[Vision2020] Neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga: "Who’s in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain."

Joe Campbell philosopher.joe at gmail.com
Mon Jan 2 04:15:09 PST 2012


Meant to post this to everyone.

On Sun, Jan 1, 2012 at 10:16 PM, Joe Campbell <philosopher.joe at gmail.com>wrote:

> Thanks for the very interesting post Ted. I'll have to read this a bit
> closer and read the links but here are a few thoughts on the topic.
>
> 1/ I think the neuroscience research is very interesting and very
> important. I'm familiar with some of it but I need to read more about it
> before I can make an informed decision. There is a conference in Florida
> State later this month and I'm toying with the idea of going to it since I
> have a bit of travel money left for the semester.
>
> Whether neuroscience research tells us something new about the free will
> debate is not clear and it depends on your views on free will and which
> issues surrounding the free will debate are the important issues. Here are
> are three main theories:
>
>
>    - Free will skepticism (or antirealism or denialism) is the view that
>    no one has free will.
>    - Compatibilism is the view that free will is compatible with
>    determinism. If you combine this with the view that we have free will and
>    determinism is true, the view is called "soft determinism."
>    - Libertarianism is incompatibilism (free will is not compatible with
>    free will) combined with the view that we have free will (and thus
>    determinism is false).
>
> Most free will skeptics think that results from neuroscience confirm their
> view. This is a very popular view among contemporary free will scholars,
> and that is one reason why the neuroscience research is relevant to the
> contemporary debate.
>
> Suppose you are a libertarian. Likely you're not impressed by neuroscience
> discoveries. The reason is that all of the correlations discovered so far
> are statistical. Since neuroscience discoveries don't entail determinism
> and many libertarians are convinced that only determinism is threatening to
> free will (God's foreknowledge for instance is not threatening according to
> many libertarians), few libertarians think the research is important.
>
> I'm a compatibilist: I think that free will is a set of active powers and
> cognitive capacities and that these powers and capacities are consistent
> with a fully determined world. Since I don't think that determinism is a
> threat to free will, I certainly don't think that the kinds of statistical
> correlations established by neuroscience are a threat either.
> To give you some idea of my view think of a simple capacity like the
> ability to partake in means-to-ends reasoning. This I think is essential to
> both free will and moral responsibility. This is why I don't think dogs
> have free will but some people do (small children for instance do not).
> Note that the capacity to partake in means-to-ends reasoning is not the
> only capacity relevant to free will. It's just one example.
>
> It seems odd to think that a capacity like means-to-ends reasoning can
> only exist if determinism is false. Likewise, it is doubtful that research
> in neuroscience will reveal that we don't really have the capacity. Rather
> it will help us to understand how this capacity is manifested and thus
> actually help us to understand the nature of free will. I am a naturalist
> about free will and just as science can help us understand the natural
> world it can help us understand its "philosophical" aspects, like free will.
>
> My meta-project in philosophy is to promote naturalist views about
> traditional philosophical concepts, for example self, free will, and God.
> These are distinct from what I call "transcendental views." Examples would
> be the self is an immaterial soul, free will is incompatible with
> determinism, and God's existence transcends our earthly existence. I think
> skeptical opinions result from the acceptance of some transcendental view
> as the defining characteristic of a philosophical concept combined with the
> belief that the transcendence is not possible, or there is reason to think
> it is false. My response all cases is to deny the first move. Free will is
> not some spooky power that suddenly emerges in human beings a some point in
> their development. It is the collection of natural powers and capacities
> that naturally develop during the life of the average person. That's why we
> don't (or shouldn't) hold babies responsible for anything, why we hold
> children responsible for some but not all things, and why we hold "normal"
> adults responsible for more things than children. As we grow we develop
> more complex powers and capacities.
>
> 2/ I want to make another comment, just about the title of Gazzaniga's
> book: "Who's in Charge?" Suppose I say, rather crudely, "my neurons are in
> charge." How is this a threat? As a naturalist, I think that I'm a physical
> thing made up of neurons among other things. I do things in part because my
> neurons do things. You need a transcendental view of the self to get the
> threat going.
>
> 3/ You're correct that there is no generally agreed upon definition of
> free will. The one I establish in my book is that a person has free will if
> and only if some of his actions are up to him, or within his control. Then
> you can understand the above theories as attempting to flesh out the
> consequences of what it means to say that actions are within the control of
> persons. Can we have control over our actions if determinism is true, for
> instance? I think "yes." Of course, not all people have control over their
> actions and control often comes in degrees. On my view, control is a
> function of active powers and cognitive capacities. Diminished or
> underdeveloped capacities suggests a kind of lack of control and that
> suggests a diminished level of responsibility.
>
> I think it is debatable whether we hold animals "responsible" for
> anything. But you can't infer that we do just because they suffer
> sanctions. We might kill a dog for having rabies but we'd do it whether or
> not we think his getting the rabies was within his control. The important
> concepts behind moral responsibility are praiseworthiness or
> blameworthiness. Is a dog blameworthy for biting an individual? I think
> sometimes a dog might be responsible for such an action, so it is possible
> that we do hold animals responsible. But what about insects? When you spray
> some ants with a can of raid certainly you are punishing them. But do you
> blame them in anyway? And if you did blame the ants, would they be worthy
> of the blame? That seems a little odd. Ants are not morally responsible for
> anything, though perhaps they have active powers.
>
> 4/ Singleton was a monster. I remember the case well. I'm generally
> against capital punishment but not because I feel sorry for people like
> Singleton. It strikes me as wrong to kill people (generally speaking) and
> two wrongs don't make a right. But this is a complex issue of course.
> Nonetheless, of course Singleton deserved to be incarcerated and for a
> longer time than he was prior to his initial release. As you say, that can
> be justified for purely pragmatic reasons. But was he responsible for his
> actions? Was worthy of blame? That is less clear to me. I don't have enough
> about his psychological makeup to make a valid judgement about this. It
> says below that he might have had a "bad brain" and was unable to inhibit
> his naturally aggressive tendencies." Depending on whether this is true and
> whether his inability to inhibit his actions was a result of diminished
> cognitive capacities, it might be that he was not blameworthy for his
> heinous crimes. The issue of blame can rest on the awful nature of the
> crimes. If a child dies in a hurricane that is a horrible event. But it
> would be silly to blame the hurricane. Hurricanes don't have the kind of
> stuff one needs to be blameworthy. It might be that monsters like Singleton
> don't either. (My own view, based on what I know, is that he is
> blameworthy. But I don't know enough about the facts here.)
>
> I think moral responsibility comes in degrees. So it isn't so much that
> folks like Singleton can never be blamed. A better thought is that there
> might be mitigating circumstances. We hold children responsible but not
> fully responsible for some of their actions. And perhaps we should do the
> same for psychopaths. And for the same reason. The capacities needed for
> full free will are diminished. My own view is that active powers play a big
> role in free will. So most people are at least somewhat responsible for the
> things they do. As long as we can act, likely we have some degree of
> control over our actions.
>
> But you can justify Singleton's incarceration even if he was not morally
> responsible for his actions, for pragmatic reasons if nothing else. There
> is no one-to-one correlation between theories of moral responsibility and
> theories of incarceration. But it is correct to note that free will
> skepticism does not necessarily undermine our criminal justice system. (I
> have separate criticisms of our criminal justice system that I'll save for
> a different time.)
>
> One reason I believe in free will is I think some people are clearly out
> of control while others are clearly not. Free will skepticism would not
> allow us to distinguish these folks in any relevant way. You might say "Why
> not just switch to the word 'control' and get rid of the word 'free will'."
> But that is to confuse concepts with words. It is the concept that is
> important. Sure you can dispense with talking about free will but you can't
> dispense with distinguishing the difference between folks who have no
> control of their actions from folks who do; you can't get away from the
> fact that some people are blameworthy and some are not.
>
> 5/ A completely utilitarian justification of punishment will not work.
> Note that punishment and incarceration are not necessarily the same thing.
> punishment seems to imply blame. Suppose you are a free will skeptic and
> think that Singleton's punishment is justified because it leads to the
> greatest good for everyone. Why then does it matter whether he actually
> committed the particular crime for which he was arrested? If we agree that
> he's a scumbag, wouldn't that alone justify us in his incarceration if all
> we cared about was the greatest good for everyone? Why shouldn't police
> just round up the worst people we can find whenever a crime is committed.
> This would seem to be justified by a purely consequentialist view. It seems
> to me that an important fact in the incarceration of Singleton was that he
> was the one who did the heinous act. But if he had no control over his
> actions, it isn't clear that he was the one who did it.
>
> On Sun, Jan 1, 2012 at 4:23 PM, Ted Moffett <starbliss at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I listened to an interview recently with neuroscientist Michael
>> S. Gazzaniga, author of the new book, "Who’s in Charge?: Free Will and
>> the Science of the Brain."  Publish Date: November 15, 2011:
>>
>> http://ebookstore.sony.com/ebook/michael-s-gazzaniga/who-s-in-charge/_/R-400000000000000529963
>>
>> Given the recent return to Vision2020 of a local scholar who has
>> considerable expertise on this subject, perhaps he can expound on
>> whether he thinks Gazzaniga has added anything new to the discussion
>> of this subject.
>>
>> The interview was fascinating, though as I noted before on Vision2020
>> regarding "free will," I find the concept confounding, do not claim to
>> know how to define it; and Gazzaniga has not resolved this lack of
>> clarity.
>>
>> I started this post several days ago.  But today I discovered that at
>> 6 PM PST tonight, on BookTV C-Span2, Gazzaniga will be interviewed
>> regarding the very book referenced in this post:
>>
>> http://www.booktv.org/Program/13035/After+Words+Michael+Gazzaniga+Whos+in+Charge+Free+Will+and+the+Science+of+the+Brain+hosted+by+Sally+Satel.aspx
>>
>> What is especially amazing, it seems to me, is that so many
>> people are confident they know what free will is and that most everybody
>> definately possesses this capacity, most every moment of our waking, at
>> least,
>> lives, thus justifying revenge and retribution of various cruel kinds
>> for misconduct.  For most everyone to understand the complexities
>> involved in the concept of "free will" is perhaps like saying most
>> everyone has PhD. level understanding in nuclear physics!
>>
>> Note I am not suggesting abandoning assigning responsibility and
>> mitigation for misconduct, regardless of any deficiencies in the
>> understanding of free will.  How many people think dogs possess "free
>> will?" But if a dog is inclinded to bite or has bitten humans, the dog
>> is often held "responsible," and either trained not to bite (domestic
>> violence counseling, as a human parallel), be muzzled or sequestered
>> (jail, prison), or executed, often without an intention to take
>> revenge for a canine moral failing based on "free will."
>>
>> The following article by Gazzaniga explores some of these issues:
>>
>>
>> http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2011/11/neuroscientist_michael_s_gazzaniga_explains_why_some_people_may_be_born_criminals_.single.html
>>
>> Not Guilty by Reason of Neuroscience: Some people’s brains may doom them
>> to
>> a life of crime.
>>
>> By Michael S. Gazzaniga
>>
>> http://www.slate.com/authors.michael_s_gazzaniga.html
>>
>> Posted Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2011, at 11:17 AM ET
>>
>> From the book "Who’s in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the
>> Brain", by Michael S. Gazzaniga. Copyright © 2011 by Michael S.
>> Gazzaniga.
>> Reprinted by permission of Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
>>
>> On Feb. 19, 1997, a house painter called 911 in Tampa, Fla. He had
>> returned
>> unannounced to a client’s house and through a window saw what appeared to
>> be a naked man throttling a naked woman. When the police arrived, they
>> learned the man hadn’t just strangled Roxanne Hayes; he had stabbed the
>> mother-of-three multiple times, killing her.
>>
>> The murderer’s name was Lawrence Singleton; he was 69 years old, and he
>> was
>> notorious in California, where 19 years before, he had raped a 15-year-old
>> hitchhiker, Mary Vincent; hacked off her forearms; and left her in a
>> canyon
>> to die. Two vacationers came across her the next morning, walking naked
>> toward the interstate, the stumps of her severed arms raised to prevent
>> further blood loss. Vincent’s description of her attacker was so vivid
>> that
>> it resulted in a police artist’s drawing that his neighbor recognized.
>>
>> Singleton was tried, found guilty, and given what was the maximum sentence
>> at the time in California of 14 years. He was released on parole, however,
>> after eight years of “good behavior,” even though shortly before his
>> release a prison psychiatric evaluation read, “Because he is so out of
>> touch with his hostility and anger, he remains an elevated threat to
>> others’ safety inside and outside prison.” Mary’s mother, Lucy Vincent,
>> said that Mary’s father would carry a .45-caliber pistol and often
>> contemplated killing Singleton.
>>
>> Because Singleton had written letters to her lawyer threatening her while
>> he was in prison, Mary was terrified after his parole. So were
>> Californians. Residents of every California town that prison authorities
>> tried to settle him in staged angry protests. He was finally settled in a
>> mobile home on the grounds of San Quentin prison until his parole was up
>> and he moved to Florida.
>>
>> In 2001 Singleton died of cancer while on death row in Florida. Mary
>> Vincent told a reporter that his arrest and death had given her a
>> “tremendous feeling of freedom,” but that she still had such vivid
>> nightmares (during which she had actually dislocated her shoulder, cracked
>> ribs, and smashed her nose) that she was afraid to go to sleep. Divorced,
>> with prostheses that she has modified with spare parts from broken
>> refrigerators and stereo systems, she is now an artist struggling to
>> support two sons.
>>
>> While you read this, what were your gut feelings and thoughts about Larry
>> Singleton? Did you want him to be locked up and never released
>> (incapacitation)? If you had been Mary’s father, would you, too, have
>> wanted to kill him (retribution)? Or did you want to forgive him, to tell
>> him that it is too bad his brain was unable to inhibit his naturally
>> aggressive tendencies and that perhaps with some treatment he could be
>> more
>> prosocial (rehabilitation)?
>>
>> Incapacitation, retribution, or rehabilitation are the three choices
>> society has for dealing with criminal behavior. When society considers
>> public safety, it is faced with the decision about which perspective those
>> making and enforcing the laws should take: retribution, an approach
>> focused
>> on punishment of the individual and just desserts; or consequentialism, a
>> utilitarian approach that what is right is what has the best consequences
>> for society.
>>
>> Neuroscience is beginning to challenge some people’s notions about
>> criminal
>> behavior and what we should do about it. Determinism—the belief that all
>> current and future events, actions, decisions, and behavior are caused by
>> preceding events combined with the laws of nature—disputes long-standing
>> beliefs about what it means to be responsible for one’s actions; some
>> scholars assert the extreme view that humans are never responsible for any
>> of their actions. These ideas challenge the very foundational rules
>> regulating how we live together in social groups. Should people be held
>> accountable for their behavior? If they aren’t, it seems that it would
>> change behavior for the worse, just as studies show that merely reading
>> about determinism results in increased cheating on tests. Is
>> accountability
>> what keeps us civilized? Neuroscience has more and more to say about these
>> questions and is already slowly oozing into the courtroom—prematurely, to
>> the view of most neuroscientists.
>>
>> Californians thought that Singleton should not have been paroled, and they
>> didn’t want him in their communities. They also thought that certain
>> behavior warranted longer incarceration. They were right, and the parole
>> board was wrong. More recently, the legal system has been looking to
>> neuroscience to provide answers in several different arenas: predicting a
>> person’s future threat (recidivism), determining for whom treatment is
>> possible, and deciding what level of certainty about these determinations
>> is acceptable. Are some crimes just too horrendous to contemplate release?
>> Neuroscience is also illuminating why we have the emotional reactions that
>> we do to antisocial or criminal behavior.
>>
>> This leads us to the question that if we understand our reactions that
>> have
>> been honed by evolution, can or should we amend them? Are these emotions
>> the sculptors of a civilized society? We have our work cut out for us!
>>
>> The philosopher Gary Watson has pointed out the simple fact that as we
>> come
>> to think about ourselves, we shape the rules that we decide to live by.
>> Primatologists Michael Tomasello and Brian Hare have argued that we have
>> been domesticating ourselves over thousands of years through ostracizing
>> and killing those who were too aggressive, in essence removing them from
>> the gene pool and modifying our social environment. If they’re right, then
>> we have been making rules for groups to live by and enforcing them
>> throughout our evolutionary history. If neuroscientific findings lead us
>> to
>> think differently about ourselves, our behaviors, and motivations, about
>> the nature of man, about what we are, and about how we should interact;
>> then we *may *decide to reconstruct our social framework—and our legal
>> structure.
>>
>> Is our natural inclination for retribution necessary, or is utilitarian
>> accountability sufficient? Is punishment justified? These are questions
>> that haven’t in any way been answered, but they are brought to the fore by
>> research on the brain and what it tells us about who we are. We are going
>> to see that our current legal system has emerged from innate intuitions,
>> honed by evolution, just as our moral systems have been.
>>
>> Who Done It: Me or My Brain?
>>
>> Legal systems serve as a social mediator of dealings between people. We
>> should keep in mind the niche construction dynamic when attempting to
>> characterize the law and our concepts of justice and punishment, formed,
>> as
>> they were, by the human brain, mind, and cultural interactions. Legal
>> systems elaborate rights and responsibilities in a variety of ways. In
>> most
>> modern-day societies, the laws made by these systems are enforced through
>> a
>> set of institutions as are the consequences of breaking those laws. When
>> one breaks a law, it is considered to be an offense against the entire
>> society, the state, not an individual. Currently, American law holds one
>> responsible for one’s criminal actions unless one acted under severe
>> duress
>> (a gun pointed at your child’s head, for instance) or one suffers a
>> serious
>> defect in rationality (such as not being able to tell right from wrong).
>> In
>> the United States, the consequences for breaking those laws are based on a
>> system of retributive justice, where a person is held accountable for his
>> crime and is meted out punishment in the form of his “just desserts.” But
>> new research raises the question: Who do we blame in a crime, the person
>> or
>> the brain? Do we want to hold the person accountable or do we want to
>> forgive him because of this determinist dimension of brain function?
>>
>> From today’s vantage point: It is all about the brain—what it does and
>> does
>> not do. We are born with an intricate brain slowly developing under
>> genetic
>> control, with refinements being made under the influence of epigenetic
>> factors and activity-dependent learning. It displays structured—not
>> random—complexity, with automatic processing, with particular skill sets,
>> with constraints, and with a capacity to generalize. All of these traits
>> evolved through natural selection and provide the foundation for a myriad
>> of cognitive abilities that are separated and represented in different
>> parts of the brain. These parts feature distinct but interrelated neural
>> networks and systems. In short, the brain has distributed systems running
>> simultaneously and in parallel. It has multiple control systems, not just
>> one. It appears to be a determined, finely tuned biological machine.**
>>
>> Neuroscience Oozing Into the Courtroom
>>
>> The law is complicated and takes into consideration more than just the
>> actual crime. For example, the intention of the perpetrator is also part
>> of
>> the equation. Was the act intentional or accidental? In 1963, Lee Harvey
>> Oswald had the intention of killing President Kennedy when he took his
>> concealed rifle to the building along the parade route, waited there until
>> the president’s motorcade was passing, and shot him. In an Australian case
>> the following year, however, Robert Ryan was judged not to have had the
>> intention to murder when he killed the cashier of a store he had just
>> successfully robbed. While leaving the store, he tripped, accidentally
>> pulled the trigger of his gun, and shot the cashier.
>>
>> While movies, books, and television portray crimes ending up in a
>> courtroom
>> where intention and many other circumstances are examined, very few
>> criminal cases actually go to trial, only about 3 percent; most are plea
>> bargained out. Once we step into the courtroom, the laboratory of judicial
>> proceedings, neuroscience has an enormous amount to say about the
>> goings-on. It can provide evidence that there is unconscious bias in the
>> judge, jury, prosecutors, and defense attorneys; tell us about the
>> reliability of memory and perception with implications for eyewitness
>> testimony; and inform us about the reliability of lie detecting. Now it’s
>> being asked to determine the presence of diminished responsibility in a
>> defendant, predict future behavior, and determine who will respond to what
>> type of treatment. It can even tell us about our motivations for
>> punishment.
>>
>> Robert Sapolsky, professor of psychology at Stanford, makes the extremely
>> strong statement: “It’s boggling that the legal system’s gold standard for
>> an insanity defense—M’Naghten—is based on 166-year-old science. Our
>> growing
>> knowledge about the brain makes notions of volition, culpability, and,
>> ultimately, the very premise of a criminal justice system, deeply
>> suspect.”
>> The M’Naghten rules arose after the attempted assassination of British
>> Prime Minister Robert Peel in 1843 and have been used to determine (with a
>> few adjustments) criminal liability in regard to the insanity defense in
>> most common law jurisdictions ever since. The British Supreme Court of
>> Judicature, in answer to one of the questions posed to it by the House of
>> Lords about the insanity law, responded:
>>
>> “the jurors ought to be told in all cases that every man is presumed to be
>> sane, and to possess a sufficient degree of reason to be responsible for
>> his crimes, until the contrary be proved to their satisfaction; and that
>> to
>> establish a defence on the ground of insanity, it must be clearly proved
>> that, at the time of the committing of the act, the party accused was
>> labouring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not
>> to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing; or, if he did know
>> it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong.”
>>
>> The question that Sapolsky raises is: Given determinism, given that we are
>> beginning to understand mental states, given we can track down which part
>> of the brain is involved in volitional activity and that it may be
>> impaired, and our growing knowledge that we can be specific about the
>> existence of an impairment and what is causing it, will we view the
>> defendant differently?
>>
>> At stake in the arguments is the very foundation of our legal system,
>> which
>> holds a person responsible and accountable for his actions. The question
>> is
>> this: Does modern neuroscience deepen our ideas about determinism, and,
>> with more determinism, is there less reason for retribution and
>> punishment?
>> Put differently, with determinism there is no blame, and, with no blame,
>> there should be no retribution and punishment. This is the simmering idea
>> that people are worried about. If we change our mind about these things as
>> a culture, then we are going to change how we deal with this unfortunate
>> aspect of human behavior involving crime and punishment.
>> ------------------------------------------
>> Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
>>
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>
>
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