Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Free Will Blogging

As I've become integrated into Mom Culture over the past 8 months and I've started to develop some friendships, I have started to get into some substantive discussions about people's fundamental views of the world.

One topic that tends to come up a lot when you discuss philosophy is the idea of "free will." People will always take one of two positions on this topic, either that free will exists or that it doesn't. Invariably the rationale behind the person's POV on the topic rests on a series of busts to the alternative idea - that is, a person who believes free will doesn't exist will give examples of human behavior that cannot comfortably be explained by free choice, and vice versa.

It's always been interesting to me that it breaks down like that, since "free will" is not actually a thing that can exist or not exist in a binary sense. "Free will" is a name we give to a certain type of model of human behavior, and thus it "exists" to whatever degree it is useful as such a model.

Put another way, free will is not actually something you have but something you do.

So how do we make use of free will? Well, the human brain is capable of understanding and mastering the forces that induce it to behave in programmed, conditioned ways. A person who can't help drinking too much can, through a variety of techniques, learn not to drink at all, or to drink less, or to make less risky choices when drinking, etc.

The recovering drunk is not then "free" in the sense of having limitless options as to how to act - a drunk who goes out to a bar with his old drinking buddies is likely to revert to past conditioned behaviors and drink too much, for example.

At the same time, personal experience of human consciousness renders absurd the argument that human beings cannot everchoose between one set of behaviors and another. People do, at certain times, consciously weigh the risks and benefits of multiple options, choose to go down one path or another, and then face the results. The idea that this experience is some sort of illusion is difficult to defend without a spiraling into generalities and unfounded claims.

Human behavior cannot be explained by one particular static model as if the brain were just a very sophisticated sort of abacus. At the same time, the biology of the nervous system shows plainly that much day-to-day behavior is controlled by essentially programmed responses that are never processed by the brain's higher reasoning centers.

In other words, human beings can behave in ways that could be usefully described as "free" - under certain conditions. Maximizing the number and quality of the moments in which a person is truly free to choose her path is a matter of preparation, and practice.

In the East, particularly in the Muslim world, the idea that conditioned behaviors exist and can be integrated with the "free" mind through study and mental exercise has been discussed by scholars both secular and religious for many hundreds of years, and the amount of research on the subject is vast.

Yet in the West we still make little study of this idea, preferring instead to argue about which dead philosopher is right about his antiquated, binary view of how the mind functions.

Thursday, May 01, 2008

Your Liberal Media

Atrios had a post up yesterday that was both intentionally AND unintentionally snarky.

The intentional snark had to do with the hiring, by the supposedly center-left Atlantic Monthly, of unrepentant war propagandist Jeffrey Goldberg" (that link also via Atrios) as their newest blogger. And indeed, the hiring of the fantastically discredited Goldberg is odious beyond measure for ANY publication, let alone a supposedly liberal-leaning one.

But the last sentence of the post caught my eye and got me to thinking. Atrios says "Still I look forward to to a lively discussion with fellow Atlantic blogger Yglesias."

Now, I like Matt Yglesias and I read his blog every day. But it's worth noting that Yglesias ALSO advocated for a war that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. He's since repented, but he supported the war more or less unreservedly at the time.

In fact, if we look down the list of bloggers that are employed by the Atlantic, we find:

Andrew Sullivan, who supported the war but has since softened and is now an advocate of withdrawal (though he never really reversed himself on the original question of the Iraq invasion, relying primarily on what Yglesias and others have called "The Incompetence Dodge.")

Ross Douthat, who supported the war VERY enthusiastically and continues, as far as I know, to support it, but who has sort of forgotten that Iraq exists in recent months.

Megan McArdle, who supported the war very enthusiastically and continues, AFAIK, to support it, but who has sort of forgotten that Iraq exists in recent months.

Marc Ambinder, who supported the war but who has no clear position on it now that I can tell.

Clive Crook, who wrote for the Economist at the time and thus wasn't signing his work, but seems to be a former war supporter who has since repented.

Finally there's James Fallows, who opposed the Iraq invasion from the beginning, and of course Goldberg.

At this point the American population can be divided more or less into thirds on the question of the Iraq war. One third of Americans opposed the war from the beginning and still oppose it. One third of Americans supported the war at the time but have since changed their minds (or at least started advocating withdrawal) and one third supported the invasion but still support it.

So if they were trying to track with the attitudes the general population, the Atlantic's blog editors would fire Goldberg and Sullivan and replace them both with wooly-headed leftists. That's not going to happen, clearly.

One obvious (and shopworn, certainly) way of looking at this is just to note that it tells you something about the "liberal media" in the US that an actual liberal publication like the Atlantic is substantially to the right of the American population on this issue. But since economic status plays a big role in shaping political opinions, it's unavoidable that you elite opinion is going to be to the right of the general population, and that what's "centrist" to elites is actually pretty conservative to the electorate as a whole.

What's more peculiar to me is this. Where on the political commentary spectrum would you find a publication that actually tracks closely with US public opinion on Iraq? What publication is a third war opponents, a third supporters, and a third "regretful supporters?"

That publication, as far as I can tell, doesn't exist. You basically go straight from center-right establishment pubs like The Atlantic and The New Republic to true publications of the left such as Harper's, The Nation and Z Magazine.

It seems strange that the "publish opinions that apppeal to the widest possible readership" niche would be one that would be more or less vacant in the political commentary market.

I unfortunately have no substantive analysis to offer on this point other than to note that it is, in fact, odd.