Humans, Free Will and Evolution - A Summary So Far
So far we have agreed that humans have free will.
At the same time, we have acknowledged that
a) humans don't always make use of this capacity, and
b) research in both cognitive psychology and neuroscience supports the view that only a tiny fraction of our neurological activity is conscious!
In his book Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman uses the terms "System I" and "System II" to designate the fast, tireless, and automatic unconscious operations versus the slow, limited, and effortful conscious operations of our brains. In The Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt uses the language of an elephant and a rider to depict our sense of conscious control in spite of the reality. How to understand the possibility of free will when so small a portion of our brains is conscious?
What if we think of leveraging that small sliver of conscious brain capacity to train the elephant? How would we go about doing that?
Since we are humans, and we are talking about how humans think, and we are thinking in order to talk about it, it can get a bit confusing.
But this is a clue! This is exactly the kind of thing that we excel at! We imagine, plan, and then strategically carry out. We study to find how nature works so that we can harmonize with what happens naturally. We form communities and do this with each other. We have a restless desire to find out ways to make things better. As Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi points out in his national bestseller, Flow, "The best moments of a person's life usually occur when a person's body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen."
Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced "cheeks sent me high") goes on to note, "Such experiences are not necessarily pleasant at the time they occur."
I'd like to propose that the exercise of free will is the intentional direction of our thoughts and actions to forgo certain and immediately attractive options in order to attempt to accomplish something uncertain, but of apparently greater value.
Let me review the over-arching direction of the class. We are examining the proposition that ethics is not about what one "ought" to do, but rather about aligning one's thoughts and actions with the way the universe is evolving. The capacity to use free will is a pre-requisite for this view.
All of us in the class have agreed that humans have the capacity for free will. That is good, because if human thoughts and actions are either wholly determinate, or wholly indeterminate, the question of "aligning with the way the universe is evolving" is moot. (So then, too, would be the question of "ought." If free will doesn't exist, how could anyone be expected to do anything other than what they do? But this is beside the point. I am arguing that the notion of ethics as "ought" is out.)
However, the actual practice of free will is less clear. We can't establish that an action or thought that comes to us naturally and easily constitutes use of free will. Only if we have intended to develop such a natural and easy ability in the past, when it was not natural or easy can we see that we have made use of free will. Voluntarily learning a foreign language is an example of the use of free will. Enrolling in challenging OLLI courses like this is another example.
Here is a summary of the way I see "ethics based on science." This is meant to replace the idea that ethics is irreconcilably at odds with science because it is based on some set of universal values.
First, I see ethics as a sort of dynamic and ever-changing dance of cooperation. The cooperation is necessarily with ourselves, with the groups with which we are involved, and with our environment. Ethics is relational. It is about connectivity in ways that promote well-being and health. On the grand scale, I see humankind as becoming more cooperative over time. This is based on the historical record and is supported by the study of human neurobiology and cognitive sciences.
This argument is obscured by the quality of our own contemporary culture. Even though humans want to make things better, there are times when we mistake the "pleasant" and the "certain" for the "good." We in a Westernized, Educated, Industrialize, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD) culture are not typical of the human species. As background, please peruse this paper, "The Weirdest People in the World."
Many of us are aware and uneasy with the current situation, but there are so very many things that are out of whack that it's been difficult to figure out how to make headway to get back on track. I'm suggesting that we start by returning to an approach that prioritizes using our free will in imaginative and strategic ways to promote cooperation in whatever groups and environments we find ourselves. This is the way of evolution, this is the way our brains are constructed, and this is deeply and intrinsically satisfying.
Second, while natural selection seems to follow a "random walk" in terms of specifics, there is an apparent general direction. In the words of Erwin Schroedinger, there is order from disorder, and there is increasing order from order. Dynamic order is a form of cooperation. Here we will learn about the characteristics that mark sustainably cooperative groups, and see how in a universe fraught with natural disasters and other evils, cooperators triumph over free-riders.
From the human perspective, we can use our free will, imaginatively and strategically, to promote cooperators, incentivize cooperation, and exclude free-loaders. Over human history, looking at the periods of greatest flourishing we see civilizations that formed themselves around the well-fare of the community at large. Even though it is difficult and uncertain, it is intrinsically rewarding.
Practicing free will is the method, and the method is subtle and slow. It involves the strategic use of imagination and the practice of self-discipline to stay an uncertain course in pursuit of something of greater value than presently apparent. When we see that this is what is happening in the universe whether we join or not, and when we begin to understand that we have the choice, and the choice is something beyond the filters of our current cognitive capacity, then we start to get into the flow.
At the same time, we have acknowledged that
a) humans don't always make use of this capacity, and
b) research in both cognitive psychology and neuroscience supports the view that only a tiny fraction of our neurological activity is conscious!
In his book Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman uses the terms "System I" and "System II" to designate the fast, tireless, and automatic unconscious operations versus the slow, limited, and effortful conscious operations of our brains. In The Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt uses the language of an elephant and a rider to depict our sense of conscious control in spite of the reality. How to understand the possibility of free will when so small a portion of our brains is conscious?
What if we think of leveraging that small sliver of conscious brain capacity to train the elephant? How would we go about doing that?
Since we are humans, and we are talking about how humans think, and we are thinking in order to talk about it, it can get a bit confusing.
But this is a clue! This is exactly the kind of thing that we excel at! We imagine, plan, and then strategically carry out. We study to find how nature works so that we can harmonize with what happens naturally. We form communities and do this with each other. We have a restless desire to find out ways to make things better. As Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi points out in his national bestseller, Flow, "The best moments of a person's life usually occur when a person's body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen."
Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced "cheeks sent me high") goes on to note, "Such experiences are not necessarily pleasant at the time they occur."
I'd like to propose that the exercise of free will is the intentional direction of our thoughts and actions to forgo certain and immediately attractive options in order to attempt to accomplish something uncertain, but of apparently greater value.
Let me review the over-arching direction of the class. We are examining the proposition that ethics is not about what one "ought" to do, but rather about aligning one's thoughts and actions with the way the universe is evolving. The capacity to use free will is a pre-requisite for this view.
All of us in the class have agreed that humans have the capacity for free will. That is good, because if human thoughts and actions are either wholly determinate, or wholly indeterminate, the question of "aligning with the way the universe is evolving" is moot. (So then, too, would be the question of "ought." If free will doesn't exist, how could anyone be expected to do anything other than what they do? But this is beside the point. I am arguing that the notion of ethics as "ought" is out.)
However, the actual practice of free will is less clear. We can't establish that an action or thought that comes to us naturally and easily constitutes use of free will. Only if we have intended to develop such a natural and easy ability in the past, when it was not natural or easy can we see that we have made use of free will. Voluntarily learning a foreign language is an example of the use of free will. Enrolling in challenging OLLI courses like this is another example.
Here is a summary of the way I see "ethics based on science." This is meant to replace the idea that ethics is irreconcilably at odds with science because it is based on some set of universal values.
First, I see ethics as a sort of dynamic and ever-changing dance of cooperation. The cooperation is necessarily with ourselves, with the groups with which we are involved, and with our environment. Ethics is relational. It is about connectivity in ways that promote well-being and health. On the grand scale, I see humankind as becoming more cooperative over time. This is based on the historical record and is supported by the study of human neurobiology and cognitive sciences.
This argument is obscured by the quality of our own contemporary culture. Even though humans want to make things better, there are times when we mistake the "pleasant" and the "certain" for the "good." We in a Westernized, Educated, Industrialize, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD) culture are not typical of the human species. As background, please peruse this paper, "The Weirdest People in the World."
Many of us are aware and uneasy with the current situation, but there are so very many things that are out of whack that it's been difficult to figure out how to make headway to get back on track. I'm suggesting that we start by returning to an approach that prioritizes using our free will in imaginative and strategic ways to promote cooperation in whatever groups and environments we find ourselves. This is the way of evolution, this is the way our brains are constructed, and this is deeply and intrinsically satisfying.
Second, while natural selection seems to follow a "random walk" in terms of specifics, there is an apparent general direction. In the words of Erwin Schroedinger, there is order from disorder, and there is increasing order from order. Dynamic order is a form of cooperation. Here we will learn about the characteristics that mark sustainably cooperative groups, and see how in a universe fraught with natural disasters and other evils, cooperators triumph over free-riders.
From the human perspective, we can use our free will, imaginatively and strategically, to promote cooperators, incentivize cooperation, and exclude free-loaders. Over human history, looking at the periods of greatest flourishing we see civilizations that formed themselves around the well-fare of the community at large. Even though it is difficult and uncertain, it is intrinsically rewarding.
Practicing free will is the method, and the method is subtle and slow. It involves the strategic use of imagination and the practice of self-discipline to stay an uncertain course in pursuit of something of greater value than presently apparent. When we see that this is what is happening in the universe whether we join or not, and when we begin to understand that we have the choice, and the choice is something beyond the filters of our current cognitive capacity, then we start to get into the flow.