Why We Have Too Much Free Will || Ken Sheldon

a more fulfilling, meaningful, creative, and self actualized life. The new cohort starts on June twenty fifth and will include more than ten hours of recorded lectures, live group Q and A sessions with me, small group sessions with our world class faculty, a plethora of resources and articles to support your learning, and an exclusive workbook of growth challenges that will help you overcome your deepest fears and grow as a whole person. There are even some personalized self

actualization coaching spots available with our world class faculty. As an add on, I'm happy to announce that just for Psychology podcast listeners, you can get twenty percent off the course but going to transcendcourse dot com and entering psych Podcast in the coupon box. We will be closing registration soon, so I suggest signing up as soon as possible. We have so much fun in this course and you will receive a lot of support along your self actualization journey.

Just go to transcendcourse dot com to register and enter psych podcast psych Podcast In the coupon box, I look forward to welcoming you to the transcender community.

What the New Psychology of the Self teach us about how to live. In this episode, I talked to Ken Sheldon about free will. Instead of questioning its existence, Ken is concerned with how we might use free will to help us reach our goals. Each person has the capacity to make good and bad choices and to learn from the past. Although we are unable to know everything about ourselves, we can still make informed decisions. Believing that we have

the ability to choose directly affects our well being. In values, we also touch on the topics of neuroscience, self determination, and responsibility. I really enjoy this conversation with Ken. I find him really insightful, and especially when it comes to this quite heated topic within academia, this topic of do we have free will or not? I like his perspective. I think it's fresh, and I think it really draws a lot on psychological science as opposed to maybe more

metaphysical ideas. Wherever you stand in the free will debate, we'd love to hear from you. Please come into the comments, and at the very least, I hope this conversation stimulated some deep thought and reflection on this very important and fascinating topic. So, without further ado, I bring you Ken Sheldon again. It's so great to have you on the Psychology Podcast.

free will debate space. I noticed you don't get too mirrored down in the philosophy of mind rigorous nuanced debate, you know, and you know you don't even stake a position. I don't think you anywhere in the book did you say I'm a compatibilist. You know. I feel like you focus a lot on the psychology of it, But what are you within that whole debate? Like, are you a compatibilist? Are you something else?

what we do, but it doesn't determine what we do. Instead, we selves attempting to operate our own minds, taking advantage of all this machinery. We have really kind of running the show for better or worse.

And so you could say that my whole career as a personality psychologist has been about trying to find ways around those arguments or ways to think about them differently. That gives us, you know, a viable position as mental entities for taking control of our own lives and for leading the kind of lives that we think we would like. That's just it.

You know, like, there are a lot of things that we think we should like. There's even things we might think we like and we don't really like.

hopefully make better ones in the future. So, you know, the book kind of talks about the free will debate early on, and it doesn't really take a position, as you said, It just concludes that there's reasonable doubt pretty good reason for doubting the determinist's perspective. And then it moves on to what I think is a more important question of Okay, if we do have free will, as I'm claiming or saying this probable, how well are we

able to use it? And that I think is the really important question, because we're kind of cut off, you know, we're living in this mental world system. To Daniel Cottaman called it the tyranny of the prefrontal cortex. We're sort

of suspended above the machinery above. We have the ability to be out of touch with ourselves, and so critical question is to get the information, the good information that we need to make choices that are going to cause our entire organism to thrive, even though we're kind of stuck as the conscious representatives of that organism moment to moment, and we might be pretty clueless about what's really happening inside of us.

symbolic mind, which we'll get to in a second. Yeah, and system two being our ability to plan, to error, correct, to change course, to maybe influence our system one. You know that we can influence our system one by changing habits, can't we? You know, it's not like a system one is completely impenetrable.

a goal researcher. And he said, free will is nothing more than the ability to ask yourself what you want, call up from your non conscious mind some possibilities for action, choose one of them, and then get moving. And so that's really a pretty straightforward and kind of intuitive perspective. If you think about it. What does it mean for an agent to have free will? It can think about what it wants, and then it can decide, and then

it can start trying to get it. And so that's what I've been studying my whole career is how people set goals and how well do they pursue goals, and then how do the goals influence their happiness after they're done pursuing them and perhaps achieving them. So I really love that definition that a Christian List provided because it sort of helped me sidestep these centuries of philosophical debate, which I see as pretty impenetrable and very much bogged down.

Everybody's got their own position, and I love the ability to sidestep all that and say, well, simple free will is the ability to think about what you want to make a choice, and that is a system to process. It's there's a lot of conscious stuff going on there where we say, well, wait a minute, what do I do here? Well, I could do this, that or that? What do I want to do? We think about the future, what will happen in each case? I think, I like

option B, I'm going to go for that. And so that's not something that's happening in system one, or at least not in that same way, because System one is more sort of automatic and habitual. So the system too is the part of us that is kind of in a representational world, living in a symbolic self. We can talk about that, making choices between alternatives.

want to go. I mean, I studied, I studied with Herbert Simon, so I came from that whole, that whole school of you know, goal stuff.

distinguished from magic free will. But both of us agree, I mean, anyone with a with a with a sane mind agrees that that there are we're not outside the causal structure of nature, that even our system two processes are caused by a long series of chain of things that that obviously lay out way outside out of our understanding, comprehension knowledge, going very very far back, maybe even to the Big Bang.

use Peter Golwitzer's terminology. And so I don't think that you can predict what the decision of that self of the moment is going to be, because it depends on what it wants, and it's a sort of not independent but somewhat independent process going on in the universe that, again is enabled by all the machinery. But I don't think it makes any sense to say me agreeing to come on your show was predetermined since the Big Bang, you know, or anything else that you or I did today.

It also doesn't make sense to say that we're magically outside of all that physical stuff. Again, we're influenced by it and enabled by it. But you know, I think we have a certain degree of independence from it, and that's the independence that allows us to make terrible mistakes. We can even commit suicide. No other animal does that, you know. I mean, that's the ultimate insult to personal survival. We can get so confused that we could take our own life, you know, And that might be Actually I

don't think it is. But the ultimate act of free will is just to deny your self existence. But more probably as are people who have a lot of emotional problems that are controlling their decision making to an unhealthy extent.

For instance, if you find someone I just thought this an example on the spot, but I was thinking, you find someone who's a devout vegetarian or a devout vegan for thirty years, you can predict if you go to a restaurant, you know they're not going to order that cheeseburger, like I guess. The question is if you can predict that with pretty much one hundred percent accuracy, are you saying that vegan person had no free will in that matter to choose the burger? I guess they could have.

I guess they could have, But they could have. We could predict they wouldn't unless they thought of unless they knew that we were trying to predict them, and then they wanted to consciously defy us, and then maybe that was their active free will.

that to express that value in their choices. And you know, if suddenly they were starving and meat was all there was, I'm sure they could go against that value or overcome that determinism in favor of staying alive.

that. That was a weird example, very weird, very weird.

a long term finding of self determination theory. And when you act with that sense of not being free, it negatively affects your well being. So it's important to have a sense of acting freely. And I take a little bit of a stronger position in the book, and I say that it's always us making the choices, whether we feel compelled to compel to do them or not. We're

signing off on them. And you know, it's sort of that existential perspective where you know that Jean Paul Sart, where you're responsible no matter what you reveal who you are by your choices. Choices scary. You know, people might try to avoid from choice or or escape from freedom in Eric Frome's terms. Nevertheless, we're always responsible. And so I don't think we're off the hook by saying I

felt compelled to do that. I think the answer to that is, well, that's sort of an immature position to be doing your living your life from, and you should try to get over that, and with some work, maybe some therapy, hopefully you can.

you and the other person. Even so, get your let me allow you to actually say it. I'm trying to predict what you would say right now. Is that any from a meta level of this discussion.

standing behind it, but I think it's plausible. The radical argument that free will is an evolved capacity of the human mind, again defining this capacity to ask ourselves what we want and make a choice and I think that, you know, given the complexity of you know, the social environments that we face, and you know, we have to be able to make it up on the fly and figure out what's going on and make decisions constantly. And so I think that's the capacity that we evolved, or

at least to ask ourselves, what do I want? Okay, I'll do this. That doesn't mean that there were no constraints on what we were doing, you know, of course, you know I I was hungry that I might choose to eat instead of you know, going to the library and checking out the book. But this point you raised about, but we don't know why we won't want something. We don't know why we made that choice, and so we

can't be free. I do take exception to that, because it makes it so the only free being is an omniscient entity that knows everything about itself, and of course we are not that. I don't think anything is that. If you insist that that's what free will means, then I have to agree with you. It does and exist because we don't know everything about ourselves, but we know enough, hopefully to keep sailing the ship, you know, through the seas of our lives, hopefully in some coherent direction towards

meaningful goals that we that we've chosen. Do we know why we've chosen those goals? No, we don't know the brain processes that you know, the neurons that summed and created that are making that choice. But on the other hand, we do know why we made that choice. That's the one we thought we wanted, and only we and our conscious experience at that moment were in a position to make that determination. So it's sort of tricky, you know.

It's that this is the kind of compatibilism that I'm talking about.

have no free will in playing cello. And I said, that's ridiculous. Like we can do things we're not motivated to want to do, right, we can. That's the will, you know. That's like, you know, we can. You know, just because our system one is telling us we're not interested in something doesn't mean we can't use system two to push through something. It's not like I want to

motivate to go to the gym every time. But he just didn't see it that way, you know, and it was a little frustrating, probably for both of us in that conversation.

is really pretty nice. To start listening to cello pieces, and you could come around to wanting to play the cello, and it wouldn't be that he was overcoming his system one resistance. It would be that he was overcoming his inaccurate self concept. So that's one way to sort of flip it around.

I mean, that's why he rails against religions, fundamentalist religions that maybe have some dangerous ideologies. You know, obviously the contents of our mind can influence greatly how we act in the world, in our agency. So it just seems like you're arguing in a lot of ways that the stories that we tell ourselves with the symbolical mind, that that matters for our free will. It sounds like that's a big part of what you're saying. Is that right?

being a person with a history and preferences. And we feel ourselves being that person, even though in a census just a hallucination. You know, it's a product of our minds. But I'm making the argument that it has top down control or some degree or influence at least over the choices that get made according to its own preferences. So it comes down to this sort of hierarchical perspective on the organization of matter that I talk about in one of the chapters.

the level below. Right, So when the first cell had to have the capacity to regulate the chemicals coming in and out of the cell, the first multicellular organism had to have a capacity to regulate how the different cells we're interacting with each other.

social spheres and those can try to control us. And that's a lot of what self determination theory is about, is how we deal with feeling controlled by other people. And it says people with power over us should support our autonomy so that we can maximize our sense of self determination and get the benefits of being embedded in these social relationships instead of just being oppressed by them.

So it's a really unique, I think, way of framing kind of an old idea that goes back to the tompt French theorist in the nineteenth century, the hierarchy of the sciences, And this is something I believe pretty strongly that each new level of organization builds upon the rest, but it is somewhat independent of what's below, given its ability to regulate what happens down below. So if I decide to go off for a run this morning, I

don't usually do that, but I suppose I did. Suddenly my all physical stuff in my body is having to deal with the stress of running, the physiology, and that was all determined by a conscious decision I made that morning. And so the hard headed skeptic is going to say, well, you don't know why you chose to run and I could say, well, I don't know where that idea came from, but I liked it and I picked it. That's why I ran.

it turned out he had a tumor in his brain. Well, he wasn't able to make a good free choice because his brain didn't support it. And so I would say that reductionism mainly works when you're trying to explain why the system has failed. But then if you're going to talk about what the system does, you know, then you need to know what's going on at the higher level. When I drive out to the interstate, I either go left or right. None of my machinery determines which way

it is. It's my intention to go to either Saint Louis or Kansas City. That's controlling my machinery in that case.

and goals. Yeah, your work, Your work has really been very impactful in the field of positive psychology, field of psychology overall. It's it's certainly influenced my work as well, I should say, and the work you've done, the breath of it on goals and as well as well being, and particularly the link between goals and well being is kind of your niche, that's.

it just was super fascinating to me to read. I will say one of the things that was super fastating for me to read as well was your discussion of the default mode network, because I've been studying the default mode network with my colleagues and linking it to creative thinking, and you don't make that direct link, but you have a chapter on the default mode network, and you do have a separate chapter on creativity, and so maybe we can make that link together right now more explicit.

we decide what to do next? And we're outlining that question using control theory and the cybernetic perspective, but we're also looking at the brain processes and we're concluding that there's interplay between central executive network, salience network and the default mode network, or there's back and forth between the prefernal cortex and consciousness of question arises as arises say in a creator's mind when they're trying to solve a problem and we don't know the answer to that question,

but the fact that it was a conscious experience broadcasts it to the broader or lower mind and starts to work on it at a non conscious level. And the mode network processes are a big part of that. And then the salience network at one point sort of notices WHOA, some thought that's just sort of wandered across the default mode view screen. It says that's important, and then we say, whoa, And then we can make a choice and maybe realize that we need to completely change what we've been doing

in our life. So in that last chapter in the book, I make a connection between the process of changing your life adopting a whole new set of goals, and the creative process using that four stage model of WALLAS of preparation, preparation, incubation, illumination, elaboration. And so yes, I am kind of trying to link those two chapters right now in this review article that we're writing. It is pretty exciting because I think it's the original stuff that we're pulling together.

There seems to be a particular netbrain network that cognitive neuroscientists discovered by accident because they didn't really seem to care much about what people were doing in the fMRI machine when they weren't doing the task that was assigned to them, and it seemed to be like, oh wow, maybe there's some value to the inner stream of consciousness,

as William James would put it. How would you characterize the major functions of the default midle network, because there's a lot of like kind of debate in the field about exactly what it does well.

And so, you know, we used to think that didn't mean anything, it was just mind wandering, But no, we think default activity is critical for sort of processing what's going on and connecting things up with our goals and motives and linking memories in spontaneous ways that can arise to consciousness and sometimes can present us with the Aha moment that this is the solution to the question or

the problem I've been trying to solve. So the default mode network, I think, arguably is us, you know, when we're not doing anything, as compared to the focused mode when we're trying to solve a problem, but a lot of times we're not doing that. We're just kind of zoning along, but that doesn't mean we're not doing anything.

It's kind of like dreaming, but at a more conscious level, we're kind of processing, making connections, wondering stuff and remembering things and reflecting on what somebody said the other day and maybe feeling guilty because we haven't connected with our sick friend that we heard about, and the friend wonders about us and the bugs a little bit, and then we realized, Hey, I saw this great cake baking recipe, and I know I could bake that cake for my friend and take it to him or heart. So it's

the default mode. Network is the part between action, but it's critical because it provides a lot of the spark to return to the next action, to adopt the next goal, and we don't know a lot about that process, to be honest, it's surprising how little personality and cybernetic models have looked at that. Like even the Carver and Shire model of goals doesn't say where did the goals come from? How do we get that goal? It just said we picked the action. That's that's a determined by the higher

level goals in our system. Right, I want to be a compassionate person, so I will picking to do that you know, expresses my compassion. But you know, a lot of times we're doing something new, we're waning it and we don't have any big pre existing idea, but we're still figuring out what to do next. I think the default mode has a lot to do with that. But there's a lot to be figured out with that as well. And I'm just starting to learn about the neuroscience of all this.

of the creative process. Yeah, for different you know, sometimes we can focus intensely on our daydreams so we can have positive as my mentor Dromo Singer called positive constructive daydreaming. Is probably when the default mode is linked and coupled our deep attention resources or working memory resources. So yeah, these things could be all these different kind of brain networks. You also mentioned the salience network, which I think is one of the most underrated brain networks. I'm glad that

you mentioned the salience network. That seems to be really important for creativity to be able to see what may count as a creative solution in the first place. So I think that's wonderful that you brought that in. But all these kinds of brain networks couple and decouple constantly. You know that it's where it's fall and back and forth, you know, and and so you know, the brains are constantly dynamic.

it all unpinges on the free will debate. It's still not completely clear to me because someone can say that, you know, all this is is maybe you're talking about human will, but it's not free will, because a lot of people narrowly view free will as could you have done differently in that specific if you rewinded the tape at that specific precise moment, would you ever have acted differently than and you're talking a lot about the things we do after the moment to change the course of

our future, you know, because I've called it the imagination network. I've called the default mode the imagination network because it can impact our future. But does it really impact the notion of free will?

everything that's already happened has already happened. So I don't to ask could you have done differently? Is to ask could the universe have turned out any differently at this moment? Since it began four billion years ago? It's kind of the same question. I think it's more useful to ask

could I have done differently? And if you think about it, a lot of times you were poised between two or three almost equally attractive options, and you know, you picked one, and maybe you later realize you wished you hadn't done that, and so you would pick differently the next time. But at the time, you picked the thing that looked most appealing, And so why would you have picked differently from that? You picked the thing that you wanted? And so why would it be free will to think that you have

the capacity to pick what you don't want? And actually, now that I think about it, that's part of what I'm saying free will is we have the capacity to pick what we don't want. Yeah, for you won't Yeah, I mean we can make bad decisions. We can look. The last chapter of my book talks about a woman who made a bad, weird decision decades ago and it's been miserable ever since, until finally her misery. Misery inspired her to start asking the questions what do I really want?

Where her non conscious mind started to provide her with some alternatives until she was finally able to pick something different. And I think that's all you can really ask for, you know, an agent regarding free will, the ability to pick what we think we want and learn from our mistakes.

a big I'm a big fan of those ideas. I'm a big fan of of you making the case that a lot of the kinds of system two functions we're talking about are things that they are free will is worth wanting in the Daniel Dennitts terms, but in your terms, you're saying there's You're straight up saying that's free will. And so that's fascinating because you you're just like straight up You're like no, You're like, no, we got more free will than you realize.

different continuums that one can make in this argument. One could say, a lot of people, a lot of philosophers of mine, say, especially determined to say, look, we have a heck of a lot less free will than we realize we have. Then there are sums like, actually, we have more than we realize. But then I think you're even to the right of that continuum and saying we have so much free will that we don't know what to do with it. In a way, do you think do you and this might be controversial, but do you

think like it's easier being a determinist? Like if you're a hard determinist, do you feel like you're evading your responsibility, your destiny?

I disagree with that. I think when we do that, it's bad for us because we're accepting an idea that isn't true and we're going to negatively impact our own functioning. Quite a bit of research, experimental research on what happens when you convince people that determinism is true, and they become less moral, less able to self regulate, less pro social, number they become numb to pain. So if you convince people yeah, I'm serious the code, I.

that you take with those beliefs. Yeah, I think it's a dangerous belief.

And I think they would say that it makes them more compassionate because you realize that people, even in their most poor choices, really didn't have a choice ultimately, ultimately, and that that should give us all more more compassion for each other, not less. I can hear them saying that as a rebuttal to what you're saying.

the machinery, or reductionism only makes sense. So if your machinery is off, then okay, you're off the hook. But if you're just making bad choices and then you're saying, well, I couldn't help it, I think that's again a dangerous thing to a dangerous road to go down. Wow.

We're also connected to other minds out there in the world, hopefully in a way that benefits everybody. So it sounds like a really cool idea. In another book, I have to go look up, Scott.

laid out is philosophical arguments. But even if it's not true, the illusion of freedom, if you want to call that, makes a huge difference, and it might operate like a kind of placebo effect that it even though it's an illusion, it makes itself true to a considerable extent in that if you believe in it, suddenly you're doing things that are better for you and making you happier and making

you adapt and thrive to a greater extent. So whether you want to call that an illusion, I think is you know, I think it's going too far to just say it's an illusion. I'd say it's an adaptation. But you know, it can go around and around with these things linguistics.