Conversations For Transformation: Essays Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

Conversations For Transformation

Essays By Laurence Platt

Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

And More




Offing A Sacred Cow

Chimney Rock, Napa Valley, California, USA

May 3, 2018



"The source of what people do and what they don't do is that people's actions are in a naturally, necessarily directly connected dance with the way the circumstances on which and in which they are performing occur  (show up) for them."
...  on the source of what people do and what they don't do 
"I'm sorry: it's your brain, it's not you."
... Laurence Platt on free will at which neuroscience is taking aim*
This essay, Offing A Sacred Cow, with The Showing, is the sequel to When New Ideas Get Old.




Do human beings have free will? I mean really?  Now don't rush to judgement. It's just a question. And I'd like to pose it as a wide open  question. If your answer is "No we don't", that's certain to ruffle some folks' beliefs and survival-entangled feathers. If you answer with a resounding "Yes of course  we do", that may be nothing more than an insecure ego running amok, locking and loading. So I'm not going to demean this deceptively profound question by claiming to have the  answer, one way or the other. I don't even place any stock in my own vote on it. What I'd like to do here instead is just take a good look at it with y'all. I'd like to start an inquiry.

A series of rigorously controlled repeatedly verifiable neuroscience experiments has proved our brains make the decision to act up to seven seconds  before we decide to act. The Cambridge International Dictionary allows "off" as a verb, defining it as "to kill someone". The same dictionary defines a "sacred cow" as "a belief, custom, etc that people support and do not question or criticize". Free will could indeed be called a sacred cow. Has neuroscience just offed  a sacred cow? Has neuroscience just pole-axed  free will and got its head up on a pike?

It's challenging asking the question "Has neuroscience offed free will?". The question itself is questionable. Who, for example, will answer it? Is it someone steeped in religion? Is it someone steeped in philosophy? Is it Joe Sixpack  steeped in neither? Each may have a yes / no opinion which simply avoids the gravity of the neuroscience research. A more unavoidable  question to ask is "Has neuroscience offed the common notion  of free will?". In other words, is our belief that there's a relation between us deciding to act, and our actions themselves, as accurate as we've considered it to be? ie is it true?  Because isn't a direct, causal link between the two, what the common notion of free will is?

As hard, as awkward, as dislocating  as it is to set aside our tired, old beliefs that human beings like you and I have free will, the fact that our brain makes decisions for us up to seven seconds before we're even aware of choosing to make those decisions for ourselves  is proof positive the reign of the common notion of free will, is over. It's history.

At worst, that removes the possibility of free will from the human equation entirely. Given the way we are about controlling our own lives, that's almost inconceivable. By "almost inconceivable" I'm not referring to removing free will from our lives: I'm referring to merely considering  removing free will from our lives ("But Laurence, if we don't  have free will, then we're little more than ... machines???"  - est  graduates: are you listening? sound familiar?). At best, it provokes us to thoroughly reassess our notion of free will: if offing the sacred cow is fait accompli  ie if free will isn't  the source of what we do and what we don't do, then what the heck is?
Werner's idea is that the source of what people do and what they don't do, is their actions are in a naturally, necessarily directly connected dance with the way the circumstances on which and in which they are performing, occur (show up) for them. Its companion piece  is: language  alters the way the circumstances on which and in which people are performing, occur (show up) for them. Both are a subject for another conversation on another occasion. But now  is a good time to inquire into it.


* Read this, the neuroscience report "Neuroscience vs philosophy: Taking aim at free will" published on August 31, 2011 in Nature, the international weekly journal of science, by clicking here.


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