Determined, page 40
In other words, the cell bodies of neurons that have related functions are clumped together in particular regions of the brain, and the axons that they send to other parts of the brain are organized into these projection cables. What all this means, crucially, is that different parts of the brain do different things. All the regions of the brain have names (usually multisyllabic and derived from Greek or Latin), as do the subregions and the sub-subregions. Moreover, each talks to a consistent collection of other regions (i.e., sends axons to them) and is talked to by a consistent collection (i.e., receives axonal projections from them). Which part of the brain is talking to which other part tells you a lot about function. For example, neurons that receive information that your body temperature has risen send projections to neurons that regulate sweating and activate them at such times. And just to show how complicated this all gets, if you’re around someone who is, well, sufficiently hot that your body feels warmer, those same neurons will activate projections that they have to neurons that cause your gonads to get all giggly and tongue-tied.
You can go crazy studying all the details of connections between different brain regions, as I’ve seen tragically in the case of many a neuroanatomist who relishes all these details. For our purposes, there are some key points:
—Each particular region contains millions of neurons. Some familiar names on this level of analysis: hypothalamus, cerebellum, cortex, hippocampus.
—Some regions have very distinct and compact subregions, and each is referred to as a “nucleus.” (This is confusing, as the part of every cell that contains the DNA is also called the nucleus. What can you do?) Some probably totally unfamiliar names, just as examples: the basal nucleus of Meynert, the supraoptic nucleus of the hypothalamus, the charmingly named inferior olive nucleus.
—As described, the cell bodies of the neurons with related functions are clumped together in their particular region or nucleus and send their axonal projections off in the same direction, merging together into a cable (aka a “fiber tract”).
—Back to that myelin wrapping around axons that helps action potentials propagate faster. Myelin tends to be white, sufficiently so that the fiber tract cables in the brain look white. Thus, they’re generically referred to as “white matter.” The clusters where the (unmyelinated) neuronal cell bodies are clumped together are “gray matter.”
Enough with the primer. Back to the book.
Notes
1. Turtles All the Way Down
For a review of experimental philosophy, see: J. Knobe et al., “Experimental Philosophy,” Annual Review of Psychology 63 (2012): 81. Also see: David Bourget and David Chalmers, eds., “The 2020 PhilPapers Survey,” 2020, survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/all.
Free will belief in children across cultures: Gopnik and Kushnir’s work: T. Kushnir et al., “Developing Intuitions about Free Will between Ages Four and Six,” Cognition 138 (2015): 79; N. Chernyak, C. Kang, and T. Kushnir, “The Cultural Roots of Free Will Beliefs: How Singaporean and U.S. Children Judge and Explain Possibilities for Action in Interpersonal Contexts,” Developmental Psychology 55 (2019): 866; N. Chernyak et al., “A Comparison of American and Nepalese Children’s Concepts of Freedom of Choice and Social Constrain,” Cognitive Science 37 (2013): 1343; A. Wente et al., “How Universal Are Free Will Beliefs? Cultural Differences in Chinese and U.S. 4- and 6-Year-Olds,” Child Development 87 (2016): 666.
Belief in free will is widespread cross-culturally, but not universal: D. Wisniewski, R. Deutschland, and J.-D. Haynes, “Free Will Beliefs Are Better Predicted by Dualism Than Determinism Beliefs across Different Cultures,” PLoS One 14 (2019): e0221617; R. Berniunasa et al., “The Weirdness of Belief in Free Will,” Consciousness and Cognition 87 (2021): 103054; H. Sarkissian et al., “Is Belief in Free Will a Cultural Universal?,” Mind and Language 25 (2021): 346.
Driving study: E. Awad et al., “Drivers Are Blamed More Than Their Automated Cars When Both Make Mistakes,” Nature Human Behaviour, 4 (2020): 134.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 1
L. Egan, P. Bloom, and L. Santos, “Choice-Induced Preferences in the Absence of Choice: Evidence from a Blind Two Choice Paradigm with Young Children and Capuchin Monkeys,” Journal of Experimental and Social Psychology 46 (2010): 204.
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Footnote (p. 6): For overviews of their ideas, see: G. Strawson, “The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility,” Philosophical Studies 75 (1994): 5; D. Pereboom, Living without Free Will (Cambridge University Press, 2001); G. Caruso, Rejecting Retributivism: Free Will, Punishment, and Criminal Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2021); N. Levy, Hard Luck: How Luck Undermines Free Will and Moral Responsibility (Oxford University Press, 2011); and S. Harris, Free Will (Simon & Schuster, 2012).
For a somewhat different take, but in a similar spirit, see B. Waller, Against Moral Responsibility (MIT Press, 2011).
Similar broad rejection of free will comes in the writings of scientists such as evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne of the University of Chicago, psychologist/neuroscientists Jonathan Cohen of Princeton University, Josh Greene of Harvard University, and Paul Glimcher of NYU, and molecular biology god the late Francis Crick.
A small number of legal scholars, such as Pete Alces of William & Mary Law School, break stride with the basic assumptions of their field in also rejecting the existence of free will.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 3
M. Vargas, “Reconsidering Scientific Threats to Free Will,” in Moral Psychology, vol. 4, Free Will and Moral Responsibility, ed. W. Sinnott-Armstrong (MIT Press, 2014).
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 4
R. Baumeister, “Constructing a Scientific Theory of Free Will,” in Moral Psychology, vol. 4, Free Will and Moral Responsibility, ed. W. Sinnott-Armstrong (MIT Press, 2014).
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 5
A. Mele, “Free Will and Substance Dualism: The Real Scientific Threat to Free Will?,” in Moral Psychology, vol. 4, Free Will and Moral Responsibility, ed. W. Sinnott-Armstrong.
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R. Nisbett and T. Wilson, “Telling More Than We Can Know: Verbal Reports on Mental Processes,” Psychological Review 84 (1977): 231.
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2. The Final Three Minutes of a Movie
Footnote: J. McHugh and P. Mackowiak, “Death in the White House: President William Henry Harrison’s Atypical Pneumonia,” Clinical Infectious Diseases 59 (2014): 990. Harrison’s doctor treated him with an array of medications, which probably hastened his death. There was opium, which, as is known to opium addicts, causes major constipation, allowing the typhoid bacteria to linger longer, dividing. He was also given carbonated alkali, which probably impaired the ability of stomach acids to kill the bacteria. And just for good measure and for no clear reason, he was also given considerable amounts of mercury, which is neurotoxic. McHugh and Mackowiak convincingly suggest that enteric disease from contaminated water made James Polk seriously ill while president and killed Zachary Taylor while in office.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 1
Libet published his initial data in B. Libet et al., “Time of Conscious Intention to Act in Relation to Onset of Cerebral Activity (Readiness-Potential): The Unconscious Initiation of a Freely Voluntary Act,” Brain: A Journal of Neurology 106 (1983): 623; “Infamous”: E. Nahmias, “Intuitions about Free Will, Determinism, and Bypassing,” in The Oxford Handbook of Free Will, 2nd ed., ed. R. Kane (Oxford University Press, 2011).
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 2
P. Sanford et al., “Libet’s Intention Reports Are Invalid: A Replication of Dominik et al. (2017),” Consciousness and Cognition 77 (2020): 102836. This paper was in response to an earlier one: T. Dominik et al., “Libet’s Experiment: Questioning the Validity of Measuring the Urge to Move,” Consciousness and Cognition 49 (2017): 255. Media accounts of the Libet experiment: E. Racine et al., “Media Portrayal of a Landmark Neuroscience Experiment on Free Will,” Science Engineering Ethics 23 (2007): 989.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 3
P. Haggard, “Decision Time for Free Will,” Neuron 69 (2011): 404; P. Haggard and M. Eimer, “On the Relation between Brain Potentials and the Awareness of Voluntary Movements,” Experimental Brain Research 126 (1999): 128.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 4
J.-D. Haynes, “The Neural Code for Intentions in the Human Brain,” in Bioprediction, Biomarkers, and Bad Behavior, ed. I. Singh and W. Sinnott-Armstrong (Oxford University Press, 2013); S. Bode and J. Haynes, “Decoding Sequential Stages of Task Preparation in the Human Brain,” Neuroimage 45 (2009): 606; S. Bode et al., “Tracking the Unconscious Generation of Free Decisions Using Ultra-high Field fMRI,” PLoS One 6, no. 6 (2011): e21612; C. Soon et al., “Unconscious Determinants of Free Decisions in the Human Brain,” Nature Neuroscience 11 (2008): 543. The SMA as a gateway (footnote): R. Sjöberg, “Free Will and Neurosurgical Resections of the Supplementary Motor Area: A Critical Review,” Acta Neurochirgica 163 (2021): 1229.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 5
I. Fried, R. Mukamel, and G. Kreiman, “Internally Generated Preactivation of Single Neurons in Human Medial Frontal Cortex Predicts Volition,” Neuron 69 (2011): 548; I. Fried, “Neurons as Will and Representation,” Nature Reviews Neuroscience 23 (2022): 104; H. Gelbard-Sagiv et al., “Internally Generated Reactivation of Single Neurons in Human Hippocampus during Free Recall,” Science 322 (2008): 96.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 6
Bell ringing delayed: W. Banks and E. Isham, “We Infer Rather Than Perceive the Moment We Decided to Act,” Psychological Science 20 (2009): 17. Effect of happiness on readiness potential: D. Rigoni, J. Demanet, and G. Sartori, “Happiness in Action: The Impact of Positive Affect on the Time of the Conscious Intention to Act,” Frontiers in Psychology 6 (2015): 1307. Also see H. Lau et al., “Attention to Intention,” Science 303 (2004): 1208.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 7
M. Desmurget et al., “Movement Intention after Parietal Cortex Stimulation in Humans,” Science 324 (2009): 811.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 8
Anarchic hand syndrome: C. Marchetti and S. Della Sala, “Disentangling the Alien and Anarchic Hand,” Cognitive Neuropsychiatry 3 (1998): 191; S. Della Sala, C. Marchetti, and H. Spinnler, “Right-Sided Anarchic (Alien) Hand: A Longitudinal Study,” Neuropsychologia 29 (1991): 1113.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 9
Transcranial magnetic stimulation: J. Brasil-Neto et al., “Focal Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation and Response Bias in a Forced-Choice Task,” Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry 55 (1992): 964. Magicians: A. Pailhes and G. Kuhn, “Mind Control Tricks: Magicians’ Forcing and Free Will,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 25 (2021): 338; H. Kelley, “Magic Tricks: The Management of Causal Attributions,” in Perspectives on Attribution Research and Theory: The Bielefeld Symposium, ed. D. Gorlitz (Ballinger, 1980).
Footnote: D. Knoch et al., “Diminishing Reciprocal Fairness by Disrupting the Right Prefrontal Cortex,” Science 314 (2006): 829.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 10
D. Wegner, The Illusion of Conscious Will (MIT Press, 2002).
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 11
Footnote (p. 26): P. Tse, “Two Types of Libertarian Free Will Are Realized in the Human Brain,” in Neuroexistentialism, ed. G. Caruso (Oxford University Press, 2017).
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 12
Libet’s overview: B. Libet, “Unconscious Cerebral Initiative and the Role of Conscious Will in Voluntary Action,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 8 (1985): 529. Criticisms of the Libet study: R. Doty, “The Time Course of Conscious Processing: Vetoes by the Uninformed?,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 8 (1985): 541; C. Wood, “Pardon, Your Dualism Is Showing,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 8 (1985): 557; G. Wasserman, “Neural/Mental Chronometry and Chronotheology,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 8 (1985): 556.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 13
M. Vargas, “Reconsidering Scientific Threats to Free Will,” in Moral Psychology, vol. 4, Free Will and Moral Responsibility, ed. W. Sinnott-Armstrong (MIT Press, 2014).
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 14
Both viewpoints in K. Smith, “Taking Aim at Free Will,” Nature 477 (2011): 23.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 15
Driving simulation: O. Perez et al., “Preconscious Prediction of a Driver’s Decision Using Intracranial Recordings,” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 27 (2015): 1492. Bungee jumping: Nann et al., “To Jump or Not to Jump—the Bereitschaftspotential Required to Jump into 192-Meter Abyss,” Science Reports 9 (2019): 2243.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 16
U. Maoz et al., “Neural Precursors of Decisions That Matter—an ERP Study of Deliberate and Arbitrary Choice,” eLife 8 (2019): e39787. For the quote, see Daniel Dennett, “Is Free Will an Illusion? What Can Cognitive Science Tell Us?,” Santa Fe Institute, May 14, 2014, YouTube video, 1:21:19, youtube.com/watch?v=wGPIzSe5cAU&t=3890s, around 41:00.
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This and related studies are discussed in Haynes, “Neural Code for Intentions.”
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O. Bai et al., “Prediction of Human Voluntary Movement Before It Occurs,” Clinical Neurophysiology 122 (2011): 364.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 19
Nearly forty years after Libet: A. Schurger et al., “What Is the Readiness Potential?,” Trends in Cognitive Science 25 (2010): 558. Urge versus decision: S. Pockett and S. Purdy, “Are Voluntary Movements Initiated Preconsciously? The Relationships between Readiness Potentials, Urges and Decisions,” in Conscious Will and Responsibility: A Tribute to Benjamin Libet, ed. W. Sinnott-Armstrong and L. Nadel (Oxford University Press, 2020). The Gazzaniga quote comes from M. Gazzaniga, “On Determinism and Human Responsibility,” in Neuroexistentialism, ed. G. Caruso (Oxford University Press, 2017).
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 20
The Mele quote is from A. Mele, Free: Why Science Hasn’t Disproved Free Will (Oxford University Press, 2014), 32. Roskies is quoted in K. Smith, “Taking Aim at Free Will,” Nature 477 (2011): 2, on page 24.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 21
New insights about comas (from the footnote): A. Owen et al., “Detecting Awareness in the Vegetative State,” Science 313 (2006): 1402; M. Monti et al., “Willful Modulation of Brain Activity in Disorders of Consciousness,” New England Journal of Medicine 362 (2010): 579.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 22
M. Shadlen and A. Roskies, “The Neurobiology of Decision-Making and Responsibility: Reconciling Mechanism and Mindedness,” Frontiers in Neuroscience 6 (2012), doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2012.00056.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 23
A. Schlegel et al., “Hypnotizing Libet: Readiness Potentials with Non-conscious Volition,” Consciousness and Cognition 33 (2015): 196.
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Caruso explores this idea in a number of publications, most recently in his excellent G. Caruso, Rejecting Retributivism: Free Will, Punishment, and Criminal Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2021). To me, at least, issues of whether preconsciousness and consciousness can exist simultaneously take us into the philosophical underbrush. For true aficionados, this brings up the frothy but influential ideas of philosopher Jaegwon Kim of Brown University. If I understand it: (a) assume that conscious mental states, while the emergent product of underlying physical properties (i.e., thingies like molecules and neurons), are different from them; (b) something like a behavior cannot be caused by both a mental state and its underlying physical bases (which came to be called Kim’s “causal exclusion principle”); (c) physical events (like pushing a button or moving your tongue and larynx to tell your generals to start a war) are caused by prior physical events. So mental states don’t cause behaviors. I guess this is kind of interesting. Well, maybe not, because in my view, mental states and their underlying physical/neurobiological bases can’t be separated—they’re just two different conceptual entry points to considering the same processes. More of this in later chapters. Some of his papers: J. Kim, “Concepts of Supervenience,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 45 (1984): 153; J. Kim, “Making Sense of Emergence,” Philosophical Studies 95 (1995): 3.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 25
E. Nahmias, “Intuitions about Free Will, Determinism, and Bypassing,” in The Oxford Handbook of Free Will, 2nd ed., ed. R. Kane (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 26
Do it or not study: E. Filevich, S. Kuhn, and P. Haggard, “There Is No Free Won’t: Antecedent Brain Activity Predicts Decisions to Inhibit,” PLoS One 8, no. 2 (2013): e53053. Brain-computer interface study: M. Schultze-Kraft et al., “The Point of No Return in Vetoing Self-Initiated Movements,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 113 (2016): 1080.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 27
Footnote: Libet’s first report of his findings: Libet et al., “Time of Conscious Intention to Act.” His 1985 discussion of it is found in Libet, “Unconscious Cerebral Initiative.”
