Is Free Will an Illusion? The Metaphysics and Psychology of Choice | Prof. Joshua Hochschild
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- Опубликовано: 1 окт 2024
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"Concluding his lesson, Virgil reiterates that the will is necessarily oriented in a certain direction, but that some power to chart the course is in us. And he warns again that insofar as this power is considered free will, it may need the insight of faith rather than philosophy to fully expound.
'So, let’s concede that by necessity
rise all your loves that kindle into flame;
still you retain the power to rein them in.
For Beatrice this noble power’s name
is the free will [libero arbitrio]-remember it, be sure,
for she may wish to speak about the same.'
I take this whole passage from the heart of Dante's Divine Comedy to be an excellent summary of St. Thomas Aquinas' understanding of free will. Particularly, in putting forth three main theses. First, that the will's general orientation to the good is necessitated by God. Second, that freedom is a matter of judging how to fulfill that general orientation through particular choices. Third, that this judging depends on an exercise of reason." -Prof. Joshua Hochschild
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This lecture was given on January 27, 2022 at North Carolina State University.
The handout for this lecture can be found here: tinyurl.com/37....
About the speaker:
Joshua Hochschild is the Monsignor Robert R. Kline Professor of Philosophy at Mount St. Mary’s University, where he also served six years as the inaugural Dean of the College of Liberal Arts. His primary research is in medieval logic, metaphysics, and ethics, with broad interest in liberal education and the continuing relevance of the Catholic intellectual tradition. He is the author of The Semantics of Analogy: Rereading Cajetan’s De Nominum Analogia (2010), translator of Claude Panaccio’s Mental Language: From Plato to William of Ockham (2017), and co-author of A Mind at Peace: Reclaiming an Ordered Soul in the Age of Distraction (2017). His writing has appeared in First Things, Commonweal, Modern Age and the Wall Street Journal. For 2020-21 he’s been elected to serve as President of the American Catholic Philosophical Association.
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Sam Harris has been real quiet since this dropped
Yeah, they shut him up real good.
Lol no he has not.
Sadly his chances of finding this are slim
Why no video?
4:40.
Determinism doesnt allow for ethics. Of course Sam Harris’ ethics are arbitrary with no justification.
This is so very boring!... And I like Aquinas very much... buth this?...
Best lecture that I barely can pretend to understand.
Check out the lecture on a thomistic metaphysics of gender, thats a good one that can be hard to understand haha
@@TheBrunarr what's the title? Thanks.
@@Urbanity_Kludge something like Metaphysics of Gender: A Thomistic Approach. It's on RUclips, like 45 mins I think
@@ContemplativeThinker fortunately, that's not what I said
In order to have volition, there must be an 𝘰𝘱𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 to do wrong. Humans clearly have an *option* to do wrong(s).
Rocks have no choice but to fall to the ground when dropped.
Wouldn't you agree that humans also have no choice but to fall when dropped?
@@bulletproofmofo Not if you have a large weather balloon or a jetpack, and rocks can not make these...or anything.
Also I believe he is being metaphorical.
@@LostArchivist It would have been funny if you said metamorphical haha.I think it's reasonable that the capacity to create systems which defy the laws of nature could also give rise to the capacity to create an illusory freedom of choice. I think it is also reasonable to characterize this capacity in humans to be a literal embodiment of sin, a divergence from nature, a missing of the mark. It seems reasonable to me to think of our capacity to think critically and choose for our own self to be the natural outgrowth of our having eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It is at once what makes us sentient and also what separates us from God. Perhaps why no other species injects as much novelty into creation as we do, and why no other suffers as we do. I don't know man, just spitballin
Haha, no worries! The attempt was _still_ funny,@@bulletproofmofo.
More importantly than inquiring _"Wouldn't humans also have no choice but to fall when dropped?"_ is to ask, is there _choice_ to do the "dropping?"_
_1)_ Choice is selection between _at least_ two alternatives.
_2)_ Alternatives are _different routes of possibilities._
∴ Choices that couldn’t have been made otherwise _(including the choice not to choose)_ weren't choices if they didn't include _different routes of possibilities._
*Determinists* can't even _utter_ the word choice in their discourse referencing ability to choose amid alternative outcomes, then in the same breath claim outcomes are inevitable...
Either there’s _ability_ to make selection, or selection _unavoidably_ happens. Can’t be both!
There is a critical component that you are missing to the argument of how knowing the deterministic nature of human's and their lack of free will can be the ultimate path to free will. If you know the inputs that will drive your decision and allow you to "program" good behavior into yourself, then you have greater free will than those who only exist to react to the externalities about them.
We already fundamentally do this by building schedules, motivations, and systems to encourage healthy behaviors and habits in our daily lives. We do not take this as a lack of free will. In fact, we view it as a greater level of free will to take control of ourselves and, by restricting and forcing good habits and behaviors based on our systems we develop, we have a greater level of free will since we control the inputs to our determined outcome.
By addressing that the brain is a deterministic entity, we recognize that we can exercise free will to control contorl the deterministic outcomes that our brains will come to the conclusion of. We have greater free will because we do not allow ourselves to have our own decisions to be driven by factors beyond our control. Recognizing that the brain is deterministic gives you the power to control the decision making process and direct yourself away from unhealthy and poor decisions.
That argument doesn't make sense though. If the brain is actually deterministic, then you can't "program" yourself at all. Your actions that you think are doing so would still in fact just be the accidental results of external and internal factors beyond your control. So you can't back into a situation where there is both determinism and free will by that route.
@@keepinmahprivacy9754 we already do this today. You exert free will to make meaningful choices to form habits. You force yourself to do the same actions over and over until it is no longer a free will choice but something that is ingrained into you.
All this is is just going deeper to the chemical level. By controlling the external factors you exhibit a great amount of free will over your actions. No longer would you be subject to imbalances that you yourself did not control.
@@TryToHardForFun But if you assert that your brain is functioning deterministically, then you actually are arguing that we are not "forcing ourserves" to do anything, because we would be utterly incapable of making that kind of choice in the first place. It's a self-contradictory argument, since you are arguing "we have no free will" and "we have free will" at the same time.
@@keepinmahprivacy9754 that isn't the argument. You are inserting words into my mouth. Both agree that we have free will to exercise our judgements. But we have less free will than we would like to imagine, both sides agree.
One side is that God is present in externalities which affects our ability to make choices based on limited information through our environment, circumstance, etc. We merely only have the free will to react to the inputs our brains are given.
The argument that is being proposed is that we can have a greater amount of free will by controlling a far greater amount of inputs since the brain is deterministic based on its inputs.
Let's break it to more concrete examples.
Your free will
A loved one dies
We exercise free will to grieve
We fall into depression
We do not have the free will to not be depressed, no matter how hard you want to be happy or to not feel empty
Our free will
A loved one dies
We exercise free will to grieve
We fall into depression
We know that depression is a chemical imbalance in the brain and body
We excersize free will to correct that imbalance.
We no longer have a lack of free will over our emotions.
We can move on until our body is natural able to regulate its chemicals to not rely on prescriptions for depression
@@TryToHardForFun Nonsense, in your original comment that I replied to, you said: "you are missing to the argument of how knowing the deterministic nature of human's and their lack of free will can be the ultimate path to free will". Nobody is putting words in your mouth, and if you have to make silly claims like that, then there is no point in discussing anything with you.