Does Two Minds Theory Preclude Free Will?

Two Minds Theory (TMT) might seem hard to swallow if you think that it threatens the idea that humans have free will. Philosopher Daniel Dennett calls this the “zombie problem.” If I think hard enough, I can probably convince myself that your actions are 100% the result of your genetics and past history, with no room for any decision-making on your part. In other words, it seems at least plausible to believe that you are a “philosophical zombie” without free will to determine your own actions. It takes some effort, but I can convince myself that you have no free will. But I find (as most people do) that no amount of effort can make me believe I don’t have free will either!

Because TMT posits that our thoughts do not determine our actions, TMT might seem like a victory for materialism (the idea that all observable phenomena have a physical cause) and determinism (the idea that everything that occurs is part of an unending chain of causation in which anything that happens depends on something that happened before, all the way back to the beginning of the universe). Most of science depends on the ideas of materialism and determinism -- that anything you see has a physical cause, and that its cause was itself determined by some other cause, ad infinitum. And because TMT argues that my thoughts aren’t always reliable, it might be taken as support for Dennett’s position that I really am a philosophical zombie even though I don’t think that I’m one.

Mark Balaguer's book Free Will as an Open Scientific Problem recounts an anecdote in which an army private, John Q. Public, is accused of deserting his post. The prosecutor offers an argument anyone can understand, that "Private Public acted of his own free will." Balaguer points out that this attorney is not arguing anything about the truth of determinism, only that Private Public was not ordered to act as he did, wasn't held at gunpoint, or wasn't coerced in some other way. Balaguer also says, however, that if you then explain to a group of undergraduates (or jurors) that Private Public acted the way he did because of a sequence of causal factors dating back to before he was born -- which is what determinism means for every action, if this philosophical position is true -- then the group will very strongly feel that Private Public's action was not actually free. In other words, most people have the intuition that humans have free will in the sense of making choices about at least some of their behaviors, and they also have the incompatible sense that if determinism is true then there's no such thing as free will. In order to reconcile these competing views of human choice and causation, determinism must be false at least in the limited case of situations where human beings make decisions. This is the classical view of free will: Even if the world is deterministic, human reason is not, and humans therefore can make free choices about their behavior.

Unfortunately, virtually all of the evidence contradicts the classical view. The Narrative System is probably deterministic in the sense that it arises from brain functions and behaviors after the time when your behavior occurs. A fundamental premise of Two Minds Theory, required for explaining the various neurocognitive and behavioral phenomena that the theory attempts to account for, is that the Narrative System works too slowly to produce behaviors. If our thoughts do not determine our behaviors, then in what sense can people be said to have free will? And if people do not have free will, in what sense can we justify legal systems, educational methods, or approaches to helping others that are based on the idea of free will? If TMT is true, must we abandon the idea that Private Public deserves punishment for deserting his post?

One possibility is that Intuitive-level decisions are still free even though they are not conscious -- in other words, that free will operates at a different level from consciousness. To show that freedom can be separated from conscious choice, Balaguer identifies a specific type of decision-making that he calls a "torn decision.” Torn decisions are those in which we have a small set of options that are equally satisfactory (should I have cake or tiramisu for dessert?) or in which very compelling reasons on both sides seem to counterbalance one another (should Ralph move to New York for a career opportunity, or remain in Mayberry with his childhood sweetheart?). We simply can't make this type of decision rationally based on pros and cons; there are either too many or two few entries in each column. Balaguer goes on to argue that even though such decisions are not rational, they are still that individual decision-maker's decisions. He argues that torn decisions meet the requirements of "authorship and control" to a sufficient degree that most people would still call them "free choices."

Of course, as in TMT, Balaguer acknowledges that torn decisions may be influenced by factors outside of consciousness. To the extent that these nonconscious reasons were causally determined by something else, we might say that the decision was not “controlled” by the person making it. Even in these cases, he says, we would probably still see the decision as being "authored" by them. However, Balaguer's overall thesis is that for at least some decisions, there is a level of uncertainty about the outcome that is freedom-enhancing; i.e., it is in accordance with the idea not just of authorship but also of control. People's reasons can play a part in these decisions in the sense of limiting their options to a rational subset (e.g., Ralph will either move to New York or stay in Mayberry; he won't move to Outer Mongolia). The question of freedom then hangs on whether there was anything else besides the initial reasons -- the ones that limited the decision to a specific subset of choices -- that makes a person choose one option over the others. If not, Balaguer argues that these decisions can be considered truly "free" even though they were not consciously chosen.

A second possibility in the framework of TMT is that freedom at the Narrative level can have later effects on behavior. In the analysis of any particular sequence from environmental stimulus to observable behavior, TMT suggests that the Narrative System works too slowly to have direct effects on the real, material world. However, it also seems clear that the Narrative System has effects on later behaviors when similar stimuli occur. Narratives are developed based on past events, but they also form part of the dataset that the Intuitive System considers when selecting future behaviors. A classical understanding of free will is thus still possible: Even if I have control over nothing but my thoughts, I can still affect my future behavior by thinking in a particular way. Any behavior produced by an individual reflects not what she or he has done, but in some important sense who he or she is. The specific behavior may not be chosen by the individual, but the history of events and narratives up to that point does limit the possible behaviors to a smaller subset. 

Based on either of these interpretations, people's behavior might not be completely deterministic even though it is outside of conscious awareness. Instead, the outcome of the process might be seen as scientifically “undetermined” — one in which various options might occur, but some happen to be more statistically likely than others. If life had a control group, that random element might lead to a different outcome even if the same decision were attempted again by the same person under exactly the same circumstances. At the level of physics, quantum theory suggests that the probabilistic view is actually a better explanation for many natural phenomena. In Balaguer's opinion, there is currently no good argument either for or against the idea that all choices are deterministic. If there is any indeterminacy at all when a decision is made, then that indeterminacy enhances freedom and control: Whenever a decision was not causally determined, the implication is that it was authored by the person making the decision, even if that authorship did not occur at the level of language-based reasons or narratives. And even if the choice between options is made at the Intuitive level by a purely random process, the individual is still the type of person who produced that behavior in these circumstances. Balaguer says that a free choice is one that seems to be consistent with a person's reasons and character -- not just the choice they made, but the fact that they are the type of person likely to choose that way.

It is of course possible to view TMT through the lens of mechanism and determinism. But these assumptions are not necessary for use of the theory. Based on either free choices made outside of consciousness at the Intuitive level, or the delayed influence of free choices at the Narrative level, TMT is compatible with the idea of free will.