Living Beyond Limits

Most people believe in Free Will  – but few agree on what that means.

Is Free will simply choice, higher-level conscious thought, or goal-directed behavior? Or is Free Will caused by your inner soul, directing you like a puppet independent of our environment?

Is Free Wil l as expansive as Jean Paul Sartre suggested, or more limited as Kant suggested?

“Most social psychologists understand human beings as social animals with advanced intelligence that respond to situational and internal influences” said Dr. Roy Baumeister of Florida State University.

“In that context, free will is most likely a set of inner capabilities for controlling action. It is the inner faculty that makes choices. Freedom means the ability to resist various particular influences, such as external pressure or strong inner impulses.”

“Any choice that a person makes reflects the interactions of multiple influencing forces, from genetics and neurotransmitters to family size and cultural traditions. The precise cause and effect relation leading to a person’s conscious action can seem mysteriously lost because of these many complex forces, but that does not mean human experience operates independently of deterministic factors” state Jay Michaels and Robin Vallacher.

If it exists it requires self control; rational, intelligent choice; planning; and initiative states Baumeister.

These qualities require a reserve of will power that is depleted with use.

Following tests of free will decision making people performed poorer in intelligent tests, mental tasks requiring control, exhibit less initiative, preferring rote choices and were more ready to quit in a second test.

“The implication of such laboratory findings is that people use up some of their willpower on the first task” said Baumeister.

“When willpower has been depleted by acts of self-control, people seem less willing to invest the effort in choosing”he said.

“They postpone choices. They favor simple solutions over complex compromises. They succumb to irrational biases.”

This correlates with reduced glucose levels in the blood stream following exerting self control.

“What we call free will can be explained by dynamical systems theory” suggest Michaels and Vallacher.

“A dynamical system is a set of inter-connected elements that change due to their mutual bidirectional influence”.

”Due to the mutual influence among elements, the system as a whole (e.g., a mind or a society) evolves over time in the absence of external forces (e.g., new information or an outside threat) and thus displays intrinsic (internally-generated) dynamics” explains Michaels and Vallacher.

Within the system a small set of states will develop called an attractor. In psychology these could be “range of mental states and actions that is commonly experienced by a person.” Just as hollows collect the rain, so the mental topology attracts similar thinking which promote the emergence of new social or psychological norms like goals, attitudes, and personality traits.

This cannot explain every situation in life.

“In an unfamiliar situation or when considering novel action alternatives, Michaels and Vallacher a person lack “a coherent higher-order state that constrains the flow of consciousness”

He may be influenced by his society or environment at the time, or be “capable of taking off in very different directions depending on slight variations in initial conditions (e.g., a trivial feature of the situation, a random thought, or a spontaneous lower-level action).”

That second option may capture the true essence of free will, according to Michaels and Vallacher who admit this is not the free will people call on to inspire meaning in life. We respond to years of neural conditioning and subtle brain chemistry beyond our control.

At one level we dislike to little choice, and are averse to too much.

Give a big range to choose from, people “look for and embrace cues to higher-order meaning that provide a coherent framework for thought and action” Michaels and Vallacher said.

In effect, the lack of constraints on moment-to-moment dynamics promotes what existentialist philosopher Fromm called an “escape from freedom”.

Belief in free will contributes to socially responsible behavior, said Baumeister. “Participants who were induced to disbelieve in free will showed an increase in antisocial behavior:”

This included cheating, aggression, reduced helpfulness and mindless conformity.

The belief in free will is highly useful fiction, according to those who reject Free Will. Others believe Free Will is culturally adaptive.

Evolutionary Psychology suggests we developed a “different way of controlling behavior, whose purpose was enabling the beast to function in a complex, information-based society” suggested by Baumeister.

In The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force, Jeffery Schwartz and Sharon Begley demonstrate that obsessive compulsive patients can alter their behavior and their brain structure using a four-step cognitive-behavior intervention based on what they call “mindful awareness.”

They believe that neural processes can be best explained using quantum mechanics. Which suggests our reality is influenced by our intentions.

However, wheat won’t turn into an apple, and my genetic material predertimed my species, What can vary is the quality and quantity of development of the seed. This can be influenced by externa l forces, such as fertilizing, watering, or by my family and cultural upbringing.

The only choice I have, at least in adulthood, is my environment.

This is a position that has been taught by Kabbalah for millennia. Although, Kabbalah suggests a scientific unpalatable altruistic creator, which we perceive in nature or as nature, it is far closer to modern psychology than many past philosophers.

Regardless of how poor my upbringing, or bad my genetic heritage, I can influence all of them only by the choosing our surroundings, suggests Kabbalist Tony Kosinec.

“A person can have negative or weak first and second factors, and just by placing those factors and the system of development in the proper environment, the quality of development can be enhanced and its speed accelerated enormously.”

“Once having chosen the environment all of these laws again kick in and that environment then shapes all our future conditions” he said.