Can every important issue be scientifically investigated and, by comparing enough experiments with mathematical theories, answered conclusively? Can no philosophy uncover truths beyond the reach of science?
Here I argue that, despite the great service it renders humanity, certain biases, intrinsic to science, must be investigated from outside it. I will mention two examples where philosophical considerations can identify limits to the scientific method:
- Freewill
- Neurochemical Evaluations of Happiness
Why Free Will Is Scientifically Unprovable
An increasing number of scientists and psychologists reject the existence of free will. Indeed 86% of philosophers reject libertarian free will, with most believing that all our actions, down to the most minute decisions, are ultimately determined by circumstances outside our control (though compatibilists believe, so long as our desires align with our actions, we are acting freely even though we could neither act nor desire otherwise).
Is this slide towards determinism due to scientific discoveries… or is it the result of a bias in the scientific method itself?
Let us review what science is:
Science is a process whereby relationships of cause to effect are hypothesized and framed as competing theories. Some important predictions of these competing theories are then tested through experiment and observation. The theory with the greatest predictive power is then provisionally accepted while theories with lower predictive powers are usually rejected as false.
In other words, science is the inherent activity of deriving laws with ever-increasing predictive power. The game of science is the game of prediction. Yet prediction is only possible in a deterministic system.
Trying to use the scientific method to prove the existence of free will is like trying to use an earth excavator to fly to the moon. How can an intellectual activity that grants credibility to new hypotheses based on their predictive ability ever possibly grant credibility to a hypothesis that our behaviour is somewhat unpredictable due to our choices not being fully predetermined?
Science can only disprove free will and prove determinism – it is structurally incapable of the reverse. Science can only validate free will to the extent it fails to prove determinism – or runs up against its own limitations.
And yet…
…despite the inherent tendency of the scientific method to accept ever more deterministic descriptions of the physical world, and the unprovable nature of free will, it’s hard to see how our current scientific knowledge based upon experiments could be more favourable to libertarian free will.
The requirements of libertarian free will are quite philosophically demanding. If every action was exactly determined by preceding circumstances, then there would be no freedom, yet if every action was completely uncorrelated with subsequent actions, there would be no will. The notion of will is that an agent’s wishes determine some of its important future actions so as to materialize that wish in reality. These simultaneous requirements seem almost self-contradictory, yet a system whose behaviour is predictable – and heavily predetermined – in the short term, yet unpredictable in the long term, would satisfy the necessary criteria for a modest interpretation of libertarian free will.
Absolute free will (including the freedom to teleport yourself to Mars) is omnipotence. No advocate of libertarian free will, or any sane human being, would seriously claim we possess this. Libertarian free will is simply the modest claim we possess some free will; that our brains can make some important conscious decisions; that some conscious decisions, which arise from our minds, produce physical actions with physical outcomes that were not always predetermined; that we could have decided differently and – had we done so – a different physical action and outcome could have arose as a result of that different decision (that if you wind back the clock far enough to the same past condition and run reality again – a different outcome could result).
The uncertainty principle, states that the position and momentum of particles is fundamentally undetermined. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle is more than just a limitation in our ability to measure particle position, as theses diagrams of electron orbitals in the hydrogen atom show. Each orbital represents the spatial probability of finding a single electron in a particular location in the atom. The p-orbital, for example, contains two dumb-bells of finite probability separated by an infinite plane of zero probability. The zero probability plane completely separates the finite probability regions from each other. There is no possible path for the electron to get from one finite probability region to the other without crossing the zero probability plane, yet if the electron didn’t cross the zero probability plane, the electric field and chemical characteristics of the hydrogen atom would be different. Thus, the electron must simultaneously exist on both sides of the zero probability plane.
Some theories appeal to an infinite number of unprovable parallel universes to interpret wave function collapse as being deterministic, but if we go back to the core value of science: experimental data is king. And experimentally, wave function collapse is non-deterministic.
While the short-term wiggle room for free will is limited to one atomic radius, the butterfly effect means very small differences in initial conditions can give rise to large differences in final outcomes. Here is the first observed example of a computer model exhibiting divergent trajectories in phase space.
The initial conditions vary by less than one part in a million, and, initially, the evolution of the system in both cases seems identical, but, after a period, the trajectory of both runs start to diverge and, eventually, they exhibit some important yet completely different behaviours.
The combined scientific observation of fundamental quantum uncertainty and long-term divergent behaviour from similar initial condition is conducive with short term macroscopic determinism and long-term macroscopic indeterminism. In other words, quantum uncertainty, when combined with the Butterfly Effect, leaves room for free will in psychology.
It is hard to imagine a physical description more favourable for the philosophically demanding requirements of libertarian free will than those routinely used to describe the behaviour of complex natural systems.
However, this may indicate free will has a long actuation time, which the Libet experiment cannot refute. Total short term freedom would, after all, negate the existence of a meaningful will.
Therefore, scientists who reject free will do not do so due to any scientific discovery (indeed discoveries in physics could scarcely infer a universe more favourable to free will) but rather due to of biases innate to the scientific method itself.
To complain there is no causal mechanism for free will and, therefore, that it doesn’t exist is to completely miss the point. Causal mechanisms are, by nature, deterministic. A causal mechanism for free will is an oxymoron and demonstrates how the tool box of science is fundamentally unequipped to prove the existence of free will. If no scientific experiment could ever falsify determinism, then claims for determinism are as unscientific as claims for free will.
Neurochemical Evaluations of Happiness
Given the importance we place on happiness, it’s worth asking: “What exactly is happiness?”
Understandably, many neuroscientists and psychologists have brought their expertise to bear on research in this area. Scientific enquiries into conditions for producing happiness are both valuable and important. But is there any hard limit to the authority and expertise that progressive experimental discoveries could convey to researchers studying happiness (and other subjective feelings like misery)?
Consider this thought experiment:
Jim walks into an MRI scanner where his brain activity is thoroughly analysed. After emerging from the machine, the researchers, who have decades of experience studying neurochemistry, say to Jim: “We’ve analysed your brain chemistry and the results are conclusive. You are acutely depressed.”
Jim responds: “But I feel happy! I rarely get depressed.”
To which the researchers respond: “You are clearly mistakenly evaluating your own experience. The results of the MRI are conclusive. You are acutely depressed. You must register for a happiness enhancement course. It’s for your own good.”
Jim responds: “But I don’t need a happiness enhancement course, I already am happy.”
To which one researcher responds: “Jim, I have a 1st class degree in neuroscience, a Phd. in evaluating the neurochemistry of happiness and depression. I have spent the last 15 years looking at different people’s brain activities and evaluating them for happiness, or misery. The other 10 researchers on my team all have similar levels of experience and, after analysing your brain activity, we have all reached the same conclusion: that you are thoroughly depressed. How much experience do you have in analysing brain patterns?”
To which Jim responds: “None.”
The researcher then asks: “So why do you think you’d have more knowledge about your brain patterns than a team of researchers who’ve spent decades of their careers measuring and analysing brain patterns to decide whether patients are happy or miserable?”
Question:
Could any amount of scientific advances, cranial measuring equipment or AI data analysis techniques in an infinitely sophisticated future ever conceivably make it possible for the team of neuroscientists to be right and for Jim to be wrong?
I take the view that, for any sensible definition of happiness or misery, the answer to this question is “no.” All happiness evaluations must begin with a questionnaire. Now through comparing questionnaires with measured brain activity, facial expressions or other kinds of behaviour, we may find reliable markers that correlate well with reported happiness (dopamine levels, serotonin levels, activities in particular brain centres etc.). In the future, neuroscientists may, by monitoring brain activity, be able to anticipate reported happiness with 99%, 99.99% or 99.99999% accuracy. So, if neuroscience can achieve such accuracy in predicting how someone reports feeling, what happens when that one person reports a very different feeling to what the instruments tell the scientists he should feel? Are the scientists wrong about how the subject feels – or is the subject wrong about his own feelings?
Given that reported feelings are the foundation for correlating brain activity to subjective experience, subjective present experience must always have absolute sovereignty.
One could, of course, scientifically define happiness in terms of dopamine levels much like we define force as mass times acceleration, but such a definition would be irrelevant to the inherent philosophical value of happiness as a subjective sense of satisfaction, joy, pleasure, freedom from suffering, etc., etc., And there probably is a danger that, in the future, overzealous neuroscientists might favour scientific definitions of emotions like happiness, anger, sadness, depression that are easier to objectively measure and stick into computer models, even if such definitions are less relevant to the subjective emotions that we feel and value. There’s also a tendency in some fields to ignore outliers, in order to get journal papers published. All of this, if unscrutinised, could result in experts overriding people’s subjective experience.
But:
It is certainly possible that, in the future, neuroscientists will gain sufficient understanding of the workings of the brain to anticipate your future subjective experience, or evaluate your past subjective experiences, better than you can yourself.
The absolute sovereignty of the individual in evaluating their own experience, only applies to their immediate present experience. Expertise can (and probably someday will) anticipate people’s future subjective experience with greater accuracy than they themselves can. And there is already some important evidence that we aren’t good at objectively evaluating (or accurately remembering) how happy we were during an extended past period. People’s evaluation of their level of happiness over their entire lifespan varied noticeably based on whether they had recently found a few dimes left by a photocopying machine, suggesting our present mood strongly influences how we evaluate past emotions.
Experts may also understand why a subject reports an experience better than the subject’s own belief for the reasons of his experience. Numerous experiments clearly demonstrate that people can frequently give erroneous accounts of the reasons for their motivations and, perhaps, even feelings.
But this does not alter our absolute knowledge of our immediate subjective experience itself.
But being able to predict what people will subjectively feel themselves in the future, or why they feel what they feel, better than they can themselves, is distinct from being able to dictate what people feel in the present, better than they can themselves.
There may also be a one-to-many problem that runs both ways, where many different brain-states in different people lead to similar subjective experiences, while nearly identical brain-states in different people may occasionally give rise to significantly different subjective experiences.
So the evaluation of people’s present experience through evaluating neurological activity is an example of where science can only catch up with, but never surpass, common personal experience.
John
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