Changing the Subject

This section appears to be the center of the Harris/Dennett debate, and the first place I find myself at odds with Harris on occasion. He also gets into the notion of free will as something that is felt

People feel that they are the authors of their thoughts and actions, and this is the only reason why there seems to be a problem of free will worth talking about.

There is the tricky implied conscious/unconscious divide again, where 'their thoughts and actions' are somehow independent from the agent. This is also addressed in the chapter:

The psychological truth is that people feel identical to a certain channel of information in their conscious minds.

Once again we are faced with this rather abstract usage of the verb to feel. And yet again, this statement seems to equate 'people' with their conscious mind, so this statement might as well be recast as: the conscious mind feels identical to the conscious mind. When parsed this way, much of the chapter is rendered tautological.

This section contains Harris' description and discussion of the philosophical schools of thought on free will, including compatibalism, and he mentions Dennett by name several times:

Compatibilists generally claim a person is free as long as he is free from any outer or inner compulsions that would prevent him from acting on his actual desires and intentions.

That seems... far too ludicrous to be true. That is basically just arguing for a particular meaning of the word free. I'm not in a position to judge the accuracy with which Harris renders Dennett's views, and I'm happy to assume they are heavily simplified. So I can sympathize with Dennett for wanting to set the record straight, but he was still quite a douchebag (in that particular exchange), and furthermore didn't succeed in the least. I checked my bookshelf, and the aforementioned Dennett book I didn't finish is indeed Consciousness Explained. I still don't intend to finish it--it struck me as a  lot of philosophical wanking on a topic that has become science.

There are a lot of interesting things to parse from the section, and Harris does begin to address the moral consequences of his stance. Though I'm not impressed with some of his statements (particulars to come), I assume these will be fleshed out more later.

The Unconcious Origins of the Will

We are conscious of only a tiny fraction of the information that our brains process in each moment... The intention to do one thing and not another does not originate in consciousness--rather, it appears in consciousness, as does any thought or impulse that might oppose it.

I love the way he put that. Harris is clear in this chapter that physical determinism is irrelevant to his thesis, due to the above. This is where one typically gets into trouble, identifying the will or even the self merely with conscious thought. Consider, for instance, this from the Wikipedia page on consciousness:

As Max Velmans and Susan Schneider wrote in The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness: "Anything that we are aware of at a given moment forms part of our consciousness, making conscious experience at once the most familiar and most mysterious aspect of our lives."

What a complete waste of pixels. Not only does it not say anything, in that statement they are clearly using the pronoun we to only refer to conscious thought, completely identifying the self only with the conscious process. Whereas it's quite clear, as Harris briefly but effectively discusses, that almost all behavior originates unconsciously. Obviously, to make any sense of this we must decide: what it is we call consciousness?

When searching for such clarity be careful: don't assume there is such a thing, a concrete referent, or a Platonic ideal, that we are trying to attach a word to. Rather, decide what the word refers to and stick with it. First we need to recognize that the mind is modular: there are distinct, relatively independent functions, and consciousness is one of them. My favorite description of consciousness, and the one I find most operationally useful, comes from an approach in Pinker's book How the Mind Works. He approached the question from a perspective of reverse engineering: what cognitive problem did consciousness evolve to solve?

The hardware (or wetware) of the brain is a massive associate matrix of nodes with analog inputs and digital outputs. What sort of computations is this hardware good at? Fuzzy pattern matching. You can train the outputs to fire more-or-less if the inputs match a certain pattern more-or-less. The visual system is probably the most salient example of this.

But when does one encounter limitations of the hardware's capability? Problems with combinatorial complexity. How do you choose items for dinner from the grocery store? The possible combinations are astronomical... pattern matching is hopeless. You need to form a narrative: what do you like? What have you had recently? What looks fresh? What do you usually combine with that.? You need a serial process of elimination. The conscious mind is a simulation of a serial process running on parallel hardware.

Free Will

In the first section Harris sets the stage:

How can we make sense of our lives, and hold people accountable for their choices, given the unconscious origins of our conscious minds?

There is a lot to unwrap in that question. We might start with the fact that this book (or essay) seems aimed at the philosophically inclined laymen, as apposed to an academic philosopher. So at this early stage I don't think we need to delve into just what it is to "make sense" of a life (I would say a life is not the sort of thing one makes sense of), or the more interesting question of what it means to hold someone accountable for their choices. I think this is the topic Harris probably devotes most of the essay to, and what I'm most interested in exploring later. The last point, as to what counts as conscious or unconscious, he gets into in the next section.

It's nice to see my main contention addressed at loc 122:

Free will is actually more than an illusion (or less), in that it cannot be made conceptually coherent.

I would argue for less. What is an illusion? Something that appears to be there but isn't. Does free will even appear to be there? One might say one "feels" like they are free to make choices, but this is not the sort of feeling that comes from the limbic system. It's more an unawareness of where one's acts of volition arise, which the conscious confabulator fills with a self of the gaps.

The Objection

I had an email exchange with Tom S. revolving around what Sam Harris states was the most common objection to his free will thesis:

If there is no free will, why write books or try to convince anyone of anything? People will believe whatever they believe. They have no choice! Your position on free will is, therefore, self-refuting. The fact that you are trying to convince people of the truth of your argument proves that you think they have the very freedom that you deny them.

To which I responded:

It does not. This is simply a false assertion. I can try to convince someone that determinism is true and there is no free will while admitting that whether or not they believe me, or whether or not I try to convince them in the first place, is completely determined.

Here is the flip side from Epicurus, 2300 years ago:

The man who declares that everything happens of necessity can have no fault to find with the man who denies that anything happens of necessity, for he is saying this very denial is made of necessity. (Sententiae Vaticanae p 45 from Bailey: Epicurus, Text and Translation, Oxford, 1925)

 So why write a book on the subject? Obviously, he had no choice!

Harris Demolishes Dennett

I have not read Sam Harris's book Free Will, largely since I can tell I already largely agree with what is in it. But I was appalled at Dennett's review published on SH's blog. It contained such sloppy thinking, I was tempted to post about it with a quip I invented twenty years ago: a philosophical debate consists of two people trying to change the subject to be whatever makes their argument right. I didn't make it far into the only Dennett book I attempted to read, and I can see why. He's obviously entrenched in the industry of academic philosophy, and has lost sight of Russell's early 20th century observation on its role:

...as soon as definite knowledge concerning any subject becomes possible, this subject ceases to be called philosophy, and becomes a separate science... Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom.

In his review Dennett actually references "the newly emerging field of experimental philosophy (or X-phi)." That phrase is worthy of a spit-take. Having spent time in academe I'm familiar with the marketing schlock one builds around marginally useful (or utterly useless) work. There are far more faculty members than relevant problems to research. Harris takes down both his sloppy reading and contemptuous attitude:

The newly emerging field of experimental philosophy (or “X-phi”) - See more at: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/reflections-on-free-will#sthash.ez8T6tzH.dpuf

The newly emerging field of experimental philosophy (or “X-phi”) - See more at: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/reflections-on-free-will#sthash.ez8T6tzH.dpuf

The newly emerging field of experimental philosophy (or “X-phi”) - See more at: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/reflections-on-free-will#sthash.ez8T6tzH.dpuf

The newly emerging field of experimental philosophy (or “X-phi”) - See more at: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/reflections-on-free-will#sthash.ez8T6tzH.dpuf

The newly emerging field of experimental philosophy (or “X-phi”) - See more at: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/reflections-on-free-will#sthash.ez8T6tzH.dpuf

The newly emerging field of experimental philosophy (or “X-phi”) - See more at: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/reflections-on-free-will#sthash.ez8T6tzH.dpuf

The newly emerging field of experimental philosophy (or “X-phi”) - See more at: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/reflections-on-free-will#sthash.ez8T6tzH.dpuf

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-marionettes-lament

My brief take on free will is that it's not a coherent concept. It makes no sense to debate whether or not it is compatible with determinism when you can't even describe what it is. In his review Dennett claims there is a great compatabilist conception, distinct from the folk-conception, and rails on Harris at great length for discussing the wrong thing (ignoring what his target audience might be...see quip above) but never, of course, presents said concept. I can only guess it is too technical and subtle to fit even within a nearly book length tirade. Dennett says:

After acknowledging that it is the prevailing view among philosophers (including his friend Daniel Dennett), he asserts that “More than in any other area of academic philosophy, the result resembles theology.”  This is a low blow...

I would hope that Harris would pause at this point to wonder—just wonder—whether maybe his philosophical colleagues had seen some points that had somehow escaped him in his canvassing of compatibilism. - See more at: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/reflections-on-free-will#sthash.NBjapQt0.dpuf

I would hope that Harris would pause at this point to wonder—just wonder—whether maybe his philosophical colleagues had seen some points that had somehow escaped him in his canvassing of compatibilism. - See more at: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/reflections-on-free-will#sthash.NBjapQt0.dpuf

After acknowledging that it is the prevailing view among philosophers (including his friend Daniel Dennett), he asserts that “More than in any other area of academic philosophy, the result resembles theology.”  This is a low blow - See more at: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/reflections-on-free-will#sthash.NBjapQt0.dpuf

After acknowledging that it is the prevailing view among philosophers (including his friend Daniel Dennett), he asserts that “More than in any other area of academic philosophy, the result resembles theology.”  This is a low blow - See more at: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/reflections-on-free-will#sthash.NBjapQt0.dpuf

After acknowledging that it is the prevailing view among philosophers (including his friend Daniel Dennett), he asserts that “More than in any other area of academic philosophy, the result resembles theology.”  This is a low blow - See more at: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/reflections-on-free-will#sthash.NBjapQt0.dpuf

and yet fails to share any of his sacred wisdom with us. I'm no Harris fan-boy, in fact I haven't read any of his books, but I've found his blog intriguing, and that is a well-deserved smack-down. Now, I'm reminded I haven't picked up my book on Epicurus for a while...

I would hope that Harris would pause at this point to wonder—just wonder—whether maybe his philosophical colleagues had seen some points that had somehow escaped him in his canvassing of compatibilism. - See more at: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/reflections-on-free-will#sthash.NBjapQt0.dp

After acknowledging that it is the prevailing view among philosophers (including his friend Daniel Dennett), he asserts that “More than in any other area of academic philosophy, the result resembles theology.”  This is a low blow - See more at: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/reflections-on-free-will#sthash.NBjapQt0.dpuf

After acknowledging that it is the prevailing view among philosophers (including his friend Daniel Dennett), he asserts that “More than in any other area of academic philosophy, the result resembles theology.”  This is a low blow - See more at: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/reflections-on-free-will#sthash.NBjapQt0.dpuf

After acknowledging that it is the prevailing view among philosophers (including his friend Daniel Dennett), he asserts that “More than in any other area of academic philosophy, the result resembles theology.”  This is a low blow - See more at: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/reflections-on-free-will#sthash.NBjapQt0.dpuf

After acknowledging that it is the prevailing view among philosophers (including his friend Daniel Dennett), he asserts that “More than in any other area of academic philosophy, the result resembles theology.”  This is a low blow - See more at: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/reflections-on-free-will#sthash.NBjapQt0.dpuf

After acknowledging that it is the prevailing view among philosophers (including his friend Daniel Dennett), he asserts that “More than in any other area of academic philosophy, the result resembles theology.”  This is a low blow - See more at: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/reflections-on-free-will#sthash.NBjapQt0.dpuf

After acknowledging that it is the prevailing view among philosophers (including his friend Daniel Dennett), he asserts that “More than in any other area of academic philosophy, the result resembles theology.”  This is a low blow - See more at: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/reflections-on-free-will#sthash.NBjapQt0.dpuf

The Book

Concerned about the fate of the oppressed and exiled Tibetan people, Gyatso [the Dalai Lama] once asked Elie Wiesel what has helped the Jews. Wiesel identified three things: a book, solidarity and memory. -Caspar Henderson, the Book of Barely Imagined Beings, p.168

Epicurus was a pragmatist: what good is philosophy if it didn't increase human happiness? Therefore, skepticism had to be rejected, and something had to be identified as truth. Thus he concluded that philosophy had to be dogmatic. "The wise man will not be a doubter but will dogmatize."   He developed the Canon: the criteria of Sensations, Anticipations, and Feelings.

Of course, to dogmatize, there has to be a book. Epicureanism was the first missionary philosophy, and the first universal philosophy. It provided the template that Christianity took over (more on this later). But, as Henderson continues,

To promote solidarity across tribal boundaries it would help if the book were less amenable to sectarian interpretation and contained more truth about the world than the Bible.

He goes on to suggest "the book of life," but this is a cop-out. Where are the Epicurean Little Epitome and Big Epitome for today? Mao's little red book of Physics?

"He insisted that his teachings were the same for all men, assuming that each would benefit by them to the limit of his capacities and opportunities." -NWD, p. 22.

While dogmatism seems repulsive to the scientist, surely we would be better off with articles of faith distilled from physics, geology, and biology, than iron age mythologies. The first missionary religion co-opted the structure of the first missionary philosophy. "As Epicurus rightly discerned, human institutions arise from the evolution of the unintended." -NWD p. 26. Could this debasement be reversed?

Anticipation

The second criterion of truth is the Prolepsis or Anticipation... the innate capacity to distinguish color is an anticipation of experience no less than the innate capacity to distinguish between justice and injustice... color-sense is part of the individuals preconditioning for life in his physical environment... while the sense of justice is part of the preconditioning for life in the social environment...

Obviously all living things are preconditioned for life in their terrestrial environment. Is it, then, inconsistent with observed fact to assume that human beings are preconditioned for life in their social environment?

To [Plato] the process of learning was one of reviving prenatal memories [due to the transmigration of the soul]... since [Epicurus] denied both the pre-existence and survival of the soul, found his explanation in the preconditioning of man by Nature for life in the prospective environment.

As Epicurus employed the term... it was no more possible to have a prolepsis of an ox than of a ,,, caterpillar tractor; the pre-existence of the idea in advance of experience was essential.

-NWD, p. 142-150

The prolepsis of Epicurus are obviously analogous to the a priori concepts of Kant. One can even see the pattern of Plato,Aristotle, & Epicurus replay in Berkely, Hume, & Kant. The Divine and time are even mentioned as anticipations, though the latter is confusing and not really comparable to Kant's notion. Epicurus hated geometry, probably due to how it lead to Platonism, so there's no mention of mathematical concepts, which were fundamental to Kant. Epicurus was more interested in biology, following in the footsteps of later Aristotle, so in many ways hits even closer to reality. After reading Kant, my main impression was that he really needed Darwin.

The Canon

It is a tribute to the Canon [Sensations, Anticipations, & Feelings] that the chief weapon employed against it was ridicule. To have set up a criterion of truth in place of reason, if not impious or sacrilegious, was at least heretical and outrageous. Few concepts are so flattering to the vanity of mankind as the hypothesis that the possession of reason exalts it above the brutes and offers it an affinity with the divine.

 -NWD p. 126

Since Nature is assumed to be the sole creatrix and man is restricted to improving upon her suggestions, it follows that Nature is the supreme teacher. By the same reasoning Physics is the supreme science, because through the study of this the teachings of Nature come to knowledge. As Cicero correctly informs us, "Through this body of knowledge the force of words, the meaning of style and the distinction between the logically consistent and the logically inconsistent can be discerned [bitches]."

-NWD p. 130

There are two kinds of inquiry, the one about realities, the other ending up in sounds without sense.

-Diogenes Laertius, via NWD

Misunderstanding

"It is an even worse mistake to have confused the tests of truth with the content of truth... [t]his was the blunder of Pierre Gassendi, who revived the study of Epicurus in the seventeenth century. It was his finding "that there is nothing in the intellect which has not been in the senses." From this position John Locke, in turn, set out as the founder of modern empiricism. Thus a misunderstanding of Epicurus underlies a main trend of modern philosophy."

Norman Wentworth Dewitt (NWD), Epicurus and his Philosophy