Creativity and Choice

There is little question that the method of cognitive behavioral therapy developed by UCLA neuropsychiatrist Dr. Jeffery Schwartz has injected new vitality into the centuries-old philosophical debate over determinism and free will. His decades of work with patients battling obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have produced formidable scientific evidence showing that those who engage in sustained, voluntary relabeling, reattributing, refo­cusing, and revaluing of errant brain signals can thwart undesired behavior that would otherwise manifest as a result of them. In his 2002 publication The Mind & the Brain, Schwartz cites data from PET scans of several brain organs—primarily the orbital frontal cor­tex, the caudate nucleus of the striatum and the thalamus—to prove that his four-step approach also can, over time, forge new neural pathways that help patients fend off the very emergence of errant brains signals.1

For materialists committed to the notion that free will—or what Schwartz refers to as “the feeling of mental force”—is essentially a deceptive, non-causal byproduct of the neural activity that truly drives human behavior, research indicating that OCD patients can take con­trol of their brain function presents a substantial intellectual challenge. After all, there appears to be little evidence to suggest that the blazing of new neural pathways occurs in OCD patients purely by chance. Further, if the choice of Schwartz’s patients to engage in therapy is merely an epiphenomenal illusion driven by a neural trigger outside their control, how is it that such a trigger is not activated in the cases of OCD patients who haven’t been exposed to the therapy?

With due respect to Schwartz’s findings and the robust debate over what David Chalmers calls the “hard problem of consciousness,”2 it is not the aim of this project to delve more deeply into the question of whether human experience is merely a scripted symphony of neural antecedents or if it is imbued with a still mysterious human capaci­ty to exercise control over material phenomena. Rather, the present discussion will embrace a narrowly tailored argument supporting the legitimacy of free will.

In his work already referenced here, Schwartz anticipates a num­ber of materialist objections to his assertion that focused attention produce changes in brain activity and personal behavior. This proj­ect will more closely examine one of Schwartz’s responses to those objections—particularly, an evolutionary based argument he presents. Schwartz writes, “The felt experience of willful effort would have no survival value if it didn’t actually do something. Therefore, positing that the feeling is the mere empty residue of neuronal action is antibi­ological reasoning and an unnecessary concession to the once-unques­tioned but now outdated tenet that all causation must reside in the material realm.”3

But don’t we know of real world phenomena—such as, say, the majority of humanity’s preference for either slightly green or well-rip­ened bananas—that persists despite having little or no influence in evolutionary matters? We know that growth of hair on the human body likely had an evolutionary advantage in that it helped keep the body warm, but it is difficult to see an evolutionary advantage to having red hair rather than blonde. Fruit ripeness preferences and hair color are incidental factors in this context.

It seems clear that given that not all physical and experiential phe­nomena are evolutionarily influential, a brain-savvy materialist point­ing to the overwhelming complexity of neural activity could argue that the feeling of mental force is nothing more than a sophisticated, but incidental and non-causal, byproduct of countless cognitive algorithms preceding each predetermined intent and action.

We can see that Schwartz’s evolutionary assertion is open to attack, but it nonetheless serves as a foundation for a thought experiment that may evoke deeper considerations ultimately favoring a free will point of view. More specifically, might Schwartz’s mental force be necessary to resolve deliberative processes that even sophisticated neural activity is powerless to resolve? The discussion that follows will in argue favor of this assertion, as well as assert a compelling evolutionary founda­tion for the claim.

The Spontaneity of Innovation

To set out on our thought experiment, it will be helpful to embody Schwartz’s hypothesized materialist objector. Suppose that an indi­vidual—say, Abbey—has a goal to change her behavioral response to a particular set of stimuli. Schwartz’s objector would argue that in the process, she will fall subject to an evolutionarily derived neural algorithm that begins accessing and considering alternative possibili­ties (APs). These APs—let’s call them archival APs—will be generated from a vast store of experience, knowledge and analytical skills (EKA) previously acquired, then organized and accessed by the brain. We know by way of Searle’s reasoning that APs are necessary, but not sufficient, to establish a case for free will.4 Hence, the materialist can safely argue that Abbey is not necessarily yet in control of her response to the stimuli she perceives. To counter this supposition, let’s suppose Abbey sees a black mamba scrambling toward her. Abbey then considers running away, very slowly backing away, or simply standing still in order to avoid the danger the snake presents. Finally, let’s suppose that Abbey prefers not to do any of these things, because she has seen many others before her attempt these responses and die as a result. Now, is it not possible that Abbey could conceive of reacting in a completely novel way—in a way she has never seen anyone respond before? Perhaps she might begin singing the national anthem, or writing out a grocery list.

Lightheartedness aside, common sense reasoning weighs heavi­ly in favor of her doing so. Far more detailed analysis that Robert Arp provides relative to creative problem solving becomes relevant. Addressing the human capacity for tool making, particularly in the context of needing to adjust to new environments, he writes, “The invention of a new tool would be an example of nonroutine cre­ative problem solving because the inventor did not possess a way to solve the problem already. This totally new environment would require that we be creative or innovative in order to survive.”5 So, it appears reasonable that novel APs represent a significant factor in the deliberative process. If fact, this is not an entirely unprecedented proposition. Searle writes, “are there some human events, specifically some human actions, which are such that the causal antecedents are not sufficient to determine that that action be performed?”6 In other words, if certain behaviors lack a neural imposition from EKA, the brain’s creative capabilities must sculpt new, unfamiliar, and untest­ed APs. In such situations, how could the brain’s neural algorithms, relying solely on EKA, effectively analyze and prioritize the value of a novel AP? Clearly, EKA offers little help. The brain must rely on an alternative resource to complete the deliberative process and act. It would be unreasonable for a free will advocate to suggest that an individual’s brain is constantly generating novel APs to accompany or compete with archival APs. Many human actions are rote, subcon­sciously driven and hardly even noticed on a conscious level, after all. But then some human actions are difficult to conceive as anything but novel. To craft an illustrative analogy, imagine an early human, Klug, who witnesses a rock rolling down a hill. This event certainly enters the realm of Klug’s EKA. Now, imagine also that he has once seen a woodpecker carving a hole in a tree. This event also is stored in EKA. Finally, suppose that Klug conceives to gather two round rocks, chisel a hole through the center of each, and connect them at the ends of a tree limb that fits neatly inside the holes.

A determinist might argue that Klug’s ability to craft two wheels connected by an axle depended solely on having witnessed the previ­ously noted events in his EKA. But what in Klug’s experience would have suggested connecting the rocks with a tree limb? More intrigu­ingly, what might prompt him to subsequently build a cart or chariot to place atop the axle? Clearly, creativity and innovation are at work in human consciousness.

Arp, having written extensively on the subject of creativity and evolution, advances the notion that humans are capable of forging completely novel ideas to answer real or perceived problems, but does so from an emergent materialist perspective that appears to limit human creativity to the realm of EKA. He has introduced the prob­lem-solving concept of scenario visualization, which entails selecting particular visual or visualized information, coalescing that informa­tion into a unified cognition, and then projecting that cognition on an imagined scenario for which it might be relevant.7Despite his materi­alist point of view, Arp seems to acknowledge that there is an active capacity or process at work that lies outside the integration of visual information that may or may not be intuitively related. He writes, “I am arguing for scenario visualization, and this form of conscious visual processing is not merely an intermixing of visual information from mental modules but involves the active selection and integra­tion of that information for the purposes of solving some non-rou­tine problem creatively . . .”8 What is not clear in Arp’s model is the particular brain function that does the selecting. As stated earlier, it is difficult to ascertain what in Klug’s EKA would enable him select a rolling rock and a woodpecker’s hole, much less a visual queue stored in any mental module that would inspire him to connect wheels to an axle for the purpose of making a cart.

Will and Creativity—A Dynamic Duo

There is no strictly held definition of creativity among philosophers, nor agreement on the process by which novel ideas arise. From a nat­uralistic point of view, Maria Kronfeldner argues that that the brain is certainly capable of creativity on a psychological level. “On the other hand, some philosophers still hold that creativity marks one of the boundaries of the naturalistic worldview. Creativity is, according to them, extraordinary, undetermined, unexplainable, and therefore un­predictable in principle,” she writes.9 Kronfeldner goes on to outline a variety of creative forms, defining each with the support of synonyms such as novelty, surprise, originality and spontaneity.

Duly acknowledging Kronfeldner’s naturalistic view, it should be noted that the epistemological foundation of creativity is not presently at question, only that it is an ontological phenomenon wound up in cognitive processes. On this note, it seems she concedes. With this in mind, a broader characterization of creativity may be beneficial to the present discussion. A. Campbell Garnett offers that: “It is this charac­teristic feature that marks the growth and behavior of living things as to some degree spontaneous, proceeding apparently from an internal dynamic and not merely from the external processes of environment.”10

With this contextual framework in hand, it will now be con­structive to consider whether creativity can be integrated into a working concept of behavioral causation. Arguing that determinist and libertarian views on free will and causality are not as far apart as they might seem, Howard Hintz offers a vital role for creativity in deliberative processes. “Even an ultimate explanation of the physio­logical and psychological operation of these creative processes or a discovery of the precise antecedent factors leading up to the creative mental act would not in any measure remove the organism itself as a major originating and causative factor. And if an organism or entity (in Whitehead’s terms) is able to originate, it is then obviously free to originate.”11 We can come to appreciate more precisely how creativity plays a critical role in the evolution of human behavior by revisiting Libet’s work outlining the readiness potential, the conscious intent to act, and resulting behavior. Conceiving of neural activity acting in a simple, linear fashion—such that the readiness potential manifests, the conscious intent to act follows roughly 350 milliseconds later, and the actor is left with 150-200 milliseconds to either inhibit or veto the intent—is helpful in establishing a conceptual framework for the role of free will in the deliberative process. As Searle notes, “even given the presence of the readiness potential, the subject does not thereby have causally sufficient conditions for performing that action because the subject, given this activity in the motor area, can still change his mind and decide not to perform the activity in question.”12

Broader cognitive processes, however, are not likely to involve a mere linear progression of such do or don’t decisions. As Evan Thomp­son notes, “Complex-system causality is not a matter of a higher level acting downwards on a lower level. Rather, the whole entangled system moves at once and always as a result of both local interactions and the way the system’s global organization shapes the local interac­tions.”13 What this suggests is that a single do or don’t decision can be made within the context of far broader considerations.

Having established that humans are capable of generating both archival and novel APs in various situations, it becomes clear that more extensive deliberative processes – will involve deliberation of both. For the sake of returning to Schwartz’s evolutionary focus as support for the efficaciousness of mental force, let’s imagine a human who can rely only on EKA in the deliberative process. Our friend Abbey, at the point she is confronted by a black mamba, would not choose to sing the national anthem or make out a grocery list, for she would have no way of predicting how the black mamba would react. Ostensibly, this aligns neatly with the notion that evolutionarily speaking, the most successful humans will choose to act in ways in which outcomes are most predictable. The difficulty with this line of reasoning is that a species continually stymied by an inability to act in novel ways would surely have lost the battle of survival long millennia ago. In countless situations where all of a person’s archival APs were detrimental ones, successful evolution of the species would have demanded novel APs. With free will, Abbey is be able to take the leap of faith necessary to sing the national anthem and possibly lull the black mamba to sleep. Now, there is no guarantee this novel AP would do the trick and win her survival, but the fact that humans have not been wiped out by black mambas or any of the other myriad threats that confront them on a daily basis suggests that something has allowed them to act in innovative ways and reap the benefit of high-risk, high-reward situa­tions. That something is free will.

Positing that volitional capabilities partner with creativity to en­able innovative problem solving does, of course, open itself to viable objections, even if the objector is willing to set aside the hard problem of consciousness as we have done here. The first of these possible objections might relate to Thompson’s notion of complex, interlaced deliberation within the volitional process. Put simply, and by way of extending our running analogy, how is it that Abbey is able in the midst of immediate danger to sort through what could be countless archival APs and any number of novel APs quickly enough to circum­vent the danger she faces? Human experience and evolutionary theory support a far more adroit, automatic behavioral response. This objec­tion aligns with arguments Francis Crick and Christof Koch present in favor of evolution preferring rapid, stereotyped, “zombie-like” deliber­ative processes.14

Here, however, Alfred Mele’s use of distal and proximal intentions is informative. He suggests that many of our proximal, or immediate, intentions need not be thoroughly analyzed at the time they arise. In fact, in the immediacy of conscious and unconscious deliberation, many APs will manifest in the form of distal intentions—or those forged by more thorough consideration at some time in the past.15 Abbey, for example, might not need to carefully consider running away from, slowly backing away from or standing perfectly still before the black mamba, because she may have had already decided months or years ago not to do these things if confronted by a snake. Having seen others die after reacting in these ways, she may have formed what would become distal intentions to sing the national anthem or to write out a grocery list. In that sense, these distal intentions would have been planted in EKA as unresolved, novel APs. Determining whether or which of these she might try becomes the proxy of Abbey’s leap of faith—her free will. Meanwhile, the running away, backing away and standing still options suggested would have been stored in EKA as resolved, archival APs which can quickly, perhaps even unconsciously, be dismissed.

Before proceeding to other anticipated objections, it seems prudent to address the compatibilist argument Eddy Nahmias offers relative to the significance of APs in making a case for free will in the first place. In essence, he offers that a very confident actor—one who is determined to act in a certain way if and when a decision to act must be made—has very little use for APs. In this way, free will has little influence in the deliberative process. The actor is bound to act.16

This line of argument suffers two apparent lapses in logic from a libertarian point of view. First, Nahmias uses free will liberally to establish that his confident actor has formed distal intentions, but then dismisses the same capacity at the time a decision to act must be made. And isn’t it true that without free will in the former case, the confi­dent actor would not exist in the latter? Secondly, Nahmias makes the seemingly logical statement that the confident actor has no need for free will. The lack of need for APs and free will mistakenly implies the annihilation of APs and free will, however. Perhaps the actor would be unreasonable or even crazy to act in a way other than the confident, distal intention she formed demands, but nothing Nahmias presents demonstrates how she is unable to act unreasonably. So long as the actor possesses an ability to choose, the compatibilist argument fails.

Returning to the assertion that free will is a necessary capacity in deliberation of novel behavior, another objection might center on the notion—to some degree already addressed here—that vast stores of socially acquired and individually discovered EKA will almost always resolve deliberation over how to respond to particular stimuli. How often will Abbey be confronted by a black mamba, after all, or by any other unfamiliar threat for which she has no EKA to shape an effective response? This is a viable, common sense objection. But so long as there is a single threat demanding a decision that EKA cannot precipi­tate, free will is necessarily present. Further, it is likely that the part­nership of creativity and free will work far more often in subtle ways. This is true whenever a slight twist in circumstances surrounding a familiar threat will demand subtle creativity to account for the nuance, not to mention free will to select a novel AP it creates.

Imagine, for example that Abbey has sung many a black mamba to sleep with her mesmerizing rendition of the national anthem, but then confronts a nearly deaf snake. Her EKA might likely compel her to sing more loudly. Doing so, however, will force Abbey to be more physically animated, which might provoke the nearly deaf black mam­ba. Our heroine has no way of knowing what the snake’s reaction will be. Fortunately, creativity and free will—rather than rapid, zombie-like deliberation—will afford her the ability to make the leap of faith she’ll need to make to survive.

Finally, the materialist objector might suggest that there is no sound reason to believe that an actor’s EKA—particularly her ana­lytical skills—would be powerless to precipitate a leap of faith action in dire situations. Were it that a broad set of archival APs had been shown to be ineffective in circumstances demanding quick action, the materialist might argue, then analytical skills would rule out negative­ly resolved APs and to the best of their ability and prioritize the value of unresolved APs, be they distal or proximal. But to argue this raises the question of whether actors might be confronted with overwhelm­ingly unfamiliar situations or slightly nuanced, familiar situations for which EKA can produce no information valuable to the deliberative process. Common sense—particularly in the broad context of human evolution—suggests that such experiences are quite common. Searle argues this very point. “This is exactly what happens in conscious decision making. One has a set of reasons, but the reasons are not effective because they do not fix the decision. A person still has to make up his or her mind for reasons to become effective.”17 If it is not free will that enables the actor to make up her mind, it seems incum­bent upon the materialist objector to suggest which neural capacity or process does.

Conclusion

Discussion to this point admittedly fails to encompass far broader dialogue and scholarship on the issues of free will, causality, creativity, and human evolution. To successfully exhaust available epistemologi­cal and ontological insights on the question at hand would be to gross­ly exceed the confines and goals of the present project. Instead, this discussion seeks only to introduce a foundation by which one could argue that creativity plays a crucial role in cognitive deliberations and at the same time appears to disable a completely deterministic view of how human decision making takes place in the case of novel situations and circumstances.

Although the scope and frequency with which creativity and free will intervene in conscious deliberative processes may need yet to be determined, one conclusion seems clear. So long as there is a single novel alternative possibility for which experience, knowledge analyt­ical skills cannot predict the outcomes, free will is necessary to make the leap of faith humans need to engage in innovative behavior.

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