[spam] Re: Control and free will: Libet

CSGnet Archive CSG2007
1

[From Bill Powers (2007.01.,05.0045 MST)]

Gary Cziko 2007.01.05 21:53 CST –

Over the holidays and semester
break I have been reading Richard Powers’ (unrelated to Bill, as far as I
know) latest novel
The Echo Maker
(Richard Powers teaches creative writing here at the U of Illinois and
this novel won the 2006 National Book Award. He is also a former
MacArthur “genius award” winner, and he rides a bicycle!). Lots
of interesting brain stuff woven into this story. But what attracted my
attention most was his contention on p. 381 that the “self” was
really not “willful.”

I’ve greatly enjoyed Richard Powers’ (no relation) books, and still
admire them in spite of the conclusion I finally reached about them,
which is that he accepts too much of what he reads as if it were true. If
you grant the current mainstream assumptions as he does, everything else
follows nicely. But if you don’t, it doesn’t. I’m willing to suspend
disbelief to enjoy a well-told science-fiction story (which is really
what Richard Powers writes), but not when it threatens to be promoted as
having something to do with reality. Just look at the stuff written by
that crusty old far-right-winger Robert Heinlein – who nevertheless was
a master story teller.

The Libel experiments suffer from an obvious flaw, which is that you
can’t measure what you can’t measure.

Libel laid that one to rest in 1983, even for the baseline brain. He
asked subjects to watch a microsecond clock and note when they decided to
lift a finger. Meanwhile, electrodes watched for a readiness potential,
indicating muscle-initiating activity. The signal began a full third of a
second before any decision to move the finger The we that does the
willing is not the we that we think we are. Our will was one of those
classic comedy bit parts: the errand boy who thinks he’s the CEO.

The simplest explanation of this is not that the environment (or a gene)
somehow causes the act by some imaginary and undetected means, but that
the decision is made at the level where the “readiness
potential” is measured, and after a delay of a third of a second (or
more), the levels which perceive the clock and the effects of the
decision, and report these things, come into play.

The idea that Libel’s result “laid to rest” the concept of
voluntary action comes from being already convinced that there is no such
thing as voluntary action – that all actions are caused from outside.
And moreover, it comes from wanting very much to prove that, for reasons
that have little to do with science. Look at the last sentence: the
“errand boy who thinks he is the CEO.” What contempt for fools
who believe in free will, what triumph in showing them up! When you’re
that eager to make a point, and that vindictive in asserting that you
have done so, you are clearly getting something out of it beside pure
truth. You begin to sound like a True Believer defending his faith – by
fair means or foul. I won’t say that Powers is the True Believer, but I
think some of his sources are.

I’d agree that the we that does the willing is not the we that we
think we are, at least not the one that is conventionally meant. The
Observer Self is not the one that thinks in propositions and logic. The
we that we think we are is the one that thinks about Libel’s experiments,
not the one that does the willing. Thinking is a process of computing at
some higher level in the brain, but that is not the only level at which
willing takes place, nor is it the highest level. Thinking and willing
are not the same thing.

As Libel’s experiments actually show.

I have pointed out a problem with “free” will before, which
Libel doesn’t even consider. An act which seems completely subject to
free choice loses that quality immediately when it becomes part of the
means for carrying out some higher-level control process. I can sit in a
car and wiggle the steering wheel in any way that takes my fancy –
unless the car is moving, I am driving it, and I intend to stay on the
road. The higher goal pre-empts the lower one, and if you try to change
the lower one arbitrarily, the choice you made at the higher level will
cause automatic resistance to your own voluntary decision. Free will can
set things up so it gets in its own way. That’s one reason for the Method
of Levels.

It comes down to the same basic rule we keep encountering. You can’t
change just one variable in an interacting system of variables. Free
will, in the sense of the ability to initiate acts (i.e., vary reference
signals) arbitrarily, may well exist, but it exists in a whole system
that it helped to organize, and which now operates at all levels whether
we are focused on them or not. Whatever you’re not focused on is
“unconscious,” but there is no such thing as “the
unconscious mind” that stays that way. When your theories start
including factors like the unconscious mind that by definition nobody can
ever observe, you’re introducing wild cards into the poker game and it
becomes trivial. I’ll bet my six jacks against your five aces any
time.

I obviously think you’re right about HPCT in this matter, Gary. And of
course if Richard got interested in HPCT, I would not object much if he
pretended to believe it. He’s a hell of a good writer.

Best,

Bill P.

2

[from Gary Cziko 2007.01.05 09:10 CST]

Thanks for your reply to Richard Powers’ and Libet’s interpretation of Libet’s experiments on free will. Your response pretty much fits what I would expect you to say from an HPCT perspective which leads me to believe I have a respectable basic understanding of HPCT. I especially liked:

[From Bill Powers (2007.01.,05.0045 MST)]

I have pointed out a problem with “free” will before, which
Libel doesn’t even consider. An act which seems completely subject to
free choice loses that quality immediately when it becomes part of the
means for carrying out some higher-level control process. I can sit in a
car and wiggle the steering wheel in any way that takes my fancy –
unless the car is moving, I am driving it, and I intend to stay on the
road. The higher goal pre-empts the lower one, and if you try to change
the lower one arbitrarily, the choice you made at the higher level will
cause automatic resistance to your own voluntary decision. Free will can
set things up so it gets in its own way. That’s one reason for the Method
of Levels.

In the Libet experiments, the subject agreeing to take part in the experiment is similar to driving the car. The subject cannot just sit there and do nothing while watching the clock as that would cause a higher-level error to the controlled perception of being a cooperative subject. So the higher system regularly changes the reference level of the subject’s hand position to move which is recorded by Libet as the “readiness potential.” The fact that there is no conscious awareness of this higher-level activity is interesting, although it doesn’t make it impossible for the subject to decide for whatever reason that he or she no longer wants to participate in the experiment and do no more wrist flicking.

If functional neuroimaging ever develops to the point where there is very fine spatial and temporal resolution, it may be possible to see HPC in action, with cascading changes in references levels caused by error signals at higher levels. In the meantime, I wonder if there aren’t experimental techniques like Libet has used that can give us better insight into how HPC works and what it means for issues like free will.

–Gary

3

[From Mike Acree (2007.01.05.0815 PST)]

Thanks to Gary for the article, and to Bill for his response.

There has been work on the readiness wave for some time. Back in the '60s the British physiologist Grey Walter hooked up the cortical readiness potential to operate a slide projector. Subjects had merely to “will” the next slide to appear, and it did. The experience was so unnerving that some subjects wet their pants.

Mike

4

[from Gary Cziko 2007.01.05 10:30 CSG]

···

On 1/5/07, Acree, Michael AcreeM@ocim.ucsf.edu wrote:

There has been work on the readiness wave for some time. Back in the '60s the British physiologist Grey Walter hooked up the cortical readiness potential to operate a slide projector. Subjects had merely to “will” the next slide to appear, and it did. The experience was so unnerving that some subjects wet their pants.

Interesting. So what these subjects gained in slide projector control they lost in bladder control!

Sounds like a bad trade to me!

–Gary

5

[From Mike Acree (2007.01.05.0850 PST)]

Bill Powers (2007.01.05.0945 MST) –

Odd. Why don’t they wet their pants when they find that all they have to do is will it in order to make one of their hands move?

The experience may well have made them incontinent, but they wouldn’t have been wearing pants at that age.

Mike

6

[From Bill Powers (2007.01.05.1135 MST)]

Richard Kennaway (2007.01.05.1657 GMT) --

This has been done, by Libet

Libet? Oh. I did think that Libel was sort of a funny name.

Libet's interpretation of his results is the subject of debate. There's a whole issue of "Consciousness and Cognition" devoted to the matter (vol. 11, no.2, June 2002). Online but subscription-only, unfortunately. A typical comment on Libet: "At most, Libet's work shows not that volitions do not initiate actions, but that conscious volitions do not."

What could "unconscious volition" mean? I can't imagine such a thing. I guess I would have to be a subject in a Libet experiment to believe that I could will a movement without knowing I was doing so. Do subjects in these experiments seem startled, or show surprise when they find they have intentionally moved a finger? And how can they veto the intention if they are unaware of intending? There's something sloppy about all these ideas.

Personally, I've no idea what people mean by free will, other than the subjective experience of choosing. The idea that it is an uncaused cause results from taking the subjective experience to be an account of the underlying mechanism giving rise to that experience.

The "uncaused cause" isn't so hard to imagine, is it? A signal generator produces an output without any corresponding input. I suppose this gets us into ancient distinctions about different categories of causes -- formal, efficient, material, and so on. PCT is about formal causes and final causes. Complex systems behave as they do mostly because of the way they're constructed rather than because of any particular antecedent events -- I suppose that's a formal cause. But it's not a causal event, which is what scientists are mostly talking about.

An interesting observation he mentions is that no readiness potential is observed preceding the exclamations of people with Tourette's syndrome, which they experience as involuntary.

Which supports the idea that we can experience the voluntariness, the un-caused-ness -- of voluntary acts. Perhaps it's hard to notice because it's not a sensory event, but surely any normal person can experience the moment of willing as separate from its consequences. What am I, some extraterrestrial freak because it seems to me that I can?

Best,

Bill P.

7

[From Bruce Nevin (2007.01.05 14:27 EST)]

We are hampered in this by a mystery and an obcurity.

The mystery is that this concerns awareness, about which we don’t have much of a clue.

The obscurity is that (as it seems) we can’t be aware of the level from which we are exercising control, but only the level(s) below it. We might assume that is why we are not aware of the “act of willing” itself. It takes an effort of theory-guided imagination even to realize that one is controlling perception of being a compliant experimental subject, whence the changes of reference for finger position, and that compliant role certainly is not the focus of the subject’s attention.

Lag in the sequence of willing, willed act, and observation of time, is neither mysterious nor obscure, but the starting point is both.

/Bruce Nevin
8

Re: Control and free will:
Libet

[From Bill Powers (2007.01.05.0930
MST)]

Gary Cziko 2007.01.05 09:10 CST –

In the Libet experiments, the subject
agreeing to take part in the experiment is similar to driving the car.
The subject cannot just sit there and do nothing while watching the
clock as that would cause a higher-level error to the controlled
perception of being a cooperative subject. So the higher system
regularly changes the reference level of the subject’s hand position
to move which is recorded by Libet as the “readiness potential.”
The fact that there is no conscious awareness of this higher-level
activity is interesting, although it doesn’t make it impossible for
the subject to decide for whatever reason that he or she no
longer wants to participate in the experiment and do no more wrist
flicking.

I agree, pretty much. But who says that
the initiation of the readiness. potential is unconscious? The way I
see it is this. The person deliberately, and consciously
changes the reference level for the state of the finger or
wrist.

…

The attached article from the July-August 2004 issue of American
Scientist may help the discussion. Here’s the abstract.

ReadinessPotential.pdf (226 KB)

···

===================================

Free Will and Free Won’t

Motor activity in the brain precedes our awareness of the intention to
move, so how is it that we perceive control?

Sukhvinder S. Obhi, Patrick Haggard

Most of us have a sense that our everyday actions are controlled by an
intention that precedes the action: I decide to turn on the light,
then flip the switch. But experiments don’t consistently support this
notion. Some psychologists believe that our sense of intention and
purpose is constructed by the brain after the action takes place.
Others disagree. The authors discuss ingenious experiments that probe
this question, along with bizarre phenomena, such as “alien-hand
syndrome,” where brain damage leaves patients struggling with
actions they cannot control.

===================================

Martin

9

[From Bill Powers (2007.01.05.1810 MST)]

Martin Taylor (2007.01.05.1457 EST) –

The attached article from the July-August 2004 issue of American
Scientist may help the discussion. Here’s the abstract.

===================================

Free Will and Free Won’t

Motor activity in the brain precedes our awareness of the intention to
move, so how is it that we perceive control?

Sukhvinder S. Obhi, Patrick Haggard

Most of us have a sense that our everyday actions are controlled by an
intention that precedes the action: I decide to turn on the light, then
flip the switch. But experiments don’t consistently support this notion.
Some psychologists believe that our sense of intention and purpose is
constructed by the brain after the action takes place. Others disagree.
The authors discuss ingenious experiments that probe this question, along
with bizarre phenomena, such as “alien-hand syndrome,” where
brain damage leaves patients struggling with actions they cannot
control.

===================================

Without a consistent model of control, it’s very hard to make sense of
what the brain does. With one, it’s a little easier, though nothing is
certain yet. It’s clear that the workers mentioned in and authoring this
article consider a plan-and-execute model, and a stimulus-response model,
to be perfectly plausible. But I don’t think those models help
much.
The observations are confused by the fact that the same
“movements” can be produced either voluntarily or
automatically. Normally, you breathe automatically and without conscious
attention. But you can also breath intentionally, generating arbitrary
patterns of inhaling and exhaling, provided you don’t create errors that
cause the automatic systems to start operating (a gasp for air if you
don’t breathe enough). Of course when there is a stimulus present (a
disturbance, that is), movements will occur quite independently of
consciousness or intention, but exactly the same movements may occur in
the absence of external stimulation, through voluntary changes in
reference signals. And to complicate that, a reference signal may also
change involuntarily through the operation of higher-order systems. The
example in the article of turning on a light when dusk comes is a bad one
for these reasons, because that’s the action you would expect of a
learned control system that operates automatically. You don’t
“will” a light to come on in that case; your learned systems
simply correct the deficit in illumination. You may not even be aware of
turning the light on.
The whole question of willing something seems to me to center on the idea
of arbitrary changes, changes that are not part of the normal
operation of the hierarchy. That’s why I associate it with reorganization
and awareness rather than ordinary well-learned control processes that
can go on with or without awareness. I think we can, in a quiescent
state, arbitrarily initiate acts like raising a finger or blinking the
eyes, in the absence of specific stimuli. It is that kind of act that I
would associate with an act of will, and expect to see at the moment of
first activity in the brain. I don’t know what the willing agent is, but
I have no reason to doubt that it is there in me. I am it. I can
attribute automatic actions to “my brain”, but I’m the one who
does the willing.

And of course my usual assumption is that I am not different from other
people, so I expect others to understand what I’m talking about when I
say things like that. That may be too large an assumption.

Best,

Bill P.

10

[From Rick Marken (2007.01.05.2150)]

Bill Powers (2007.01.05.1810 MST)--

Martin Taylor (2007.01.05.1457 EST) --

The attached article from the July-August 2004 issue of American Scientist may help the discussion. Here's the abstract.

Without a consistent model of control, it's very hard to make sense of what the brain does...

This was my response to the article also. But the authors actually do have a consistent model of control: the wrong one. It's the "modern control theory" model that says control involves the computation of the action required to produce a result by comparing the desired to predicted result of these actions. Of course, the authors do everything they can to avoid studying control itself -- they are ostensibly interested in understanding why people perceive themselves as being in control -- so which model of control they use is somewhat moot. Look at the main question that motivates their research: Could the order in which we experience such events create our subjective experience of control? Cute question but any answer they get is guaranteed to tell you nothing about control, and it doesn't.

One thing that is interesting about the Libet experiment (and the Obhi and Haggard paper based on it) is that it reflects what I have found (from my experience of returning to academia) to be the new reliance on neurophysiology in psychology. I've gone to a few of the Cognitive seminars at Ucla and nearly every one was based on correlating some electrophysiological measure of brain activity with a cognitive function. Apparently if you can say that there was increased activity in the primary motor cortex or that something happened when you applied transcranial magnetic stimulation to the supplementary motor area (as they do in this article) then you're really doing science.
If, however, you have a simple functional model that behaves just like the organism you are studying, that's just a big yawn.

I think the new trend toward "cognitive neuroscience" is just a sign that psychological science has hit a dead end. Psychology now has to borrow techniques and terminology from other, more respected sciences (like biology), in order to give the impression that it _is_ a science and that it is making progress in toward understanding how the mind works. I think the work of Libet, Obhi and Haggard shows that the secret of how the mind works (that it is an input specification system) is still safe, even from the elaborate probings of the the most sophisticated neurophysiologists.

If you haven't got a good model of control you're not going to get anywhere in the study of mind. But if you can get time on an MRI machine, you just might get somewhere in academic psychology;-)

Best regards

Rick

···

---
Richard S. Marken Consulting
marken@mindreadings.com
Home 310 474-0313
Cell 310 729-1400

11

[From Bill Powers (2007.01.06.0215 MST)]

Rick Marken (2007.01.05.2150) –

Without a consistent model of
control, it’s very hard to make sense of what the brain
does…

This was my response to the article also. But the authors actually do
have a consistent model of control: the wrong one. It’s the
“modern control theory” model that says control involves the
computation of the action required to produce a result by comparing the
desired to predicted result of these actions. Of course, the
authors do everything they can to avoid studying control itself – they
are ostensibly interested in understanding why people perceive themselves
as being in control – so which model of control they use is somewhat
moot. Look at the main question that motivates their research:
Could the order in which we experience such events create our subjective
experience of control? Cute question but any answer they get is
guaranteed to tell you nothing about control, and it
doesn’t.

Yes, I got that out of the article, too. “Control” is treated
as a comforting illusion, with “free will” and
“volition” as decorations on the illusion that make it more
convincing.
It’s really odd, what science has apparently done to some people. It’s
actually put them close to the frame of mind that held sway during the
Dark Ages, when our life on Earth was considered to be only an illusion,
a time of testing to determine whether we would go to Heaven or Hell,
with knowledge, aspirations, and creations in our lifetimes being
basically worthless and meaningless. What does one subjective life
matter, when all that really matters will happen in the next world?
For the next world, science has substituted Real Reality. The effect is
pretty much the same: to develop a cynical viewpoint in which nothing in
our private experiences can be taken to mean anything – experience is
only an epiphenomenon, an eddy in the stream of cause and effect that
happens to pass through the nervous system. There is nobody there to
experience experience.
But this is so damned silly. Even that cynical thought is a
thought in the head of the person who thinks it, known only to that
person in that person’s totally subjective experience. The ONLY thing
that matters, that can matter, is subjective experience. Objectivity is
the illusion, not subjectivity.

Best,

Bill P.

12

[From Rick Marken (2007.01.06.1115)]

Bill Powers (2007.01.06.0215 MST)

Yes, I got that out of the article, too. "Control" is treated as a comforting illusion, with "free will" and "volition" as decorations on the illusion that make it more convincing.

Yes. It took me a while to realize that this is what as going on. The Libet study was being used as "proof" that willfulness is an illusion. I guess those who are impressed by the Libet study are predisposed to think that the mind as a completely deterministic system that just does stuff while we, the possessors of that mind, look on and imagine that we have something to do with what's happening.

It's really odd, what science has apparently done to some people. It's actually put them close to the frame of mind that held sway during the Dark Ages, when our life on Earth was considered to be only an illusion, a time of testing to determine whether we would go to Heaven or Hell, with knowledge, aspirations, and creations in our lifetimes being basically worthless and meaningless. What does one subjective life matter, when all that really matters will happen in the next world?

For the next world, science has substituted Real Reality. The effect is pretty much the same: to develop a cynical viewpoint in which nothing in our private experiences can be taken to mean anything -- experience is only an epiphenomenon, an eddy in the stream of cause and effect that happens to pass through the nervous system. There is nobody there to experience experience.

Yes, this seems to be what's happening. No wonder religious fundamentalism has been on the rise: the old Dark Ages rise up to combat the new one.

But this is so damned silly. Even that cynical thought is a thought in the head of the person who thinks it, known only to that person in that person's totally subjective experience. The ONLY thing that matters, that can matter, is subjective experience. Objectivity is the illusion, not subjectivity.

That's one of the main points I will be making in my PCT course: Behaviorism notwithstanding, behavior is a subjective, not an objective phenomenon.

Best regards

Rick

···

---
Richard S. Marken Consulting
marken@mindreadings.com
Home 310 474-0313
Cell 310 729-1400