22 Volume 17 Number 3 PROSPERO PER NEWS: Do we have freewill or do we just think we have? A report [This is the revised script of a Report about a… [619446]

22 Volume 17 Number 3
PROSPERO PER NEWS:
Do we have
freewill
or do we just think we
have? A report

[This is the revised script of a Report
about a debate on freewill staged by
the P E R Group in association with the SPES at Conway Hall in May
2011. Norman Bacrac’s full statement
appeared in Philosophy Now in
November 2010. Prof. Langford’s full statement will appear in a later issue
of Philosophy Now .]

Saturday May 7th at Conway Hall
Norman Bacrac and Michael
Langford debate the question
<<Do we have freewill or do we just
think we have?>>. The
presentations are followed by a
lively discussion.

This meeting in the Brockw ay Room breaks
previous records for attendance at a joint
PER-SPES event. A large audience enjoys
the presentations which are both, in quite different ways, passionately delivered. Norman Bacrac suggests that our consciousness comes about from the
working of our brains, as inwardly
experienced. He goes on to argue that in
whatever way our brains work, it will be in accordance with the laws of chemistry and
physics.[1] So when we decide to do
something, this is actually, he argues, our inward experience of a brain process which
has proceeded wholly in accordance with
the laws of physical science.
Michael Langford ’s emphasis is quite
different: on ordinary experience, ordinary
language, anti -reductionist reasoning, the
possibility of mystery and our substant ive
ignorance about how the brain works.
Anyone who claims to have freewill does so
on the basis that they are conscious of their
own freedom. They are not claiming more than this, just this.
This is a fascinating question which
appears to put today ’s scie ntific world -view
on a direct collision course with commonsense. It is also quite relevant to education, because the tradition of liberal
education is that we educate young people
to handle and appreciate their own autonomy. If however they don’ t have such
‘autonomy ’ –in some sense – in the first
place, this project might look forlorn.
This meeting raises important issues
which relate strongly to ‘ philosophy for
education’ . However there is not room here
to give a full, detailed, blow -by-blow
accounts of the discussion which followed
the two talks. We shall focus mainly on the points made by the speakers and some of
their major implications, plus a brief
indication of some of the subsequent debate.
Norman Bacrac ’s ‘epiphenomenalism’
is based on two propositions which he

23 Volume 17 Number 3
PROSPERO describes as ‘ axioms ’:
1) Every conscious state is determined by a
simultaneous brain state.
2) Every brain state evolves solely in accordance with physical law.
Axiom 1 asserts that all the contents of a conscious sta te, however complex, are what
they are because of the state of the brain. Axiom 2 asserts that nothing will take place
in the brain which is not in conformity with
the laws of physics.
In asserting that consciousness is dependent upon the brain, epiphenome nalism is a
natural outcome of the materialist tradition in philosophy.
If the two axioms of epiphenomenalism are true, our undoubted effect on the world is
not accomplished by a conscious self or
‘free will ’ acting by magically originating a
sequence of brain events. The I that thinks
(in Cogito Ergo Sum) is therefore perhaps
best regarded as the label our brain ’s
language programme uses when it refers to
itself, and not, as Descartes supposed, an independent source of change in the brain.
We are causal agents in the world by virtue
of being physical beings.
Epiphenomenalists proclaim the supreme importance of consciousness while
accepting its total impotence.

Michael Langford puts the case against
epiphenomenalism
Michael Langford begins by saying tha t he will pitch his argument from a broadly
physicalist perspective. From this
perspective, he argues, the term ‘ soul’ can
be defined operationally. This is useful because it does not have the exclusively
cognitive associations of ‘mind ’. It can be
used without religious associations. The
speaker accepts that the brain is probably
the source of our consciousness, but it
(consciousness) is not obviously linked in a
cut-and-dried way with brain events. There
is so much here which we do not understand that i t would be wrong to be
dogmatic.
Intensionality is an important expression
of a person’ s values, the meaning of which is
not reducible to objective fact. Thus the
mad v. bad distinction deserves to be
maintained, not least for quite practical reasons.
Questions of meaning come to the fore
when we consider how human beings recognise scientific truth. If the human brain is just a machine, how does it manage to recognise a new truth, e.g. quantum
theory, which involves abandoning a great
deal of previous opinion? It appears that although the human brain has many of the properties of a machine, it is also able to
transcend a mechanistic -type response when
this needed. When we exercise this
transcendence we vividly show the real meaning of our ‘ freewill ’, whi ch is not just
predictable mechanics. So the exercise of

24 Volume 17 Number 3
PROSPERO free discernment, far from being an illusion,
is actually the source of our scientific
knowledge.[3]
DISCUSSION
Large numbers of points were aired in general discussion. A few examples are given.
Richard Truss asks about actors. Surely
they know the difference between acting and living: while acting they are constrained by the script, but they are not conscious of a pre -written script in their private lives.
Sheila Richards asks about suicide -terrorists. They seem to be free to
blow themselves up.
Barbara Smoker argues that Prof.
Margaret Boden at Sussex University ‘ has
produced artificial intelligence ’ (sic). Does
this not show that consciousness is all down
to physics?
Ivan Ivanov points out that B acrac ’s
‘axioms ’ are, in fact, postulates. (They are
not self -evidently true like the axioms of
Euclidean Geometry.) Ivanov also asks how
Bacrac can know that brain and
consciousness events are simultaneous.

COMMENT
The odd thing about this debate is that
Norman ’s Bacrac ’s emphasis on the agency
of physics in the brain seems to lead to the
indisputable conclusion that we are ‘not
really free ’, but when we come to try to
unpack what this means, in direct
experiential terms, i t turns out that none of our substantive freedoms is actually being taken away. So this message ‘ we are not
really free ’ is more like a slight rhetorical
shadow thrown across our lives. But it is a
shadow which becomes even more
shadowy the more you try t o pin it down to
specific loss of freedoms. It is like saying
that material objects disappear when no one is looking at them, either directly or via
photo cameras or CCTV. This might
produce panic among those who are neurotic about the solidity of things, but
such panic is misplaced because nothing
would ever count as a counter -argument.
Similarly nothing ever counts as a
counter -argument against the
‘not-really -free’ point of view. Michel
Foucault proved to himself that he had freewill by throwing himself in front of a
car in the Rue Vaugirand in Paris in July 1978. He ended up badly hurt in hospital,
but his courage had no effect whatever on
the not -really -free school. It does shows us
however that he really was free to carry out his freewill experiment. [Incidentally this
crazy experiment was all -of-a-piece with
Foucault ’s generally depressive philosophy.]
The slide in Axiom 2 is ‘ in accordance
with physical law ’ assumed to be ‘ as it
actually is ’. But we do not know that our
current concept of physical l aw is the final,
infallible physical truth. The idea of an Anthropic Ontology is now on the table,
challenging the assumption which has been

25 Volume 17 Number 3
PROSPERO made by almost everybody since Descartes
that science is deterministic.
CPO

NOTES
[1] But do we really know that these are the
final ‘laws’? It may be the case, as argued
in the current Ontol ogical Annexes in
Prospero, that the physics of the future will
be modelled using a new abstract discipline
‘Actimatics ’ which builds -in the potency
of
human freewill, such as it is[2] into the
fabric of the modelling discipline.
[2] ‘Such as it is’ bec ause this is the freewill
we are conscious of possessing, not some
magic factor -X.
[3] The essence of the issue is that a
particular level of mechanism operated by
‘the laws of physics ’ will allow conclusions
of type A to be reached. To get a more sophi sticated conclusion of type B, a more
sophisticated mechanism will be needed. Intelligent human beings seem to have the
capacity to raise their level of sophistication
to suit the context. It is hard to see how
the ‘laws of physics ’ alone could do this. We
assume that the ‘ laws of physics ’ act blindly:
that they do not have any capacity to
upgrade themselves.

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