Dr. Peter Lugten June, 2023
Philosophers from all walks of Academia have long pondered the question as to whether we possess free will, whether what seems to us to be genuine is really an illusion. For the purposes of this article, I will take as a starting position that the Universe is indeterminist and that we are not predetermined by a fate set in place at the Big Bang. Justification for this can be found in my essay “Of Clouds, Clocks and Free Will”, which disproves the notion, popular amongst contemporary philosophers of mind and prominent neuroscientists, of either a hard or a soft version of determinism. That paper discusses how free will can emerge from patterns of oscillating neuronal activity. Because “modules” of neuronal activity, representing ideas, oscillate subconsciously, competing for conscious attention, the choice between them is partly random. A conscious neural circuit that reflects our character, which has been named differently by different researchers, is able to veto lower-level decisions. I propose that this circuit learns from experience and then rebalances the oscillations appropriately, so that they conform to what we consider to be our will. This theory applies not only to “snap” decisions, but to our moral core, allowing particular experiences to influence our future ethical judgements. This model of our free will shows how, despite partial predetermination and partial randomness, our consciousness is able to train our subconscious neural activity such that we are able to accept responsibility for our generally but not entirely predictable decisions. The model also links free will to creativity and humor, which share circuits that are not predetermined.
This theory of Modular Plastic Control also explains weak will, recognized by Aristotle as “akrasia” and in our kitchens by the strong desire to eat the extra slice of chocolate cake. In this case, the battle between the “do eat” and the “don’t eat” modules can be swayed over time by a combination of the illness we feel after indulging, and the ability of our minds, over time, to harness feelings of disgust from our amygdala, and fortify our will power. However, the fact is that there are pathological conditions which can disrupt our self-control.
This presents us with the problem of addiction. According to Greek legend, Addicus was a slave who kept wearing his shackles even after his master had set him free. Some philosophers have argued that, if addicts cannot stop themselves from taking another hit, they cannot have free will. Harry Frankfurt, professor emeritus at Princeton, denied free will to even the willing addict, because the coincidence of that person’s “second-order volition”, or effective desire, and the “first-order desire” simply to get high, is not under the addict’s control(Frankfurt 1971). I’m going to guess that these philosophers have not suffered from drug addiction, and neither have I. But they should share my interest in an article in the New York Times by Maia Szalavitz, titled “Do Addicts Have Free Will?”(Szalavitz April 2023) Szalavitz, a contributing Opinion writer, and author of “Undoing Drugs: How Harm Reduction is Changing the Future of Drugs and Addiction”(Hachette, 2021), introduces herself to readers as having been addicted to cocaine and heroin in the 1980’s. She considers herself lucky that she got help before it was too late. During her addiction, she knew that ongoing drug use made no sense, and could ruin her dearest relationships as well as her future, but, as she wrote, “I didn’t believe I could cope any other way”. She notes that recent research “shows that addiction doesn’t mean either being completely subject to irresistible impulses or making totally free choices. Addiction’s effects on decision making are complex”.
On the one hand, addicts have a certain degree of control. She notes that few of them will inject drugs in front of the police, and are thus able to delay use. They may make complicated plans to obtain and hide their drugs, exhibiting purposeful activity. Given the option, they will use clean needles. Small rewards for drug-free urine tests, as in contingency management therapy, are “quite successful at helping people quit, which couldn’t be possible if addiction obliterated choice”.
On the other hand, addicts will persist in their usage in the face of being cut off from family and friends, losing jobs and becoming homeless, contracting infectious diseases, and being repeatedly jailed. Salavitz considers that the majority of these addicts have other psychiatric disorders, such as childhood trauma, or, as in her case, a then undiagnosed autism spectrum disorder. Research, she writes, suggests that as children grow, their “emotions and desires are calibrated to guide them toward what their brains predict will meet their social and physical needs”. This normally leads to more control, optimizing choices, but addiction interferes with these processes. It alters “how a person makes choices and responds to consequences”.
In answer to the question of whether addicted persons should be held responsible for their behavior, Szalavitz holds with Professor Hanna Pickard, of philosophy and bioethics at John Hopkins University, who calls for “Responsibility without Blame”. (see Responsibility without Blame E-Learning at hannapickard.com). According to this view, addicts do have some control over their actions, but it is compromised. They do not deserve to be blamed for them. Recognizing that shaming and punishment are counterproductive to therapy, this approach aims to provide the skills and resources people need to change, and to hold them accountable, with compassion, as they learn to make different choices.
Addictions are the result of a disturbance of the brain’s reward system, which is a key element in the satisfaction we derive from behaving in a manner consistent with our character, even if it means giving up some particular pleasurable action. It was first investigated by James Olds and Peter Milner, who implanted electrodes into the midbrain and ventral striatum of rats(Olds 1956). Once rats learned to activate the electrodes by pressing a lever, they wanted nothing else but to press the lever repeatedly, foregoing food, sometimes until they died. The reward system of the brain attaches values to our actions, assigned either consciously or unconsciously, based on experience.(Klemm 2011, p 167) This helps refine the decision-making process through reinforcement within the brain stem. Negative reinforcement arises from the reticular formation of the medulla oblongata, especially the central gray area, which also mediates the unpleasantness of pain. This is part of a larger area of negativity that reinforces dysphoria, depression, negative emotions and involves the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, the insula, the somatosensory cortex and parts of the thalamus. Meanwhile, positive reinforcement arises from dopamine transmission in multiple locations of the brainstem and basal ganglia, linked by the Medial Forebrain Bundle (MFB), through the lateral hypothalamus, critical circuits in the Ventral Tegmental Area (VTA), the ventral striatum, portions of the amygdala, and the ventral medial Prefrontal Cortex (PFC). In addition to dopamine in the substantia nigra, and noradrenaline (locus coeruleus), serotonin is an important neurotransmitter in the MFB. Klemm notes that studies have linked the prediction of potential reward-winning behaviors to the VTA. In addition, the orbitofrontal cortex contains neurons coding for reward magnitude. (p 176) Rewarding and adverse stimuli converge on the same circuits, which presumably combine them to make decisions emotional responses to both social and physical pleasures and painfulness. At rest, 67% of reward area neurons fire spontaneously in a slow oscillation synchronous with the PFC(p 78). Sometimes, the brain must deal with conflict between reward-driven compulsions and our “better judgment”, dealt with in the cingulate cortex.
Recent work by Kent Berridge, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Michigan, has shown that “liking” and “wanting” are two separately mediated sides to the coinage of reward(Berridge 2022). Liking a stimulus, and the satisfaction of having obtained it, is associated with the brain’s natural opioids, operating in “hedonic hotspots” of mu opioid receptors, located in the nucleus accumbens, the insula, the ventral pallidum and another in the orbitofrontal cortex. Endocannabinoids and some neurotransmitters other than dopamine also act on these hotspots, which recruit all the others when activated. Wanting more of it, and the motivation to obtain it, is associated with dopamine circuits, for instance, in the remainder of the nucleus accumbens. During drug addiction, the ability of the dopamine circuit to satisfy the want for the drug decreases, due to “down regulation” of receptors, and so the demand for more increases. In some people, there is also a structural hypersensitization of the dopamine signal, driving an urge that can last for decades. Meanwhile, this happens as the like for the drug can diminish, leaving the addict to desperately chase a more elusive satisfaction.
An intriguing example of this interplay and its effect on free will concerns a married family man who developed a brain tumor in the year 2000 that turned him into a sex addict and a pedophile(Gander 2016). He became progressively obsessed and his behavior intolerable, despite medical treatments, and was about to be jailed, when he developed symptoms pointing to a brain tumor. Removal of the tumor led to his resumption of his normal life, at least, until the tumor relapsed, and the urges returned. A second surgery was curative. The tumor interfered with the orbitofrontal cortex and its regulation of social behavior, leading to loss of the normal control. But not so much that he didn’t seek the surgical remedy.
This example, and the more common example of addictive behavior, shows that pathological processes can change our character by interfering with, or even perverting, the feedback mechanisms between or conscious and subconscious levels. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Addiction, argues that addiction undermines free will by disrupting the necessary neural circuits.(Volkow 2015) Although it begins voluntarily, it becomes the result of a different brain state. The Prefrontal Cortex, she explained, “is critical in our ability to change our behavior when the environment changes so that we can optimize our actions. To sustain effort. To resist immediate rewards. To delay gratification. To be able to consider a goal for our future, and carry it through. And drugs disrupt that”. Admittedly, there are “high-functioning addicts”. The alcohol consumption of Sir Winston Churchill was legendary, and the alcoholic Boris Yeltsin was able to dissolve the Soviet Union, transform Russia into a market economy, and bravely resist an attempted coup. Nonetheless, the will power of the addict is unable to resist the subconscious urges of the addiction, even when all conscious feedback is against it, and the conscious desire of the addict is to resist. There is no puzzle here as to whether the free will of an addict exists or not. It exists but is compromised by the pathology, just like our ability to throw a ball is compromised by a broken arm.
One of the most common addictions, to look at an average street scene in America, is that of addiction to food. It is able to thwart all resistance to the extra slice of chocolate cake, and has contributed to an “epidemic” of obesity and its related medical comorbidities. Contributing factors include the way that ultraprocessed foods are deliberately formulated to be “so palatable and satisfying that they’re almost addictive”, to quote Dr. Eric M. Hecht, an epidemiologist at the Schmidt College of Medicine, Florida Atlantic University.(Wadyka 2023) Also contributing, the ubiquity of ultraprocessed foods, especially in neighborhoods known as “food deserts”, where healthy foods are either too expensive, or not available, and, of course, the heavy advertising for unhealthy foods.
As noted by Maia Szalavitz in “What Ozempic Reveals About Desire”(Szalavitz, June 2023), Dr. Berridge is now convinced that food addictions act on the same systems that cause craving for drugs. Under normal circumstances, liking and especially wanting, dial down after appetite has been satisfied. Once full, most people will turn down more food. Ozempic and Mounjaro are members of a new class of diabetes and obesity drugs that work differently from earlier medications. Called GLP-1 receptor agonists, they significantly reduce wanting and craving for food and its associated emotional distress, and restores the ability to feel satisfied after having eaten. They modulate the motivational dopamine systems, but not in a way that reduces desire in general. This lowers the body’s set point weight, about which it will tend to fluctuate. Berridge considers that GLP-1 drugs work by controlling the focus of desire, reducing the value that motivational systems place on getting more food now. They shift attention rather than blocking pleasure, and this could work for other addictions as well.
Free will is also sensitive to hunger and tiredness (being “hangry”, to quote Hanna Pickard in the April, 2023, Szalavitz article). Nobelist Daniel Kahneman, professor emeritus at Princeton, and the late Amos Tversky of Stanford proposed that the task-solving network involving careful deliberation which they called System 2 will then yield to the fast, intuitive and largely subconscious System 1 network(Kahneman 2011). The resultant “ego-depletion” explains why, for instance, judges tend to award longer sentences later in the afternoon. It is important, from the point of view of consistency of character, to recognize such tendencies and other biases, and adjust accordingly. Reconsider, when possible, decisions made in anger, even adopt the old trick of counting up to ten before blurting out a regrettable remark.
In conclusion, I think it fair to say that addictions are not examples that deny the existence of free will in general or in the particular instances of each addict. On the contrary, by illuminating the mechanism of the reward system in the brain by demonstrating how it can go wrong. This provides support for the Modular Plastic Control theory of genuine Free Will, and its associated feedback, reward-based organization.
References:
Berridge, Kent.(2022) “Neuroscience of Pleasure, Reward, Liking and Wanting
Motivation, Addiction and Emotion”. Mind and Matter Podcast, Nick Jikomes, Nov 1
Frankfurt, H.G.(1971) “Freedom of Will and the Concept of the Person”. The Journal of
Philosophy 68(1) 5-20
Gander, Kashmira.(2016) “The man whose brain tumor turned him into a paedophile”. The Independent, Feb 24
Kahneman, Daniel.(2011) “Thinking Fast and Slow”. Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Klemm, W.R.(2011) “Atoms of Mind: The Ghost in the Machine Materializes”. Springer
Olds, J.(1956) “Pleasure Centers in the Brain”. Scientific American, 195(4) 105-117
Szalavitz, Maia.(April, 2023) “Do Addicts Have Free Will?” New York Times, April 30
Szalavitz, Maia.(June, 2023) “What Ozempic Reveals About Desire”. New York Times,
June 5
Wadyka, Sally.(2023) “What Ultraprocessed Foods Can Do to the Brain” New York Times, May 18
Volkow, N.D.(2015) “Addiction is a disease of free will”. Retrieved from https://archives.drugabuse.gov/about-nida/noras-blog/2015/06/addiction-disease-free-will
Scholarship of Fools Philosophy 