In Rationality + Consciousness = Free Will Hodgson ambitiously takes us on a journey from questions about how we can have knowledge through rationality, reasoning, consciousness, the nature of the physical world all the way to values, punishment and how to interpret the western mono-theisms. The book as aimed at a general audience and Hodgson has gone to some effort to make his large world view digestible by all. Indeed all the central claims he wishes to endorse are highlighted and re-presented at the end of each chapter. Professional academics, however, may find some of the claims too sparsely researched to be considered plausible (such as a reliance on non-peer reviewed sources for discussions of indeterminism in quantum mechanics, p. 122).

The central aim of the book is to develop an account of free-will which is dependent on a particular view of consciousness. The account of free will which Hodgson advocates allows real alternatives, in the strongest possible sense. Our will is free when we choose between ways in which the world could in fact go at a particular time. As such he offers what has been called a “Libertarian” account of free will. For Hodgson then the future world is not wholly determined by the past world and the laws of nature, but instead is constrained to a few possibilities by these factors. The conscious subject is able to freely and for good reasons choose between alternatives which it finds presented to itself.

How such choices are made is to be understood with reference to consciousness. For Hodgson it is conscious experience which allows a person to reasonably, but in a manner not wholly determined by the past and laws of nature, choose between alternatives. These choices are not wholly determined by the past and laws of nature, Hodgson contends, because they are not the sort of thing which laws can act on (p. 79). Laws, it is thought, cannot act on experiences as they enable the person to grasp whole situations (“gestalts”), whereas laws can only act on the constituent parts of the whole (p. 79-85). Decisions are however, reasonable, as the experience itself constitutes a reason for choosing as the subject chooses (p 71, 80).

Given that Hodgson understands the natural world in terms of laws and he proposes that laws do not wholly determine conscious decisions one might ask if he is takes consciousness to be somehow non- or super-natural. The answer is: not entirely. He offers what he calls a dual-aspect account of consciousness (reminiscent of what others have called “property dualism”), on which experience has both a physical aspect, i.e., the brain, and a mental aspect (p. 58). Both are necessary aspects of consciousness. This is how Hodgson creates conceptual room for his account of conscious decision making. As consciousness has a physical aspect conscious decisions are constrained by the laws of nature, but as it has a non-physical aspect, the laws do not determine what the decision will be.

Although Hodgson does present what appears to be a largely internally consistent world view, there are challenges to his view which can be raised from the outside. Some of these challenges are explicitly considered by Hodgson. Rightly, much of his account is an attempt to deal with the contention (prominent amongst those who argue that we can have free will even if the world is wholly determined, a position known as “compatibilism”) that a decision cannot be both undetermined and reasonable. Other worries are, however, not explicitly taken on.

For example he takes it that all sciences offer explanations of natural phenomena in terms of laws (p. 115) and that these laws in fact govern the world (p. 56, 85) rather than merely describe it. Although both of these assumptions are controversial (see Chalmers 1999 for an intrduction) Hodgson does not offer a positive case for why we ought to accept them. This is particularly worrisome as it is from the sciences which study things like consciousness and decision making that we see explanations which do not make reference to laws at all, (see e.g. Craver 2007). The concern here is that on the alternative view of the natural world offered by these “mechanists” causation is not simply a matter of following the laws of nature. On such a view Hodgson’s motivation for positing a non-natural or non-physical aspect of consciousness disappears. This is because on the mechanist view there can be physical causes which are not law governed in Hodgson’s sense and so even if it is true that conscious decisions are not determined by laws it does not follow that they are non-physical as there are physical causes which are not law governed.

We may also worry if Hodgson’s description of consciousness is correct. His claim that conscious decisions are not law governed rests on the claim that in conscious experiences we perceive wholes “all at once” (p. 80). However, studies in change blindness suggests that consciousness is not an “all at once” phenomenon (for an older, but conviently short, review see  Simons and Levin 1997). In a typical change blindness set up large changes to a visual scene are missed by momentarily occupying the subject’s attention.

O’Regan and colleagues have placed some of their examples on the internet at: http://nivea.psycho.univ-paris5.fr/Mudsplash/Nature_Supp_Inf/Movies/Movie_List.html  

That such large changes can be missed in this way suggests that even just the visual scene (not even all of consciousness) is not presented to the subject all at once as Hodgson requires.

Although a thoughtful and internally consistent work, failure to explicitly deal with some aspects of the alternative world view espoused by Hodgson’s opponents suggests that the arguments in Rationality + Consciousness = Free Will are unlikely to convince those who hold alternative views as to the nature of the physical world and consciousness.

 

Chalmers, A. F. (1999). What is This Thing Called Science 3rd Edition, UQP.

Craver, C. F. (2007). Explaining the brain, Oxford University Press, USA.

Simons, D. J. and D. T. Levin (1997). “Change blindness.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 1(7): 261-267.

 

©  2012 Glenn Carruthers

 

 

Glenn Carruthers