The hard problem of free will

This is part 2 in the series of articles about the classic problem of free will, as a result of discussions I had with Nick Thompson, Pieter Steenekamp, Glen Ropella and others from the FRIAM group. In the first part we have explored free will through the lens of Daniel Dennett’s book “I’ve been thinking” [1], asserting that the free will we possess is the ability to make decisions without duress. Dennett views free will as an “achievement”, as the learned ability to control one’s actions and resist manipulation. Finally we underscored the value of free will by pointing to the existence of a century-old industry — the advertising, PR, and marketing industry dedicated to influence our decisions. This industry serves as compelling evidence that free will exists and is indeed a “treasure” that various groups and organizations constantly seek to control for their own purposes. Dennett was right: it is an achievement against all odds.

Aspects of the hard problem

As Nick observed in the comments of the first part, it is all a matter of perspective, and it turns out that the hard problem of consciousness and the hard problem of free are related. Normally animals including ourselves perceive themselves in the first person view and others in the third person view. Social animals take a step further and perceive the own group in the first person view and other groups in the third person view. The hard problem is to understand the first person view in others (the hard problem of consciousness and subjective experience) and the third person view of ourselves (related to self-awareness and the problem of free will). From this point of view the two fundamental problems are related.

Why is it so hard and one of the fundamental problems? Because there are multiple problems we need to solve and insurmountable obstacles that impede us if we want to find our own way to go.

To achieve free will we need to be

• free of basic needs that distract us (e.g. the bottom of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs)
• free of hidden influences by external forces & from goals imposed on us
• free from illusions and self-deceptions

If all these conditions are fulfilled we need to be

• able to formulate our own intentions (which requires language)
• able to perceive ourselves in the third person view (which requires self-consciousness)
• able to set our own directive (which is tricky)

We have a chance of free will only if we can perceive ourself and the forces acting on us in the third person view. This allows us in principle to set our own directive. But this is tricky because as Schopenhauer noticed “A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants” (“Der Mensch kann tun, was er will, aber er kann nicht wollen, was er will”). All these obstacles make you wonder why free will is possible at all. And yet we have the ability to break the patterns that govern our behavior. We have the freedom to choose what we want to be on fire about. The question is how?

Basic Biological Needs

To be able to think about achieving our own goals and intentions in the first place we must be free for a moment from the constant needs and desires of our biological bodies. If the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is not fulfilled than there is no room for free will left. A homeless person in San Francisco thinks only where he can sleep and what he can eat, while a billionaire can do whatever he wants. He can even use champagner for the shower on his superyacht, as Gregory Salle describes in his book “Superyachts: Luxury, Tranquility and Ecocide” [2].

Hidden Social Influences

One obstacle is to be free of hidden influences by external forces and from goals imposed on us. What are the hidden forces which try to influence our decisions (thereby reducing our free will) and how can we resist? As described in the last article, advertising and marketing play an important role here. They all want to influence our free will and impose goals on us we are supposed to want (like you need to eat that burger or buy that t-shirt). How this subtle persuasion is done is explained in countless books like “Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind” [3] or “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” [4] or “Advertising, The Uneasy Persuasion” [5] and many others. Thus the question should be “who has free will?” Obviously the rich and those who are smart enough to resist manipulation by marketing, advertising and propaganda have much more free will than the rest.

Free from Illusions

Another closely related obstacle is to get rid of the illusion that we know what we want. Erich Fromm says in his book “Escape from Freedom” [6] that “Modern man lives under the illusion that he knows ‘what he wants,’ while he actually wants what he is supposed to want. In order to accept this it is necessary to realize that to know what one really wants is not comparatively easy, as most people think, but one of the most difficult problems any human being has to solve. It is a task we frantically try to avoid by accepting ready-made goals as though they were our own.”

The third person view

Then there is the obstacle to perceive ourself from the third person view, which is of course difficult, because it leads to self-consciousness, and this is a source of confusion. As Gilbert Ryle says knowing yourself is tricky. He writes [7] “Should I, or should I not, put my knowing self down on my list of the sorts of things that I can have knowledge of? If I say ‘no’, it seems to reduce my knowing self to a theoretically infertile mystery, yet if I say ‘yes’, it seems to reduce the fishing-net to one of the fishes which it itself catches”. In his book Gilbert Ryle positions himself as a “ghost buster” by arguing there would be no ghost in the machine. Ergo no ghost in the machine which could have a free will either. The difficulty is despite all this confusion to develop the ability to think about yourself in order to define your own intentions.

Setting your own directive

Setting your own intentions and goals, your own directives is the ultimate form of free will, isn’t it? William James says in “The Principles of Psychology” in Volume 2 ( Chapter XXVI “WILL” ): “The essential achievement of the will, in short, when it is most ‘voluntary,’ is to ATTEND to a difficult object and hold it fast before the mind”. He continues “though the spontaneous drift of thought is all the other way, the attention must be kept strained on that one object until at last it grows, so as to maintain itself before the mind with ease. This strain of the attention is the fundamental act of will.”

He suggests that the act of will is fundamentally an effort of attention because minds wander and thoughts drift, like particles who are subject to constant random movement. Our ability to focus attention, especially in the face of competing distractions, is therefore central to our experience of exercising free will. Free will is according to James related to the question “what are the forces that increase or influence our attention”. Is it us – by setting our own goals and our own directives – or something else?

Since we can not change our own intentions, desires and directives directly, we usually need to do it indirectly by interacting with someone or something which acts as intermediary. It can be as a simple as an entry in a calendar or a sticky note which tells our future self in the next days what to do. Or it can be praying (collectively or individually) which is essentially talking to our future selves, as mentioned in the book [8] I have written. Talking to our future selves helps to set our own directive. If we remember what we said or thought in our prayer then our past selves tell us what to do and what to avoid. In this sense it helps to realize the will incorporated in the remembered text, usually in religious contexts the will of an higher entity, but it can also help to realize the will of ourself, and thereby help to enable free will, volition and willpower.

References

[1] “I’ve Been Thinking” by Daniel Dennett
[2]  Superyachts: Luxury, Tranquility and Ecocide by Gregory Salle
[3] “Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind” by Al Ries and Jack Trout
[4] “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” by Robert Cialdini
[5] “Advertising, The Uneasy Persuasion” by Michael Schudson
[6] Escape from Freedom, Erich Fromm
[7] The Concept of Mind by Gilbert Ryle
[8] Hidden Genes, Jochen Fromm

( The Unsplash photo of a trail is from user Erin O’Brien )