Learning and Memory Bias Choices But Don't Preclude Free Will

One common definition of "free will" is that a person can decide or choose among multiple alternatives without being forced by physical laws, luck, fate, or divine will. Most of us feel that there are situations where we are in charge of our choices and no outside force compels us to make a particular choice. But it is fashionable these days for scientists to insist that free will is an illusion. In fact, they claim, without evidence, that consciousness cannot do anything. It just observes a little of what the magnificent unconscious mind does. The possibility that conscious thought programs neural circuitry escapes their biased thinking.

People who believe that humans have no free will are hard-pressed to explain why no one is responsible for their choices and actions. What is it that compels foolish or deviant behavior? Who or what compels us to accept one moral code over any other? Who or what compels us to believe in God or to be an atheist? Who or what compels us to become a certain kind of person, with no option to "improve" itself in any self-determined way? Learning experiences may bias our choices, but we are free to reject learning that does not serve us well. Wise people do that.

Human brains make choices consciously and unconsciously by real-time evaluation of alternatives in terms of the anticipated usefulness of previous learning from other situations. This learning occurs in the context of the learned sense of self, which begins unconsciously in the womb, as neural connections construct a map of body parts. The conscious brain is aware that it is aware of choice processing and makes decisions in light of such understanding. When a given alternative choice is not forced, the conscious mind is aware that it is not obliged to accept any one choice but is "free" to select any one of the available options. We may be creative by consciously constructing other alternatives than the ones presented. Such realization might even guide many decisions at the subconscious level. In any case, neural networks weigh the probable value of each alternative and collectively reach a "decision" by inhibiting networks that lead to less-favored alternatives. Thus, network activity underlying the preferred choice prevails and leads to a selective willed action. What governs the network activity causing the final choice is the activity in other networks, which in turn is governed by stored memories and real-time processing of the current choice contingencies.

What usually gets left out of free-will discussions is the question of how a brain establishes stored-memory preferences and how it evaluates current contingencies. These functions surely cause things to happen, but what is the cause of the cause? Any given brain can choose within certain limits of its learning experiences and stored memory. We govern those choices by what a brain has learned about the self-interest value associated with given contingencies. Brain circuitry assigns value, and values chosen are largely optional choices. The conscious brain directs the choices that govern value formation, reinforcement, and preservation in memory.

Now we are confronted with explaining how neural circuit impulse patterns (CIPs) representing the sense of self can have a free will. First, I reason that each person's brain has a conscious Avatar that acts as an active agent to act in the world on embodied brain's behalf, as explained more completely in my recent book. This is reminiscent of the 3rd Century idea of a homunculus, a "little person" inside the brain. A modern view is that this homunculus exists in the form of mapped circuitry within a more global workspace.

Certain maps are created under genetic control. These include the topographic map of the body in the sensory and motor cortices. Then there is the capacity for real-time construction of maps of the body location in space that resides in circuitry of the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex. Other maps are created from learning experience from the near-infinite circuit capacity of association cortex. What these maps learn is stored in memory as facilitated circuit synapses and deployed "on-line" in the form of CIP representations of what was originally learned. New learning likewise exists as CIP representations in network populations. Thus, what has been learned is stored as memories that can be accessed later in decision- and choice-making.

The conscious Avatar itself is a constellation of certain CIPs representing the conscious-agent sense of self. Certainly, by definition, the Avatar can make choices and decisions. Avatar choices can be implemented unconsciously, because Avatar circuitry is embedded in the global workspace of unconscious mind. Wakefulness releases consciousness to make its own choices and decisions. Avatar processing is neither random nor inevitable, and presumably can occur with more degrees of freedom than found in unconscious mind. Avatar processing more likely progresses via non-linear chaotic dynamics than by linear deterministic processing.

If the conscious Avatar exists as a set of CIPs, how can something as "impersonal" and physiological as that have any kind of "will," much less free will? Consider that the "virtual you" is your Avatar. Let us recall that "will" is little more than an intent that couples bodily actions to achieve the intent. This kind of thinking does also occur in the circuitry that controls unconscious minds. These circuits automatically generate actions in response to conditions that call for a response. Such actions are stereotyped and inflexible, but not when there is conscious regulation.

Each choice alternative is represented as circuit impulse patterns (CIPs) within a group of neurons. Each group's activity interacts with the others―and with the CIP representation of the conscious Avatar. The Avatar CIP is poised to influence activity in the alternative sub-populations and thus can help direct the final processing result.

The Avatar must have some criteria to bias a given option. Those criteria have been learned and remembered. The Avatar CIP activity can modulate the alternative-choice representations in the context of self-awareness according to past learning and value assessments of current contingencies. The existence of bias does argue for determinism at this stage of choice making, but the bias could have been created earlier by conscious free-will reasoning and value assessments.

While it is true that genetics and experience help program the Avatar circuitry, the Avatar does its own non-linear processing and makes choices about who to interact with and what experiences to value, promote, and allow. The Avatar can insist that it has a need to remember some lessons of experience and makes it a point to remember them. In short, the Avatar gets to help shape what it becomes.

It seems to this Avatar that current debates about determinism and free will tend to obscure the important matters of our humanness. Free will debates distract us from a proper framing of the issues about human choices and personal responsibility.

Sources:

Klemm, W. R. (2014). Mental Biology: The New Science of How the Brain and Mind Relate. New York: Prometheus.

Klemm, W. R. (2016). Making a Scientific Case for Conscious Agency and Free Will. New York: Academic Press.

The Better Things Get, the Worse They May Seem

“Too much of a good thing” and “it’s all relative” now take on new meaning. A new research report of seven studies suggests an explanation for the paradox that humans misjudge the extent of a changing situation. This report, published in the June 29^th issue of the premier journal, Science, demonstrated that people often respond to diminished prevalence of a stimulus by expanding their perception of its prevalence. For example, when looking at a matrix panel of blue and purple dots, if the experimenter reduces the percentage of blue dots, the subjects began to see purple dots as blue. Or when shown panels of threatening faces mixed with neutral faces in which the percentage of angry faces became rarer, they began to see neutral faces as threatening. Or when unethical requests of the subjects were made rarer, subjects began to regard innocuous requests as unethical. In other words, reduced prevalence of a certain stimulus created a bias for finding more of that stimulus than actually existed.

The investigators began with the blue/purple dot test. When they saw the biasing effect of reducing incidence of blue dots, they wondered if this same principle applied to other kinds of stimuli and to more abstract comparisons. The bias showed up also in their test with angry and neutral faces and in the test with unethical and innocuous requests.

Everyday experiences suggested this research. For example, others had reported that when unprovoked attacks and invasions decline, the perception of new instances receive magnified judgement. I might speculate that the empowerment of women by the women’s rights movement has made recent incidents of sexual harassment more notable than would have been the case years ago when it was not so unexpected. Or perhaps the current outrage over illegal immigrant children separated from their parents and attempts to close the border are magnified by the fact that so many have been already reunited and set free in the U.S.

The authors rightly concluded, “These results may have sobering implications. Many organizations and institutions are dedicated to identifying and reducing the prevalence of social problems, from unethical research to unwarranted aggression. But our studies suggest that even well-meaning agents may sometimes fail to recognize the success of their own efforts.”

They add reference citations that show that societies have made “extraordinary” progress in solving a wide range of social problems, but that the majority of people think the world is getting worse. In prosperous countries, like the U.S., social problems usually continue to improve. However, many people in such environments seem to keep finding more and more things to complain about. For example, as the economy improves, it seems increasingly easy to find poverty or wealth gaps. As civil rights improve, it seems easy to find abuses and even to misinterpret neutral events as abuse. Thus, despite all progressive efforts, the problems seem intractable, when in fact they are not. Politics is contaminated by flawed judgment caused by changed prevalence of social problems contaminates our politics.

We tend to cling to old myths when they no longer apply as well as before. This diminishes appreciation of the successes of government policy. In the U.S., the growing hostility of citizens toward their country may actually be the result of the improvements in the country. Compounding the problem is the common feeling that it is not politically correct to consider that this kind of bias might exist. Even when a person knows of this bias, sometimes it is of political benefit to keep contentious issues alive.

Help kiddos get ready for school. 

My popular, 5-star book,Better Grades, Less Effort, is now available in hard copy. from all bookstores and Amazon 

Source:

Levari, David E. et al. (2018). Prevalence-induced concept change in human judgment. Science. 360(6396), 1462-1467.

The Best Years of Your Life

When I was young, there was no respect for youth.

Now there's no respect for the old.

I missed it both times!

                                Milton Berle (or so he claims)

When you were a teenager, were you ever told, "Enjoy this time, it's the best years of your life?" What a stupid thing to say. Youth is wasted on the young, and for most people, youth is hardly the best years of life.

Ours is a youth-obsessed culture, demanding living in the now with youthful gusto. Who has time for lessons learned and the wisdom that comes with age? Here's one example that only older people know: All this excitement about legalizing marijuana is being fomented by people who know nothing of the exhaustive social and scientific marijuana research conducted in the 1930s and the harmful biological effects in the 1970s.  Older scholars know about this, but younger ones seem woefully uninformed and uninterested in "old" research. Actually, that often applies to old research in all fields.

We are all going to get old, assuming we don't die first. Our friends, relatives, and loved ones are or will get old. As baby boomers retire, older people are coming to dominate the population. Modern medicine and the wide pursuit of healthier living styles have enabled many older people to live longer and remain vigorous and productive in their old age. Yet, in this country and many other Western countries, we shun, neglect, and sometimes abuse the old. This is the theme of a recent blog by the CEO of a medical products company, Sue Chen.

Chen contends that as people age, others lose interest in engaging with them. A recent National Research Council study indicated that older adults are stigmatized as a group. Older people are treated like old people in social groups and in the workplace. Less is expected of seniors. Seniors in turn expect less of themselves. Chen asserts that younger people shun the elderly and don't want to think about aging because they are afraid of their own impending aging. They know that older people become more socially isolated and that the loneliness is magnified when divorce or death causes the loss of a spouse. Children are unintentionally conditioned to have negative bias about older people. Young families often shut out older parents, aunts, and uncles. We seem to have abandoned the "extended family" concept that was so wholesomely dominant only a few decades ago.

Fear of further aging and being sick and lonely grows with each passing year. Fear of aging is unwarranted, at least for healthy seniors with sufficient retirement income. Actually, one's later years can be the best years of life. Helen Hayes, at age 73, said "The hardest years are between 10 and 70." Paul Meyer, upon reaching 70, claimed that "Life begins at 70." By that time we all have accumulated a "rich reserve" of life experiences and lessons learned. He tries to do all the things he has always done. He points out some of the many advantages of old age, such as people expecting less of you. What you do accomplish makes a bigger impression because it isn't expected. At 70 you have more choices. You can act your age or act young. You can do things you didn't have time for in the past, particularly "smelling the roses." You can take naps without feeling guilty. You feel less guilty about the way you raised your kids, because now they know just how hard raising kids is and are having many of the same difficulties and angst as you did. Time becomes precious, because it is running out. You therefore spend it more wisely. You don't waste time on harmful emotions or personal animosities.

Now at 81, my experience is consistent with what Hayes and Meyer concluded.  I am, even though semi-retired, more efficient and almost as productive in my profession as when I "retired." Amazingly, I have discovered more free time to work. And now, I get to do what I want to do, not what others want me to do. But the biggest advantage of aging, as I see it, is that older people have typically learned more about how to cope with disappointment and adversity and how to squeeze the sweet and good juice out of life.

In the absence of debilitating sickness, aging can be a great blessing. There are many things people can and should be doing to make the senior years the best years of their lives. These include eating well, exercising frequently and vigorously, constructing a positive emotional attitude, becoming more active in mental and social life, getting frequent medical checkups, and most of all I think, living with an honorable purpose.

To know more about aging well, check out my e-book, Improve Your Memory for a Healthy Brain. Memory Is the Canary in Your Brain's Coal Mine, available at Smashwords.com. My "Improve Learning and Memory" blog is at http://thankyoubain.blogspot.com.

Sources:

http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195138931.001.0001/acprof-9780195138931-chapter-4. Accessed Oct. 17, 2015.

Chen, Sue (2015). What you don't know about aging could kill you. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hippo-reads/what-you-dont-know-about-_9_b_8091512.html

Meyer, Paul J. (2000). Making the rest the best. Chicken Soup for the Golden Soul. Deerfield Beach, Fl.: Health Communications.  p. 480-486.