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#3602 -
Thursday, July 23, 2009 - Editor: Jerry Katz
Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
Free Will:
The Last Gasp of the Unenlightened Mind
Jay Michaelson
Much of Western ethics, religious and secular, seems to rely on
the concept of "free will," the principle that each of
us is free to choose -- in both mundane and morally significant
contexts -- and thus bears responsibility for whatever choice we
make. Choose to indulge your urge to steal, and you bear both
moral and legal responsibility for the consequences of that
action (particularly if you get caught). And so on.
All this amateur philosophizing endures notwithstanding the
withering attack on free will by scores of philosophers,
neuroscientists, and biologists. John Locke and David Hume called
it nonsensical. Schopenhauer, whose philosophical work is largely
about the question of will, noted it is only an a priori
perception, not an actual description of events. As Hobbes noted,
free will has only apparent reality; in Nietzschean terms, it has
conventional truth only; in terms of absolute truth, it is
incoherent. In Spinoza's words (Ethics III:p2s), "men
believe themselves to be free, because they are conscious of
their own actions and are ignorant of the causes by which they
are determined." Obviously, if we knew all of the numerous
causes of our actions, we would understand free will to be a
delusion.
Likewise in the scientific community, which long ago rejected the
Cartesian dualism of a somehow immaterial soul interacting with a
material brain, and its pseudo-materialistic equivalent, which
posits an ego sitting inside the brain (somewhere undetectable by
neuroscience) and watching the percepts of consciousness go by
like a movie. The phenomenon we call the "mind" is, as
Gary Marcus described, a kind of "kluge," a contraption
cobbled together from parts meant for something else.
Consciousness -- in particular our consciousness of
"self" or ego -- is made up of thousands of memes,
culturally written software that runs on the hardware of the
brain. Scientifically, there just isn't a self, a humunculus
hunched inside the brain. (On all this, see Daniel Dennett,
Consciousness Explained, pp. 109-15, 253-54; and Freedom Evolves,
pp. 304-05).
Ultimately, "free will" is a convention. It is useful
solely for describing our perception of, and responsibility for,
decisions. As a phenomenon of consciousness, it evolved over
time, and it in turn has helped human beings and human culture
evolve. In the classic compatibilist perspective, it is coherent
as a mental phenomenon, even if it makes no sense absolutely --
and yet since its only function is as a description of a mental
phenomenon, no more is required. Ontologically, it has no
meaning, because ultimately, everything is caused from without.
But morally, ethically, it still means a great deal, because what
is "ultimate" does not really matter ethically. It is
only important that the proximate causes of one's decisions can
be traced to what Dennett calls "recent past... not to
infinity, but far enough back to give my self enough spread in
space and time so that there is a me for my decisions to be up
to." (Freedom Evolves, p. 136)
This is sufficient, ethically speaking. It allows for
non-existence of the self, the total determinism of all
phenomena, and yet ethical responsibility for one's actions. And
yet the unreflective notion that we actually somehow have free
will, really, as a matter of ontology, persists. And it justifies
an egotism which resolutely opposes every effort to liberate the
self from the ego. It is the last gasp of the unenlightened mind.
This is our point: that when "free will" as an
ontological proposition is dismissed, realization arises without
any negative consequences for ethical responsibility.
Consider: the meaning of "free will" is essentially
that there exists an action without any external causes, solely
determined by an independent moral agent who, while of course
affected by the world, ultimately operates independent of it. The
question of whether it exists is thus essentially a subset of the
classic philosophical distinction between determinism and
indeterminism. Normally, of course, most of us live our lives
according to determinism. We expect that when we are ill, there
is a cause (material or otherwise) of the illness; that when we
see cars, they likely have drivers (and engines); that rain does
not materialize out of nothing in the sky. All phenomena have
causes; they do not blip in and out of existence on their own
(bogus adaptations of quantum mechanics notwithstanding).
Yet most of us live our ethical lives according to indeterminism.
We assume that we make choices, and that those choices are
"ours," that is, not wholly caused by other things. The
buck stops here. At this moment, you could continue reading, or
click to another web page -- and of course it seems that the
choice is yours. Seems, but not is. Setting aside neuroscience
for a moment, it does not even comport with what is directly
observed in meditation. Every mental decision is wholly caused by
the sum total of causes and conditions which have brought you to
the moment of choice. Where else would it come from? Some of
these causes may be proximate -- how interesting this essay is,
how restless you are, what you have to do in five minutes -- and
others may be quite distant: how you respond to philosophy; your
gender, race, and class; and so on. It is beyond our ken to
identify all these different causes and conditions, but surely
they exist. Yet even if a choice seems totally impulsive, even
random, it is caused by something, is it not? And whatever that
something is -- or rather, whatever the uncountable myriad of
somethings are -- already exists as the product of other causes
and conditions.
This fact is observable through meditation, which is as close to
the scientific method as the introspective mind can get. It's
simply clear, empirically, that decisions are phenomena caused by
other phenomena. If you want to repeat the experiment, get
trained, sit down, and follow the same process, of slowing down
the rapid-fire of thought to an extent that the mechanism of
causation and choice can be seen more clearly. You will see how
involuntary actions which ordinarily pass unnoticed are seen as
intricately detailed sequences of desire and repulsion; how just
brushing away a mosquito can seem like a choreographed ballet.
Whereas normally it seems like "I make a decision," in
clear enough meditative states, it's possible to actually observe
how the different actions and reactions which usually get labeled
as "the self" are evoked when the right conditions are
present, how habituated responses dictate action, and how even in
instances of choice, the thought processes one goes through are
caused by personality, environment, and the rest. Observed -- not
merely felt. The smooth clockwork of discursive thought is
deliberately interrupted in such contexts, and its mechanistic
nature can be observed. There is no self driving the gears -- the
self is the gears. It's an emergent phenomenon of the uncountable
causes and conditions that are happening all the time. This is
what can be observed empirically, on the phenomenal level of the
mind.
Of course, it is possible that some weird, non-material,
non-provable, non-disprovable, non-observable self is actually
calling the shots, but the principle known as "Ockham's
Razor" suggests that the simplest solution tends to be the
best one -- not least because, after three hundred years, no one
has been able to show how material and non-material forms
interact. (Famously, Descartes himself suggested that there is a
nexus between the material and the non-material in the pineal
gland of the brain. Given what we now know about the pineal gland
and its role in consciousness, that Descartes chose it is quite
remarkable, even prescient. But even electricity and the various
energies of the brain are still material.) And no, quantum theory
-- that perhaps the soul is able to pop gluons and mesons into
existence, and from there, somehow, an independent consciousness
influences the material brain -- doesn't work either. As minute
as neurons are, they are gargantuan in size compared to subatomic
particles blinking in and out of existence, and every thought we
have is really a phenomenon caused by many neural connections, in
different parts of the brain. Suggesting that quantum flux
influences the brain is like saying that an ant crawling across
my floor suddenly built my home. All this quantum nonsense
actually exists to justify an intuitional sense of the world
which is flatly contradictory, directly disprovable,
scientifically disowned, and is only around at all because it
seems to feel good. (On this point, Ken Wilber's Quantum
Questions is a terrific anthology of the 20th century masters of
quantum theory all lining up to say that, while it is remarkable,
mystical, and amazing, it has nothing whatsoever to do with
"thoughts creating reality" or free will or anything
like What the Bleep suggests.)
But notice what this pseudo-metaphysical explanation is
attempting to provide: a way out of materiality and causality,
and a ground for ethics. But our ethical selves would not
disappear without metaphysics; most people don't care about
metaphysics anyway. What's more, from a nondual perspective,
deterministic causality is really our best friend, because it is
the release from the prison of self, the last barrier to
realization.
From the relative perspective, materialism is the simplest, most
logical account of the phenomena of mental processes, including
the sense of free will. Our brains, as well as our minds, obey
the basic laws of cause and effect. Somewhere, deep within the
recesses of the brain, there are memories and learned behaviors,
memes and cultural artifacts, that are then combined, in the
fraction of a moment, to form decisions. Free will is part of
what cultural critics call "the myth of the given": the
mistake of thinking that what we are is somehow
"natural" or given, apart from cultural and linguistic
factors. Of course, the way these factors are combined will be
different for each person, thus giving rise to personalities and
creativity; the materialistic view certainly does not deny the
wondrous powers of the human mind to innovate, invent, and create
new "combinations" that have never existed in the world
before. Indeed, as Dennett writes (Freedom Evolves, p. 185) our
sense of agency is part of "what nature intended," just
as much as our instincts are. We really are in the image of God.
But not because we somehow stand outside the material universe.
From the absolute perspective, the world arises as like a dream
-- but within the terms of that dream, there is only the
appearance of self, not a reality of it. What we take to be the
"self," a soul gazing out at the world but ultimately
free from its influence, is but a mirage. Of course, we have
"selves" in that my mind is not your mind, and my body
is not your body. But our minds and bodies are wholly conditioned
by other things: from genetics and how we were raised right down
to how hungry we are right now. As I ponder the next words to
write, thirty seven years of experience and thousands of years of
genetic engineering are determining the choices that I make.
"Free will" has nothing to do with it.
Rather, the "I" is a temporary ripple on a pond of
causes and conditions. It is like a motion picture, an illusion
of seamless movement caused by the rapid-fire succession of still
images. Or, to use Buddhist teacher Joseph Goldstein's metaphor,
this phenomenon of the "I" is like the Big Dipper: it's
there if you look at things a certain way, and not there if you
look at them a different way. Of course, there's no Big Dipper
really; but equally "really," that is, from our
ordinary, conventional way of looking at things, there is.
Likewise, as a lived, perceptual phenomenon -- a phenomenon, not
more -- obviously free will exists. This is the point of
comptabilism: that free will describes a phenomenon of our
experience, but nothing more than that. And that is sufficient
for all the ethical and jurisprudential consequences of free will
to fall into place.
This is why Rabbi Akiva's statement in the Talmud that
"everything is foreseen; yet free will is given" is not
some Zen-like paradox. It's describing just how things are. In
actual reality, everything is "foreseen," if by
"foreseen" we mean by an omniscient God who, unlike us
but like Laplace's demon, can actually know the billions of
causes and conditions influencing each of us at every moment. In
the Buddha's words, "there is free action, there is
retribution, but I see no agent that passes out from one set of
momentary elements into another one, except the those elements
[themselves]."
Some believe that without free will, we are mere biological
instruments, with no spark of the Divine -- or, in semi-secular
terms, no human soul. But from a nondual perspective, this
argument is theologically backward. If only we were able to
release the need to see ourselves as separate from the rest of
the cosmos! The autonomous soul isn't the gateway to God; it's
the gateway to delusion. This is precisely what the Jewish sages
call the yetzer hara, the selfish, separating and, occasionally,
evil inclination that sees the self as the center of the
universe. Whereas, when I'm able to see, just a little bit, that
my choices and feelings are the results not of my autonomous
"free will" but of a vast Indra's net of causes and
conditions, the overwhelming majority of which I cannot know --
not only a sense of perspective, but also a sense of peace, can
arise. It is what it is, and it will be what it will be -- ehyeh
asher ehyeh in the Hebrew -- and my choice is simply what to do
about it.
This kind of letting go is not a detachment from the imperative
of justice, but a revitalization of it. Which perspective is more
likely to lead to pursuing justice, one centered on my self and
my needs, or one which sees the arising of 'my needs' as just one
more strand within a web of causes and conditions -- a web often
given the name of God? Personally, I'm a lot less selfish when
I'm not self-centered; it seems like a tautology, really. Nondual
action is the same as dualistic action, except without a selfish
motive, the notion of a "doer," or the resentments and
hindrances that inevitably accompany self-involved activism.
Of course, too much equanimity can lead to a kind of ethical
laziness. But if we're really serious about looking closely at
the mind, then lot of what passes for equanimity and balance --
not to mention "realism" -- is actually selfishness in
disguise. Detaching from the delusion of free will isn't
detaching from the world; it's attaching oneself to it, and that
makes ignoring its suffering in the name of domestic tranquility
all the more difficult.
Nor is this erasure of the self an erasure of individuality.
Letting go of the delusion of free will doesn't mean that,
beforehand, I'm a creative, idiosyncratic, sensual person and
afterwards I'm a null set. Everything still arises; it's just
seen for what It is, rather than what it isn't. This is why some
of the most enlightened teachers around today are still very much
Brooklyn Jews, or British contrarians, or whatever their
histories have shaped them into being. They may not even seem
nice at first, and I'm sure that sadness and anger still arise.
Only the phonies are always smiling.
Free will is an illusion of the well-functioning brain, a trick
of the mind, and oftentimes the joke's on you. Let go of it;
you've got nothing to lose, and Nothing to gain. And there's a
big difference between nothing and Nothing, even though I can't
quite tell you what it is.
One Last Miracle
This should be the end of the inquiry: that letting go of the
delusion of separate self helps one see the relative world more
clearly and surrender into the absolute. But if we are speaking
of ethics, there is one peculiar miracle left.
It is a simple one: that compassion is natural after all. That
the surrender into Being, into God, does make us kinder, even
without the heteronomies of law. When we quiet down -- just
silence, just stillness -- and see things as they are,
compassion, lovingkindness, and wisdom appear on their own,
without any oughts from us. When you really get to who you are,
underneath all the neurosis, alongside the deep wounds from
childhood, you find yourself to be a compassionate person who,
just like all the rest of us, simply wants to love and be loved,
and to live life right.
At least, that's what I've found. And it's what, in
near-unanimity, generations of other contemplatives have also
found. We're not finding "goodness" in any particular
ethical or moral sense. I love the stories of Ikkyu, the
enlightened Zen monk who, after his enlightenment, would carouse
with prostitutes and get drunk. That's what he found, and he
exasperated the more traditional authorities who had a set idea
of what an enlightened person is supposed to look like. In
reality, an enlightened person doesn't look like anything in
particular. Like the much-overtold story of Zusya of Hanipol, the
sage looks not like Moses or Jesus, but like Zusya. Like her true
self.
But we do find a natural goodness, that wants to help, that no
longer needs to defend the boundaries of self. It takes work, but
the good heart does emerge.
It is also, sweetness notwithstanding, a radically different view
of the path of justice from the view that we must repress your
deep, dark instincts, because they are evil, or corrupted by
Original Sin. The view I am articulating is: get in touch with
your deep, supposedly-dark instincts, and bring them all to
Light. It is also somewhat dangerous: on a societal level, we
obviously need moral laws, rules, and the rest. It is not
reasonable to expect everybody to go off on extended retreats and
get to know their true natures. Doing so is a privilege,
conditioned by economic ability, as well as by the way our lives
have happened to play out. (Many people call that 'karma.')
Tragically -- and let's not underestimate the nature of that
tragedy -- contemplative practice is not available to everyone.
And, obviously, most people don't desire it either. So all the
usual ethical rules and regulations remain in place, and in
debate.
But when it can happen, the contemplative practice of seeing
clearly -- not superimposing moral thinking atop a rotten
foundation, but just seeing what is -- leads to more justice and
more peace. Simply by seeing clearly who or what we are, we
become more gentle, more compassionate. Automatically, as it
were. The sense of the sacred arises naturally as well. We are
radically good at heart -- some might say, we are God at heart.
I can't convey to you how transformative it was for me to see not
merely that "all people are good at heart," as Anne
Frank said, but that I am in particular. Me! The clumsy,
fumbling, needy me -- the ironic, cynical me -- underneath, or
rather alongside, all those pieces and strategies is really a
very simple loving person who is -- gasp -- good at heart. This
can be a very embarrassing thing to realize, let alone express.
But it's embarrassing because we suppose that the real Anne Frank
is the Hallmark Anne Frank -- i.e., that knowing people to be
good at heart leads to mushy thinking, or Polly-Anna optimism.
But that's not true at all. Knowing that I am good at heart does
not cloud my judgment about when I'm too clever, inconsiderate,
or "spiritual" -- it clarifies it. It does not bring
about arrogance; it engenders humility.
Anne Frank was not naive. But imagine her knowing, even as she
was victimized and brutalized beyond our capacity to conceive,
that what was happening was not the evil essence of humanity, but
a mistake. Imagine a surrender not to despair, but to the
unfolding of Being itself. Imagine the slightest loving smile,
held even amidst tears.
~ ~ ~
Read the original article and comments to it at
http://www.realitysandwich.com/free_will