Free WIll
Real Talk Philosophy Artwork
“Puppeteer “ created by M for Real Talk Philosophy’s exploration of Free WIll
A Short Introductory Story - Brain damage, free will, and the law
One day, in 1998 an American, whom we’ll call Kevin, was on his way driving home from work. Then a foul taste began to grow in his mouth. A heaviness, thickness in his chest. His tongue began to grow in his throat. Then his hearing began to fade. Then he passed out. When he finally woke up, he saw his car smashed into the side of an apartment building. The police that arrived insisted that he had been drinking. But he was yelling through clenched teeth, “I’ve had a seizure!”
Kevin has epilepsy. He has since he was a teenager. Two years before the accident, Kevin had brain surgery to remove the part of his brain that was causing the seizures. At first, it seemed to have been 100% successful. He didn’t have seizures for years… until he did. So fast forward two years, and he gets in this car accident. The first surgery was so successful, for a little while anyway, that Kevin and his wife had every reason to believe this second surgery would be just as successful. So he went under the knife. He was awake.
Kevin is a musician. They had him hum while they performed the surgery, to make sure they didn’t accidentally hit a part of the brain responsible for his love of music. The doctors removed four and a half centimeters of his brain, a little bigger than a golf ball. After the surgery, he seemed like a very normal guy. Fine motor function. Fine speech. He could play music.
But then things started to change. His appetite became insatiable, eating nonstop. Then he began playing the piano nonstop too. 8, 9 hours a day. His sex drive went crazy. His wife said she’d come home and he’d immediately want her. Then again. Then again. Then, eventually, Homeland Security showed up at Kevin’s front door. The agents asked "You know why we're here?" and Kevin said, "Yeah, I do, I was expecting you." Kevin led the agents to his computer and they arrested him.
Kevin had been downloading child porn. Not just child porn, toddler porn - some videos showed children 3, 4 years old. Kevin says he started with an insatiable sex drive, then an insatiable porn drive, then the porn got more and more taboo - gay sex, bondage, pee, feces, animal sex - until he was led to child porn
Kevin said... “I didn't want to do it. There would be nights where it would be four or five, six hours of going through the same site and downloading one or two files and then deleting them, going back a minute later, downloading the same files, deleting them. I would download those files a dozen times and delete them a dozen times, because I didn't want to be there, knew I shouldn't be there, and couldn't help myself from going back“
After the arrest, when Kevin was put out on bail, he was given some medication. His wife says it was “like flipping on a switch”
We see a similar phenomenon in monkeys. When surgeons performed similar surgery on Rhesus monkeys and removed a similar part of the brain as the one Kevin lost, they become hypersexual. Males monkeys with normal sex drives become 10 times more sexually active, with both males and females. So not only did sexual drive change, but also sexual preference. In court, Kevin pled guilty but asked the judge to be lenient, saying that the person who did all those things in some sense wasn't him.
Introductory Questions
Should Kevin go to prison?
Did Kevin look at the child pornography, or did “someone else”?
Does Kevin have free will?
What is free will? Does it exist? How do you know?
Whatever “God” is - does It have Free Will?
What is Free Will?
There are many different definitions of free will and the variation of definitions is likely one reason why there is so much debate over its existence. One simple definition comes to us from Britannica, which defines Free Will as “the power or capacity to choose among alternatives or to act in certain situations independently of natural, social, or divine restraints.”
Consider the clothes you’re wearing now. Did YOU choose to put them on, or were you under the control of some external influence? When scrolling through Facebook, are YOU choosing to scroll, or has SOMETHING ELSE taken control? Something separate from your brain and your biology that had you choose to carry out certain actions, for instance, choosing your outfit, your career, your partner, etc.
As written by Arthur Schopenhauer in Essays and Aphorisms, “Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.” Now, what do you think this means? That’s right. You can want to eat chocolate cake. But did you choose to want to eat chocolate cake? Or was this desire completely out of your control?
Split-brain experiments
Free Will is a very difficult phenomenon to study. Free Will is a subjective, internal experience. Science is exclusively the study of the objective, external world. How could researchers possibly conduct an experiment to test a person’s Free Will? There have been a few attempts to study the existence of Free Will. One collection of experiments are referred to as The Split Brain Experiments.
For people suffering from seizures, it’s very common to separate the left and right hemispheres of the brain. This is called a lobotomy. Specifically, a lobotomy involves the severing of the corpus callosum - the bridge between the hemispheres. When lobotomies first began to be practiced, it appeared as though the surgeries left the patients fully intact. The surgery has little effect on motor function, math skills, personality, etc. People with split brains act the same as people with joined brains, just without seizures. Beginning in the 1960s, the neuroscientists Roger Sperry and Michael Gazzaniga began studying people who had undergone lobotomies, who are sometimes referred to as “split-brain patients.”
For these experiments, we have to first understand that visual input from the left eye is passed to the right hemisphere. And visual input from the right eye is passed to the left hemisphere. In most people, this visual information is shared to the other hemisphere via the corpus callosum. But in split-brain patients, the corpus callosum has been severed, so the information is confined to only a single hemisphere of the brain.
In the 1960s, Sperry and Gazzaniga would cover a subject’s right eye, and show them a command, for instance, the words “stand up and leave the room.” After seeing the command, the subject would stand up and leave the room. The researchers would ask, “why are you leaving?” Now, language, in most people, is controlled by the left hemisphere. But this information didn’t enter the left hemisphere; it entered the subject’s left eye and was passed to the right hemisphere.
So in response, the subject would say, “oh, I’m just leaving to drink some water.”
The researcher would ask, “Are you sure?”
And the subject would say, “Yeah, I’m thirsty”
Now, this wasn’t a lie. The subject was thirsty. And they convinced themselves that this was the reason why they had gotten up to leave the room. But this wasn’t the reason they stood up to leave the room.
In another experiment, subjects were flashed a word, for instance, the word ‘egg’ to only the left eye. When asked what word they saw flash, they said they did not see a word flash. Because the left hemisphere, which controls language, never received this input. Subjects were then given a box of various objects and asked to choose any object with their left hand (which is controlled by the right hemisphere). Obviously, they would choose the egg.
When asked about their choice, the subjects would justify it
“Oh, I had eggs for breakfast this morning.” or “My sister owns a chicken farm.”
These answers were not lies. These things were always true. But these were not the reason the subject selected the egg. They selected the egg because of the flash on the screen.
Libet’s experiment
But the Split Brain Experiments were not the earliest experiments conducted on Free Will. The earliest experiments on Free Will were conducted by Benjamin Libet in the 1980s. These have come to be known as Libet’s Experiments.
In his lab, Libet scanned subject’s brains with EEG scalp caps. Over a long duration of time, Libet asked his subjects to press a button whenever they “felt like it.” This was done again and again, the subject choosing every time how long to wait between pressing the button. Subjects were also looking at a very precise clock, and were told to note the exact time when the decision to press the button had been made. But the EEG brain scan saw neurological activity which corresponds with decision making (on average) 200 milliseconds before the subject made the decision and the button had been pressed.
Implications
The research appears to imply that the conscious decision didn’t cause the movement. The movement was the result of brain activity that occurred some time before the conscious experience of the decision.
This has led some scholars to believe that Free Will is an illusion, that consciousness is more like a report on what is already happening, rather than something that makes decisions.
Skepticism
Some argue that the time recording couldn’t have been very specific. Others say that these findings may be accurate, but can’t be applied to more complex decision-making. Others question “How long does it take to make a decision?”
Discussion Questions
Is it possible for one person to exhibit more free will than another? Consider spirituality, finances, race, location, era, etc.
Are there ever moments when you feel like a slave to your biology (smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, watching YouTube, scrolling facebook, etc.)?
How much of your decision-making is influenced by other people?
Parasites & Free Will
It has been well documented that parasites can control minds. Does free will exist if our actions can be controlled by parasites? There are many mind-controlling parasites that we are aware of, and many we are likely unaware of.
Toxoplasma gondii
Toxoplasma Gondii is a parasite that can infect many animals but can only sexually reproduce in the intestines of a cat. It can survive in any mammal, but it must make its way back to a cat in order to reproduce. Toxoplasma frequently infects rats. This is because rats spend a lot of time in many of the same places as cats. For this reason, the parasite has evolved, by a random genetic mutation, a brilliantly creepy way to travel back from rat to cat, despite rats’ deeply ingrained fear of cats. This is a neurological mechanism that scientists still don’t completely understand
Toxoplasma somehow affects the neurological processes of the rats, which causes them to release their fear of cats and walk (or in some cases run) directly toward the cat. Toxoplasma creates hundreds of cysts in the brain of the rat. This causes dopamine levels to rise in the rat. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that plays a role in mediating powerful emotions such as desire and fear.
It’s possible that these rats recognize that they are being controlled by an outside force, in the same way we might recognize when our anxiety is caused by coffee. But there is also the chance that the neurochemical change is unrecognized, and that the rat is simply drawn to the cat, as a mosquito is drawn to a lamp.
Humans can also be infected with the toxoplasma gondii. This often occurs by consuming undercooked meat of infected animals or by coming in contact with cat feces, via drinking water, garden soil, or litter boxes. Studies have indicated that in human subjects infected by toxoplasma, Neurons harboring the parasite were making 3.5 times more dopamine. In humans, Toxoplasma is thought to be a trigger for schizophrenia and other mental illnesses. Schizophrenics are 2-3x more likely to test positive for antibodies to toxoplasma gondii than non-schizophrenics.
Now, it appears that Taxoplasma affects men and women in different ways. Infected human males scored higher in traits like suspicion of authority and a propensity to break rules. Infected human females ranked higher in measures of warmth, self-assurance, and chattiness.
Discussion Questions
How do beliefs in free will affect political ideologies?
Would an artificially intelligent being have free will?
Do non-human animals possess free will in a way different than human animals?
Haiku and Drawing Submissions
