≫ PDF Who in Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain Michael S Gazzaniga 9780061906107 Books

Who in Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain Michael S Gazzaniga 9780061906107 Books

Download As PDF : Who in Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain Michael S Gazzaniga 9780061906107 Books

Who in Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain Michael S Gazzaniga 9780061906107 Books

The first half of the book I found to be brilliantly written with interesting studies woven into Gazzaniga’s own analysis. The second half, things seem to fall apart. He doesn’t make clear what it is he is arguing. He tries to convey the existence of come middle road between free will and determinism, but it isn’t clear to the reader what that middle road is.

I’d highly recommend reading at least the first half of the book. The studies referenced throughout are fascinating. The second half also has interesting studies, but the context in which the studies are analyzed is confusing at best.


Tags : Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain [Michael S. Gazzaniga] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. “Big questions are Gazzaniga’s stock in trade.”<br />—<em>New York Times</em> “Gazzaniga is one of the most brilliant experimental neuroscientists in the world.”<br />—Tom Wolfe “Gazzaniga stands as a giant among neuroscientists,Michael S. Gazzaniga,Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain,Ecco,0061906107,Life Sciences - Neuroscience,Brain.,Cognitive neuroscience.,Brain,Cognitive neuroscience,Free Will & Determinism,MEDICAL Neuroscience,Neuropsychology,PSYCHOLOGY Neuropsychology,Philosophy,SCIENCE Life Sciences Neuroscience,Science,ScienceMathematics

Who in Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain Michael S Gazzaniga 9780061906107 Books Reviews

Who, or what, is responsible for our actions? It is the age-old question of free will versus determinism. Forget about God-willed predeterminism. Rather, is our behavior the result of a complex, interactive chain of prior causes over which we have no control? Or is there something inside of us (not an immaterial, immortal soul) that enables us to override the causal chain and do things differently than we would have done without this power of will?

Gazzaniga reviews a lot of interesting and more-or-less relevant research from psychology and neuropsychology. In what follows I am giving my conclusions based on my interpretation of what Gazzaniga says. His train of his argument sometimes gets lost in the details.

Conscious mind is not the actor or agent in governing our behavior. Choices and behavior are controlled by non-conscious processes. Conscious thoughts and voluntary behavior are the result after the fact. Thus, the “you,” the “self,” is not just your conscious thoughts. “You” are the total system of conscious and unconscious mental processes, which are nothing more or less than the processes of the functioning brain. Thus, you cannot make the excuse that “my brain made me do it.” Your brain is you.

Gazzaniga argues, however, that our actions are not just the result of a causal chain that leads to an inevitable result. Mind is an emergent process of the brain, more than just the sum of its parts. And mind can exert downward control on the brain, thus intervening to produce actions different from what we would do if our behavior were merely the result of an inflexible causal chain. In other words, in everyday language, we can make choices. We can consider the facts (or what we believe to be the facts), and consider the possible consequences of alternative actions (as we can conceive of them), and make choices.

One cannot escape the conclusion that there is a large element of causality in human decision-making and behavior, but with so many interacting causes—plus a dose of uncertainty and chaos—the behavior of individuals cannot be reliably predicted. The best we can do is to make probabilistic predictions about the typical or average behavior of groups of people. While predictability implies determinism, the lack of predictability does not imply non- determinism or free will.

The most important practical application of the free will issue concerns attributing responsibility for criminal acts and other disapproved, antisocial behavior. Gazzaniga
discusses this issue in the penultimate chapter. If people have unconstrained free will then they are personally, individually responsible for their own actions, and it is right—in the traditional, conservative view—that they should be punished for their transgressive actions in proportion to the severity of the transgression. But if people's’ behavior is a result of multiple causes beyond their control then one might argue that they should not be punished as retribution, though they might be incarcerated to protect society from future transgressions. Here is where the responsibility of society comes in. The individual mind (a product of the functioning brain), with its knowledge and beliefs and behavior potentials, is a result of the interaction of the individual with their social and physical environment from the time of birth. (And even before birth, since the mother’s nutrition and health and drug use affect the fetus’s brain development.)

Society can do two types of things to influence the causes that probabilistically determine the likelihood that an individual will commit criminal behavior. (1). Society can try to improve social and environmental factors that affect individual behavior. This includes things ranging from childhood nutrition to education to safe neighborhoods to job opportunities, among others. I won’t go into detail on this topic since I want to focus on the next one, which is more relevant to Gazzaniga’s book.

(2). Society can ensure that people know that there will be consequences for their behavior. The anticipation of punishment is an effective cause for inhibiting criminal behavior for most people, most of the time. (And the degree of certainty about punishment is more important than the severity of punishment. Doubling the certainty of being caught and punished would do more to reduce crime than would doubling the length of jail sentences.) Gazzaniga argues that only in very rare cases is the legal defense of a defective brain or mental retardation justified. It doesn’t take much brain power to understand basic ideas of right and wrong and the possibility of punishment.

Though society is right to enforce negative consequences for criminal behavior, the rationale for punishment should not be retribution (“an eye for an eye”), but rather, deterrence of future criminal behavior. One way that punishment works as a deterrence—though imperfectly—is by giving others an example of the negative consequences of criminal behavior. (In this regard it might be useful to have more publicity on the unpleasantness of incarceration, with individual case examples.) More important, punishment by incarceration deters crime by removing the individual from society, thus eliminating the opportunity for further crimes against society for as long as the person is incarcerated. By emphasizing the purpose of incarceration punishment for protecting society, rather than proportional retribution, one can argue that in some cases of violent crimes the criminal should be kept in prison for the rest of their life, even if the crime was not murder. Experts cannot reliably predict which violent criminals will or will not commit more violence after they are released from prison. However, there is nothing in this argument that would justify a death sentence. Death sentences serve the old-fashioned idea of retaliation or retribution, but they are not necessary for preventing individuals from committing future crimes. Life in prison is more compatible with the humane idea of protecting society from violent criminals.
This is an excellent book about how the brain works, with some implications regarding the concept of free will. The author is a neuro-scientist, not a philosopher, and he doesn't seem particularly well acquainted with or interested in what philosophers think of free will. A neuro-scientist should not, of course, be an expert in philosophy, but anyone who dares to write a book about free will should be. For a book on the science of the brain and free will to really work, it should be co-authored by a scientist and a philosopher. Hence, this book doesn't really work as a book about science and free will, but for me the science is good enough to rate this as an outstanding book. Perhaps some of the author's other books are better in terms of books only about brain science, but I have not read his other work.

The author's views on free will can be briefly summarized by the following quotes "YOU is your vastly parallel and distributed brain without a central command center. There is no ghost in the machine, no secret stuff that is YOU. That YOU that you are so proud of is a story woven together by your interpreter module to account for as much of your behavior as it can incorporate, and it denies or rationalizes the rest. Our left- brain interpreter’s narrative capability is one of the automatic processes, and it gives rise to the illusion of unity or purpose, which is a post hoc phenomenon." In other words, he believes that we falsely perceive being in conscious control, equates conscious control with free will, and since the perception of conscious control is false, free will does not exist. At least that is how I understand his argument, correct or not.

I believe there is more to free will than just the perception of conscious control, so the book does not, for me, deny free will. I believe the author does himself deny free will, but the case he makes in the book is only relative to a restricted version of free will.

For an excellent philosophical discussion of free will that follows up very closely on Who's in Charge, see Freedom Regained by Julian Baggini. Baggini even quotes Who's in Charge in his own book. To understand both the science and philosophy of free will, I highly recommend Who's in Charge followed by Freedom Regained.
The first half of the book I found to be brilliantly written with interesting studies woven into Gazzaniga’s own analysis. The second half, things seem to fall apart. He doesn’t make clear what it is he is arguing. He tries to convey the existence of come middle road between free will and determinism, but it isn’t clear to the reader what that middle road is.

I’d highly recommend reading at least the first half of the book. The studies referenced throughout are fascinating. The second half also has interesting studies, but the context in which the studies are analyzed is confusing at best.