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Speaker 2: There ain't nobody else making our choices but us. We
Speaker 2: might like to think so, but we're responsible and that's scary,
Speaker 2: but it's also tremendously empowering if you fully grasp it.
Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. Today we welcome
Speaker 1: back Ken Sheldon to the show. Ken is a Curator's
Speaker 1: Distinguished Professor of psychological Science at the University of Columbia, Missouri.
Speaker 1: He has written and edited over two hundred academic books,
Speaker 1: scholarly articles, and book chapters. Among these, some of his
Speaker 1: most notable work include Optimal Human Being and self determination
Speaker 1: Theory in the Clinic. His latest book is called Freely Determined.
Speaker 1: What the New Psychology of the Self teach us about
Speaker 1: how to live. In this episode, I talked to Ken
Speaker 1: Sheldon about free will. Instead of questioning its existence, Ken
Speaker 1: is concerned with how we might use free will to
Speaker 1: help us reach our goals. Each person has the capacity
Speaker 1: to make good and bad choices and to learn from
Speaker 1: the past. Although we are unable to know everything about ourselves,
Speaker 1: we can still make informed decisions. Believing that we have
Speaker 1: the ability to choose directly affects our well being. In values,
Speaker 1: we also touch on the topics of neuroscience, self determination,
Speaker 1: and responsibility. I really enjoy this conversation with Ken. I
Speaker 1: find him really insightful, and especially when it comes to
Speaker 1: this quite heated topic within academia, this topic of do
Speaker 1: we have free will or not? I like his perspective.
Speaker 1: I think it's fresh, and I think it really draws
Speaker 1: a lot on psychological science as opposed to maybe more
Speaker 1: metaphysical ideas. Wherever you stand in the free will debate,
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from you. Please come into the comments,
Speaker 1: and at the very least, I hope this conversation stimulated
Speaker 1: some deep thought and reflection on this very important and
Speaker 1: fascinating topic. So, without further ado, I bring you Ken
Speaker 1: Sheldon again. It's so great to have you on the
Speaker 1: Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's great to be here. I think I was
Speaker 2: with you a few years ago, but things have kind
Speaker 2: of changed a little bit since then, so it'll be
Speaker 2: good to reconnect. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, a lot has changed in the world. And the
Speaker 1: last time we talked about your brilliant work on the
Speaker 1: optimal Human. So you wrote this fastening new book called
Speaker 1: Freely Determined. I had to take the cover off because
Speaker 1: it's hard to read it with the cover fallen off.
Speaker 1: But anyway, Freely Determined, congratulations on the publication of this book,
Speaker 1: and it adds some new ideas into this space, this
Speaker 1: free will debate space. I noticed you don't get too
Speaker 1: mirrored down in the philosophy of mind rigorous nuanced debate,
Speaker 1: you know, and you know you don't even stake a position.
Speaker 1: I don't think you anywhere in the book did you
Speaker 1: say I'm a compatibilist. You know. I feel like you
Speaker 1: focus a lot on the psychology of it, But what
Speaker 1: are you within that whole debate? Like, are you a compatibilist?
Speaker 1: Are you something else?
Speaker 2: Probably you would call me a compatibilist. What I'm trying
Speaker 2: to say is that you can have determinism and free
Speaker 2: will at the same time. You just have to recognize
Speaker 2: that human higher mental processes are part of the determining formula.
Speaker 2: You know that what we do weigh up here in
Speaker 2: this abstract mental world that we live in, is part
Speaker 2: of what determines the behaviors that we take. And I
Speaker 2: don't think that it's reducible to any of the lower
Speaker 2: level machinery. The machinery gives us the capacity to do
Speaker 2: what we do, but it doesn't determine what we do. Instead,
Speaker 2: we selves attempting to operate our own minds, taking advantage
Speaker 2: of all this machinery. We have really kind of running
Speaker 2: the show for better or worse.
Speaker 1: This sounds like a debate that you have with your father.
Speaker 1: Is that right, He's a very deterministic view of the situation.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I start off the book talking about these debates
Speaker 2: going you know, way back into my teens with my dad,
Speaker 2: who was a law professor and but also a determinist
Speaker 2: was kind of a funny thing. He didn't think people
Speaker 2: should be punished for their crimes because they couldn't help
Speaker 2: doing them. But I, you know, I had the hardest
Speaker 2: time because his arguments were so undefeatable in some ways.
Speaker 2: And so you could say that my whole career as
Speaker 2: a personality psychologist has been about trying to find ways
Speaker 2: around those arguments or ways to think about them differently.
Speaker 2: That gives us, you know, a viable position as mental
Speaker 2: entities for taking control of our own lives and for
Speaker 2: leading the kind of lives that we think we would like.
Speaker 2: That's just it.
Speaker 1: The leading the lives that we think well, the leading
Speaker 1: the lives that we hopefully would like, because you go
Speaker 1: through a lot sorting out the difference, how to find
Speaker 1: out the difference between what we think we might like
Speaker 1: and what we do like. So I'm going to give
Speaker 1: you a little bit more credit than you just gave
Speaker 1: yourself there. I'm about you know the kind of life right,
Speaker 1: you know, because you go great pains just to for
Speaker 1: us to really look deep inside and figure that out.
Speaker 1: You know, like, there are a lot of things that
Speaker 1: we think we should like. There's even things we might
Speaker 1: think we like and we don't really like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's not easy. No, we're in this funny position.
Speaker 2: Having free will means we are also free to make mistakes.
Speaker 2: We're free to be clueless, We're free to have no
Speaker 2: idea what we really want. We're free to make terrible choices,
Speaker 2: but we're also free to learn from those choices and
Speaker 2: hopefully make better ones in the future. So, you know,
Speaker 2: the book kind of talks about the free will debate
Speaker 2: early on, and it doesn't really take a position, as
Speaker 2: you said, It just concludes that there's reasonable doubt pretty
Speaker 2: good reason for doubting the determinist's perspective. And then it
Speaker 2: moves on to what I think is a more important
Speaker 2: question of Okay, if we do have free will, as
Speaker 2: I'm claiming or saying this probable, how well are we
Speaker 2: able to use it? And that I think is the
Speaker 2: really important question, because we're kind of cut off, you know,
Speaker 2: we're living in this mental world system. To Daniel Cottaman
Speaker 2: called it the tyranny of the prefrontal cortex. We're sort
Speaker 2: of suspended above the machinery above. We have the ability
Speaker 2: to be out of touch with ourselves, and so critical
Speaker 2: question is to get the information, the good information that
Speaker 2: we need to make choices that are going to cause
Speaker 2: our entire organism to thrive, even though we're kind of
Speaker 2: stuck as the conscious representatives of that organism moment to moment,
Speaker 2: and we might be pretty clueless about what's really happening
Speaker 2: inside of us.
Speaker 1: It just seems like you somehow make a distinction between
Speaker 1: system one being, you know, our unconscious mind so to speak,
Speaker 1: that all the things beneath the surface of our conscious
Speaker 1: awareness that are happening automatically kind of keeping the system
Speaker 1: running without much pre thought. It seems like that system
Speaker 1: one you try be a lot less free will to
Speaker 1: than system two, which you talk a lot about the
Speaker 1: symbolic mind, which we'll get to in a second. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and system two being our ability to plan, to error, correct,
Speaker 1: to change course, to maybe influence our system one. You
Speaker 1: know that we can influence our system one by changing habits,
Speaker 1: can't we? You know, it's not like a system one
Speaker 1: is completely impenetrable.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1: So you actually like weigh the two systems differently in
Speaker 1: terms of their free will implications.
Speaker 2: I asked a very excellent question. I haven't thought about
Speaker 2: it quite that way, but I would agree with that
Speaker 2: assessment in the book I adapt A philosopher, Christian Lists.
Speaker 2: He wrote a book in twenty nineteen called Why free
Speaker 2: Will Is Real, and he proposed a definition of free
Speaker 2: will that put the question squarely into my territory as
Speaker 2: a goal researcher. And he said, free will is nothing
Speaker 2: more than the ability to ask yourself what you want,
Speaker 2: call up from your non conscious mind some possibilities for action,
Speaker 2: choose one of them, and then get moving. And so
Speaker 2: that's really a pretty straightforward and kind of intuitive perspective.
Speaker 2: If you think about it. What does it mean for
Speaker 2: an agent to have free will? It can think about
Speaker 2: what it wants, and then it can decide, and then
Speaker 2: it can start trying to get it. And so that's
Speaker 2: what I've been studying my whole career is how people
Speaker 2: set goals and how well do they pursue goals, and
Speaker 2: then how do the goals influence their happiness after they're
Speaker 2: done pursuing them and perhaps achieving them. So I really
Speaker 2: love that definition that a Christian List provided because it
Speaker 2: sort of helped me sidestep these centuries of philosophical debate,
Speaker 2: which I see as pretty impenetrable and very much bogged down.
Speaker 2: Everybody's got their own position, and I love the ability
Speaker 2: to sidestep all that and say, well, simple free will
Speaker 2: is the ability to think about what you want to
Speaker 2: make a choice, and that is a system to process.
Speaker 2: It's there's a lot of conscious stuff going on there
Speaker 2: where we say, well, wait a minute, what do I
Speaker 2: do here? Well, I could do this, that or that?
Speaker 2: What do I want to do? We think about the future,
Speaker 2: what will happen in each case? I think, I like
Speaker 2: option B, I'm going to go for that. And so
Speaker 2: that's not something that's happening in system one, or at
Speaker 2: least not in that same way, because System one is
Speaker 2: more sort of automatic and habitual. So the system too
Speaker 2: is the part of us that is kind of in
Speaker 2: a representational world, living in a symbolic self. We can
Speaker 2: talk about that, making choices between alternatives.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I gotta say, I love your perspective because it's
Speaker 1: very much in the line with my perspective, and I
Speaker 1: have framed it a little bit differently. I've called it
Speaker 1: cybernetic free will, but I think we're talking about the
Speaker 1: same thing, you know, where cybernetic systems that can can
Speaker 1: consciously represent the distance between our starting state and our
Speaker 1: goal state, we can try to consciously develop strategies to
Speaker 1: reduce that gap so we can get to where we
Speaker 1: want to go. I mean, I studied, I studied with
Speaker 1: Herbert Simon, so I came from that whole, that whole
Speaker 1: school of you know, goal stuff.
Speaker 2: I love the cybernetic perspective because it underlies the car
Speaker 2: Shire approach, which is the main correct perspective that I
Speaker 2: use in my goal research.
Speaker 1: Beautiful, Yeah, beautiful. And I don't know if you follow
Speaker 1: my colleague Colin Deyong's work at all on cybernetic Big
Speaker 1: five theory.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I do know his word.
Speaker 1: But cool, yeah, very interesting. So I believe in that perspective,
Speaker 1: and I would just call it cybernetic free will, as
Speaker 1: distinguished from magic free will. But both of us agree,
Speaker 1: I mean, anyone with a with a with a sane
Speaker 1: mind agrees that that there are we're not outside the
Speaker 1: causal structure of nature, that even our system two processes
Speaker 1: are caused by a long series of chain of things
Speaker 1: that that obviously lay out way outside out of our understanding,
Speaker 1: comprehension knowledge, going very very far back, maybe even to
Speaker 1: the Big Bang.
Speaker 2: Right, I would say that the system two processes are
Speaker 2: enabled by lots of stuff, and they're influenced by lots
Speaker 2: of stuff, a lot of it that we don't know about,
Speaker 2: but that the moment for choice comes, and that the
Speaker 2: conscious experience of that's the one I want, flips the
Speaker 2: brain into an implemental state. It crosses the rubicon, to
Speaker 2: use Peter Golwitzer's terminology. And so I don't think that
Speaker 2: you can predict what the decision of that self of
Speaker 2: the moment is going to be, because it depends on
Speaker 2: what it wants, and it's a sort of not independent
Speaker 2: but somewhat independent process going on in the universe that,
Speaker 2: again is enabled by all the machinery. But I don't
Speaker 2: think it makes any sense to say me agreeing to
Speaker 2: come on your show was predetermined since the Big Bang,
Speaker 2: you know, or anything else that you or I did today.
Speaker 2: It also doesn't make sense to say that we're magically
Speaker 2: outside of all that physical stuff. Again, we're influenced by
Speaker 2: it and enabled by it. But you know, I think
Speaker 2: we have a certain degree of independence from it, and
Speaker 2: that's the independence that allows us to make terrible mistakes.
Speaker 2: We can even commit suicide. No other animal does that,
Speaker 2: you know. I mean, that's the ultimate insult to personal survival.
Speaker 2: We can get so confused that we could take our
Speaker 2: own life, you know, And that might be Actually I
Speaker 2: don't think it is. But the ultimate act of free
Speaker 2: will is just to deny your self existence. But more
Speaker 2: probably as are people who have a lot of emotional
Speaker 2: problems that are controlling their decision making to an unhealthy extent.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, couldn't someone argue that? Probabilistically speaking, Once
Speaker 1: you start adding up enough factors external, environmental and internal factors,
Speaker 1: suicide ideation starts to get more and more and more
Speaker 1: and more likely. You know, certainly there's there are still causes,
Speaker 1: you know that that allow us to do something. I mean,
Speaker 1: we were in the social sciences. We don't think we
Speaker 1: can't predict things at all, And I just think there
Speaker 1: are some things that have very high correlations, like so strong.
Speaker 1: For instance, if you find someone I just thought this
Speaker 1: an example on the spot, but I was thinking, you
Speaker 1: find someone who's a devout vegetarian or a devout vegan
Speaker 1: for thirty years, you can predict if you go to
Speaker 1: a restaurant, you know they're not going to order that cheeseburger,
Speaker 1: like I guess. The question is if you can predict
Speaker 1: that with pretty much one hundred percent accuracy, are you
Speaker 1: saying that vegan person had no free will in that
Speaker 1: matter to choose the burger? I guess they could have.
Speaker 1: I guess they could have, But they could have. We
Speaker 1: could predict they wouldn't unless they thought of unless they
Speaker 1: knew that we were trying to predict them, and then
Speaker 1: they wanted to consciously defy us, and then maybe that
Speaker 1: was their active free will.
Speaker 2: I don't know, well, I don't know if it's fair
Speaker 2: to say that when we are able to know what
Speaker 2: we want and consistently do it, that we are determined
Speaker 2: to do that thing. It's more than you're able to
Speaker 2: detect and follow our own preferences. And so that person
Speaker 2: knows they're not going to eat meat. It's not like
Speaker 2: they have a compulsion not to eat meat, or maybe
Speaker 2: they sort of do it, maybe it's kind of gross
Speaker 2: to them, But I would put it that they have
Speaker 2: a very strongly internalized value of not eating meat, and
Speaker 2: that to express that value in their choices. And you know,
Speaker 2: if suddenly they were starving and meat was all there was,
Speaker 2: I'm sure they could go against that value or overcome
Speaker 2: that determinism in favor of staying alive.
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, Okay, this is a good point. You use
Speaker 1: the word compulsion. You know, a lot of philosophers are
Speaker 1: free will will argue from a compatibilist point of view
Speaker 1: that that we have freedom as long as we're not
Speaker 1: compulsively you know, like there's a number of conditions that
Speaker 1: have to be met, and one of them is, you know,
Speaker 1: not internal distractions that cause us to have compulsions or
Speaker 1: or being externally controlled, like being tied down right and
Speaker 1: being told you must eat meat right or something like
Speaker 1: that. That was a weird example, very weird, very weird.
Speaker 2: But anyway, actually, my grand my grandfather did my father
Speaker 2: in law did that to my daughter one time to
Speaker 2: Thanksgiving dinner. You must eat. She was a vegetarian, quite obnoxious,
Speaker 2: let me tell you. Wow.
Speaker 1: Wow. I hope the young lady did not grow up
Speaker 1: with PDS PTSD from that.
Speaker 2: Well. I would answer this this line of questioning by
Speaker 2: referring to self determination theory, which are underlies most of
Speaker 2: my work. And it makes a distinction between feeling a
Speaker 2: compulsion to do something, calls that introject did motivation, feel
Speaker 2: guilty you're making yourself do it, and internal motivation or
Speaker 2: internalized where you're fully standing behind behind it. And so
Speaker 2: if you are acting with a compulsion, it's true you
Speaker 2: do not feel as free. And that is, you know,
Speaker 2: a long term finding of self determination theory. And when
Speaker 2: you act with that sense of not being free, it
Speaker 2: negatively affects your well being. So it's important to have
Speaker 2: a sense of acting freely. And I take a little
Speaker 2: bit of a stronger position in the book, and I
Speaker 2: say that it's always us making the choices, whether we
Speaker 2: feel compelled to compel to do them or not. We're
Speaker 2: signing off on them. And you know, it's sort of
Speaker 2: that existential perspective where you know that Jean Paul Sart,
Speaker 2: where you're responsible no matter what you reveal who you
Speaker 2: are by your choices. Choices scary. You know, people might
Speaker 2: try to avoid from choice or or escape from freedom
Speaker 2: in Eric Frome's terms. Nevertheless, we're always responsible. And so
Speaker 2: I don't think we're off the hook by saying I
Speaker 2: felt compelled to do that. I think the answer to
Speaker 2: that is, well, that's sort of an immature position to
Speaker 2: be doing your living your life from, and you should
Speaker 2: try to get over that, and with some work, maybe
Speaker 2: some therapy, hopefully you can.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this tying it to self determination theory is fascinating.
Speaker 1: You know, you can hear the skeptics. I can hear
Speaker 1: their voice in my head saying, like, Okay, well, feeling
Speaker 1: like you have free will doesn't mean you have free will,
Speaker 1: like just feeling like you're autonomous. You know, it doesn't
Speaker 1: take away the fact that we don't. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: just a mirage, it's just an illusion. But then you know,
Speaker 1: you come back and you say, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: I could do like the whole artificial intelligence chat between
Speaker 1: you and the other person. Even so, get your let
Speaker 1: me allow you to actually say it. I'm trying to
Speaker 1: predict what you would say right now. Is that any
Speaker 1: from a meta level of this discussion.
Speaker 2: Just rephrase the question real quick for me. No.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm just seeing a conversation unfold between you
Speaker 1: and a skeptic, or not a skeptic, but a determinist,
Speaker 1: a hard determinist, or even a determinist who a soft
Speaker 1: even a soft determinist, you know within the field who's like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, just feeling like you're free doesn't make you free.
Speaker 1: It's you didn't have any control, You didn't have any
Speaker 1: choice over feeling free anyway.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Well that's a funny thing that self determination
Speaker 2: theory is not directly addressed the free will question. It
Speaker 2: is just said that the feeling of freedom is important.
Speaker 2: And so I am taking that additional step, and I'm
Speaker 2: even making the quite radical and it's I'm not fully
Speaker 2: standing behind it, but I think it's plausible. The radical
Speaker 2: argument that free will is an evolved capacity of the
Speaker 2: human mind, again defining this capacity to ask ourselves what
Speaker 2: we want and make a choice and I think that,
Speaker 2: you know, given the complexity of you know, the social
Speaker 2: environments that we face, and you know, we have to
Speaker 2: be able to make it up on the fly and
Speaker 2: figure out what's going on and make decisions constantly. And
Speaker 2: so I think that's the capacity that we evolved, or
Speaker 2: at least to ask ourselves, what do I want? Okay,
Speaker 2: I'll do this. That doesn't mean that there were no
Speaker 2: constraints on what we were doing, you know, of course,
Speaker 2: you know I I was hungry that I might choose
Speaker 2: to eat instead of you know, going to the library
Speaker 2: and checking out the book. But this point you raised about,
Speaker 2: but we don't know why we won't want something. We
Speaker 2: don't know why we made that choice, and so we
Speaker 2: can't be free. I do take exception to that, because
Speaker 2: it makes it so the only free being is an
Speaker 2: omniscient entity that knows everything about itself, and of course
Speaker 2: we are not that. I don't think anything is that.
Speaker 2: If you insist that that's what free will means, then
Speaker 2: I have to agree with you. It does and exist
Speaker 2: because we don't know everything about ourselves, but we know enough,
Speaker 2: hopefully to keep sailing the ship, you know, through the
Speaker 2: seas of our lives, hopefully in some coherent direction towards
Speaker 2: meaningful goals that we that we've chosen. Do we know
Speaker 2: why we've chosen those goals? No, we don't know the
Speaker 2: brain processes that you know, the neurons that summed and
Speaker 2: created that are making that choice. But on the other hand,
Speaker 2: we do know why we made that choice. That's the
Speaker 2: one we thought we wanted, and only we and our
Speaker 2: conscious experience at that moment were in a position to
Speaker 2: make that determination. So it's sort of tricky, you know.
Speaker 2: It's that this is the kind of compatibilism that I'm
Speaker 2: talking about.
Speaker 1: Well, did you did you any chance to watch my
Speaker 1: two part series with Sam Harris on free Will?
Speaker 2: I did not get a chance to, but it's on
Speaker 2: my list for the Christmas break.
Speaker 1: Amazing because we we kind of get at it a
Speaker 1: little bit. We go go at it a little bit.
Speaker 1: You know, he's a friend, but you know we have
Speaker 1: different opinions on this matter, and I can well imagine, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was this sticking point where you know, he was
Speaker 1: talking about cello and how I love cell and how
Speaker 1: I'd love to teach him how to play cell and
Speaker 1: he said, I have no choice in the matter, I
Speaker 1: do not want to play cello. He's like, I do
Speaker 1: not have any motivation to play cello, so therefore I
Speaker 1: have no free will in playing cello. And I said,
Speaker 1: that's ridiculous. Like we can do things we're not motivated
Speaker 1: to want to do, right, we can. That's the will,
Speaker 1: you know. That's like, you know, we can. You know,
Speaker 1: just because our system one is telling us we're not
Speaker 1: interested in something doesn't mean we can't use system two
Speaker 1: to push through something. It's not like I want to
Speaker 1: motivate to go to the gym every time. But he
Speaker 1: just didn't see it that way, you know, and it
Speaker 1: was a little frustrating, probably for both of us in
Speaker 1: that conversation.
Speaker 2: I can imagine the way I could see Sam coming
Speaker 2: to want to play the cello is if he's got
Speaker 2: this self concept of I'm not a musical guy. Yet
Speaker 2: at some level of him there's a talent circies that
Speaker 2: have been undeveloped, And after his conversation with you, perhaps
Speaker 2: he would have started to think a little bit about, well,
Speaker 2: you know what, that's not such a bad idea. I've
Speaker 2: always kind of half thought it might be fun to
Speaker 2: wear in a musical instrument. And you know, the cello
Speaker 2: is really pretty nice. To start listening to cello pieces,
Speaker 2: and you could come around to wanting to play the cello,
Speaker 2: and it wouldn't be that he was overcoming his system
Speaker 2: one resistance. It would be that he was overcoming his
Speaker 2: inaccurate self concept. So that's one way to sort of
Speaker 2: flip it around.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a very interesting reframing. You know, there's a
Speaker 1: quote that I love from William James where he said,
Speaker 1: my first act of free will shall be to believe
Speaker 1: in free will. I'm sure you're familiar.
Speaker 2: With that quote, right, Yeah, yeah, I've heard it.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you have. I'm sure you have. The context
Speaker 1: surrounding that quote is really even more interesting because he
Speaker 1: suffered with depression and even some suicidal thoughts in his life,
Speaker 1: deep deep depression. And apparently after he said that and
Speaker 1: made that deliberation, his whole life changed. And it's fascinating
Speaker 1: to think the extent to which those beliefs matter within
Speaker 1: our own head. I mean, Sam, by the way, Sam
Speaker 1: Harris would be the first one to argue that belief matters.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's why he rails against religions, fundamentalist religions
Speaker 1: that maybe have some dangerous ideologies. You know, obviously the
Speaker 1: contents of our mind can influence greatly how we act
Speaker 1: in the world, in our agency. So it just seems
Speaker 1: like you're arguing in a lot of ways that the
Speaker 1: stories that we tell ourselves with the symbolical mind, that
Speaker 1: that matters for our free will. It sounds like that's
Speaker 1: a big part of what you're saying. Is that right?
Speaker 2: It is because in order to make choices between the
Speaker 2: alternatives that we have called into our minds, there has
Speaker 2: to be a sense of being a person who cares.
Speaker 2: And I call this the symbolic self. I draw from
Speaker 2: some work by Constantine set Katy's and John Scarnsky, on
Speaker 2: the evolution of the symbolic Self, a fascinating nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: seven article, and they said that in order for us
Speaker 2: to interact in this complex social world with language, all
Speaker 2: these other humans, we needed to evolve a sense of
Speaker 2: being a person with a history and preferences. And we
Speaker 2: feel ourselves being that person, even though in a census
Speaker 2: just a hallucination. You know, it's a product of our minds.
Speaker 2: But I'm making the argument that it has top down
Speaker 2: control or some degree or influence at least over the
Speaker 2: choices that get made according to its own preferences. So
Speaker 2: it comes down to this sort of hierarchical perspective on
Speaker 2: the organization of matter that I talk about in one
Speaker 2: of the chapters.
Speaker 3: In reclok And I don't know if you want to
Speaker 3: get into that, but I'll just say briefly that I
Speaker 3: think that evolution and has in the process of life evolving,
Speaker 3: more and more complex levels of control have showed up,
Speaker 3: and each one is been selected for because it regulates
Speaker 3: the level below. Right, So when the first cell had
Speaker 3: to have the capacity to regulate the chemicals coming in
Speaker 3: and out of the cell, the first multicellular organism had
Speaker 3: to have a capacity to regulate how the different cells
Speaker 3: we're interacting with each other.
Speaker 2: Eventually we've got a nervous system that takes control of that.
Speaker 2: And so I follow that logic all the way up,
Speaker 2: and I say, well, you've got a brain, and then
Speaker 2: you've got cognitive processes controlling that brain, and then you've
Speaker 2: got self processes controlling the cognitive processes. So that's where
Speaker 2: our own sort of agency originates. But then it continues
Speaker 2: up from there. We are nested within social relationships and
Speaker 2: social spheres and those can try to control us. And
Speaker 2: that's a lot of what self determination theory is about,
Speaker 2: is how we deal with feeling controlled by other people.
Speaker 2: And it says people with power over us should support
Speaker 2: our autonomy so that we can maximize our sense of
Speaker 2: self determination and get the benefits of being embedded in
Speaker 2: these social relationships instead of just being oppressed by them.
Speaker 2: So it's a really unique, I think, way of framing
Speaker 2: kind of an old idea that goes back to the
Speaker 2: tompt French theorist in the nineteenth century, the hierarchy of
Speaker 2: the sciences, And this is something I believe pretty strongly
Speaker 2: that each new level of organization builds upon the rest,
Speaker 2: but it is somewhat independent of what's below, given its
Speaker 2: ability to regulate what happens down below. So if I
Speaker 2: decide to go off for a run this morning, I
Speaker 2: don't usually do that, but I suppose I did. Suddenly
Speaker 2: my all physical stuff in my body is having to
Speaker 2: deal with the stress of running, the physiology, and that
Speaker 2: was all determined by a conscious decision I made that morning.
Speaker 2: And so the hard headed skeptic is going to say, well,
Speaker 2: you don't know why you chose to run and I
Speaker 2: could say, well, I don't know where that idea came from,
Speaker 2: but I liked it and I picked it. That's why
Speaker 2: I ran.
Speaker 1: In kind of a nutshell. You're just saying you don't
Speaker 1: like reductionism. You don't you don't like taking the mind
Speaker 1: and reducing it to the brain.
Speaker 2: Even Yeah, I think reductionist. Reductionism is hugely important, and
Speaker 2: it's taught us so much. But I think it's mainly
Speaker 2: useful when the system is breaking down. You say, oh,
Speaker 2: they have sickle cell anemia. What's wrong? You know the
Speaker 2: blood systems I'm working, Well, the cells that compose that
Speaker 2: system are misshaped, or a person. I talk about the
Speaker 2: example of Charles Whitman in the sixties who shot a
Speaker 2: bunch of people from a bell tower in Texas and
Speaker 2: it turned out he had a tumor in his brain. Well,
Speaker 2: he wasn't able to make a good free choice because
Speaker 2: his brain didn't support it. And so I would say
Speaker 2: that reductionism mainly works when you're trying to explain why
Speaker 2: the system has failed. But then if you're going to
Speaker 2: talk about what the system does, you know, then you
Speaker 2: need to know what's going on at the higher level.
Speaker 2: When I drive out to the interstate, I either go
Speaker 2: left or right. None of my machinery determines which way
Speaker 2: it is. It's my intention to go to either Saint
Speaker 2: Louis or Kansas City. That's controlling my machinery in that case.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I assume you've read the book Freedom Evolves by
Speaker 1: Daniel Dennett.
Speaker 2: I have leafed through. Its pretty dense stuff, but a
Speaker 2: lot of good, good idea.
Speaker 1: It seems very very compatible with your argument, very compatible
Speaker 1: with the argument, except you put up more of a
Speaker 1: psychological machinery around it. I mean, he just argues that
Speaker 1: we have a lot of these abilities, that abilities that
Speaker 1: we evolve that give us a free will worth wanting.
Speaker 1: And that's essentially what you're saying. But you are able
Speaker 1: to flesh that out in a lot of ways with
Speaker 1: neuroscience and with self determination theory. Your your groundbreaking research
Speaker 1: and goals. Yeah, your work, Your work has really been
Speaker 1: very impactful in the field of positive psychology, field of
Speaker 1: psychology overall. It's it's certainly influenced my work as well,
Speaker 1: I should say, and the work you've done, the breath
Speaker 1: of it on goals and as well as well being,
Speaker 1: and particularly the link between goals and well being is
Speaker 1: kind of your niche, that's.
Speaker 2: That's your thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, I see you, I see you, I
Speaker 1: see you, I get you. And it's really made a
Speaker 1: substantial impact. So to be in the field of psychology
Speaker 1: to be able to link that to the free will debate,
Speaker 1: it just was super fascinating to me to read. I
Speaker 1: will say one of the things that was super fastating
Speaker 1: for me to read as well was your discussion of
Speaker 1: the default mode network, because I've been studying the default
Speaker 1: mode network with my colleagues and linking it to creative thinking,
Speaker 1: and you don't make that direct link, but you have
Speaker 1: a chapter on the default mode network, and you do
Speaker 1: have a separate chapter on creativity, and so maybe we
Speaker 1: can make that link together right now more explicit.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm actually working on a review chapter right now
Speaker 2: with a self determination theory neuroscientist named Google Lee, where
Speaker 2: we're making that connection. We're asking the question, how do
Speaker 2: we decide what to do next? And we're outlining that
Speaker 2: question using control theory and the cybernetic perspective, but we're
Speaker 2: also looking at the brain processes and we're concluding that
Speaker 2: there's interplay between central executive network, salience network and the
Speaker 2: default mode network, or there's back and forth between the
Speaker 2: prefernal cortex and consciousness of question arises as arises say
Speaker 2: in a creator's mind when they're trying to solve a
Speaker 2: problem and we don't know the answer to that question,
Speaker 2: but the fact that it was a conscious experience broadcasts
Speaker 2: it to the broader or lower mind and starts to
Speaker 2: work on it at a non conscious level. And the
Speaker 2: mode network processes are a big part of that. And
Speaker 2: then the salience network at one point sort of notices WHOA,
Speaker 2: some thought that's just sort of wandered across the default
Speaker 2: mode view screen. It says that's important, and then we say, whoa,
Speaker 2: And then we can make a choice and maybe realize
Speaker 2: that we need to completely change what we've been doing
Speaker 2: in our life. So in that last chapter in the book,
Speaker 2: I make a connection between the process of changing your
Speaker 2: life adopting a whole new set of goals, and the
Speaker 2: creative process using that four stage model of WALLAS of preparation, preparation, incubation, illumination, elaboration.
Speaker 2: And so yes, I am kind of trying to link
Speaker 2: those two chapters right now in this review article that
Speaker 2: we're writing. It is pretty exciting because I think it's
Speaker 2: the original stuff that we're pulling together.
Speaker 1: That's great. Let me know if I can help it all.
Speaker 1: You know, if you just won't even talk to me
Speaker 1: about the research we've conducted on the topic, it might
Speaker 1: be beneficial.
Speaker 2: You know, I would love to send you a just
Speaker 2: if you wouldn't mind taking a quick read of this
Speaker 2: draft when we finish.
Speaker 1: It, Yeah, because i'd love to.
Speaker 2: It could have a lot of holes then your expertise
Speaker 2: would be great to check them.
Speaker 1: I'd love to. I'd love to. Yeah, I'm so excited
Speaker 1: that you're working in that. You know, we have listeners
Speaker 1: and might not be familiar with anything we're really talking
Speaker 1: about right now, So let's talk a little about what
Speaker 1: the default mode network. What the world are we talking about.
Speaker 1: There seems to be a particular netbrain network that cognitive
Speaker 1: neuroscientists discovered by accident because they didn't really seem to
Speaker 1: care much about what people were doing in the fMRI
Speaker 1: machine when they weren't doing the task that was assigned
Speaker 1: to them, and it seemed to be like, oh wow,
Speaker 1: maybe there's some value to the inner stream of consciousness,
Speaker 1: as William James would put it. How would you characterize
Speaker 1: the major functions of the default midle network, because there's
Speaker 1: a lot of like kind of debate in the field
Speaker 1: about exactly what it does well.
Speaker 2: It does a bunch of different things, that's true. I
Speaker 2: think it's involved both in executive control and in mind wandering,
Speaker 2: which makes it hard to disentangle all the different stuff.
Speaker 2: But I think of it as when we're just sort
Speaker 2: of not doing anything in particular. We don't have a
Speaker 2: cybernetic tope loop, we don't have a goal that's active
Speaker 2: in our mind. We're not doing something. We're just hanging
Speaker 2: out in our mind during sort of a free flowing state.
Speaker 2: And so, you know, we used to think that didn't
Speaker 2: mean anything, it was just mind wandering, But no, we
Speaker 2: think default activity is critical for sort of processing what's
Speaker 2: going on and connecting things up with our goals and
Speaker 2: motives and linking memories in spontaneous ways that can arise
Speaker 2: to consciousness and sometimes can present us with the Aha
Speaker 2: moment that this is the solution to the question or
Speaker 2: the problem I've been trying to solve. So the default
Speaker 2: mode network, I think, arguably is us, you know, when
Speaker 2: we're not doing anything, as compared to the focused mode
Speaker 2: when we're trying to solve a problem, but a lot
Speaker 2: of times we're not doing that. We're just kind of
Speaker 2: zoning along, but that doesn't mean we're not doing anything.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like dreaming, but at a more conscious level,
Speaker 2: we're kind of processing, making connections, wondering stuff and remembering
Speaker 2: things and reflecting on what somebody said the other day
Speaker 2: and maybe feeling guilty because we haven't connected with our
Speaker 2: sick friend that we heard about, and the friend wonders
Speaker 2: about us and the bugs a little bit, and then
Speaker 2: we realized, Hey, I saw this great cake baking recipe,
Speaker 2: and I know I could bake that cake for my
Speaker 2: friend and take it to him or heart. So it's
Speaker 2: the default mode. Network is the part between action, but
Speaker 2: it's critical because it provides a lot of the spark
Speaker 2: to return to the next action, to adopt the next goal,
Speaker 2: and we don't know a lot about that process, to
Speaker 2: be honest, it's surprising how little personality and cybernetic models
Speaker 2: have looked at that. Like even the Carver and Shire
Speaker 2: model of goals doesn't say where did the goals come from?
Speaker 2: How do we get that goal? It just said we
Speaker 2: picked the action. That's that's a determined by the higher
Speaker 2: level goals in our system. Right, I want to be
Speaker 2: a compassionate person, so I will picking to do that
Speaker 2: you know, expresses my compassion. But you know, a lot
Speaker 2: of times we're doing something new, we're waning it and
Speaker 2: we don't have any big pre existing idea, but we're
Speaker 2: still figuring out what to do next. I think the
Speaker 2: default mode has a lot to do with that. But
Speaker 2: there's a lot to be figured out with that as well.
Speaker 2: And I'm just starting to learn about the neuroscience of
Speaker 2: all this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's tricky stuff. One thing I do want to
Speaker 1: double click on is I do think a lot of
Speaker 1: the functions of the default mode network are to form
Speaker 1: the core of human existence. That's how I freezed it,
Speaker 1: and I do think that's true. I think that the
Speaker 1: default Moile network can couple and decouple with the executive
Speaker 1: attention network to various degrees depending on the different stages
Speaker 1: of the creative process. Yeah, for different you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: we can focus intensely on our daydreams so we can
Speaker 1: have positive as my mentor Dromo Singer called positive constructive daydreaming.
Speaker 1: Is probably when the default mode is linked and coupled
Speaker 1: our deep attention resources or working memory resources. So yeah,
Speaker 1: these things could be all these different kind of brain networks.
Speaker 1: You also mentioned the salience network, which I think is
Speaker 1: one of the most underrated brain networks. I'm glad that
Speaker 1: you mentioned the salience network. That seems to be really
Speaker 1: important for creativity to be able to see what may
Speaker 1: count as a creative solution in the first place. So
Speaker 1: I think that's wonderful that you brought that in. But
Speaker 1: all these kinds of brain networks couple and decouple constantly.
Speaker 1: You know that it's where it's fall and back and forth,
Speaker 1: you know, and and so you know, the brains are
Speaker 1: constantly dynamic.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: You know all this, But I think we need to
Speaker 1: explain this to to our listeners. You know, But how
Speaker 1: it all unpinges on the free will debate. It's still
Speaker 1: not completely clear to me because someone can say that,
Speaker 1: you know, all this is is maybe you're talking about
Speaker 1: human will, but it's not free will, because a lot
Speaker 1: of people narrowly view free will as could you have
Speaker 1: done differently in that specific if you rewinded the tape
Speaker 1: at that specific precise moment, would you ever have acted
Speaker 1: differently than and you're talking a lot about the things
Speaker 1: we do after the moment to change the course of
Speaker 1: our future, you know, because I've called it the imagination network.
Speaker 1: I've called the default mode the imagination network because it
Speaker 1: can impact our future. But does it really impact the
Speaker 1: notion of free will?
Speaker 2: Though? Yeah, well again I'm not arguing for magic free
Speaker 2: will independent of all the machioney. I think that we
Speaker 2: have this mental ability to take stock of who we are,
Speaker 2: where we are, and what we want and make some decisions,
Speaker 2: and could we have done differently? I think that almost
Speaker 2: might be a nonsensical question, because you, first of all,
Speaker 2: you can't go back to that moment and say, okay,
Speaker 2: do something different or not. It's already happened, and so
Speaker 2: everything that's already happened has already happened. So I don't
Speaker 2: to ask could you have done differently? Is to ask
Speaker 2: could the universe have turned out any differently at this moment?
Speaker 2: Since it began four billion years ago? It's kind of
Speaker 2: the same question. I think it's more useful to ask
Speaker 2: could I have done differently? And if you think about it,
Speaker 2: a lot of times you were poised between two or
Speaker 2: three almost equally attractive options, and you know, you picked one,
Speaker 2: and maybe you later realize you wished you hadn't done that,
Speaker 2: and so you would pick differently the next time. But
Speaker 2: at the time, you picked the thing that looked most appealing,
Speaker 2: And so why would you have picked differently from that?
Speaker 2: You picked the thing that you wanted? And so why
Speaker 2: would it be free will to think that you have
Speaker 2: the capacity to pick what you don't want? And actually,
Speaker 2: now that I think about it, that's part of what
Speaker 2: I'm saying free will is we have the capacity to
Speaker 2: pick what we don't want. Yeah, for you won't Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean we can make bad decisions. We can look.
Speaker 2: The last chapter of my book talks about a woman
Speaker 2: who made a bad, weird decision decades ago and it's
Speaker 2: been miserable ever since, until finally her misery. Misery inspired
Speaker 2: her to start asking the questions what do I really want?
Speaker 2: Where her non conscious mind started to provide her with
Speaker 2: some alternatives until she was finally able to pick something different.
Speaker 2: And I think that's all you can really ask for,
Speaker 2: you know, an agent regarding free will, the ability to
Speaker 2: pick what we think we want and learn from our mistakes.
Speaker 1: From mistakes, well, that that takes us out of the
Speaker 1: realm of how a lot of philosophers define narrowly they defined.
Speaker 1: It's like, it's like they can't think of free will
Speaker 1: outside of the rewind the tape thing. Do you know
Speaker 1: what I mean?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't they're rewind the tape thing, doesn't It's
Speaker 2: a thought experiment that I don't think is very co here.
Speaker 1: Can can drop on the call it right there.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm probably just not getting you.
Speaker 1: Should have snapped, you should have snapped with that and
Speaker 1: get a little sassy, get a little sassy over there.
Speaker 1: Well you know, no, I hear you, brother, I hear you, brother.
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of the a lot of Daniel
Speaker 1: Dennet's writings on the abilities that are they give us
Speaker 1: a free will worth One time, I think a lot
Speaker 1: of things I was not thinking, Yeah it's so okay,
Speaker 1: Well you'll see a great friend, a great friend there
Speaker 1: of ideas, you know, so I've always yeah, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: a big I'm a big fan of those ideas. I'm
Speaker 1: a big fan of of you making the case that
Speaker 1: a lot of the kinds of system two functions we're
Speaker 1: talking about are things that they are free will is
Speaker 1: worth wanting in the Daniel Dennitts terms, but in your terms,
Speaker 1: you're saying there's You're straight up saying that's free will.
Speaker 1: And so that's fascinating because you you're just like straight
Speaker 1: up You're like no, You're like, no, we got more
Speaker 1: free will than you realize.
Speaker 2: We're doomed to have free will. Yeah, that's a funny
Speaker 2: way to flat it around. But that's that's the existentialist
Speaker 2: in me. You know, that's saying, yeah, there ain't nobody
Speaker 2: else making our choices but us. We might like to
Speaker 2: think so, but we're responsible. And that's scary, but it's
Speaker 2: also tremendously empowering if you fully grasp it.
Speaker 1: Hmm. Yeah, And I know that's another major theme of
Speaker 1: your work, is the link between freedom and responsibility. I
Speaker 1: assume you've read Roll May's stuff. Yeah, yeah, in the sixties.
Speaker 2: I'm an old humanist going from way back, mostly a rogarian,
Speaker 2: but yeah, some of the other folks as well, I've read.
Speaker 1: Yeah, roll May wrote beautifully about about that interplay, and
Speaker 1: I think I love that you brought in, brought that in,
Speaker 1: you know, to this this whole debate. And it's very
Speaker 1: interesting because you have like a whole chapter the problem
Speaker 1: of too much freedom, the chapter that's the chapter you have.
Speaker 1: So it's like, it's interesting because there's there's kind of
Speaker 1: different continuums that one can make in this argument. One
Speaker 1: could say, a lot of people, a lot of philosophers
Speaker 1: of mine, say, especially determined to say, look, we have
Speaker 1: a heck of a lot less free will than we
Speaker 1: realize we have. Then there are sums like, actually, we
Speaker 1: have more than we realize. But then I think you're
Speaker 1: even to the right of that continuum and saying we
Speaker 1: have so much free will that we don't know what
Speaker 1: to do with it. In a way, do you think
Speaker 1: do you and this might be controversial, but do you
Speaker 1: think like it's easier being a determinist? Like if you're
Speaker 1: a hard determinist, do you feel like you're evading your responsibility,
Speaker 1: your destiny?
Speaker 2: You know, I think that hard determinism is seductive.
Speaker 1: It's a deep question.
Speaker 2: It's seductive because it seems like the most scientifically rigorous
Speaker 2: position to take, and it's the position that goes along
Speaker 2: with the scientific ideal of putting our subjective wants and
Speaker 2: values aside and being guided by the facts. Right, And
Speaker 2: so we have this wishful thinking of wanting free will,
Speaker 2: but as true scientists, we have to put that aside.
Speaker 2: I disagree with that. I think when we do that,
Speaker 2: it's bad for us because we're accepting an idea that
Speaker 2: isn't true and we're going to negatively impact our own functioning.
Speaker 2: Quite a bit of research, experimental research on what happens
Speaker 2: when you convince people that determinism is true, and they
Speaker 2: become less moral, less able to self regulate, less pro social,
Speaker 2: number they become numb to pain. So if you convince
Speaker 2: people yeah, I'm serious the code, I.
Speaker 1: Want to ask you a follow up question to that,
Speaker 1: because is has anyone ever done the study on different
Speaker 1: philosophers and psychologists and what they believe in their actual morality?
Speaker 1: Like that? From that level, wouldn't that be interesting? Wouldn't
Speaker 1: that be an interesting study like are hard determinists more immoral?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: I would be a fascinating study. And a version that
Speaker 2: I've thought about it is does an evolutionary psychologist who
Speaker 2: thinks that men evolve to be philanderers have less ability
Speaker 2: to control their right unfortunate choices with their female graduate students?
Speaker 2: You know, I think free will can determinism? Can you know,
Speaker 2: make you think you're not responsible. I had to do that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so that's another you're right besides the well being hit
Speaker 2: that you take with those beliefs. Yeah, I think it's
Speaker 2: a dangerous belief.
Speaker 1: Wow, you even go so far to say that that
Speaker 1: that it's a dangerous belief.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't care. I'm getting to the end
Speaker 2: of my career. I'll just say what I think.
Speaker 1: And you have no fucks to give about for you,
Speaker 1: about for you, Ken, Ken's like I got zeros to
Speaker 1: give in the in this debate, it's you. No, I
Speaker 1: hear you. The idea, whether or not it's a dangerous
Speaker 1: idea is is? I can again, I can hear the
Speaker 1: voice in my head of the hard determinists saying, because
Speaker 1: I've debated so much of them, so I can kind
Speaker 1: of like hear what their counter to everything you say is.
Speaker 1: And I think they would say that it makes them
Speaker 1: more compassionate because you realize that people, even in their
Speaker 1: most poor choices, really didn't have a choice ultimately, ultimately,
Speaker 1: and that that should give us all more more compassion
Speaker 1: for each other, not less. I can hear them saying
Speaker 1: that as a rebuttal to what you're saying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's kind of what my dad was saying.
Speaker 2: It's a bit of a liberal perspective of you, you know,
Speaker 2: forgive people of their crimes if they came from a terrible,
Speaker 2: you know background. And I don't think I don't think
Speaker 2: we can really afford to say that because the question
Speaker 2: of who is really off the hook versus isn't it's
Speaker 2: very tricky. I think you're only really off the hook
Speaker 2: if you've got some organic problems. And that's once again,
Speaker 2: determinism only makes sense when there's a problem down in
Speaker 2: the machinery, or reductionism only makes sense. So if your
Speaker 2: machinery is off, then okay, you're off the hook. But
Speaker 2: if you're just making bad choices and then you're saying, well,
Speaker 2: I couldn't help it, I think that's again a dangerous
Speaker 2: thing to a dangerous road to go down. Wow.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, let's end this interview talking a little about
Speaker 1: the importance of brains working together. You know you this
Speaker 1: chapter called a Living Will Together Man, have you with
Speaker 1: the extended brain hypothesis that uh, David Chalmers and Andy
Speaker 1: Clark put forward and that Annie Murphy Paul wrote about
Speaker 1: in a recent book.
Speaker 2: Nope and that sounds like another one. I got to
Speaker 2: check it out. I think I'm going to be familiar
Speaker 2: with the arguments once you explain it to me quickly.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you'll, you'll definitely. I mean, well, just that
Speaker 1: there are there are brains, don't stop and start enclosed
Speaker 1: in this head, That we are deeply, deeply embodied and
Speaker 1: connected to others, and our brain is extended beyond just
Speaker 1: this skin here.
Speaker 2: It's just it.
Speaker 1: Seems very much in line with your your Living Well
Speaker 1: Together chapter, we talk about how we really influence each
Speaker 1: other's We really influence each other's free will in profound ways. Right,
Speaker 1: it's not all strictly in an individual pursuit the pursuit
Speaker 1: of free will, all right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that sounds consistent with what I've been what
Speaker 2: I say in the book about this multi level hierarchy
Speaker 2: of organization where we are also nested within groups of
Speaker 2: other minds and we're influenced by them, but we also
Speaker 2: influence them, and it's critical for our well being and
Speaker 2: our adaptation, I would argue, to be able to form
Speaker 2: coherent groups, alliances, coalitions, and evolutionary terminology, and so we're
Speaker 2: not just not just these abstract entities stuck in our heads.
Speaker 2: We're also connected to other minds out there in the world,
Speaker 2: hopefully in a way that benefits everybody. So it sounds
Speaker 2: like a really cool idea. In another book, I have
Speaker 2: to go look up, Scott.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, look it up.
Speaker 2: Let me just look up real quick.
Speaker 1: The title of Manny Murphy Paul's new book, she basically
Speaker 1: summarizes the work Urr. Book is called The Extended Mind
Speaker 1: by Annie Murphy Paul. The subtitle is The Power of
Speaker 1: Thinking Outside the Brain. Annie's a dear friend of mine.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I think it's.
Speaker 2: A cool book.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think I do like that He of
Speaker 1: us thinking about free will more than just an individualistic pursuit, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, we influence each other's and each other in
Speaker 1: such profound ways. We limit each other's freedom, not just
Speaker 1: internally but also externally. The liberals got something right there
Speaker 1: to a certain degree. Your father is right, but it's
Speaker 1: not the whole story, but you know it is part
Speaker 1: of the story for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, this is this has been great. Is there
Speaker 1: anything else you want to add that you haven't said?
Speaker 2: I guess I would just reiterate that I can't prove
Speaker 2: and nobody can prove that free will exists. I think
Speaker 2: it's likely if you think about it the right way,
Speaker 2: and I think about it the way Kristen lifts list
Speaker 2: laid out is philosophical arguments. But even if it's not true,
Speaker 2: the illusion of freedom, if you want to call that,
Speaker 2: makes a huge difference, and it might operate like a
Speaker 2: kind of placebo effect that it even though it's an illusion,
Speaker 2: it makes itself true to a considerable extent in that
Speaker 2: if you believe in it, suddenly you're doing things that
Speaker 2: are better for you and making you happier and making
Speaker 2: you adapt and thrive to a greater extent. So whether
Speaker 2: you want to call that an illusion, I think is
Speaker 2: you know, I think it's going too far to just
Speaker 2: say it's an illusion. I'd say it's an adaptation. But
Speaker 2: you know, it can go around and around with these
Speaker 2: things linguistics.
Speaker 1: You can call it an adaptive illusion, but then you
Speaker 1: don't really like calling it an illusion. Yeah, no, I
Speaker 1: hear you. I mean it's like religion, right, like or.
Speaker 2: Belief in God.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, like we don't know for sure. It's
Speaker 1: sort of like a similar argument to what you're saying.
Speaker 1: I mean, we probably won't never know while we're alive.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe we'll find out someday. Oh hey, God,
Speaker 1: you do exist after all. But it's hard. It's hard
Speaker 1: to know that right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, And I don't know. I don't know the
Speaker 2: truth of this, and neither does anybody else. But it's
Speaker 2: true that it is like a religion to people. You know,
Speaker 2: determinism is like a religion to people. Free will might
Speaker 2: be like a religion to me. I don't know. I
Speaker 2: would agree with Sam Harris. I do think that God
Speaker 2: is a delusion, that religion is a delusion. But I
Speaker 2: can't be sure about that either. So really you just
Speaker 2: have to be sort of agnostic if you're going to
Speaker 2: be humble in the.
Speaker 1: End, Ken Sheldon letting it all hang out here at
Speaker 1: the end of his career. God is good. But we
Speaker 1: have free will. That's that's interesting. Usually you find a
Speaker 1: lot of the really deep religious Christians believe we have
Speaker 1: free will. It's an interesting isn't that interesting? You often
Speaker 1: find they do believe in free will.
Speaker 2: God gave it to you.
Speaker 1: Well, that's what it is. I guess is that God
Speaker 1: gave it to us to us, But there you go, Well,
Speaker 1: who gave us evolution?
Speaker 2: This is a chance prodcast.
Speaker 1: Anyway. I won't go down that rabbit hole too much
Speaker 1: at this point, but we can do that over some
Speaker 1: beers someday or some wine. Really great chatting with you,
Speaker 1: and thanks for reading this really provocative book.
Speaker 2: I appreciate it. It was fun reconnecting with you, and
Speaker 2: we should do it more often.
Speaker 1: Likewise, thanks for listening to this episode of The Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to react in some way to something
Speaker 1: you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion
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