Consciousness, Free Will, and Evolution

One of the great problems with contemporary debates over free will is that two distinct and fundamental philosophical questions are frequently (almost always) confused.  One is the question whether the ubiquitous human intuition of an open future is metaphysically viable.  Do I really have choices that are not already made yet, in the sense of being predetermined by the state of the Kosmos before I make the choice?  The second is whether human consciousness is part of the chain of causation leading to human actions.  Did I drop the hot object because it hurt?  Or was my conscious pain merely an epiphenomenon, generated by the underlying physical processes but having no consequences of its own? 

This has been a persistent concern of mine for some years.  Tonight I have been reading Eckart Voland’s interesting article: “We Recognize Ourselves as Being Similar to Others: Implications of the “Social Brain Hypothesis” for the Biological Evolution of the Intuition of Freedom.”  Voland clearly regards our intuition of freedom as an illusion and sets out to explain how we came by it.  His thesis is that it is a byproduct of modeling the intentions of other persons.  Here is a bit from the abstract:

If, as the “social brain hypothesis” alleges, the main selective pressure among primates is on generating social knowledge about one’s cooperators and competitors, then it is the knowledge about others and not the knowledge about oneself that is the scarce cognitive resource. It is beneficial to make the others predictable and to form hypotheses about their probable behavioral tendencies. This is done by behavior reading and mind reading and by classifying the recurring stochastic patterns in everyday language as the “will.” Thus, the idea of free will emerged first as a social attribution and not as an introspectively gained insight.

I strongly suspect that Voland is right on the specific question.  It seems to me more than likely that the human sense of self and of deliberation (and particularly moral deliberation) emerged in tandem with a “theory of mind,” which is to say, a recognition that other persons have minds like “mine”.  However, I do not see how this thesis is required, let alone advanced, either by determinism or epiphenomenalism. 

Here is how Voland begins his essay:

The human psyche, with its ability to feel, think, and act, is a deterministic system. In the current discussion, this thesis is primarily supported by arguments informed by neurobiology.

I have long regarded determinism as one of the myths of modern science.  The problem with all myths is not that they are false but that they cannot be verified and that the reason for believing in them has nothing to do with their veracity.  It may well be that the state of the Kosmos at any moment, T¹, rigidly determines the state of K at T².  How one could know that is beyond me, and it is not a necessary assumption for any science.  All the scientist needs to suppose is that T¹ determines some part of T² within some specified margin of error. 

I will pass here on the question of why so many want to believe in something that is unverifiable and unnecessary.  I will point out that when Voland speaks of neurobiology, he has in mind certain findings that indicate that the brain makes up its mind before the mind becomes conscious of making a decision.  Again, this may be true; however, it is an argument not for determinism but for epiphenomenalism. 

Voland makes a pitch for the proposition that genuine freedom cannot have evolved. 

Contrary to other claims: Freedom does not evolve, and what is more: Freedom could not evolve, because if we assume that organisms which could make use of the freedom to not obey the biological imperative were created by a whim of nature, then natural selection would disfavor these genotypes to the degree that they were to make use of this freedom, and the endless game of evolution would proceed without them. Freedom here is understood in the sense of the indeterministic libertarian intuition of being able to behave in other ways, if one only wanted to do so.

To prevent a widespread misunderstanding: The antithesis of determination is indetermination and not flexibility. Humans, perhaps like no other species, are capable of special behavioral flexibility, which in turn is carried by special cognitive abilities designed for this purpose. This allows humans, more than other organisms, to adequately deal with situations that are new to them and to cope with unusual requirements (Kanazawa, 2004). This changes nothing, however, with regard to the fact that all of the knowledge of how requirements are to be mastered already must exist in the form of certain strategies of perception and thinking in the organism, completely within the meaning of Kant’s a priori (Heschl, 2001). There is no room in this system for a libertarian freedom of the will, i. e. the capacity to act differently under identical conditions and to cause behavior while oneself being uncaused.

This strike me as altogether wrong.  “Flexibility” means precisely not obeying “the biological imperative.”  It means this in two ways.  One is that the biological, preprogrammed imperative must be responsive to different situations.  The organism must be able to zig and zag in ways that cannot be fixed ahead of time. 

The other is that organisms that disobey “the biological imperative” may be the ones that flourish when the environmental niche has changed.  Evolution has engineered a vast number of modes of flexibility.  The most pervasive is genetic diversity, of which, the most interesting is sexual reproduction.  Is it not obvious that consciousness is precisely the most sophisticated form of flexibility?  Let us suppose that all conscious creatures are capable of some measure of freedom, in the sense of making choices that are not governed by deterministic rules.  That would allow such creatures to be very flexible in their responses to the environment. 

How then to keep such creatures honest in a Darwinian sense?  The obvious answer is to bribe them.  This is the function of pain and pleasure, discontent and happiness.  Rather than giving precise instructions to sentient animals, evolution was content to give them parameters.  Do whatever you want so long as you survive long enough to reproduce. 

This is the only account, as it seems to me, that explains why it hurts when I pick up something that is very hot.  If consciousness is really an epiphenomenon, produced by but not effecting biological processes, then it is a very odd phenomenon.  It is analogous to the occasionalism that you find in dualistic theories.  It doesn’t seem like a winner. 

Flannery O'Connor on Integrity and Freedom

I spent spring break this year in New Orleans and when I am in New Orleans I always find myself reading Flannery O’Connor.  I won’t bother to explain.  Anyway, since I have been thinking about autonomy, I was struck by the author’s note to the second of edition of her novel, Wise Blood.  Here is most of that note:

Wise Blood was written by an author congenitally innocent of theory, but one with certain preoccupations.  That belief in Christ is to some a matter of life and death has been a stumbling block for readers who would prefer to think that it is a matter of no great consequence.  For them, Hazel Motes integrity lies in his trying with such vigor to get rid of the ragged figure who moves from tree to tree in the back of his mind.  For the author Hazel’s integrity lies in his not being able to.  Does one’s integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do?  I think that usually it does, for free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man.  Freedom cannot be conceived simply.  It is a mystery and one which a novel, even a comic novel, can only be asked to deepen. 

For “an author congenitally innocent of theory”, O’Connor writes with astonishing clarity and penetration about the presuppositions underlying her fiction.  Integrity is a term often used loosely to mean a sense of moral rectitude, but its precise meaning indicates that one is in possession of one’s self.  It is the essential requirement for moral responsibility.  That integrity is more a matter of what one cannot do that what one can is an insight that goes back at least to Plato’s Gorgias.  Self-government, the virtue focused on in that dialogue, means that the self imposes limits the self.  For that to be possible, the self cannot be conceived simply; it must be sense as the integration of its various parts. 

Thus “free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man.”  That extraordinarily powerful line encloses the peril of O’Connor’s century.  The greatest threat to human autonomy that the world has ever known came from those who insisted on a singularity of will (do we need to add the triumph of the singular will?).  Genuine freedom indeed means many wills in conflict whether in an assembly of persons or that assembly that constitutes a natural person. 

Her insistence on the element of mystery implies, I suggest, that the capacity for freedom is ultimately miraculous.  She may be right about that.  Belonging as I do to the tribe of philosophers, I am not entirely convinced.  But I do believe that this implication is vital for philosophy.  The philosopher may try to explain and hence demystify the human capacity for freedom of thought and action.  Unless he takes seriously the possibility that such freedom depends on the intervention of a creator God, his speculations degenerate into mere dogma. 

The Evolutionary Origins of Human Autonomy

I am working on a paper on autonomy.  Here are some preliminary reflections. 

This essay concerns the biological origins of human autonomy and thus involves the intersection of biology and political science.  My point of departure is the assumption that the two fields of inquiry are interdependent.  It is not possible to fully understand human autonomy, individual or collective, without understanding its biological origins.  Likewise, to recognize that genuine autonomy emerges from the evolutionary history of life on earth is to understand how metaphysically robust the phenomenon of life really is.  This approach avoids both reductionism and any hint of vitalism; it allows biology and the human things to reveal themselves for what they are in the context of the natural world as a whole. 

One thing that the Socratic philosophers understood better than their modern counterparts is that the possibility of science rests on the assumption that human intelligence (or Nous, as the Greeks called it) operates on the same principles by which nature is ordered; otherwise, nature is forever unintelligible.  Accordingly, I begin with a consideration of the intelligible meaning of the word autonomy. 

The philosopher Ernst Mayr famously argued that biology is an autonomous science.  He meant by that not that biology contradicts or is free from the principles of physics, but that biology has more principles than physics.  I take that as the first clue that autonomy emerges as a space between two realms of laws.  This turns out to reflect the history of the term. 

The term autonomy is a classical Greek word built on two important roots.  Auto means self, as in Socrates himself.  It is a very basic word that functions both as a pronoun (him or it) and as an adjective, as in autoagathos, which means “good in itself”. 

The second root word is nomos.  This word is usually translated as “law.”  Like a lot of Greek words, it is borrowed from an earlier use.  It originally meant an enclosed pasture.  A nomos was boundary imposed by human beings that confined the movement of herd animals but allowed them to move freely (according to their own natural laws) within that boundary.  It was adopted to indicate both explicit, codified law and the unwritten moral rules that bound the citizens together into a polis.  I am pretty sure that Nietzsche’s phrase “herd instinct” derives from this Greek root. 

Herodotus uses the term when he describes the history of the Medes.  When they threw off the rule of the Assyrians, they achieved autonomy.  They later lost it when they allowed a man known for his fair judgment to establish a tyranny over them. 

Herodotus 1.95 [2] Ἀσσυρίων ἀρχόντων τῆς ἄνω Ἀσίης ἐπ᾽ ἔτεα εἴκοσι καὶ πεντακόσια, πρῶτοι ἀπ᾽ αὐτῶν Μῆδοι ἤρξαντο ἀπίστασθαι, καὶ κως οὗτοι περὶ τῆς ἐλευθερίης μαχεσάμενοι τοῖσι Ἀσσυρίοισι ἐγένοντο ἄνδρες ἀγαθοί, καὶ ἀπωσάμενοι τὴν δουλοσύνην ἐλευθερώθησαν. μετὰ δὲ τούτους καὶ τὰ ἄλλα ἔθνεα ἐποίεε τὠυτὸ τοῖσι Μήδοισι.   96. [1] ἐόντων δὲ αὐτονόμων πάντων ἀνὰ τὴν ἤπειρον, ὧδε αὖτις ἐς τυραννίδα περιῆλθον.

The Assyrians ruled Upper Asia for five hundred and twenty years, and from them the Medes were the first who made revolt. These having fought for their freedom with the Assyrians proved themselves good men, and thus they pushed off the yoke of slavery from themselves and were set free; and after them the other nations also did the same as the Medes: and when all on the continent were thus independent, they returned again to despotic rule as follows:--

Thucydides uses the same term to indicate the self-government of Greek cities and Xenophon follows suit when he continues the history of the war between the Athenians and the Spartans. 

Xenophon also uses the term in his Republic of the Lacedaimonians to indicate the practice in most Greek cities of emancipating children when they become adults.  They are then allowed to be autonomous, which means that they are self-governed with respect to their own families. 

Xenophon, The Republic of the Lacedaimonians, 3.1  Ὅταν γε μὴν ἐκ παίδων εἰς τὸ μειρακιοῦσθαι ἐκβαίνωσι,  τηνικαῦτα οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι παύουσι μὲν ἀπὸ παιδαγωγῶν, παύουσι δὲ ἀπὸ διδασκάλων, ἄρχουσι δὲ οὐδένες ἔτι αὐτῶν, ἀλλ’ αὐτονόμους ἀφιᾶσιν·

When a boy ceases to be a child, and begins to be a lad, others release him from his moral tutor and his schoolmaster: he is then no longer under a ruler and is allowed to go his own way.

This does not mean, of course, that the young adult is free from the laws of his city; it does mean that he is in some sense free within the bounds of those laws. 

Autonomy then literally means “self-law”.  It indicated both individual and communal independence: a person or a political community that lived under its own laws.  A political community is free when it is free from the authority of other communities and lords.  A man enjoyed autonomy when he could act of his own free will. 

However, and more revealing, a poet enjoys autonomy when he exercises poetic license and an animal enjoys autonomy to the extent that it can range freely.  Poetic license frees the poet from some convention but it frees him to institute boundaries of his own.  Without boundaries, his poetry cannot have meaning, as all meaning binds.  An animal that ranges freely will nonetheless range within a boundary set by its nature.  It will not go where there is likely to be neither food nor mates nor comfort, but it will turn aside on its own and not for any fence. 

The idea of autonomy extends along three dimensions.  One opens up a space between the natural laws of animal instinct and the artificial boundaries imposed by human husbandry.  The second opens a space between some human community and a larger community seeks authority over it.  The third opens between the individual human being and some larger human community of which he or she is a member. 

Autonomy means liberty rather than freedom.  Freedom is freedom from.  It is simple release.  Liberty is self-government, which is to say, self-legislation.  The topic of this essay is the biological origin of that space within which autonomy is possible.  I will argue that this space opens up with the emergence of human beings as moral and political animals. 

We were social animals before we became human animals.  Social animals must learn to live together.  In a harem species, this is achieved by the dominion of an alpha male whose rule, while he rules, is unchallenged.  In our own species, like our chimpanzee cousins, the position of the dominant individual was never so secure.  Our ancestors evolved into self-legislating creatures.  We were able to internalize rules that allowed us to live within the group but that also allowed the group to resist the domination of would-be tyrants.  We needed to cooperate, as cooperation was the key to social power.  At the same time, cooperation opens up the possibility of cheating and exploitation.  These tensions open the space for human autonomy.