There Is No “Should” in Free Will

In his article on free will and experimental philosophy, New York Times science writer John Tierney encourages people to believe in free will, offering evidence from several studies suggesting that the conviction that you are in control of your own destiny stimulates moral behavior.

In fact, the voluntary adoption of beliefs in order to achieve certain ends contradicts the very notion of free will: if you’re able to choose what you do, it’s unnecessary to manipulate yourself into behaving morally. The establishment of conditions leading to certain behaviors is only useful in a paradigm in which your behaviors are not under your control.

Furthermore, a world in which you can choose your beliefs, but not your actions and behaviors, constitutes a form of modified determinism that isn’t even acknowledged in the article. A negative belief in free will is assumed throughout to equate with a positive belief in determinism; Mr. Tierney utterly ignores the epistemological gray area that he himself appears to inhabit.

While the utility of adopting a belief that leads to positive real-world results (even if it is founded on shoddy assumptions) could be convincingly posed, I would still argue against doing so in the case of free will for the simple reason that it is a matter more properly left to science.

Just as we don’t adopt our beliefs about gravity, but instead derive them from the facts presented to us, so our thoughts and feelings about free will must be founded on the scientific evidence available to us. To do otherwise is to open ourselves to all other kinds of wishful thinking: we could also try believing that the sky is yellow because it makes the world look prettier, but in the end, the sky will still be blue, no matter how we try to manipulate our thoughts to the contrary.

The Expendable Organ: The Biology of the “Spare Tire”

Ever had the sneaking suspicion, when dieting or embarking on an exercise routine, that those extra pounds of fat are conspiring against you?

If so, you’ll be interested to hear that science has finally confirmed those suspicions.  Recent research has revealed that discrete “pouches” of fat – such as the belly fat that we commonly refer to as a “spare tire” – are not merely stored energy, as was previously thought.  Rather, the fat cells actively behave like an organ, synthesizing proteins and sending hormonal signals to the parts of the brain controlling appetite, blood sugar regulation, and feelings of fullness.

This is significant for two reasons.

First, it should affect the attitude we take toward diet and exercise.  If pouches of fat that we want to get rid of are sending signals to our brains asking for more sugar and salt and fat, then dieters should not put so much trust in their “felt” or “subjective” appetites when seeking to lose weight.  Our fat deposits are actively working against us, in a sense; and we must use our reason – our rational understanding of a proper diet – in deciding what and when to eat.

Second, it helps to answer the question of how, exactly, the presence of excessive fat contributes to illnesses like heart attack and stroke.  Oversized fat deposits do not merely impede the body’s healthy activity; they actively contribute to the body’s ill health.  According to research, the proteins manufactured by fat cells include 80 as-of-yet-unidentified proteins, and several that contribute to the regulation of insulin and blood sugar levels.

Yes, it’s true: that extra fat really does have a “mind” of its own.

Social Sadism: The US Army “Kill Team” Viewed in Light of The Stanford Prison Experiments

Today, it was announced that US soldiers in Afghanistan posed for photos alongside the dead bodies of civilians they had murdered.  These “trophy” photos recall not just the horrors of Abu Ghraib, but also the tendency of serial killers to keep “mementos” of their victims – photos, body parts, jewelry, a piece of clothing.

The German magazine Der Spiegel reports that after murdering a civilian in a ditch on the side of the road, the US kill team’s leader removed the dead man’s tooth and cut off a little finger.  This is more than murder; it is sadism conducted in a group setting.  This is social sociopathy.

When an individual behaves in such abhorrent ways, our culture will usually do one of the following: send him to the madhouse, imprison him, or execute him.  When it is not an individual acting alone, however, but rather a unit of men and women who are supposed to be representing the United States (and, by extension, all of its citizens), what is to be done?

Certainly, the situation must be rectified.  Most likely, the individuals involved (“the soldiers,” “the murderers”) will be held accountable for their actions and duly punished.  However, we must ask ourselves whether this sort of punishment is truly the most just, not to mention most effective, course of action in this case.

The fact that it was a group of individuals brought together randomly – that is, who did not self-select – is important.  This “kill team” was not, we can infer, a group of psychopaths who just happened to have been assigned duty in Afghanistan.  While we ponder how to bring justice to the murdered citizens, we must ask what would have led to such psychopathic behavior among otherwise “normal” individuals.

One possibility is that the soldiers were just following orders.  This same excuse has been given by soldiers in the Congo engaging in similarly sadistic behaviors, and it might almost be believable in this case if the soldiers had not taken such obvious delight in the murders, as evidenced by the trophy photos and demented mementos.

If it was neither individual volition nor adherence to orders that spurred this behavior, then what was it?  Furthermore, how should the individuals involved be dealt with, and how can such situations be prevented in the future?

One possibility is that the behavior resulted “merely” from situation.  This is the “social psychosis” or “social sociopathy” or “social sadism” or “social evil” hypothesis.  In the 1971 Standford Prison Experiment, one of the most famous behavioral experiments in the history of psychology, psychologist Philip Zimbardo simulated prison conditions in the basement of a Stanford University building.  Having recruited a group of male students to play “guard” and “prisoner,” he watched for a full week as the “guards’” behavior towards the “prisoners” became increasingly sadistic, resembling that of  the guards at Abu Ghraib.  Even Zimbardo himself was affected by the experiment; he notes in the Natural Geographic‘s documentary on evil his observation that, when entering the simulated prison, he held his hands clasped behind his back – classic body language of the “authority figure”.

Ethical or no, what this experiment is thought to have demonstrated is the power of situation on an individual’s actions.  An otherwise well-adjusted individual – say, a college student or soldier – will, if put in a position of power over others, unconsciously “become” evil, feeding off the inclination towards sadism that is encouraged by the situation.  The idea is that even the strongest individual’s willpower disappears in the face of such a powerful social force: even heroes will become monsters if put in such a position.  You and I are no exception.

If this is truly the case, then punishing the individuals involved in the “kill team” activities in the normal way, while perhaps mollifying an outraged public, will do nothing to solve the real issue at hand, and could even be thought unjust.  Taking an “eye for an eye” standpoint may give us a sense of satisfaction, but it is not true justice insofar as it fails to take change-over-time into account.

For example, we give prisoners opportunities to “change” – many criminals become reformed while in prison, at which point we no longer think it necessary to have them locked up.  (This is not the case for the most violent criminals, but perhaps this is because we feel that the deranged nature of their crimes is in direct proportion to the likelihood that they will act this way again.)  In other words, the goal of prison, just like that of psychiatric institutes, may in many instances be to “fix” what is “wrong” with the deterrent individual, such that he or she may be fit to walk the streets again.  In this view, it doesn’t matter what caused the individual’s sociopathic behavior in the first place; what matters is that it be eliminated.  If the prisoner is fully reformed, he should be allowed back on the streets, since he is no longer a danger to others or himself.

If this view is accurate, however, and situations of “group psychosis” arise only in context, then the indivuals undergoing trial for their previous actions are no longer the same people that they were when they were carrying out their abhorrent crimes.  In other words, once the soldiers are no longer in “kill team” context, they return to being normal citizens, and, depending on the amount of trauma they experienced while acting in ways contrary to what one may call their “true” nature, may even be further traumatized by having to undergo the public humiliation of standing accountable for crimes they committed while in a state of mind resembling that of a trance.  (Think of the paralyzing/mobilizing power of the crowd, of group mentality – which has certainly affected all of us at one time or another.)

We might still feel inclined to punish these individuals in the sense of “eye for an eye” justice.  As with anyone whose life is taken prematurely, we want their death to be justified; as people say, we don’t want the victims to have died “in vain”.  This is certainly a natural response – anger at those who have committed unjust acts against others.   It may also be the most practical response – for the outrage that would result from not punishing the offenders could possibly result in even more heinousness than has already been committed.  In the interest of keeping the peace, our best course of action may very well be to punish the offenders to the fullest extent of the law, as we would with those who had consciously and willfully committed such horrific acts.

In this case, it may very well be that the best course of action is not, in fact, the most just.  Whatever we decide to do with these individuals in response to their socially abhorrent actions, we must not forget the broader issue at hand: the existence of social sadism and the incredible effect that situation and group mentality can have on even the strongest will.  These soldiers are not sociopaths per se, but rather normal humans become sociopathic by way of unusual circumstance.  We must work on developing a system of justice that takes such phenomena into account.

The Giant Mimivirus: How Size Matters to the Tree of Life

Sometimes the smallest discovery – in this case, one that is 1/10,000th the size of a grain of rice – can lead to the biggest revolutions in our understanding of how the world works.

In 2010, an article in Nature Education announced that the Giant Mimivirus, the largest virus ever discovered, may potentially necessitate the creation of an entirely new branch in the tree of life.

Currently, the tree of life consists of 3 domains or main branches: Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukarya.  Viruses are not included, as they lack the mechanisms or behaviors (metabolism and protein encoding) that allow living organisms to thrive and reproduce.  Unlike the organisms composing the tree of life, viruses are essentially inanimate outside a living host cell.

The Mimivirus, discovered in pneumonia patients, is like other viruses insofar as it is incapable of replicating without the help of a host cell. However, it is unlike all known viruses in almost every other significant way: size, genetic material, and life potential.

The largest known viruses are classified as NCLDV (nucleocytoplasmic large DNA viruses).  The Mimivirus is larger than even these giants – in fact, its size is greater than many bacteria, which by definition should exclude it from being classed among viruses.  Furthermore, it has an unusually large volume of genetic material: it has 1.2 million base pairs in its DNA, far more than any other known virus and, again, many bacteria.   This means that in some ways, the Mimivirus is more like bacteria than other viruses.

Furthermore, the Mimivirus has more genes dedicated to activities associated with life – protein translation and metabolism -  than any other known virus.  Although there is no one gene that is common to every virus, the giant Mimivirus contains sequences unique to any virus: its genome includes 911 protein-encoding genes, some of which have never before been seen in a viral genome, including those found in the NCLDV group, which encompasses its closest viral relatives.

Because the origin of these unusual genes is not yet determined, it is impossible to know at this point whether they evolved these traits alongside living cells, or whether they are a form of evolutionarily advanced virus.  The first would affect the tree of life, while the second would merely affect the way viruses are classified.

Some scientists, unwilling to expand the tree of life to include cells incapable of life without host cells, have concluded, based on these distinguishing characteristics, that the giant Mimivirus constitutes a new branch of NCLDVs.  Others, perhaps more amenable to change, have suggested that the differences between it and other viruses and bacteria are so significant as to call the entire classificatory system for life into question.  This image, linked from the Nature Education article, illustrates one proposed alternative to the traditional tree: here, the forms of life are put into two groups based on encoding mechanisms, one for those organisms that encode via capsid (viruses of Archaea, viruses of Bacteria, and viruses of Eukaryota), the other for those that encode via ribosome (Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukaryota).  Still others have proposed simply adding a branch to the traditional tree, such that it would consist of 4 categories: Bacteria, Archaea, Eukaryota, and Viruses.