A Theory of Soul Consistent with Scripture and Neuroscience - Part 14: Free Will Needs the Substrate of Randomness

              Some time ago I introduced the hypothesis that the soul has an “efferent system” and that one part of this efferent system was responsible for the “soul-to-brain” (or “immaterial-to-material”) interaction.  I suggested that this was the quintessential mystery surrounding the concept of a soul.  Specifically, how does the soul, which (presumably) is immaterial, have an effect on a living thing, which is material/physical?  I said I had a theory about how that happens, and now it is time to dive into that theory.  In today’s entry, I am just going to lay the groundwork of where in the universe we should look for the actual immaterial-to-material action.  With respect to the mechanism itself, we will discuss that in more depth in the future. 

              I mentioned in the entry where I introduced the efferent system of the soul that the problem of how an immaterial thing like the soul could have any influence on something material like the brain, is a long-discussed problem.  If you’d like to get some background on that from a really excellent series of videos, I strongly recommend the series of videos that Jeffrey Kaplan (U North Carolina) has put together.  Specifically, the video about Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia critique of Rene Descartes’ dualism would give you a great basic background, which you can find <here>.

              Today, though, I’d like to start at a more philosophical level.  I’m going to try to address the following three questions:

 

1.  What are the conditions under which an immaterial “willed” thing might influence a physical thing?

 

2.  Why haven’t we already discovered that influence? 

 

3.  Wouldn’t willed actions break the laws of physics?

 

              I’m going to use an illustration that I have partially introduced in the past <here>.  Once we’ve worked through it, then I will go back and show how it provides insight into answers for the three questions I’ve posed.  I think the illustration also answers a common criticism of many opponents of free will, so we will finish up by addressing that issue at the end.

              The illustration I’m going to describe is a theoretical experiment involving some measurements with a penny.  The experiment involves a robot gripper that holds a penny vertically – i.e. the faces of the penny are perpendicular to the surface they are dropped onto.  The gripper is 1 meter above a very solid and flat base.  The apparatus includes an extremely accurate means of recording when the gripper opens (and the penny starts to drop), and when the edge of the penny first hits the table.  Thus, the “time of flight” can be calculated very accurately.  Further the entire apparatus is carefully set up so that when the penny hits the base, it will bounce around and eventually land half of the time with the heads up and half of the time with tails up (and never stays on edge!). 

              For the purposes of this illustration, there are some features that might be hard to duplicate in an actual experiment, but for which we can easily imagine an apparatus that was designed as described.  The experiment will be performed in a total vacuum so that there is no influence of air molecules on the time-of-flight of the coin.  The base of the apparatus will be perfectly flat and hard, such that repeated experimentation does not wear out the base (and, we’ll assume the penny doesn’t wear out either…or that we have an infinite supply of perfectly matched pennies).  Also, the base does not move relative to the center of the earth.  There is no earthquake during our experiment.  I suppose we’ll have to imagine eliminating the gravitational pull of the moon and similar extraneous forces.

              The point of these features is this:  when we calculate the gravitational constant of the penny falling from its 1 meter height, we calculate the constant to be 9.80665 m/s² every single time.  The error in our time-of-flight measurement is less than 5 decimal places, so we never see that error in our reported value. 

              In addition to measuring the time-of-flight for each penny drop, we also record whether the penny lands heads or tails.  As mentioned, the apparatus is designed so that the distribution of heads to tails is 50:50.

              OK, great.  Now we are going to run our experiment in 100 sets of 100 trials, for a total of 10,000 data points.  Remember, it’s a thought experiment, so we can choose anything, and 10,000 data points seemed to me like a sufficiently large sample size to convince ourselves of some “certainties” in the analysis of our data.

              Now, we will average the values for each set of 100 trials for both the gravitational constant calculation and the heads:tails calculation.  The resulting outcome is pretty easy to imagine.  It’s going to look something like this:

 

Trial #            Average Gravitational Constant (m/s²)            Number of Heads

1                                9.80665                                                                      51

2                                9.80665                                                                      48

3                                9.80665                                                                      51

4                                9.80665                                                                      54

5                                9.80665                                                                      50

6                                9.80665                                                                      52

7                                9.80665                                                                      46

8                                9.80665                                                                      47

…

100                            9.80665                                                                      49

 

              We could plot them.  The gravitational constant would be a single point.  The number of heads would have a distribution centered around 50 (approximately) and spread out on either side of 50.  If we did enough trials, eventually we’d have one where there were 100 heads and one where there were 0 heads.  But that would take a lot of trials!

              OK – so what?  I hope this is all very pedestrian to you.  Obviously, this is what is going to happen.  If you don’t believe me, try it yourself.

              Now for the fun and interesting part.  I’m going to introduce a soul into this experiment who will exercise free will.  How, you might ask?  Well, I just happen to have a very willing soul that has free will and is readily available to assist with this experiment:  namely, me!

              So, here is what I am going to do.  Sometimes, as the penny falls, I’m going to grab it and then set it down on the table.  On some trials I will hold the penny for a bit and then set it down.  Sometimes I will actually grab it quickly and slam it down on the table faster than it would normally fall.  Sometimes I’m going to see if I can grab it but still have it hit the table at exactly the time it normally would have in a free fall.  And sometimes I’m just going to let the penny fall without interfering.  I’m not going to tell you how many trials I will interfere with – it could be every trial, or none of the trials, or somewhere in between.  Also, each time I grab the penny I will decide if I’m going to place it on the table with the heads up or the tails up (i.e. I will use my free will – it will not land randomly). 

              Finally, I’m going to place an opaque and soundproof barrier between you and the apparatus, so all you can see is the readout:  the calculated gravitational constant and whether the penny landed heads up or tails up.

              Now, your job is to identify the trials where there a soul intervened with free will, and the trials where the laws of physics were allowed to do their natural, physicalist thing.  For starters, here’s the data from the first ten trials that we did:

 

Trial #            Calculated Gravitational Constant (m/s²)            Heads or Tails

1                                   9.80665                                                                    H

2                                 11.05052                                                                    T

3                                 15.67812                                                                    T

4                                   9.80665                                                                    H

5                                   9.80665                                                                    T

6                                   7.78888                                                                    T

7                                   8.675309                                                                  T

8                                   9.81789                                                                    T

9                                   9.80665                                                                    T

10                               28.05052                                                                    T

 

              Let’s start with the gravitational data.  Can you identify in which trials free will was inserted?  Of course you can.  It is totally obvious, even though all you can see are the numbers.  Trials 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, and 10 are obviously “free will trials.”  I hope you are impressed, though, with trial #8 when I tried hard to match the natural fall of the penny and I got within 10 milliseconds!  That was pretty cool.  Also, you might also be able to identify which trial occurred while I was listening to Tommy Tutone.  The point is this:  it’s obvious which trials have free will in them.  If pennies had free will and could act like this in a purely physical system, there would be no mystery about free will.  Actually, if pennies (or any other inanimate object) had free will, we’d never know that there was a gravitational constant.  We’d just know that the entire universe was unpredictable.  But that is not what happens in a purely physical world:  it is totally predictable and exactly the same.  It is repeatable.  That’s what allows us to perform meaningful experiments.  If inanimate objects had free will, scientific inquiry couldn’t exist.

              OK, fine, now let’s move over to the heads or tails column.  If you did not have the gravitational data – just the heads/tails data – could you identify which trials are “free will trials” and which are not?  Think about it before you answer.

              You cannot tell which trials were the ones I intervened in and which trials I let normal physics play out.  In fact, if I hadn’t told you that I was going to mess with how the pennies landed, you’d never even imagine that there might be free will buried in your column of data.  This is true no matter what “pattern” of coin flips I might decide to use.  In the ten trials shown above, every time I intervened, I placed the coin down on the table with tails up.  But even knowing that information, you still can’t tell which trials are which.  Sure, at some point, if I intervened in every trial and placed the coin tails up 100 times in a row, you might get suspicious.  But regardless of what I did, you could never prove that free will was involved because a random distribution such as this includes the possibility that the coin will land tails up 100 times in a row.

              Let’s say, however, that I don’t want you to know that I’m intervening with the coins on some of the trials.  I can easily do that with a few simple rules.  Let’s say that I only intervene with a few of the 100 trials in each set.  Let’s say two – two out of 100.  And, further, let’s say what I do is decide which side I want up – heads or tails – in the first of my two trials in which I intervene.  Then, just for fun, in my second trial I always place the coin on the opposite side.  So, if I decided this set of 100 trials was going to be my “heads” set, I’d place a heads trial first and then some random number of trials later, I’d intervene and place tails.  You would have no chance of guessing which trials I intervened in.  We could repeat this 100 times…10,000 times…a google times…and you still would have no chance of accurately guessing the trials I intervened on. 

              The point is this:  we know that free will, if it acts at all, acts in a way that we cannot detect with our physical instruments.  We’ve been searching for free will since at least the “swerve” of Epicurus, and we haven’t found it.  So, how could free will have escaped our measurement all this time?  By “hiding” in randomness!  I know that many of you don’t believe that there is such a thing as free will, but I think you would agree that if free will exists, it acts within random events, not determined events.  Otherwise, we’d have observed it in action already.

              Now I’d like to circle back to my original three questions and show how this helps us answer those questions: 

             

1.  What are the conditions under which an immaterial “willed” thing might influence a physical thing?

              Answer:  free will has to have its influence through some existing random process.  In fact, if it can be proven that there are no random processes in the entire universe, then I think you will have proven that free will does not exist.  Randomness is a necessary substrate for the existence of free will (although it is not a sufficient substrate).

 

2.  Why haven’t we already discovered that influence? 

              Answer:  the action of free will within a random distribution cannot be distinguished from the other random samples by any outside observer.  And, at least when it comes to any actions by anyone else, we are always outside observers.

              Is it weird to suggest that free will “hides”?  Almost as if it had…I don’t know…a free will?  Yes, I think it is kind of weird to suggest such a thing, but, the point is, given that human beings have been searching for free will for millennia…and they haven’t found it…that would seem to indicate that it is hidden.  Also, if free will could be predicted, then it wouldn’t be free will anymore.  So, yes, I think free will is hidden – hidden from scientific discovery.  However, on the other hand, free will is the most obvious thing to every human being who exercises it.  If you don’t like something that could hide from science, then I guess you will reject free will along with other very valuable things like love and creativity.

 

3.  Wouldn’t willed actions break the laws of physics?

              Answer:  if randomness truly exists, and free will acts within the bounds of that randomness, then no laws of physics are broken.  No new energy is introduced into the physical system. 

 

              There is one more thing I’d like to mention, which is an argument that opponents of free will often bring up when anyone starts talking about free will living within randomness.  Most often, the free will proponent will say something like “quantum indeterminacy shows that free will could exist.”  The opponent will say “indeterminacy has no will – it doesn’t get you any closer to free will.”  I agree with those opponents.  If the claim being made is that “free will = randomness”, then such a claim is meaningless.  Willed events are not random events.  But the point I’m trying to make here is that free will requires randomness to exist in order for free will to exist, but free will is not the same as randomness.  Fish require water to exist – but that doesn’t make fish the same as water.

              After all this, you might claim that it is suspiciously convenient that this theory of free will makes free will something that can’t be observed, leaves no trace, does not alter the laws of physics, and therefore can never be proven to exist and can never be measured or even caught in the act.  Free will would be just like the Flying Spaghetti Monster.  If free will does not “want” to be found, then the outside observer not only cannot find free will in their observation of the data, but they can’t even have a suspicion that free will is hiding in their data.  If I didn’t tell you that I had altered some coins, you’d never think of it.  Free will can make the outcome be totally random within every possible measurement of randomness, thus erasing every trace of its existence.

              I would argue that this description sells free will very short.  Yes, it is true that if free will lives within randomness, you can never find it by outside observation.  But none of us are outside observers in this experiment.  We’re the subject of the experiment.  As the subject of the experiment, you can know that free will exists because you experience it.  Although you would not be able to identify which trials above were “free will” trials and which were not; I, as the subject, had no problem identifying them.  I know which coins I placed and which I let fall randomly – it is not at all hidden to me.  As the subject, I know that I intended to do something, I decided to go ahead and do it, and I did it.  I know I had a choice.  You, as an outside observer, have no way of proving that I made a decision, but I do, because I made the decision. 

              So…is the observer right, or is the subject right?  You’ll have to decide that on your own – you can play each role (assuming you are a human being with free will) and see which side you consider the most reliable.  I can’t prove either side.  But what I want to stress is the following:  if you’re looking for free will, you need to look for a site of randomness where it can live and flourish.  In our next entry, we’ll explore whether it is possible to find the randomness we need within the nervous system.

 

A Theory of Soul Consistent with Scripture and Neuroscience - Part 6: Soul 101, Class #2

 [See here for introductory comments.]

               I theorized that the soul is composed of at least three major components that I referred to generally as Afferent System, Efferent System, and Processing & Memory [see here].  This entry is about the Efferent System of the soul. 

 

The Efferent System of the Soul:  “The Will”

              The efferent, or "motor system", of the soul is basically what we might generally refer to as "the will".  This is where free will is generated and implemented.   The efferent system is where the interaction between the spiritual "soul-world" and the physical "flesh-world" happens.  The efferent system is, at least in my view, the most mysterious component of the soul and probably the most mysterious thing in the entire universe.  To me, the entire “mystery of the soul” really comes down to this aspect.  In fact, I think it is at this point that many people decide the soul is too mysterious for rational belief and they jettison their belief in the soul, and with it, anything supernatural.  They become physicalists, and probably determinists, as they stand at the edge of this great mystery.  Belief in the soul becomes childish in their eyes.  Instead of gazing on this mystery in amazement, they walk away.  I get it.  Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia understood this very problem almost 400 years ago.  It’s not new.  My goal in this series of blog posts on the soul is to get some of you to take a second look at this mystery.  What if the immaterial world actually does influence the physical world?  All I’m asking is for a chance to put forward a concept for consideration.

              As think there are at least two major parts to the Efferent System of the Soul.  One part is the aspect that performs the mechanics of the "spiritual-physical link."  Somehow the decisions made by the soul have to produce an influence on our physical actions.  How in the world is it possible that some non-physical entity could impact what we do?  In fact, as I've discussed elsewhere [here], we can narrow it down much further:  at some point, this action has to affect one or more neurons in the brain.  How?  To be honest, I had some theories on this that I was embarrassed to put into writing, and I thought “surely others have thought about these ideas and have written about them.”  Eventually, after a few years of searching, I found some others who have written about these concepts in the past 40 years or so, and so I feel like I can now describe these ideas and at least I will have company when I am ridiculed.  But I’m not going to dive into those details here – you’ll have to wait a bit for that! <it will be linked here>

              The second part of the efferent system is the actual decision-making component.  This component is the entity that generates an uncaused cause [see here].  This is the entity that generates a decision that is unpredictable, but not random.  And, just like the unity feature of consciousness [here], there is nothing else in the universe (that we know of) that is like this.  There is no other force or condition or outcome that is not either "caused" or "random".  As a result, it is impossible to come up with an analogy without introducing human will into the analogy, thus creating some circular logic.  Some would say that the uniqueness and downright craziness of thinking there could be something that appears random (i.e. unpredictable), and yet is not random, should drive us all to doubt the idea of free will.  But, as I have discussed elsewhere, for me, free will is a given - it is the starting point - because I experience it moment by moment.  I do not throw it out just because it is conceptually difficult, if not impossible, to fully describe.  I can't explain why bumblebees fly either, but I see them flying so I don't entertain the possibility that "since I can't make sense of it, they must not be flying."  I know that there are whole libraries full of books denying the existence of free will.  I’m not going to argue the point here.  My point in this entry is to just say “Here’s where I think free will exists.”

              I actually don't know if it is right to call the efferent component, "the will."  There are a lot of terms used for this concept, often poorly defined (probably because of the circular argument problem).  I think this component might also be analogous to what some refer to as human "agency".  Or, from a spiritual standpoint, it might be proper to call it the "spirit" of a person.  Or even "heart."  Whatever you call it, it is the seat of moral responsibility.  The existence of "the will" is why we can hold human beings responsible for their own actions in a manner different than a dog or a worm or a computer.  Whatever you call it, the general content of our moral decision-making (what kind of a person we are), and the implementation of those moral decisions, is established in this component.    

              How is "the will" or "agency" established in each human?  Are we born with it?  Is it set by God?  Is it just random chance?  This line of thinking, which ends with the idea that you'd have to create your own self in order to have free will, is, in my opinion, a very tough argument for libertarians like me to counter.  It's a body blow that I have to absorb because I can't answer that question.  I take some solace in the fact that the concept of God has the same issue.  Did God create Himself?  If not, then how did He come into being and who decided what God's character was going to be like?  When it comes to God, of course, we simply say that God had no beginning - He always was.  There is no question that God has free will <well…actually, see here>.  So did God freely choose His character?  There's no answer to that.  I have an idea about the infinitesimal "beginning" of human free will, but that will have to wait for some future entry.  But I don't reject the idea of God just because I can’t answer these questions because, in many ways, this whole mystery (how did God create Himself?)  is exactly what makes God, God.  In the same way, the conundrum of "creating yourself" is exactly what makes free will, free.  Like Blaise Pascal, I like this mystery.  To me it is exciting.  More mysterious and exciting and even "spooky" than quantum entanglement!

              I will just say one thing with respect to the question "are we born with it?" in relation to our free will.  I think there are a lot of reasons to believe that this part of the soul grows and matures, roughly analogous to physical development.  I think that the maturing of the soul could provide an explanation for why we persist in thinking there is some kind of "age of accountability" for humans.  This is a common difficulty in raising kids.  At what point are they responsible for their own actions and should be punished or praised accordingly?  There is certainly nothing that happens outwardly that indicates a sudden transition from "not accountable" to "fully accountable."  At some age, kids are "tried as adults."  We pick ages (5...12...18...etc.) for this "transition" because we have no other means of making this determination.  But some kids seem to mature quicker than others.  And what about kids with mental disabilities?  One size doesn’t fit all, but we don’t have good options.  These are all good questions, and a soul - specifically a "will" - that grows and matures over time provides part of a framework for understanding how to address these questions.

              Remember that in my theory of the soul, the efferent system is generally exercised in a manner that is sparse, infrequent, and weak.  This is partly what I was trying to point out in my entry on "It's a Dog's Life."  The brain can run on its own without requiring input from the Efferent System of the Soul, and, I think most of our life operates "physically."  Thus, when we start digging into how the soul actually influences the brain, the mechanics of this influence have to take the "weak and infrequent" nature into account.  However, when we focus on character qualities that are uniquely human - say something like forgiveness or even altruism - we expect the soul is involved.  That's where we should expect to see the action of the immaterial soul on the physical brain.

              I'm going to stop here with this initial description because this takes me back to my purpose:  to present a theory of the soul that is consistent with neuroscience and scripture.  The key thing is that the Efferent System of the soul is the one concept where science could have real explanatory power.  Specifically, I claim the soul exists in each person and is influencing neurons (albeit infrequently).  That concept can theoretically be subjected to experimentation.  If my hypothesis is correct, then this soul-neuron interaction is happening in every human being who is alive at this very moment.  Thus, there are lots of potential study subjects!  At the very least, neuroscience can establish significant guidelines as to where, when, how, etc. this interaction could happen.  That’s why, for me, it is important to have a theory that fits both the Christian concept of a soul but also fits within the guidelines established by neuroscience.

              And now on to the third major component of the soul:  processing and memory.

 

Emergence 2 – Mona Lisa

           I started exploring the idea of “emergence” in a previous entry <here>.  Emergence is the idea that something can have a property that doesn’t exist in its individual parts.  This could be the fluidity of water or the solidity of ice or even the color of ice.  But it could also be the properties of ant colonies that emerge when millions of ants work together and it could be the properties of societies when a large group of humans get together.  In fact, in some sense, anything that is not a fundamental principle could be considered an emergent property.  And, as I mentioned previously, probably the most interesting proposed example of an emergent property is consciousness.  “Consciousness as emergence” is the idea that when a complex network of neurons interact, consciousness emerges from that network even though it is not present in any one neuron. 

             In the first entry on this topic, I discussed the emergent property of meaning that arises from a collection of letters.  My contention was that the emergent property of meaning only exists in one place:  the conscious perception of an individual.  Thus, the “emergence” in this case can be boiled down to conscious perception and, in the end, the concept of emergence is exposed to be just another word for consciousness.  However, there is some disagreement about whether the meaning that emerges from letters is really the same as most commonly accepted examples of emergence, so it is necessary to dig deeper into this topic.

             Today I’d like to use what I think is a more commonly accepted example of emergence:  an image that emerges from a painting.  Let’s take the Mona Lisa painting by Leonardo da Vinci.  It is, at a molecular level, just a bunch of molecules spread over a canvas.  None of the molecules in the paint or even in the canvas have any resemblance to, or concept of, the image of Mona Lisa that we see when we look at the picture.  Thus, the image that we see can be said to be an emergent property of the painting or an emergent property of the molecules of paint that make up the image.  The sum of the paint molecules in the Mona Lisa is certainly greater than just the collection of paint molecules themselves.  There is something more there – something that emerges when the molecules are arranged carefully (by da Vinci) that could not have been predicted or expected by just examining the molecules of paint themselves.

             The question we want to consider is this:  where is the image of the Mona Lisa with respect to the painting?  Where does this emergent property exist?

             In order to explain the point I would like to make, I’m going to simplify the situation with some simplifying assumptions.  I don’t think any of these simplifications affect my conclusion, so please bear with the simplifications and then we can circle back at the end and consider whether the real complexity of the situation changes the conclusions I have drawn.

             First, I’m going to use a printed image of the Mona Lisa instead of the painting itself.  Specifically, a laser-printed image of the Mona Lisa.  Don’t worry – the image will be immediately recognizable when you look at the page.  But, if you were to greatly magnify the printed page, you would see that it is really just composed of a series of printed dots of different colors.  Each dot is a single color, based on the ink colors available in the printer.  We could go deeper in magnification and talk about the molecules that make up each dot, but that’s not necessary for the purposes of this thought experiment.  I think it will be obvious that the image of the Mona Lisa is not resident in the dots of different colored ink.  The dots themselves have no knowledge of what image they are a part of, obviously.  The printer itself was not given information about Mona Lisa – it was only given information about what color dots to print where.  But there is one thing for certain:  when we look at the page, we see Mona Lisa.

             Now I’m going to make a couple of major simplifying assumptions.  Let us imagine that there is a one-to-one match between the dots of colored ink on the paper and the photons of different color being reflected off of the page.  In this case, a single blue photon is reflected off of a single blue dot on the page and heads to your eye.  A single red photon is reflected off of a single red dot and heads to your eye.  At some given instant in time, all of the differently colored photons are reflected off of their respective dots and head to your eye.  If all of the photons were in sync with one another and timed just right, there would be a mass of colored photons heading toward your eye.  Each color and the location of each dot is preserved in that mass, or column, of photons.  Thus, in some way, you could slice that column of photons and get an image of the Mona Lisa.  But, of course, the photons, like the dots on the page, have no knowledge of the Mona Lisa.  They are just photons taking a specific color and existing in a specific point in space.  The emergent property of the image of the Mona Lisa is nowhere to be found in this collection of photons.

             This group of photons now enters your eye where they activate the rod and cone receptors in your retina.  My second simplifying assumption is that each photon actives a single cone cell, which then generates an action potential that travels along a single nerve fiber in the optic nerve.  Thus, there is a one-to-one correlation between the whole set of photons and the action potentials on multiple fibers in the optic nerve.  If the nerve fibers in the optic nerve preserved the geometric relationship of the cones in the retina, you could slice the nerve at some point and recreate the “digital image” of the Mona Lisa (after converting the action potentials to their indicated colors).  Again, that is an oversimplification for the purpose of this analogy.  The point is that the light image of the Mona Lisa lands on the retina and activates the appropriate cones, which send their signals along the optic nerve to the occipital cortex of the brain.  The parallel arrangement of the signals in the optic nerve are preserved, since each cone cell has a direct “single line” connection to the brain (due to my simplifications).

             The parallel signals along the optic nerve now enter the occipital cortex, where they kick off a complex neural network that extends around the visual cortex.  Some of one side of the image is split off and mixes with the other side.  Edges are identified.  Colors are identified.  The network of neural signals keeps expanding to different areas of the brain.  Memory is activated and the image is compared to past knowledge and things we recognize from our past.  All of this happens pretty quickly because it doesn’t take us long to glance at the picture of Mona Lisa before we recognize it as being Mona Lisa.

             Some might think that eventually these neural signals end up activating some single neuron in the brain that only lights up when you look at a picture of Mona Lisa.  That is sometimes referred to as the “grandmother cell hypothesis” though I’m not sure that was ever a serious scientific idea.  But there is no such single neuron.  Instead, the collective activity of the neural networks across the brain give rise to the general awareness, and thus conscious perception, of Mona Lisa.

             My contention is that, until this final step of consciousness, there is no place for any emergence of the image of Mona Lisa.  In this whole process, from the dots on the page, through the light transmission, to the neural activity - all the way to the brain – there is no place where the information is brought together into a cohesive “image of Mona Lisa”.  It doesn’t happen until it happens in our brain and we have the conscious recognition of “oh – that’s the Mona Lisa.” 

             It is reasonable to wonder whether my simplifications resulted in my “factoring out” emergence from what really happens.  Of course the whole process is much more complex.  Lots of photons are bouncing off of each dot on the page and heading to the eye, not a single photon.  They are coming at different angles, different colors, etc.  But photons stay as photons – they don’t mix together to create a cohesive image – so I don’t think anyone would claim that the emergence of the image of Mona Lisa arises from the reflection or travelling of photons from the dots on the page.  However, once the photons get to the rods and cones in the retina, the processing is certainly a lot more complex than my simplification.  There are ganglion cells in the retina and some pretty complex processing happens even just between the cones/rods and the ganglion cells.  My argument here is that the processing in the eye is just an extension of the processing that is carried on in the visual cortex.  It can all be lumped under the category of neural processing in the “brain” and, in fact, the retina is considered part of the central nervous system.  Thus somewhere, somehow, the image of Mona Lisa arises from the neural processing in our brain (or central nervous system, if you prefer).  The emergent property of the image – the Mona Lisa - does not exist until we consciously perceive it.  My contention is that every example of emergence (at least every example of “weak emergence”) boils down to this same conclusion:  the “emergent property” only emerges in our conscious perception of it, and nowhere else.

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             I imagine a discussion with someone about how it is that consciousness just arises from the neural activity from the brain.  I would maintain that consciousness is non-material [see here], whereas they would maintain that consciousness is purely a physical thing that naturally arises from the action of neurons.

             “If consciousness is purely a physical process, what is the means by which it just arises from neural activity?” I would ask.

             “Consciousness is just an emergent property that naturally arises from the activity of neurons, just like many other emergent properties of material objects.”

             “An emergent property?  What does that mean???  Could you give me an example of an emergent property outside of consciousness itself?”

             “Well, for example, imagine you’re looking at the painting of the Mona Lisa…”

Emergence 3 - Wetness of Water

Emergence 1 – My Contention

             I want to explore the idea of “emergence” or “emergent properties”, as I understand the philosophical concept to be.  Emergence is probably more popularly summed up in the common phrase “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”  Emergence is the idea that something can have a property that doesn’t exist in its individual parts.  I think the most common example typically put forth as an emergent property is the “wetness” or “fluidity” of water.  Water is just a collection of H2O molecules.  An H2O molecule has no property, by itself, that could be called wetness.  But when you put a bunch of them together (and the temperature and pressure are right), the property of wetness “emerges” out of the collection of molecules, and thus it is considered an emergent property.  An emergent property is also frequently defined as a property that you would not (or could not?) have predicted by just looking at the individual parts.  The idea of emergent properties is apparent in everything from molecules to societies.

             There are lots of examples of emergent properties, and I will explore some in future entries.  However, there is really only one so-called emergent property that I care about:  consciousness.  How consciousness is related to the actions of a bunch of neurons communicating with one another is of great interest to me.  There are many people who consider consciousness to be the quintessential example of an emergent property.  They say that consciousness is a property that naturally arises from the complex interaction of neural networks.  This allows them to consider consciousness to be a natural part of the material world – as natural as the wetness of water - and nothing more.  Importantly, this allows them to reject any idea that consciousness is non-material or immaterial.  I think that is a mistake (see here and here), and I hope to show why I say that over the course of a few thought experiments that I will initiate with this blog entry.  My contention is this:  calling consciousness an emergent property of the brain is tantamount to saying that “consciousness is the property of exhibiting consciousness” …which is no explanation at all.  Further, I want to make the contention that all “emergent properties” are conscious perceptions.  I contend that “emergence” and “consciousness” are the same things, and so you can’t use one to explain the other, because all you are saying is “consciousness is consciousness.” 

             This is a tricky argument for me to explain, so I’m going to unravel it slowly, hoping that what I say makes sense.  This is my first time trying to explain this concept, so it may be a bit rocky.  I would certainly be interested in people’s comments on the matter.

             I’m going to start my series of thought experiments about emergent properties by using an example that I have to admit is marginally “emergent”:  specifically, the meaning of words.  If we string together a couple of “A”s, a couple of “I”s and an “L”, “M” and “V” in the right order, we can create a meaning that emerges from those letters that is certainly not contained in any single letter and could not be predicted by examining the letters alone.  We could string those letters together to create the phrase “I AM ALIVE”, which has a very significant meaning that has nothing to do with the letters themselves.  The meaning of the phrase could be considered an emergent property of those letters.

             My question now is this:  where does the emergent property of those letters exist?  Does it exist on the page (or screen) where those letters appear?  Does the emergent property somehow float above the letters in some way?  This is obviously not the case.  If an ant crawls across the page, it doesn’t encounter the meaning of the phrase encompassed by the letters.  If a bird flies overhead and sees the entire phrase, it doesn’t encounter the emergent property of the meaning of the phrase.  In fact, if a non-English speaking person, or an illiterate person, looks at the entire phrase, they also will not experience the emergent property of these letters.  The only one who experiences it is an individual who knows the meaning of the phrase as it is written.  Thus, the emergent property exists only in the minds of human beings.  Further, it exists only in the minds of some human beings.  Thus, since not all seeing humans experience the meaning of the phrase, I think it should be clear that the emergent property does not exist in the visual perception of the words or even in the visual cortex.  Two different people can look at the phrase and see exactly the same image in their brains, but one experiences the meaning and the other, who doesn’t know English, experiences nothing.  In fact, it is not until the firing of various neurons in our brain are brought together into our conscious perception of the fact that the image we see on the page is actually a phrase, and the phrase means something, that we experience the emergent property of meaning.  Thus, in this example, the emergent property of the meaning of the phrase is our conscious perception of it.  The emergent property just is conscious perception, in this case.  If we then say that the meaning of letters is an emergent property, we have not found a new property at all.  All we are describing is our conscious perception of the meaning.  We initially ascribed the emergent property to the letters themselves, but that’s not where the emergent property exists.  It exists nowhere but in our consciousness.  It just is our consciousness.  There is no difference between the emergent property of “meaning” and the conscious perception of meaning.  I hope that makes sense.

             If the meaning of words were a clear example of what people call an emergent property, then I might be able to rest my case with this one example.  But calling the meaning of words an emergent property is not particularly clear.  Most “true” emergent properties spontaneously arise from the collection of their parts.  The meaning of words does not naturally arise from their existence.  Meaning also requires a set of rules of language, rules that have to also be understood and agreed on by others who use the same language.  For the words to have the meaning they have, there are a lot of outside things that have to be brought to bear upon the series of vertical, horizontal, and slanted lines that make up the phrase “I AM ALIVE”.  Given that, I don’t think most people would consider “meaning” to be an emergent property in the same way that “wetness” is an emergent property.  I’m not sure I totally agree with that, since it seems to me that if you consider the parts of your system to be the letters plus the linguistic rules of English, then you can still say that meaning emerges from the sum of the parts, it’s just that the parts are a lot more complex.  But I’m not going to argue that here.

             In summary, to the extent that the property of “meaning” is an emergent property of letters, the concept of emergence is shown to simply be a restatement of the property of consciousness.  They are one and the same.  The idea of meaning itself cannot exist without consciousness.  My goal is to show that the same thought process can be applied to more standard examples of emergence and that the same conclusions can be drawn. 

Does God have Free Will?

             If you are trying to engage someone in a productive discussion on some particular point of disagreement, it is often helpful (necessary?) to go back to a starting point where you both agree and then find out where the divergence of thinking actually occurs.  In doing this, you often find that the point of disagreement is not really what you thought it was.  In that vein, I was recently thinking about a particular line of argument in my head and I thought it would make sense to go back to a statement everyone would agree with.  So, working backwards in my mind, I eventually settled on the following question as a starting point for agreement: “Does God have free will?”  I considered it to be a rhetorical question.  I said to myself “Of course the answer has to be ‘yes.’”  Everyone would agree that God has free will.  It seemed like a great starting point for the line of discussion I had in my mind. 

             When I first considered this question, I considered it so obvious that I thought even people who don’t believe in God would agree with it.  Specifically, I thought everyone would agree with the following statement:

 

“If there is a God of any consequence, then the one fundamental characteristic he[1] must have is the characteristic of free will.”

 

             Well…I’ve come to realize that not everyone agrees with that statement.  At first I was incredulous.  I really was.  But the more I’ve considered the issue, the more I’ve come to realize that it’s a trickier question than I first imagined.  I’ve come to realize that it is not the obvious starting point at which everyone would agree.  But I’ve also come to realize that it might be a rather valuable starting point from which to consider the whole issue of free will and determinism.  That issue, when debated and discussed, is almost always focused around the human condition – i.e. do humans have free will?  But in all of my reading on the issue of free will (which, granted, is limited), I have not come across any serious in-depth discussion of free will as it might relate to God.[2]  I know, of course, that not everyone believes in God and so many might say “why argue about something that doesn’t exist?”  But, as I phrased the question above, I think it is a useful line of thinking for anyone, including those who do not believe there is a god of any kind.  The point is, our views about free will and determinism are really exposed if we start asking about free will for a being, hypothetical or not, that has characteristics of being all-powerful and all-knowing.  Can such a being have free will???

             Exploring this question has not changed my original view:  I still think the answer is a resounding “yes.”  I still think that God obviously has free will.  But I can see now that part of the reason I feel that way is based on the very fundamental views I have about reality.  Those views are not shared by everyone!

             An example of the pathway this question takes is to rephrase it to something like “Can God do what He wants?”  Again, my first reaction is “of course God can do what He wants.”  But, then, someone might say “If God knows the future, then is He is bound to act according to that future, so He is not free.”  That’s a common problem with an all-knowing God.  But I think most people would say that God is outside of time and space – i.e. is not constrained by time and space – and therefore it’s not at all clear what it would mean for God to “know His own future.”  God is not living through time, waiting for certain events to happen and then making a decision (free will decision?) about them.  But, then, you have to wonder if free will has the same meaning if you take time out of the equation.  For example, can cause and effect happen in a realm devoid of time?  I’m sure a few philosophers have wrestled with that question and written books on the topic.  But, as for me, I’ve never experienced life outside of time so I have no idea how timelessness works.

             OK, so fine, that’s plenty confusing.  Maybe a similar question would be that, if God is outside of time and space, what does it mean for God to “want” something?  The word “want” as we typically use it, has a basis in a universe constrained by time.  If you “want” something, it implies that you don’t have it now but you would like to have it in the future.  Thus, it quickly becomes clear that you would have to define “want” differently when it comes to God (or any being existing outside of time), and so the question gets messy.  So, then you have to ask “can God want anything?”  And down the philosophical rabbit hole we go!  As is often the case, philosophy becomes a task of carefully defining the terms, which can often prove rather difficult and never-ending.

             One question we often ask with respect to free will has to do with responsibility for one’s own actions.  So, what about the question “Is God responsible for His own actions?”  Here we might have a clear answer.  We could ask it another way: “Can anyone or anything else be responsible for the actions of God?”  If the answer is “yes”, then doesn’t that make the “anyone” or “anything” the real God?  And so we would be asking the same question of that “anyone” – are they responsible for their own actions?  The buck has to stop somewhere unless there is one big circle of causality, which seems illogical to me.  So, I would say “yes, certainly God is responsible for His own actions.”  Is there anyone who would disagree with that?

             So here is where this line of thinking seems to help identify points of divergence.  I, personally, make a direct link between “responsibility for your actions” and “free will.”  I cannot conceive of any reality in which you can be responsible for your own actions if you are not free to decide those actions.  If God does anything, He is responsible for it.  And, if He is responsible, then He “chose” it.  And, if He chose a course of action, then He could have chosen otherwise.  If He could not choose otherwise, then who or what prevented Him from choosing otherwise?  If something can prevent God from choosing otherwise, then that person/thing becomes God in my opinion.  Here’s where the concept of God’s free will diverges from a concept of man’s free will.  The question of “could I (a human being) have chosen otherwise?” is harder to answer.  As a human being, I could be compelled by some other force or thing or being, and so the answer to the question is not as obvious.  But, when it comes to God, well, God, by definition, cannot be controlled by any outside force.  The answer to that question has to be “God is not compelled by any other force to make the decisions He makes” in order for God to be truly God.

             I suppose this line of thinking is a lot like asking if God is the “first cause.”  To me, that is part of the definition of God.  In fact, some would argue that it is the need for some “first cause” that is the best argument for the existence of God.  You can’t ask “who caused God?” or “who created God?”  God is not created and is not caused.  Personally, I do find the argument logically reasonable, but I don’t see it as the best argument for the existence of God – at least not the existence of a living God – as I discuss elsewhere <here>.

             In future entries, I am going to be building on the idea that God has free will.  But I acknowledge here that not everyone will accept that concept at face value.  I would certainly be interested in hearing the ideas of others on this topic.

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[1] I know that a hypothetical “god” could be he/she/they/whatever, but writing that out every time is tiring to me and so I’m using the shortcut “he”.

[2] If you know of any such discussions, I would appreciate being sent a reference or link.