Free-Will, Neuroscience, Emergence And All That PR Jazz

What is it about free will that makes it such an attractive target? Perhaps because it's all we've got left now that God has gone. Just as there was a ton of publicity to be had attacking God and every last sentence in The Bible, so there's a lot of publicity to be had saying that we don't have free will or that we're so dumb and easily manipulated we don't deserve it.

Determinism - the thesis that everything but everything in the Universe was pre-destined to happen from the moment of creation because the development of the Universe is governed by the Laws of Nature and the disposition of the particles at the start - was really a PR stunt by Laplace Associates ("We Have No Need For That Hypothesis") for their Celestial Mechanics product. It's not a serious idea and was never intended to be. If you wonder how it was ever taken to be one, remember, you think that bottled water is better than the tap water in a first-world country. That was a PR stunt as well, and boy did it work.

Reductionist materialism - the thesis that everything you value is "merely" a bunch of atoms / whatevers, does not really exist ("Love ain't nothin' but oxytocin talkin'") and you're a fool for taking it so seriously - is just a playground wind-up. It's one thing to say that "emotions are caused by the release of hormones as a reaction to what happens to you" and another entirely to say "there are no emotions, merely hormones released into the blood stream". If there are no emotions, why go looking for hormones to explain them? To reduce X to Y is not to deny that X exists, but to claim that X is caused by Y and can be relieved by an antidote to Y. It's not necessary for me to convince you that your new girlfriend is trouble on stilts - all I need to do is to give you a dose of the anti-love hormone and you'll be free of your unhealthy fascination. Love may be hormonal, but that doesn't make any less all the things every poet in history ever said about it. Unless, that is, you're looking for a reason to be bitter and twisted.

The latest passengers on the Knocking Free Will bandwagon are the neuroscientists. But hold on here: when they publish research that seems to show that decisions are the result of brain processes, our reply should be... Gee, who knew? Followed by... and you'd publish it if you found that decisions weren't a result of brain processes? It's the business of neuroscience to find physical correlatives for what we think of as mental processes, so we should not really be too surprised when they say they have done so. Recently they have discovered that there's a brain process that accompanies a certain type of decision that happens before we become conscious of having made the decision. Lawyers are lining up to claim that their clients, criminals and bank CEO's all, are off the hook for anything they did. One way we know an idea is a bunch of crock is that defence lawyers rush to use it in defence of the clearly culpable.

We should be used to the idea that we are physical bodies and brains, with no magical ghosts, souls, minds or spirits interacting with our bodies (presumably via the pineal gland), and yet with free will. This is the twenty-first century, after all. It's sheer laziness to carry on proclaiming that we are but physical beings and therefore have no free will and our mental life is an irrelevant illusion. The real challenge is to explain how we can be wholly physical beings with free will,  making morally significant choices. From the fuss about the recent research on brain processes, it seems like a lot of people have yet to get the message.

I'm going to do is explain what I understand by freedom and free will. See if it makes sense to you. But don't expect me to argue against the determinists and Sneering Reductionists, and don't expect me to explain why free will isn't some massive illusion. All of these are self-consistent positions - sadly - and there's no way out once you step in. So pardon me if I trust my experience over an hypothesis that was only invented as a publicity stunt anyway.


What free will is not is this: that in the situation S there were options X and Y, and though we did X we could have done Y. This makes far, far too many fuzzy metaphysical claims for my taste. What does "could have done" mean? In practice? How does anyone know I could have done Y, especially since I'm a Catholic / Muslim / Vegetarian / Mother / Barrister and it's against my beliefs / ethics / religion and anyway I don't have that kind of money and have no idea where to buy arsenic? What does it mean to say that X and Y were options? For who? Me? Or a Russian oligarch? (Russian oligarchs have so many more options than I do.) Usually when someone says that I could have done Y, they are making a moral judgement, not saying something about the state of the Universe when I made the decision to do X.

There's an idea of free will that's just a little bit Romantic - in the way that Sleepless in Seattle is just a little bit romantic - and it goes like this: are we really free when we're the victims of manipulative advertisers, global brands, the indoctrination of schools and grade-inflated universities, peer pressure, employer's expectations and corporate rules, the censorship of the media conglomerates, the thousands of hoops of the bureaucrat, and the tricks played on us by marketeers informed by the latest research in behavioural psyschology? When artists have to have Masters' degrees and networking skills before they can even be considered by a gallery... are we really free? Or are we just choosing conformities?

You get the idea. Romantic free will must be pure or it is not. Free will is unconstrained, uninfluenced, and uncontamiated by the slightest taint of mundane reason, the unfettered expression of our inner souls, acting in a spirit of love, creativity, autonomy and originality. This isn't my idea of free will.

As a side issue, soul-lovers and mind-merchants will try to convince you that things like decisions and choices are "intentional objects" that cannot be understood in a purely material world, and need minds and other mysterious "emergent" objects. Emergence is a bridging idea - in this case between the rather simple way we thought about the world up to the end of the nineteenth century and how we are starting to think of it now. Back in the day, only the fundamental particles were real, and everything else was some temporary arrangement of them, with decreasing amounts of plausibility the more complex the arrangement became. Today we are starting to understand that it's the arrangements that are real, because the fundamental particles come and go. Your skin is real, but the cells are always falling off it. The Inland Revenue is sadly real, but the staff come and go on their temporary contracts. "Emergence" is offered as a magical process by which complicated things appear from seemingly simple components, as if bread dough "emerges" from its ingredients. It doesn't, of course, because it takes something to mix and knead the ingredients before the dough "emerges", even if in the case of the primordial DNA-creating soup, it wasn't an actual baker. Anyone who offers "emergence" as a serious explanation needs to learn more science and technology.

Free will is making decisions and choices, with an important condition, which I first read in Hegel's Aethestics. In the next post, I'll talk about that.

Junk Page Views: blogg.tk and Others

A while ago Google introduced Google Stats on Blogger. Very interesting it is as well. I have recently ascended to the giddy heights of roughly ten page views a day - which can be more than I get e-mails at work - and I would like to think that those are all real people brought here by a search on Google or the "Next Blog" button on Blogger.

Then I saw that a site called blogg.tk was a top provider for a few days. Never having heard of it, I went to have a look. What a nasty site. It seems to be offering software to set up a whole bunch of random blogs from which you can, allegedly, make money. Because if it was that easy, why don't they do it themselves and cut out the middleman?

I had noticed other odd-looking sites before. alphainventions.com was one, remroom.ru another and postring.tk, pu.gg. www.jobsforsmartpeople.com, pingywebedition.somee.com yet others. Many of them are based in, oh!, look!, Russia. I am willing to believe that someone might have been browsing from what looks like a Russian furniture store, but then I trust everything from Russia, from the blondes to the billionaires.

I'm assuming the scam is to spam sad and lonely bloggers like me with views so that we go to their site, where they will infect us with viruses or try to sell us some bogus software that will make us rich or popular or attractive to women. Maybe they will hi-jack the blog. I don't know.

This is never going to be a popular blog. It's too text-heavy, the entries are often long, the tone is personal and the photographs don't feature Abbey Lee or Lily Cole on a regular basis. (I don't know how many page views Terence Tao gets - in a sensible world, it should be thousands - but I bet it's not as many as Rumi Neely gets.) I'm not writing about things people care about, like fashion, music, mathematics and cooking. Nor is it chirpy in tone and garishly colorful in design, which also seems to help.

I would like to know that the page views I get are real. Occasionally someone leaves a comment, which just makes my week. (I've never left one, which I know makes me a Bad Blogging Citizen, but I can never think of anything to say other than "Interesting post" that wouldn't take half an evening to compose. I would feel frustrated if I read "interesting post" because I would want to know why.)

Google know about these junk page views, but doing anything about them isn't on their list.  Best advice seems to be: don't click on the link. Just like you don't "unsubscribe" from spam e-mails.

The Art of Non-Conformity (3): Lucie's Laws

Hold back the sophomore comment about "there can't be ways to be a non-conformist, because then you'd be conforming to the rules of being a non-conformist". I can conform to the rules I choose, and I can choose your rules or their rules, and it doesn't matter, because tomorrow or in the next instant I can change my mind. The point is not to conform to their rules because you can't think of anything better to do, or because you want to be accepted by them.

I'm going to cheat and quote myself, because this is the best way I've put this, though I wasn't thinking about it at the time. This is Lucie and Adam's second date, and Lucie is explaining the Laws she and a friend mentioned as an aside when Lucie and Adam first met.

LUCIE     One: do not watch television and only read foreign newspapers...

ADAM     I can read the FT?

LUCIE     I do. Saturdays. Vanessa Freidman, Jackie Wullschlager, Peter Aspden. Sometimes even to make sure they've kept their promises.

ADAM     Oh. You really do know everyone.

LUCIE     Or I'd have a day job. Rule Two?

ADAM     Okay.

LUCIE     A light suntan and good muscle tone are not optional...

ADAM     Damn straight.

LUCIE     Three: outside the home, even casual clothes should be classy.

ADAM     That's what I was trying to say...

LUCIE     You were. Four: shopping is not...

ADAM     ...a destination activity...

LUCIE     ...so buy your food and washing-up liquid on your way to somewhere else...

ADAM     Aha.

LUCIE     Aha indeed. Five: drinks begin with a w - whiskey, wine and water...

ADAM     You just took that from me.

LUCIE     Well, you might think so. But actually I didn't. Six?

ADAM     Six.

LUCIE     If you can see a crowd, you're in the wrong place...

ADAM     So true.

LUCIE     Seven: butter, coffee and toilet paper, however poor you are, never scrimp on those three things...

ADAM     That sounds familiar, but I shouldn't let on I know it's India Knight, should I?

LUCIE     No. People will think you read your girlfriends' books.

ADAM     And we wouldn't want that. Eight?

LUCIE     Eight: argue with your dentist and your doctor, but not with your petrol gauge or your first impressions.

ADAM     My petrol gauge is as reliable as my first impressions?

LUCIE     Which are way more reliable than your doctor.

(05:20 In The Morning - un-produced theatre script)

Lucie's Laws are about keeping the crap out of your life so you have time, energy and money to enjoy the good stuff. Do what you want except consume junk culture, junk food and the poisonous air of the English media. Rules two and three mean you're going to dress well and you will be going to the gym or playing sports a couple of times a week at least (because being an overweight slob in sloppy clothes is so desirable). Rule four keeps you away from the High Street at the weekends, and from having a family, because you can't shop for a family on an ad-hoc basis. Rules five and seven tell you to aim for simplicity in taste and quality in essentials, not quantity or novelty (that's where most people fall on their faces). Rule eight tells you not to accept so-called experts at face value: many doctors and dentists have ulterior motives, whereas your petrol gauge doesn't (some phone battery indicators do, I read somewhere). Rule six reminds you that the last time the crowd was right was in the mid-Sixties about the Beatles and the Stones. Since then, what's interesting and quality has diverged further and further from what's popular.

You can do whatever else you want. Adam he is an accountant and Lucie she is a PR. You can have a day job or a career. You can like your sex vanilla or kink, you can be a vegetarian who believes in global warming or a carnivore who doesn't, you can have ink or clear skin, you can dig Mozart or Ornette Coleman - as long as you dig someone. You can be well-balanced or you can be a screw-up. You just can't be so messed-up you so things because you think other people think that's what you should do. You can be as dogmatic as you like in the instant, as long as you drop your dogma when it gets in the way of doing what you need to get done.

Sunday Stroll Along The Canal in Utrecht

Once or twice a year I stay with a friend who lives in Utrecht. The more I go over to the Netherlands, the more I like it. Just walking through the streets is restful. Even when it seems, that the Dutch had started their Christmas shopping that weekend.

Friday Afternoon Around Culemborg

Culemborg is a Utrecht dormitory about fifteen minutes south by train from Utrecht. It dates back to the 1300's, with a market square, a church, a very fancy town gate (bottom photo), a modern railway bridge over the river, but no road bridge, so there's a the ferry that runs from about six in the morning to ten-thirty at night. 70 cents the single trip for foot passengers. We had lunch in a cafe - there are quite a few decent-looking restaurants and cafes there - and crossed the river, where the wind was cold, but the cottages picturesque, then returned to the town, stopping at the shop with the marzipan pig to buy some marzipan sweets for desert that evening.

The Art of Non-Conformity (2): What Non-Conformity Isn't

So we were talking about non-conformity, and how it has nothing whatsoever to do with being prepared to sit around ramshackle airports in poor countries waiting for the pilot of the held-together-by-duct-tape DC3 to sober up and fly the plane, while eating vegetarian tacos and re-coding your client's website. It may sound exotic, and it narrowly beats commuting in suburban London, but it's not non-conformity. Non-conformity in those circumstances would be finding a doctor to give the pilot a vitamin B shot to help him sober up.

Non-conformity isn't about not following rules or not doing what everyone else does. To do anything that resembles an organised activity, from playing chess to driving (even in Naples), requires you to follow some rules. This is one of those points philosophers don't make enough of: to "do" anything that other people can recognise as our doing X means that we have to follow the rules they have for doing X. If we start moving chess pieces around at random, nobody will think we're playing chess. They will either think we're bonkers, or being silly. Even Mornington Crescent has rules - it's just that the rules aren't about what you think they're about.

Conformity is about following the rules when you have forgotten why, or never knew why or just because you like to follow the rules. Bridge clubs are full of old people tut-tutting at the newbies who don't know that a bid of three clubs is never followed by four hearts except when your partner has bid one no trumps and it's the third Thursday after Lent. Professional players will tell you that these "rules" are guidelines: you use them, don't use them, according to your judgement of the situation. Pros always say stuff like that, no matter what the subject. The point for them is to go home with a shed-load of money. But the point for the amateurs is to take part in a ceremony that confirms them as being insiders, members of the club and good social team players. Process is more important than results. (Which is why even now I recoil inwardly when I hear people talking about "process" in business: the point of business is to make a product people want at a price they can afford that leaves you with a profit. Not following a "process" that like as not has no positive effect on profit. But that makes me a non-conformist.)


Non-conformity is not about being random or ignoring common social conventions. If you have the opportunity to bathe on a regular basis and don't, that doesn't make you a non-conformist: it makes you smelly and anti-social. If you don't return things you borrow, that doesn't mean you are questioning notions of personal possession, it makes you a thief. If you do things without thinking the consequences through, that makes you impulsive at best and a dangerous and irresponsible twerp at worst. Some rules and conventions are there to enable co-operation and the smooth passage of business and human affairs. Mess with those when it matters and you're just an a..hole.

Non-conformity is about following the spirit of the law and focusing on the results, not the letter of the law and the ceremonial trappings. Non-conformists treat everything as a guideline, each rule applicable in perhaps many circumstances, but not in all. On a clear road with turns you can see round, why not have fun using the full width of the road? In heavy traffic, stick to your side. As for ceremony and process: those are regarded as optional, content-free and to be performed only if it will result in getting what they need. To a non-conformist, "process", "convention", "the way we do things" are not real. Reality is creation, getting results and making things happen. If there's one thing that most non-conformists do, it's jay-walk.

A conformist gets a large chunk of their identity from following the rules and taking part in the ceremonies. A conformist goes to Church because they like the routine, the feeling of being with other people, and of being in the place. The non-conformist goes because they need the religion: if they wanted to be surrounded by people, they would sit in a cafe. When they don't need the religion, they don't go. The non-conformist is not defined by what they do, and that's scary, if not actually a contradiction, to most people. After all, isn't "you'll do anything to (insert objective speaker doesn't share), won't you" one of the standard junk-drama put-downs?

The downside of non-conformity is steep and deep. I am never going to one of the gang, because being one of the gang means committed, unquestioning acceptance of their rules. Ain't going to happen. There will be something in my body language and facial expression that suggests I'm deciding or otherwise judging for myself. I'm not supposed to do that. Other people want to know that when they do X, I will automatically approve, and when one of the Other do Y, I will automatically disapprove. That way they don't have to worry about being judged they because they know just what to do. I mess all that up, because I insist on starting from scratch every time. And people don't like people who are motivated by results: they prefer ceremony. The merchant middle class that emerged across Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries upset both the aristocracy and the workers exactly because it was focussed on results, on profits and on political change.

The benefits of non-conformity? I can't think of one, to be honest. It's something that you're born with, or start doing very early in your life. At some point you find yourself choosing to be where the crowd is not. And when I think of it, that's the main benefit. And if you understand what I meant by that, you too are similarly cursed.

Things I Saw Where I Lived and Walked: Around The Brunswick Centre

Some Sundays are nearly perfect. The Sunday I took these pictures, I drove in to central London in thirty minutes, ran two miles in 16:50, swam the fastest I've ever swam, saw Mademoiselle Chambon at the Renoir, and had these blue skies to walk under.

The Renoir Cinema has been underneath the Brunswick Centre for as long as I've been watching movies. It used to be one large auditorium with the seats arranged in curves, and was split into two screens a long while ago. It's part of the Curzon art-house chain.

Back in the 1970's the Brunwsick Centre was a concrete wasteland with the little hut of the Renoir box-office in the middle. If you were blindfolded and dropped there, you might think you were in Soviet Russia or a northern council estate. Which you were: a Camden council estate, that is. I visited the Renoir a few times in the early 2000's when I was working over in a City telco, and it was still pretty dire. The Giraffe cafe was there. I think.

Then someone refurbished it and brought in the shops and cafes. When I started working at The Bank in 2007, I went to see a movie there, and was amazed. Because it looks like this...

When I came out from the lunchtime show, it was even more busy. But then, the whole area has changed. It used to be deserted, but at almost any time there are people walking around, even if they are tourists going to Heathrow via Russell Square tube. I've written about the Goodenough College before, so here's a view of Marchmont Street on the other side of the centre. London did not look like this in the 1970's. And I know which I prefer.

The idea of a health store with a pavement cafe being open on Sunday in Camden on Marchmont street, or the Italian on the corner of Marchmont and Tavistock being open, in 1970? It would have been un-thought of, it would in fact have been impossible to think. Philosophers would have given you elegant explanations of the idea of the logically impossible and used "pavement cafe in Camden" as an example of the logically impossible.

And yet here it is. With two Americans talking about "pro soccer" over their cappucinos. Which is something that would have been equally impossible to think in 1970.