Your quotes do not support the idea that consciousness plays the role of free will.
Here is the role that consciousness plays: First, recall that free will is about choosing what we will do. Second, recall that the
brain, while choosing what we will do, is
us choosing what we will do.
Consciousness allows us to know what we chose and why we chose it.
1. In the restaurant, we must be
conscious of the items on the menu in order to know what our options are.
2. In order to explain our choice to ourselves and others, we must be
conscious of the reasons behind our choice. Before making my choice for dinner, I should consider what I've already had today for breakfast and lunch. I recall that I had bacon and eggs for breakfast. Then I recall that I had a double cheeseburger for lunch, so I wisely chose to have the salad instead of the steak for dinner. So, I am
conscious of recalling what I had for breakfast and lunch.
3. When I order the salad in the restaurant, I
consciously to tell the waiter, "I will have the Chef Salad, please".
Those are a few of the instances of consciousness in free will.
Everything else going on in the brain may be unconscious activity. But the unconscious activity sends its results through several layers up to conscious awareness, where it becomes
reportable.
Gazzaniga suggests that consciousness is not limited to a single brain area, but is distributed across the brain in multiple functional areas:
Since we were finding specialized capacities in all different regions of the brain and since we had seen that conscious experience was closely associated with the part of the cortex involved with a capacity, we came to understand that consciousness is distributed everywhere across the brain.
Gazzaniga, Michael S.. Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain (p. 64). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
I am suggesting that the brain has all kinds of local consciousness systems, a constellation of them, which are enabling consciousness. Although the feelings of consciousness appear to be unified to you, they are given form by these vastly separate systems. (p. 66)
The brain is a self-organizing system:
Germane to our current discussion, however, is that while hierarchical processing takes place within the modules, it is looking like there is no hierarchy among the modules. All these modules are not reporting to a department head, it is a free-for-all, self-organizing system. (pp. 69-70)
Despite all this built-in chaos, the brain as a whole operates with a purpose:
What we always must keep in mind is that our brains, hence all these processes, have been sculpted by evolution to enable us to make better decisions that increase our reproductive success. (p. 69)
A complex system is composed of many different systems that interact and produce emergent properties that are greater than the sum of their parts and cannot be reduced to the properties of the constituent parts. (p. 71)
So, what are Gazzaniga's thoughts on free will? He is in the "free will is an essential illusion" camp. It may be an illusion, but it is a necessary one:
The lingering conviction that we humans have a “self” making all the decisions about our actions is not dampened. It is a powerful and overwhelming illusion that is almost impossible to shake. In fact, there is little or no reason to shake it, for it has served us well. (p. 75)
The "illusion" is created by what Gazzaniga calls the brain's "interpreter" function, the special function that explains our behavior to ourselves and others.
When we set out to explain our actions, they are all post hoc explanations using post hoc observations with no access to nonconscious processing. Not only that, our left brain fudges things a bit to fit into a makes-sense story. It is only when the stories stray too far from the facts that the right brain pulls the reins in. These explanations are all based on what makes it into our consciousness, (pp. 77-78)
The "interpreter" only has access to "what makes it into our consciousness". For example, in the restaurant, I was conscious of the items on the menu, I was conscious of recalling what I had for breakfast, I was conscious of recalling what I had for lunch, I was conscious of my evaluation that a salad, rather than a steak, would be the best choice for dinner. But I was
not conscious of the processing beneath my awareness that brought about these conscious experiences. However, the interpreter is able to piece together these conscious experiences into an useful explanation of what just happened: I read the menu, I considered my options, and I made my choice. And this is an accurate account of what essentially happened.
The interpreter provides the storyline and narrative, and we all believe we are agents acting of our own free will, making important choices. The illusion is so powerful that there is no amount of analysis that will change our sensation that we are all acting willfully and with purpose. The simple truth is that even the most strident determinists and fatalists at the personal psychological level do not actually believe they are pawns in the brain’s chess game. (p. 105)
While Gazzaniga reasonably rejects free will as a soul or spirit operating outside of the brain and outside of deterministic causation, he defends both the notions of
responsibility and
freedom. He begins:
Today, more than ever before, we need to know where we stand on the central question of whether not we are agents who are to be held accountable and responsible for our actions. (p. 106)
He describes bottom-up and top-down causation occurring between the levels of neural interactions:
Mental states do not exist without those interactions. At the same time, they cannot be defined or understood by knowing only the cellular interactions. Mental states that emerge from our neural actions do constrain the very brain activity that gave rise to them. Mental states such as beliefs, thoughts, and desires all arise from brain activity and in turn can and do influence our decisions to act one way or another. (p. 107)
And that is what I refer to as the "rational causal mechanism", the causation that results from our conscious thoughts and feelings. Gazzaniga described this poignantly in his introduction to the book:
Are we just a fancier and more ingenious animal snorting around for our dinner? Sure, we are vastly more complicated than a bee. Although we both have automatic responses, we humans have cognition and beliefs of all kinds, and the possession of a belief trumps all the automatic biological process and hardware, honed by evolution, that got us to this place. Possession of a belief, though a false one, drove Othello to kill his beloved wife, and Sidney Carton to declare, as he voluntarily took his friend’s place at the guillotine, that it was a far, far better thing he did than he had ever done. (pp. 2-3)
And that is how the rational causal mechanism plays a key role in
determining human behavior.
Rational causation is an
emergent property of human evolution. At different levels of organization, different behaviors emerge following different sets of rules. The rules at the lower level cannot explain the new behavior. And this is the basic flaw with reductionism.
Emergence is a common phenomenon that is accepted in physics, biology, chemistry, sociology, and even art. (p. 135)
The classic example from biology is the huge, towerlike structure that is built by some ant and termite species. These structures only emerge when the ant colony reaches a certain size (more is different) and could never be predicted by studying the behavior of single insects in small colonies. (p. 135)
A new set of laws emerge that aren’t predicted from the parts alone. (p. 136)
Different levels of organization exhibit different behaviors following there own rules. Gazzaniga uses a ball as an example in physics:
We view the collective behavior of the atoms, Micro B, at the higher organizational level of the ball, Macro A, and we see it doing ball behavior following Newton’s laws, but the atoms are there at the core doing their own thing and following a different set of laws. (p. 139)
And
responsibility emerges at the
social level of organization, where we get new laws that we ourselves create:
Responsibility is a dimension of life that comes from social exchange, and social exchange requires more than one brain. When more than one brain interacts, new and unpredictable things begin to emerge, establishing a new set of rules. Two of the properties that are acquired in this new set of rules that weren’t previously present are responsibility and freedom. (p. 136)
Another emergent property is
control:
Control implies some form of constraint. Control is not eating the jelly donut because you know it is not healthy, and not cheating on the test because, well, if you get caught you get in some kind of trouble. Control is an emergent property. (p. 138)
What DBT has been suggesting is summarized by Gazzaniga here:
Setting a course of action is automatic, deterministic, modularized, and driven not by one physical system at any one time but by hundreds, thousands, and perhaps millions. The course of action taken appears to us as a matter of choice, but the fact is, it is the result of a particular emergent mental state being selected by the complex interacting surrounding milieu. (p. 141)
My own point is that the result of this internal neurological process can only be understood by us through
macro modeling, through concepts such as the operation of choosing. This is how our interpreter explains it to us, and it is our only way of understanding the process in any meaningful way.
And this is where Gazzaniga returns us in order to make sense of the world and our behavior in it.
In the last chapter, I left off suggesting that responsibility arises out of social interaction and that the mind constrains the brain. We are now going to see how we incorporate social dynamics into personal choice, how we figure out the intentions, emotions, and goals of others in order to survive, and understand how social process constrains individual minds. (p. 144)
It turns out that we are wired from birth for social interactions. A great many of our social abilities come hardwired from the baby factory. The advantage of hardwired abilities, of course, is they work immediately and don’t have to be learned, as opposed to all of the survival skills that do. (p. 144)
One of these hard-wired features is referred to as "Theory of Mind":
Complex social interactions depend on our ability to understand the mental states of others, and in 1978 David Premack came up with a fundamental idea that now governs so much of social psychological neuroscience work. He realized that humans have the innate ability to understand that others have minds with different desires, intentions, beliefs, and mental states, and the ability to form theories, with some degree of accuracy, about what those desires, intentions, beliefs, and mental states are. He called this ability theory of mind (TOM) (p. 159)
Another hard-wired feature is "mirror neurons":
They found that when a monkey grasps a grape, the very same neuron fires as when the monkey observes another individual grasping a grape. They called these mirror neurons, and they are one of the great recent discoveries in neuroscience. They were the first concrete evidence that there is a neural link between observation and imitation of an action, a cortical substrate for understanding and appreciating the actions of others. (pp. 160-161)
Another hard-wired feature is certain "moral intuitions":
He (Psychologist Jonathan Haidt) defines moral intuitions as “the sudden appearance in consciousness, or at the fringe of consciousness, of an evaluative feeling (like-dislike, good-bad) about the character or actions of a person, without any conscious awareness of having gone through steps of search, weighing evidence, or inferring a conclusion.” (p. 167)
Haidt and Craig Joseph have come up with a list of universal moral modules after comparing works about human universals, cultural differences in morality, and precursors of morality in chimpanzees. Their five modules have to do with suffering (it’s good to help and not harm others), reciprocity (from this comes a sense of fairness), hierarchy (respect for elders and those in legitimate authority), coalitionary bonding (loyalty to your group) and purity (praising cleanliness and shunning contamination and carnal behavior). (pp. 172-173)
Returning to the social basis of responsibility, Gazzaniga says:
Currently, American law holds one responsible for one’s criminal actions unless one acted under severe duress (a gun pointed at your child’s head for instance) or one suffers a serious defect in rationality (such as not being able to tell right from wrong). (p. 187)
And there you'll recognize the more common understanding of "free will", the one that I have been consistently using:
Choosing for ourselves what we will do, while free of coercion (
duress) and other forms of undue influence (e.g., a
defect in rationality).
A person is held responsible for acts of their own free will, but not for actions that were caused by coercion or undue influence.
Gazzaniga continues:
After the previous chapters and the evidence for determinism, we are confronted with the question: Who do we blame in a crime, the person or the brain? Do we want to hold the person accountable or do we want to forgive him because of this determinist dimension of brain function? Ironically, this question is treading dualist waters, suggesting that there is a difference between a person and his brain and body. (p. 187) Italics mine.
At stake in the arguments is the very foundation of our legal system, which holds a person responsible and accountable for his actions. (p. 189)
The three areas of the law that neuroscience is now impacting have to do with responsibility, evidence, and the question of justice for the victim and the offender during sentencing. (p. 191)
Gazzaniga discusses the legal notion of responsibility:
Personal responsibility is a product of a normally functioning brain of the “practical reasoner.” Things can happen to the brain, a lesion, injury, stroke, or neurotransmitter disorder that makes it not function normally, resulting in diminished brain capacity, thus, diminished responsibility, and this is used for exculpability. In criminal cases in particular, the defendant must also have “mens rea” or actual evil intent. (p. 191)
And notes that responsibility is not a property of the brain, but a social construct:
Responsibility is not located in the brain. The brain has no area or network for responsibility. As I said before, the way to think about responsibility is that it is an interaction between people, a social contract. Responsibility reflects a rule that emerges out of one or more agents interacting in a social context, and the hope that we share is that each person will follow certain rules. An abnormal brain does not mean that the person cannot follow rules. (p. 193)
Regarding the penalty for criminal offenses, Gazzaniga correctly shifts attention to three different philosophies of justice:
Retributive justice is backward-looking. One is punished in proportion to the crime that is committed, extending just deserts to the individual, and punishment is the goal. The crucial variable is the degree of moral outrage the crime engenders, not the benefits to society resulting from the punishment. (p. 206)
Utilitarian justice (consequentialism) is forward looking and concerned about the greater future good of society resulting from punishing the individual offender. (p. 206)
Restorative justice looks at crimes as having been committed against a person rather than against the state. (p. 208)
Please read Gazzaniga for further description of these three approaches. He devotes a whole chapter to this topic.
The point I wish to make here is that Gazzaniga does
not suggest that a person should not be held responsible for his actions due to their actions being deterministically caused by the brain.
And he finishes with an affirmation of the brain's ability to cause deliberate behavior by its decision making function:
... the dignified Indian handed his English friend a pair of shoes to take back to his kids. Here they were in what a Westerner would only call abject poverty and misery, and yet the human exchange transcended everything—that moment that so defines who we are. It is that magnificence of being “human” that we all cherish and love and that we don’t want science to take away. We want to feel our own worth and the worth of others. (p. 217)
The large deterministic view that surrounds all of science seems to be urging a more bleak view, the view that no matter how we dress it up, in the end we are machines of some kind, automatically and mindlessly serving as the vehicles for the physically determined forces of the universe, forces larger than us. Each of us is not precious. We are all pawns. (p. 218)
Understanding that the brain works automatically and follows the laws of the natural world is both heartening and revealing. Heartening because we can be confident the decision-making device, the brain, has a reliable structure in place to execute decisions for actions. (p. 218)
Okay, DBT, let me get to your stuff.
Gazzaniga's experiments - which I think you quoted, show that actions are determined unconsciously, which are then represented in conscious form along with a narrator function.
Yes, and I think I've clarified that above. The key point I'd like to make here is that the interpreter is only as good as the information it has to work with. When it has accurate information, then it tells the truth. If key information is missing, it confabulates. (This also happens with post-hypnotic suggestions).
For example:
''Experiments on split-brain patients reveal how readily the left brain interpreter can make up stories and beliefs. In one experiment, for example, when the word walk was presented only to the right side of a patient’s brain, he got up and started walking. When he was asked why he did this, the left brain (where language is stored and where the word walk was not presented) quickly created a reason for the action: “I wanted to go get a Coke.”
That is an example where the left brain lacked the information that only the right brain had. This experimentally manipulated scenario caused the left brain to confabulate.
Even more fantastic examples of the left hemisphere at work come from the study of neurological disorders. In a complication of stroke called anosognosia with hemiplegia, patients cannot recognize that their left arm is theirs because the stroke damaged the right parietal cortex, which manages our body’s integrity, position, and movement. The left-hemisphere interpreter has to reconcile the information it receives from the visual cortex—that the limb is attached to its body but is not moving—with the fact that it is not receiving any input about the damage to that limb. The left-hemisphere interpreter would recognize that damage to nerves of the limb meant trouble for the brain and that the limb was paralyzed; however, in this case the damage occurred directly to the brain area responsible for signaling a problem in the perception of the limb, and it cannot send any information to the left-hemisphere interpreter. The interpreter must, then, create a belief to mediate the two known facts “I can see the limb isn’t moving” and “I can’t tell that it is damaged.” When patients with this disorder are asked about their arm and why they can’t move it, they will say “It’s not mine” or “I just don’t feel like moving it”—reasonable conclusions, given the input that the left-hemisphere interpreter is receiving.'' - Michael Gazzaniga.
Same story here. Due to the hemiplegia stroke the left brain was missing visual information, and was forced to make its best guess as to what was going on.
All actions being fixed at any given moment in time: inputs acting upon the immediate state and condition, determining the action taken.
You seem to have lost sight of the fact that the brain is a system that actively acquires information and then acts upon it, within itself, to produce its own response.
Unconscious brain activity processes information which is fed into conscious activity and response. Input precedes unconscious processing, which precedes conscious thought and action by milliseconds.
But, like Gazzaniga says:
What difference does it make if brain activity goes on before we are consciously aware of something? Consciousness is its own abstraction on its own time scale and that time scale is current with respect to it. Thus, Libet’s thinking is not correct. (p. 141)
And, as you often say, that's all I have time for.
