Jerry Coyne Explains Why You Have No Free Will

Jerry Coyne declares the death of Free Will with the same perspicacity with which he declared that “Evolution is True”:

”Perhaps you've chosen to read this essay after scanning other articles on this website. Or, if you're in a hotel, maybe you've decided what to order for breakfast, or what clothes you'll wear today.

You haven't. You may feel like you've made choices, but in reality your decision to read this piece, and whether to have eggs or pancakes, was determined long before you were aware of it — perhaps even before you woke up today. And your "will" had no part in that decision. So it is with all of our other choices: not one of them results from a free and conscious decision on our part. There is no freedom of choice, no free will. And those New Year's resolutions you made? You had no choice about making them, and you'll have no choice about whether you keep them.

The debate about free will, long the purview of philosophers alone, has been given new life by scientists, especially neuroscientists studying how the brain works. And what they're finding supports the idea that free will is a complete illusion”

The debate about Free Will is in no manner the purview of philosophers or neuroscientists alone; the suggestion that these folks will tell the rest of us whether we have Free Will is ludicrous and arrogant-elitist. Coyne’s thinking is superficial enough that his personal elitism in this regard is merely his own delusion.

”But two lines of evidence suggest that such free will is an illusion.

The first is simple: we are biological creatures, collections of molecules that must obey the laws of physics. All the success of science rests on the regularity of those laws, which determine the behavior of every molecule in the universe. Those molecules, of course, also make up your brain — the organ that does the "choosing." And the neurons and molecules in your brain are the product of both your genes and your environment, an environment including the other people we deal with. Memories, for example, are nothing more than structural and chemical changes in your brain cells. Everything that you think, say, or do, must come down to molecules and physics.”

The massive reductionism in which Coyne engages here is ideological, not scientific. The idea that I will type a certain word here as being predetermined by the Big Bang’s effect on my molecules is totally without any material evidentiary support. It is pure ideology which resembles a credulous belief without evidence whatsoever: blind belief. It is pure ideology which doesn’t even match common sense, which is why Coyne and the physicalists claim that we all are deluded (except for Special Pleading clarity for themselves, of course).

”We can't impose a nebulous "will" on the inputs to our brain that can affect its output of decisions and actions, any more than a programmed computer can somehow reach inside itself and change its program.”

Neglecting the inaccurate comparison to computers (agent vs non-agent), the statement is another ideology, a credulous belief without any evidence whatsoever, despite what Coyne claims as evidence below.

”'Meat computers'

And that's what neurobiology is telling us: Our brains are simply meat computers that, like real computers, are programmed by our genes and experiences to convert an array of inputs into a predetermined output. Recent experiments involving brain scans show that when a subject "decides" to push a button on the left or right side of a computer, the choice can be predicted by brain activity at least seven seconds before the subject is consciously aware of having made it.”

If it happened that Coyne actually understood digital general purpose computers, he would have realized that activity doesn’t mean final decision. If a differentiation is to be accomplished, then memories must be accessed and loaded for comparison. Input data must compared against other memories to discern if the data is coherent. Registers must be loaded, clock cycles tick off as data is shifted, then compared, new registers are loaded as the instruction cycles complete. That is how digital computers work.

The digital computer is not programmed by its “genes”; that would mean that the hardware designer would preprogram – in hardware – all the outcomes of the computers processing. The digital computer is a general purpose machine, which is programmed by the software, and its output is not expected to be deterministic on the physical machine’s prior history of design. If it were the case that the design influences the output, the machines would be useless. The comparison is absurd, and it is an assertion of massive ignorance to make the claim which Coyne makes.

As for the seven second delay, or even more which Coyne suggests, does anyone actually wait seven seconds or more between a situation being presented and a decision being presented to the brain through the delusion of having made the decision oneself? Are any of us that slow? Do we stand there mute, awaiting the decision to be presented to our consciousness?

”Psychologists and neuroscientists are also showing that the experience of will itself could be an illusion that evolution has given us to connect our thoughts, which stem from unconscious processes, and our actions, which also stem from unconscious process. We think this because our sense of "willing" an act can be changed, created, or even eliminated through brain stimulation, mental illness, or psychological experiments. The ineluctable scientific conclusion is that although we feel that we're characters in the play of our lives, rewriting our parts as we go along, in reality we're puppets performing scripted parts written by the laws of physics.”
[emphasis added]

Coyne claims here that the “sense of willing” is negated by (a) monkeying around in the brain with electrodes, (b) mental illness (already delusional), (c) psychologists in charge of confusing test subjects. This, to Coyne, makes the “scientific conclusion” ineluctable. There are some additional problems with this, atop of the surface absurdity being asserted:

(1) where are these scientific conclusions being ineluctably asserted? He doesn't say.

(2) No science is ineluctable. Ever. Period.

(3) And exactly how is puppetry asserted on my decision to type this word? He doesn't say.

Perhaps his electrons could get in touch with my electrons, and explain these lapses.

”Most people find that idea intolerable, so powerful is our illusion that we really do make choices. But then where do these illusions of both will and "free" will come from? We're not sure. I suspect that they're the products of natural selection, perhaps because our ancestors wouldn't thrive in small, harmonious groups — the conditions under which we evolved — if they didn't feel responsible for their actions. Sociological studies show that if people's belief in free will is undermined, they perform fewer prosocial behaviors and more antisocial behaviors.”

So if we are all, every one of us,100% deluded (Except Coyne and associates) it is all covered by evolution, which Coyne knows for certain is True. Because evolution is True, there is no need to provide any evidence apparently.

Perhaps there actually are people who are merely meat machines, automatons driven by their electrons to do things which have no decision making made in conscious space; maybe Coyne is one of those who has no conscious control over what he writes, because it is directed causally by his electrons and their physics, clear back to the Big Bang. Still it is doubtful that Coyne, one would think, would claim no credit for having written these things, because he is a paid, staff philosopher who needs to publish in order to eat. For Coyne to reject his own agency is highly unlikely: someone should ask him how that works out for him.

If Coyne believes that his house, plumbing, automobile, roads, the computer he types on, that all these things were created 7 seconds or more prior to thinking about them, he has a lot more to prove than blood flow directed to certain areas in the brain. Coyne seems programmed, in fact, to consider only a certain type of input, under certain presuppositions which he cannot shake.

He winds up with a list of consequences of having no Free Will.

First is that religion which promotes free choice of its tenets is falsified. (how could we have guessed that?)

Second, is that criminals are not responsible for their actions (who is, then?). Coyne is quick to assert his moral reasons for why criminals actually should be punished anyway. But ironically his reasoning involves free choice: a person might not like that consequence and choose a different path for future behavior.

Coyne recognizes “not much downside” to denying Free Will. And there are upsides, two of them:

(1) ” The first is realizing the great wonder and mystery of our evolved brains, and contemplating the notion that things like consciousness, free choice, and even the idea of "me" are but convincing illusions fashioned by natural selection.”

Actually this seems to mean that blind belief in evolution is an occasion for wonder and joy.

(2) ” Further, by losing free will we gain empathy, for we realize that in the end all of us, whether Bernie Madoffs or Nelson Mandelas, are victims of circumstance — of the genes we're bequeathed and the environments we encounter. With that under our belts, we can go about building a kinder world.”

Having just admitted the following: ” Sociological studies show that if people's belief in free will is undermined, they perform fewer prosocial behaviors and more antisocial behaviors”, Coyne’s conclusion is bizarre; more empathy? Are you sure, Jerry? And who is to say that the current level of empathy is insufficient? Does Coyne have the moral authority to so declare? Based on exactly what data? Certainly not the data which he himself provides, which specifically indicates less empathy, not more. All in all, it looks like another ideology being presented as science of some sort.

Coyne is an unabashed Philosophical Materialist whose inadequate comprehension of science, its axioms, as well as computers, their operation and design, renders his philosophical twisting of neurological findings false and useless. And that is not to mention that his own agency in making these declarations falsifies the declarations outright. It’s not rocket science to understand that.

Note to self: I probably should mention Scientism in this review, so I just did.
Another Note: hat tip to Mariano. Thanks!