Greetings from our fifteenth floor hotel room in Boston, where yesterday’s Hurricane Sandy maelstrom has relaxed to a dreary gray calm. The storm was a fierce illustration of the power of Nature — completely different from the power of Naturalism, which is what I spent the last few days discussing with some of the smartest people I know, at the Moving Naturalism Forward workshop (as mentioned).
For me personally, the workshop was a terrific experience, digging into important and fascinating ideas with a collection of extremely smart people. Some minor disappointments right at the beginning, as Patricia Churchland, Lisa Randall, and Hilary Bok all had to cancel at the last minute due to (happily temporary) medical issues. But we plowed bravely forward, and we had about the right number of people to both represent a variety of specialties and yet keep the gathering intimate enough so that everyone was talking to everyone else. This was not a meeting devoting to cheerleading or rallying the troops; it was a careful, serious, academic discussion about the issues we struggle with among people who share the same basic worldview.
There have already been some write-ups of the proceedings by Massimo Pigliucci (one, two, three) and Jerry Coyne (one, two, three), so I thought I’d offer mine. But in writing it up I saw the brief impressionistic remarks I originally intended to offer grow into something more sprawling and hard to digest. So I’m splitting it up into a few posts: this one, plus I think three more.
In this part, I’m going to neglect the substance of what was actually discussed, and offer some thoughts about the organization and logistics of this kind of meeting. It was very much an experiment, bringing together a wide-ranging group of people with a clear common interest but very little by the way of formal agenda. This might be the least interesting part for folks who weren’t there, but we’re working hard to provide videos of the discussions, so soon it will be almost as if you were! And my self-critical thoughts might be useful to anyone else who wants to organize similar events in the future.
If I were to grade myself as an organizer, I’d give myself a B. (Maybe a B+ if we were at one of those places with rampant grade inflation.) I thought it was a great group of people, which is the most important thing, so there is that. We all agreed that the very loose discussion-based agenda was the right way to go, rather than having formal talks. In retrospect that was the right choice — everyone around the table was far more engaged than most people are while listening to someone stand up and give a PowerPoint presentation. (A couple of people stood up, and a couple of people used PowerPoint, but nobody did both!) But I also think it would have been beneficial to invest more formal power in the moderators for each session. We proceeded in the style of a family having a boisterous dinner together, with everyone speaking up whenever they had something to say. It worked quite well, but it might have worked even better if the course of the dialogue had funneled through a central person. Janna Levin, who also recognized this tendency, served as the moderator for the very last session, and I thought it was the best-run of them all.
The last session of Day Two involved a discussion of representation and “aboutness” (what it means for one thing to be about something else, and how in the world such a thing can come into existence naturally). It was the only time, I think, when a subgroup of the table ran off into a technical area and left others behind; in particular, the philosophers were hashing out issues of extreme importance to them. As a result, several of the philosophers said that it was their favorite part of the workshop, while most of the scientists were lost. Maybe it’s okay to allow that more focused kind of discussion as a rare event, but I would have liked to wrangle it in such a way that everyone was equally present.
The most common refrain was that we didn’t have enough time to talk about crucial subject X. With which I sympathize, although there was no corresponding opinion that we talked about our (wildly ambitious!) agenda items for too long, or that the meeting was too short (although we lost half a day to Sandy). So this might just be inevitable, in that there were too many interesting and important things to talk about. Given what we did actually cover in two and a half days — the nature of reality, reductionism and emergence, the foundations of morality and meaning, free will and consciousness, and the relationship between science and philosophy — I don’t think “we should have added more topics” is a realistic judgment.
Substantively, however, I do think it would have been nice to have more discussion about particular technical topics in science (and for the most part the philosophers agreed). At one point I tried to introduce some explicit questions about the role of evolution and the development of complexity, but it didn’t really catch on as a topic. Don Ross mentioned that he was hoping for more discussion of interpretations of quantum mechanics (which is crucial for questions of determinism, ontology, and emergence), and I can’t argue with that. Simon DeDeo pointed out that the question of causality plays a foundational role in many of the ideas that we did discuss, but we never actually tackled it explicitly.
More generally — and probably because of our very short overall amount of time — I thought we had fascinating discussions at a very abstract level, but could have spent more time bringing things down to brass tacks. We clarified some deep issues about (for example) free will and morality, but didn’t really try to go the next step and say “Okay, so what is moral?” There was a fascinating moment when Terry Deacon explained how his willingness to do certain kinds of experiments on certain kinds of animals has evolved over time, but we didn’t follow up on nuggets like that. This might be an unrealistic standard, as there were not enough hours in the day to dig deeply into all the topics we discussed, but it was an absence I felt after all was said and done.
I should reiterate that these minor gripes about my own performance as organizer don’t detract from the overall impression of the meeting, which was a fantastic and singular intellectual experience. As I mentioned on Twitter, if you judge the success of a conference by the extent to which the coffee break and lunchtime discussions follow directly on what was said at the formal sessions, I’ve never been to a more successful meeting. Incredibly smart people, focused on very deep and important questions, thinking their brains out about how to answer these questions. If you’re an academic, these are the moments you live for.
Okay, the next few posts will be about what we actually discussed!
If you say that events are the determining factor in what an individual chooses, it is so, but other factors also enter in such as job availablility, family relationships, climate, health, religion, etc. can influence choice, but the individual remains the ultimate decider and is free to choose what best fits his or her life. A person can choose to go to one college or another or to stay home or go to a movie, to buy a car or instead use a bus for transportation, etc., or even choose to believe in God or not. How is this not free will?
This whole discussion reminds me of someone’s description of an Eddie Van Halen guitar solo- “he sounds like he’s falling down the stairs.” Reviewing the summaries from the meeting by the participants, they could not agree on a definition of “free will” even though most said they had a “determinist” viewpoint. Mention was made in the meeting to drop the topic of free will from future pow-wows as it was a ‘black hole.’
Supposedly no real information ever comes out from inside a black hole, though there may be some radiation spritzing out at the event horizon.
Have a good weekend guys, whether you will it or not.
Hello Gang:
Could I possibly be wrong in thinking your blog is a denial of a supreme being…
I am a nobody, outsider, but I suspect your have not give this much thought, to what follows.
God has a tool we call Nature and Nature has two tools we call DNA and Evolution.
Evolution must have something to work upon and that is matter, energy and DNA.
DNA is a library of information so vast that it approaches infinity.
DNA then had to be created by a supreme being.
All knowledge you possess comes from DNA.
And, therefore it implies that there is nothing new under the Sun and existence.
Thank You.
Everette L. Wampler
Author of texts: THE ADVENT of MODERN MAN
Volume 1 – The Message In DNA
Volume II – The End of The Last Ice Age
You should discover how the message in DNA played out to bring forth
The End of The Last Ice Age text.
@Tanner Phillips (#5)
> Philosophy is the queen of sciences, both physical and social.
Philosophy is the mere gift wrapping of science – Once you know what’s inside, the packaging can be discarded.
That’s not to say moral philosophy is worthless, although moral philosophers do tend to go round and round in circles, chasing something that in the end doesn’t really exist.
@Tony,
What you are saying is that we have free will because here are some examples of free will so how is there not free will. Well, you might think you have free will, but what you don’t have is an argument.
Philosophy is a dead language and just ideology supporting local norms for chit chat. By definition it refers to nothing.
The go/no go changes in neurons that triggers and directs behavior occurs in 150 ms. There is literally no time for thought, self-talk, decision-making, choice, emotions or any other higher order concepts. This is also a continual feedback process.
Think of all the “decisions” and micro movements needed to type or drink a cup of coffee. There is no deciding.
If free will, philosophy-ideology-religion-magical thinking were at all valuable to life — why don’t other animals have it?
The main impetus for free will-magical thinking is to justify threatening to punish people who don’t act “morally” according to our definitions. Revenge seems to drive the interest in free will.
To actually learn something look up the Turing Consciousness conference. Listen to all those videos, get the papers and THEN let your beliefs jibe with those facts. Especially useful are the presentations by LeDoux and Cisek. Now philosophers and ideologues can continue to remain ignorant of the facts of brain research and deny them — but the facts remain.
Facts that made no appearance at this recent meeting and that seem to be purposefully excluded.
@30 How so? You are free to choose to do what is good or evil are you not? To kill or not, to steal or not? What is not free about that?
This is pretty simple, really. The facts appear to be that the “I” of Descartes is trivial and inconsequential. It’s no more real than the “god” idea and fulfills the same function creating a magical super entity that can control us and the world around us. False
In fact, the individual, country, planet, solar system, galaxy and likely universe is completely inconsequential, infinitesimally tiny and meaningless. Completely meaningless.
Now, those paid by the word will reach back to the Middle Ages and old books, words and ideas to deny the facts — and Templeton will fund most of them. Denial always feels good – for the moment. But the facts remain and we are just uncovering more of them everyday.
The great victory of modern science, aside from throwing things really far or very tiny things real fast, (space probes and atom smashers) and a drop in infant mortality, which is really due to increased sanitation, is the gradual realization that we know effectively nothing. That is real progress.
We know very, very, very little. So there is a lot of potential upside! lol
Now telling someone that they, and you also, know pretty much nothing is a very bad sales tactic and social discourse is always all about selling something to others so we make junk up – and lie. Bench lab work/”science” is just another ideology called reductionism, extreme physics can tell us something about our brains making us put the trash out, Brittany Spears and pop culture is as determined evolutionarily as hair color, etc. – we make up and swap lots of silly stuff. We’re a hyper-social species and we like to chatter, on and on….
Lying and deception seems a fundamental core of social behavior, thank you Robert Trivers, but actually believing lies can be hazardous to our health. So apparently we need to be good at lying and good at detecting and rejecting lies. Hard to do.
This get together mainly seemed to involve telling lies/falsehoods to each other and pretending — aka any normal human social get together.
There are two aspects of free will that people often miss in discussions. First is the fundamental unpredictability of the human brain (among a lot of other things that are fundamentally unpredictable). This can be most vividly presented if one considers the thought experiment of “rewinding” the history of every particle in the Universe 100 years back, and letting the history play itself back again. Will it be the same as previous time around? Answer: no, it won’t — people will occasionally make different choices than previously. Of course, not just people, but also animals, weather, pendulums, electrons, etc… This is a consequence of randomness that is inherent in Nature and cannot be eliminated. The world is simply not deterministic.
The second aspect is way more interesting — it is the ability of a human brain to consciously override instinct. Think hunger strike, and stuff like that. This ability is (mostly) unique to humans, and this is what religions usually consider to be “free will”. The human brain definitely does have the ability to enforce conscious self-control, unlike most animal brains. I can feel an “urge” to eat something, but I also have a *choice* whether to proceed with or refrain from eating. Or, I can feel an “urge” to kill someone, but I also have the possibility to refrain myself from doing it.
The process of *choosing* is conceptually possible because of the above first property of the brain — it is not a deterministic system, and its behavior is not predetermined. There is always an element of randomness involved. On the other hand, the choices we all make in such situations are almost never random, but are typically a result of some decision making, pain/gain estimating, train of thoughts, etc.
So when someone is annoying me a lot, I may feel the “urge” to slap him in the face. And then I have the ability to follow that instinct, to resist it, or to flip a coin over the decision what to do, etc. If I choose to follow the instinct and do the slapping, I may be held accountable for that action, since I *could* have chosen to do otherwise, in a nonrandom fashion. An animal can not be held accountable for inflicting pain to someone, since the behavior of the animal is completely dominated by instinct, and consequently its “will” is not “free”. Despite having random unpredictable behavior, the animal brain is not powerful enough to contemplate morality and justice while determining the action, but just blindly follows the dictate of the instinct.
The instinct is an old product of evolution, which ensures self-preservation style of behavior. As all other animals, humans have it built-in. But unlike animals, a human brain is powerful enough to also grasp the concepts of right and wrong, moral and immoral, just and unjust, etc. In addition, it is powerful enough to override instinctive actions, based on a decision about these higher abstract concepts. That is what “freedom of will” is all about, really.
Strange how the notion of time gets lost in the comments above. Our thoughts our mental models and our understandings all have impact on how we process the many perturbations which kevinkindsongs likes to refer to as denying free will. These thoughts and interpretations shape the context for the next set of interpretations and so on. Sure it may be “true” that any given microdecision is NOT made but “happens” but it is also “true” that our choices freely made affect context which affects the microdecisions etc. So free will might not be a first order effect but rather a third or fourth order effect. Even as a multi-order effect philosophy has a lot to then say about context. And I must remind all the participants to see http://theterrydeaconaffair.com (Terry’s observations about animal experiments and morality may be inversely related to his views on “borrowing” the ideas of others as being “moral”)
It all comes down to believing in God, a God who gave us the ability to choose to do what is good or what is evil. I think many of those who don’t believe in God do so because He puts limits on what is morally acceptable behavior, by this I mean your Love, hate relationships, I do not mean whether you are gay or straight or however else, those are physical and mental aspects, often beyond your control, no, I mean do you Love your neighbors or do evil to them, and your neighbor is everyone else. That you are born gay or straight is true, and many other mental conditions not well understood, but these do not make you good nor evil. Simply put do you Love or do you hate, you have the choice, that’s the choice that saves or not, even in this world. God is Love, the God that dwells within those who choose it.
Pingback: Reports from the Moving Naturalism Forward workshop | Open Parachute
Pingback: Reports from the Moving Naturalism Forward workshop | Secular News Daily
The idea that there are micro, macro or different kinds of decisions is not supported by any evidence I have seen.
Let’s remember the human neuronal action process (decision making) descended from all other species. So any brain process directing behavior has to be found in them as well. For example, why/how would nature evolve one process for a rats to get food and humans to engage in verbal-logical-conscious evaluation to get food?