Sigmund Freud has just received powerful reinforcement from an unlikely direction:
Free will is an illusion, biologist says
When biologist Anthony Cashmore claims that the concept of free will is an illusion, he's not breaking any new ground. At least as far back as the ancient Greeks, people have wondered how humans seem to have the ability to make their own personal decisions in a manner lacking any causal component other than their desire to "will" something. But Cashmore, Professor of Biology at the University of Pennsylvania, says that many biologists today still cling to the idea of free will, and reject the idea that we are simply conscious machines, completely controlled by a combination of our chemistry and external environmental forces.
In a recent study, Cashmore has argued that a belief in free will is akin to religious beliefs, since neither complies with the laws of the physical world. One of the basic premises of biology and biochemistry is that biological systems are nothing more than a bag of chemicals that obey chemical and physical laws. Generally, we have no problem with the “bag of chemicals” notion when it comes to bacteria, plants, and similar entities. So why is it so difficult to say the same about humans or other “higher level” species, when we’re all governed by the same laws?
No causal mechanism
As Cashmore explains, the human brain acts at both the conscious level as well as the unconscious. It’s our consciousness that makes us aware of our actions, giving us the sense that we control them, as well. But even without this awareness, our brains can still induce our bodies to act, and studies have indicated that consciousness is something that follows unconscious neural activity. Just because we are often aware of multiple paths to take, that doesn’t mean we actually get to choose one of them based on our own free will. As the ancient Greeks asked, by what mechanism would we be choosing? The physical world is made of causes and effects - “nothing comes from nothing” - but free will, by its very definition, has no physical cause. The Roman philosopher and poet Lucretius, in reference to this problem of free will, noted that the Greek philosophers concluded that atoms "randomly swerve" - the likely source of this movement being the numerous Greek gods.
Sigmund Freud's most powerful insight was the notion of Psychic determinism. He recognized that our behavior is the result of a complex interplay between largely unconscious determinants and that our conscious minds are most often an after-thought. Neuroscience is now showing that this is literally true, ie our brains "decide" upon actions well before our conscious minds are aware of having made the decision. Conscious intentionality is most likely an illusion. However, I believe that Cashmore is overinterpreting this to mean that Free Will does not exist.
It is probably correct that most of our actions, in isolation at a single moment in time, are deterministic. If one could specify the state of every neuron in our brains at a specific moment, it might be theoretically possible to predict what would occur a moment later. However, once time is introduced into the equation, the summation of inputs and outputs, and their feedback loops, becomes impossible to follow, in real time, with any currently (and possibly with any conceivable), computing machine. In other words, even the most powerful imaginable computer would likely be unable to keep up with a single person's thoughts and actions.
As the chaos theorists have pointed out, complex systems are so dependent on initial conditions that a butterfly's wings in Brazil could produce a hurricane in South Carolina one week later. With such complexity, it may be practically impossible to reduce behavior to a deterministic state.
(My caveat is in place for the benefit of those Singularity/AI proponents who believe that we will one day inhabit a universe filled with computonium, which might be able to do the calculations.)
There is a second reason, beyond the complexity of the problem of action and mind that mitigates in favor of the utility of the concept of Free Will. Among the feedbacks that effect change in our actions is our conscious awareness of the effects of our actions.
Mr. M is a 48 yo Gay man (seen by a female Psychiatrist who I supervised) who came into treatment suffering from moderate to severe depression. He had little energy for his work and was engaged in frequent, high risk sexual behavior, ie promiscuous, unprotected sex. He understood he was at great risk for contracting HIV and despaired of being able to control his urges. A course of medication helped improve his mood and his motivation and allowed him to engage in his therapy. He began to understand that his dangerous promiscuity had its roots in his early feelings of rejection by his father and his desperate desire to be close to a man. His past relationships had typically been shallow and short term, but during sexual encounters he could feel loved and desired, if only briefly. In the third year of his treatment, his therapist had to take a three month maternity leave. He was referred to a colleague for follow up during this time but did not contact the covering Psychiatrist. When his therapist returned from her leave she discovered he had severely decompensated. He was spending most of his time on Gay porn sites, had become involved in several instances of high risk sexual behavior, and had allowed his work to slacken significantly. His therapist was able to interpret his regression as a response to her "abandonment" which evoked his earlier experiences of abandonment by his parents during his childhood. He was able to reflect upon his dangerously self destructive behavior and his time spent on the internet surfing Gay porn and his incidents of acting out diminished and stopped within a month of resuming therapy.
When Mr. M's therapist left him for her baby, experienced as an abandonment, his stability was perturbed; he reacted with an unconscious tantrum. His anger at being abandoned and his hurt led to an intensification of his chronic loneliness and neediness. His maladaptive response was to put himself in danger, gratifying his unconscious self-destructive urges while also gratifying his momentary needs to feel loved. The sexual release allowed for the discharge of his aggressive and sexual drives.
When Mr. M was made aware of the unconscious motivators for his behavior he was able to use the insight as a novel input into the system. He understood that he had the choice of repeating his dysfunctional behavior or modifying his behavior; he was able to recapture his previous, healthier equilibrium.
In Cashmore's view, none of Mr. M's behavior had anything to do with Free Will; it was all deterministic. However, even were this true, in practice the differentiation between Mr. A's behavior as based on his Free Will, or as based on his Conscious awareness influencing his unconscious and deterministic behavior, and a completely deterministic view of behavior, is relatively meaningless. It does not produce a testable hypothesis which would allow us to differentiate an entity with Free Will from a being without Free Will.
Just as Arthur C. Clarke once commented that any technology sufficiently advanced would be indistinguishable from magic, I would suggest that any Consciousness sufficiently complex would be indistinguishable from a being who could convince us he has Free Will. Perhaps this could be a corollary of the Turing Test.
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