Q&A: The New Research on Free Will
The New Research on Free Will
Question
What does the Rabbi think about the new research on free will?
https://rationalbelief.org.il/Free will – new studies/
Answer
I hadn’t heard it, only read the summary. The distinction between picking and choosing is exactly what I wrote in my book (in addition to three other arguments). It’s interesting that she talks about experiments that dealt with choosing and not only picking. I’m very doubtful that such experiments were actually carried out (I wrote in my book that a friend from Hebrew University told me they were working on this. It’s a sensitive story and not at all simple). I’ll try to listen, and then perhaps I’ll understand more.
Discussion on Answer
In the end, the experiment is actually very interesting, and I didn’t know it had been carried out. I’d recommend skipping her conceptual-philosophical introduction.
What did the Rabbi think about the first part of what she said? (I hope I understood it correctly.)
That over time she came to understand that she isn’t interested in being someone with free will and the ability to act one way or another. Rather, more than that, it sounds like she may even prefer to be a creature that, in an identical situation, will make exactly the same decision.
Because if you are now standing at a crossroads and have two options, to do A or B, and the same considerations are in your hands, then she would want to choose the same thing every time. That is, in other words, the possibility of acting according to her set of beliefs and values, and the ability to distinguish between good and bad and between truth and falsehood, what she wants to do—*that* is what makes her a rational creature.
(In my understanding, as opposed to choice, which to some extent adds nothing to the equation compared to a systematic deterministic path.)
After all, why should I care whether I behave deterministically or not, so long as I act according to my values and try to be a good person under the belief that this behavior is embedded in our nature? That’s enough.
The question of what interests her is irrelevant. That’s a matter of personal taste, and especially in a deterministic picture she is built in such a way that this is what interests her. So what?
Libertarianism doesn’t say that you won’t decide the same thing, only that you won’t necessarily decide the same thing. So the question is not whether I will do the same thing, but whether the doing will be mine or not. According to her view, she would also prefer that they hypnotize her so that she always behaves in the same proper way. I doubt whether she would agree to that too.
Her mistake is that she thinks choice is meant to ensure that you do the right deed, meaning that our judgment is only consequentialist. But it isn’t. The right deed is valueless if it is not done out of choice. The judgment is deontological and not only consequentialist. According to Kant—it is only deontological.
By the way, in a deterministic picture you do not behave and you do not try. You do nothing. Everything is done through you.
A person is compelled to feel good when he perceives himself as free of constraints. Therefore he is compelled to feel even better if he believes he has free will. Therefore everyone believes they have free will (even those who claim they do not believe, do believe they have it). All this follows from the necessity of man’s psychological reality.
Anyone want to summarize what the experiment was and what the results were?
In one sentence, the findings are that in picking experiments there is the Libet effect, meaning the RP signal precedes the decision. In choosing experiments there is no such time gap. [By the way, this is exactly what I wrote in the chapter in my book, and there I said that I have a friend at the Hebrew University who told me they were planning to do such an experiment].
The choosing experiment is as follows: they presented the person with options to donate money to various charities, some of them controversial. He was supposed to press the charity to which the money would be donated, and that is a choosing-type deliberation.
There is room to discuss the interpretations she offered for the results, for the RP, and for the Libet experiment itself. (Her view is deterministic.)
Interesting.
In any case, every experiment has a deterministic explanation. Methodologically, they assume from the outset that everything is deterministic, so all that was discovered in the end is that the mechanism of choosing is different from that of picking.
Why didn’t this research cause an uproar? After all, this is a real bombshell.
(What Mudrik claims was probably found somewhere else, etc.—that’s just a gut feeling.)
Does this mean that the scientific world is so convinced of the truth of determinism that no study will move it?
Or is it that it doesn’t properly understand the a priori distinction between picking and choosing, and therefore the research isn’t all that significant?
By the way, it’s Liad Mudrik, not Idit Mudrik. I’ve heard half the lecture so far, and the woman hasn’t the faintest idea what she’s talking about. She mixes up concepts like the worst ignoramus. Which proves once again that even professionals make serious mistakes in this area. What’s surprising is that she also did a doctorate in philosophy, not only in neuroscience.
By the way, up to this point she presents a completely deterministic picture and position, and I’m very surprised by the summary of her remarks given on the Ratzio site. But I’m continuing to listen.