EO: You'll hear the voice of the neurobiologist emerging from me on
this. It's natural we feel there's a self because of the body that we're
in. Our brain is mapping the world. Often that map is distorted, but it's
a map with constant immediate sensory input. The brain is organized
heavily around sensations coming from the body, and that is so intense,
so much at the center of conscious experience--including all the input
coming from our body--that it's seen as the principal protagonist. That's
what the self is.
PT: One of the most precious beliefs of the "self' is that it has
free will.
EO: A lot of philosophers and thinkers have believed that the human
mind was not based in material reality. They had a vague notion of
angelic transcendent activity that they never could define because, of
course, they coudn't translate it into any materialist terms and make
sense.
That's really the basis of the notion of free will, that there is a
whole different faculty, probably true for human beings only, a human
quality that helps lift us up above the animals, somewhere between here
and the angels.
PT: But when you talk about free will, you describe it only in the
sense that the brain is so complex, so constantly bombarded with input,
that it's able to cascade in any direction at any time. That's freedom,
but not self-determined free will.
EO: There are really two meanings of free will. One we all agree on
is that you have your own mind, you make your own decisions, your soul is
your own. No matter what is done to you, that's the one thing that cannot
be surrendered. Of course, now we know that with the right pharmaceutical
or biochemical manipulation, you can get people to shift moods,
attitudes, and maybe even beliefs. So that view isn't holding up quite so
well anymore--but let's say that's what we mean by free will.
The other kind of free will stops people cold in their attempt at
selfunderstanding. We don't know our own minds. We don't know all the
processes inside, and we can't predict what kind of responses and
decisions we'll eventually make. Even if we believed we could, there is
so much chaos in the mind brought about by tiny perturbations or external
events. Not even with a gigantic computer could we predict what any of us
sitting at this table will do precisely one hour from now.
PT: So we're free like the weather.
EO: Or like the wind. We will get up when we are ready to get up.
That will be our free will. And we will go out that door and events will
happen and we will think about them and make decisions that we can't
predict right now. This thing we're walking around in is not in complete
control. It could do marvelous things. It could encounter
disasters.
PT: A world where the brain gives rise to the mind is a world where
when we die physically, we're dead forever. That's one of the difficult
truths of evolutionary biology.
EO: We've all descended from a common ancestor, and our genes are
moving on into future generations in very closely the same manner as they
would if you as an individual were the particular conduit. Looked at that
way, you get a sense of near immortality from the human species.
Homo sapiens is 500,000 years old, give or take a hundred thousand
years. That's a long time. That's virtual immortality as far as human
beings are concerned. If we last another halfmillion years, then that's
almost time out of mind, time beyond our personal imagining. However,
that notion of immortality is still part of a secularist world view.
That's what humanism really is, you know, concentration on the continuity
of the human spirit.
PT: But what do you do as an individual, faced with death? Remember
Dylan Thomas' lines, "Do not go gentle into that good night .... Rage,
rage against the dying of the light."
EO: I think what he was telling us was, "Stay healthy, don't smoke,
and be as vigorous and involved as you can." No...I think that's what he
ought to have told us.
I don't think it would be wise to say that, as the time approaches,
you should start raging against death. I don't think there's any greater
fear of death among atheists or secularists than there is among the
devoutly religious.
As Francis Bacon has said, "Men fear not death, but the moment of
the strike thereof." If I tell you, "It won't be too long before you're
dead," that's okay You can imagine a time when there's no consciousness,
when there's no you. But if I say, "On May 2nd, 2040, you are going to be
executed for having been wrongly accused of murder" or "On that date you
are going to die of a huge heart attack"--that's more distressing, isn't
it?
PT: Right. The date itself doesn't matter, but knowing the exact
moment does .... You call yourself a deist. What do you mean by
that?
EO: A deist is a person who's willing to buy the idea that some
creative force determined the parameters of the universe when it
began.
PT: And a theist is someone who believes that God not only set the
universe in motion, but is still actively involved.
EO: I've been doing a kind of Pascalian waffling as a deist. I
think being an atheist is to claim knowledge you cannot have. And to say
you're agnostic is to arrogantly dismiss the whole thing by saying that
it's unknowable. But a provisional deist is someone like myself who
leaves it open. You see, evolutionary biology leaves very little room for
a theistic God.
Tags:
behavior,
edward o wilson,
Edward Wilson,
evolutionary psychology,
gas chambers,
genetic,
genetic determinism,
Harvard University,
house arrest,
leading authority,
life death,
national academy of sciences,
nazi germany,
new york review of books,
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sociobiology,
species of ants,
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