

The book is available for download here: Who's in Charge.

[Chris]

Follow up, The social animal

Most neuroscientists believe we have a dedicated system for social reasoning, quite different to the one that is used for non-social thinking. What’s more, when one system is on, the other turns off. Lieberman explains how the social system fulfils three core tasks. First, it must make connections with others, which involves feeling social pains and pleasures, such as those of rejection or belonging. Second, it must develop mind-reading skills, in order to know what others are thinking, so as to predict their behaviour and act appropriately. Finally, it must use these abilities to harmonise with others, so as to thrive safely in the social world.

[Chris]

Another follow up: Social Reasoning, Continued

I’ve been stalking Mathew Lieberman on line, looking at videos and interviews and such. Also, a commenter found this journal article. I suppose I ought to just read his book, but I find his style somewhat annoying, so I hesitate. Anyway, here is an NPR interview.

if I’m being rejected from a group, how do I need to change my behavior or what I say or think in order to not be excluded or rejected from that group? It teaches me lessons about how to behave differently in the future. And because we can imagine the future, we can also use that preemptively. We can feel social pain at the threat of being excluded from a relationship or a group.

I do think that this is a very powerful motivator. Go back to Adam Smith. People want to feel high self-regard. But your self-regard depends on how you are regarded by others. Ideally, your tribe wants to nurture and protect you, because they love you and admire you. Worst case, your tribe wants to shun and expel you.

Some thoughts on what I might call the “tribal membership motivator.”

...

I think it goes much deeper than conscious reasoning.

[Heyduke]

At first glance, sounds like another Newtonian clockwork universe dude where everything is mechanistic and deterministic. If that's your cosmology, and --if I may be afforded some poetic license here-- by Heisenberg's Uncertainly Principle, we change everything we examine according to our belief systems, and believing is actually seeing, then of course the materialist atheist is going to arrive at that conclusion.

I'll have to go outside and prune some fruit trees and think about this for a bit. I'll get back to you tonight Pacific Time.

But, as you say sometimes Chris, science is more about creating models than arriving at hard facts. I'll leave you with a model that I've been chewing on lately. What if consciousness is ubiquitous throughout the universe? And what if the human brain, rather than being the source of thought, actually acts more like a transistor radio? What if the brain is more like a radio that condenses streams of consciousness from outside of itself?

The universe is a paradox. I recognize that I have a unique identity. And yet I also recognize that the universe is one inseparable indivisible whole of conscious matter, and that the darkest corner of empty space is not a true quantum vacuum, but is filled with a ground state of energy.

[Chris]

At first glance, sounds like another Newtonian clockwork universe dude where everything is mechanistic and deterministic. If that's your cosmology, and --if I may be afforded some poetic license here-- by Heisenberg's Uncertainly Principle, we change everything we examine according to our belief systems, and believing is actually seeing, then of course the materialist atheist is going to arrive at that conclusion.

I'll have to go outside and prune some fruit trees and think about this for a bit. I'll get back to you tonight Pacific Time.

But, as you say sometimes Chris, science is more about creating models than arriving at hard facts. I'll leave you with a model that I've been chewing on lately. What if consciousness is ubiquitous throughout the universe? And what if the human brain, rather than being the source of thought, actually acts more like a transistor radio? What if the brain is more like a radio that condenses streams of consciousness from outside of itself?

The universe is a paradox. I recognize that I have a unique identity. And yet I also recognize that the universe is one inseparable indivisible whole of conscious matter, and that the darkest corner of empty space is not a true quantum vacuum, but is filled with a ground state of energy.

When it comes to the brain, things are mechanistic, deterministic at the cell level, but I think he's also saying that out of the dynamic of neuronal interaction there emerges a self.

Your cosmic theory is similar to his at a more earthly level in the way society, culture, what have you, defines the individual.

[Heyduke]

1 tree down... 15 to go.

The Hundredth Monkey Effect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundredth_Monkey_Effect
It goes a little like this;
On an Japanese island chain, there was a macaque monkey that started washing its sweet potatoes in water. That habit spread throughout the island. "Gradually this new behavior spread through the younger generation of monkeys—in the usual fashion, through observation and repetition. Watson then claimed that the researchers observed that once a critical number of monkeys was reached—the so-called hundredth monkey—..." that stream of consciousness jumped across the water to monkeys on nearby islands.

What would Gazziniga say about consciousness jumping? ie. The Hundredth Monkey Effect. What would he say about Jung's collective unconscious? What would he say about psychic phenomena, clairvoyance, or deja vu? Would he chalk all that up to fiction, or attempt to provide a mechanistic explanation?

[Chris]

Not sure what Gazziniga would say, probably that it couldn't happen, that for knowledge, skills, rituals to spread it would have to be through contact, observation, communication and such. Matt Ridley, The Rational Optimist, describes anthropological studies of peoples who had advanced through contact with others, through specialization and trade, became isolated and devolved, lost knowledge and skills, and eventually died away.

You never know, of course, but how would you distinguish that from simple spontaneous discovery in different places.

[Heyduke]

You never know, of course, but how would you distinguish that from simple spontaneous discovery in different places.

As you would say, bro, the Hundredth Monkey Effect is not falsifiable. And, it's certainly not a popular theory within the circles of logical positivism.


But, to borrow a quote from a famous atheist (Bertrand Russell);
"When we look at a rock what we are seeing is not the rock, but the effect of the rock upon us."

Using a good and bad analogy, the brain is like a television screen (with DVR attached). The movie itself doesn't come into being without a screen to broadcast it on. That screen is the human brain, and the movie is consciousness.

That's an overly simplistic analogy, for many reasons. For one, the brain isn't 'blank', but is a product of millions of years of history. For another, the brain isn't inert, and furthermore, the brain is a living thing and not a machine. But, I think the movie and the screen analogy moves us one step closer to differentiating the brain from consciousness.

[Heyduke]

Let us say that the mind is the interaction between brain and consciousness. The mind can be present in the ego state, where we see ourselves as separate from the rock (in the Russell quote). We also have an unconscious mind, like in dreaming, where we interact with consciousness outside of the bounds of logic and reason. And thirdly, there is a universal consciousness, as described by Hindus, or Carl Jung, or Edgar Cayce, or when we refer to The Kingdom of God in Christianity.

Now, I'm a druid. And we pagans, as with most of the ancient Greeks, believe in panpsychism, which is the view that the mind is a universal feature of all things. According to Plato,

"This world is indeed a living being endowed with a soul and intelligence ... a single visible living entity containing all other living entities, which by their nature are all related."

And so, minds are connected by universal consciousness. All things are connected by universal consciousness. To use a modern analogy, there exists an organic internet of things, connected by consciousness.

And so, pruning my trees today, I could live in my ego, and I could see the tree as separate from myself(which quantum mechanics tells us is false). I could judge by sight that a tree stood 20 feet from myself. There was a physical distance between myself and the tree. But, residing in my ego, there was a much further psychological distance between myself and the tree.