Consciousness and Emergence
Posted on October 27, 2021In this post I’ll be discussing consciousness as an emergent property of our minds, and how our common understanding of free will is not part of that emergence. This view, that we lack free will, is called determinism. Many think that dispensing with free will is negative, but I will try to show the contrary, that this perspective can have very positive effects both for individuals and societies, making us more compassionate and empathetic. As a brief disclosure, this may be an uncomfortable topic for some, and so if you wouldn’t like to question if you have free will, you might stop reading here. The notion of free will encounters nearly everything: politics, laws, morality, relationships, guilt and achievement, and so it’s not surprising that the view of determinism can be provocative. But I think there might be wisdom in it that could help us transition towards some of the positive futures we envision.
The only way to keep this post from being unreasonably long is to provide a link to the most comprehensive description of determinism I’ve found which is from neuroscientist Sam Harris. I realize though that there are many positions on free will, and my aim is not to argue against those, but explore this one. I will explain a couple key points from the argument, but what I want to offer is not the explanation of why we lack free will, but the implications it has for us as designers. My argument will begin following the next three paragraphs if you wish to skip the summary of determinism. Here’s the link Harris’s description of determinism.
Sam Harris podcast 241: Final Thoughts on Free Will
The first point of his I’d like to make is the struggle most philosophers and scientists studying free will have in reconciling two seemingly opposing forces: the first is physics and the second is our subjective experience, in which we seem to have free will. Because of this subjective experience, it can feel like we stand outside the physical laws of the universe, in which events have discernable causes. But Harris’s insight is that with the proper attention, this feeling can fade away, mindfulness comes into play here. Importantly, we did not choose our parents, therefore nor our genes or the environments we were born into. So, we did not choose two of the biggest sources of our actions, our nature nor our nurture. Further, we don’t choose our thoughts or emotions, which often form the basis for our actions. Most people feel they have a “self” and that this self is not only the thinker of thoughts, but also the author. We feel that when things happen to us, our “self” can “choose” what to do. Using a thought experiment, he reveals that this actually isn’t part of our subjective experience when we pay close enough attention. From Harris: think of and pick a movie, any movie, and pay attention to the experience of picking one. A few may come to mind, just pick one, and note that this is about as free a choice as you can possibly make. You have all the films in the world to choose from and you can take all the time you like. Reflect on if there is evidence of free will here. Were you free to pick a movie you’ve never heard of? Or of a movie you have heard of but didn’t think of? For instance, you know that the Wizard of Oz exists (if you thought of the Wizard of Oz insert another famous movie that didn’t cross your mind here), but were you free to think of it if you didn’t? Your Wizard of Oz neurons weren’t active for reasons you can’t know or control. If we were to rewind time to things exactly as they were before you read this paragraph, you wouldn’t think of the Wizard of Oz again, and again as many times as the clock was rewound. Decisions we make in life, where to go to college, what to study, who to date, which house to buy, have so many more constraints than this simple decision of picking a movie. So, if there’s no free will here, where is there? And if you are confused here, you did not choose your confusion, and if you understand, you did not choose to understand.
The point above is that we don’t choose our thoughts. What are you going to think next? Thoughts simply appear as part of the stream of consciousness. To know what thought is next would necessitate we think it before thinking it. The feeling of being the thinker of our thoughts is what it feels like to be lost in thought. Subjectively, there is no thinker to be found in the mind, there are only the thoughts themselves. There is no “self” sitting on the side of the river, watching the stream of consciousness go by. There is only the stream. Pay close enough attention and we see that thoughts just appear, and we don’t choose them before they appear. The insight is that while physics and our subjective experience might seem to be irreconcilable, they are actually completely compatible with each other.
And again, realizing this can actually have very liberating consequences, many of which Harris discusses in the linked podcast, but I’ll convey my favorite one. The beautiful asymmetry of love and hate. To hate someone, we must really think they and their “self” are responsible for whatever harm they caused, that they were able to act differently and kindly, but chose not to. We hate them because we feel they really chose to do what they did. Love is quite delightfully different. We don’t fixate on the reasons why loved ones do what they do, we love them because we enjoy their company and want them to be genuinely happy. Think of someone you love smiling, and how wonderful that is. Interestingly, the smile is only real to the extent that it isinvoluntary. Choosing to smile is not as genuine as just smiling. Perhaps difficult to see at first, this asymmetry is worth thinking about. From this perspective, it really is difficult to see the rational basis for hating people. Lastly, this also doesn’t mean thoughts don’t matter. What we think, and what we do with what we think, is still incredibly important to who we are and the qualities of our character, even if we don’t choose our thoughts our what we do with them.
I chose this subject because Steven Johnson discusses the brain and biology extensively in his book Emergence, but never describes consciousness as an emergent property, and he also addresses free will directly a couple times. I first learned about emergence under the context of consciousness: neurons and other brain cells follow rules at a small level, and somewhere along the way as the scale increases, the sophistication of consciousness emerges. Johnson says that “free will only matters on the scale of the individual human life. We need to think… on the scale of the superorganism itself. (Page 98)” But isn’t emergence exactly about how small-scale interactions take place and manifest a higher-level sophistication? What if adopting determinism enables us to interact on a micro level with more compassion, understanding, and forgiveness? What kinds of qualities might emerge from these new mindsets at a higher scale?
Another context he uses when describing free will is to separate us from ants. “…individual ants are relatively stupid, following elemental laws without anything resembling free will…. We consciously make decisions about where to live or shop or stroll; we’re not simply driven by genes and pheromones.” I agree with him that decisions appear in consciousness but disagree that we’re not driven by genes and pheromones, and I’d add that we’re also driven by external environmental factors (which our “self” also doesn’t control of course). The developing field of Behavioral Genetics reliably supports this, watch the movie Three Identical Strangers for a compelling introduction. But importantly this is an example of the anthropocentrism which continues to be a barrier towards allowing us to engage with the natural world around us. We wrongly feel we are separate from it, that we somehow developed consciousness and free will and these traits permit us to be unique. This isn’t to say that we should treat people like ants, of course not. Humans are richly complex beings, but we still respond to the environments we’re in, and understanding that those born into difficult environments face hardships not of their choosing. And often their actions are consequences of circumstances also beyond their choice.
This is relevant for many aspects of society, one of which is crime and justice. In the 1978 Grayson Case, the Supreme Court of the United States declared free will is a quote “universal and persistent foundation for a system of law.” Is this an accurate way to view offenses and ascribe punishments? We intuitively should be able to understand that children born into high-crime neighborhoods are more likely to turn to crime not because they are inherently bad, but because their environments shaped them. Children and people shouldn’t be responsible for the influences they couldn’t choose. This also doesn’t mean that some people should be in prison because they are genuinely dangerous, but there is more nuance here. Taking a wider view of the causes and effects that drive people to do things is a window into more compassion and might be a more correct way of viewing the world. Understanding actions have causes outside the individual will help us to build systems and societies that support people, rather than demand they float in a world set up for them to sink.
The next aspect of society where this could help society is in the distribution of wealth, in all senses of the word including health, food, housing, political freedoms, and more. There is a sentiment among many who have much wealth that they earned it, and in many cases they did. My aim is not to discredit their efforts and achievements, but to point out how fortunate they were to accumulate their wealth. Even if coming from humble beginnings, they were fortunate to develop the needed knowledge, work ethic, or quality that enabled them to achieve success. And others who didn’t were unfortunate. The “self” that is telling them that they earned their wealth might be right, but that “self” didn’t choose to be born with the ability to earn it. Mimi Gellman spoke of the gift economy, letting go of this entitlement is a path to sharing for those with gifts fortunate to have them with others.
This conversation is far too intricate to be covered in 1900 words, there’s much more to be explored in this space. But I hope that is has showed that determinism needn’t be bad, and in fact might offer some help in viewing the world more justly, and with more forgiveness and compassion. Consciousness is the space in which everything takes place, all human experience exists on this landscape, and so it’s critical we hold it highly in our minds when we think about the world and how to design it. Perhaps this perspective on how we function will help us build communities that eliminate more suffering and promote human flourishing.
JS