Project Reason is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit foundation devoted to spreading scientific knowledge and secular values in society. The foundation draws on the talents of prominent and creative thinkers in a wide range of disciplines to encourage critical thinking and erode the influence of dogmatism, superstition, and bigotry in our world.
Perhaps to get back on track we could shift from being judgmental about decisions and look at decisions that arose out of “luck” or “coincidence”, whether they seemed small or large at the time, turned out to have had major effects. For example, I had a job offers in the summer of 1973 from a university in Iran. I was reluctant to go back to Iran (spending 18 months there was seemed enough) but had no choice it seemed. Then, as I sat there with the contract from the Iranian university, the phone rang. Somebody in Alberta was calling saying that if I was interested there was a 1 year postdoctoral position open for me. The decision was easy, but if the person making the offer had not been able to contact me (I’d just finished 5 months of traveling about), or if the call had come a few days later, I would have ended up back in Iran and led a very different life.
It’s these sorts of “coincidental” happenings that we can spin up into a life story. But I think that our minds have been primed by upbringing and experience to attend to certain sorts of things so when a fortuitous opportunity in those areas arises we are more likely to recognize it and take advantage of it. The sort of story we spin is what is of interest to ego-psychologists.
In my case, the “best decisions I ever made” were probably never made by me. What I mean is that when crucial opportunities came along I usually made the worst decisions, but nevertheless I ended up being where I am with a lot of regrets but not quite knowing how I could have made a “better” decision at the time because I really don’t know if indeed my life would have worked out better (more meaningful or more valuable to others) than it is/has?
When a person is pretty much a moron, which I usually think of myself as being, then one makes decisions based on too much “other-based” thinking. I don’t feel like I am always trying to please people, but rather that I decide not to impose myself on others. So the decisions I make are mostly centered around relieving others of my wants, needs, and even my presence (not imposing myself upon them). Although most people I meet and associate with tend to love me, sometimes too much or to quite an inexplicable degree, I absolutely never expect to get any fulfillment from others although I do all the time. I do have a few very close friends and I make new friends all the time some who I get close to for a few days or even just for hours and then never see again(by ‘close’ I mean intellectually and emotionally intimate). So my life is very rewarding in that I receive lots of love from almost everyone and especially from children and babies who will run across rooms to talk to me or just to look at me and smile with their mesmerizing level of understanding.
I can hardly think of one single decision I made that thinking back on it I can honestly say that it was a great choice made by me . . . maybe someday I will do something that shall look pivotal when reflected upon by me later?
I, that is the being writing this sentence, whoever that is, have never made a good or bad decision. Since I do not have free will I see the actions that I have taken in given situations as predetermined and the idea that it was ‘I’ who ‘chose’ is merely an illusion. I could not have done other than I did. If that were not so then no one would ever make ‘bad decisions’. I have acted in ways that, with the benefit of hindsight, have turned out to be suboptimal. At other times, I have acted in ways that have brought consideral benefit, or avoided grave harm, to this bunch of atoms. How all this played out is a deep mystery hidden behind an illusion of agency.
I think the best decision I ever made was to feel ok about all this. But of course, in the end, even that was not a decision I made.
In my case, the “best decisions I ever made” were probably never made by me. What I mean is that when crucial opportunities came along I usually made the worst decisions, but nevertheless I ended up being where I am with a lot of regrets but not quite knowing how I could have made a “better” decision at the time because I really don’t know if indeed my life would have worked out better (more meaningful or more valuable to others) than it is/has?
When a person is pretty much a moron, which I usually think of myself as being, then one makes decisions based on too much “other-based” thinking. I don’t feel like I am always trying to please people, but rather that I decide not to impose myself on others. So the decisions I make are mostly centered around relieving others of my wants, needs, and even my presence (not imposing myself upon them). Although most people I meet and associate with tend to love me, sometimes too much or to quite an inexplicable degree, I absolutely never expect to get any fulfillment from others although I do all the time. I do have a few very close friends and I make new friends all the time some who I get close to for a few days or even just for hours and then never see again(by ‘close’ I mean intellectually and emotionally intimate). So my life is very rewarding in that I receive lots of love from almost everyone and especially from children and babies who will run across rooms to talk to me or just to look at me and smile with their mesmerizing level of understanding.
I can hardly think of one single decision I made that thinking back on it I can honestly say that it was a great choice made by me . . . maybe someday I will do something that shall look pivotal when reflected upon by me later?
Personally I don’t think that second guessing the past is worthwhile, we’re not going to get a rerun. But there are three types of decisions that are in play: the first are the known knowns - decisions about where to go to school, who to marry, etc.; then, there are the known unknowns, things we prepare for or attempt to prepare for and hope that we’re ready when the time comes - the death of a parent, a possible earthquake or tornado, and so on; then there the unknown unknowns, the random possibilities that pop into being that we are tuned to recognize, where we need to make a quick decision if we’re aware of them, in this case a decision to seize an opportunity or let it go by, to avoid something based on a subliminal feeling, stuff like that. I think it’s the decisions of the third sort that produce much of the “where I am today.”
Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (Rob) - 26 July 2012 10:07 PM
I, that is the being writing this sentence, whoever that is, have never made a good or bad decision. Since I do not have free will I see the actions that I have taken in given situations as predetermined and the idea that it was ‘I’ who ‘chose’ is merely an illusion. I could not have done other than I did. If that were not so then no one would ever make ‘bad decisions’. I have acted in ways that, with the benefit of hindsight, have turned out to be suboptimal. At other times, I have acted in ways that have brought consideral benefit, or avoided grave harm, to this bunch of atoms. How all this played out is a deep mystery hidden behind an illusion of agency.
I think the best decision I ever made was to feel ok about all this. But of course, in the end, even that was not a decision I made.
I appreciate your effort/“decision” to write all this out Rob, and maybe that’s what I wanted to say in my little confession above. There is a lot of emphasis today on the freedom involved in the agency of the individual, but as you say that is very much an illusion, so the notion that one can specify particular, discreet choices gets all mitigated by actual circumstances.
Sometimes people go through a whole lifetime thinking that they made an awesome decision about a life-changing event but never discover that it was someone else’s effort that brought that particular possibility into reality. Shakespeare wrote something about webs and weaving.
Personally I don’t think that second guessing the past is worthwhile, we’re not going to get a rerun. But there are three types of decisions that are in play: the first are the known knowns - decisions about where to go to school, who to marry, etc.; then, there are the known unknowns, things we prepare for or attempt to prepare for and hope that we’re ready when the time comes - the death of a parent, a possible earthquake or tornado, and so on; then there the unknown unknowns, the random possibilities that pop into being that we are tuned to recognize, where we need to make a quick decision if we’re aware of them, in this case a decision to seize an opportunity or let it go by, to avoid something based on a subliminal feeling, stuff like that. I think it’s the decisions of the third sort that produce much of the “where I am today.”
Yes, it’s the unknown unknowns that are usually the potent actions and bring about the most life-altering situations, of course these are actions that we, as agents, have little influence over in the sense of deliberation and reflective assessment. These are just spontaneous happenings that almost move us along whether we want to purposely go or not. Perhaps life is better when it is lived in that momentum? Think of all the babies that are created out of those moments?
Personally I don’t think that second guessing the past is worthwhile, we’re not going to get a rerun. But there are three types of decisions that are in play: the first are the known knowns - decisions about where to go to school, who to marry, etc.; then, there are the known unknowns, things we prepare for or attempt to prepare for and hope that we’re ready when the time comes - the death of a parent, a possible earthquake or tornado, and so on; then there the unknown unknowns, the random possibilities that pop into being that we are tuned to recognize, where we need to make a quick decision if we’re aware of them, in this case a decision to seize an opportunity or let it go by, to avoid something based on a subliminal feeling, stuff like that. I think it’s the decisions of the third sort that produce much of the “where I am today.”
Yes, it’s the unknown unknowns that are usually the potent actions and bring about the most life-altering situations, of course these are actions that we, as agents, have little influence over in the sense of deliberation and reflective assessment. These are just spontaneous happenings that almost move us along whether we want to purposely go or not. Perhaps life is better when it is lived in that momentum? Think of all the babies that are created out of those moments?
I recall a talk by Doris Lessing where she was discussing the influence of emotionally laden songs on people and suggested that many people may have been conceived on a car seat or couch with Frank Sinatra crooning in the background.
More seriously, regarding those possibilities that pop up, the only thing to do, I think, is to attempt to prepare oneself to react in a way that furthers goals or at least seems to move one in a positive direction. That seems to me to involve a person’s orientation toward life and go back to early childhood conditioning.
Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (Rob) - 26 July 2012 10:07 PM
I, that is the being writing this sentence, whoever that is, have never made a good or bad decision. Since I do not have free will I see the actions that I have taken in given situations as predetermined and the idea that it was ‘I’ who ‘chose’ is merely an illusion. I could not have done other than I did. If that were not so then no one would ever make ‘bad decisions’. I have acted in ways that, with the benefit of hindsight, have turned out to be suboptimal. At other times, I have acted in ways that have brought considerable benefit, or avoided grave harm, to this bunch of atoms. How all this played out is a deep mystery hidden behind an illusion of agency.
I think the best decision I ever made was to feel ok about all this. But of course, in the end, even that was not a decision I made.
Rob, keep in mind that back when the term free will got coined, the field of psychology was only distantly and invisibly in the future. Plenty of people understood psychology to various degrees, but not until recently has psychology been taken to the point of accurately (or close to accurately) categorizing and describing mental phenomena. The term free will arrives with under-the-surface meanings that modernity has erased through legitimate scientific scrutiny. “Choice,” on the other hand, is a simple word. So is “decision.” These terms lack superstitious intent. Their common use reaches no where beyond the here and the now. I strongly recommend not conflating terms such as free will and choice. If you do, you end up sounding like a pre-reformed GAD, and I don’t think you want to do much of that, do you?
Harris has deconstructed various concepts including self and free will. I suspect that all he’s trying to do is move things forward, something I wholeheartedly agree with. In my opinion, we don’t need to remain clinging to our ancient superstitious heritage, or at least not much of it. So it’s a positive thing to expose ancient/mistaken concepts that remain alive in ordinary speech and writing. Yes, we lack a self. But we do have something akin to self that the ancients perhaps knew nothing about. Yes, we lack free will. But we do have something akin to the skill of choosing, just as many other animals do. One more that comes to mind that seems analogous though not directly relevant to this topic is “ownership.” No one owns things in much more than a temporary or partial way. I’m listed on piles of papers as the owner of a property in California. But I don’t own it in any way other than symbolically, on paper. If I fail to pay property tax, the county gets the property, so I don’t really own it in that way. Also, a bank holds literally all the equity the property contains. They own the property much more literally than I do, but I’m the owner on paper.
Don’t get tricked by tricky words. I’m counting on you.
Two quick comments. Agree that “free will” contains a ton of baggage that obviates the whole idea, but we do have some range of choices (what I sometime call “degrees of freedom” from research and design and statistical analysis) within which we have quite small probabilities attached to any of those options. If they were large probabilities, then “choice” for any one of them is diminished. A retarded person, for instance, does not an option of becoming a mathematics professor. I can choose to continue this post, or not, either are within those degrees of freedom at this time and place.
“Ownership” to me means right of exclusive use, within some constraints as represented by laws and physical reality. I own this condo in which we live, bu I do not have a right to burn it down or use it as a crack house.
Two quick comments. Agree that “free will” contains a ton of baggage that obviates the whole idea, but we do have some range of choices (what I sometime call “degrees of freedom” from research and design and statistical analysis) within which we have quite small probabilities attached to any of those options. If they were large probabilities, then “choice” for any one of them is diminished. A retarded person, for instance, does not an option of becoming a mathematics professor. I can choose to continue this post, or not, either are within those degrees of freedom at this time and place.
“Ownership” to me means right of exclusive use, within some constraints as represented by laws and physical reality. I own this condo in which we live, bu I do not have a right to burn it down or use it as a crack house.
Hey, wait a moment…!
Let’s go with the Stoic idea of free will: most things are determined, the only real freedom you have is to choose the extent to which your “soul” (their term) is influenced by external impacts. Making those choices determines the personality that you will become.
Let’s go with the Stoic idea of free will: most things are determined, the only real freedom you have is to choose the extent to which your “soul” (their term) is influenced by external impacts. Making those choices determines the personality that you will become.
If the choices have no consequences, then they have no meaning, no relevancy.
Two quick comments. Agree that “free will” contains a ton of baggage that obviates the whole idea, but we do have some range of choices (what I sometime call “degrees of freedom” from research and design and statistical analysis) within which we have quite small probabilities attached to any of those options. If they were large probabilities, then “choice” for any one of them is diminished. A retarded person, for instance, does not an option of becoming a mathematics professor. I can choose to continue this post, or not, either are within those degrees of freedom at this time and place.
“Ownership” to me means right of exclusive use, within some constraints as represented by laws and physical reality. I own this condo in which we live, bu I do not have a right to burn it down or use it as a crack house.
I agree completely, Dennis. I tossed the notion of ownership into the mix only to show how tricky a word can be. I have some modicum ownership of my property, as I’ll gain or lose money when it comes time to sell it, and I have exclusive rights to live here for as long as I continue to pay property taxes. But in a literal sense—today at this moment, my bank owns the property and allows me to pretend that I own it. They’re hoping and counting on my eventually acquiring financial equity. But even then, my ownership will remain contingent on many things. It will never be a pure and unadulterated ownership by any means.
In my view, a concept such as “choice” is never pure. Free will is a religiously pure concept, and Harris is correct in attempting to drive home his deconstructing points about it.
Two quick comments. Agree that “free will” contains a ton of baggage that obviates the whole idea, but we do have some range of choices (what I sometime call “degrees of freedom” from research and design and statistical analysis) within which we have quite small probabilities attached to any of those options. If they were large probabilities, then “choice” for any one of them is diminished. A retarded person, for instance, does not an option of becoming a mathematics professor. I can choose to continue this post, or not, either are within those degrees of freedom at this time and place.
“Ownership” to me means right of exclusive use, within some constraints as represented by laws and physical reality. I own this condo in which we live, bu I do not have a right to burn it down or use it as a crack house.
I agree completely, Dennis. I tossed the notion of ownership into the mix only to show how tricky a word can be. I have some modicum ownership of my property, as I’ll gain or lose money when it comes time to sell it, and I have exclusive rights to live here for as long as I continue to pay property taxes. But in a literal sense—today at this moment, my bank owns the property and allows me to pretend that I own it. They’re hoping and counting on my eventually acquiring financial equity. But even then, my ownership will remain contingent on many things. It will never be a pure and unadulterated ownership by any means.
In my view, a concept such as “choice” is never pure. Free will is a religiously pure concept, and Harris is correct in attempting to drive home his deconstructing points about it.
Agree all, no argument. “Choice,” as is “freedom,” is always qualified. The idea that “everyone” has some equal right to use of some property or resource, is to me nonsense. Regret being too brief, at the moment I’m in some pain from a severe back muscle strain that has made me hobble about. Of course, milking that as much as possible.
I recall a talk by Doris Lessing where she was discussing the influence of emotionally laden songs on people and suggested that many people may have been conceived on a car seat or couch with Frank Sinatra crooning in the background. 
