More Food For Thought

Below I've embedded a video of the philosopher John Searle talking about the problem of free will. Please watch it, and as you do so, think about what Searle is saying in light of the of the following questions:

• The scientific evidence is overwhelming that humans are altering the Earth's biosphere in a very a destructive way (global warming, marine ecosystems, deforestation, the Sixth Extinction, etc.). And yet humans (at the species/population levels) are doing nothing to slow the destruction of their own habitat. In fact, humans are behaving (or always striving to behave) in exactly the same ways which brought about the very serious problems they "refuse" to deal with. 

  How can we explain such persistent and consistently self-destructive behavior? Is such behavior compatible with the commonsense view discussed by Searle that humans have free will? In light of the trends briefly described above, what happens to the ordinary view that humans can and do make unconstrained ("freely made") choices?

 

Comments

[Brian]

I feel like he basically gets to the point in the last couple of sentences. At the conscious/micro level there appears to be an element of free will. We can choose to stand or sit, what to wear, what to eat, what to do next, etc. Generally, these decisions are not forced upon us by previous events, so they represent some level of free will.

However, the question is whether that conscious/micro level of apparent free will is only operational within a larger unconscious/macro level of innate biological drive. Does ecology/biology trump conscious behavior? It seems to me that the evidence is that it clearly does. As you note, as a species, we continue to behave in ways that are clearly not in our long-term interests, and not necessarily in our short-term interests either. In the end, the genetic need for "growth", generally meaning our need to expand our footprint to consume all available energy (through increased population and/or increased consumption) seems to underlie and provide the context for all our apparently rational "free will" decisions.

In some ways, this is analogous to our political system, where, at the micro level, we have the ability to vote for whomever we choose, and those votes are tallied and therefore influence the result. However, at the macro level, the rules of the game are such that money exerts an overall influence that both guides and bounds the possible decisions we can make. In reality, our "free" elections are taking place within a larger context over which the vast majority have little or no control or influence. Like mice in a maze, we can find the food, but are limited to the confines of the maze.

Again, a very interesting subject. Thanks for sharing the video.