Free will – problems of definition

Some of the philosophically inclined readers have probably followed the recent internet discussion of “free will.” I am referring specifically to that between evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne (blog: Why evolution is True) and philosopher Massimo Pigliucci (blog: Rationally Speaking). It been interesting partly because the debate has also encompassed commenters on each blog. Regulars who might otherwise have lined up with the specific blogger but disagreed in this case.

I have no wish to get into debates on “free will” – I find them frustrating because people often argue past each other. And it seems to me that the debate often really boils down to how we define “free will.”  So I just want to restrict my comments here to the matter of definition.

I think much of what Jerry writes is good – but in this case I find his definition of “free will” too mechanical. And I think this leads him to doubtful conclusions. Here is how he defines “free will” in his USA Today article (see Why you don’t really have free will):

“. . .let me define what I mean by “free will.” I mean it simply as the way most people think of it: When faced with two or more alternatives, it’s your ability to freely and consciously choose one, either on the spot or after some deliberation. A practical test of free will would be this: If you were put in the same position twice — if the tape of your life could be rewound to the exact moment when you made a decision, with every circumstance leading up to that moment the same and all the molecules in the universe aligned in the same way — you could have chosen differently.”

It is the “consciously” which I wish to take issue with. It’s important because part of his argument refers to work indicating that decisions on an action may be taken by a person well before that person is conscious of the decision. As Jerry describes it:

“Recent experiments involving brain scans show that when a subject “decides” to push a button on the left or right side of a computer, the choice can be predicted by brain activity at least seven seconds before the subject is consciously aware of having made it. . . . “Decisions” made like that aren’t conscious ones. And if our choices are unconscious, with some determined well before the moment we think we’ve made them, then we don’t have free will in any meaningful sense.”

Consciousness is much over-rated

I think this work is interesting because it suggests an important role for the subconscious (or unconscious part of the brain) in decision-making which, on the surface, appears conscious. In a way this isn’t surprising because most of the work the brain does is, has to be, unconscious. Just imagine if all the ongoing work involved in homeostasis were controlled by conscious decisions. That you had to consciously decide how to respond to every incoming biological threat and then pass those conscious decision on to the immune system!

So, I don’t think it is wise to differentiate so sharply between the conscious and subconscious working of the mind/brain. I have written before about the role of the subconscious in moral decisions and think this stretches to many more areas of our decision-making than we might think. And that is a two-way street – our conscious mental deliberations also influence our subconsciousness brain – and that in return feeds back into later conscious decisions. Our academic and social learning involves, over time, constant interaction between the conscious and unconscious brain.

My suggestion is that when we “freely and consciously choose” this decision is not restricted to the conscious, self-aware brain. It also, and inevitably, involves the unconscious. Using the particular definition Jerry has, and limiting the process of decision-making to the conscious brain, is just too mechanical.

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Painless science writing

I guess most scientists find writing difficult.  I certainly have over the years. So I do admire scientists who communicate well, who produce readable material. And do it with ease.

P Z Myers is one of these. He is a prolific blogger (see Pharyngula) and an excellent writer. Besides so much activity on his blog he holds down a teaching job and is in  high demand as a public speaker.

And he has written a book! It’s due out early next year and I am sure itwill be an excellent read.

So what is his secret? How does he write so well, and so prolifically?

Using the sleeping brain

In a recent post, Fishkiller, he revealed part of this secret.  “I write in my sleep” he claimed. Boy, would I love to have that skill.

“I write in my sleep. You see, the way it works is that if I have something on my mind when I go to bed, my brain will churn over it all night long, and because of the way my head works, it will spontaneously generate a narrative. I do that in all of my dreams — I float aloof from the events, mentally transcribing what’s going on. My consciousness is a kind of disembodied reporter, I guess.

This quirk can work out well. Lots of my longer posts are composed while I’m sleeping — I wake up in the morning and the structure of the story is all laid out in my head, with a jumble of words stacked up waiting to be written down. It’s not a complete word-by-word write up, but major themes and key chunks of text are all done, and writing is more like splicing in a few transitions and tidying up some rough edges than actually, you know, writing, whatever that is.”

Maybe he exagerates and it is only part of the story. But I am sure he is on to something. I once presented a class on science writing. It was aimed at young scientists, many of who were contemplating their first paper. So I decided to give help with the approach to writing, rather than just the formality of producing a research paper and getting it published.

Using both sides of the brain

I took the concept of using “both sides of the brain” – the right hand side for creativity and the left hand side for editing. This was basically the approach Betty Edwards used in her course, and famous book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.

The trick is to separate the two activities. Firstly suppress the left hand side of the brain. Be creative. Get your ideas down. Don’t worry about the language, grammar or spelling. Don’t worry about the orders. Just concentrate on a brain dump. Just use the right brain.

Only once you have the material on paper do you allow the left hand brain to participate. Only then do you get into editing, correcting, and so on. The discipline is to suppress the left brain in the initial stages. (Which does take some effort). Otherwise we just naturally attempt to edit when we should be getting our ideas out. That inhibits our ideas, slows down the whole process, causes diversions.

Allowing the left brain to interfere is a major source of procrastination. It’s dispiriting.

If you are interested in following up this approach to wring have a look at the book by Henriette A. Klauser – Writing on Both Sides of the Brain: Breakthrough Techniques for People Who Write. The technique certainly does work and I found it liberating once I started consciously using it. And yoiu know what? After a while I was finding that when I did allow the left brain to apply its editing very little was required. My grammar and organisation was being applied without the left brain interference!

Using the unconscious brain

But I always felt there was another part of the brain we use in writing – our subconscious. That’s why it helps to put a paper aside. To “sleep on it.” I am sure that the subconscious mind may still be working through the ideas, maybe even the editing. Certainly, I always found I returned to the paper with a fresh mind, more able to identify and solve problems. Maybe even satisfy myself that I was happy with the writing anyway.

So, while I hadn’t actually seen the unconscious mind taking the active role PZ describes, even perhaps using dreams, I can certainly see how that works. And wouldn’t it be great if we could train our brain to work that way? It would certainly take a lot of the pain out of science writing.

I am sure that this skill, like all others, is a matter of training. Of experience. Once we learn to take the left brain, right brain approach and consciously put work aside to allow the subconscious to work at it, we are effectively in training. The more writing we do the better we become. The less painless it is.

After all, this is probably how journalists work. And we do too, in the rest of our lives. When we learn to ride a bike our subconscious eventually takes over and we do it automatically. On our jobs we may be applying quite difficult operations, analyses or calculations effortlessly because the skills are unconscious. I am sure many of us perform these operation in our dreams. I certainly do.

So I guess the answer is – do more writing. Apply concepts like writing on both sides of the brain to free up the creative side and take the pain out of editing. Have the confidence of putting things aside to allow the unconscious mind to do its work.

Maybe one day I can put my nightly dreams to work like PZ does

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