Are we monkeys riding tigers?

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Dance monkey. Dance.

About this time of year we all go about making our resolutions for the coming year. I, for example, have resolved to be in the best physical shape of my life and also to have the best year of my life (God willing). The latter includes using my free will to make proper decisions based on the experience gained from bad past ones. Resolutions seem to be an acknowledgement of the hope that we do indeed possess the free will to determine our fate, regardless of what has happened to us in the past or what some “magical power” wishes upon us (but just to be safe some throw in a “God willing” whether or not they are believers). To quote Swami Vivekananda on the subject:

Each one of us is the maker of our own fate. We, and none else are responsible for what we enjoy or suffer. We are the effects, and we are the causes. We are free therefore. If I an unhappy, it is of my own making, and that shows that I can be happy if I will. The human will stands beyond all circumstance. Before it — the strong, gigantic, infinite will and freedom in man — all the powers, even of nature, must bow down, succumb and become its servants. This is the result of the law of Karma. [Link]

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p>An article in the New York Times, however, throws us a curve ball. Perhaps we have as much free will as a monkey standing backward while riding a tiger with a mind of its own. Perhaps free will is an illusion also:

A bevy of experiments in recent years suggest that the conscious mind is like a monkey riding a tiger of subconscious decisions and actions in progress, frantically making up stories about being in control.

As a result, physicists, neuroscientists and computer scientists have joined the heirs of Plato and Aristotle in arguing about what free will is, whether we have it, and if not, why we ever thought we did in the first place. [Link]

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of cause-and-effect type experiments in my own life in order to test out this whole free will thing. I think I may have finally arrived at a point where I am able to make some fairly accurate predictions based on limited data, simply by paying careful attention to my thoughts as I have them. In a few instances last year I was able to predict an answer even before presented with an actual problem. I suppose this was a good thing but as recently as today (before reading this article) I had begun to question my free will. I can’t help but think (or hope) that there should be some randomness thrown in to the system to make in less neat. I also hope that there isn’t a point where you become so enamored with the idea of free will that you keep watching yourself exercise it like a never-ending game, just to prove to yourself that you are still free. Did the last few sentences feel like a confusing abyss?

Daniel C. Dennett, a philosopher and cognitive scientist at Tufts University who has written extensively about free will, said that “when we consider whether free will is an illusion or reality, we are looking into an abyss. What seems to confront us is a plunge into nihilism and despair…”

Einstein [said]… “This knowledge of the non-freedom of the will protects me from losing my good humor and taking much too seriously myself and my fellow humans as acting and judging individuals,” he said. [Link]

I don’t know about you guys but I am going to read this post again just before going to bed. I am somehow convinced that if I dream that I am a monkey riding a tiger I will be able to swivel facing forward by the time I wake up and my life will be different.

In the 1970s, Benjamin Libet, a physiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, wired up the brains of volunteers to an electroencephalogram and told the volunteers to make random motions, like pressing a button or flicking a finger, while he noted the time on a clock.

Dr. Libet found that brain signals associated with these actions occurred half a second before the subject was conscious of deciding to make them.

The order of brain activities seemed to be perception of motion, and then decision, rather than the other way around.

In short, the conscious brain was only playing catch-up to what the unconscious brain was already doing. The decision to act was an illusion, the monkey making up a story about what the tiger had already done. [Link]

I recognize that this Times article might be a bit too deep for the first day back to work but I know that I’m not the only one wondering how free they truly are today.

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But most of the action is going on beneath the surface. Indeed, the conscious mind is often a drag on many activities. Too much thinking can give a golfer the yips. Drivers perform better on automatic pilot. Fiction writers report writing in a kind of trance in which they simply take dictation from the voices and characters in their head, a grace that is, alas, rarely if ever granted nonfiction writers. [Link]

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I agree with this. Some of my best writing can be attributed to voices in my head.

I sought clarity from mathematicians and computer scientists. According to deep mathematical principles, they say, even machines can become too complicated to predict their own behavior and would labor under the delusion of free will. [Link]

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p>This is true too. It is what is happening on Battlestar Galactica so it must be.

Keep dancing you monkeys.

59 thoughts on “Are we monkeys riding tigers?”

  1. I am seduced by metaphysical questions. Reading this discussion reminds me of a Woody Allen movie. I don’t recall which one. Woody plaintively asks his father something to the effect “How could Hitler exist? Why did the Holocaust happen?” Dressed in a strapped undershirt, his father responds. “How the hell do I know? I don’t even know how the toaster works” throws up his hands and leaves the room. The questions here are rather intimidating along with some of the answers.

    I donÂ’t think scientists understand why consciousness has evolved the way it has or how it works. Although some do feel that they will be able to deconstruct it in time. I believe weÂ’ll understand a lot more in time.

    I recall reading a book titled “ I Am That” which is a series of Q & A’s with a mystic in the Hindu tradition ( I apologize if the terminology is a little off). I have the book somewhere but I can’t put my hands on it. I believe he said “I Am.” is the primary reality and that we create our own world like a movie flicking across a white screen. He suggested each of us is a witness who is greater than any particular thing you can describe. We are reality and reality is the unmanifest and love is the supreme. This seems on the mark.

    I get a little uncomfortable with terms like God, Godhood, and soul. I guess I would call myself Christian and feel that it is important to have a reference point greater than one’s self. For me the Bible is not literal, it is as they say in Pirates of the Caribbean “kinda like guidelines”.

    It seems the focus of Western religion is oneÂ’s relationship with the outer world while Eastern religion emphasizes oneÂ’s inner world. Both have something to offer.

    As for the free will question, I am guess I am of the opinion that most of us have free will “sorta” camp. I think some of the frameworks and disciplines in “I am That” expand our free will giving us a chance to nudge the tiger once in awhile.

  2. In the book Moby Dick, Herman Melville has his say about free will. This is from the Chapter entitled Matmaker.

    “The straight warp of necessity, not to be served from its ultimate course – its every alternating vibration, indeed, only to tending that; free will free to still ply her shuttle between given threads; and chance, though restrained in its play within the lines of necessity, and sideways in its motions directed by free will, though thus prescribed by both, chance by turns rules either, and has the last featuring blow at events.”

    Gary

  3. Gary, I’m with you, I can’t resist metaphyscial discussions even if they are frustrating at times.

    As for the free will question, I am guess I am of the opinion that most of us have free will “sorta” camp.

    I’m not sure I know what you mean by free will “sorta”. We either have it or we don’t. An intermediate option is too mindbogglingly complex to entertain. Yes, external events happen and you can call that chance. However insofar as they affect us personally depends on how we choose to react to that event which is free will. The same event or life challenge can have completely different outcomes depending on who it affects.

  4. Createexpress,

    I think the choices individuals make are often with limited awareness of why they are making a particular choice. Limited awareness constrains the range of responses – more likely reactions that a person has. In an ideal world, I agree an individual has the freedom to respond to a given stimuli anyway they choose but as a practical matter for most of us our freedom is constrained by our history, culture and genetics. I think society has a right to hold individuals personally accountable for what they do.

    I also think chance often has a significant influence on the outcome of what a person chooses to do. A person may choose one action but depending on the chain events which follow the action outcomes may be totally different. Lots people presume I take action A therefore it caused outcome B. I think it may be that Descartes duality thing (not really sure, I’m not up on that stuff). I don’t think this view of the world is necessarily representative of “reality”.

  5. I recall reading a book titled “ I Am That” which is a series of Q & A’s with a mystic in the Hindu tradition ( I apologize if the terminology is a little off).

    Aham Brahmasmi?

  6. I think the choices individuals make are often with limited awareness of why they are making a particular choice. Limited awareness constrains the range of responses

    You absolutely hit the nail on the head Gary. This, I thought, was the whole point of this thread – that we are so limited in our awareness that we don’t even realize the power of the tiger on whose back we are riding. If we could expand our awareness to take control of the tiger we would no longer be a victim of chance. There can be no chance when you are in control of your own thoughts, words and actions at the deepest level of consciousness. Its a pretty tall order and it takes a lot of practice but I’m told its where we all want to go eventually.

  7. Karmabyte

    Here is the full title of the book. I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta . It’s listed on Amazon.com

  8. Createxpress,

    Thank you for the kind words.

    “There can be no chance when you are in control of your own thoughts, words and actions at the deepest level of consciousness.”

    I guess the concept of chance is elminated if a deep level of consciousness includes acceptance of what is.

    Gary,