is freewill magic?
recall again, that I've talked briefly about how neuroscientists and psychologists are beginning to study the topic of freewill too. Their findings are very exciting, because even though the process of figuring things out by introspecting with my own intuitions and reasoning can be productive, I'm not sure if the topic of freewill is best examined with these methods. After all, if freewill is like a persistent illusion, as many people say, how can we ever hope to see past that illusion by looking within the illusion-- can people in the Matrix ever know that they are in the Matrix?
One psychologist (incidentally, one of my all time research heros) argued that the way we experience freewill is like when we watch magic. He conducted a couple of really clever experiments (see experimental psychology section in link 1) to show how our experience of freewill is vulnerable to external manipulations. For example, we can be made to believe that we did something when we did not consciously will for it to be so. More concretely, if an eye witness saw you do something accidentally when you feel that you had not done so, would you not begin to doubt yourself?
This psychologist's work has been quite controvesial. Some people seem to think that the guy has done it-- he has got to the bottom of this magic trick. There is no such thing as freewill-- it's just an illusion! And if freewill is mere illusion, then should we have more sympathy for criminals. Did they commit crimes out of active volition?
But hold on. Did he really show that freewill does not exist? I hesitate to think so. Even though he has shown that our experience freewill is illusory, he cannot show that freewill does not exist. He does not have sufficient evidence to claim that there might be a cause, other than our freewill, that is causing our behavior. For all we know, our experiences are like scenes from a movie, playing randomly from one frame to another, without any active external cause leading to each frame. What we can know about our experience of freewill is a research question that is very different from whether there is freewill.
One psychologist (incidentally, one of my all time research heros) argued that the way we experience freewill is like when we watch magic. He conducted a couple of really clever experiments (see experimental psychology section in link 1) to show how our experience of freewill is vulnerable to external manipulations. For example, we can be made to believe that we did something when we did not consciously will for it to be so. More concretely, if an eye witness saw you do something accidentally when you feel that you had not done so, would you not begin to doubt yourself?
This psychologist's work has been quite controvesial. Some people seem to think that the guy has done it-- he has got to the bottom of this magic trick. There is no such thing as freewill-- it's just an illusion! And if freewill is mere illusion, then should we have more sympathy for criminals. Did they commit crimes out of active volition?
But hold on. Did he really show that freewill does not exist? I hesitate to think so. Even though he has shown that our experience freewill is illusory, he cannot show that freewill does not exist. He does not have sufficient evidence to claim that there might be a cause, other than our freewill, that is causing our behavior. For all we know, our experiences are like scenes from a movie, playing randomly from one frame to another, without any active external cause leading to each frame. What we can know about our experience of freewill is a research question that is very different from whether there is freewill.