...that you do not exist.
Mike Flynn takes on Sam Harris' argument that self-consciousness is an illusion. Harris relies on an experiment that purportedly shows that brain activity purportedly showing that a decision has been made precedes the subject's conscious awareness of the decision. It is a classic experiment that supposedly cast doubts on self-awareness (but what it may show is that the decision is made by something not subject to measurement before it is communicated to the embodied portion of the self.)
Flynn's post starts thus:
Once more a public thinker has set forth to prove in public that he has no mind. The brain atoms inhabiting the vehicle called "Sam Harris" have moved Mr. Harris's fingers to type a blog post yclept: Free Will (And Why You Still Don't Have It) contending that he did not intend to type a blog post, but was caused to do so by a congeries of external and internal stimuli.It seems to me that not only does this beg the question, it is entirely consistent with the Thomistic notion that the self is composed of a physical body and an immaterial intellect, and that the intellect - specifically, the will - is where the decision is made.
The post is an excerpt and/or digest of a section of the book which the brain atoms, responding to information from the external world, internal states of the body, and the ennoiasphere, entitled The Moral Landscape. Like Condorcet before him, Sam Harris expects that he can find morality inductively by means of physical science, as if by knowing the mass of an electron he would tell us whether we should off granny for the inheritance. In the course of this, his brain output replicated the following external stimuli:
Maundering Becomes ElektraActually, findings of this kind are difficult to reconcile with the idea that they are scientific experiments, since they invariably over-interpret the actual empirical observations. Identifying the "response potential" with the "moment of decision" is to beg the question.
"The physiologist Benjamin Libet famously demonstrated that activity in the brain's motor regions can be detected some 300 milliseconds before a person feels that he has decided to move. Another lab recently used fMRI data to show that some "conscious" decisions can be predicted up to 10 seconds before they enter awareness (long before the preparatory motor activity detected by Libet). Clearly, findings of this kind are difficult to reconcile with the sense that one is the conscious source of one's actions."
Flynn points out:
Now, how did Lisbet know when his subjects made a decision? The subjects self reported where a dot was on a clockface when they "felt" they had decided. But visual processing is sluggish. At the moment of decision, the subject would be "seeing" an earlier time than the present but which had only then been processed by the visual system. Curiously, no one contends that this proves that vision is an illusion.And:
Lisbet was actually aware of the problem of viscosity in response and tried to correct for it by a separate experiment estimating the time lag. He did this by applying a mild electrical shock to the back of the hand and noting when the subject reported feeling the shock. However, the time lag for tactile sensations is shorter than for visual (or auditory) sensations, thus Lisbet's correction was not enough. The 300 milliseconds appears to be an artifact of this effect.
Two other researchers, Miller and Trevena, also used scalp electrodes, but asked the subjects to wait for an audio tone before deciding whether or not to tap a key. An RP dutifully appeared but the signal was the same whether or not they elected to tap the key. Clearly, the RP is not an actual decision to move. Miller concluded that it might merely signal that the brain is paying attention.
Harris's brain atoms did not output this particular external stimulus into his essay.
Convenient that last, but it is not Harris' fault - it is his faulty brain wiring.
Flynn discusses the second experiment which Harris uses to attempt to persuade you that you do not exist:
The second experiment mentioned by Harris' brain atoms is that of Chun Siong Soon (et al.), described here. Subjects' brains were scanned by fMRI as they decided to press a button with their right or left index fingers, thus making it really-truly scientificalistic. To peg the moment-of-decision, subjects referred to a stream of letters on a screen. Patterns of brain activity in two areas "correlated" with the left/right decision appeared "up to" ten seconds before participants reported making their conscious decision.
Soon's study also predicted whether the subject would use his left or right hand well before they supposedly knew which choice they'd made. None of the accounts I've seen mentioned whether Soon had taken handedness into account. (I can predict pretty near 100% which hand my wife will use to write a note.) Also, in one account, I saw that this prediction was made correctly only about 65% of the time. This is significant only if Ho = 50% and people choose their hands at random. But it is well known that people cannot choose at random, and Soon's study seems to be another, more expensive confirmation of this. In my stat classes I have asked people to randomly choose one of the numbers 1 2 3 4, and about 50% will choose 3 when random chance would predict 25%. Almost no one chooses 1 or 4.
That someone might rev up his motor response region in anticipation of an immanent decision seems not to have crossed anyone's mind. Perhaps it was not one of the external stimuli in the "sphere of meaning" in which the Harris brain atoms float.
The brain atoms of Mr. Harris output the following response to various external stimuli:
"The human brain must respond to information coming from several domains: from the external world, from internal states of the body, and, increasingly, from a sphere of meaning--which includes spoken and written language, social cues, cultural norms, rituals of interaction, assumptions about the rationality of others, judgments of taste and style, etc. Generally, these streams of information seem unified in our experience."Mr. Harris' brain atoms are to be congratulated for coming up with a nugget of Aristotelian-Thomistic psychology. (Although they seem to refer to "brain" and "mind" as if they were the same thing. This is circular, assuming that which ought to be proved.) I have given the name ennoiasphere to the "sphere of meaning." This provides a suitable pseudo-scientific patina to it. Harris' brain atoms seem to thing this ennoiasphere is something new that "increasingly" provides something called "information." But that "spoken and written language, social cues, cultural norms, rituals of interaction, assumptions about the rationality of others, judgments of taste and style, etc." was well known to Thomas Aquinas, who included it under the term "habits." Habits could be cultural, personal, or (as we now know) genetic. But habit is not a defeater for free will. It was known to Aquinas, and to Aristotle. One suspects even Plato knew of it.
The Aristo-Thomist model of the mind (or "soul") is shown in the figure below. I posted it once before, but it is worth reposting, since Harris and his disciples appear never to have heard of it.
Flynn identifies the "perception" stage with "common sense" which coordinates the disparate and disorganized sense experience into a unified experience.
Flynn observes:
The Harris brain atoms write on and claim:And:
"The truth seems inescapable: I, as the subject of my experience, cannot know what I will next think or do until a thought or intention arises; and thoughts and intentions are caused by physical events and mental stirrings of which I am not aware."Now the first part is uncontroversial. It is like saying I cannot take a step without making a footprint. That I do not know what I will think until I think it is a tautology. I cannot taste food until I eat it. But the second part is simply to assert what the brain atoms ought to be proving. The Harris vehicle's admission that he has written an entire essay without being aware of the "mental stirrings" is indeed tragic and we ought to entertain the possibility that this is actually what Harris' mind is like.
However, it is as logically impossible for brain states to be thoughts as it is for printed text to be thoughts. The letters or patterns are themselves devoid of meaning. The lines that combine to form the shape H do not necessarily give rise to the knowledge of the sound "en." It does so only when a mind uses the Cyrillic alphabet to represent sounds. If erosion scratched into a rock parallel lines and cross-lines that took on the shape НЕТ, it would not be Nature telling us "NO." If we observe a stone in free fall, it does not necessarily give rise to the idea of gravity. It might give rise to the idea of "Run! Avalanche!" Materialistically, we can only ever observe a stone in free fall. Whatever meaning it has depends on the POV from which we view it. Most of life must be lived on automatic pilot. That's why in addition to genetically-induced habits, we deliberately memorize alphabets and multiplication tables (or used to) as well as virtuous habits. Humans are rational animals and a rational animal is of course an animal. I once walked home from the dry cleaners down the block on autopilot while I mulled over some statistical issue, and did not come to until, inserting the key, I missed the lock and had to call on my conscious mind to finish the task. During that brief walk, I experienced something of what it was like to be a non-rational animal.
Recall that the proper object of the will is a concept (not switch flipping or finger-twitching) stripped by the intellect of all the particulars of a percept. This means that the intellect presents to the will a concept that is undetermined to this or that particular "dog." Since the object presented by the intellect is not known perfectly, the will is free to accept or reject it, or to choose this or that means to attain/avoid it. The Harris atoms come close to this by saying that they "cannot know what I [sic] will next think or do until a thought or intention arises," but he seems to think the indeterminacy of the intellect is an argument against the freedom of the will rather than the basis for it!
When the intellect presents to the will a concept such as 2+2=4, the will is perfectly determined toward it and cannot withhold consent. (We assume that the signs have been learned and understood in the normal way.) But when the intellect presents, say, the idea of helping the poor, the concept is not fully grasped. Who are the "poor"? What does it mean to "help" them? A particular means -- say, this program -- does not command assent since it may be ineffective, counterproductive, or less effective than that program. The will is therefore not determined to this or that and may give or withhold assent freely.
Think of "free" as being like "play" in engineering. The will is determined always to the good, but the intellect does not always know perfectly what is good, and a particular object may not be good from every perspective. If it were good from every perspective, the will could not freely withhold consent. But then it would be free in the sense that nothing now holds it back from attaining its natural end. Think of a stone in free fall, moving always toward the minimal gravitational potential. In the same manner, the will when unencumbered by ignorance would move toward the perfect good. Makes you wish we had a name for the Perfect Good, hey?
"Free" does not mean that the will assents randomly or unpredictably; nor does it mean that it assents without reason or motive or in the absence of external stimuli from the ennoiasphere. Nor even that it might not be hobbled by ignorance, habit, brain injury, and what have you. We do not freely will in a vacuum.
But then the Harris brain atoms go on to spoil the perfect reasoning:
"None of this, however, renders the choices we make in life any less important. ... the fact that our choices depend on prior causes does not mean that they do not matter. If I had not decided to write my last book, it wouldn't have written itself. My choice to write it was unquestionably the primary cause of its coming into being."
Choices? What choices? There is only the wind of causation blowing through the neural trees of the Harris brain. Decided? But that he decided to write the book implies that he could have decided not to write it. (Or that he could have written it differently.) But by his prior account, the book did indeed write itself, because it was only a response to a set of causes passing through the forest of neurons. On what grounds do we privilege those neurons as the cause of the book and not the sundry stimuli beyond them? How do we justify any particular cut-off point in what must be a chain of causation stretching back to the Big Bang and say here is where the choice begins?Sure sounds like there is a non-material element of the self.
"Decisions, intentions, efforts, goals, willpower, etc., are causal states of the brain, leading to specific behaviors, and behaviors lead to outcomes in the world. Human choice, therefore, is as important as fanciers of free will believe."The Harris vehicle cannot resist flinching at the last and surrendering its materialism. How can there be willpower without a will? How can choice be important when the will is not free? (For that matter, if there is no volition, how can intellect act?) This is utterly incoherent. No one doubts that decisions, intentions, et al. are associated with brain states, but just as footprints don't cause walking, the brain states might not "cause" thinking.
Heck, there are interesting cases of people leading normal lives with virtually no brain at all. A young boy lacking a cerebellum should not be able to walk; but he does. A student lacking nearly all his cortex should not get A's in math, but he does. What happens is that in some cases the mind recruits other regions of the brain to carry out functions usually performed by the missing or damaged regions. How this could happen would be an intriguing research topic.
Rabbi Moshe Averick makes a similar point in "Nonsense of a High Order: The Confused and Illusory World of the Atheist." From my Kindle, I've excerpted the following observations:
- “Words” and “ideas” are two separate things The thought “I want a drink,” is not the same thing as the words “I want a drink.” In fact, the two in a certain sense have absolutely nothing to do with each other. My daughter understood by certain sounds her little brother made that he was thinking inside his head “I want a drink,” even though he could not yet speak the words, and in fact he was even too young to think the words. The words themselves mean nothing at all. They are simply arbitrary sounds that we use to express an idea.Read more at location 2775 • Delete this highlight • Undo deletion
- The idea itself, “I want a drink of water,” is not accessible through any of our physical senses, nor can it be quantified or measured, for the simple reason that it is not physical or material in any way.Read more at location 2793 • Delete this highlight • Undo deletion
- Evolutionary biologist George Williams put it this way, “You can speak of galaxies and particles of dust in the same terms because they both have mass and charge and length and width. [But] you can’t do that with information and matter…Information doesn’t have mass or charge or length in millimeters…”32Read more at location 2796 • Delete this highlight • Undo deletion
- This self-declared “proud atheist” manages to seamlessly weave the “m” word into his description of that remarkable faculty called language in the very first paragraph of his award winning book, The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language: You are taking part in one of the wonders of the natural world. For you and I are members of a species with a remarkable ability…That ability is language…The ability comes so naturally that we are apt to forget what a miracle it is.Read more at location 2800
- A miracle, indeed! All day long we are involved in binding together the spiritual reality of ideas and thoughts, with the physical reality of sound. Speech is nothing less than one soul relaying a spiritual message to another soul through the physical medium of sound. We are just so used to it, that we never take the trouble to think about what is actually happening.Read more at location 2805 • Delete this highlight • Undo deletion
So, not only does the "self" have a spiritual/intellectual component, but ideas are essentially spiritual/intellectual. That's not surprising since if the "thing" that makes decisions is spiritual/intellectual it will perforce necessarily "use" spiritual/intellectual "things" to perform its function.
Flynn concludes:
As usual when we get to the mountain top we find Thomas Aquinas there with a lemonade stand. Thomas distinguished between "human acts" and "acts of a man." The acts of a man were precisely those mechanical acts that Tallis speaks of and which the Harris brain-states output as being the whole ball of wax. The human acts are precisely the rational acts, the ones that call upon intellect and will.
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