Three thoughts

Three thoughts occurred to me in quick succession today.

It's not so much about choices; there really are very few choices we make. We are guided, shepherded, into behaviours, funnelled into opinions. Whether by neural pathways or social pressures or simply the apparent logical necessity of one idea following another, of evading cognitive dissonance. The internal logic, whether physical or psychic, is oftentimes impossible to escape. But it feels like free will (and this isn't an argument for determinism as much as it is an argument for self-awareness; a call to be aware of the choices we don't make, and the opportunity for breaking our habits). Personality feels like something we own; like a choice of behaviours we make. In fact it is something more like a cage from which we cannot escape, or an opaque, striated net through which our being takes form; the most prominent features we possess are already carved into our external presence, and we assume that it is "us" that makes them so. In fact, it makes us.

Much, so much, has changed in our ways of life in the last century. And we have forgotten very quickly what life used to be like. We - those of us living since the Second World War - are the first generations ever to have not had an overriding concern with acquiring food. This to us now seems unbelievable: food is a natural resource, it simply grows from the ground around us (or even more simply - we are surrounded with opportunities to buy food in shops. The shelves are never empty. How could this change?). How could acquiring and assuring food be a problem? The system of global colonial-capitalism locates us inside a bubble almost at breaking point, but one beyond which we can see no horizon. Food is grown and sold to us; our gardens and natural areas grow plants, we can buy seeds easily for our own use. But if a shift were to occur in how global civilisation operates these finely tuned trade routes can cease to exist and communities will find themselves once more at the mercy of nature - a nature now more violent, more unpredictable, more prone to chaotic and destructive events than pre-industrial society survived.

The rate at which we are degrading the environment ("sawing off the branch we are sitting on" as one climate scientist put it) and the predictions of scientists regarding the medium-term future for our species and planet have made almost no impression on the majority of people. Governments half-heartedly pursue half-baked schemes to reduce carbon emissions but whatever good intentions exist are scuppered by more pressing short-term needs to stay near the top of the civilisation-food chain. At some point in the 21st century, the populace will experience a shock akin to Seth Brundle's son Martin: in the film The Fly 2, Martin is unceremoniously told there is nothing that can be done to prevent his - increasingly rapid - mutation into another form of "life" (to put it kindly - his genetic inheritance is 50% fly, and it is about to assert its dominance). But the injections, they help me - he protests. The injections were just water, Martin. Just for your peace of mind.

Free Will Thought Experiment

Imagine awaking to find yourself in your body a year, two years, or five years in your past. Only your awareness is there, an observer to your actions - you have no control over your body or the choices you had then made - these are already set and determined. Although terrifying, this experience would at first also be fascinating - with the element of choice removed, you would be a static bystander, fulfilling absolutely the role of observer. After some time, your consciousness would drift, but unable to remove itself from the physical sensations aroused by the body's motion would soon fall into a state of identification with the experience, accepting the moment as its own.

The sense of boundary between the mind which experiences and the body which acts would blur. Subdued by its impotence, the mind would assure itself that the sense of control was unimportant - simply the experiences generated by the predetermined actions were the whole of its reality. As the moment of removal, the time when the consciousness was taken back into the past, approached and passed, the mind would feel no difference, still actions happened and the mind experiences. Its understanding of 'choice' has atrophied to nothing. Is there any difference at all? How can one tell?

If one analyses the psychological events surrounding an action outside of temporal awareness, they seem to ripple in both direction: prior, the coalescing of desire from nothing into the moment of electrical impulse, from brain to muscle. After, the fading of the memory from the moment of the experience to nothing - perhaps a trace remains, still gradually fading, etiolated and remoulded by contemplation.

The experience of motive and initiation is not necessarily any more important than the experience of memory. It need exercise no more definition than the memory over the actuality of the event. Physical laws retain their integrity when the direction of time is hypothetically reversed - could the same not be true of psychological laws?

--

I found this entry in my journal from 2002. It's an interesting thought experiment and demonstrates how the mind can assume the freedom of will. Many modern psychologists and neuroscientists argue that much of conscious thought happens after the decisions are made: that is, we create our motives after watching ourselves act. We delude ourselves that we are in control, while the subconscious and biological processes determine our response to our environments.

As Wittgenstein made clear, the self is not an epistemologically isolated entity, revealed through deliberate (consciously enacted) action. Consciousness comes to a belief/formulation of the self through watching one's own actions just as much as other people do. And, just as we perceive others and understand/postulate a 'self' encompassing these actions, as we know there is amind involved there that we can interact with, so we come to a belief about ourselves through perception of our own actions. We postulate agency, and a coherent single 'self' or 'nature' on our own behalf just as we do to others. But there is no single 'self'. There is no single 'me'. We are all a vague collection of actions, impulses and thoughts bagged together in the illusion of an identity. 'Self' is just a linguistic game. We should not be fooled by the pragmatic tools of our language into thinking there is some essential nature or object that they represent.