[See here for introductory comments.]
We've now introduced the basic components of the soul that comprise my theory of the soul (see: input, output, processing), but there is one more general point I want to make before we dive into some specific applications of the theory, and I'm going to make this point by way of an analogy. I want to make use of this analogy in future entries, so I want to present it now before we proceed any further.
The
purpose of this analogy is to provide an intuitive sense of the characteristics
of the connection between the output component of the soul (will/self/agent of the soul - see here) and the physical brain. The analogy is this: imagine a jockey on a horse, where the horse
represents our physical body (especially the brain) and the jockey represents
our soul (especially the will)[1]. That's hardly much of an analogy, since
jockeys are just humans with wills and horses are living, fully physical beings
with physical brains. It's kind of
circular, I know. But the key point of
the analogy is this: the jockey has soft spaghetti noodle for
reins and, further, the reins have handles covered in razor sharp thorns.
I know this
analogy seems odd and almost goofy, but this is just meant to be a tool for
conceptualizing the link between the spiritual and the physical. Humor me for a moment and let me pull some
thoughts out and see if this analogy is a useful tool for you. First, note that the horse can go on
its merry way without waiting for the jockey to do anything. In the same way, our physical brain can
function without the will. This was the
point of "A Dog's Life." Second,
note that the control the jockey has over the horse is via a tenuous, weak
connection that I've illustrated as wet noodles. The horse can overpower the jockey at any
time. It is a constant struggle for the
jockey to exert control over the horse because of the condition of the
reins. It is not impossible, just difficult.
It is possible, with patient training, for the jockey to train the horse
to respond to the wimpy reins, but it is always a tenuous situation. There are frequent failures in which the
horse goes off on its own and ignores the jockey.
At least for
me, this helps to understand the perplexing human condition that free will
presents us with. As I have stated
elsewhere, I am convinced that humans have free will <here for
example>. I believe we can make
decisions (we "could do otherwise") and we can be held responsible
for our decisions. But there is also
this very odd thing that we all experience:
we don't always do what we
"want" to do. We make
mistakes that we claim are "out of character". We say things that we instantly regret. We look back on our life and say "I
should have made a better decision" in any number of situations. We know we could have made a better decision.
We wanted to make a better
decision. But we didn't! What kind of
free will is that? Well, I would submit
to you that it is free will implemented via wet noodles! We absolutely can make correct moral and ethical decisions, it's just really hard
for us.
This part of
the analogy is also meant to illustrate the "slow response" and
"training" aspects of our free will.
The noodles exert a wimpy influence, and therefore significant training
is required to get the horse to respond to the reins. Good luck if the jockey suddenly decides he
wants to pull the horse up short. It
won't work. Instead, the jockey has to anticipate the need of stopping and
spend considerable time training the horse to respond to the wimpy pull of the
reins and obediently come to a halt.
This has to be done in advance.
It's difficult to do, but possible with patient training. The point is this: when we are faced with a sudden major
important moral decision, our actions are influenced by our past training and
not so much by our soul's immediate influence at that moment. Let's say I
am suddenly faced with the time-limited opportunity where a "little white
lie" will gain me $1000. My
"horsey self" will surely go for that - why not? My "jockey self" must pull back on
the reins if I am to do the right thing and speak the truth. But if I have not already "decided",
in the past, that I want to be a "truth-teller" and have, therefore, trained myself to refrain from lying,
then my "jockey self" will have no chance to stop my "horsey
self" and I will lie and get the money.
Later I might say "I shouldn't have done that." That is the enigma of the human moral
experience. Our free will is a
wonderful, powerful force implemented through a weak, wimpy, and decidedly
un-wonderful pair of reins. We humans
are a conundrum in that way.
The third
component of the analogy is the sharp thorns on the handles. I know that reins don't always have handles,
but these do. And the problem is that
when the jockey uses them, it hurts. The harder the jockey has to pull, the more
it hurts. There is a personal
"cost" to pulling on the reins and trying to control the horse. Thus, from the jockey's perspective, there is
always a bias towards just letting the horse run free. At every turn, every change in speed, every
jump, the jockey has to decide "do I really need to try to change course,
or can I just let it go?" It hurts
to control the horse, so the jockey only exerts control when necessary.
What's the
point of this part of the analogy? I'm
trying to use this to illustrate the fact that we generally pick and choose
when to exert our true free will. I have
stated elsewhere that free will is primarily exerted in important moral
decisions [here]. I don't believe it has to be that way. I don't believe our free will is limited to only a few moral decisions. We could
decide to stand up right now. We could decide to turn left instead of
right. But, in general, we don't
exercise our free will in those situations because they are not worth the cost. The jockey evaluates the importance of each
choice and decides that squeezing yet again against the thorns is not
necessary. I'm not saying we don't make
a decision in those cases. Instead, I'm
saying that the jockey lets the horse go where it will. How does the horse decide? Like any other
physical, material system: decisions are
based on the inputs, past history, emotions, environment, etc. I also think that there are decisions that
get relegated to random selection within our brain. If we are faced with a decision that really
doesn't matter (as far as we know), then why spend the energy and effort to
decide? Flip a coin.
I have said
elsewhere that designing a scientific experiment to demonstrate free will is
very difficult and I hope this analogy helps you see why. Particularly in relation to the "thorny
handles", it is very hard to really put human beings into an experiment
where they will, in fact, exercise their true free will. Asking people to decide whether a number is
high or low, or whether a color matches the word, or even whether a hypothetical
moral decision is right or wrong, is just never going to be worth the cost of
grabbing those thorny handles. The human
subject in those experiments is fully aware that the situation is not
important. Why engage free will? Let the horse do what it will. Let the horse react. Maybe engage the random number
generator. Thus, free will is not
exercised. To design an experiment that
really forces human beings to engage their free will would require, at the very
least, significant deception regarding the fact that they are part of a
scientific study. Ethically, such
experiments are generally not acceptable even if it were possible to design
them.
I hope you
will find this analogy helpful as we go through a more detailed discussion of
the soul. Think about it in your own
personal experience. I'm sure you have freely chosen to do things that you
didn't want to do. That statement is such a total contradiction
that it makes no sense, yet it is somehow true!
I hope the analogy helps you see how such a statement can be illogical
yet true.
Finally, I
think I should clarify that the "self " should be considered to be
the entire horse, jockey, and reins conglomerate. It is a mistake, I believe, to say that the "true
me" is just the jockey. It's also a
mistake to say that the true me is just the horse. In this analogy, "we" are the whole
package. We are responsible for the
decisions made by the entire conglomerate.
And, therefore, the struggle is
real! I really like how the Apostle Paul
expressed it: "I do not understand
what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do...For what I
do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do-- this I keep
on doing." [Rom 7:15, 19]
[1]
Note that this is not the same as Plato's Chariot Allegory, although that
allegory also deals with how we make decisions and the difficulty in doing
so. This also is not the same as Freud's horse and rider analogy. I might need to explain this further, but suffice it to say that, in my analogy, the horse has all the features of a real horse. It responds to inputs and makes decisions. In Plato, and then Freud, the analogies only use certain features of a horse (strength and power, for example).
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