Sam Harris, Ben Shapiro and Eric Weinstein - Free will debate
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- Опубликовано: 2 янв 2018
- Great civil discussion. Sam Harris is clearly the one who has the most verbal facility. Wait until the end, a women in the audience asks a very interesting question to Sam. It ends with a hopeful message. Ben, tries to argue for a common sense notion of free will in a consequentialist framework for moral responsability.
Eric is arguing for free will in the context of the different levels of reality. On the atomic level there is only determinism and randomness, in human psychology, there is at least agency.
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I curate content (edit little snippets of wisdom from the original material) and by giving it an original take and a coherent narrative, it adds value to the original content, plus makes it know to new people.
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You know how I know I’m a moron? I am 8m23s into this and just now figured out this is a still photo...not a video
😂😂😂🐌🐌🐌🤪🤪🤪😷
Esko Huse holy shit...
Time to put the pipe down!
No it's a video. You've just got three really chilled out dudes here.
Or a really Vivid imagination
It’s hard to debate free will with Sam Harris, because he is right.
I’m pretty sure this is sarcasm but the fact that I initially didn’t read it that way is hilarious
Where is the full video to this or podcast, I mean does anyone know what episode of his podcast this is?
Never mind I found it . It's episode 112 The Intellectual Dark Web - in case anyone is interested.
Was this not filmed? Tried a few links and no video. Madness not to film this but still a great listen
I have been thinking about how crazy it is that I am thinking about whether or not I have free will and I don't even have the free will to decide whether or not to think about having free will.
i have just started thinking about that without any free will of my own, and on that same note i would be curious to ask, did you go insane by now?
@@geraltofrivia2570 did u?
@@connork319 nah, i just got back to the illusion that i have free will
@@geraltofrivia2570 why is that
@@connork319 Well i don't really know since i have no free will, but the illusory feeling that i have is that it's too much of a bother to be thinking about things you can't change. I would also think that if through my lack of free will i would realize that i have no free will and i would be sufficiently bothered by it, i would simply kill myself. You should take everything with a grain of salt since i'm not really sure there is a me who to really answer you truthfully.
No matter how smart you are, you won't notice the lack of free will if you don't want to. At that point intellectual honesty goes out the door.
Take enough THC
Anyone know where I can find the rest of this discussion?
ruclips.net/video/klf7d8WHVzw/видео.html
To experience a thought or to be aware of a thought or to be thinking a thought is basically the same thing with some nuances. Thinking a thought has more a flavor of "'constructing" a thought or "examining" a thought, like looking at it on every angle to search for meaning. Experiencing a thought has more a flavor of "feeling" or "tasting" a thought. Like if a thought is going through some mental senses that allows you to know it intimatly. You experience it. And being aware of a thought is just knowing you have a thought. Or, in the case of a more complete awareness, it would also include knowing the meaning of the thought. So you can be aware of a thought before you think it thoroughly. In other words, you know you have a thought but you have not examine it completly, part of it being unconsious or incomplete. The act of thinking the thought brings it to complete consciouness or finishes constructing it. But I understand your question. Can you be aware of a thought that do not exist yet? A thought that you have not think or constructed yet. I would have to say yes, you can, to some extent. If you are conscious of what is already there, you can inverse that and be conscious of what's missing. You can not be aware of the inner details of the thought but you know how it must be at it's surface to interface with the existing thought. The rest can be constructed bit by bit or by proximity using conscious logic, randomness or some unconscious process with the help of limits conditions as already explain in a previous comment. Consciousness can not create a thought that it's not conscious of. You have to start with something. To create out of nothing has to be a random act. And with that germ you can go on. In other words, it's impossible to make a new painting without paint but if you have paint you can make as much painting you want. We create thought in reaction to other thoughts. We reflect back on previous thought to see what's the logical suite. We do not create a thought with nothing unless it's random. Or think it (examine it) before it even exist. We use a previous thought. And meaning can not be created by the subconcious because the subconcious would than be the conscious. The conscious is were the awareness is. And because of it you are free. As for the experiments you refer to, they are all very badly design. And the statement that it is possible to know a person's decision before it reaches their consciousness by monitoring their unconscious brain activity is a disputable extrapolation. I already wrote a comment on that, just read it. And read some critics of those experiments and you will see it's not as definitive as you make it seems. But it's a good start and we should continue investigating how it works.
So dont tell your kid that they have free will but you treat them like they do?
yep
I love how Ben Shapiro just stayed quiet for most of this.
Below his pay grade
Going to listen to the entire conversation on sam's podcast. 23 mins is nothing.
P.S.- Sam rejects ads.
I'd rather listen to 3 hours of adds than 17 minutes of sam trying to guilt me into paying him
@@isaacburrows8405 his will is not free...
Is the entire conversation about the free will argument, or is it just this clip?
Which podcast
@@isaacburrows8405 you know that ads are like a cancer in society right? No wait, you probably have never thought that deep my bad
does anyone have the video of this?
If the mind always defaults to its best interpreted logical choice for every single circumstance it's encountered, then every single one of us would constantly be in a state of the best version of ourselves. In other words, whenever we make a choice against our better judgement, then the better and more logical choice was not made.
Purely logical choices are only perfect in a perfectly logical world which we do not live in
@@negawatt9755 frankly speaking when i see your example i remember my toxic relationship and why i stayed in it. What we believe as 'i listened to my heart, and not my brain' is actually what we think to be the most reasonable choice at that time.
It seems Ben only got passionate when he thought Sam was coming for him!
When
I was preprogrammed to click on this video and write this comment. My whole life has brought me to this very moment where I am making this very point. I hope Sam will understand that it's not really that we really don't agree with him but that we were just accidentally created and just made to not agree with him. It's nothing personal, really.
Is that actually your synopsis of this debate? It seems your indoctrination since you were born, of your parents beliefs has slowed your mind.
I mean as sarcastic as you’re being you’re not entirely wrong...
You are merely expressing what is in your heart of hearts. Your interdependence to outside influence is confessed. And why we would have to believe you are independent and choice-determining based on random quantum fluctuations is completely moot and unevidenced... so it does not need to be believed. Plus, I feel like you are wrong just like you feel you have "free will," if by any stretch my self-assurance is not stronger than yours.
Sam would agree with you
You are actually making his point
Accidently created?
I agree there is no free will - Sam's points about reaction to influence and priors that initiate behavior all make sense. Where I disagree: The notion that we can "decide" upon a moral landscape based upon reduction of human suffering. Some of us will think that is correct, some of us will not. We never decide. Continued exposure to influential argument might "change" minds in the same way a strong prevailing wind changes the growth pattern on a tree's branches. I think Sam just needs to articulate this is what he means when using words like "try".
Agreed
Sam's points are almost always only philosophical. He likely doesn't think things will change...but try he must.
Sam Harris is a Athiest, athiest Philosophy is a direct twin if Calvinistic philosophy.. So of course, they go together..
You are nothing but gland squirts and muscle twitches
Sam views the moral landscape in the realm of science. It is objective. “Deciding” the details of the moral landscape is no different to “deciding” what theories best describe our physical universe. I disagree with Sam’s assessment here but there isn’t any internal inconsistency with the two positions.
thank you for uploading!!
In Sam harris' world, you are already doing and can do all the things in your life, whatever the way you want, without having a free-will
Jamal Hussain whatever- life is full of choices and I make the choice!
Jamal Hussain he definitely wants you to have the best hunan experience possible
But there is no You................... the You tht you are experiencing are ntg but just a biochemical algorithm....
In Sams world you are not the doer.Thinking you are the doer leads to the false sense of self.
thats literally not what he said you moron.
I was very annoyed at Ben Shapiro's objection of Sam's using "active verbs"...
1. I don't see how that's a logical objection... but even if there is some level of sound logic behind it that I'm just not grasping, yet... then there's still...
2. every time Sam was trying to eplain it, he (Ben) kept interrupting the explanation to reassert it...
it's like he thought he had a grand slam argument against it, that he felt justified in not letting Sam speak... basically not even being open to listen to the explanation.
I was waiting for a "long story short" moment
Unconscious things are determined, conscious things are motivated.
Deterministicaly motivated by already determined fears and wants.
@@infinityblablabla Your fears and your wants come from your understanding of a situation. It is not determined. Change your understanding and you will change your fears and your wants. What comes from understanding is never determined, it's motivated. When you close the switch of consciousness, than you become determined like an inanimate object. But open the switch of consciousness and you transform the chain of cause and effect into a chain of motivation to effect.
And by the way, we do not live in a determined world. At best, it's a random world with some organising force fields. To have a determined world would require infinite precision. But we know there is no such thing. At the quantum level, there is always some degree of imprecision. If, on small number of interactions, things appears determined, on large number of interactions, randomness becomes more and more the law. You know the input but you can never know the output. Not on the small scale anyway. On large scale, you could make some statistical predictions.
For example, take the white ball that hits the black ball. You know the black ball will go in the hole with a certain precision. But if the white ball hits the red ball, that hit the blue ball, that hit the yellow ball, that hits a billion of a billion of a billion balls before it hits the black ball, are you so sure that the black ball will go in the hole? So keep in mind that our world is not as determined as you think. It's more of a random nature with some organizing forces.
That's why quantum mecanics is so good. It's describing the world in a statistical manner by associating a probability wave function to every particule.
Read the conversation I had with Alan Collins down below. There is about 40 exchange between him and me, and near the end, I make a critic of Cosmic Skeptic position on free will. It will enlighten you on the subject. Also, read my comment on the chain of cause and effect. I think, it's the second comment from the top. And after all, why don't you read everything that I wrote in this comment list. You will than, better understand what is free will.
@@AL-vp7mh you've mistaken many things, - randomness by definition is random , it couldn't determined neither it is influenced by state of consciousness and free will, so you are not responsible for randomness in your mind at fundamental level, so it's like someone playing dice in your mind, or you playing dice and talking decision .
- about determinism - you are saying because of uncertainty in fundamental partical we couldn't predict what one's mind will do beforehand , here you are also confused like electron can be two places or there is fundamental uncertainty in position of electron, doesn't mean that a table made of same fundamental particles will have uncertainty of its position so there is uncertainty in electrons positions but as group of particles we can study and predict them, so just see the weather prediction system it's very hard to predict weather after 2-3 weeks because its chaotic systems ( we will predict Greater degree of accuracy in time as we technologically progress) and you could say it's chaotic system ( like our mind) the uncertainty in fundamental particles will amplify the uncertainty in prediction over time, long term prediction will be impossible to determined whole future with 100% accuracy. so now you're confused between determinis and fatalism, offcourse no one can predict your whole life, if i predict your brain function what you are going to do next before you aware of it, then freewill be out of picture, so you see latest libbet experiment, in it, it predicts in lab before subject aware of that they take decisions even some cases even 5-10 sec before and they took dicision so decision (in libet experiment decision was to move a finger or not) already started before they(subjects) awareof it( google search 'libet experiment' to understand what I'm talking about if you don't know) ,
Further we see ai predicts what we next watch before we know what we watch even some psychologist can predict human behavior much more accuracy than someone randomly will predict it,
So in summary let suppose no one could determine/predict you decision before you aware of with 100% accuracy (which is not the case clearly although several seconds/milisec before you aware can be predicted with current technology with almost certainity), if we remove our technological incapability or we couldn't handle waste amount variable and data, reason of indeterminism in long run will be fundamental randomness, and this randomness will give randomness not "FREE WILL".
@@Imnothere59 I was going to type out a big response to that guy but thankfully you save me the effort
@@medicinemandan271 thanks dude, I thought no-one gonna read this.
When did Shapiro become a philosophical contender?
Samsgarden When did Harris become a philosophical contender?
tony banks Over two decades ago.
@Lucas Wang he's there to make up the numbers, also, it's so the other guys don't win hands down.
@@tonybanks1035 harris graduated from philosophy at stanford
he also wrote several books touching philosophical ideas. I dont know what it takes to be a philosopher in your view but Harris is clearly at a minimum more suited to that title than a moron like shapiro.
@@xsuploader Harris has a BA in philosophy from stanford. Hardly the necessary background to be called a philosopher by any stretch of the imagination. Shapiro neither. Both are on the same level. That's the realistic take for those who don't like do delude themselves.
The "books" he wrote touching philosophical ideas have been ridiculed by actual philosophers. They are deemed "interesting" by people with no philosophical backgroung, and their success stems more from being thought-provoking than being actual academic standards in philosophy.
"You are a story your brain tells itself" Yuval Noah Harari.
Why are you quoting that idiotic charlatan?
Did you choose your brain.No..So its not your brain.
So is there a "Yuval Noah Harari" (three names no less!) who can come to true conclusions? Or are there just stories his brain tells him?
@Vlasko60 with a brain that's an unreliable narrator to boot. Never quite know when new information or perspectives will come about and provoke a realization that one of the stories we were telling ourselves was wrong/faulty/incomplete.
@@KingoftheJuice18 I think probably both. And besides- what does it feel like when you're holding a wrong conclusion that you believe to be true? Exactly the same as holding a true conclusion.
It is hard to believe that someone out there feels joy on hearing Ben Shapiro's voice. I know that in the billions of people out there it is inevitable that there is at least one, but it still seems very unlikely.
@@Gary_oldmans_left_nut bruh too deep
@@Gary_oldmans_left_nut Yeah… let my deterministic mind respond to that. You, your thoughts... 💩
😂😂😂😂😂
The blunt voice of reason?
I was just thinking the same thing! Haven't heard much of him but the few things I heard come out of his mouth is straight up nonsense!! So ignorant and arrogant at the same time! He said he doesn't understand free will with evolution! 🤣😂 he said that free will is proof of God!! So if we proof that there is no free will it means there is no God? LOL it should be the opposite 😅!! And he confuses free will with our consciousness!! The guy is an IDIOT!!
Best argument: 4 components to "free will" or "our personality" or "our conscious" mind:
(1) Our personal choices.
(2) Our genetics, somatic reality, brain chemistry, & architecture.
(3) How we were taught, raised, abused & neglected by out parents, or lack of parents.
(4) Our society, culture, the system, nation & laws we live under.
Our free will, is thus diminished at the very least, it is mere component, no less important than the sum of our environment & the limit that we can control the impulses of our primitive brain impulses & instincts for survival.
The three questions one must answer -- with proof -- before believing free will is real:
1. Where did free will come from?
2. How did free will come to be?
3. Why are humans the only animals with free will?
@@TheClassicWorld No, you don't need to answer these to believe in free will. That's like saying you need to understand precisely how human action can be reduced to physics to believe in determinism. That's too high of a standard and it's impractical.
You believe in free will - that you have the ability to make multiple choices - when you try to figure out your plans for your own future, or when you go shopping. You might say that this is just a working assumption that you can dispense with, but the fact that it's a working assumption is something not to be ignored. You have to believe you have that ability to be able to live in the world, granted not all the time you have to believe it but sometimes you do. You also need it to explain why you blame someone for wrong doing or why you uphold someone for right doing, that is why you can forthrightly assign moral responsibility to a person - so not only assign it, but be able to back up your position in speech.
@@TheClassicWorld The first two questions are a bit redundant, don't you think?
The last question only counts if you believe we are animals. The fact that we stand apart from animals and there is no proven link that confirms we are animals renders the last question invalid.
Lastly, if we could scientifically prove the origins of free will, we wouldn't be having this discussion. The shortcomings of science to prove or disprove free will's existence is not evidence it doesn't exist.
Much like gravity didn't start existing when we "discovered" it, free will doesn't stop existing because we haven't discovered it yet (or found the linchpin to disprove it.)
@@TheClassicWorld number 3 is absurd. if humans have free will than so would other non human animals.
but of course, nothing has free will.
Kings ( in the Old Testament account) are a good example, and what is said about their "free will" in I think the Proverbs is revealing: The Lord turns the heart of kings whithersoever He wills--paraphrase.
2:13 Hume’s classic question was, from whence does this “ought” arise in the first place, if all that exists in the universe are facts? As he put it, “the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects, nor is perceived by reason.” So where can it come from? Even having perfect knowledge of every existing thing in the history of the universe would only give you more and more facts; it would not enable you to make the giant leap to concluding that anything “should” have been different. Even if you say “reason is a fact,” you still have to account for how it can perceive of anything that is not a fact. And if in the end your “ought” turns out to be just another fact in the universe, then it has no special status over any other fact, and so any moral command is as “good” or “bad” as any other.
Well fucking said sir.
Exactly. Sam keeps mudding this entirely.
Your question is a good one and doesn't lend itself to a short "sound-bite" answer. The late Ernest Becker's "Escape from Evil" is the best thing I've read on that question. In short, humans are the only animal who has a conception of possibilities and what things could be- these things can never be fully realized and Becker's main thesis is that humans' knowledge of our mortality is the primary component of our motivations.
The idea of guilt developed when human cultures advanced to the point where surplus was possible. The introduction of monetary exchanges and private property further developed the idea that some had more than others and I could have more and why don't I?
I would suggest getting the book- Becker is better at unpacking it than I am. He won the Pultizer Prize for "Denial of Death" (1974).
@@ravissary79 sam is bad at phrasing moral realism
but essentially moral realists are trying to say there are methods of maximising utility which are themselves facts. Just like there are methods of minimising error in an experiment there are methods of pleasing minds.
so essentially Morality is a collection of facts that mean something if you have a goal of maximising utility. If you dont then whatever.
Oughts come from facts. That's how every sane person makes decisions. If you're intellectually honest and pay attention to how you arrive at conclusions, you _know_ you do this yourself all the time. If they don't, they're infinitely more likely to be wrong/cause harm.
I've read Hume and I took what he said as not _just_ doing a leap from one fact to a should without making the connection with arguments first and keeping it one-dimensional (i.e. humans in cars cause accidents - humans shouldn't be in cars). If you interpret it as "can never get an ought from an is" you essentially reject the core function of rationality and become a relativist about everything.
That interpretation doesn't even make sense if you're a fan of Hume, because he derives oughts from facts in his own books, making the relativist interpretation unlikely.
Ergo: The fact/value distinction is not about an impossibility to derive oughts from an is at all. It's about not doing the work required to justify a conclusion.
We are not aware. We are complex.
Our perception of reality is an emergent property.
Causality drives every interaction from the most basic to the most complex.
Furrowed Brow can you provide the math for that?
MentalFabritecht
Take small bites.....
www.google.com/url?q=ftp://ftp.cs.ucla.edu/pub/stat_ser/r416-reprint.pdf&sa=U&ved=0ahUKEwjQjZeP5tLaAhXF2VMKHfb9D_cQFggQMAA&usg=AOvVaw1zXt313VwLTxOkbc3hk0iF
Furrowed Brow thank you, luckily it wasn't too long.
I guess you must be one of those robots with no sense of experience.
Just because causality exists does not mean we cannot reflect or think about the actions we have taken.
Yes, events in reality have the property that causes lead to effects, no argument there.
But just because one event leads to another does not take away my ability to think about my actions, to reflect on those actions, to see how I feel about those actions, And to either change or continue acting the way I do. It is in this self reflective/analytical feedback mechanism in which I believe "free will" lies.
The "illusory" self that permeates my body allows my experiential awareness to interact with this causal universe, and to act accordingly, And maybe even modify it within my limits or abilities to do so. If things were merely cause and effect, with no option to change or act differently, then yea i would believe everything to be deterministic and causal. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depends how you want to look at it) humans have come to bear the existential burden of responsibility for our actions and choices.
Emergent from what? Where do we go from non perception to perception.
We are the result of a collective unconscious slowly awakening to the dreams that our ancestors brought forth to cast our the dreaded dangers of mortality, to say we are not aware is false - it is correct to say we are not aware of everything - we glimpse aspects of the nature of what is and what may be, we are starlight shining in the dark...
Eric thinking bubble..... "why"
Who thought it would be a good idea to have Ben Shapiro debate free will?
Mo Azim Yeah I know it was embarassing for Harris.
@@tonybanks1035 no...
I do not know if he is the only Jew of the three, but Jews do not believe like the bible teaches, that free will was forfeited in Adam--Rom. 8:20.
I appreciate their method of debate, but I’m just nowhere near as impressed with the Weinstein brothers as everyone else is. I have no doubt they’re brilliant, they just don’t get across to an audience quite like ppl like Sam and Jordan Peterson do
Coming around to audiences is not all, espeically when i think jordon perterson and eric weinstein seem to have glaring holes in there arguments. Im sorry i wish them very well but there are likely falsehods and even damaging ones, but i guess there are also good things and the conversation being interessting is very important. So in combination with sam on free will i aktually think they very enrich the conversation and i love to hear there objections. Wish them very well, hope i was not snarky, i wish they had more "kinda friendly" conversations with poking questions like this 23 minute clip with people they disagree with that have some traction like sam or sapolski :)
🤣🤣🤣
Phenomenal debate. The ability to dissociate from self and observe inductive and deductive processes simultaneously, isn't that by definition quantum mechanics? Which when observed are instantiated at the classical level. What remains is a binary choice of chaos or order analogous to free will or determinism. Utter depravity or Holiness. Solipcism or Christian Theism.
This is the theme of Paul's Epistle to the Romans.
Paul answered Shapiro in chapter 2, solipcism leads to the inability to distinguish anything from the self and it's sensuality until the passions are so magnified and erroneously justified in axiomatically fulfilling desire as a thing in itself. In solipcism the sensuality is NECESSARY and the self is CONTINGENT; therefore it is the delusion of free will that kills the self and actualizes the automoton, or quasimoton screaming I'm not a robot, meat machine, animal, while at the same time dependent on the church.
Option 2, claiming blissful ignorance in moderation which is still narcissistic personality disorder in taking pride in how much one does not know. Pascal's wager is thin ice as you congratulate yourself on the choice you made. A self made Christian? Huh? Is that really a choice you made? Is that the power of positive thinking, or are you manifesting a presumption that is ridiculous on it's face?
Option 3, to witness all the information collected by senses, in historical observation, as well as your inductive and deductive processes, and seeing the REVELATION OF JESUS CHRIST, that HE chose you for GOOD works which he PREPARED for you to do before the foundation of the universe, which are accomplished in the light of the knowledge of God, in the face of Jesus Christ.
Option
How about free will is an illusion on the grounds that you would feel like you are making choices but what if those choices are already pre-determined.
What if it’s your soul’s story book and you will always make the choices that bring you down the path regarding your life story?
Weinstein sets the bases for understanding the tension between the two perfectly with his layer of cake analogy. If you understand that, you will understand that the answer to the question is yes.
I don't, please explaine further more
Umm you made a mistake in the description.
You said "in human psychology, there is at least agency."
Which is just blatantly false, as Sam Harris can show you
How does Harris show that humans don't have agency? What experiment is done?
Is it kinda wierd how Eric sort of sums up what Sam is saying around minute 15? Or am I wrong? It kind of sounds like he argued his way into determinism.
There is no link between a cause and an effect in consciousness. It's not that a choice is random, altough randomness is often involved, it's that there is absolutly nothing forcing a choice in a direction or another. A choice is not forced, it's understood.
There are certainly reasons to act or choose but the impulsion is free. There is simply an understanding in consciousness that you have to decide at some point..., that you can not deliberate for ever..., so you stop when you feel you have exausted the options to your satisfaction or you stop at a random moment and opt for what appears to be your best option at that very moment, understanding that you could have stop at a moment sooner or later because it's random, and you could have set some criteria of decision differently because it's also random in large part, and you could have analysed the situation from another angle for the same reason, and finally you could have came to a different understanding and consequently, but not causally, had made another decision or choice.
The effect is related to the cause but it's not caused by the cause. That's why it's more proper to talk about a "motivation" than a "cause" when we are in the realm of mental causation.
You did what you did but it could have been different. You understand your choice, but many aspects of your choice comes from randomness, and you know it. It can not be otherwise because we are not all knowing. We construct the story as we go... It's our will to advance not knowing everything we need but making our best guess at what the next move should be. It's our free will...
Randomness is involved at many level but the choice and the analyses are not random because we are conscious... We can grab the meaning and that's a miracle! We are not robots.
Nature certainly put pressure on us to choose but it's not telling us what to do. There is no law that determined our next action. If we do nothing, we will be uncomfortable, we know things will start to go bad and miserable for us and it could even leads to death. That's our primary motivation for action and choice.
But the story is not unfolding in a determined manner. The story is beeing written by us using 3 aspects of reality: regularity (causality or determinism), randomness and consciousness. Regularities allows for predictions, reasonning, logic, AI. Randomness allows for novelty, creation, and decoupling. And consciousness also allows for decoupling but most importantly it allows at every step for the experience of understanding and will.
And keep in mind that consciousness is not the result of brain activities. It is conditionned or molded by brain activities but it's not determined by it.
Consciousness is the result of ALL THAT IS, be it visible or not to us. The "I AM" is the same in all of us. It's our link to God or the universal consciousness. Only the point of view created by our different bodies differs from person to person.
It's not the physical world and it's determinism that gives rise to consciousness, it's consciousness that gives rise to the material world through regularities. Matter is the illusion… Everything we see and experience is an expression of consciousness.
It's absurd to say that consciousness is determined by the matter of the brain when matter is already an expression of consciousness used to create points of view.
Read all my comments if you want to know more and deepen your thoughts. It's not as easy as saying : "choice is an illusion".
Sam Harris is like the intellectual eminem. You know he's good, but just HOW good really shows when he's juxtaposed with others you previously thought were almost as good. Shapiro looked weak here. Frankly, I expected a better fight.
Mel, Shapiro is weak. I tried to give this guy the benefit of the doubt, but his arguments are tired and regurgitated, and worst of all he argues against himself half the time. From the guy who has pretty much inspired the 'feels vs reals' movement against SJWs and their use of emotion over logical argument, it is astonishing how often Shapiro does the same. Any time the debate moves into the arena of religion Shapiro suddenly becomes a critic of rationality and the materialistic view of the world, and tells us there is something else out there, which he defines and defends about as clearly as Deepak Chopra or any new age type. Likewise if the debate turns to any subject that the right by default has to argue against (or rather, that sellouts like Shapiro have to argue against because the core of their base don't believe it) such as global warming or an form of environmentalism, Shapiro suddenly sees conspiracy everywhere, and trots out old worn out and long debunked arguments of the sort one would expect to see on a creationist video. He is more of a Sophist than anything, a skilled talker, but not nearly as much depth as people credit him for, and nowhere near the level of principle.
PtolemyauletesXII I can't say I strongly disagree with you. He's clearly intelligent but only selectively rational and mostly just a fierce debater.
I thought his points made sense.
PtolemyauletesXII I think sophist is an excellent way to describe Shapiro. As many times as he makes sense, he has been specious; and he often operates in the realm of provocateur.
Daniel Mizuguchi ooo, trying to use your biggest words. I see you, nice :)
When Shapiro laughs, I hear Tyler Durden in my head. On the airplane.
“You have a kind of sick desperation in your laugh.”
For some reason when he speaks, it feels like squirrel is talking.
When you hear someone, you immediately to the world of fiction to justify your bias. Interesting.
@@blackswanaudiostudios3947 Very insightful. You’re taking a basic course in psychology I presume?
When someone says, “ all of ur success or failures has nothing to do you and your choices” , the question isn’t if that’s true or not. The question is, why would you openly say that to anyone? It’s a arrogant way of saying, “ once we know everything down to the quantum throughout space and time, everything will be fixed that’s broken.”
Is there a difference between Insight and logic?
Insight doesn't not necessarily reflect our wants. I believe it reflects a higher state of consciousness than where logic is found.
To clarify, I am using the definition of Insight as follows: ''1 : the power or act of seeing into a situation : penetration. 2 : the act or result of apprehending the inner nature of things or of seeing intuitively.''
To further clarify, the revelations obtained through meditation could be regarded as lucid thought whereby there is no agenda, just truth. I call it lucid on the basis it is not subjective. This relies on the notion there are universal truths.
Just some initial thoughts.
I'm subscribing as this is great content :)
It seems that humans don’t have free will, we just have a spectrum of choices to make at any given time and what determines those choices are a number of variables/influences. A good analogy is similar to playing chess, there are more parameters and restrictions to your moves(ie you can’t move off the board, certain pieces can only move in certain directions) but the amount of moves that can be made are still huge and varied. Choice is a construct/operation of the brain. If humans did have free will - at what point does it kick in? 3/6/9 months after a fertilized egg in the womb, 2 years old? Does someone still have free will in a coma? Do humans have free will all the time, we just choose not to exercise it most of the time?
Yeah, but it's the choices themselves that show we have free will. How can you make any choice and not be cognizant and even predictive and reflective of that choice? Atheists are compelled to make absurd arguments like free will doesn't exist and that consciousness is an illusion because it's the only way they can maintain their materialistic worldview. They're forcibly shoe horning consciousness into their materialist philosophies which is disingenuous to say the least. And how, exactly, does our response to events show that we don't have freewill? Sam seems to think of human beings as being nothing more than paramecium responding to a light stimulus or being prodded by a dissection tool. It's ridiculous. Ultimately, his argument, if true, would only show it's the universe that makes choices and we're nothing more than puppets.
You have will to change your circumstances. If you believe in God this all makes sense
The argument against free will is not the most simple, but it also isn't especially complex, to the point I believe that any intellectual preaching free will is a victim of their ego's wishful thinking and the power of cognitive dissonance. The problem with free will is that the concept implies an origin of choice that is neither arbitrary nor predetermined, which is not logically possible. For example, if you say that your choice to go one way at a fork in the road was not arbitrary - which both free will believers and non-believers would agree on - then both sides immediately have the burden of coherently describing a non-arbitrary origin for that choice. For determinism, this is easy. Under determinism, we use our observations of the laws of physics to conclude that the universe essentially functions like a machine, predetermined to progress in only one way from the very beginning, which ultimately resulted in you choosing one particular direction at the fork in the road. For believers in free will, their burden is to describe a set of non-arbitrary but also non-deterministic rules. The problem here is that non-arbitrary and non-deterministic rules cannot simply have popped into existence, or else by their very nature they would be arbitrary. Thus, these rules must have a source. That source also cannot have simply popped into existence, since that would, again, be arbitrary. The search for a source that is neither arbitrary nor predetermined, yet also has no source, is an infinite regress. No such regress exists in determinism, which is why determinism is the better option. The concept of free will is not logically coherent, nor does free will need to exist for society to function. Free will only seems to be useful as a concept for people to think of themselves as independent and special.
You have it exactly backward...determinism is the constant search for the prior cause...free will depends on an uncaused prior cause GOD. This is the whole purpose of 100 years of materialist philosophy built on unproven assumptions...eliminate God...eliminate the consequences of all behaviours.
@@markanthony3275 I am unclear what you are speaking of, seems terse and reductive---assertions without argumentation.
@@robertobrien4979 Maybe read some books on the topic...and it will be clearer...start with "The Science Delusion" by Rupert Sheldrake...then "Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth" (in the chapters that Dr. Jeffrey Satinover wrote on free will and also the pagan revival ).
@@markanthony3275 Listened to Sheldrake TED talk, and looked into psi stuff. Thanks....some interesting ideas, some straw men, some good some bizarre....
Except that this source is eternal and uncreated, thus comes the concept of God in the Islamic world view which provides a solid chain of answers coherently allowing for free will to exist without any contradiction. Therefore making the islamic belief the best option for one to exist properly and not having to LIE to children in order to help them conduct a healthy consistent life.
Every conscious thought is already merely a rationalization.
Is Eric making the case that we cannot know that facts are facts because we never know if we have all of the information?
We are the puppets of causality.
And yet we retain all things important, like character, integrity and personality.
I'm not siding with Harris on the free will question, but I think some are unaware of what Harris is basing, at least in part, his position on the topic. He explains it in the interview he did on the Joe Rogan podcast. If memory serves it was based on some data that showed the physiological machinations that take place prior to an action or decision we make. From that, Harris concluded that those electrical and chemical processes were beyond our control, and that these processes are making the choice, not free will. That's probably a very simplistic summation of what he said, but you can listen to the interview to hear what he actually says.
You summarized it well enough. I found him to simply be saying that because you can see and measure the machinations of your thought that lead to the physical manifestation, that somehow that meant you never chose it in the first place, which didn't seem like that impressive of an argument against free will.
So they found that something happens in the brain before the body executes the action. Well no shit. Not sure how that qualifies as sufficient evidence against free will.
michael, I agree. I began to awaken 10 years ago. About 5 years ago I learned of Benjamin Libet's discovery (a 1/3 second delay between when a decision is made, and when the conscious mind things "I did that!"), and later Dr. David Vago's similar discoveries that go about 1/2 second.
For me, practicing mindfulness and being aware of the moment a thought enters the mind, choosing not to think about it right now (no judging, just observing and choosing), it becomes obvious that the 5% conscious mind _emerges_ from the 95% subconscious. Constantly! By being mindful/present/awake, we can "front run" ourselves (in a sense) and exercise a veto power. In that sense, there is free will. I can choose not to just blindly follow whatever emerges into my mind from the subconscious. Most people don't practie this. They follow their emergent sense of self/reality on autopilot. In that sense, they don't have free will.
But, even with mindfulness/presence (exercising a veto power over what emerges as reality in our mind), it's "more free will." It's still not perfect free will because the choice not to think about something right now (or act upon some emotional impulse) itself emerges. It's more deliberative with the subconscious. Less autopilot. But, still emergent and beyond our control (besides after-the-fact reflection and veto power; not trusting what emerges). There's a circular loop happening when mindful/present where the subconscious is challenged by consciousness. A more "checked" emergent existence. That definitely feels like it's free will. Yet, it's still a product of emergent consciousness/existence.
Another example of free will is Dr. David Vago. He has a Tedx presentation on youtube where he talks about a 1/2-second delay he's measured. He finds that people who are more observant/present, and who unwittingly spend more time in the sensory-input phase (the first 1/4 second) tend not do be "stuck" in the next 1/4-second's "evaluation" phase. I think that's the phase where we get stuck and ruminate, and get into patterns of living in the past/future. Simply by being mindful (I would say that's what he's describing being), people can discard noise, and be more present (not self-narrating compulsively). That's some level of free will. Yet, it's all happening beyond our conscious state. It's clearly happening before.
When we come to the end of our life of sin and get converted, we learn that human free will does not work.
@@markfullerOnly a few years ago did I learn a new term as applies to God predetermine all things according to His good pleasure--"prevenient grace". It essentially means that God is secretly at work predisposing all things in bringing souls to salvation.
I think it is contraindicative the formulation of those two words Free - Will. You cannot have those two things cemented together There is nothing like free will because it is not free because there is a juxtapose consequence for every free will decision you make. But you have a will but it is not free. And I think Sam Harris is mixing these two things together and Eric and Sean are both correct. The assumption that at different strata of the human experience, we have the ability to express our ability to will and at some other level we almost because predetermined and determined even if we are not completely. And we cannot understand all of these from the materialistic point of view. Dr. Iain McGilChrist said - The people who tell you you don’t have free will are exercising their free will to tell you you don’t!
Christian freedom (of will) is not their own by human nature, but it is by inheritance from Jesus Christ who is that free will Spirit.
Action is born from a muscle
If the self is an Ilusion to who is it deluting?
watsup chava. EGO, that's who we think we are. It gets scary when you actually start to shed the ego, when you realize how attached we are to the ego, it gets pretty uncomfortable trying to rid that attachment, whoa, let me tell ya.
@Particle Config. I was referring to we as each of our individual conciousness. As for a whole, I believe its possible that the "we" is all of our conciousness collected together...ima be honest, I only started gettin into conciousness after being completely lost inside my mind for some years. meditation has helped me realize that I was identityfying myself with every single negative thought that I would think. Meditation has also made me realize that we truly dont think of our thoughts, they do just arise into the mind/concious eventually without effort.
@@patrickkissane4341 Meditation coming from India has led people both to deny a self and affirm a self.
watsup chava don’t make the atheist go into fits of incoherent screeching
Now I understand that I can not understand anything because I am an illusion. But than who is it that can understand that it can not understand? Something somewhere must certainly understand something about that.
i do think harris runs into a bit of a wall when asked the question about raising a child. he talks about "effort" even though he does not believe we have the agency to control that.
The causes that determine the amount of effort we apply to any given task are out of our control.
The same goes for the causes that determine our desires.
Teaching our children the qualities they need to achieve their desires would likely become one of the many causes determining the level of effort they apply in the future.
Effort is an option.It is not under ones control.However it can create the option leading to the determined outcome.
correct
We don't. Perhaps Sam talking about putting effort into raising a child is the influence needed for someone to start though. It's pretty annoying to think about but free will need not be a part of the equation
@@whuh8873 how can you decide to put effort in if that effort is not subject to free will?
Whether you think there is or there isn’t such a thing as Free will- you have to act and live as if there is coz believing that there isn’t has no practical utility becoz that can be used as an excuse for not taking responsibility for your actions. Because at the end of the day, a belief has to be embodied or manifested, this question is not just an intellectual exercise intended at just killing time or atleast it shouldn’t be.
TLDW; We don't know if free will exists.
Yeah, you must not have watched
I love how been shapiro basically sat at the side once Sam broke out the big boi philosophy
…”if we sum all the facts”…woah Sam is saying some “big boi” stuff. Sam is a lightweight. Hasn’t read half of the philosophical literature that he thinks he needs. FA Hayek debunks all of this nonsense but I’m sure Harris has never read anything from Hayek or any of the other critiques of this engineering approach to society
So you have to make a choice to learn Chinese, but there is no choice to learn Chinese.. Makes sense
the choice to make the choice to learn Chinese isn't a choice you can make
@@evanlofranco Neither is the choice to learn chinese in the first place, if you go in that line. Just stop using free will pertaining words if you don't believe in it.
@@alainlangdon why
@@evanlofranco It will help you understand how incoherent the free will deniers position is.
@@alainlangdon what free will denier? what don't I understand?
When we say we have or don't have free will? what is the "we" made from? One must clarify what the "thing" that has or has no free will made from before one can say anything about if it does have free will or not. So the steps for a viable approach is.
1. What is the definition of free will?
2. What stuff makes the "thing" that I call me?
3. Does that stuff permit free will?
These are my answers to the above
1. What is the definition of fee will.
The ability to change space-time 4 dimensionally, that is change past present and future
2.What stuff makes the "thing" that I call me?
The thing I call me is a single thing that is made of stuff that can connect simultaneous events as is evident from my ability to see simultaneous event.
3. Does that stuff permit free will?
A thing that can connect simultaneous events can operate faster than the speed of light and as such can change past present and future as needed by the definition
philpapers.org/rec/DESCAS
Yeah people don’t even think this far. They can’t even define where they begin and end because the illusion is so strong they think it’s a given.
I think your conscious mind is simply ONE factor in determining your behaviors and thought processes. That, however, is only a slice of what makes up your conscious mind. It's only RIGHT NOW, whatever moment you're taking the time to examine what you're thinking. That conscious mind is made up of so much that wasn't conscious that, I think it's an incalculably small percentage of actual free willed thinking. But, I DO think there's SOME free will
(Using Sam's logic and some common sense) You can't use reason to get to morality. Reason uses you. (as your thoughts are a consequence of deterministic processes.) Reason isn't a tool. You are the tool your deterministic thoughts use to reach their own ends. Call it whatever you want except morality, otherwise your position is irrational.
The first time one bungee jumps or jumps out of a plane, one can realize the relationship/coexistence of free will and determinism. It may not be either or. Bret's layer analogy is in that direction. Thinking outside the context of time can be challenging for many. Perhaps Sam has had experiences where the time component, temporary removed, fostered revelations that he is attempting to articulate. Difficult task with our limited language, particularly english.
If morality isn’t based on informed decisions about positive and negative changes in the experience of conscious creatures, then it can’t be based on anything and is an utterly meaningless word. So either morality is a matter of suffering and wellbeing in conscious beings; or the word has no meaning whatsoever and can be jettisoned from the English language. At which point we can ask ourselves: so there’s no morality but we have to choose between things that improve conscious experience or things that degrade it, which choice will we make? The answer is obvious. This is all Harris is saying. There’s nothing else morality could conceivably mean so if we’re going to use the word we have to use it to describe the choices that improve and degrade experience in conscious creatures.
@@motorhead48067 Wrong.
"So there’s no morality but we have to choose between things that improve conscious experience or things that degrade it, which choice will we make?"
This stands at odds w/ Sam's position because he doesn't believe in any sort of free will. He's a determinist. If you want to presuppose that we can make better or worse choices according to some degree of limited free will then fair enough you're in a position to talk about morality on the basis of wellbeing. If you believe all things are determined and that everything you do is inevitable, then you don't have morality but descriptions of subjective experience. And reason and thoughts are not something you possess but just another component of your deterministic brain; perhaps a method by which it organizes itself independent of any "free and responsible agent."
"How can we be free as conscious agents, if everything we consciously intend was caused by events in our brain which we did not intend, and over which we had no control?" -Sam Harris
Tom das you mean he has no control over himself?
@@jakecostanza802 Yes. He is himself and cant choose not to be.
According to Sam Harris, consciousness is caused by events in our brain we do not intent or control and because of it we do not have free will. But to freely move an arm, I don't need to control every individual cell in my body or mind. I only need that they respond to my intent however that happen. Just like to freely use a computer I don't need to know the inner working of it. And a conscious state of the brain is not always caused by an unconscious state of the brain. Many times a conscious state of the brain is caused by another conscious state, the details of how it is done, we don't need to know to be free.
IF
@@alainlangdon Where did the intent to move your arm come from? Where did the choice of which arm to move come from? Why did you "choose" moving your arm and using a computer as examples? Were you free to choose other examples? If so, why did you not choose them?
If I am 'reasoning', I CHOOSE which facts I'm going to use to determine the reasonableness of that which I am considering. I CHOOSE to consider some facts as pertinent to the issue under consideration and CHOOSE to disregard others. This choice denotes free will.
We may not have absolute free will, but to say we have no free will is ridiculous.
you just don't get it. None of teh points you make conflict with what Sam is saying. If you don't realize that you must not understand it.
One idea that is widespread within the free will denyers is that if an effect has a cause then it's determined, and if it has no cause then it’s random, leaving no place for free will. And according to them, there is no other possibilities. But that's false for two reasons.
First, because a random choice is not a random result if the choice comes from a predefined subset. Second, because there's a third possibility which is that the effect and the cause can be related (without being caused) by and independant intermediate, like consciousness for example.
I think that it's naïve to conclude that because there are regularities in nature this means that determinism applies just as well to mental activities as it does on matter. And I think that it's naive to believe that materialism is the only rational ontologie to explain those regularities.
For those who doubt that an ontology based on consciousness can be rational, please look up a few video by Bernardo Kastrup. I don't agree with everything he says but the guy is definitely rational and knows his subject well. Here's two examples :
ruclips.net/video/KuYeNKEGgAs/видео.html
ruclips.net/video/XcMOape0PY8/видео.html
In summary, an effect can be caused through a natural law and it's determined, or an effect can be spontaneous, without cause, and it's random, or an effect can be related to a motivation through consciousness and therefore understood, but not caused. The will is free when it is not forced through a natural law.
That’s a non-argument. You’re essentially saying, “consciousness (read: free will) must exist because we can conceive of a world where it does and it would still work.” Except the real world is governed by laws that make free will impossible, and you can’t argue with that.
Your “third possibility” cannot be proven, and, if you think about it for long enough, cannot be observed or examined either.
Everything that happens is determined by laws of physics, except for quantum jumps that appear to defy them by exhibiting truly random behavior.
Free will does not exist.
I was in agreement with Sam Harris' conception of the illusion of free will and the self until recently. It seems quite premature to conclude that the self is an illusion. Science is built upon objectivity, it tries to weed out subjectivity at every opportunity. The self is the epitome of subjectivity, and hence why it is so difficult to quantify or localize within the scientific method. Failure to account for the self in an objective sense does not imply its non-existence.
He claims in his book that the self is an illusion. Which implies that the self does not exist in any 'real' or objective sense. The self and consciousness are closely related, you cannot have one without the other. Have another skim through his book, his argument lacks strength here the most.
Moreover, his idea of free will is in the absolute sense. Of course, there is no absolute freedom. However, is absolute freedom even desirable? What does it mean to be absolutely free? Since being comes with limitations, you'd have to be outside of the human body to experience absolute freedom, and therefore absolute freedom is unattainable for as long as you are a limited being. Further, this implies that absolute freedom is undesirable. And since undesirable it concludes that absolute freedom is not the 'freedom' we are after. Whatever feeling of freedom we get in exercising choices is the free-est we can get as conscious beings.
The argument regarding the illusion of free will is a non-issue. No, absolute freedom does not exist, but it is not the freedom we want anyway.
Agreed. The failure to adequately account for a thing may be a shortcoming of science rather than of the thing in consideration. Not recognizing this turns science into dogma.
I would say you have no freedom. You are taken hostage of a combination of youre genes in youre brain and the enviroment that influence it. Responsibillity is what you need to take to fix things so you get a better life for youre self. Try to think of any choice that you have made that is not based on anything.
1nzi I only understood my "self" as being my body thus serving a basic biological utility. Seems like evolution at work to me.
Sam seems to be so hell bent on arguing against dualism that he's resorted to reductio ad absurdum arguments and intellectual dishonesty.
1nzi, read Sam's "Waking Up" book.
You say: "The self and consciousness are closely related, you cannot have one without the other." and the book is all about how consciouness is definitely a thing that exists but how the self is an illusion.
Out of all discussions I've come across on the internet about human free will, one with most substantial content definitely goes to Conway's free will theorem (FWT). Anyone seriously interested in some concrete content on this subject matter should have a look into FWT. Here's a link to the last of 6 public lectures Conway gave about FWT, on which he discusses some consequences of the result and argues (positively) for the human free will despite acknowledging the irrefutable consistency of the determinism:
ruclips.net/video/IgvkhgE1Cps/видео.html
In fact, Conway, as a proponent of the free will position, has contributed more substantial argument towards determinism in this lecture than any of the determinists preceding him, exhibiting his prowess as a first class mathematician and the depth of his thoughts on this subject matter.
Isn't it easy to point out the emotional bias if he agrees that DT is irrefutable consistent?
@@alancollins8294 I wouldn't necessarily put it as an emotional bias. You could call it a belief, perhaps. But he does a better job at defending his position in his lecture than I can cover for him, so I would encourage you to watch the series. Quite entertaining if you have a sufficient background.
One important point I would like to highlight is that, even if we completely disregard his free will position on faith, he still contributes more on this discussion on determinism vs free will.
He proves that if humans have free will then so do elementary particles. If one accepts that humans do have free will, elementary particles necessarily have free will as well. On the other hand, if one accepts that the elementary particles cannot possibly have free will, then it will inevitably mean that humans don't have free will either. So, either side you are on, Conway gives you something constructive to say towards your position.
He also concretely defines what it would mean to have free will; something no one has been able to do actually. According to his definition, to have free will means that the future behavior is not expressible as a function of the information about the past. He further gives a striking point: with this definition, randomness =/= free will. To have free will requires more than just being random. So, it is quite amusing to watch the guests here often equating randomness with free will.
@@neutralcriticism4017 conways arguments are all bullshit
I watched the whole video.
1. if particles have freewill then moral responsibility can be equally placed on any system of particles like a rock.
2. if p implies q and q is a surprise.... Im not responding to this babble
3. incompleteness of quantum mechanics... doesnt matter. The incompleteness of a theory doesnt imply another fact unless you can establish the fact. This is as silly as saying the the theory of everything is found thus God.
all of the arguments are like this. Thanks for wasting an hour of my life by implying conway had anything of substance.
Mankind does not choose to be lost, and does not choose to be saved. Still and yet, believers in determinism are not deprived of their character, and so, are not robots.
the very last comment very nicely crystallized how ridiculous this whole debate was.
Three blind men examining an elephant.
L. Ron Gardner that's all science is, until breakthrough happens.
Beethoven was deaf
That doesn't exist
There are a few other senses.
And someone knows it was an elephant.
To have "Free Will" I must first be free. I certainly am not. I must first know myself, which I do not. I must first know what Will truly is, and what in me exerts it, which I do not either. So, my point of departure is: I don't actually know shit AND I am a long way from having free will, whatever that is...
the biggest thing is that you are conditioned according to the society,no one has some alien senses as people act like if they are from somewhere else
Study that indicates we don't have much free will. We have brain activity that occurs for "random choices" far before a conscious decision was reported. Could mean something else tho was curious abt ppl s thoughts
My view of it mirrors Sam's. I think the main challenge is the consequential process of shifting from the previous notion that there is free will to one where we understand there isn't - the problems arise at the point of discovery due to the new concept not yet having matured with respect to what it means to us individually/ civilisation in our everyday life. At first paradoxes and problems emerge since it brings about questions that we now are exposed to - "how do we think, How do we act? In this situation or another?". However just like in the example of the lady asking about how she should raise her child, Sam (being someone whose already been through the process she's currently going through), explains the benefits of this idea of no free will, and how to navigate the challenges that it brings. Her questions are all important and are part of the process in bulding our new understanding. Finally, Eric voluntarily plays along with the premise and follows up with additional conclusions to this situation which is in all ways - True, Ironic, funny, and insightful.
I couldn’t agree with this more. I recently had the free will revelation and go about my life normally, but its like i’m occupying two entirely different constructs of thought. And the free will thing comes back around and confuses everything. Any tips to grapple with this? My natural inclination is to read up all about it, not in the hope I find a definitive answer (because i’m already sold that there is no free will) but to find an answer as to what that means for my life as I know it. 23 years of living under the illusion of free will combined with a newfound irrefutable sense of actually not having free will, is a seriously mad combination. I don’t think there is free will, but the natural exemplification of my behaviour would suggest I do, because thats how i’ve lived for so long. I’m trying not to go insane, but its very hard for these two schools of thought to exist without it being debilitating, confusing and all consuming. Currently struggling with concepts of pride, blame and love.
@@arletottens6349 No. Facts are facts, and whether they incur the need for large societal changes or not is irrelevant to them being so.
"I hope to convince you that free will is an illusion." ---- Sam Harris, determinist
Obviously, Harris is mistaken. Or perhaps he is simply confused by the paradox. It is constructed as a bit of a Gordian Knot. The sword can be found here: marvinedwards.me/2019/03/08/free-will-whats-wrong-and-how-to-fix-it/
Saying that isn't incompatible with a lack of belief in free will
I disagree with both these guys which is strange because I like aspects of both their positions in general. The problem with the discussion about free will at this level is that it's irrelevant to our daily life view. When you ask someone if they have free will, they are hearing "does someone control your life or do you make the decisions?". It's not, "well my brain had a hicough so I turned the know left before I realized it was the wrong direction". Those types of decisions not being free are fine for phylosophical discussions, but are not meaningful in our daily macro decisions. That means where I'm going to eat tonight, do I study for my exam, will I pick up my kids from school. Those are not random acts of chaos the brain causes.
Thus, we may not have "free will" at the microbiology level, but we sure do at the macro and no higher being or process dictates otherwise. I have never been hungry, decided to go great only to have my brain turn off my plan unless some outside force interrupts, like a disaster, phone call etc. But then we can also admit that we choose to answer the phone call or run out of the house during an earthquake rather than fix that ham sandwich.
This discussion of free will at this level is just hot air, that shouldn't be given air time.
I disagree completely, the rejection of free will has implications that affect our day-to-day lives.
My best friend has anxiety and depression and despite all of my courage and support to help him improve his life, he doesn't. Before I used to get extremely frustrated because he wasn't "choosing" to improve, now I know he can't freely choose, and I don't get frustrated. Instead I'm much more empathic and understanding of the causes behind his behaviour.
I've stopped feeling hatred towards anyone, and I've lost the need to go over the distress they've caused me. How can I take it personally that they chose to hurt me, if they were a victim of biological, psychological and social factors? The same applies with vengeance, I no longer want revenge on the people that have seriously hurt me because I know what they did was no free choice of their own.
I now have ultimate patience for those who are irrational or illogical, because instead of tearing my hair out going "this is so obvious, how are you not getting it, why are you deciding to be so stupid" I can realise that there is a cause for their irrationality which is out of their control.
I'm pretty damn resistant to insults. When people feel the need to criticise me unfairly in the hopes that I'll take it personally, I'm not all that bothered. Before I would be insulted because I couldn't grasp the fact that they consciously and freely decided that it was worth their time to make me feel miserable, but now I know there's no such thing as a free choice, their insults don't hurt me.
Any mistake I make, I never feel unnecessarily guilty for it. If you swapped places with me, atom for atom, you would make the same mistake, so there's no need to feel bad about it. I wasn't in control of the fact that I made a mistake. How many people do you know who beat themselves up thinking "I should have chose to do X... what was I thinking" - it's impossible to choose otherwise so there's no reason to blame yourself.
I never feel stupid if I don't understand something that other people do. In school I used to ask "why am I stupid unlike everyone else, it's all my fault" yet now I know there are prerequisites to learning anything and you can be the unlucky person who didn't catch those prerequisites. I have a friend who is a genius at maths, yet they can't count backwards from 30 to 1. They spent years feeling guilty and stupid and blamed themselves, yet only stopped when they realised what they have is a rare problem that has a CAUSE that they are unaware of. At some point in their lives, they didn't acquire the prerequisites needed to count backwards.
I've stopped feeling guilty for not being as successful as other people. Before I used to feel guilty I don't have as much discipline as a student who gets higher grades than me, now I know they grew up in completely different environmental conditions and inherited behaviours and thoughts that allow them to succeed. Rejecting free will and viewing life deterministically, instead of feeling guilty for not being as successful as certain people, I actually learn to imitate them instead by investigating the factors that lead them to success.
I'm a psychologist, and rejecting free will has seriously boosted the skills needed to succeed in my career. As a psychologist, you have to learn the skill of empathy and understanding of other people's behaviour instead of judging, and... well... if you know there's no free will, and that every behaviour has a cause, instead of fixating on the behaviour you can focus on what caused it. Instead of judging a criminal for their horrendous crimes, you can usefully investigate the factors that lead to his actions, and work to preventing them from having effects on others. And if you're a psychologist you have to learn the skill of detachment, i.e. separating work from home life. You will come across a lot of people who are absolutely evil. When you stop thinking about how horrible they are and how they deserve to die, and blablabla how dare they do this and that, and REALISE that they were not in control of their behaviour, you can detach yourself from the emotions that may cloud your judgement when treating the person.
So that's literally how rejecting free will has improved my daily life. It is completely relevant because it has implications for how we deal with other people's thoughts and behaviours, and that makes up nearly every waking day of our lives.
Richard McCabe . You're confusing free will (aka choice) with biology. We have free will to go to the movies, choose which dinner to order, what outfit to wear, decide where to live, which career to pursue. That has nothing to do with "choosing" to get better from an illness. As a medical professional, you should know better. You cannot "choose" not to get ill.
Your points are phylosophical on how to treat and view people. Those ARE choices. You make the same mistake as many others - confusing free will with biological processes. The major point that people view as free will is the ability to make one's own choices about everyday things, and not being "controlled" in a pre-determined manner or by an outside force.
Kirk, you're actually wrong on the definition of free will. Free will isn't simply the ability to make choices, it's the ability to make FREE choices. You may say you prefer your definition, but the rest of society believes we are free to "choose otherwise".
For example, if you want to lose weight, but you are confronted with chocolate ice cream, and you decide to eat it anyway, that was a choice. But it was not a free choice. That choice was preceded by biological, psychological and social factors that caused it.
Society would say you had the ability to choose otherwise and resist the ice cream, but that's of course not true.
What you're arguing about is going off-topic. You were originally trying to say discussing free will isn't really that important for our daily lives, and I was explaining how rejecting free will has helped me live my daily life better. It's made me less hateful, vengeful, guilty and stressed in my daily life.
Richard McCabe probably the same logic and reasoning behind cold blooded murderers who just can't help but kill people. Just because some people experience pathologies that may inhibit proper functionality of their cognitive/emotional abilities doesn't mean there is no ability to choose or decide. From my point of view, maybe there are people more capable of exercising their will than others, some call it mental toughness. Most people I believe, are not mentally tough. Did you not reach your conclusion and then decided to act accordingly, based on what you "learned?" Or was it just another deterministically driven experience that you would have had, no matter what. Even now as you discuss these topics which you have made your mind up on, is there not a chance that you may change your mind one day given enough evidence to prove otherwise?
@@richardmccabe2392 very interesting and I completely agree. But what would you say for the flipside, the more positive things? Instead of blame, praise and instead of hatred, love? Can pride and love exist with no free will? Can you love someone if they are not the ultimate author of their actions? This is something i’m really struggling with at the minute. I completely agree with everything you said but I can’t do it half-half, only for the bad and not the good. It’s made me question everything I knew about life and what I deem valuable.
Even your emotions about whether or not you have free will would not be free will, but who wills emotions?
Well, i don't know if I had a choice to come into existence . I don't think that is a definition of no free will . I don't think we have free will ,is based on our instincts. How ever there are moments that it does exist. I wouldn't call it free it's very hard. You first have to understand the three operating systems of being human. From there you will have a better perspective of who and what we are.
When a single cause create a single effect dictated by a physical law, that's what we call determinism. It apply to inanimate object composed of many atoms. But with a single particule, it can be very different. A cause can have multiple potential effects. Only one will manifest when a measurement is made, usually the most probable one considering the environnement. But other less probable effects can also manifest. That's the quantum world, very strange to us. And we still don't know what role consciouness play in it. But what we know is that when we bind many particule together, the probability of the effect manifesting adds to become an inevitability, and the less probable options become insignificant. And what about the complexe conscious beeings? In this case, there are mutiple inputs and multiple potential outputs, of which only one or a few will actualised, giving the conscious being the sentiment that it could have choosen otherwise. And it's true, it could. Because the actual output, loop back in the input. So, if the output don't give the expected results, the neuronal circuits will detect it and change the output to better suit the wanted result. Up to here, it would be just like what a computer could do, but in the case of a conscious being, there is another feeback loop of consciouness on itself and that's something a computer can not do yet. The neuronal circuits create consciouness and meaning which feeback on the neuronale circuit that create consciousness and meaning. It's not an output, input thing. It's the internal circuits acting on themself. The loop don't go from outside to inside, it stay inside and loop on itself. For a computer to do this, it would take an instruction (for example: If condition then action) capable of reading itself and understanding it's own meaning and acting accordingly. It would take an instruction that knows it's an instruction and what it's doing. Exactly like what we are; Conscious beeing aware of our own thoughts and so capable of changing them at will, according to the meaning we perceive. So, that's why it's hard to understand free will for some people. They think with a single cause and a single effect with no feedback, and the outcome seems inevitable. And altough that's the way inanimate things work at a certain level, it's not the way microscopic or complex conscious beeing work. The chain of cause and effect end where consciousness begin because consciousness can act back according to meaning. So, contrary to inanimate things, we really have options that we can exercice at will. When acted upon, we can react in multiple potential ways and the way we choose will depends on the meaning it has for us. It do not depend on what just happened prior, in the past. The output is not forced or inevitable, it's understood and created by the meaning. The chain of cause and effect may create consciousness but than consciouness create the next effect base on the actual meaning, not on the past cause. And this new cause is now called a motivation which look exactly like an ordinary cause but is the result of a free will emanating from consciouness, and not the direct result of a previous physical cause which was originating from the big bang. Here, "free will" is the "will" associated to the meaning held in consciouness through awareness. It's free because it's the consequence of an understanding which can change with experience and the intention making it, ultimatly, a choice between good and bad, between the will of God or the will of the ego. And after that, the effect may continue as a chain of cause and effect, if no consciouness is involved. But it returns to a motivation and effect chain when consciouness is involved. Cause and effect when the switch is off. Motivation and effect when the switch is on. Things don't happen without causes. It's just that the causes are due to the meaning when consciouness is involve. For now, consciousness is a mystery and free will lies in that mystery.
A L Nice argument. My concern is that, as you admit, the conscious experience is at bottom caused by factors outside of our own control or experience, so it seems anything that follows is ultimately based on variables outside of our control. Also, you weigh heavily in the idea that our conscious experience and “meaning” is what essentially interrupts or injects itself j to the input/output equation, yet you’re simply describing brain function which manifests into internal dialogue/debate/decision making (all due to physical events in the brain caused still by the chain of events). So yes, in that regard we function differently than a computer, there’s a process involved in our decision making experience that a computer does not have, nevertheless its simply a manifestation of physical processes in the brain as the neurons pinball with each other.
@@tsemi9485 I don't think that consciousness comes from the physical brain only.
I believe that we have a soul body and many other structures that connect us to a universal consciousness.
As I said in another comment, I choose to incorporate in the expression BRAIN, anything that allows our mind to be. So, when I say brain, I mean brain plus soul body plus anything that makes consciousness possible. And in this particular comment, I just emphased the idea that there must be a loop of consciousness on itself going back to the ultimate nature of reality.
It's still a mystery to me. And it may be a mystery for God himself, if God exist. In fact, for me God is that universal consciousness. It's primordial and it created everything just because it can. But maybe it doesn't know why it's conscious itself.
And if God is not free, then nobody is... because we are God playing the game of life within its own consciousness. And technically, God is uncaused since there is nothing outside God.
My explanation of free will is based on the mystery of consciousness. If consciousness was proven to be some sort of illusion, then you are right, there would be no free will.
But is that a life I would want to live?
Nobody knows for sure. But from what I understand, free will makes more sens.
That's why I'm still alive and fighting to better myself.
@@alainlangdon very good explanation
@@alainlangdon consciousness is an illusion its not an inherently real thing
Ben is a smart man. When it comes to his field. His experience is with politics and social media. Theres no way in hell he would ever qualify for a discussion with sam harris on free will. Sam is an extremely experienced philosopher. This was his home turf... Ben stood no chance.
I mean I tend to agree but he seemed to Homs his own. My problem here is that Sam both endorses effort and discipline, and also says you have no control over ones effort expenditure. I understand the argument fine, but the coherent argument seems to end in a contradictory conclusion
It's not we either have it or we don't, it's that we can not have it most of the time and still have it some of the time
Presence or absence of free will has nothing to do with quality or quantity of behavior, like, for example, whether someone is an athlete or a couch potato, saintly or psychopath, and the possible causes of the difference. Free will refers to whether or not one had a choice about whatever it was that they did in the past, not to the behavior itself or possible causes. Ben Shapiro conflated these and implied that Sam Harris invalidated his thesis on the absence of free will because he used so many active verbs to talk about a human quality that he considers passive, control over choice.
Ben’s argument was invalid, not Sam’s, but somehow Sam was unable to directly counter this in the two instances that Ben flaunted it. A conflation also occurs with imagined effects of free will’s absence on morality, fears that chaos would result. But the quality of actions doesn’t change according to what brought them about; what can change are judgments and actions concerning the actor. For example, a serial murderer may not have had a choice to become a killer, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be locked up. It doesn’t mean that accountability for behavior is separated from behavior. If it’s consequently found, for example, that a brain tumor was a cause of the killings, medical treatment and modification of the prisoner’s sentence should be considered. The consequence of absence of free will would only mean that, while we can be appalled and hate a hateful act, hating the actor would no longer make sense, since the choice was not under their control. We would be relieved of the painful drive to seek vengeance, of self-righteousness, and we could then take calmer, wiser actions.
If it becomes clear that the cause of all behavior of any organism is its ceaseless conditioning by genetic inheritance and all known and unknown environmental effects throughout its life, it must be concluded that the organism could not have helped doing whatever it did, that its so-called will is a result of its totally embedded relationship with the universe, that its independence exists as a perception but has no reality as free agent. This applies to all living beings, not only humans, although humans may have a vastly larger range of interests and choices than other lives.
In other words, what has been done is determined, but since since there are far too many factors involved in determining any future action, our futures are more or less unpredictable, even more unpredictable than the weather, and so we experience our reality as one in which we have at least some freedom of choice regarding our individually-experienced lives. The arrow of time gives us a determined past, an uncertain future, and the present in which we make choices as we wish and experience our lives unfold as consequences of the (inevitable) choices we made as well as of the unpredictable events of our vast and marvelous world.
The biggest problem I have is the arrogance from the determinist side. How Sam Harris speaks as if he KNOWS, and not as if he BELIEVES.
Make no mistake- It is on pure faith to claim there is no free will, just as it is faith to claim there is.
Jordan Peterson: *Well, it depends on what you mean by "free"...* 😊
But seriously, if you just subtract every limitation to human freedom of choice that we do indeed know of - intelligence, instincts, the five/six big personality factors etc. - how "free" would you call that what might possibly remain? How "free" would you call speech that has limitations put on it? "You can say (or do) anything you want, as long as it's X" is not freedom in my book 😉.
@@cosmicprison9819 The determinist claim has zero room for the concept of choice. No person who believes in free will thinks you can will yourself out of gravity, so to me the argument is not addressing the root of the disagreement.
I'll put it this way, if "free" is limited to zero, will is too.
If there is a .001% degree of freedom, free will exists, and determinism is not true.
Unquarked My minimal definition of freedom would be the choice between just two alternatives, and the ability to have chosen differently, but free of any constraints (including internal ones) to that small choice. Your definition of .001% would technically imply that if I put you in prison and chained you to a wall, but allowed you to move your fingers by one centimeter, you would still be "free" because you're not completely immobilized. Would you sign up for that? 😉
If you have such a small amount of autonomy, even though it may be entirely within your control, how much of a difference it actually makes in influencing your behaviour and the outside world would probably be negligible. Which is crucial for the application, like the question of how much responsibility you have for your own actions if everything except for .001% that you do is outside your control.
@@cosmicprison9819 Your example of the slave means they cannot choose what they do. Of course that's not free.
If you believe people do make choices, you are arguing for free will and against determinism. As I have already stated, free will makes no claims about the freedom to will yourself out of gravity. Everyone on that side agrees people are somewhat constrained. It is part of the determinist claim that choices are not made.
"Probably be negligible" is a faith-based claim. You have no idea what your constraints are.
@@ronaldp.vincent8226 I wouldn't call a "remaining autonomy" free in any sense of the word. Take the closest comparisons, "free speech" and "free market". People are very quick to judge these as "no longer free" when even just the smallest constraints are placed on them. Especially on speech. Then it's no longer free speech, it's licensed speech. In terms of constraints, just like you can name them for "free speech" (no defamation, no calls to violence etc.), it's also easy to name constraints to will that are not synonymous with physical constraints to your motor capabilities (like the example of being unable to fly, which you cited):
One big constraint would obviously be intelligence. You can't choose to understand something that's too demanding for you, and you can't choose to make yourself less intelligent so that you have an easier time communicating with someone of lower intellect than you. Okay, maybe that's just a constraint of possibility, like being unable to fly?
What about your personality? Personality traits are fairly stable across time, and also heritable.
Can you choose to be more extraverted, so that you experience more positive emotions and develop better social skills, and find social interactions inherently more rewarding instead of draining? Can you choose to be more introverted so that you're less bored when alone (or in lockdown ^^)?
Can you choose to be more conscientious if you think you're being lazy? Or is their a limit to the amount of "kicks in the butt" you can give to yourself? And if so, does that limit differ between people (spoiler: of course it does)? Then we can no longer hold people to the same standard in terms of what is "lazy" or not, because they differ in conscientiousness.
You don't need to believe in full-on determinism to realize in how many ways your freedom of choice is restricted, by very specific factors that you can explicitly name. I'm now trying to understand these arguments on neuronal and quantum levels. If people can convince me of determinism completely, that wouldn't invalidate my experience nor statements that intelligence, personality factors etc. limit the ways in which we can act. On the contrary, it would imply that the limitation is even more extreme than we feel it is in our daily lives. That our will is also not free in those areas where we don't consciously notice it. (Whereas if some activity is too cognitively challenging or not fitting with someone's personality, they usually notice that limitation consciously.)
Free will is the ability to choose according to your understanding.
When you delibarate, you obey the rules of your "software". That "software" has it's own rules that are not necessarily deterministic.
For one cause, you don't have only one possible effect. You can have many possible adequate response to a situation. Sometimes they all have the same value, sometimes not. If they don't all have the same value, you only have to put a weight on each of them before choosing at random.
Because it's not just a question of what you prefer, it's also what's most likely to attend the goal. Weighting each response is the best thing to do when you don't know which one will do the trick. That way, you compromise and keep your options open at the same time. There is always a compromise between how you feel and what you should do. Then you monitor the result and decide if it was the right response to give to the situation according to your goal.
It's not always easy to evaluate if we go in the right direction. It's an equation with many missing variables but we manage to appoximate what it means to us. And with each decision, we transform ourself, we become a new person, that will react differently to the next choice, in an unpredictable way, yet rational way at least for the person.
We are always at the cross road. At every step, there are multiple possible branching. It's not determined, it's not random, it's understood.
And consciousness is what wraps it up in a nice little package called the free agent. It's yourself, a human being: determined on some level (your physicality), conditioned on another level (your biology), and free, to some extent, where it counts (your mind, your "software", where the branching is possible).
Don't you think that's the way we function?
When face with a situation, don't you say : I could do this…, I could do that…, I’m not sure what I should do…, how do I feel?, what is the best for this situation?, for me?, for everybody? And instinctivly you weight the options according to who you are (your values, your believes, your inclinations and feelings, your rationality, etc.) and you choose at random. But it's not random because there's a rational before the final random choice, the free choice. That’s why you can always say : I could have done otherwise. And it's true. You could...
What makes people think that human free will is so important to preserve in the next life when all things human will have been dissolved?
An illusion holds no meaning and is not an illusion if no observer is present.
Free will is the ability to choose according to the meaning you perceive. Let's examine that at a deeper level.
When there is an effect on a particule, there is either no cause and it's a random effect, or there is a cause and it's a deterministic process. That's the way most people tend to reflect on that subject. But it's not that simple.
First, a particule as a physical ponctual separate thing may not exist. Look up the latest physics theory. So physicality may be the biggest illusion of all.
Second, an effect link to a cause by a simple physical law that makes the effect ineluctable, as in determinism, is not how reality seems to work. What is link to a cause is a probability distribution of possible effects. Some effects are more probable and some are less probable but there are no direct link between a cause and an effect, as we used to think when we thought that reality was made of material stuff. If it seems determined at our scale, it's because the probability distributions add up with large number of particules to become more and more of a certainty. Never perfect but asymptotically close. And we are not even sure what role consciousness play in that scenario.
But there is a third possibility. An effect may be caused by meaning held in consciousness. That type of cause is different from an ordinary cause in an inanimate system. In the traditional way of thinking, an ordinary cause is the last element of a long chain of cause and effect going back to the origine of the universe. But a cause that come from meaning held in consciousness is a cause that knows that it is a cause and can change just because of it. It do not come from the origin of the universe. It come from the capacity of consciousness to grab the meaning of a situation. And that's in the now. It hold nothing to the past. In the common language, we call that a motivation.
Causes applies to inanimate things and motivations applies to complexe conscious beeings, allowing free will. It's a cause, but it's a cause that is understood and it's not ineluctable because of it.
And it also mean that, place in the same condition, you could choose differently. Because if you came to the conclusion that 2 options had the same value for you, than those 2 options are the result of your free will. They have been choosen according to the meaning you perceive in your consciousness. Which ever option you take afterword will be the expression of that free will. You can therefore choose anyone at random and it will still be the exercice of your free will because you already have eliminated all the other options. So, although it may be a random choice, it's not a random result, since the 2 options were already selected as the valid response, for you, to a situation. That's why, if you come back in time, you always have the possibility to choose differently.
Also, if there were only one option, than the second option could always be the negation of the first option for a breaf moment followed by going back to the first option. That's called a moment of hesitation and it brings free will alive.
And finally there's a fourth possibility. It's called "free won't". It's the ability to stop a process following a perception. In complex conscious beeing, a chain of cause and effect can be stop because of the meaning perceived. So an effect can be random, or caused, or motivated, or stop.
Consciousness is the mystery that makes free will possible. Nobody can explain that mystery but we experience it everyday. It has four principal properties: self awareness, subjective perceptions, grabing the meaning and will. There are different level of consciousness and consequently there are different level of free will. We are as free as we are conscious.
Finally, computer may be able to compute some "meaning" to a certain extent but it can only be perceive in consciousness. Meaning without perception would be better called "information", I guess. So computer don't have free will.
That's my take on it.
Can an illusion realised that it is an illusion?
Exactly these guys are full of crap. Not even worth debating. That alone assumes freewill.
Stealing a quote from someone else here: 'There is awareness, and there are objects of consciousness, but the “self” is one of the objects; it’s not the awareness.'
Actually though, there are no objects of consciousness either, but that's one paradigm shift away from the one I'm asking you to make here :)
@@j2mfp78 Yeah they should have just had you on the panel
@@anthonygumingo9840 I don't entertain stupid self refuting ideas like "We have no freewill " But you can, especially if you believe you have no choice in the matter. 😜
Pointless wordplay. As I understand it, you are saying that we have the independence of realizing that Free will is an illusion? Again, why were we not debating this earlier? It was only when the findings of Psychology, Neuroscience began to point in this direction were we forced to confront it.
If you are determined, than there is no choice! The very fact that there is a choice to be made, good or bad, is indicative that you are free to choose according to your understanding. Some properties that are only found in consciouness are self awareness, transcendantal understanding or grasping the meaning, will or free will I might add, subjective perception (color, taste, etc) and general consciouness. There is nothing of those in the subconscious so it can not create what it don't have. The conscious mind is using the unconscious mind not the other way around. Free will doesn't mean without a reason. That would be randomness. Free will mean caused by "will" coming from consciouness because of meaning. And determinism mean caused by something physical or by a known force field. You are more than just a powerless witness to your life. If I'm wrong and by some mysterious phenomena the unsconscious mind unwillingly created something that is conscious, than once it's establish it obey it's own rules that are base on meaning. And according to NDE this thing may even survive the extinction of the body at least for a while and I believe that this should be study more. It's like UFO, people used to say it's impossible, but you will see, it's going to be more and more common knowledge that those things are real. And if we can believe experiencer, at least some of them, it seems that those aliens communicate by telepathy. That's meaning acting outside the brain on another's neurones.
I didn't see this when I posted the questions in a new thread. Feel free to ignore it, I'll read what you have said.
Actually if your choice was causally inevitable, then the fact that it would be you performing the choosing, and no other object in the physical universe, was also causally inevitable. Determinism changes nothing.
@@marvinedwards737 Your statement is not very strong in the sens that you do not address any of the hard problems, like if you don't even perceive that there are problems. First of all, it's not a simple cause that precipitate the choice, it's conscious intelligent informations, in other words, meaning. And this allows free will.
@@alainlangdon Right. Biological causation results in an object that behaves in a goal-directed (purposeful) manner to survive, thrive, and reproduce. Rational causation comes with an evolved neurology capable of imagination, evaluation, and choosing the best means of achieving the biological purpose. The mind (a process running upon the neural infrastructure) transforms sensory input into conceptual objects and events, creating meaning. And this is where free will makes its appearance in the universe.
@@marvinedwards737 Now you said it better than I can. Thank you.
Sam missed an opportunity to elaborate on how truth and its effect on reason is exactly why the ability to reason is the x factor that bridges his inability to express his argument better. Reasoning is the influencer of behavior. It is perhaps our one autonomous ability. The choice to reason.
I agree, he should've broken down the illusion of free will to its more basic form which is in the process of thought itself
can you elaborate on a practical example? I try to understand it but still don't really grasp it
Here is the obnoxious circle that the illusion of free will draws for me. If free will does not exist than whether I believe in it or not is predetermined. Whether or not I attempt to convince other people that free will is an illusion is also predetermined. If life is truly a casual chain of events and your life can only unfold in one very specific way than how is there any value to life at all? Responsibility goes out the window. You aren't responsible for your triumphs or failures. The beginning, ending, and every moment inbetween of this bizarre ride we are on is set in stone. This panel of very well spoken weirdos were bound to have this " debate ". Stay away from philosophy kids, it will ruin your life. Oh wait you have no choice nfm.
Ben is just a presuppositionallist if you guys really want to understand bens position ,watch the debate that sye ten bruggencate and Matt Dillahunty had
Pragmatic Entertainment its difficult for me explain but u should watch that debate
'I'm not sure but you should google it', would of been a better saying.
Ben is not a presuppositionalist. That position holds a compatibilist view of freewill whereas Ben's position is that of libertarian freewill.
In the beginning of this supposed debate the language that Ben is using like we're just sacks of meat , we're just floating through the universe it almost sounds like he's trying to say you cannot be rational you cannot trust what you think without acknowledging God and also you cannot have free will without acknowledging free will or you can't be rational without Free Will Etc that's what I meant
Jeff Markus In the beginning of this supposed debate the language that Ben is using like we're just sacks of meat , we're just floating through the universe it almost sounds like he's trying to say you cannot be rational you cannot trust what you think without acknowledging God and also you cannot have free will without acknowledging free will or you can't be rational without Free Will Etc that's what I meant
Certainly in order for us to do the things we do we need to feel as though we are making choices. And by “feel” I mean that our minds make us feel we have the capability of “deciding.” The deterministic interpretation is that as we consider possibilities we are really just spectators watching the mental computation occur and taking credit for it.
As individuals we are only aggregates of smaller things, cells, which are also aggregates of smaller things, and so on. My mind is comprised of a cacophony of neurons firing in the dark. Even this term “firing,” is just a broad stroke to denote ions moving in and out of cells, a seemingly even more abstract basis for the human condition. Even when I believe I make a choice, there is always a biological explanation for why and how I made the choice I did. What I mean is to consider what comprises a “choice.” A choice consists of a series of actions directed at achieving some goal in response to some stimulus that gave multiple paths by which to attempt to achieve the goal. Now we as humans have many goals at a given moment. We may not always choose the optimal solution for a particular goal because we are truly working towards another goal that may be damaged by the optimal path for the goal at hand. We could also simply miscalculate. But the idea is that we are only capable of using our biological machinery to work towards accomplishing our goals, however they may be prioritized at any given moment, allowing for our imperfect abilities to calculate.
So perhaps the free will lies in the making of plans, the selection of goals? Well we come programmed with biological goals: survival, reproduction, entertainment, and their subsidiary goals. In fact one could argue that every new goal we have is somehow derived from one or multiple of these.
What would be the point of consciousness evolving then? Why not just be zombies with input -> output behavior, with no self reflection nor ability to experience? Consciousness must surely have evolved because it was a beneficial mechanism that allowed creatures to survive, adapt and influence the world around them.
If there's no need for free will, why evolve a mechanism such as consciousness to trick itself into believing it has the ability to decide? Why not just have a mechanism that takes inputs and produces outputs deterministically with no need for feedback mechanisms or morals and feelings? If the point was survival only, there was no need to create such a complex mechanism as consciousness to provide appropriate behavioral responses that would lead to reproductive success. But we aren't zombies, we have an internal world where we analyze, think and then decide upon actions which align with our internal guidance mechanisms; these mechanisms are constantly being updated by new experiences we have or self reflection and critical thinking.
If reality was purely a deterministic domain where free will didn't exist, we wouldn't even be having this conversation. I have big doubts about consciousness arising just to be an illusory movie presented to the biological entity that walks around in the real world. I don't see any practical use for such a mechanism to evolve, especially since it wouldn't be needed in order to increase our ability to survive. What's the evolutionary advantage of having an illusory sense of self and action? There must be an advantage to being conscious over not being conscious, And part of that advantage lies in our ability to think critically, decide, Take action, re evaluate those actions and go through the process again until we are satisfied with the outcome.
Because consciousness is a direct response to evolutionary adaptation. Have you ever seen a mosquito fly into a light bulb? If other mosquitos were conscious of this action, they would understand flying into a light bulb would result in death. It's an intriguing question to wonder why humans developed a frontal lobe capable of self realization, and complex problem solving, but that is a question for evolutionary biologists.
Here is an interesting question to ponder. If humans no longer had Broca's area (The area for creation of speech). What would a thought feel like to us? How would it sound to us? How would we rationalize to ourselves if we could no longer "Talk in our head." I think this is an incredibly interesting question to speculate. I believe the brain would merely do it for us, and we would no longer need that additional step of talking to ourselves. We would simply form a decision and act upon it, without the "Talking it through part" And I think this "talking to ones self" Is a large component of what conscious thoughts actually are.
On a side note, was it really necessary that we evolved past single cell organisms? They seem perfectly efficient, in fact as a whole species they seem more efficient than humans. So why did evolution force these organisms to evolve beyond what they were? These are the questions you are asking right now. Organisms become more and more complex as time passes, this seems like a basic law of evolution, therefore there is no reason to believe a complex system such as the brain would never emerge given billions of years.
Gogley Loosa mosquitos do not have the cognitive capacity to form coherent and abstract thoughts like you and I do. They don't have the capacity to reflect upon death; they have no language and thus they can't think in the same way we do, so even if they are conscious, they are not at the same level we are.
Yes, talking to yourself, otherwise known as phonemic awareness is a BIG part of who we are and what makes us different. It is interesting to ask what an animal thinks, but it certainly doesn't involve sounds/words like our thoughts do. Maybe they think in pictures, or smells, or whatever other inner state their brain has made the go-to think mechanism. But you can be assured it is nothing like our inner experience.
Just because organisms become more complex does not mean consciousness arises from that. Once again, mosquitos or dogs or what have you, may have a component of inner experience, yet they are less complex than the human brain. So the question for you is, what makes non conscious particles become conscious.
One of the factors that IS affected by comlexity is our ability to act in different ways. Flies and less complex organisms exhibit rudimentary social behavior and barely any tool making abilities. The further you go up in complexity, the more social and technological a species becomes. And once again, the complexity does not imply consciousness nor subjective experience.
If we lost our brocca's area and ability to think in words, we would be chimps. We would have a basic tool of bodily gestures and a finite amount of sounds that composed our language, but we would not be able to form new complex ideas nor design tools that further extend our ability to affect the outer world. Our thoughts would be in pictures, smells, And other non-language sounds, maybe even feelings. Our ability to form language and use it as a tool to ask for something or say "NO" is what has given rise to this entire free will debate. Although not being able to talk to one's self would result in less rationality and self awareness, key components of free will.
Furthermore, I would argue humans have MORE free will than less complex organisms such as apes and dogs. I wouldn't say these animals LACK free will, it's just not as extensive as ours.
Hand gestures would be effective in communicating with others but not to yourself. Which is why I argued that self vocalization is a large majority of what constitutes self awareness. Does a baby have a free will? Or do we only develop free will later in life. These are questions we need to ponder upon.
The mosquito comment was in response to asking about why we developed consciousness. It is an evolutionary response to aid in our survival. I wouldn't argue that we would be chimps as primitive specimens of homosapiens didn't have the capacity for language. They did have the capacity of human communication, as you mentioned through hand gestures. Scientists believed spoken language began approximately 100,000 years ago, and the 1st known homosapiens was known to emerge 200,000 years ago. We wouldn't be chimps, we would still be homosapiens.
In other words your putting free will on a spectrum? Where less cognitively developed organisms have less free will. This to me is basically telling you that free will stems from the brain itself, and not any outside forces. And knowing this information, you would see that this logic refutes itself. Do we really have control over how our synapsis fire? The patterns they fire in that cause us to make rational decisions?
Oh man, there is absolutely morality at the level of electrons and quarks. The consciousness of the universe responds differently if it’s being observed.
As above so below. All is vibration.
up until the batteries in the night stand go dead
Eric Weinstein was wrong about one thing. Self reflection doesn't lead to madness. Self reflection leads to sanity. *Sanity*, leads to madness.
if a implies b and b implies c then a implies c.
@@xsuploader It just depends on what kind of proximity we're talking about then, but yes, you're right. It's still misleading enough that self reflection->madness that it's akin to giving someone directions to Rhode Island from Maryland and not mentioning moving through New York. Perhaps there's a better analogy but it should get the point across. There's something quite significant between self-reflection and madness, and that is some degree of being in touch with reality. Weinstein does not strike me as a person that is deeply pre-occupied with self-reflection/awareness.
Sam Harris is very funny!
The major problem with Sam's argument came up when answering the audience member's question about how to use that knowledge to make change happen, and his answer was in the meta-language of free will; ie., you just have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. To put it another way, from a deterministic POV, sitting around to see if you learn Chinese is exactly how you learn Chinese, whether you realize it or not.
Yes, Sam's answer is problematic. A person doesn't have a free will but have the capacity to learn and change, to understand and master biology. To do that, a person needs stimuli. So, to answer the mother asking the question, she could provide advice or help to her son so he would acquire necessary skills or mindset to act appropriately. To sum up, free will seems you act without stimuli. Without free will, you can still act but need stimuli to start the process.
Everything is about influence. If you tell people that they will learn Chinese by just sitting around, they will do it expecting to learn Chinese. If you tell them that they need to buy textbooks or move to China they will do that. Even though in both cases the behavior is determined and you are always just "sitting around" waiting for things to happen to you, when deciding what to tell people you should tell them the latter, not the former, because it will have a more positive influence on them.
No, it's not that, it's if you're sitting around to see if you're in an environment where Chinese is needed, second nature, cultural, or just business or intrest you're likely to learn it or attempt to as your instinct naturally pushes you towards it, subconsciously.
Like the Chimpanzees need to grab the fruit, he is conditioned in a situation where food is scarce, it wasn't the choice of will, but the subconscious fear of death and his knowledge of life from prior experience, anxiety driven instincts, that lead to the neurological reaction from the subconscious to the conscious then to the rest of the bodily system, in doing so he receives dopamine and the consciousness rationalises the decision as to allow dopamine to slowly keep him feeling good.
@@PeterXiao1 What you're describing is just "will" not free will. There's a difference
We don’t and can’t know the truth about the universe, and all our musings about it will never change that.
We don't need the idea of free will. In fact it the term has a history of development all its own that is barely a thousand years old.
I never get tired of listening to Sam Harris debate in chess and Shapiro getting frustrated because he is still arguing in checkers.
Good one
Sam is most likely correct but Ben is actually being more responsible as it relates to human well being over all. Meaning, Sam is right that we don't have free will, we ARE the result of hardware that we didn't choose being updated by inputs with didn't choose. But I get the strong sense that Ben realizes that, and is afraid of the extremely detrimental effects this knowledge will have on society. Sam acts as if, because HE is able to be more compassionate with this knowledge that society will be able to do the same....that is the huge fallacy.
The problem is....Sam, with his hardware, is *not* an accurate representation of the world at large, which is the root of Ben's concerns.
Sam's hardware enables him to navigate extremely intelligently in these new waters. But what about the average person, when they are told that if they commit crimes, even horrible, violent crimes against others, it is through no fault of their own. If they kill themselves, in the end it was inevitable. How is this gonna play out on a broad scale? Sam seems to completely ignore all possible negative consequences that this powerful, utterly life altering knowledge would have, and only uses himself as an example as if he is the average Joe, which is an enormous intellectual fallacy.
So even though some people here comment that Ben is not being as "deep" as Harris (and I like Harris and respect his thoughts on the basics mechanics of the free will issue) that "depth" depends on what you weigh as more important overall. He is actually much more pragmatical on behalf of human well being, I would even say *crucially* so.
Very few people are capable of living with the perspective that we are essentially living a predetermined path as much as if our existence was the playback of a DVD. Logically I know that every decision I make was predetermined at the big bang, but my mind can't accept that, which was also predetermined...
The point of the philosophical debate of free will vs determinism is a matter of what is true.
Whether you should try convincing ppl of one side or the other is a different idea.
@@Gary_oldmans_left_nut If free will is an illusion, then there is no choice to accept or reject it. All has been predetermined.
Freewill is not universal cognitive self-control.
Freewill is liberty to apply will power, it is agency towards self-efficacy.
Two-Edged Sword lookikikkkkkk
The thing is, what Sam means by "free will" is not what most people think.
What he means is that we do not have an "outside" observer that creates independent action within our minds. We are embedded within our minds, and in some sense are our minds. We are not separate from it, and so we cannot make "free" choices.
He does not mean that people are not responsible for their choices, insofar as we think of our choices as unconstrained.
Great discussion! I disagree with Sam, if you had knowledge of all that is, you would be in the best position to know what you ought to do, but if there is no moral prescription in all that is, then there would be no moral obligations. So an ought doesn't logically follow from an is. The prescription needs to be something that is. Of course, the problem then is that everything in nature seems to be descriptive so a prescription would likely need to be outside of nature. Also we can only be morally obligated to personal beings. This is why it is highly likely that a God exists if morality is objective.
As for determinism, it may be possible for the human mind to be rational without free will. However, we would be unable to affirm any of our beliefs on rational grounds. If you believe that determinism is true, then you admit that you were determined to think so, and you cannot say that you believe it for rational reasons. Even if you think you do, you were determined to think that. See the problem? Given our strong experience of freely making decisions, I think free will far better corresponds with reality.
The incentive to do anything is to maximize your own well being. Maximizing societal well being is essential to that. If you want something, you “should” take measures to obtain it. The essence of the word “should” implies incentive. If we adopt a Christian morality where God is the author of what we should do, we “should” do those actions in order to avoid eternal torment or to gain eternal bliss. In other words, the only reason we “should” do anything is to avoid pain or to gain pleasure, so in the same way, we should seek to maximize our own personal well being.
I don’t know how the existence of non-existence of free will impacts the validity of rationality. Rationality is a system that’s worked to produce consistent results throughout time. You can’t make assertions about reality without using rationality because rationality is the only system we know works.
Morality comes from knowledge.
@@keithohanlon6191 who told you😂😂
Where does an "ought" come from?...if not an "is". Morals are nothing more than our evolutionary survival mechanism. Societal animals display the same characteristics. They have even bred social animals (with morals) from non-social animals (without morals). Morals emerge from brains, nothing more. If you start with the premise that there is an "ought" independent of minds/brains, then you are starting from an unsupported substrate. Even if there is a God (which I doubt) you have no reasonable justification for any attribute, let alone "morals". For all you know your "God" could be evil, by our standards. By any reasonable measure, this appears to be the case. If you begin, impartially, (which I doubt you can do, based on your comment) you would be able to quickly build a case for an evil (vs. benevolent) God. You have to do mental gymnastics (as many religious people do) to conclude that such a God has our (collective/human race) best interest at heart. The universe doesn't seem to agree.
@@rustyosgood5667 Subjective morality does not require an ought as there is no objective prescription, just the preferences of individuals.
I would start with what better corresponds with reality - that things are objectively right and wrong, or that nothing is?
If you are referring to the problem of evil, that has been adequately refuted at the scholarly level. There is no logic contradiction of an all loving God permitting humans to do evil. Most people argue on the basis of probability instead saying that it is unlikely. However, to do that, one would have to demonstrate that a world with less suffering would be objectively better. How could one possibly demonstrate that?
Is it really that hard to just say, “choice is an illusion”....?
🤷♂️
Yes it's hard because you have to lie to yourself and submit so deeply to the thought of another (in this case Sam Harris) that you come to believe that lie.
@@alainlangdon
Huh?
Did you literally just type that assuming my position on the subject? Lol You sound like you’re struggling with this topic and feel threatened by Sam. I don’t even agree with everything Sam has to say but how is he a liar lol?
Get help my friend 🤜🤛
@@AndrewJoshua11 You made a comment on a video where Sam Harris defend categorically that we have no free will and you write: "Is it really that hard to just say choice is an illusion?".
Well, yes it's that hard because it's false.
There is no link between a cause and an effect in consciousness. It's not that a choice is random, altough randomness is often involved, it's that there is absolutly nothing forcing a choice in a direction or another. A choice is not forced, it's understood.
There are certainly reasons to act or choose but the impulsion is free. There is simply an understanding in consciousness that you have to decide at some point..., that you can not deliberate for ever..., so you stop when you feel you have exausted the options to your satisfaction or you stop at a random moment and opt for what appears to be your best option at that very moment, understanding that you could have stop at a moment sooner or later because it's random, and you could have set some criteria of decision differently because it's also random in large part, and you could have analysed the situation from another angle for the same reason, and finally you could have came to a different understanding and consequently, but not causally, had made another decision or choice.
You did what you did but it could have been different. You understand your choice, but many aspects of your choice comes from randomness, and you know it. It can not be otherwise because we are not all knowing. We construct the story as we go... It's our will to advance not knowing everything we need but making our best guess about what the next move should be. It's our free will...
Randomness is involved at many level but the choice and the analyses are not random because we are conscious... We can grab the meaning and that's a miracle! We are not robots.
The story is not unfolding in a determined manner. The story is beeing written by us using 3 aspects of reality: regularity (causality or determinism), randomness and consciousness. Regularities allows for predictions, reasonning, logic, AI. Randomness allows for novelty, creation, and decoupling. And consciousness also allows for decoupling but most importantly it allows at every step for the experience of understanding and will.
And keep in mind that consciousness is not the result of brain activities. It is conditionned or molded by brain activities but it's not determined by it.
Consciousness is the result of ALL THAT IS, be it visible or not to us. The "I AM" is the same in all of us. It's our link to God or the universal consciousness. Only the point of view created by our different bodies differs from person to person.
It's not the physical world and it's determinism that give rise to consciousness, it's consciousness that give rise to the material world through regularities. Matter IS the illusion… Everything we see and experience is an expression of consciousness.
It's absurd to say that consciousness is determined by the matter of the brain when matter is already an expression of consciousness used to create points of view.
Read all my comments if you want to know more and deepen your thoughts if you want to understand better. It's not as easy as saying : "choice is an illusion".
@@alainlangdon Man, you really find pleasure in assuming. All that speculation and unnecessary detail just to stimulate your fragile ego, hence the reason you took the time to negatively respond out of insecurity in the first place (this was apparent because you took my statement as a personal attack by identifying with your opinion). This is understandable behavior.
My statement was actually a quick humorous way I summed up the semantics of portions of the debate. It was actually neutral and wasn’t in any way claiming a “belief”, but merely trying to jokingly summarize what Sam and the others were trying to say in regards to explaining the determinism aspect of free will (no choice/no free will), not “the illusion of choice is what the answer is” which is the way you make it out like I’m saying.
You can tell this is a topic you care about to a degree and seem to be quite disturbed at the implications of the unknown. It’s okay, it can be an uncomfortably real topic. Either way though, you still don’t come off as someone with well thought out opinions, let alone impulsive responses, so it’s hard to take anything you claim as lies, facts, opinions, etc as something reasonable to consider.
What’s absurd is to try and speak in absolutes as you do. You don’t actually seem to know about the science of consciousness, matter, implications of the observer on reality, or really anything on a educated level, but you do seem passionate.
Now with all that said, hard determinism seems to be the most reasonable and conclusive evidence to suggest choice is merely an illusion. You’re not in control of your decisions. Evidence my friend, evidence 🤦♂️🤷♂️
Feel free to reply now with all that built up passion and make sure you really type a good novel. I won’t reply but I will read it; you deserve at least that respect loll
Good luck 😬
@@AndrewJoshua11 About every sentence you wrote is either untrue, a projection or show a lack of understanding, shallow thinking. But I don't have the time to respond now because of work. I will respond in a few days.
Many interesting bits.. wish these guys get together again.
minus Ben Shapiro
he's a joke
It is easy to show Freewill is problematical if not an illusion