Pain of the Open Mind

Let me ask you a philosophical question: does free will exist? Are we really free agents, able to make meaningful choices through our own will, or is our conscious experience only, as certain studies have proposed, a post-hoc rationalization of wholly unconscious neurological processes? Before you read on, take a moment, close your eyes, and give yourself an answer.

There are a lot of different perspectives on this question. A materialist would likely say that what we call “free will” is really mandated by evolution, genetics, and early brain development, and is just our subjective experience of a largely predetermined process. A Christian like myself would, of course, say that our ability to make real choices is a gift from God. Many psychologists would fall somewhere in the middle, acknowledging an enormous degree of influence from the unconscious, but nevertheless maintaining that we can make real choices. There are a lot of complicated arguments to consider.

But here’s the thing: if you actually did stop and give an answer earlier, it probably wasn’t based on any of those reasons. Most likely, you answered that yes, free will does exist—not based on arguments, but because the alternative, that we are nothing more than complex biological robots, was literally painful to contemplate.

Let me explain what I mean. I saw an interview with the top car salesman in America a while back, who gave a remarkable insight into human decision-making: everyone, he said, buys based on feelings. Of course, we know that many people buy cars for emotional reasons. The brand, the aesthetics, or the prestige of a luxury car. But what about the sorts of people who pour over auto websites, consumer reports, and tech specifications, all to find the most ideal vehicle for their needs at the best price? According to the top salesman, those people simply wanted the feelings of security and confidence from their choice.

Now, that may sound overly simplistic to you, but unfortunately, the science bears him out pretty well. In the Iowa Gambling Experiment conducted by renowned neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, among others, they found some incredibly interesting things about the way human beings locate advantages. Each “player” was given 2,000 simulated dollars and told to try and maximize profits by drawing one card at a time from one of four decks. Two of the decks gave $100 for each card pulled, but would occasionally inflict massive penalties, sometimes over $1,000. The other two decks only gave $50 per pull, but the occasional penalties were much smaller, usually less than $100. Statistically, the former decks would lose you money in the long-run, and the latter decks would give money in the long-run.

Now, the players didn’t know any of that, nor did they know when the game would end (after 100 cards drawn). So they would start out about how you’d think, sampling cards from each deck, more or less at random. Early on, they liked the bad decks because they gave more money per pull, but once they’d been hit with a few penalties, they started to shift to the better, more consistent decks. By the end of the experiment, most of the players successfully made a profit, and many of them even reached what the researchers called a “conceptual stage,” where they were able to explain which decks were good, which were bad, and why.

Now, all of that seems pretty typical, so what’s the big deal? Well, the researchers noticed a couple of incredibly interesting details: first, that the players were changing strategies before becoming consciously aware of the advantage involved. Once the players had been hit with that big penalty a few times, the researchers measured a negative physiological reaction via skin conductance (a common stress marker) when they contemplated drawing from those decks again, pushing them toward the good decks even without explicitly knowing why.

The second big finding came from the other group—there were actually two separate groups of players. The first group we discussed was filled with normal people, but this second was drawn from people who had damage to their prefrontal cortex, in this case meaning that they did not form the negative physiological reactions to the bad decks formed by the first group. They still showed a skin conductance response when being penalized, but they never developed that response when contemplating the bad decks, as the control group did. Now here’s the most interesting part: some of the people from that second group also reached the conceptual stage, where they could accurately describe which decks were good or bad and why…  but they still made bad choices. On the intellectual level, they knew which decisions were right and which were wrong, but they still picked the wrong decks. Why? Because they didn’t have that physiological aspect. They had the intellect but not the feelings, and that made all the difference.

Now take another example from my life. Although I grew up Christian, I didn’t really go on a search for the truth, study other faiths and viewpoints, and gain the kind of certainty I have now until my wife threw me out of the house and I was hitting rock bottom. Why did I wait? Because cognitive dissonance, the tension that comes from questioning deep beliefs, is not only mental, it is felt as physiological discomfort, which is why most people never really subject their beliefs to proper interrogation. I only did it once I hit the point when NOT inspecting those https://www.dralexanderloyd.com/blog/the-language-of-the-heartbeliefs was even more painful. We should learn from my mistakes.

I’ve been saying for a long time that the unconscious mind is probably the same as what the Bible calls the spiritual heart. So let me just say, it’s not a bad thing that we are so influenced by our “heart.” We were designed that way. What it does mean is that we have a responsibility to govern our heart as best we can by working to ensure that it is based on truth.

Not only do we make decisions emotionally, more often than not we don’t make them due to emotion. So if you want to pursue worldviews that are based on truth, there’s really no substitute to exposing yourself to that pain. Ask yourself hard questions. Try to explore opposing viewpoints with an open mind. If you can, have open conversations with people that disagree with you. The good news is that given time and work, you’ll find yourself growing thicker skin. Not only will it get easier to confront the truth—or what may be the truth—but you’ll be far more confident in your beliefs for having done so.

Have a blessed, wonderful day!

Dr. Alex Loyd