erraticwisdom

So, consciousness is accompanied by an experience of freedom, which phenomenologically speaking, does not seem illusory. But, what exactly does that mean about consciousness and our brain?

There are basically two options. One, the experience of freedom is simply not real, our brains, like every other physical object, operate deterministically. Like an elaborate computer program, the firings of various neurons (or whatever the exact mechanism is discovered to be) are causally sufficient for a decision to be made.

The second option is that consciousness does somehow allow for us to make and act upon free choices. How exactly could something like this occur without making the mind out to be a causal black hole somehow circumventing the laws of physics? (At this point, quantum mechanics is often brought up as a loophole of sorts, but introducing randomness isn’t quite the same as free will. See discussion in Phenomenology comments)

Let’s take an example of what we normally see as a “free” choice. In the famous case of the Judgment of Paris, there is a point right before Paris begins to consider his alternatives (Hera, Athena, or Aphrodite as the most beautiful goddess) where no decision has been made, and then a second point soon thereafter where he has made his decision and begins the motions of awarding the golden apple to Aphrodite. In the intervening period, Paris appears to make a free choice. He responds to the problem presented to him as a conscious being, considering the potential rewards and penalties as they affect him.

What is most important is that there is a necessity to this type of response. One simply must exercise this (potentially illusory) freedom. Paris, now a dejected determinist, cannot just sit back and wait for his fated choice to roll out of his mouth. No, whether genuine or random, he must at least make the mental motions that would produce one of the available three names.

Free will is then dependent on a conscious, self-aware being, and is a necessary component of even the simplest decisions. How exactly does this freely acting consciousness fit into our physical world then?

Now that’s a doozy and perhaps the single most fascinating question I can think of. My immediate inclination is to view consciousness as a higher-order aspect of traditional brain functions, neither entirely immaterial nor causally chained. Without being too nebulous, consciousness as a subjective phenomenon cannot be easily reduced to objective parts, and so it seems to somehow emerge from the activities of the brain. The relationship roughly corresponds to that between the molecules in a man-made object and the function of the artifact itself. For example, the table in front of me is composed of different molecules, and its solidity and brownness are reducible to properties of its molecules and their bonds, but its function as a table is not entirely contained by the particles buzzing around inside.

Similarly, consciousness seems to be rooted in but not entirely reducible to neural activity. Damage my brain, and my level of consciousness will appreciably suffer, but psychological abuse, for example, can be just as damaging and its effects aren’t always visible at the level of neurons and neural networks.

Is consciousness as a higher-level product of the brain’s activity therefore outside of the determined world? Not quite, but if we can establish, or at least allow for the possibility, that the state of my brain’s neurons at any point is not sufficient – causally speaking – to determine the state of my consciousness at the next point, then we have something like free will.

The big leap here is the “higher-level” part, and I’ll readily admit that it’s purely speculative. It’s difficult to describe without sounding as if consciousness spawns magically every instant, but there are no other cases where we have subjective, 1^st person phenomena with objective, 3^rd person ontologies. Like I said, it’s a doozy.