Hi. Do you have free will?
No, I'm not asking if wcuk is a pay site.
The question of free will is fundamentally deep (and deeply fundamental... zing!). What is consciousness, what is "I"? Hofstadter took a swing at it, and while I'm only about 1/3 of the way through, my mind is already boggled.
There's a great clip from Waking Life that deals with this question. It doesn't answer the question, because who could hope to answer it? Instead, it looks at free will by way of physics, applying deterministic and probabilistic physics to neuropsychology. Both of these approaches are ... unfulfilling. To paraphrase: Either we're cogs in a giant machine whose initial conditions were set at the big bang, or everything is the consequence of random chaos and is therefore meaningless.
Surely there is a theological response to the question of free will. I am not aware of it, because as a policy, I've tried to stay away from theology, and I will continue to do so in this post. You understand.
In fact, let's abandon this level of thought. Frankly, the only reason I included it at all was to impress you with my cleverness and depth (Do you like me? Check one: ___ Yes ___ No ___ Maybe). Let's instead assume that we do have free will, that we do make decisions that are based on the Self and the Conscious.
The question now is: Just how free is our free will?
There's a program on NPR called Radio Lab. It is amazing. I can't recommend it highly enough. In one of their episodes, they did a better job of answering this question than I can ever do. You should probably stop reading and just listen to their show.
Still here? Well, that's your choice. Or is it? (Damn, that was a good segue).
The episode describes three experiments that were conducted by behavioral psychologists, each of which reveals something about the nature of our decision-making process. Namely, that this process is so easily manipulated as to be laughable. I'll summarize them here, and in Part 2, but please don't hold me to the details.
Do you like the Hang In There Baby cat posters? I don't, I find them puerile and saccharine. I, personally, would much prefer some Impressionist art, although I'll admit that I couldn't tell Impressionism from Cubism from a hole in the wall.
A few dozen people (enough for statistical significance, I presume) were given the choice between the two. They were sent into a gallery full of posters, half Kitty and half Impressionist. They were told, "here's a gallery, you can take one, and it's yours to keep!"
For half of them (Group A), that was it. For the other half (B), there was one more caveat: They had to write a paragraph or two explaining their selection.
The results are unsettling: Group A tended to choose the Impressionist posters, while Group B chose adorable little Kitties.
The group that had to justify their decision was driven towards the simplistic, inane, stupid choice. Now, it would be downright unscientific of me to do that, to let my own personal prejudices color my interpretation of the results. Instead, why don't I let the subjects' do the talking?
In a poll a few months after the gallery experiment, subjects were asked if they were happy with their selection. The trend was that Group A was happy, while Group B was not. Nobody wanted the Kitty posters! By simply making the subjects verbalize their reasoning, the experimenters manipulated them into taking what they didn't even want, even though they'd walked out of the room feeling satisfied!
Free will indeed.
to be continued...
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6 comments:
Lacking free will is what advertising agencies count on. Unfortunately this is where psychology makes its green. That is why I do consumerist research, so ad agencies can better understand the art of manipulation. It is pure evil.
Impressionism, Cubism, and a hole in the wall. Art History 101. ehh hem...
Impressionism: A term coined by a critic in the 19th century. His intent was to poke fun at the work of artist Claude Monet (such as your given example). Impressionist art in an attempt to capture the transient effects of sunlight and the passage of time. Artists of this genre typically depicted subjects of nature and modern society. Many artists painted the same scenes multiple times over, at varying hours of the day, to observe how light transforms an image. In Monet's case the short brush strokes and blurred images were a style as well a result of his progressing cataracts.
Cubism: This genre followed a century later. You may be familiar with artist Pablo Picasso. In short, Cubism attempts to present all facets of a subject on a single plane. The image thus becomes flattened, abstracted and fragmented. The genre later split into two main branches Analytic Cubism and Synthetic Cubism, but I won't get into that.
As for the hole in the wall, I think we're clear now.
-Amy
how very apropos, prescient.
I have free will
Your mom has free will.
You seem to be saying that because one's behavior can be influenced by the actions of others and that one's behavior is multiply determined that one lacks "free will." I don't think that follows.
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