Q&A: Questions about Your Book 'Neuroscience'
Questions about Your Book 'Neuroscience'
Question
In this book, you base (as I understand it) your ruling in the libertarianism-versus-determinism issue on our intuition as human beings. (Though you do leave room in this space for stubborn Brodians to declare different intuitions.)
You listed quite a few intuitions that your determinist friend would have to admit are an illusion, and you ran several thought experiments to test the sincerity of his illusion. Wonderful.
But I didn’t understand why your view is preferable, even on the intuitive plane.
You too admitted (p. 399) that there are certain aspects of illusion: even though we do not choose, we have the feeling that we do choose. You gave phantom pain and a mirage as examples. The problem with the example is that you brought a marginal phenomenon to illustrate that there is an exception that does not teach us about the rule[1] in order to show the opposite situation: that there is a rule that teaches us nothing about the rule. In other words, in the picture you drew, choice remains only where it is value versus impulse (because in value versus value, all that remains for the “chooser” to do is check which value is greater), and only a right to impose a veto if the impulse has found its way into action against the “neutral mental will.” That is, from a “natural” standpoint things were supposed to roll in the direction of the impulse, and then the mental person comes and places a value opposite it and imposes a veto against the “valley.” But what about all our decisions about what to eat for breakfast? Illusion. And what about our choice whether to volunteer handing out flyers for the “Big Crocodiles” party or to devote our free time to the struggle against hard drugs? Mathematics. So what exactly is left for us to choose? Most of the day we deal with mathematics (especially if we are physicists) or with trivial picking.
You also argued that if we create a soft libertarian picture in which we admit that there are hills and valleys, and they influence the choice, we can easily deal with Libet’s RP, since the impulse to act preceded the decision (and it is the rebel itself), and then our “choosing to choose” arrives and decides whether to choose to impose a veto and act against nature. (With this you also explained weakness of will, though that explanation too is not exactly intuitive.) And my question is: what causes the impulse to be natural and the value to be X (unnatural? mental? angelic? heavenly?)? After all, this whole system that divides between values and impulses is also located in my physical brain! There it is already fixed that murder is a value/non-value, and that wealth is an impulse (although you rightly wrote on p. 389 that it is possible that for some person wealth is a value). Why does the impulse not to murder (because I heard how despicable it is from kindergarten teacher Bruria and from my contractor Lior) in order to inherit the fat wallet sitting in my victim’s pocket (which would be “against my will” because of the burden of the road) receive in your conceptual system the heading “value”? And don’t say that this too is intuition, because there are many “values” about which there is intuitive dispute as to whether they are correct or not. And what would you say about them? Besides, your reliance on intuition is itself nothing more than intuition, and for precisely that you condemn the determinists, who believe things they must think because they were forced to think them.
And why, in your view, is there a philosophical difference between what you called picking and choosing? After all, if a person has a mental system that can create force fields that move things in the brain, why wouldn’t he have that mental power also for the decision whether to go out to a movie tonight or scratch his back?
More generally, I didn’t understand the meaning of mentality in your teaching. Even if the yellow color in my consciousness is not the wavelength, but rather the result of such a wavelength striking my eye, and the color itself is something different that exists only in my consciousness, still there is always a correspondence between the wavelengths and my consciousness. And although we do not ordinarily say, “My body believes in the coming of the Messiah,” in truth the believer is my brain! It creates (as a result of education) the network of neurons that informs me that the Messiah will indeed come whenever I deliberate about it. Every time my body encounters this question (whether through a question that entered through the ear, or through another consciousness that popped up in my physical brain), the body immediately answers and produces a consciousness that indeed the Messiah will surely come! There is no consciousness without brain activity, so what is the basis for the confidence that there can be a consciousness that produces brain activity? And if so, we should have to see many consciousnesses (only value-related ones, of course) running around in our brains, and no scanner would be able to see them; aside from “us” (and not “our body”), no one would notice them.
And let’s conclude with a question: a baby that is born—does it too have mentality that can create force fields? Does it have free choice (I don’t know whether it is intuitively aware of this, in any case) whether to cry when it is hungry? If not, from when is that mentality created within it? What causes it to crystallize at a particular time? If the neurons created it, then apparently it would be subordinate to them. Presumably something else creates it at a certain stage, and then suddenly the person is overtaken by a burst of freedom that is felt intuitively in the deepest and most personal recesses of the “self.” That didn’t happen to me. Maybe one day it will happen to me against my will.
[1] Without addressing the problematic nature of the example. For in truth the person does see, and in truth he does feel pain. There is stimulation in those sensory regions of the brain for various reasons. But here the person does not really choose.
Answer
I read quickly (too long).
Not all those situations involve a feeling of choice. There is a feeling of calculation. When there is a choice between values, or a value versus an impulse, there is a feeling of choice. People do not distinguish between these feelings, and so they think that in all of them we have a feeling of choice, but that is not so. One of the goals of the book is to lay these distinctions before people so they can examine themselves again. That is exactly the distinction between the feeling that accompanies picking and the feeling that accompanies choosing.
I do not know when the ability to choose enters a person, but a baby probably does not have such an ability, or at least it is not realized. It enters gradually and takes up more and more space until one matures.
Discussion on Answer
1. Then you didn’t read what I wrote here. Read it again.
2. I didn’t understand the point about mentality.
3. It exists in him potentially and is realized as he matures. Exactly as every determinist understands that a baby grows up and ripens over time.
1. I read it again. And it gave me nothing new. I didn’t understand why you claim there is no feeling of choice before the decision of where to eat dinner.
2. I also didn’t understand the issue of mentality. What does it contribute to the discussion of choice? After all, it always comes in complete correspondence with the physiology of the brain.
3. But for a determinist this is one long process, all of it causal. In your view there is no reason for choosiness to begin operating within him.
Sorry, the name of the book is Science of Freedom. Take up my madness with me.
1. What do you mean, why? Because there isn’t. Once you understand the difference between picking and choosing, it’s easy to distinguish between those two feelings.
2. I still don’t understand what the question is.
3. For me too it is a long and continuous process of bringing potential into actuality, just as with a baby’s maturation in every other parameter.
1. So what really is the difference? The only difference I find is only in the feeling of satisfaction or disappointment in choosing as opposed to picking, where that doesn’t exist. But in the sense that there is a decision here, they are equal. I couldn’t understand what you mean.
2. I asked again—I did not understand the meaning of mentality in your teaching. Even if the yellow color in my consciousness is not the wavelength, but rather the result of such a wavelength striking my eye, and the color itself is something different that exists only in my consciousness, still there is always a correspondence between the wavelengths and my consciousness. And although we do not ordinarily say, “My body believes in the coming of the Messiah,” in truth the believer is my brain! It creates (as a result of education) the network of neurons that informs me that the Messiah will indeed come whenever I deliberate about it. Every time my body encounters this question (whether through a question that entered through the ear, or through another consciousness that popped up in my physical brain), the body immediately answers and produces a consciousness that indeed the Messiah will surely come! There is no consciousness without brain activity, so what is the basis for the confidence that there can be a consciousness that produces brain activity? And if so, we should have to see many consciousnesses (only value-related ones, of course) running around in our brains, and no scanner would be able to see them; aside from “us” (and not “our body”), no one would notice them.
3. You’ll agree with me that in all the other parameters there is deterministic development, as opposed to the state you are describing here, where something genuinely new really starts to exist here (a consciousness that produces force fields!!)
We’re repeating ourselves. I’ll try one more time, and with this I’ll finish.
1. There is a clear difference in feeling between the two situations (at least for me). I’ll emphasize that even in states of picking we do have choice, but since we have no counter-considerations, we always choose what the RP signals to us. Think about the person sitting at Libet’s table deciding when to press the button. He sits there and wonders; he is not deliberating. The moment an RP is formed in his brain, he presses. He can of course not press (impose a veto), but he has no reason to do so. I remind you that in the experiment in which Liad Mudrik participated (I mentioned it here on the site), they showed clearly that in states of choosing the RP really does not determine the decision, so this claim is also scientifically confirmed and not only experientially. If you have a feeling of deliberation in the situation by the button, you really are a strange person.
2. As stated, I don’t understand what you want. What is the question? My claim is that the will can bring about a brain state. What is the basis for that confidence? The immediate feeling that I choose. That’s all.
3. I already answered. Here too the development is entirely normal. The baby has from birth the capacity to bring about a brain state by means of the will, except that its will is undeveloped, and therefore this (almost) does not happen. This develops over the years until he matures and ripens. Exactly as he has mathematical ability in an undeveloped form and it ripens over time. Exactly the same thing.
That’s it. I’m done.
Rabbi, do you hold that in choosing too there is an RP, only one does not have to follow it?
And therefore in picking there is simply nothing preventing one from following it. Otherwise, where does that RP suddenly come from?
Though if so, then in choosing too one can choose only between imposing a veto and rolling downhill.
That is an empirical question and I have no answer. It may be so and it may be otherwise. It seems to me that Liad Mudrik reports that there is no RP at all before the event.
Even when I decide what to eat for breakfast there is a feeling of choice! Maybe there is a difference in satisfaction or disappointment in important choices as opposed to trivial ones, but not in the actual feeling that I am choosing. Certainly not at the intuitive level.
And you did not explain at all what mentality contributes to the discussion.
And not where choice is created in a baby or a child. Where does it come from?