Dr. Baumeister,

In “John Bargh and Some Misunderstandings About Free Will” you endorse several senses of free will:

~ as freedom from causation in some respect: “freedom from particular causes.”
~ as relative freedom: “some actions are freer than others.”
~ as self-control: “overcome [instinctual] reactions when they aren't socially appropriate or beneficial.”
~ as requiring the falsity of determinism: “the essence of the idea of free will is that people actually make choices. The very idea of choice entails that more than one future outcome is possible.”
~ as necessary for the appearance of culture: “a mechanism of action control that evolved to enable humans to create this new kind of social life, namely culture.”
~ as a naturally evolved capacity for self-organization: “If there is an alternative to the deterministic causal universe, it might understand freedom along the lines of self-organization.” And: “Human free will would then be a further step of self-organization…”

You also say that free will, defined as freedom from *all* causes, is “a useless notion… Of what use would such a random action generator be?”

Putting all this together, it seems the sort of free will you’re defending is naturally evolved self-organization and a capacity for self-control, necessary for culture, in which some actions, because they aren’t fully caused due to the falsity of determinism, are freer than others. You say this is a plausible view that fits the observable facts, but also say “I don't see any definitive empirical evidence for or against [it].”

Your view of free will seems to combine the compatibilist notion (compatible with determinism) that when I act freely I act under my own self-control – no one is coercing me – with the libertarian, contra-causal notion that free will requires the falsity of determinism: if I’m completely caused in my choices, then they aren’t free choices. The compatibilist requirement is uncontroversial since everyone agrees that coerced actions aren’t free. It’s only the contra-causal requirement that’s problematic, since on the face of it it’s difficult to see how the evolution of self-organization, a presumably causal, physical process through and through, creates creatures that end up being *uncaused* in their self-controlled choices in some respect.

Also, since you rightly say that freedom from *all* causes would serve no useful purpose, one wonders how being *somewhat* uncaused adds to self-organization and self-control such that it would have been naturally selected. For purposes of acting successfully in the world, I don’t want anything random interfering with how I translate my beliefs and desires into action.

Lastly, it’s hard to see how self-organization ends up being “an alternative to the deterministic causal universe” since any naturalistic account of self-organization will involve a causal story of some kind. Contra-causal free will, precisely because it requires choices be exceptions to causal laws, will never yield to scientific explanation, hence is irredeemably mysterious. So I don’t think the prospects for your view are particularly sanguine if what you’re after is a clear account of human agency.

Your claim that belief in contra-causal free will is socially desirable and beneficial is also debatable, but this is quite enough for one post.

Determinists simply haven't looked at developments in decades of research in quantum mechanics and the subatomic reality.

This article was a good read, and unlike some other writings on free will it didn't raise the hair on my neck.

What bothers me with discussions on free will and the like is when statements that are backed up as being 'scientific facts' are perceived as unified immutable truth, ruling out all other explanations. Science simply produces an evolution of theories that in the best case scenario are increasingly probable and useful in their application.

The only problem with the scientific method is that it is constrained by the dimensions we can measure with the physical instruments we have. That makes exploring things like free will and consciousness a complicated and unworkable matter. I think one of the thinking mistakes is that we can solve questions like free will and consciousness using current scientific ways of measuring and secondly one of the consequent thinking errors is that since we can't measure it, it's not scientific and can't be true.

That follows an assumption that if something can't be proven with scientific methods it simply because we haven't figured it out yet, or it's simply not a real phenomenon. That assumes that all phenomena have properties that don't go beyond the dimensions we can measure. It's a catch22. In fact some scientists prefer to believe in theories that are incredibly unlikely, but at least can be supported with theories we can measure.

We'd rather have everything explanable with the methods we have. Our distaste for having to prove things, not being able to prove things and our inability to prove things has good sides and bad sides. The bad sides, like ruling out potential explanations that can't be proven with current scientific technology, are akin to common religious practices that proliferate a limited range of beliefs and thinking that need to be thrust on others.

Some scientific proponents will find the immeasurable theories irrational. But the things we base our 'rationality' on aren't so rational. It constrains us to the things we think we know.

Einstein's world collapsed when he couldn't refute theories of quantum mechanics. He had his theories of relativity that could confidently explain everything we can see in this universe, yet these theories about the subatomic world completely shocked the foundations of how the universe might function. We can explain everything perfectly in the visible world with Einsteins theories. Determinists cling, like Einstein did, to theories like these and ignore the findings we've had in our studies of the subatomic world and it's workings, metaphorically speaking. Just because we can ignore or see it doesn't mean it's not there.

Free will is the way God pulls your strings... see my web page...
http://home.earthlink.net/~btodd2/freewillnote.html
Most people just talk and talk and don't go to the rule book for the right answer.
Cheers...

This is a rich thread of replies which I'm enjoying reading and thinking about. I'm going to reply more fully to Roy's post in my own blog, but want to respond to some important points made here by Tom Clark and Peter Knight, as well as by Roy in his replies. I think that together, the important points Clark and Knight make here -- the one concerning the multiple uses or senses of 'free will' and the other concerning the issue of multiple levels of analysis -- combine to shed new light on the core misunderstandings and confusions in this debate.

Tom Clark notes the shifting definitions of 'free will' in Roy's post and indeed this does seem to be one of the reasons for the 'misunderstandings' between us in this continuing debate. As I noted in my Tampa presentation, much of the misunderstanding about free-will occurs because people often have different versions of the concept in mind, but don't realize it, and so continue to talk past each other.

Perhaps, if we could settle on a single definition of free will, then Roy and I (and others) would not disagree with each other on the question of its existence. For example, take the compatibilist notion, defined by Clark as that when I act freely I act under my own self-control – no one is coercing me. This is the definition used in political science, in which 'free' means 'freedom from external control or constraints'. I believe Roy and I would find ourselves in agreement that this form of free will exists, defined in this particular way. It certainly seems the kind of free will Roy and his colleagues study in their research on self-control and personal agency.

However, the libertarian, contra-causal notion of free will -- which Clark notes "requires the falsity of determinism: if I’m completely caused in my choices, then they aren’t free choices" -- is a different story. This is a stronger form of free-will, one in which the will is said to be free from both external AND internal causation. Because there is now substantial evidence that the will (goals and motives) can be caused through both external (e.g. priming) and internal (e.g., emotional states, evolved motives) sources of control other than the conscious, agentic self, it is empirically the case that the will is not entirely free of internal causation. The scientific question that we and other labs have been addressing for some years now is therefore one of HOW MUCH of the will is caused by internal forces other than the individual's conscious intentions and conscious goal pursuits.

In fact the "how much" question was the topic of one of the prior Baumeister-Bargh debates, at another social psychology conference about 5 years ago. In that one, Roy agreed with me that something like 95% of social behavior, goal pursuit, and judgment (the higher mental processes) were not 'free' in the strict libertarian-definitional sense above, but unconsciously driven instead. Roy's key point though was that the remaining 5% was critical -- his compelling analogy was of a car that goes straight ahead 95% of the time but that other 5% was critical: the times one has to use the steering wheel to change course.

Now, I personally think this is an important scientific issue and that science has contributed valuable new knowledge to the question of free will by -- at minimum -- demonstrating limits to its power and influence, in that the conscious self is no longer (as it used to be) considered the exclusive causal source of complex human judgment, behavior, and goal pursuit. [Baumeister himself has made important contributions in this vein with the discovery of 'ego-depletion' effects, which reveal startling limits on one's ability to exercise choice and conscious control -- which in turn suggests some *other* mode of control must be normally operating...] Without research questioning this long-held assumption about human nature, we would not know about the unconscious forces operating at a level of analysis 'below' the one at which self-theorists operate.

Which brings me to Peter Knight's important point about levels of analysis. It is worth considering here that Roy's model of the causal, agentic self is analogous to Einstein's, and mine is analogous to quantum mechanics. Let's just play with this analogy for a moment. Roy's model describes many important human and social phenomena quite well and can make novel predictions and discoveries. As Peter Knight says of Einstein's model, "we can explain everything in the visible world using Einstein's theories." But when one looks below at the level of analysis underlying the 'visible world' (we can substitute 'conscious, aware' for 'visible' here) we find invisible, unconscious causes of the higher mental processes, including the will. As Peter Knight concludes, "Just because we can ignore it or [don't] see it doesn't mean it is not there."

So true. The 'subatomic' world of unconscious causation is indeed there. It may be an inconvenient truth to some, but we ignore it at our own peril.

Free will could never have evolved in the face of ordinary biological pressures. Because the forces of nature and phenomena of culture are largely predictable or "regular," biological individuals with free will would be at a substantial survival disadvantage compared with their rule-bound competitors. Therefore, under natural selection, a capacity for free will could never have become established and, if it had ever emerged, it would have quickly died out. A more detailed presentation of this evolutionary case against free will can be found at http://law.pace.edu/jhumbach/Free_will_ideology.pdf.