“Free Will: The Scandal in Philosophy”; A Book Review

After having subjected myself to Harris’ book on Free Will, I found this work by Bob Doyle. Doyle has created a massive web site called the “information philosopher”, which serves as a reference for much philosophy, including that of information theory. He then compiled this book from the information he accumulated on the website. Even though Doyle’s work is far more massive, inclusive (and superior) to all other works that I have encountered, this review will be shorter, since the flaws in the work are few, and the conclusions are specific and easily addressed.

Doyle’s book focuses first on the history of the philosophy of free will from Aristotle to Searle, including determinism (18 different types of determinism are outlined), and Compatibilism. He analyzes the necessary and sufficient components of free will, and concludes that a two stage approach, as initiated by William James in 1884, can be made to work for a Compatibilist Theory of free will.

What Doyle suggests is that stage one in any thought process is the initiation of the process by random events, in this case quantum activity in the neurons. This occurs in the subconscious, and it generates “alternative possibilities”. This is the indeterminism stage. Stage two is not randomly controlled, but is determined by “deliberation of the alternative possibilities for action generated by that indeterminism. This we call self-determination”.

On pages 370 and 371, the concept of a two-stage “Cogito” model is developed which includes a feedback loop called “think again”. Around this point in the book, Doyle theorizes that humans are not like computers, humans are information processing machines which are vastly parallel and exceedingly complex. In fact, he says:

”But the ability to translate our thoughts into language and communicate that information to others is unique. We may not be the only species which has thoughts, but we are the only ones that can share our thoughts”.

This seems dubious, but even assuming that it is true that we save our thoughts for others to peruse, thereby creating information external to ourselves (anentropic), this does go against a totally deterministic and entropic universe, placing humans in a specific position which is not controlled deterministically. So are humans actually the uncaused causers that materialists and Atheists fear? Doyle concludes on page 387 with a short statement on the “Mind-Body Problem”. He claims that it is “solved in part” by knowing that the information creation is done physically, even though the…

“…information is the mind in the body, the ghost in the machine, as close to a spirit or soul as science can get. When we die, it is our information which is lost”.

But there are other questions which science is unable to address, even within Doyle’s Cogito theory. The first, most obvious question is: why. Why is non-determinism and anentropic macro-operation predictable from a macro-deterministic universe? Why is it seen only in living things, and why are living things predictable from a deterministic universe? Why would the operation of science, which requires cause and effect determinism as a foundation, now be content with macro-indeterminism as an explanation? What evidence is there that supports the idea that all thoughts, including “re-thinking”, are necessarily initiated randomly rather than purposely looking for specific items in memory for examination and comparison? Why should we believe, without evidence, the just-so story that all this just evolved?

The bottom line seems to be that philosophers and scientists cannot pin down with any exactness (and certainly no certainty) where the boundary between conscious mental activity and subconscious mental activity actually lies. So any free will theories involving subconscious vs. conscious tradeoffs are merely speculation. And Doyle’s speculation is a complex attempt to reconcile the determinists with the non-determinists to produce a compatibilist compromise… a compatibilist speculation. Doyle seemingly works well with information theory, but stumbles into statements of “fact” which he cannot prove. The most glaring “fact” of which is that death = information lost, where information is the understood substitute for “self”, an unstated materialist ideological conclusion.

This book is interesting and useful if for no other reason than as a compendium of historical theories and types of theories. Apparently the information in the book is also on Doyle’s website and would be searchable, but I like books too. Buying the book rewards Doyle’s efforts, and I’m glad to have done so. I recommend it.