Thoughtful comparison of several recent books on developments in neuroscience as they relate to free will.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/caa4f212-688b-11e1-a6cc-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1ohxQAz00

From the article:

Advances in neuroscience have given the free will deniers new impetus. The ace in the pack is the work of the late Benjamin Libet, which neuroscientist Sam Harris says in Free Will shows that “some moments before you are aware of what you will do next ... your brain has already determined what you will do. You then become conscious of this ‘decision’ and believe that you are in the process of making it.” For the likes of Harris, evidence like this shows that the absence of free will is now scientific fact, not philosophical theory.

I believe what they are really showing is that the naïve notion of free will is inaccurate. It's not like you can decide, at any given moment, whether you want to be a totally perfect, holy person; or commit a crime of moral turpitude. Our legal system is based on an assumption similar to this.

Instead scientists are now apparently beginning to understand what Buddhists have known for millennia: That becoming a holy person is a process which involves skillful cultivation of the right qualities. You don't just make a decision to suddenly be a totally different person; You make small decisions to steer you in the right direction and eventually eliminate defilements. In other words, they are now "finding out" that you don't truly have free will in the seconds leading up to an action, but that causes and conditions (that you are obviously ignorant of) must have arisen at some point in the past and then culminated in the apparent present moment decision.

I agree that the research seems to be limited to the question of moment to moment decision making. But the wider philosophical question in the article - and, I think - in Buddhism, is, whose will is it anyway? In theory, 'I' made the decision to meditate many years ago, but didn't find myself doing it really until recently. The difference probably has more to do with the advent of the internet, the availability of teachings and community, than my will to do so.

Dauphin, you seem to suggest that apart from automatic processes, there is still someone making decisions. Who is this decision-maker, in Buddhist terms? I don't mean it as a rhetorical question. I'm trying to figure it out.

I agree with the idea that you can chip away at old habits and form new ones slowly with the willpower energy you have. This makes a great case for people who want to develop more self-discipline by removing temptations from your work or study place. The more temptations available the more likely you'll follow the easier and more pleasurable short-term path. An alcoholic should get rid of all the alcohol in their house ASAP when they go through rehab.

I'm not sure how to answer this. It's almost like trying to answer the question, "Who are you?" The most precise answer is that there is no person in ultimate reality, but conventionally I am still me, and I am the one who makes my decisions. I think this research doesn't change any of this. Every action is still the result of causes and conditions, both past and present. The only thing the new research seems to show is that causes in the present are sometimes just not strong enough to change the outcome, but instead it is practically "dictated" by causes from the past, or to be even more precise, by causes from a slightly more distant past than we previously thought.

All we are starting to admit is that we don't have overwhelmingly great, immediate power over our actions at any given moment, but instead we have to be very skillful in order to steadily create the conditions that will eventually lead to good outcomes.

What is it that makes decisions? It's one of the five aggregates: volitional formations. It's not all-powerful; it's just an instrumentality that influences outcomes based on inputs.

Hope this thread still gets read. Some thoughts from a western magick practitioner:

"You may think that you make your own, conscious and reasonable decisions, but then your decision will only look, sound and feel good when the subconscious mind agrees. More often than not, it is the deep mind that provides impulse, choice and motivation, and it is the conscious 'I' that receives these, finds some reasons and explanations for them and thinks it has come to a sensible decision." -Helrunar, Jan Fries

I think that the trouble here is identifying the free will as the ability to make conscious decisions. Which might make reasonable sense to a scientist. It is strange, because, in trying to debunk a religious argument, they may have completely redefined the territory. Some traditions have viewed free will as an unconscious thing, and this may be limiting too. I wish I could find this Peter J Carroll quote, something about how there is no part of man that represents himself to himself.

Or, Jung: "Our attitude towards this inner voice alternates between two extremes: it is regarded either as undiluted nonsense or as the voice of God. It does not seem to occur to anyone that there might be something valuable in between."

I hope this doesn't answer anyone's questions.

-jess

I guess I dropped the conversation because I don't really feel that I have special insight into it, but can only research what others have said.

I have noticed, though, since posting this thread, that I am a LOT less prone to obsessing or worrying over decisions. Whereas before I would wonder if I was doing the right thing, maybe I should do the thing I really DON'T want to do, how can I know, let's list pros and cons, etc, etc - I've been a real worrier! Now, I just think, I'm not really deciding anyway, so let's see what I actually choose to do. Writing it out, this sounds like a passive approach to life, but really it's just an end-run around worrying.

I don't suppose this adds much to the philosophical or scientific discussion, but has been a benefit of practice for me.

JB,

Makes sense. It's kind of a "what side are you on" question. Asking if YOU make the decision identifies YOU as the conscious mind. Others might identify as the unconscious and say "don't let your conscious mind stop you from blahing the blah." No insights here, neither, but I'm glad you found a working model. Hope I can as well!

"when you blah, it sends a blah blah to your brain, reminding you to blah, even if you haven't blahed, in the last four blahs."
-Scientific American

Clearly not the person being studied, according to the scientists, who elsewhere might insist that there is only the brain at work: the same paradigm that insists that there is 'no real self' is here arguing that the 'no real self' has no free will, so therefore there is no free will...

But all the experiments show is that observations are not consistent with their interpretations, and rather than reject their interpretations, perhaps by pointing out the flaws in 'you then become conscious of this ‘decision’ and believe that you are in the process of making it.', or even by noticing they are begging the question with 'your brain has [...] determined what you will do', for some reason they maintain their framework and cast their conclusions within it's empty carcass.

All they are showing is that decisions are made before any remodeling of them. There is nothing surprising about that. In fact, isn't that our experience?

Exactly! Science is great at exploring and revising its pictures within certain limits. But those limits, in this case materialism, are often philosophical, metaphysical, paradigmatical-- NOT scientific, not empirical-- and are apparently invisible to many scientists who are otherwise open minded inquirers.

This is all a lot more clear (to me) when taking a sociological and historical lens to scientific culture itself, which reveals a definite process which over time gave rise to these basic assumptions which form the unquestioned background to much scientific inquiry, and which produces the kinds of absurd interpretations of data like in the famous study from the top of the thread.

When I read this study without that materialist lens it sounds like just another re-statement of my intuitive sense that indeed choice/intention and rationalization are two different processes. However, this is not a fixed relationship, and as self-knowledge (or, as bare awareness of mind's processing of sensations) increases, rationalizations decrease, and intentions arise more simply and directly and in greater clarity. I bet many here can relate to this! And isn't this indeed correlated to an increased sense of freedom, freedom as spontaneity? In other words, there seems good phenomenological data to equate the experience of freedom with the spontaneous arising of intentions/actions rather than with conscious/deliberative processing, which often (to me) has more of the flavor of arrogance and/or confusion (especially in contrast with spontaneity). An interesting place to take the discussion would be towards the differences between impulsivity, spontaneity and deliberation.