The Indelible Stamp of Our Humble Origins – Part I: On The Limits of Freedom

There are a number of species of wasps called digger wasps, commonly found in North America, that can otherwise seem fairly unremarkable, until you put a few curious scientists in their environment.

These scientists would quickly notice a little ritual they follow after hunting for food. Once the wasp has dragged it's prey close to the nest in which it's progeny await their feast, it will pop quickly inside to check all is in order before returning to pull it's victim in.

If these scientists intervene while it's inside, moving the feed away a short distance from the nest, the wasp shows us how meticulous a little busy-body it is, by again bringing it's food to the nest entrance... and repeating it's quick inspection.

The white-coats can repeat this little exercise in cruelty as much as they like.

While not showing a memory that would put even the most forgetful among us in awe, it is hard to think about this wasp's behaviour without thinking about a computer program: something that repeats the same steps over and over.

I feel a very slight twinge of envy considering these wasps. They follow a clear algorithm, without the pretentious idea that they do anything more impressive.

Arthur C. Clark, one of our great science fiction authors, famously wrote that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

With a dose of humility, and perhaps – according to Monty Python – a shot of hard liquor, we must pose a question long familiar to philosophers: how far has our programming advanced beyond these wasps, or are our minds magic incarnate?

Or, phrasing it more conventionally and succinctly: do we, or do we not, have free will?

Even if it does not quite get to answering this question, there is a small thought experiment I consider useful here: to ask “regardless of our having it or not, what would be necessary for us to get merely the impression that we have free will?”

This could lead us to wonder: “could there be a creature that, having free will, was unaware of having it?”

To answer these questions, we have to break free will down in to what would be its necessary parts. I think there are three of them:

1. Sensing the state of the world inhabited (it is important to note that the senses need not be reliable; senses can be useful without being 'correct')
2. Based on what is sensed, choosing an action to perform to achieve an outcome
3. Performing the action

If you take away the first step – sensing – then the second step – choosing an action to achieve an outcome – would be impossible, since a destination could not be expected without some idea of a starting point.

If the second step, “choosing an action,” is absent then the action becomes a reflex, such as what happens when a doctor taps your knee with a hammer. Your body senses the hit, and your ankle jerks away. Reflexes are not “free.”

Finally, it is assumed that there is always an action performed, which may in a simple case be to do nothing.

From here, I can imagine two ways a creature could assume (correctly or not) that it possessed free will:

1. Remember the state sensed after an event, and that it acted during that event to reach it. (It is not necessary to remember before the event)
2. Know of it's own decision-making step (that is, the second step I mentioned earlier)

Even if a creature could not know of it's own decision making, it could still deduce (possibly incorrectly) that it made such a decision – as long as the first option holds for it.

Notably, our wasp friends can not remember the outcome of their action, at least in any way that is useful to them later.

The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard made the lovely observation that life can only be lived forwards and remembered backwards. Consistent with this, we could imagine – unlike the first option – two occasions on which a creature could “know of it's own decision-making step:”

1. At the time it is making the decision (it's living).
2. After it has made the decision (it's remembering).

While any creature without amnesia would remember making a decision it had lived, there is no guarantee it lived every decision it remembers. Or at the very least, it's memory may not be perfect.

For a creature to posess free will, and not merely have an impression of it, it is clear that the creature must be aware of it's choices at the very occasion at which they are made. Otherwise, we must ask, in which sense are they choices?

Rene Descartes, famous for his “cogito ergo sum” - “I think therefore I am,” lived during a time when it was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain the “free will” illusion. His 'solution' was to consider the human body and mind as two separate entities: the body a material machine, and the mind a byproduct of an “immaterial soul.”

Admittedly, this idea could be stretched to fit with some of modern physiology, which divides the nervous system in to two parts, the “Autonomic Nervous System” (ANS) and “Somatic Nervous System.” (SoNS) Some functions are entirely controlled by the Autonomic Nervous System, such as our heart rate, and the amount of light our iris allows through to the retina. Some straddle both systems, such as breathing, which we can mediate to an extent. Others are entirely manual, and effected through the Somatic Nervous System, such as the extension of an arm, or the clenching of a fist.

Descartes' division and the illusion of free will it tries to support really begin to tear apart when we get to modern neuroscience. We are becoming increasingly knowledgable of the electrochemical bases of thought and behaviour. Some experiments reveal that brain activity corresponding to decisions occurs hundreds of millisecods to a few seconds before we are consciously aware of them.

I do want to let this sink in, as little practical use as it may be to your daily lives, because the consequences here are profound: this evidence suggests that your consciousness, probably what you recognise as your “self,” is in a very real sense your body's spectator.

You are your own doppelgänger.

Descartes should have said “I am therefore I think.” Because when you say that, you realise that your thoughts reflect you, not the other way around. Our memory, that faculty setting us apart from the wasps, can only ever tell us what we were, not what we are, and certainly not, certainly not that we are free.

Delivered on January 31, 2012