Flies Show Free Will
| May 16, 2007 | Posted by dacook under Intelligent Design |
A team of neurobiologists led by Bjorn Brembs of Free University Berlin have found experimental evidence in fruit fly behavior indicating that these much-abused bugs may have an element of free will. A report on the study in LiveScience notes that:
For centuries, the question of whether or not humans possess free will  and thus control their own actions  has been a source of hot debate.
“Free will is essentially an oxymoron  we would not consider it ‘will’ if it were completely random and we would not consider it ‘free’ if it were entirely determined,” Brembs said. In other words, nobody would ascribe responsibility to one’s actions if they were entirely the result of random coincidence. On the other hand, if one’s actions were completely determined by outside factors such that no alternative existed, no one would hold that person responsible for them.
Of course standard Darwinian orthodoxy denies the reality of free will. Though many Darwinists shy away from the implications of their beliefs as they apply to ascribing responsibility for human behavior, their position demands that all behavior is determined by the genetic heritage of selfish genes. If free will in fact exists, it must exist outside the deterministic universe of materialism. But if free will exists in flies, can it be denied in humans?
Of course the scientists behind this study are good Darwinists all, and therefore must cavil and caveat their way out of the real implications of their findings:
Brembs said that “even a fly brain possesses a function which makes it easier to imagine a brain that creates the impression of free will.”
Just as life give only “the appearance of design†to people like Dawkins, observed behavior must be noted to give only “the impression of free will.†To stay in the mainstream, scientists must not acknowledge the possibility of actual free will, although Brembs comes perilously close with his statement:
“If even flies show the capacity for spontaneity, can we really assume it is missing in humans?” he asked.
As with biological complexity, the more we discover about behavior, the less deterministic it looks. Evidence for free will is evidence against Darwinism, no matter how it is spun.
73 Responses to Flies Show Free Will
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SteveB:
You’re correct that the determinist says every event is causally determined. The individual is seen as having zero agency. But you’ll have to elucidate how it follows that the individual is incapable of reasoning correctly about the world, or of recognizing that he is part of this causal chain. Why can’t the reasoning and deliberating themselves become part of the stream of causality?
I understand that it’s a weird–even spooky–way of thinking about the world, but the fact that an idea is strange or unappealing is not adquequate to refute it.
Ooopsie, have I pushed some buttons and some people have responded predictably?
As my little experiment showed, human behavior is predictable to some extent. Did everybody respond that way? No. Do Borne and DaveScot have less free will than the ones who didn’t respond to my little troll-provocation? I personally don’t really think so and probably neither would many here. There was a statistical chance that at least some here would respond in a very pissed-off manner to a blatantly arrogant and condescending provocation. Thus, obviously, as has been shown, human behavior follows rules. Neuroscientists research these rules. To do this, you average across individuals to get at the rules and average out the variability. It thus comes as no surprise if most neuroscientists think that *all* our behavior follows rules and no free will in the common sense can exist. I think this is a mistake by generalization and our work was a shot at this generalization by looking explicitly at the variability in behavioral data. we showed that even this variability is not just an annoyance that you (as a scientist) have to live with. No, behavioral variability (such as this shown by the members choosing to respond or not) is a feature of apparently a great many different brains. We don’t know how it works, but we showed evidence, for the first time, that it exists.
As much as I think it is a mistake to believe our behavior is completely determined simply because we can find rules in it, I think it is a mistake to claim that because we don’t yet understand the biological nature of this variability, it must be non-materialistic. This is a colossal error for many reasons, not the least because I would look like a total fool if someone smarter than I would come and show me a materialistic way of explaining the variability. This guy (or gal) would make me look so utterly stupid, wouldn’t he/she? Obviously, the brain creates behavioral variability as an adaptive trait and all we have to do is find out how it does that. I think in flies we can solve this within the next 5 years (provided funding), so if you want to bet on something non-materialistic, you better bet now (I’m willing to wager a box of wine against that bet).
Before you keep going on about how this means determinism: it doesn’t and all it requires is some thinking and maybe reading to realize that!
Now on to the original blog author’s (dacook) questions:
I have a few related questions for you: Do you think there could ever be an experimental way to differentiate true free will, independent of genetic heritage or behavioral programing, from a deterministic “evolutionary conserved mechanism generating spontaneous behavior,†as you put it, in the brain?
Good question. I’m not sure. You’d have to show that in a majority of people (you don’t expect this to be a property of a chosen few, do you?) there are mental processes (not based on brain activity for ‘true’ free will) which cause behavior independently of heritage or history. I think this may in principle be possible, but probably not at the moment. I might add that the chances of finding a mental activity not associated with any brain activity are so small that you’d have to find a graduate student who doesn’t care about the outcome of his thesis to do the experiment.
Thus, I think it may be possible, but chances of an the outcome in your favor are so slim, that I’m almost willing to bet anything against it
You were quoted as saying in the article; “we would not consider it ‘will’ if it were completely random and we would not consider it ‘free’ if it were entirely determinedâ€Â
Yet if free will is an illusion generated by some brain function producing what appears to be spontaneous behavior, isn’t that still deterministic and therefore not really free? i.e. it’s this proposed evolved brain mechanism, whatever it is, that determines the behavior, rather than actual choices made by an independent intelligence. (By independent I mean that its behavior is not determined by its evolutionary heritage.)
Like I said above, IMHO both determinist neuroscientists and mentalist creationists/theists/whateverists are on the wrong track. Especially when they believe there are only these two positions (which many seem to adhere to). In my fantasy speculation our brains have managed, through eons of trial and error (i.e., evolution) to harness chance and use it ‘at our will’`. We use deterministic rules to throw the dice in a very certain manner such that it’s not 100% clear how they will fall. In this way, we’re both deterministic and free without being either to its full extent.
In this way we are not, IMHO, determined by our evolutionary heritage in the behavioral sense: we receive certain boundaries (akin to not having wings so we can “will” all we ever want and won’t just lift off), within which we can create space for ourselves (got slightly existentialist there, eh
And if it’s not “will†if it’s random, as you said, then the “spontaneous†part of what your proposed brain mechansim does would appear to rule out true “will†as well.
It’s the combination of random and deterministic which makes the total neither. I know this may be hard to grasp and I probably suck at explaining this very well, but in principle this can actually work. Research will show how far I’m off. ‘True will’ as in ‘independent of brain activity’ will probably prove to be as tough as proving the existence of a deity, but that hasn’t stopped people from trying.
Random number generators already exist to vary robot’s behavior; how would this brain mechanism be different?
Excellent question!! This is really the heart of the matter! IMHO, I think the difference is that the brain (i.e., us) determines how, where, when and how often the dice get thrown. In the weather analogy, the rules are fixed. In the brain, they constantly change. Importantly they change through brain activity (e.g., “thinking”). Quite possibly, this is where biology might be able to provide one piece of the mind-brain puzzle. Research will show how far we can answer this question in what time.
To return to the main question, if your proposed brain mechanism is not “entirely determined,†and not “completely random,†how can you ever tell if it even exists? How could you determine if a behavior is in fact a product of the mechanism and not true free will of an intelligence acting outside materialist constraints? If you can tell, how? This is a serious question.
I see that this is a serious question and I think it is a very good one (again, and no flattery here
. It turned out that even this piece appears again to be constructed by chance and necessity in close conjunction. Now, determinists will (and have!) construct this as proof that there is no “free will” just as mentalists will claim the opposite. Both can do this simply because the mechanism we envisage contains components of both and until we know exactly how it works in every detail, both camps will stick to their too rigid perspectives.
There are several points to this issue. So far, there is no evidence of any “true free will of an intelligence acting outside materialistic constraints”. As I have shown in my troll-provocation example, human behavior is very obviously predictable to a certain extent. Some of this predictability comes from biological constraints (this is how you/we show it exists). Therefore, if you can show any biological constraints (of which I have given but one trivial example), the truly independent will of which you speak has been falsified. However, there remains the grain of unpredictability (after all, only two people went into my trap!). It is this unpredictability which we looked for in flies (well, not the exact same one, but you know what I mean
For both camps our work means a restriction in how they can argue: we just proved both of them right (and wrong) to a certain extent. If determinists want, they can claim the glass is half full for as long as they want and mentalists can claim it’s half empty. To me personally after our results have come in, sticking to either end now appears equally futile as the discussion about whether the glass is half full or half empty.
I can try to explain to you that the essential point is the “half” and you’ll jump in joy claiming “see, he said ‘half empty’!!!!” (as you have). The determinists will (and have) likewise claim “see, I told you, he said it’s half full!!!”.
If you have problems seeing the middle ground, you might want to adjust your perspective.
Finally, of course, as in evolution, one may claim that everything stochastic in the process is divine and/or non-materialistic. This restrains the non-material to all things chance. If you chose to do so, your non-materialistic entity follows the rules of stochastics, which is fine by me.
Did that answer your question?
Finally, specific to your hypothesis, what kind of brain mechanism could there be that wasn’t “entirely determined†(your phrase) by its genetic makeup and subsequent experience?
Probably most brain mechanisms are not entirely determined by genetic make-up and experience. There always is noise in the system and even identical starting points may end up completely differently if run twice in a row. In fact, this is a hallmark of nonlinear systems. Our brains on this planet, by their very nonlinear design, can never be constructed in a way that you only need the same genes and the same experiences and they’ll end up exactly the same. This is exactly what we have shown to be impossible already for flies, let alone for humans.
I’m sorry, for the brevity of my remarks and I’m sorry if my little experiment offended anyone, it served a very specific purpose. I gotta rush off to my experiments!
Thanks everybody for this stimulating discussion,
Take care,
Bjoern
As my little experiment showed, human behavior is predictable to some extent.
Your experiment was what? You put a statement on a blog and get a response? B.F. Skinner has a come a back from the dead!!!!
You ought to be more concerned about the number of people who ignored it.
It’s exactly this variability (some responded and some didn’t) which was the topic of our paper.
It’s exactly this variability (some responded and some didn’t) which was the topic of our paper.
Is it for a high school science fair?
Wittenstein @61:
First, sorry for the delay in responding as I was away for the weekend.
You ask: “Why can’t deliberating become part of the stream of causality?”
Because deliberation requires a choice between multiple options. But the determinist has “at any instant exactly one physically possible future.”
This is where many of these world views do OK in the salon, but fail utterly in the real world. You challenge me “to elucidate…†If I’m truly capable of doing this–if I can act, think, deliberate, reason and explain–I have genuine agency, and determinism is falsified. If I can’t, there’s not much point in challenging me to do what I am incapable of. Further, there’s not much point in criticizing me for it (even if that criticism is subtle), as all either of us have been doing in this little exchange is carrying out our respective programming. Might as well blame the oven for burning the brownies.
Dr. Brembs:
Thank you for responding to my questions. I appreciate your taking the time.
Though I think your study is fascinating and your responses thoughtful, I do not believe that the inference link between your observations and your conclusions is well enough warranted for me to change my mind about the possibility of the existence of true free will.
The “conclusion” that there is a deterministic brain mechanism to explain what looks like free will is an a priori assumption, not something that follows from your evidence.
To me the flies’ behavior could as well be interpreted as showing a spark of true free will initiative.
I admit, of course, that my inference arises from my pre-existing thought system, as does yours.
More data is needed. Keep flogging those flies!
Regards,
dacook.
[...] The mistake we find in this post on Uncommon Descent starts here: Though many Darwinists shy away from the implications of their beliefs as they apply to ascribing responsibility for human behavior, their position demands that all behavior is determined by the genetic heritage of selfish genes. [...]
SteveB @66
“Because deliberation requires a choice between multiple options. But the determinist has “at any instant exactly one physically possible future.â€Â
There’s nothing necessarily incompatible about these two sentences. The options lie in the world, not in us, and in the end we choose one or another. The question is just exactly how and why. Perhaps it seems strange that we would bother to “deliberate” if we have only one possible future. The important thing to remember is that the determinist is not saying we only pretend to think while our bodies are actually following some kind of Newtonian trajectory. We do think and plan and deliberate and reason, it’s just that these processes, like any other, may have emerged from, and may ultimately be determined by, laws of nature. Our culture and language wrap these concepts up tightly with ideas of free will, but we could be wrong.
I’m not trying to prove determinism, I’m just trying to prove that it isn’t self-refuting. Nothing about the truth of determinism would mean that events–including discussions on the web–can’t change us. Maybe my arguments will change your mind. More likely they won’t. But I don’t see how you have demonstrated that it is logically impossible that I am making these arguments, and that you will subsequently accept or reject them, unless there is more than one physically possible future.
Both of us seem to be entering the repeat cycle. I’ll leave the last word to you. Thanks for the discussion.
W
Greetings Wittgenstein, Dr. Brembs, and other fruit flies in the ointment:
Apparently you and some others are under the impression—though you’ve not used the term yet—of a suggested argument about how we can have “free will” of sorts while still acknowledging the purely physical elements of human brain evolution alone; the phenomenon called “Emergence”—i.e., nature made the “free will” template, but we choose what to write on it. Man evolved as “tabula rasa“, Aristotle’s notion of the mind as blank slate until forced to act.
The argument of Emergence, THE supposed “knock-down” answer to non-materialist explanations for human consciousness, is this:
Having cultural or physically limited choices does not mean I can’t step outside certain bounds of culture, cannot know truth, cannot make reasonable decisions, etc. Having limited real choices does not mean I have none at all. Its just that they are contextually bound. Conversely none of us can do anything we like on fiat or whim. But the brain evolved to ALLOW free will and analysis of truth, etc. Right?
“Emergence” is well known in other aspects of life as a phenomenon either in, say, coloration of compounds, or physical characteristics of rocks, plants, H20, and other complicated combinations of material whose collective attributes could not have been predicted ahead of time but nonetheless show features that seem to defy deterministic behavior. In reality they either evolved or got compounded. Thus for example water has features that cannot be easily explained by looking at separated O and H atoms, that defy all other liquids (expanding upon freezing rather than contracting, etc). So–there is “no reason” to think this feature or set of features would be missing from the evolution of the human mind.
I think the confusion here, (which stuns me since the soft-core determinists have mentioned this for years), is the terminology. Several posts here speak of the evolution of a condition–a situation–that allows the brain to process propositions that give the appearance of free will. And I think this is the term you’re missing and seek. Emergence denies we are somehow out of necessity hide-bound sock puppets and not masters of our own fate (IF the mind evolved physically over vast epochs of time and thus human induction is cast out by Darwinism or evolutionary explanations).
Doubters of materialistic explanations for free will and human thought, like C.S. Lewis, said that our very thoughts and actions could not ultimately be trustworthy as seeing truth for truth (if the mind evolved) since we are metaphysically bound to materialistic action/reactions of chemicals in the brain, etc. Thus the commentary you’ve criticized– those to the effect writing that free will and physical evolution of the mind are mutually exclusive. (e.g.–we can’t know certain things for sure about the past if our minds actually did evolved, etc.) However, according to “Factor E”, they are not, and the correct phrasing he missed is that while its true that our actions and perceptions are always limited by metaphysical conditions we had no part in (I have brown eyes, and not by my choice but my father’s choice of wife, etc, and unless I want a life of crime I can’t simply “choose” to have a Jaguar XJ6 in the driveway unless I have the cash or lease money), we can and DO make choices based on our limitations.
Emergence says this is darn good enough to qualify as an “evolved” version of free will. For flies or people.
Free Will, or choosing to see a proposition as true/untrue dichotomy (which is vital to all propositions of actual free will), is thus said to be no more dependent on “induction” and “stepping outside the bounds of physical reality” any more than “choosing” to jump off a bridge violates the laws of gravity normally holding you to the rails.
Just because the human mind evolved and could have physical explanations for all its aspects does not deny that within realistic bounds, the human mind holding certain propositions or notions or having choices is not contradicted by the fact that this “emergent” property of the mind is not well understood. The fact that it is complicated and thus far “simply is” based on observation says nothing that bolsters the notion of “induction.”
In short précis, if Emergence is true, then Lewis’ notion on Induction (and all others) as a challenge to orthodox Darwinism is irrelevant, and is thusly annihilated as a logical response to the problem of human choices “stepping outside of naturalistic explanations”–or the “truth” of certain propositions.
In MY opinion, the problems here are manyfold, using orthodox Darwinism itself as the friendly witness:
First, if the locus or loci of free will can in fact be “found” in the brain, then we are probably less able to make free will choices or hold propositions to be true as we gleefully suppose. A narrow gene range in the brain that “evolved” for this purpose would be just that: Narrow—by very definition.
Second, the prime directive to all biological evolution is reproduction. Period. All else is held to be slush and gush by most materialists or is a side effect of the main event—an effort to reach that lofty goal . Bees make nests, humans build cyclotrons and farm equipment. So what? The fact that humans have larger brains than dogs means only that dogs and humans share the common goal of making pups and babes but that via various pathways have had to diverge from the survival needs of their distant common ancestor. It does NOT mean humans are “better” than dogs. Only different. Thus Oliver Wendell Holmes’ famous quip that he assigned no more moral or other specialized significance to the thoughts of humans than those of baboons. So determinism is inherently found even in “emergent ideas” for many materialist thinkers. The goal of thinking, after all, is sublimated to making eggs–ones with a shell (chickens and lizards) and those without (humans and doggies). In this idea the brain is but a tool for making eggs, much as a shovel can be used to dig ditches but on the side can be used to clunk gophers on the head. But the actual purpose remains digging–thus shovels have no “insights” into anything other than a sharp edge.
Third, Emergence is not demonstrated as an observed or located property of the physical brain, it is guessed at, with regard to human beings and higher biological systems. We don’t know if the analogy to water is even appropriate or could hold. It is simply an uninstructive statement that proves nothing but master guesswork–masquerading as science which basically says, “That’s the way things are, go home, get out of our yard, and take your non-materialist ball with you”.
Hopefully that was not all…predictable!
–SWT
Atlanta Ga.
It seems to me current “hard” science about free will is based much on the concept of “strong anticipation” by Daniel M Dubois. Try and find the paper:
“Review of incursive, hyperincursive and anticipatory systems-foundation of anticipation in electromagnetism.” The paper is offline now from where it used to be.
Here’s a quote from it:
“This reminds me the following comment an auditor made after a conference on anticipatory hyperincursion I made: “You have found the basic theory of free will”. Indeed, the brain may be considered as an anticipatory hyperincursive neural net which generates multiple potential future states which collapse to actual states by learning: the selection process of states to be actualized amongst the multiple potential states is independent of the fundamental dynamics of the brain, independent of initial conditions and so completely unpredictable and
computable).
—-
The paper has lots of complicated math in it, and he’s a reputable professor with some awards, so therefore it must all be true….free will is science.
Bjoern Brembs
“My past time is futile, because we have more and better data showing how evolution works than how gravity works. Yet, I have only seen one reference to intelligent falling! ”
Here’s the Darwinist response to the intelligent falling theory:
Differential Gravitational Success
Scientists have long been searching for the origin of the force of gravity. By simple experiment I hope to demonstrate how gravity works.
Going down to the river, I collect a bunch of oddly shaped rocks laying on the riverbed. Putting the rocks in a sack, I climb up a hill and empty the sack on a steep slope of the hill. As expected, the rocks roll down.
I notice that some rocks have rolled down further as others. There was a differential gravitational success. Next comes the important question, what may have caused this difference? On examining the rocks I find that the rocks vary in some aspects. The rocks that have rolled down most far are generally more heavy and rounded, as the other rocks.
By the established scientific methodology, the explanation becomes simple. In struggling to roll down most far, the rocks that were most fit to roll down, rolled down the furthest. So this means that the force of gravity finds it’s origin in the property of being more fit then another to go downward in the struggle for depth, resulting in gravitational success.
Richar Dawkins comments:
“Although I like to believe it is true, it is preposterous to claim that a beneficient almighty being would govern falling intelligently. In the ruthless struggle for depth the rocks are only governed by blind, pitiless indifference, in fact the rocks do not care at all. I remember once a schoolbus full of children being crushed by a huge boulder falling of a cliff, splattering the kids into a bloodsoaked mush. Was this intelligent falling of a beneficient God? No, it was just the purposeless forces of nature, the ruthless struggle for depth by a boulder that has no feeling, no care at all.”
Eugenie Scott (National Association of Biology Teachers USA) comments:
“What religionists sometimes do is exploit a gap in scientific knowledge such as the origin of the force of gravitation, and fill that gap with fantastic speculation. Slowly but surely science progresses to fill these gaps by applying methodological naturalism. This method has been succesful for science so far. There is no need to invoke intelligence to desribe the natural world around us, and the theory of differential gravitational success just proves that once more.”
[...] over evolution, for instance, routinely invokes the ‘free will’ concept, a running theme of the flagship ID blog Uncommon Descent (–which, I should note, also linked to my recent post on [...]