I received a fascinating insight from a reader who had a special interest in the “Free Will” chapter of 13 Things That Don’t Make Sense. In that chapter I talk about the surgeon Itzhak Fried who discovered he could give people the “urge” to perform an action just by stimulating certain areas of the brain with electricity. This reader reports similar urges as a result of Tourettes - or something.

I’ll keep the action anonymous, but the back-story is that “Ralph” has had Tourettes since the age of 7. He was only given medication when aged 32. He has to concentrate incredibly hard if he wants to fend off the verbal tics, and can only manage it for about 5 minutes at a time. But here’s the real grind: he also has murderous thoughts if not medicated:

“I would sit drinking tea with my mum and be constantly having the urge to kill her, in fact every person I met I had the urge to attack, not just the thought but the urge - suppressing these urges was/is a constant strain. However, I can suppress them (maybe because the voice suggesting I attack others is my own and does not seem external to me as maybe some voices heard by schizophrenics do). But I can suppress them. Of course it could be said that my urges are not as strong as some which is why I don't act on them (and never have), however, perhaps it is the complexity of an urge which makes a difference, and complex urges we can control which does suggest a level of free will.”

It doesn’t seem a stretch to me that there are electrical misfirings that cause such urges, just as Fried was able to create urges to move in his patients (they gave in to the urge if he increased the current). So is “Ralph” fighting against electrical currents in his brain, and if the currents were stronger, would he not be able to fight them?

This scenario creates a nightmare when this is translated into issues of legal responsibility. I can imagine “Ralph” could be sectioned under the mental health act if things got any worse and he was considered a danger to others. Yet judging by his email, he is entirely lucid and rational.

This is such a difficult area and we’re only scratching the surface. Neuroscience is a ticking timebomb. Are we ready for the blast?
 

So, if you have a genetic predisposition to aggression, you can get a reduced sentence for murder. In Italy, at least.

As I mention in 13 Things, Patrick Haggard is trying to avoid a similar problem: defence lawyers want to use scientific arguments (such as “he has no free will”) to sway legal judgements. Haggard, an expert on the neuroscience of free will, says he can’t be sure enough of anything that neuroscience is saying to testify about it in court.

What’s more, would we even want him to? I don’t think anybody in their right mind likes the idea of a murderer being released earlier because he is predisposed to aggressive behaviour.  And we feel that way precisely because of what the science says, not in spite of it!

At the risk of repeating myself, this all plays into the same tricky territory as the Nutt case. Who says science is a neutral, implication-free pursuit of the truth, or that we should blindly say that if the scientific evidence says something, that trumps experience, culture and context?

On yesterday's George Lamb show, I mentioned how researchers have discovered that there might be gene variants that can make you a bad driver. Does this mean these people should be excused from prosecution if they kill someone in an accident? Or does it mean that they shouldn’t be allowed to drive?
 

The government’s scientific advisory panel on Free Will has made it clear that science has shown there’s no such thing. Despite this, the government insists on holding people responsible for their actions. Should the chair of the panel resign?

Here’s the thing. Just because you’re a scientific expert on a particular subject, does that mean people should do what you say? Or should they take your scientific opinion and weigh it up against other, non-scientific factors that also matter to them?

If you’re a believer in the supremacy of science, then I guess you’re going to be astonished and exasperated when people shrug their shoulders and decide that, despite what you say, they’re going to stick with their own worldview. I’m not a believer in the supremacy of science as a viewpoint: I think it’s one (very important) angle on how to run a society. There’s more to being human (and being in a human society) than can be measured and reported in scientific terms.

I’m talking, of course, about the David Nutt affair. The UK government’s advisor on drugs resigned last week after the government decided not to follow his advice. I won’t repeat the story: there’s loads of stuff about the controversy at the Guardian.

Yes, science says that alcohol and tobacco are worse than cannabis in terms of harm. But we have a cultural tradition of accepting their use – and we have developed ways of coping with the impact. With cannabis, it’s different: we don’t know how to deal with it. Science has little or nothing to say about the various ways our culture deals with these issues, and so a simple measure of harm can’t be the only factor involved in deciding how we deal with their use.

I had an interesting email from a juggler recently. He was interested in the subject of free will – specifically the Libet experiment where the activation of the brain’s action (more usually readiness) potentials, which prepare us for movement seem to pre-empt any conscious desire to move. He had this to say:

I would love to see what my action potentials look like when i am juggling, especially when the balls are moving very fast. an interesting thing that I have experienced is the feeling that there is "someone else" inside me doing the juggling. It  happens only rarely, and only after I have been juggling for at east 30-45 minutes and have entered "the zone." My conscious thoughts can wander while the juggling just happens.

I too would like to see what his action potentials look like, but neuroscience is nowhere near sophisticated enough to deal with all the information.

It strikes me that this must be like a great guitarist who doesn’t need to think about what notes to play during a solo. That must feel, in a sense, like “someone else” is playing.

This divide between a conscious self and the brain/sensor/motor mechanism in certain tasks – driving a car is another, I guess – is fascinating. But at any point, the conscious mind can choose to stop what’s going on in the “background”, which makes me think that perhaps it’s not related to the Libet action potentials.

I think the waters on free will are really muddy. A recent experiment claimed to have disproved Libet’s result, for example, but others say the new result can’t even be related to the Libet experiment, because the new setup “changes the paradigm”.

What it seems you’re not allowed to say is “who needs free will anyway?” I don’t exist as anything other than some emergence from the cells that make up my body and brain, and my brain’s “thoughts” are a mess of chemical and electrical signals that do various things, including create that nebulous thing we call a consciousness. Why do I need to think that something in me has “free will”?

It seems obvious to me that, even if it does somehow exist, it can only be an incredibly weak and rather inconsequential factor in the path we follow. Genetic studies that show predisposition to addictions, or marital unfaithfulness, to choose two examples, make that painfully clear. We are carbon-based machines controlled by chemistry. Get used to it. Or ignore it. But don’t worry about it.

I went dowsing last week – and wrote it up for New Scientist here . Sadly, I didn’t have much space, so couldn’t explore the nuances, but I’m fairly convinced the balance of the piece is right: dowsing is incredibly convincing when you're into it, but that doesn’t make the cut in a scientific appraisal. As James Randi has put it, “these are persons who are genuinely, thoroughly, self-deceived.”

That’s not to say people who believe dowsing taps into something beyond our senses are definitely wrong. Science isn’t powerful enough to make that assertion (which is why, I think, homeopathy survives for now). But I’m not convinced there’s any evidence to back up their claims. It’s all anecdotal. Yes, they are pretty powerful anecdotes – but then they wouldn’t make great stories if they weren’t.

To expand on the article, I’m going to add a couple of things. First, it was all much more plausible when John Baker (not pictured), my dowsing demonstrator was just “finding” stuff. It just got too woo-woo for me when he started asking questions of the rods. Here’s how the story continues beyond what’s in the New Scientist piece:

He asks the rods when the building was first constructed, and the rods respond as he counts through the centuries, then the decades. In 1445, the rods say. It was an agricultural building, and in use until 1520 or so, they say.

“So it’s like a Ouija board?” I say.

 “Don’t go there,” Baker says, frowning. “It’s not like that.”

But it seems like a fair question to me. Talking about “energies” is one thing. Talking about something that knows the meaning of “centuries” and “AD or BC?” is quite another. I can tell Baker is slightly annoyed by this observation, but he admits it must be some kind of human intelligence. The rods channel energies left behind by the collective human intelligence, but the point is that our brains, our subconscious minds, are all connected together in a vast web for which the passage of time is no barrier. If Baker can divine the position of a window on this site six centuries ago, that’s because human minds once registered the window’s presence.

Not that he cares that much about the explanation. It doesn’t really matter how it works, he says. And it doesn’t matter – it doesn’t even surprise him – that dowsing does not work in scientific tests. James Randi has been offering a million dollars to anyone who can show that dowsing works, and it remains unclaimed. “Of course it doesn’t work in scientific tests,” Baker says. “It only works when it’s done for the right reasons. When dowsers get together and hide things in a room, none of them can find anything.”

So, dowsing puts itself beyond scientific scrutiny. How you feel about that depends on your prior belief. Personally, it just makes it pointless to go any further. Just as I don’t have any need or desire to use homeopathy, and so can’t be bothered to try to pin it down, dowsing will remain one of those things I think is “probably rubbish, but what do I care if other people don’t agree?” Let them spend/charge money on/for it. It’s not my problem.

Am I wrong?

Catching up a bit, I discussed free will on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme on Saturday. I was talking with Mark Vernon, who does this kind of thing regularly. Mark is an author and blogger, and I think he was chosen because he’d discussed the free will chapter in 13 Things on his Philosophy and Life blog (which, incidentally, is one of the Sunday Times' 100 best blogs).

We only had the last three minutes (as Mark said, to cover a debate that’s been going on for thousands of years!) of the programme so didn’t get to say anything profound. But I thought I’d just throw out a couple of words about what Mark’s blog entry said.

It’s interesting how almost no one (me included) gives up free will without a fight. For the Greeks, it was an easy fight to survive, at least. But with modern neuroscience, I think we’re all in danger of losing. Not that anyone apart from neuroscientists admit that.

Mark, for instance, says:

…there is this 'the brain did it' talk. But whose brain, you can ask? Well, my brain. And is there a division between me and my brain? Presumably not. So even if 'my brain did it', that is still me. There's no dualism. Free will, then, is just shown to be more subtle than pure conscious intent, which strikes me as pretty obvious.

I can’t help think, though, that this is just evasion. If free will is not pure conscious intent, what is it? How do you define it? If you say it’s “more subtle” than intent – you’re essentially taking its teeth out and saying free will is not about intention. How can that be?

And who or what is “me”? It’s a construct – albeit a very useful one. Choices are made by brains. Brains are made of molecules that move through various states - and ultimately obey the laws of quantum mechanics. We are brain-machines.

It’s OK to pretend we have a soul or a “me” inside us – that delusion is what has evolved to make us the reflective and brilliantly adaptable species we are. Modern neuroscience just plays the role of the boy in the Emperor’s New Clothes, and tells us we are naked. But, in free will terms, at least, it’s not disastrous to be naked. And it’s not disastrous to pretend we’re not. As Steven Pinker said, “free will is a fiction, but it has applications in the real world.”

I have the cover feature in New Scientist this week. It’s called Natural Born Believers, and it’s about how our brains are primed for religion:

That's not to say that the human brain has a "god module" in the same way that it has a language module that evolved specifically for acquiring language. Rather, some of the unique cognitive capacities that have made us so successful as a species also work together to create a tendency for supernatural thinking. "There's now a lot of evidence that some of the foundations for our religious beliefs are hard-wired," says [Yale psychologist Paul] Bloom.

I think it’s a really interesting story (well I would, wouldn’t I?), and it has particular resonance since hard times – the current global recession, for example – seem to make this hard-wiring take control. Recession and religion seem to go hand in hand - see this story in the New York Times, for example.The story is buzzing on the New Scientist website (the 300th comment has just gone up – that’s in just one day). So, what does it mean? God is imaginary? Or God made sure we could appreciate the Divine? You decide.
 

 
I’m back from New York now, and wondering where my jet lag ended and that oh so predictable British winter lethargy kicked in. I’m one of those people who functions better with a charge from a lightbox, and the time has most definitely come to be using it.

Seasonal Affective Disorder is all in the mind, of course, but that doesn’t mean it’s not real – it’s like placebo. I was interested when I visited a neuroscientist at University College London and saw that he has the same lightbox model as me. I asked him if he thought it was actually a placebo. “Who cares how it works?” he said, laughing. “It works - that's enough for me.”

Actually, there’s evidence to show it has a biochemical effect (as there is for placebo; when will we stop saying "just a placebo" as if it wasn't a powerful effect?). Last year, a paper in – wait for it – Neuropsychopharmacology showed that it’s to do with serotonin (the happy molecule) being removed from cells too efficiently. In those who suffer from winter depression, the serotonin transporter molecule is getting on for twice as active as it should be. The removal rate returns to normal levels in summer, but can be slowed down in winter by light therapy. There’s a New Scientist story about the study here.

I’ll get round to blogging about my experience of talking at the Hayden Planetarium very soon, but – well, you know: I’m seasonally affected, aren’t I? There’s something pleasingly poetic about a sluggishness that results from overactive serotonin transporter molecules. Those babies are really going for it. No wonder I’m so tired…
 

Just read my children a fantastic picture book. They’ve heard the story many times, so it’s lost its impact, but every time an adult hears it for the first time, they are truly shocked.

It’s called Tadpole’s Promise (it’s on Amazon) and….I don’t want to spoil it, actually,  so I’m not going to tell you what happens. But it deals with the fact that a tadpole’s change into a frog and a caterpillar’s change into a butterfly are automated processes, impossible to resist, and as predetermined as the fact that a frog will always … oops, I nearly gave it away. Anyway, it’s fascinating ending because kids love the story and adults invariably hate it.

I found myself wondering whether that’s because it exposes a prejudice that means nothing to children and everything to adults. For most children, free will is not an issue because their needs are generally met externally, they live within social structures where they follow the rules, for the most part, and it is possible for them to act on most of their desires without adverse consequences. (I remember being totally shocked by Margaret Boden suggesting in a lecture that young children (under 5s, say) are not truly conscious beings because of the simplicity/naivete of their cognitive processes and experiences. I don’t like it, and I don’t agree, but I kind of know what she means).

Adults, on the other hand, feel they have more responsibility. And so they are blessed/cursed with the sense that they have choices to make. But do they? Really, I mean?

Neuroscientists tell us we don’t have anything like free will. In New Scientist a while back, Patricia Churchland, a neuroscientist based at the University of California, Davis, discussed this subject, opening with a startling anecdote:

In 2003, the Archives of Neurology carried a startling clinical report. A middle-aged Virginian man with no history of any misdemeanour began to stash child pornography and sexually molest his 8-year-old stepdaughter. Placed in the court system, his sexual behaviour became increasingly compulsive. Eventually, after repeatedly complaining of headaches and vertigo, he was sent for a brain scan. It showed a large but benign tumour in the frontal area of his brain, invading the septum and hypothalmus - regions known to regulate sexual behaviour.

After removal of the tumour, his sexual interests returned to normal. Months later, his sexual focus on young girls rekindled, and a new scan revealed that bits of tissue missed in the surgery had grown into a sizeable tumour. Surgery once again restored his behavioural profile to "normal".

Churchland goes on to ask, “Did the man have free will? Was he responsible for his behaviour? Can a tumour usurp one's free will?” Sexual desires, she points out, are regulated by hormones that act on neurons in the septum and connected brain areas. Where does this leave us with personal responsibility? You can access a PDF of the article via the “articles” page of her website (it’s subscription only on newscientist.com).

Every time I discuss the issue of free will, people (including me) try to wriggle out of the inescapable conclusion that we are carbon-based machines that are controlled by a lump of carbon-based jelly sited in the skull. This jelly sends out chemical and electrical signals that do all kinds of interesting things, including giving us the illusion that something inside our heads is separate from the physical stuff – a soul, or mind, or whatever you want to call it – and allowing us (whatever “us” is) to direct the body and thoughts.

It’s a nice idea, but it doesn’t really add up, does it? Like the grown-up tadpole who ate his childhood sweetheart (OK, there you go), we follow stimuli, and obey the drives and impulses set out by our genes and our experience.

But, also like the frog, we’re  best off thinking that there’s nothing amiss. So feel free to ignore this post if you want. As Steven Pinker has put it, “free will is a fictional construction, but it has applications in the real world.”