Free Willy! (and James Brown!)

Fri, 3 Jun 1994 11:33:21 -0400

More thoughts on free will:
What does this topic have to do with anthropology? Well, it has to do
with human beings, besides the fact that one feature of human life,
"culture," may express various memetic propositions about it...
I would say the root of free will is not randomness. If human action
was random, it would hardly be free. "Free will" means that the parameters
of action are limited, but the choice among possibilities is not... I would
argue that, although we can identify a slew of variables which *influence*
human choice, there are ultimately factors that will escape our analysis,
if nothing other than idiosyncratic factors like what people had for
In order to test the proposition of free will, we would basically have
to do the impossible. That would be to place the same human being in
exposure to exactly the same stimuli, at the same point in space and time,
and then see if they would proceed to take the same action...
In any case, it seems obvious to me that the behaviorist model of
stimulus-response is inadequate for human beings. Certain organisms do
display such behaviors, which we call "tropisms;" for example, reactions to
light, etc. Indeed, we can find such behaviors in human beings too, which
we call "addictions," where the person continues to return to the same
stimulus over and over again to obtain the same reponse... but for the most
part, we find that the same human being does *not* react the same way to
the same stimulus twice.
Indeed, one of the persistent features of human action is that most
humans don't like having their behavior predicted, and in fact may often
take actions contrary to the predictions of others precisely for this
reason. (This in itself is not predictable, precisely because they may
choose *not* to be unpredictable!)
Metaphysically, many people have challenged free will because they
feel it somehow makes human beings unique. Everything else in the universe
is determined, totally subject to external action. Why should there be this
one class of objects, human beings, that is not? In response to this: I do
not think human beings are the only objects in the universe with this
property. Any other object in the universe which possesses *consciousness*
- and we can argue over whether or not such 'objects' (beings) have been
found - would also have this property. To Daniel Dennett, conscious beings
have this property because they contain representations of themselves; they
are self-referential. To me, it goes beyond even that, but I won't go into
Neurologically, some scientists have claimed to falsify it. They
suggest that with a PET scan, they can identify areas of growing neural
activity in the motor cortex several microseconds before action takes
place. Hence, human action *is* completely predictable. Up until one
scientist allowed his subjects to watch the scanner. They would see the
area of predicted motor activity, and then not take the motor action. Then
he found something amazing: he would tell his subjects to visualize moving
their arm, but not to do it. Presto! The areas of motor activity would
light up, but no movement would take place...
I would say one reason why we have "free will" is because we can
visualize taking a whole series of actions, and even consider their
consequences, without *actually* taking those actions... and thus modify
our actions before they take place.
Further, I would also say that while the brain/biocomputer has all
kinds of 'programming,' (let us call it socialization or enculturation) it
possess a distinct property that most other computers existing do not. It
can metaprogram. It is able to review its own programming and make
modifications thereof. Thus, the brain may be 'loaded' with all kinds of
'software' from its particular 'culture,' but it is capable of questioning
and modifying those programs...
Ultimately, whether or not there is such a thing as a human 'soul,'
I do not think we can deal with the problem of 'free will' until we come to
accept that there is a human 'self,' and try and understand what that

Seeker1 [@Nervm.Nerdc.Ufl.Edu] (real info available on request)
CyberAnthropologist, TechnoCulturalist, Guerilla Ontologist, Chaotician
Matrix Master Control Node #3, Gainesville, Fl.
"I slept with Faith & found a corpse in my arms upon awakening/ I drank and
danced all night with Doubt and found her a virgin in the morning." --