What Makes you Think That?

Recently, a friend asked me if I believed in the concept of free will. I responded instantly “yes”, as is my wont. He probed deeper, asking “what makes you think that?” Immediately, something welled within me, as I delayed my immediate response of launching into a monologue about the ineffable nature of consciousness and how contradictory it would be to lack free will but feel as if one had some degree of control. The feeling was that of knowing I had an opportunity to be succinct and humorous, and grasping for the words which called me. Without missing much of a beat, I responded to my friend’s “what makes you think that” with, “I chose to”. My friend chuckled and, well, that settled it. In some cases, less is certainly more.

This occasion served me, not (just) as a moment to score some points with a short quip, but also later as an introspective example of how consciousness works. For, while I was searching for the words which I believed to be within reach (a faith-based endeavor), I was also actively holding myself back from expounding the same tired old arguments which would feel more like recitation. This moment felt like an active veto process, whereby my subconscious was actively subverted by my higher level conscious functions, just long enough to reach the witty quip. Most of my understanding of consciousness comes from the book The User Illusion by Tor Nørretranders, a book which I highly recommend. In his chapter titled The Half-Second Delay, Nørretranders relates Benjamin Libet’s experiments investigating the conscious ability to initiate an action. Nørretranders writes, “consciousness is the instance of selection that picks and chooses among the many options nonconsciousness offers up.” My largest take-away from this book was that, yes, the vast majority of actions we take every day are controlled by a level of our cognition that we cannot lay claim to (just think about how little attention you pay to how you walk, let alone the digestion of your food!). However, the role of consciousness is not as a top-down controller of every aspect of our being. Rather, we train our unconscious daily through the actions which we focus on until they become habit. For example, when learning a new sport or hobby, it’s very tricky at first and conscious attention must be made simply to avoid the easiest of mistakes. However, once those actions become habit, you are able to shift your focus to higher-order processes like strategy and technique, trusting that your subconsciousness will keep you from tripping all over yourself.

In this way, and along the lines of my introspective moment meta-analyzing consciousness, my conscious efforts were focused on rallying the troops of my unconscious and vetoing unsatisfactory answers until a suitable one was brought forth, which immediately made its way to my lips. In a sense, I was opening myself up to the world, prayerfully and open-mindedly, until the humorous response I was seeking came unto me. My free will was that which knew better to wait and formulate that response. As Nietzsche wrote in Beyond Good and Evil, “the greater part of conscious thinking must be counted among the instinctive functions.” This does not discount the very active role that consciousness takes in the process of thinking, rather it paints a much more wholist perspective on thought. The uncritical critic would point out that we cannot think up our thoughts, stop there, and conclude that conscious free will is bunk. Indeed, if we were the ones producing all of our thoughts, what would be the point of thinking them when they already reside within our cranium? That line of reasoning flirts with postulating a homunculus residing in our heads who is the true object of introspection. Instead, a more fruitful outcome arises by acknowledging that thoughts do emerge out of an ineffable substrate, and instead of dispensing with thinking as a deterministic process we can open our minds to a greater range of thoughts, pray that wisdom be delivered unto us, and faithfully reproduce those actions which lead to deep and sagacious lines of inquiry.

An astute skeptic may point out that our language indicates that none of these thoughts could have been our own. For example, language which even I have slipped into while describing my own introspection such as “something welled within me”, “words which called me”, or most frequently “it came to me”, “I was struck by”, the list goes on. I would point out that these linguistic unfortunates are the consequence primarily of the essential ineffability of consciousness. For, if we could deterministically describe exactly what is causing our thoughts, that would close the door on any room for conscious free will. Therefore, our language reflects innately the reality of living in a world with free will: we usually cannot find the best way to describe it. That is no reason to stop progress in directions which aim to describe our higher order functions: neuroscience, psychology, philosophy of mind. Rather, I say, march onwards and keep charting out the complicated border between consciousness and unconsciousness. We will only be the freer for it.