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elfsThe Atlantic magazine has an article out this morning entitled, A Famous Argument Against Free Will Has Been Debunked, and it contains just about the usual amount of claptrap.
As many people may know, I don't believe in most of the popular notions of free will. The idea that "in the same circumstances, given a second chance, I would decide differently" is a categorically nonsensical statement: you will never be given a second chance, you will never have the same circumstances. You might be given a new chance, and that opportunity will come with the lessons learned from the previous experience.
The Journal Entries, for all the erotica within them, contains a lot of debate about the varieties of free will worth wanting, and the varieties of "humanness" worth preserving. A lot of the issues in the stories are about decision: why we decide a certain way, and how we make those decisions. There is, underlying the entire series, an ironic awareness of just how subject to prior circumstance we are, and just how arbitrary our valuing of our ongoing existence as conscious, emotional creatures is. As one character recently revealed, "It's all we got... without it, the universe would be different, but not in a way we would like or even understand. And we wouldn't be here to appreciate it. I'm glad we are here. Aren't you?"
What the study highlighted by the Atlantic says is that underlying as apparently valueless decision, one with nothing at stake and no input to drive it, is a random noise that our brain puts out every day which reaches a peak activation energy. Basically: when you're bored, your brain eventually does something to un-bore you.
That's not free will, and it's not a debunking of the neurological argument against free will.
I do believe that there are varieties of free will worth contemplating, and having, and believing in. I do worry that behavioral and neurological studies might begin to constrain the very sense we have that we "feel free," and we should be on our guard against such intrusions into our mental space.
But this study is neither of those. It's just an affirmation of what we already know. And The Atlantic fails to make an interesting case for its headline.
As many people may know, I don't believe in most of the popular notions of free will. The idea that "in the same circumstances, given a second chance, I would decide differently" is a categorically nonsensical statement: you will never be given a second chance, you will never have the same circumstances. You might be given a new chance, and that opportunity will come with the lessons learned from the previous experience.
The Journal Entries, for all the erotica within them, contains a lot of debate about the varieties of free will worth wanting, and the varieties of "humanness" worth preserving. A lot of the issues in the stories are about decision: why we decide a certain way, and how we make those decisions. There is, underlying the entire series, an ironic awareness of just how subject to prior circumstance we are, and just how arbitrary our valuing of our ongoing existence as conscious, emotional creatures is. As one character recently revealed, "It's all we got... without it, the universe would be different, but not in a way we would like or even understand. And we wouldn't be here to appreciate it. I'm glad we are here. Aren't you?"
What the study highlighted by the Atlantic says is that underlying as apparently valueless decision, one with nothing at stake and no input to drive it, is a random noise that our brain puts out every day which reaches a peak activation energy. Basically: when you're bored, your brain eventually does something to un-bore you.
That's not free will, and it's not a debunking of the neurological argument against free will.
I do believe that there are varieties of free will worth contemplating, and having, and believing in. I do worry that behavioral and neurological studies might begin to constrain the very sense we have that we "feel free," and we should be on our guard against such intrusions into our mental space.
But this study is neither of those. It's just an affirmation of what we already know. And The Atlantic fails to make an interesting case for its headline.
