Compatibilism Debunked | Free Will and Determinism
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- Опубликовано: 28 сен 2020
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-------------------------VIDEO NOTES-------------------------
The existence of free will is an uncomfortable subject, and a difficult intuition to let go of, if, like me, you are convinced it is illusory. One response to the implications of determinism on free will is a philosophy known as 'compatibilism', with advocates from Thomas Hobbes to Daniel Dennett. I think it fails, and thought I'd spend some time explaining why.
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My original free will video: • Why Free Will Doesn't ...
Thomas Hobbes, The Leviathan (read online): old.taltech.ee/public/m/mart-...
Arthur Schopenhauer, On The Freedom of the Will (in 'The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics'): amzn.to/3cwkECM
Peter Van Inwagen, The Powers of Rational Beings: www.davidjamesbar.net/wp-conte...
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It's a shame a lot of people don't want to accept determinism. But I guess they have no choice.
I did for 42 years then changed my mind
@@davidevans3223 cool :)
@@davidevans3223 As you were determined to do.
i think quantum mechanics, as it stands now, makes a case against determinism, and rather for indeterminism instead
@@ChrisChoi123 I think that's a good point. Quantum mechanics is the reason why I'm not a fatalist. There are things in the universe that, at least it seems like that to us, happen at random. Like particles poping into existence.
I'm more of a determenist when it comes to free will, cause these particles don't interfere with our free will...and if they would...well then it wouldn't be free will either.
Mom: What caused you to fail this test?
Me: Ok so the universe began 13.8 billion years ago...
I was determined to fail, Mom.
First Name Last Name can your explain more
I’m interested
And it would make sense kind of with all the religious corruption and racism within it
@First Name Last Name Thanks for sharing.
@First Name Last Name .
@First Name Last Name . Atheist, like any other group are full of very different people. I constantly bring up the fact that white supremacist use the New Testament as well as the old to defend their ignorance and hatred.
Not all police officers are psychopath murderers. Not all priests are pedophiles and not all people of any group are the same. This is called stereotyping and it's a fallacy.
@First Name Last Name I think it is caused by a couple of reasons. First is a hard truth for athiests: most athiests are white. So it seems a bit out of place for them to claim that the other side has a bias against a certain group of people when they themselves represent a disproportionate amount of that group.
Secondly, because it is hard to tell if Christianity fueled white supremacy or white supremacy fueled Christianity. And more importantly, it is easy to see how white supremacy could have still developed without Christianity purely based on European advancements in science and technology. So it becomes very hard to put blame on the theology of Christianity.
And finally, due to just how many theologies Christianity has. Even if Christianity was the reason that white supremacy developed, Christians could say that that was a different "flawed" theology that doesn't actually represent Jesus's teachings or what they believe. And technically that isn't even a No True Scotsman, since they still may claim that those people are Christians, just misguided in twisting the theology. Just like how you might say that an athiest who believes in social darwinism is still an athiest and still believes in evolution by natural selection, but is woefully misguided in its application.
Also for the record, I'm not a Christian, or a thiest, just trying to make my best inferences.
It's fun how each time I brought Determinism in a debate, my opponent instantly gain a phD in Quantum Physics.
good one!
well you don’t need a phd in quantum physics to know determinism can’t be true but it doesn’t really matter because you don’t need scientific determinism to have determinism
@@carenihlemann3369 if you think that that is the case you don't understand enough about quantum physics to make that statement. There is at least one deterministic theory of quantum physics. Specifically pilot wave theory. Our observations tell us there is a fundamental limit to our observations. However, it does not specify anything more than that and consequently we don't actually know if the results are random or not.
It would be like concluding a dice is truly random because you can't predict the result of a roll. Just in quantum physics it's impossible to measure the dice accurately enough to be able to tell if it's random or not. Like a black box that spits out random numbers. It might be random or, there might be details we can't observe that perfectly predict the box's behavior
I personally prefer many-worlds because it doesn't collapse the wave function and just let's it propagate forever. Which seems less arbitrary (to me). No evidence yet though sadly.
@@solsystem1342 ur on the right tracks. but many worlds breaks down for me because it supposes that infinity is actually real. that these worlds can continue forever and ever because of some branching nature in reality. i dont see this as plausible because i dont believe infinities exist - they are a function in mathematics. unboundedness may exist in this reality but infinity cannot. this is why pi is not a real number, it will keep giving u digits. so there is no known way to derive pi, just the closest decimal. all the mathematics that isnt like this is state-building, meaning its computational. if im free to interject my own speculation - it seems the universe is the collection of all possible implementable functions (a computational machine) which runs on negative entropy. its been discussed that life is the most effective way at "fighting" entropy so it seems whatever life/existence is, we're keeping this machine on
@cat bunny when the person you responded to said "[many worlds] doesn't collapse the wave function and just lets it propagate forever," they didn't mean that the many worlds interpretation implies the existence of an infinite object. all of the interpretations of quantum mechanics allow the wavefunction to exist for an infinitely long time; and the many worlds interpretation does not necessarily require an actual infinity of branchings. they were saying that the many worlds interpretation provides a simple description of the wavefunction with only one mechanism (the schrodinger equation), by which the wavefunction can propagate forever *uninterrupted*. for other interpretations the wavefunction still propagates forever, but it just does so by two mechanisms (the schrodinger equation and some mechanism explaining wavefunction collapse). as far as i know, actual infinities are not inherent to the many worlds interpretation.
also it's not as relevant, but pi is definitely a real number in the mathematical sense (i.e. as an element of the unique complete ordered field up to isomorphism). you may want to avoid the word "real" in this context.
The “want to want” is the perfect articulation… I’ve always thought the same. This video was like watching someone read my mind and put it into a well worded essay. Well done
I feel the same way, something i always knew to be true from a very young age but could not express as eloquenlty
This whole video is trash. False dichotomies, misunderstandings, and pervasive western metaphysics is given as an assumption. I just find it gross and edgy.
Who's to say that we have to choose our wants with another want? If we had two wants we could make an aware intelligent decision between the two wants. Now we can't choose how intelligent we are at any given moment, but if one had an adequate amount of awareness between two choices they can make a deductive choice. You might say well we can't choose how we reason so it's not a free choice. However, we have multiple modes of reasoning that to a certain extent we can choose. Certainly we can choose to think about X when we have deductively decided to not think about Y.
You can just make any choice, out of limitless choices, it's only after the fact we say we did it 'because it's what I wanted', so you can just create any want by making any choice.
This is a fallacy because it applies even if we have magical spiritual free-will. We can never choose what we choose. Thus this is a non-argument.
Determinist: your honor it was determined for me to commit this crime.
Judge: young man it is determined that you will spend time in prison.
Judge can simply say: “it’s true, but that’s the law”
Well, determinism does allow people to not be morally responsible for their crimes - hence he should not be punished with suffering. However you do need to have incentive to stop people from commiting crimes, and also you need a way of rehabilitation criminals so that they don't commit again.
@@thebitterartist Just apply a quarantine analogy, and this conflict is resolved. We can quarantine people that through no fault of their own have harmful infectious dieases. We can apply the same reasoning to those who through no fault of their own commit harmful actions and are likely to continue to commit harmful actions. So imprisonment or other behavior modification techniques can serve to influence the future behavior of the offender as well as influence others what results if that behavior is done. Moral blameworthiness is not involved.
The constitution of U.S. makes this explicitly clear by saying yhat free will dosent matter in the eyes of the law and isnt a valid argument
There is no responsibility because responsibility implies you could have done otherwise
You can see the guy is a consistent skeptic: "I've been Alex O'Connor...". He'd never guarantee a 100% he's himself all the time.
“I could tell you my adventures-beginning from this morning,” said Alice a little timidly; “but it's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.” - Lewis Carroll
Serious students of philosophy are all skeptics, cynics, disbelievers. Critical thinking automatically challenges every source of information to prove itself as true and valid.
But a disbeliever is inclined to blindly reject new ideas while a believer is inclined to blindly accept new ideas.
Which extreme is worse?
@Quinceps lmaooooo
ruclips.net/video/IqaZnaFjbt8/видео.html
A theist tried to refute RATIONALITY RULES 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
you say that like it means something
I enjoy the illusion of free will and hope to continue to do so.
You have no choice but to
And maybe someday he won't have a choice but to not.@@draxxthemsclounts2478
@@draxxthemsclounts2478 top 5 best replies of all time, personally
when i was a kid i always had an intuition of this concept but was never able to communicate it. i always wondered why i wasnt able to make myself enjoy doing things i knew were beneficial (homework, cleaning, etc…) but i found boring or difficult.
U don’t enjoy them… u just do it ,otherwise it’s unlikely u will have a good life, because generally speaking the hard stuff in life; gym, eating healthy, sleeping properly and putting yourself out there to there to find friends or a relationship won’t happen.
@@Harry._.Thompson it's not that he doesn't know that what you say, it's that he wondered why couldn't he make himself like doing those things
Brain teaches us to like doing things when there is a positive feedback loop of reward for doing those things. When it's *your* house you start to enjoy the cleaning. When you begin to get high grades you begin to appreciate the benefit of homework. When as children we hate mushrooms and spinach, as you grow your brain learns that they are full of powerful nutrients and so adjusts your perception of taste to encourage you to eat more of them. THat's all taste is BTW - your brain saying, "I get good nutrients from these things, give me more!"
You just have ADHD, got get some drugs youll be fine
@@Harry._.Thompson You missed the entire point of his comment.
Love getting my monthly reminder from Alex that I’m in control of literally nothing.
Might have some free will just not as much as I thought still feels like free will
If you're 'in control of nothing', and nobody is, there's no sense in punishing anybody for any wrongdoing because 1. Morality is 'fake' and predetermined and 2. Their actions were predetermined and beyond their control, so why do anything at all?
@Gagan Singh 1. If pre-determinism, determinism, and free will are analytical analyses of reality, then their objective is to display an accurate description of existence and how it operates. Pre-determinism only exists because free will exists, they both arise at the same time and do not exist independently of eachother. Pointing to one side of a coin whilst saying it is the whole coin leaves the other side of the coin unseen.
The fact of the matter is that existence and reality and the 'true nature' of them is that they are beyond any comparisons of things like description or conceptualization. Their 'true nature' is of signlessness and emptiness of separate existence, and even then, not these. Existence and the sandbox of reality are beyond human perceptions of dualistic meanings like 'being and nonbeing' and 'real and not real'. If pre-determinism exists, that means that there is a 'source' cause. The fact that we can scientifically trace the universe to only one point of conception defies the fact that nothing can be created or destroyed, only that its form fluctuates and changes.
The cause is just the cause. There is no 'sign' being emitted from it, as in, there is no emotional or mental substance filling it. The true nature of phenomenon is emptiness and signlessness. The 'true' nature of reality is just shutting your mouth and not asserting any ideas about it. To experience the truth of this shared existence we inhabit is to quit applying your own mental conjecture over it and perceive it with no preconceived notions or ideas.
@Gagan Singh holly shit. Thats briliant.
@@dravenwag the point of 'punishing' people isn't to enact justice etc but to ensure the safety of others, so in that sense morality isn't really relevant. As for changing their future behaviour, lack of free will doesn't negate the impact of external stimuli on a person's behaviour. We're not closed systems.
You are one of the few people who make me seriously rethink my ideas.
YOU are one of the few people who make me seriously rethink my ideas :)
I like your channel but i just don't get why you would often team up with David Wood? Didnt you say were an agnostic
@@xlsanga44 The common enemy, Islam.
@@xlsanga44 Atheist.
@@atastypineapple9296 lol sit down
I am just starting my journey into the idea of free will. Thank you for this video, it's a good place for me to start as it gave me terms I didn't know before.
Brilliantly explained! Thank you very much for this very interesting and enlightening video. You're a natural teacher. Very much worth the time!
As Hitchens once said “I believe in free will because I have no choice” 😂
And as Alex thinks, Hitchens was a dodging sophist for saying that: ruclips.net/video/fopo9E7UAVQ/видео.htmlm30s
IMHO, Hitch had the best attitude regarding metaphysics, he also referred to determinism as "sinister" for the, ahem, obvious reason of a creator.
@@polymathicheretic5068 What makes metaphysics a matter of attitude? I reckon you should have reasons to back up your beliefs about metaphysics. You can’t just “take an attitude” towards metaphysics.
@@motorhead48067 Don't strawman me, random dude, asking me question I did not pose. On the other hand, I think metaphysics is on par with aesthetics, which is to say weak and irrelevant to science. As for my attitude, the school of logic is infinitely more preferable.
this line is so great!
"You can do whatever you will, but you can't will what you will." I felt compelled to highlight my liking for this quote.
"You are free to act, but you don't have control over the final result of your action. So act for the sake of right action, and not for desire of a result"
[Bhagavad Gita]
You can also do whatever you don't want to do because you believe that you have been ordered to do it by God such as fasting and praying.
This works under the presupposition that God has made us with free will and given us the choice in utilising the free will to believe in Him and obey Him or not.
God made us and gave us free will is a natural disposition to take that we all feel is true in our hearts and how we live out our lives even those who claim with their tongues that they don't believe in free will.
Take cosmic skeptic - he made a video maybe a year ago accusing Mohamed hijab of being "dishonest".
I believe that he was correct and that Mohamed hijab was dishonest and yet cosmic skeptic has no right to use the word dishonest because his own world view which negates the existence of free will disallows for Mohamed hijab to have acted dishonestly because that would have required for Mohamed hijab to have had a choice in how he acted.
You are free to deny williing of willing but you cannot deny willing by denying willing of willing. It is a false equivalence.
Also isn't that exactly what members of the Heaven's gate cult did, willed their wills. They disliked their own desire for sex and acts of impluse based on those desires. They properly identified the source of the impluses and desires in males, the testosterone produced by testes. They self castrated. That is they used their wills to will an action that modified a base desire. They did so in a recursive fashion as the moved forward through time so that their past willful action effected their future willful behavior.
We actually do this all the time by learning and decision making. I, as an adult, no longer have the same desires and impluses i did as a child or a young man. I have learned things then used that knowledge to decide that certain desires and behaviors were not desirable. Then I no longer desired them.
@@Moostee90hotmail You can't say you didn't want to fast and pray and then proceed to do it without a reason for it.
You would have wanted to pray and fast perhaps because you wanted to avoid the reprocussions of not doing it and/or you wanted the reward you were convinced you were going to get in the afterlife.
These are desires that you had no control in choosing as they were shaped by your causal history, you still gave into your desires.
@@Moostee90hotmail he was dishonest regardless of his intent. It’s a objective fact. He would have done it 100/100 times. Just means to not trust some people. Pretty simple.
I lean towards compatibalism currently. I like Dennets example of learning to sail vs not learning to sail, which felt like a light bulb moment for me. I feel it when I read a book first time or multiple times, there is something that will spark interest in me about a certain paragraph that didn't or couldn't before.
Interesting topic indeed.
I think Alex’s position on this is that you were always going to read that book at that time, and because of your mindset of when you read the book you got inspired when you otherwise might not.
Therefore, you didn’t “choose” to be inspired, it just happened randomly. And due to your personality you were able to follow up on it, which you will always do if you went back in time and watched yourself do it again.
I just checked what compatibilism is.
Compatibilism holds that:
1) the thesis of determinism is true, and that accordingly all human behavior, voluntary or involuntary, like the behavior of all other things, arises from antecedent conditions, given which no other behavior is possible: all human behavior is caused and determined
2)voluntary behavior is nonetheless free to the extent that it is not externally constrained or impeded
3) the causes of voluntary behavior are certain states, events, or conditions within the agent: acts of will or volitions, choices, decisions, desires etc...
Item 1 speaks about all human behavior being caused and determined. But if you are the cause then you are the very thing that determines what you do. Like bootstrapping. Since cause does not strictly precede effect , because everything is really made of quantum waves which are smeared out in time. You can get a boot strapping effect.
If you are the cause of what you do then the whole physics of choosing to do something or controlling something is bootstrapped into a loop.
According to the Schrodinger uncertainty principle , if you know the location of something exactly, then you don't know "when" it is very accurately. If the location is somewhat uncertain than the time it exists is smeared out. To allow bootstrapping you only need a picosecond or less of smearing to create a loop.
A better example is a time machine, if you could travel back and kill your grandfather 100 years in the past , then as soon as you killed him , you would vanish also but since you did not exist then you could not have killed your grandfather , so then your grandfather existed and then you existed and could go back and kill him, and the loop goes on and on. In QM the time is smeared out not in 100 years but in very very small intervals.
How much smearing do you need to create a loop where you actually can be the cause of what you do ? Probably any picosecond of looping would be enough.
The de-Broglie wavelength of a human with a mass of 70kg and walking at 2 m/s of 5x10^(-36) metres. The wave function also has a well defined deBroglie frequency f = E/h.
Frequency means time , so there is a time component to a human. Brains are lighter than a whole human and the part of your brain where you are conscious could actually be really tiny. The smaller something is the larger is the wavelength. This smears out the object in space. An electron is smeared out in an atom. Also smeared out in time. So when you observe an electron you interrupt it's wavefunction and find out it's exact location. But when not observed the electron can be doing anything , it can interfere with itself in space and in time and when you have two entangled particles that shoot off in opposite directions the time order of which one is observed means nothing ( due to Einstein relativity and clocks) . So particle A could be observed first or particle B and by observing particle A , particle B also gets observed at a different time. But If you whiz by both particles at near the speed of light then you could say particle B was observed first. This is kind of a time loop , an event in the future can affect an event in the past. So this opens the door to you "yourself" causing what you do from the future. Thus you would need no external cause as stated in the compatibilism proposal.
I guess you are correct if you choose to reason with the narrow definitions you choose to set. @@shadamyandsonamylover
The interest that sparked was random, therefore not in your control, therefore not a result of free will
@@Martin-ei8oi you could also say that the interest being sparked was determined, and 'time' is what changed the thing that you were determined to be interested in.
Ah, that intro helped me to feel a lot better, thank you so much Alex.
I've always took a sort of pragmatist stance with this. "Free will" is a socially constructed word we use to describe a person's relative freedom to make a choice un-coerced. It's not really a word with any sort of hard definition -- honestly imagine what it means to have "free will" (or imagine a world in which it exists)... What does that world look like? How would a mind even function if it has no internal basis for which to make decisions? Could a free mind "store" memories in time? If so, wouldn't that storing of memories have some effect on future behavior? "Free will" is non-sensical when we break it down.
Devonic
Free will is a residual concept dictated by each persons willingness to see malicious thoughts/actions for what they are. If one lives by the “knee jerk” reaction, how can they claim to have free will? We all want/need the same thing...soundness of mind. No one wants their mind to become their enemy. Malice destroys soundness of mind and strips one of their true identity.
Don’t we all want our minds to be in a pleasant state? If I can affect that, then you have handed your free will over to me.
İ really liked your perspective and explanation. Totally agree with you.
I tend to agree. What is free will?
So is the question "do you have free will" or "Can there be free will"
And does free need to be unbounded? Can you have limited free will? Free within bounds.
And are the things that brought you to this point (the determinants of your next choice) part of you and therefore part of you will?
Devonic you make a good point. When I first heard the term "free will" it seemed obvious that I had it. Then I heard Sam Harris say that when we do things for reasons or when we do them randomly, that is not free will. So he has defined it in such a way that it is virtually impossible to say it exists.
'Free will enough is good enough', I say or . . .
> I feel free-willing ENOUGH, therefor I am!! <
Just as with his own, with his cerebralism cute-item Alex ties others' brains too into pretzels, and to what purposeful end? It is but intellectual masturbation, as DARED done in PUBLIC! Many seem up for it's silliness.
Here is something real and self-proving 24/7/365, existing from since the beginning of reality itself ("It lives!!"):
"Where Law fails, Necessity rules."
It is THE controlling authority that authorized our fought-and-won Revolutionary War, against his forbears' too-insistent King. (Or, if Alex be of the Scots, then 'enemy-King.')
. : .
The entire free will thing is depressing and fascinating at the same time.
If an intelligent being like a human came from nothing and this nothing is an unconscious thing, then it is possible that this thing has produced, after several attempts, a being of our characteristics but its abilities miss our capabilities billions of times and since this being has a superintelligent but limited ability He was able, through several experiments, to control the unconscious thing that he came from, and thus he had the ability to produce beings, and after several attempts he produced humans and this universe.
@@gngamestudio I'm not sure what you're getting at. Doesn't seem to relate to what i was talking about.
@@gngamestudio Do you really believe man came from nothing?
Anyone finding that depressing, you just get over your being a separate autonomous entity. It's not depressing at all when you go through that process. It's almost... freeing.
It's not depressing, it makes the story of life make holistic sense. Are you depressed about your favorite book having dry ink before you open it for a read or re-read? No. Does your knowledge of its beginning, middle, and end? No. This is how you ought to feel about your own life. Not having free will doesn't take away the meaning of your experience. Instead, it makes it all essential - every single moment.
Before I say anything, I just want to add that I appreciate your calmness, way too many people insult people instead and force them into defensive mode, making all argumentation pointless. Thank you very much.
Having said that, I believe you may have misunderstood compatibilism. The point of compatibilism isn't to deny that your actions are completely free of external influence, it's that what made you want to want is irrelevant to the existence of free will. The ability to make your choices stars from the point on the cause and effect chain you exist upon. Everything has an external factor, and what you want is outside your control, but since free will is about the freedom of a being, the being you end up becoming is the person in question anyway. Our definition of free will starts after the link in the chain that makes up your personality. You as a person change every moment anyway, the difference between external and internal factors begins after your personality. I doesn't break causality, it just says that freedom has almost nothing to do with what led to your personality, because for you to have free will, there has to be a you in he first place.
It is also possible that you haven't misunderstood it, and I'm not a compatibilist even though I think determinism and free will coexist; but that would also mean I'm somehow a better philosopher than multiple professional philosophers as someone that doesn't have a philosophy degree, because I noticed and found counterarguments to all your arguments long ago by myself. Seeing as how that is *extremely* unlikely, and seeing as how I'm absolutely an idiot, I have to imagine you misunderstanding compatibilism is more likely.
No, you're definitely correct. As a compatibilist with a philosophy degree; the core idea of most compatibilism is that the very rigid notion of free will which incompatiblists tend to adhere to isn't really what we're getting at when we use the term "free will" in general discourse, and isn't a requirement for moral responsibility. As such, the fact that it's incompatible with determinism is irrelevant. Most of the compatibilism literature is people proposing different definitions of free will, and debating their issues and benefits. Alex mentioned in the video that when he made it he was only a few years into his philosophy undergrad, so it's understandable that his grasp of this topic was a bit underdeveloped. Additionally, a lot of people have very strong intuitions about what constitutes free will, and they tend to approach the literature with the assumption that everyone else shares them and other definitions are just redefinitions of the term in order to try to wriggle out of an unavoidable consequence of its real meaning; the incorrectness of this assumption becomes apparent when you talk to enough people about it, but that can take a while.
Compatibilism is the majority view among professional philosophers these days. There are a variety of reasons for this. For one thing, the notion of free will that Alex is using has very serious issues with it that have been argued to make it impossible even without the presence of determinism. From the arguments I've seen, this basically results from the qualities it requires the self to have; they can't make decisions randomly, and they can't make them for reasons or the preferences required for those reasons to constitute reasons will be the cause instead of them, and it's not really clear what the alternatives are. Arguments for incompatibilism also tend to make very specific assumptions about the nature of the self and the position of the self with respect to the world, which people might disagree with; for instance, the notion that one doesn't have free will because one can't determine the internal factors that affect one's choices relies on regarding those internal factors as being separate from some essential self. If, instead, one regards the self as a composite of those internal factors, then this argument becomes, essentially, that one can't have free will unless, as you basically point out, one is their own creator. Most people find that unintuitive, although there are people who seriously argue for it.
I'd like to take a linguistic shortcut and propose that while determinism is correct, free will also exists - as the strong intuition that you mentioned, as a concept that we can meaningfully apply to our own experiences and that we can use to communicate effectively with each other. It is generally understood as true that if I'm forced to do something at gunpoint I'm not doing it out of my free will, but if I decide whether I want to buy orange or apple juice I'm choosing freely - and ultimately, words are defined by how they are used. You can argue that "free will" can't be defined neatly and, as commonly understood, just exists in our heads - but so do many other things, like beauty.
Furthermore, free will's existence is basically impossible to reject in practice - living as if free will doesn't exist is impossible for humans because we always feel like we're making choices. And if you can't reject a concept in practice, is there much point to rejecting a concept in theory by using a technical-academic definition of terms like "free will", "exists" or "true/false"? At that point it's just arguing about the definition of words without much gain.
Love your perspective man, really smart
I agree with this. Most arguments I hear against the existence of free will seem to argue against a definition of free will that in reality has no practicality, meaning no one actually thinks of free will in the definition they are arguing against. I also think our ability to be consciously aware and learn of the influences which dictate our behavior tears down Sapolsky’s causation argument against free will (used him as he seems to be doing the rounds lately arguing against free will). I’m sure there are other arguments against free will to consider, but positing that free will is just an illusion seems pointless and rather unfounded unless you take the position that any and all influence over a decision makes it not free but that just seems a shifting of commonly understood definitions with no real new or helpful insight into human behavior.
Determinism is comforting when I'm feeling down or I've done something bad. But it's really demotivating and unappealing when I'm feeling optimistic and energetic. So I live with a kind of pragmatic doublethink.
Demotivating?
I wrote a novel earlier this year (during lockdown), Zen And The Art Of Saving Life On Earth.
It very soon became clear to me, that was my raison d'existence. In the book itself, I was merrily dismissing free will and insisting that for the ecocide to abate, humans need to grow the fuck up and deal with religion (and the capitalism it enables). For starters.
Were you born to sit on your arse or to do something incredible?
Failure to even consider asking the above question is NOT a good place to start. But when you start asking yourself that question, well, shit CAN get real!
i feel u man
I think anyone who dwells on this for any length of time is forced to do the same. It leads you down some really weird paths otherwise.. I hope my pre-determined path involves avoiding going mad or withdrawing from society because I've thought about this for too long!!
That doesn't make sense to me.
@@neillynch_ecocidologist Fuck you, unscientific commie. Economics is a legitimate science and anyone who is against market economics is as superstitious as religious people.
Free Will? Does not exist ❌
Free Willy? Exists ✅
You win some, you lose some.
Free will does not exist ❎✅
Free will exists ✅❎.
I never leave my Willy his free will...
If you can free willY, you can therefore free will simply don't ask why hhhh if you're curious I am will's friend they call me honest tom hhhh :)
My Willy isn’t free. It will cost you a lot of money 😆
An informal discussion on free will vs determinism. Hope you enjoy it⤵
ruclips.net/video/IphyOzoQpEY/видео.html
I truly love these videos, my main problem with Determinism is that I don’t fully understand how does that address the responsibility of our actions. If we can’t freely choose to do X over Y but rather we were pre-determined to do so and couldn’t have acted otherwise, how can anyone be held accountable for the consequences of their actions? I’d love it if you could explain this dilema because it’s one that I can’t truly wrap my head around. Thanks again.
Determinism is all about the concept of influence. Things influence others and determine the future. This means that anything we do is important because it has influence. Its important to hold others somewhat accountable, because that will influence them and others to behave in correct ways.
@@dungeon-wn4gw but how do you hold anyone accountable for their actions when they didn't have the option to have acted differently? When there is no free will and we can't affect our "decisions", how is anyone to blame for any outcome?
But we can inject memories of punishment for future, because memories do determine outcome, even though we know they are not responsible
I guess your question is essentially how can we justify harming someone through punishment given determinism. I think the thing to bear in mind is that punishment administered by the law is not an isolated event, the law applies to everyone. It's not a case of a choice between incarcerating a criminal, or letting them go free in a largely law-abiding society, it's a choice between incarcerating a criminal, or letting them go free in a lawless society. In a lawless society, the criminal would be at risk of becoming a victim themselves, and even if they didn't, they'd still likely struggle to live, as people wouldn't have much incentive to produce much, if it could be stolen from them anyway. I'm not sure we can justify a death penality, but I think we can at least justify a well-run prison system, as I think criminals are likely no worse of than they would be in a lawless society.
@alexxburt2930 Simple - reject the notion of responsibility as you currently have it. Transfer it over to accepting that in fact, yes, you criticizing an action a person has taken _is_ you criticizing that person as a whole. Basically, most humans pre-determinedly agree that what is considered unlawful should have consequences.
It's interesting because it tells us one thing; that life is a struggle to make others conform to being a certain way we tolerate. It is not about just changing actions; it is about definitely changing entire personalities. A Web of determined persons influencing one another in some kind of network where the entire system has certain attributes determined by the influence of the largest cluster of determinants.
Your question about criminals again just shows that what we ought to do is re-habilitation and re-socialization rather than punishment. In fact, those are empirically proven to be a better solution to fight recurring crime than punishment is. So basically, we just need to be honest about it - the goal of society is to have everybody conform to a set of most basic mannerisms, beliefs and ideas, and those who act out against any of that usually are made to conform unless they are (pre-)determined to be such a great influence to bring change.
I’ve been thinking this for a while but I’ve never heard someone articulate it so clearly. Flawless logic
I just had a talk with my professor about determinism and he asked me what a universe with free will would like. It seriously stumped me because it seems like you would need a universe without any causal effects, but in that case it still seems like your desires would just be random and still not truly free. I'd be interested to hear your take on such a question! I'm also a 3rd year undergrad of philosophy.
I think a lot of hard determinists would say hard determinism is necessarily true, meaning it is true in all possible worlds.
Your take is Alex's take. It's very straightforward, you cannot even concieve a world where agents are truly free. In fact, you cannot concieve a world where agents would be even 0,000001% free. It's logically impossible to get behind oneself in such way.
I used to be a freewill skeptic but I’m more unsure now because I don’t think you can dismiss agent causation so easily. That is the other option other then determinism or randomness in my eyes. Sure, we can’t really understand how agent causation would exist but I think if you have strong enough evidence for agent causation, you can still say it’s likely to exist. Even if something is out of our comprehension, if you have evidence for it, you should still believe it. The fact that the universe exist is most likely out of our comprehension yet we still say the universe most likely exist. Don’t worry, I don’t believe in god, but I am more undecided about libertarian freewill even tho it may seem almost magical. But that’s no reason to not believe it, especially if you have enough evidence for it. So if anyone wants to here my argument for libertarian freewill I’ll give it but remember, I am undecided about what I think about freewill so don’t expect it to be perfect lol
@@nicknolder7042 Sure, I'd like to hear your argument for libertarian free will.
Reasonably Doubtful
I think it’s too big of a coincidence that sometimes our previous thoughts align with our future actions to say there is no agent causation involved, and I also think things become weird once you have this futuristic machine that can tell you what you will do with almost 100% certainty because, if this machine tells me I will most likely do action X in 5 seconds but I’m a rebellious person, I will not be likely to do action X in 5 seconds, and yet this machine is supposed to be nearly 100% accurate
I would consider myself a determinist, however I feel like determinism doesn't change anything about life since the illusion of choice and actual choice has literally no difference to me. As long as it feels like I can change anything it doesn't matter if it was determined in the beginning or not, the things I did had results to them so why bother if I really ever made a choice or if it only felt like that.
People beign products of their surroundings and genetics actually cause alot of problems with our existing way of life.
the justice system is based on free will
Determinism and consequently free will have grand implications re. prison systems for those unfortunate enough to have been born into such circumstances where they fall into these systems.
well sure, in a small scope it doesn’t really change anything, but if you look at the big picture it does (i think).
For example: criminals. Right now most people would agree that a person that did something wrong should be punished but as soon as you start to consider it’s not actually his own fault but more so the fault of his surroundings and upbringing the perception changes. Now it’s much more reasonable to try to help the criminal and not to „punish“ him (he should be isolated from the general public of course) but also to look at the cause that he was „willing“ to do something bad and how to prevent it in the future.
i hope that example makes sense. (im not a native english speaker if you couldn’t notice.)
Why bother? Well, life is a lot less anxiety inducing if 'que sera, sera' is not just wise but true.
The sort of Compatibalism I choose to believe takes the most important distinction not to be whether an action is caused by internal or external factors, but rather the degree to which an action can be said to be caused by the internal logic/reasoning/rationality. For example, if you ask someone to say the first object that pops into their mind, there is no sense in which we can say they freely chose to think of that object, which is of course determanistic. However, if you ask someone to choose whether or not they pull the lever in the Trolley Problem, they will appeal to their reason, deliberate, and eventually make a decision. Indeed, we can say that all the thoughts leading up to the eventual decision are discrete causal events and thus determanistic. We can also admit that many internal factors are in fact determined by external ones--perhaps how the person was raised, what they ate for breakfast, or who is around them listening to them answer the question. But clearly this second case represents a deeply different kind of decision, one where reason played a much larger role for the decision-maker.
Now, why is this distinction so important that it is worthy of describing free will? In a world in which we would like people to act logically and rationally (most importantly because morality, as I take it, is derived FROM reason), we would like to positively reinforce rational (or moral) choices and negatively punish irrational (or immoral) choices in order to increase rational and ethical decision-making in people. However, the degree to which that sort of feedback is both justified and effective depends upon the degree to which reason was a primary motivating factor for the agent. (This is precisely why we punish premeditated murders more severely than crimes of passion, and those more severely than mental illnesses, and crimes that people are compelled to commit by force not at all.) Actions remain determined, but free will is ascribed to the presence of one particular sort of cause (i.e. reason), one that is uniquely human and extremely weighty. As such, this definition will remain stable in replacing conecptions of free will in the face of Determanism when it is needed to justify philosophical positions such as moral responsbility.
"Actions remain determined, but free will is ascribed to the presence of one particular sort of cause( i.e. reason), one that is uniquely human and extremely weighty"
Interesting take, however is reason an unique feature in relation to Human? My understanding is this: reason is derived from external observation of the universe, it's definitely abundant in our perception, being a common denominator for interaction. It seems purely deterministic?
Let's try another angle.
I build a robot, equipped with algorithm for purpose of solving a maze. Robot interacts with a maze in a way that is predetermined by instruction set written by human using reason, thus robot must operate according to framework of reason. Can we call it a free will!? The outcome of robots actions are predetermined for sure.
So one may conclude every action is inherently subjective to cause and effect. It seems that act upon something has inherently linked for a desired outcome. The will must be tied to consciousness that first has to determine an action, before will is executed.
Is my reasoning sound?
I also thought about acting upon something in a random manner is as close to free will as it gets, in a sense of eliminating deterministic factor of conscious effort, sadly such action does not qualify as wilful anymore.
My final argument is to acknowledge that consciousness always predetermines will before conscious act is committed.
Interestingly I can conclude that conscious sole intent for an action may meet the premise of free will, until its acted upon and becomes deterministic.
Therefore to exercise free will is to dream and fantasise.😢
@bigboy2217 I’d like to hear your thoughts on this take
By far the best video I've seen on this topic. Thanks for sharing
I love everything about this video, from the argument, to the explanation, to the graphics, to the setup, to the analysis of past/current philosophers' views, to the soothing accent. Absolutely brilliant, Alex.
I've spent literally hours trying to explain these concepts to people. Thanks for giving me a link I can send them. They still won't understand but its less effort for me.
There's so much wrong in there, but OK. if it helps you.
Suhaib Zafar list some of the things that you think are wrong so people can discuss
@@alexcoroian3983 he did say that he believed that if you turn back the clock and click play everything would be the same - but he also said that some stuff in the universe is random. Both can't really be true I guess. This one is not really that important but not bad for a start
@Gabbabuble i'm not sure exactly what Alex means when he says random, but personally I think what we perceive as random still actually has underlying causes that would produce the same effects, they're just very difficult or even impossible for us to perceive, at least at scales larger than the quantum scale (because then you truly get demonstrably random empirical and experimental results, which bothered even Einstein and caused him to say the famous "God doesn't play dice") which, speaking of dice, we view it as random on our scale of perception, but if we could see each fundamental particle and the forces they produced we'd be able to predict exactly how the dice fell every single time. However, ultimately I think his thought experiment of rewinding everything back was to simply illustrate the intuitiveness of the idea of free will, of imagining that we at least has some control over what shirt we would wear if everything were to rewind. random events such as the spin of electrons on a quantum scale are not under our control and thus they still wouldn't prove we have free will
Yeah, I know that feeling. Even the concept is so outside acceptable thought to many people they can't even begin to contemplate the idea.
Hey Alex, great Video, thanks for that. I´d really like to hear your thoughts about the implication on terms like guilt or responsibility. Also what are your thoughts on the question if the underlying differences in worldviews let´s say puritan ethics vs. westerneuropean moral, have an influence on the different view on cruelties like say the death penalty - that could be an interesting topic...
How I explain it: we don't get to choose our external stimuli, and we don't get to choose what thoughts come into our minds. Whence free will?
The best we have is the knowledge that the current state of our mind will influence the future state of our mind - hopefully in such a way as to make us feel smug and self-determined.
DRINKING GAME: shot every time alex says "IF DETERMINISM IS TRUE"
Thousands of people have died. I hope you're happy with yourself.
Σοφία Tennyson - assuming Christianity is true, which it isn’t
Get the IV's ready
The puppet is free,so long as it loves it strings.
‐Sam Harris.
No it isnt its made of wood or plastic ! Be a little difficult for it to know
@@ianreynolds8552 Everyman has the right to be wise.Everyman has the right to be a fool.The wise have the right to exploit the foolish if they do so legally.The choice is yours.
Oof
rip theists
That Harris sees strings where there are none is the delusion.
I would agree with several things you said, though I must raise a couple points.
You’ve started by defining free will as the ability to do what one what’s to do, however free will is not that at all. Free will I think most would argue, is the ability to pick any option available to you at a given time, irregardless of what the will wants.
For example if I’m in a scenario where I wake up to a blaring alarm, I have several options in theory; I could turn of the alarm and get up, I could put a pillow over my head and ignore it or I could turn it off and keep sleeping. Now my will in this scenario is to turn off the alarm and keep sleeping. If I have true free will, I can act on my will or I can act against it and get up, it’s up to some deeper level of my consciousness.
Secondly, when discussing compatibilism, you talked about the way they view free will in a manner I can’t exactly agree with. I’m sure some compatibilists are satisfied at stopping at the point where the distinction between internal and external causes has been made, but that certainly isn’t enough for other compatibilists. As I’m sure you know compatiblilists argue our will is determined, but at least when I learned about it, the argument was that the aspect of ourselves that granted free will was out ability to act either in accordance with our determined will or against it. This is a more sensible compatibilism.
Now I am not a compatibilists, I found it very compelling for a while but it had flaws, and the one that broke it for me was that with free will defined as that crucial ability to pick different options available to you in a given moment, it seems you can’t have any determinism at all.
Let’s entertain a hypothetical. If my will is determined to want to steel a wallet I found on the ground I can acutely be aware of what my ‘will’ will be in the future depending on what I do. If I take the wallet for short term gain, I know later my will is going to be in a state of regret wherein I’ll want to seek redemption somehow. If I don’t take it, I can also predict how I’ll be feeling and what I’ll want to do, which will be find a way to get money.
So if I truly do have the ability to either take the wallet or leave it, then it follows necessarily that the will that arises along path A and the will the arises along path B are not determined, since it was my undetermined action which caused them, and I can intentionally go down one pathway.
I also want to talk on determinism for a moment because it’s always been an extreme position to take in my eyes. Yes we observe a natural reality where cause and effect is a very real and present phenomenon, but the thing is, it’s already shown that our reality is not wholly deterministic, and yes I’m going to insert the quantum indeterminacy argument… but for me what this should tell us, is that it’s not implausible to assume that other aspects of reality are indeterminate. Consciousness is hardly understood, as Dennett framed it “consciousness is one of last surviving mysteries”. I mean here is this bizarre phenomenon wherein the universe can begin to perceive itself and become aware it’s perceiving itself, why I ask is the determinist so adamant that this is merely a normal function that is just as deterministic as a planets rotation? Honestly,what grounds are there to hold this when all that can be shown to be causally determined is matter that lacks sufficient consciousness?
In the end determinists put all their cards into an assumed axiom (laplace’s demon) even though quantum mechanics has already broken it. I believe that the notion of free will is just too important to surrender, such that the only time one should be willing to submit to determinism is when it has been proven beyond any reasonable doubt that humans are completely determined. Only you can’t do this until you’ve unlocked consciousness entirely, and we are far from that. Thus the most rational and sensible thing to do is either wait in ignorance or with the belief in free will for peace of mind.
For your first point, let's say for the sake of argument that you truly do have those options of separate actions and you aren't determined to do one thing. Your will is still controlled by things you can not control like the way you were raised, past experiences, health and neuro chemistry. "A man can do as he wills, but not will as he wills", because of your will, you are determined to make that action. So even if we assume you do have the option to chose your action, your choice is completely determined, meaning that you never really had a choice, making free will inherently contradictory.
@@vaguepepper4028 we are always affected by external factors and things like birth and history and what not. But that doesn't clash with free will. I could do 5 push-ups right now if I decided too. Once I've started I might decide to do 10. I might decide to do zero. I could stop writing this comment and start on my dinner. But you're telling me that between all of these very possible scenarios that I just thought of, I have no ability to freely pick any of them? So I can make up a bunch of things to do, but I can't choose one because it's already determined? Was this text already pre determined? Were the examples given pre determined? Doesn't make any sense
@@tobiaskvarnung3411
You don't control wich thoughts/ideas will arise in your brain or if you will find those thoughts/ideas to be convincing or not.
@yannickm1396 that don't clash with free will. And I can still choose what direction my thoughts will take. What general pattern they should take to get the desired or satisfactory phrases in this comment for example. But if I want to stop that process to write about giraffes, it's completely within my prerogative to do so. Who or what needs to find these thought and ideas convincing in order to act on them? Which neuro pathway? What molecule? What chemical reaction dictates what's convincing or not? Free will means it's within your authority to act on the options presented to you. This ability can be less in some individuals, higher in others. But we almost always have a choice in what we do. And even in times where we might not, it still doesn't take away from the existence of free will. As long as we are able to in any way, shape, or form, dictate even the smallest detail in our actions or thoughts, we have free will. Which shouldn't be possible in a world ruled by molecules and chemicals. It just does not make sense.
There's also no accountability in that world. If I decide to skip school or work, it's not my fault then? I shouldn't be held accountable for my own shortcomings because "they're outside of my control"? That's ridiculous. We do have agency over our lives, and we have agency because we exist. The mind is more than wrinkles and neurons.
And if we do have free will, where did it come from? Material or naturalistic arguments just don't provide sufficient explanation for free will. We don't even know what the mind is but you're convinced we don't even have a mind? Just electricity flowing through fat. As a former atheist, it just doesn't make sense man
@@tobiaskvarnung3411
Free will means it's within your autority to act on the options presented to you:
You can act on the options presented to you. But like i said wich of the options presented to you, thoughts/ideas you you have you will find convincing you don't have any control over. Your thoughts may come from cause and effect. It may come from randomness wich is by definition not a concious choice. Or you may have a soul. But you did you did not choose your soul. In every imaginable universe free will just does not make sense man. I don't even know what has to be true for something like that to exist.
Compatiblism = let’s just change our definition of free will so that it still works out
and even then it doesn't
i'm determined to not do my homework due tomorrow i guess
And i'm determined to not study for my calc exam in an hour
you don't know that
exact you will fail its destiny
@@gabrielahimsa4387 Anyone's current observation is not the one deciding what is his destiny. It is the unknown that decides it. Only by telling yourself to become free from your worse self, the unknown will make you free from your worse self. All this including my saying this is destiny and still your choice matters.
I am determined to study for psychology test 😇
I recently took a class on this topic and found it incredibly fascinating. I was actually rather supportive of the marriage between free-will and determinism. I, however, must concede that the intuition of free-will certainly swayed my opinion. Absolutely loved the video- especially Schopenhauer- but, I have a minor contention. I feel there was a bit of a mischaracterization of compatibilist theory in the analogy used in your argument: the Boulder comes barreling down towards you, and you jump without truly having a choice- hardly any free-will in that choice- and I agree. Harry Frankfurt proposes an argument for compatibilism, yet he would not claim that in your example there was any free-will present. Given that you are incapable of doing anything other than jumping out of the way (I hold this was the essence of the analogy), Frankfurt would claim no agent causation was exercised in that scenario. I found it useful to phrase compatibilist theory in the negative rather than in the positive. Compatibilism, as I have understood it, essentially claims that free-will is not a matter of choosing what one wants to do, but rather, it is the ability to not choose all other possibilities. If I am unable to choose anything other than jump out of the way, then free-will was not present in that choice; the choice is then merely another link of transeunt causation. I know you’re very well read and probably much more educated on the topic- thanks for reading this far and keep making great content!
You can choose to get hit by the boulder. You could choose to pray for something to save you. You could choose to jump off. You could choose to try to dodge. You could choose to try and stop it. You could choose to try to die or try to live.
There is choice involved, there isn't one option. I can't think of any scenario with only one option.
@@carter2865
These scenarios/dilemmas often restrict freedom/options, but that's often to keep it simple.
Ultimately, with determinism, the "decision you make" is the 1:1 outcome of the universe (and beyond?), and the _you/us_ "experiencing" it is part of that 1:1 outcome.
I haven't come across any explanation or demonstration, professional or otherwise, that gives credence to the idea that the concept of free will exists beyond being a concept, and as a concept, it is an incoherent one, and it remains incoherent, and thus, for the time being, it cannot be applied to (physical) reality.
@@carter2865 I can think of a scenario with only one choice. Life itself. You are born with your DNA. You can't be given the choice to not be born with this specific information that your genes are containing. You just deal with it. Only one option, untouchable. Everything that exists is out of our hands. Choice is an ilusion, it feels real just like our dreams feel real, but our decisions are not determined by ourselves, we were compelled to make those decisions by external factors. No matter what we do, we can't control ourselves because we were never meant to. We are designed to survive. Just like a robot is programmed to execute a task. It's the biggest scam there has ever been, biology is constantly tricking us into thinking we can choose to do what we want. While we are busy bulding our entire lives on this lie, our bodies make us hungry, thirsty, sleepy, horny, we feed ourselves to prolong our existance, we drink and sleep to keep the machinery in good condition, we have children so that our DNA survives our own death. The environment interacts with your body and it dictates what course of action to take so that you don't cease to exist. Consequently, you may say then what about self-destructive behavior?, (such as suicide). That is a malfunction, a bug, a glitch, an error, it was not supposed to happen, it is just random.
@Ashley Powers You could choose without being suicidal. Maybe you would rather be killed instantly by the boulder rather than jump somewhat out of the way and risk having your chest/smashed up in a fatal injury resulting in a prolonged painful death.
Besides I don't think my point changes all that much even if you grant what you're saying.
@Ashley Powers given enough time to see the Boulder coming, sure you can. Whether that makes you suicidal or not doesn't really matter.
Curiously, many people have learned to experience, first hand, the lack of free will. The illusion, the feeling, is neither universal or inevitable. It can be dispelled.
Can you provide more information on this
There are many places to start. If you are not religious, I'd say Sam Harris and his waking up app are the way to go. If you are, you will be upset with Sam.
@@jeremyarcus-goldberg9543
Love your content always learning from everyone and everything I can.👍😌
I remember sitting on my floor in 3rd grade looking at a coat hangar thinking "in the future there are two options, I either pick up the hangar or not. only one can happen and already has happened relative to future me" I sat there staring at the hangar for about 2 min before I gave up and picked it up.
Also I feel this issue does not need any debate, especially a philosophical one. Biology would be as far as you would need to go to decide whether free will exists. as far as I understand it (which is very uneducated) neurons receive ions such as sodium from nerves and whatnot, they then send an "amplified signal" to the next neuron through the pathway which provides the least resistance. So by that understanding free will could not exist as the brain would always send out the exact same "signals" for a certain input.
I'm free to turn off this video. No, wait, I can't because I'm determined to watch😁
That's good. I like that.
That doesn't sound do bad at all
It's not my fault I didn't do my homework, it was already determined that I was gonna play videogames all day!
You would have if you could. Maybe you did and didn't at the same time, and the universe split in two or three but this version of you didn't.
ruclips.net/video/IqaZnaFjbt8/видео.html
A theist tried to refute RATIONALITY RULES 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
I lean a little toward compatiblism and the way that I interpret it is that it is our motivations or wants that have freedom, not ourselves when we have free will. Motivations and wants are what will is, and when motivations and wants are free, they are will and they are free so they are free will.
Also maybe I'm wrong here, but I see an act as free not if its cause originates internally, but if it is in accordance with wants and motivations. Those wants and motivations have external causes, but that's irrelevant to my criteria.
Either way this video shifted my confidences from 0.65 for compatiblism and 0.1 for incompatible determinism to 0.4 for compatiblism and 0.35 for incompatible determinism.
That's just it, if you redefine the criteria of " freedom" and are happy with that, then compatabalism works for you.
Hard determinists continue to use "free" in terms of freedom from causes.
"Difficult intuition to let go of" Suggesting you have a choice. Just because one wants does not mean one will. Our wants are very much temptations, we can have differing intensities of temptations, and yet even when we are more tempted to make one choice like pleasure. We can choose other than. This type of metaphysics focused discussion is certainly challenging to discuss because rather I find it more self evident. If one only follows their wants, than you are a slave to your own desires. I have had a few paradigm shifts in my pre theist life. When the paradigm's shifted I had a shift in my wants and desires. Now that I am a theist, I find the human nature of desires to be almost nullified completely. Making me feel free from want, it is this unchaining of free from want that Christians will often call a unchaining from a slavery to sin. When we watch other people make mistakes in their lives for instance. We can thus reduce the event to a learnable moment. We cant simply conflate and reduce our coincenses down to only desire or want that drives us. Although we can allow this to be so, we can also allow the alternative to be so as well.
You're an intellectual, but I especially admire how patient you are in debates and conversations. I believe that one of the reasons why you can answer questions so well is because you listen in order to understand the other argument. Then, you are able to meet them on their level. It seems like an obvious way to debate, but it seems like a lot of debaters are so ready to educate the ignorant that they forget that they need to listen in order to understand why others think the way that they do.
The reason that he can answer questions so well is that he is both educated and articulate. But even the educated and the articulate are sometimes wrong. Alex, I believe, would never go so far as to say he is never wrong, but he might suggest that he had no choice but to be wrong. But if he has the capacity to go back and correct his mistake, such an argument would do nothing to support the idea that we always and forever lack free will.
Cosmic skeptic is a racist know-it-all that should be banned from reasonable platforms.
Your photography has improved a lot! Congrats! 🌟
It really just goes to show that we are interlinked, and there is no distinction between one organism and the next other than time. Meaningfully, we are everything that has ever existed or ever will exist.
Amazingly enlightening video! But I wonder what's determinism's argument for sending criminals to jails (or even punish them), if their doings are not resulted from their wills.
A focus on rehabilitation instead of punishment essentially. People seem to jump the conclusion that if free will doesn't exist then criminals shouldn't be given consequences because their crime was not their choice and as a result not their fault. Any consequences would be unfair with that logic. But just because they didn't act out of free will doesn't mean nothing should be done about them. If a cars brakes are broken it isn't the cars fault, but we don't just let the car keep driving on the roads crashing into things. Instead we take it off the road, find the problem, fix the problem, and return it to the road once it's safe to be around other cars.
Ohhh yes, thank you for reminding me that I'm not in any way free 😍
Edit was for grammar mistakes
"You're really just gonna throw your hands up and call free will a grand mystery?!?!"
"Yes."
Free will is a grand mystery. Determinism is not true, proven wrong for decades now, rendering all of the video’s points null.
@@aienbalosaienbalos4186 Proven wrong by uncertainty in the quantum world? 🤔
@@jeevajyothis3785 yes. That is the strong case against determinism.
There is also the weak case, which is the 3 body problem.
In general, with 3 bodies, the exact equation of their movement due to gravity includes infinite normal mathematical operations, and it converges so slowly that it is practically useless.
So we change form exact math solutions to numerical methods, and it seems to be fine.
But it turns out that the 3 body problem is extremely sensitive. That is, tiny error in the positing of the earth, like just 15 meters, results in entirely different positions of the earth at the scale of the solar system.
Now, this might just be a problem that we haven’t solved.
But many philosophers have argued that the universe simply does not want to be exactly understood or predicted. The fact that tiny errors in measurements are amplified immensely makes predicting the future very hard.
So even with classical deterministic mechanics, it might be impossible to determine the future.
@@aienbalosaienbalos4186 It is the first time I hear about the 3 body problem so thanks for that. But even if the motion of bodies cannot be predicted or understood by us, can it be random such as in the quantum world?
Moreover even if we concede randomness exists in the physical world as well, can that prove free will exists? We do not have any more control over something random than we have over something determined, right?
@@jeevajyothis3785 Well, in the 3 body problem argument, the world is in fact determined, but it is unknowable, so in practice it is as if it were random.a although it is not. But it is a weak argument, it might just solved by just using insanely more precise measurements and computations.
I think the random case is more interesting. If our wants turn out to be random, then that seems to me to be a perfectly acceptable manifestation of free will.
That is, when choosing a color for example, there were many colours you could had wanted, and for no physical or measurable reason, you ended up wanting green. I think we could say that you "chose" to want green. There were no physical limitations restricting your choices.
For example, the decision might come down to a quantum state of an electron in your brain. We can say that you "chose" the quantum state, which in this case means that you "chose" the color you wanted.
Anyhow, my position on free will is that we don't know. We have simpler problems to solve in the first place. I don't think we'll discover if agents in this universe are free to choose what they want, if we don't even understand how "wanting wants. We can't understand what "wanting" means, if we can't even understand how being conscious works.
Science simply has no answers on consciousness, and we might never have. Perhaps consciousness exists outside our material universe.
Perhaps our consciousnesses, me and you, exist somewhere else other than this physical universe, and we are getting the information from this physical universe. The information these human brains process is somehow transferred to the universe where our consciousnesses exist. There never be a physical manifestation of consciousness, and it might remain forever a mystery.
I like to think of a computer simulation with players in it (there is increasing support for the theory that our universe is a simulation). In a game, there is the game map, and the players act on it. Say Minecraft. The blocky world exists with it's rules and laws that one can determine experimentally. The bodies of the players and mobs follow rules and have collision boxes and health and etc. But the "consciousness" of the player or mobs do not exist in the Minecraft world.
The AI for the mobs is being simulated elsewhere on the computer. Nowhere inside Minecraft you can see the program that runs the AI for the mobs.
The same for the players: their choices are controlled by human user inputs. This connection with our real world is invisible inside the Minecraft world.
And we might be the same. Our consciousnesses might just be "happening" elsewhere other than this physical universe, so we will never see/touch/measure/experience anything that ever came into contact with them, EXCEPT through the decisions made by these consciousnesses that affect their "player models", which in our case could be the electrons in our brains.
I agree with everything that you said but the way I try to reconcile it is through a change in perspective.
I have a broader view of what I am. Often when discussing free will people will say things like: "it's ultimately your desires that determine your actions" or something like: "It's the brain that determines your actions, and since the brain is just an evolved organ made from atoms, following deterministic rules of nature, your actions are also deterministic" and I don't deny that. My view of what I am, however, includes those things. My physical brain is not making me do things, I am that brain. My desires don't make me do things, I am those desires. I see myself more as a system rather than just a voice in "my" head.
I feel like this discussion is based on a not very clearly defined idea of what free will is supposed to be, a kind of observer that is above the laws of nature and maybe even logic. I already see myself as a system existing in this world and if, let's say, I decide to watch this video, that is a genuine and authentic expression of this system that is "me".
Thanks, Alex. Much appreciated ❤
Wow, that was an amazingly smooth sponsor transition!
Just started watching your vids. Absolutely brilliant! I'm looking forward to trawling through the back catalogue.
Your point around 5:55 is really good, I feel like we don’t have free will because I could try all I want to jump off a cliff or bite my finger off but if I don’t want to do it my body does not let me
Great video! Just wanted to ask, what would you say to a person like me who thinks that free will is simply the illusion we make and hence exists in that sense? That's my take similar to Dennett's, free will is our way of making sure we don't get manipulated by other agents and hence the illusion of choice. Also I'd love to hear about your recent vegan reconsiderations, I've been considering becoming vegan and would like to hear what made you reconsider. Hope you're feeling well.
There's a video called "Why is the milk" gone by Exurb1a about free will and the "cosmic game of pool", i think he is right.
Exurb1a is one of my absolute favourite RUclipsrs ❤️. His narration style is extraordinary. Sleep is just death being shy actually brought me to tears 😭
Hello, fellow Exurb1a fans, nice to see you out here in the wild
@@nishita3084 yes hello! nice meeting you
Yes! That video actually originally convinced me if the notion, it’s basically a masterpiece imo.
@@k-doggy1762 link of that RUclips plzzz
Love your debates even when I disagree with your premise. All of your arguments are well thought out and articulated well.
A very interesting thought process...for a question that I ultimately believe can never be answered by philosophy. If a conclusive answer will ever be found, chances are it will be neurobiology that cracks it.
Still, nothing wrong about pondering about it...it's fascinating ^^
But...it would be technically possible for the "unthinking world" to be deterministic and the thinking mind not to be. In such a case, the formation of first such mind would be determined, unavoidable. But anything that happens with and to them as a result of their actions wouldn't necessarily be. I absolutely cannot claim to know whether that is the case, or not, but...I don't see any reason why it absolutely could not be the case.
In such a scenario, the "unthinking world" would also cease to be deterministic once affected by thinking minds. At least in regard that it's current form, shape and situation would not be inevitable and calculable at the beginning of the universe. But...after every such mind's action, the path the world takes afterward would be determined - until and unless a mind affects it again.
I am somewhat doubtful about that possibility tho. Both my studies and my personal experiences showed me just how tightly linked our emotions, sensations, thoughts, personality and actions are to the biological processes inside our bodies (and not just the brain). I've been dealing with major hormonal issues most of my life (got a mutation that causes my body to deactivate estrogen)...each time my hormones get "out of sync" in either direction, I feel like a different person. I mean, there's still the underlying "me" down there, my thought processes following a familiar kind of logic, navigating thoughts and feelings in pretty much the same way, but...the shape of that path can vary wildly...and so do inevitably the steps.
I've always thought that we have will, but not free will. We can will things, but were always destined to will them and there was no other way that it could have gone. Although I'm always open to having my mind changed.
You have no idea how long I have waited for this video ever since you announced it on Twitter. In fact, today I told my Catholic philosophy tutor why we don’t have free will, and she was impressed (not necessarily convinced but impressed).
I like to think that a form of free will is the ability to break out of structured patterns of abuse or self harm.
I really can't relate to the "intuition that free will exists". I never had such feeling that human action is free, and I was surpised to hear that other people feel like they have free will. Since i remember myself I always felt like a character in a video game, and I intuitively knew that people cannot do anything different than what they did.
The other point that should be adressed is the "strong intuition" that we have free will. That intuition quickly vanishes, in my experience, the moment you pay atention to how your will emerges on its own. It is clear that you are a witness of it, not its author. I find it strange that so few people adress this matter, as it seems to be, as you pointed out, the only argument left for proponents of free will, after the logical implications of causation have been pointed out to them.
Then you are bad at dealing with your own mind... I can at times change my will on a dine if I just pay enough attention to it and reasons for it.
@@hippykiller2775
You don't control wich thoughts/ideas come into your brain or if you will find those convincing or not. You say you can just reason more to change your few about something. The new information apearing in your brain that changes your few about what you first thought to be true you also did not choose to have.
@@yannickm1396 if you want to believe something is true that's a reason that you can use to build a foundation of a true belief for it.
And funny enough I've been doing a lot of work on this topic recently and I can say with utter confidence that free will absolutely does exist and you can choose what you believe and think. But I would never suggest anyone lie themselves into any belief.
It would be a fallacy to think that necessarily because a person is younger, less experienced, less educated, etc. than another person, therefore the first person doesn't have good, valuable, innovative, etc. ideas.
Ideas should be judged on their merit - not their origin.
And the achievement of spreading ideas to a wide audience has a lot of value in itself.
But the truth is it actually matters alot in our society who says sth if sth will have an impact or not,it makes sense economically since we cant allow everyone in to a debate since it would take no end
The truth is there is no such thing as an innovative idea, or original thought. You may claim credit for it, but doesn’t make it so.
Yes, that's why I believe there shouldn't be a difference in the way we treat criminals of age and criminals that are minors. Because why do we suddenly become more responsible for our actions one day after we are 18?
Also, Alex literally studied at one of the best universities in the world. That makes him absolutely qualified to talk about philosophy.
@@Cookiekeks that seems to actually contradict my point, which was that education (and other circumstances) has no bearing on the merit of an idea/point/argument.
I was a combatabist, but I used my free will to change my mind.
Stephen Hawkins once said that the people who deny free will also look twice when crossing the road.
This is possibly the greatest question humanity has ever had the chance to ask itself. By coincidence, I asked my friend at school today if he believed in free will, (same day this video was uploaded). We agreed that with the lack of enough evidence we should resort to the null hypothesis which is that we are nothing more than chemical reactions. If you’re wanting to explore this topic of free will and consciences more, i’d Recommend watching black mirror (on Netflix) specifically “black museum.” It asks the question if what gives us moral agency is only complexity, then why shouldn’t an equally complex digit copy of consciousness be given the same human rights. Personally, I believe to insert the idea of a soul is just an easy way a giving a simple comforting answer to mind boggling question. Great video, Alex.
*compatibalist
The illusion of free will is the same concept as being tricked to believe that you can turn the tv on and off when you clap, but someone else has the remote and is messing with you. It will feel real, convincing and seem like you have proof, until the situation is fully understood.
That's a really useful analogy, i'm definitely borrowing that for whenever I find myself in a situation where i need to explain why free will does not exist.
Consider this event: a decision enters your conscious awareness
We call the experience of this event "making a decision."
This is a mistake. It is just an experience. The actual decision is made prior to that, outside our awareness. We are normally not privy to evidence of this because the path of decisions to our physical actions (the other evidence we have of what has been decided) is longer than the path to our conscious awareness, so our actions almost always happen after the decision has entered our awareness. If we more often acted before we knew we'd decided to act, we'd be less inclined to make the mistake.
Somewhat more accurate might be to describe the experience as "the universe informing us of what we're going to do."
Just to add to this... even if one was to assume there is randomness in the universe, that still would not result in free will as it would just be a roll of the dice, not something under our control that we would get to decide.
Believers constantly try to smuggle in free will with any possible randomness.
@@Vlasko60 yup
Fate, chance, and free will
Your audio quality is so gooood!!!
My fear is that the denial of free will is seen as a get out jail card for our actions. Even if there is no free will, having a society that acts as though it exists is the best one to preserve both its quality and durability!!
The fact people do not have free will is not the same as saying people will not change due to other things occurring. We don’t know the route the universe and people’s actions are going to take, therefore to act as if free will not existing is a ‘get out of jail free card’ seems to wrongly confuse it with the idea that events (such as jail) will not affect people’s behaviours, since they are predetermined to be criminals or something. This is not what no free will means
@ballisticfish1212 I am saying that a meme can be destructive even though true. The idea of no free will in practice is sand in the gearbox of society!
@@ballisticfish1212That is a false opinion that you were predetermined to think is true.
@@Nox-mb7iu 🤣
@@Nox-mb7iu You have no evidence for your claim. So in the end you either believe in free will, or believe that it doesn't exist. If free will doesn't exists, you also can't go wrong in believing that it exists, because you had no choice. If free will exists, than you made a bad choice in believing that it doesn't exist. In translation you are taking a risk for no reason.
This is actually fascinating. I'll have to replay it at .75 so I can ponder it better.
I can stop wanting what I want by being conscious of what I want deeply inside me and of what is driving my desires. By our strong will, it is possible to do it, but most of us just don't do it. As an example, someone can think that he lives happily and freely in a modern city, but by reevaluating his thoughts, he can drastically manage to change his way of life by going to live in a quiet and ecologist environment, discovering that before he wasn't actually free in the sense that he hasn't had much control of his desires, for example. Our free will seems also to evolve, and we get more and more control of ourselves through deep introspection of our desires, soul, and values etc. By doing that, we can diminish the level of determinism. The free will is an ideal-type in some sense which maybe cannot be achieved fully, but we can get so close that we may actually tell that it exists if we aren't stopped by external phenomena. We can reach a high level of self-control and self understanding, but for most people it is not the case. Therefore the compatibilist approach is not debunked here completely in my eyes.
>I can stop wanting what I want by being conscious of what I want deeply inside me and of what is driving my desires.
Why do you want to stop wanting what you want?
You missed the entire point here. It doesn't matter to what degree you're aware of anything. Ultimately your behavior is caused by circumstances outside of you and previous to you.
Compatibilism is just a redefinition of terms.
What made you go to the journey of finding out what you want and your inner desires? External Forces!
I am a compatibilist. I very much appreciate the video, and you come _very_ close to understanding compatibilism, but unfortunately your points end up missing the mark quite significantly. Let me explain my viewpoints.
First of all, while I cannot presume exactly what Hobbes meant, I am very much of the belief that you misinterpreted his ideas. An action does not cease to be "free" simply because it was coerced. It only ceases to be free once you can't say that there is any conceivable way for it to have gone otherwise.
In essence: physical restraints inhibit free will. Threats do not. If you grab my arm and flail it about, I didn't do so out of my own free will. If you put me at gunpoint and tell me to flail my arm about, then doing so will be of my own free will.
It's not about the idea that an action can ultimately be traced back to an external impetus. This is irrelevant. If the impetus actually bringing the action about is internal, then irrespectively of its causes, the action was taken of that person's own free will.
This also means I wholly reject the distinction Van Inwagen draws between touchable and untouchable facts. If the idea there is to label facts that humans could have affected as "touchable", the definition given misses the mark entirely to the point of being useless, because _absolutely no one_ who believes in free will defines touchable facts in that way.
Now, this should dispel the idea that once you have granted a compatiblist definition of free will, it still contradicts determinism. But I won't stop there, as I still have to show that my definition of free will is in fact reasonable.
Notably, you say the following: "If you're happy to say that you're free, despite having no control over your actions, then I think maybe we're just talking at cross purposes"
This is still misunderstanding what I, as a compatibilist, would define free will as. Very simply put, compatibilism defines free will in a way that attempts to square it not only with determinism, but also with how we experience the idea of freedom in daily life. If an actions _feels_ free, it most likely is.
The core of this misunderstanding is that you assert a different conclusion than the one you have actually proven. You have proven that you have no control over _who you are,_ but this does not imply a lack of control over your actions. It's still _you_ that takes those actions, after all.
It's not strange at all to say that if you were a different person, you might have chosen differently. We are all shaped by our circumstances and experiences, and I don't think you'll find anyone who denies that. Despite this, and our lack of ability to choose who we are, you are ignoring that the very subject to which free will is applicable sits _right in between_ who you are and what you do. So even if you were somehow forced to take a certain action because of who you are, that force acts upon YOU. It doesn't directly bring about the action. If it did, then yes, you would have no control. But because YOU, in the sense of your innermost self, are a step in that process, you have control by definition.
Now, to return to your very first point again, I believe you've also said something else of note that's self-refuting, namely that compatibilism makes you "a slave to your own desires".
During your explanation of Schopenhauer's ideas on the matter, you make it very clear that you equate Hobbes' and Schopenhauer's ideas of will with desire. This is problematic, because this makes your assertion synonymous to saying that "you are a slave of your own will". In other words, you directly imply that "will" is the thing that chooses, and is thus in other words, free.
This idea that will and desire are one and the same is not something I subscribe to regardless, however... My main sticking point here is that desire does not equate action, whereas the idea behind free will is that we can _act_ freely (hence the insistence on internal vs. external--the latter only becomes important once we try to put something into action).
Ultimately, I believe desire to be completely irrelevant. Desire is a predictor of what action someone chooses to take, but you yourself rightly point out that coercion isn't foolproof. In other words, if you coerce someone, you cannot necessarily count on them following your instructions. This means our desires don't _dictate_ our behaviour, but _inform_ it.
Free will is not about choosing what you want. It's about choosing what you _do._ Though perhaps even that description falls short. It's about _doing_ what you do. This may sound redundant, but I already explained previously that someone taking your arm and flailing it about does not constitute a freely taken action. The reason that it does not is that you are not the actions _doer._ If you are the _doer_ of an action, _then_ the action was taken freely. This also means Schopenhauer's criticism falls flat because it focuses on the things that happen _before_ free will takes effect. It's the translation of your inner state to action that is the domain of free will.
Of course, if you have answers for all the points I've raised, I'd be glad to hear them. Allowing my own viewpoints to be challenged is a healthy habit, after all, and at the core of what scepticism is all about.
Exactly I agree I think of it like this
We cannot control our desires or the our nature or our environment. At first most people live in a continuous cycle of behavior because theyre beliefs are the same because they dont compare new information to the ones they already have
When you begin deciding what information works by comparing theyre cause and effect.
Then you can choose what to believe in based on perceived results.
“It’s still YOU that take those actions”
Knowing that evething behind yourself is interactions between atoms and particles, then those interactions determine your actions. Your statement is wrong.
@@rotorblade9508 You are correct, but even if your actions are predetermined, it's still YOU that takes those actions. This is true regardless of whether or not determinism or free will are true--it's as true as, say, if you roll a boulder down a hill and it hits something, it's the _boulder_ that did the hitting, and not you, even though you caused it to hit something.
I agree
The reason that coercion, as in "holding a gun to the head", works is that it invokes a moral judgment. Is it better to be shot or better to comply? In most cases it is morally better to comply, because it is the lesser harm. The exception would be if you're ordered to kill someone else.
The problem with your statement is that you can’t prove you want something more that something else.
When someone wants to stay in bed, but goes to the gym anyways, you can’t just say “Oh he just wanted to go the gym more”.
What if the desire to stay in bed was stronger, but he went to the gym anyways? That’s free will in my opinion.
Well explained. I've been wondering about how free will is an illusion ever since I came across it in a philosophy course. Thanks a lot for this video
He's wrong.
@@brianmacker1288 Oh look who it is! Can you imagine how shocked I am to find you making another assertion without actually demonstrating anything? LOL
It's not even an illusion. There is no feeling of having free will, just a belief.
@@MrCmon113 But don't we feel like we have choices? That we are deciding something independently and could have done otherwise?
@@MrCmon113 i certainly feel like i have free will, even if i maybe don't.
It seems to me that we have no idea about all the myriad influences in our biology and subconscious that are influencing us. There seems to be a variety of experiences we each have when making a decision including:
1. Irrational actions which we don’t even pretend to understand and might lead us to therapy.
2. Rash actions for which we give no thought like suddenly losing your temper and inappropriately blurting out a profanity.
3. Obvious choices based on predetermined likes or goals like choosing to eat cake vs dirt.
4. Complete indecision when the options are of equal merit… brown hat or gray hat… like the character Chidi on “The Good Place” with a constant repetition of “on the other hand.”
5. And the most interesting to me; when you mull something over for awhile and then suddenly you realize a decision has been made. You eventually know what you’re going to do as if a coin has been tossed in your subconscious.
This illusion of free-will is simply the conscious awareness of one’s internal process and in retrospect it feels like a real choice because it all happened in your head.
Having said that; We have to act as if we had free will and hold people responsible for their actions regardless in order to restrain anti-social behavior. Our social structure becomes an emergent external force to limit our actions.
Believe in free will is not actually necessary for the existence of a justice system. Punishment or better the fear of punishment can simply act as a psychological deterrent against potential future crime, even when we know that the criminal can't or couldn't choose. Also jail also obviously prevents the criminals from doing crime while they are incarcerated which is another useful part of the justice system.
The Middle Way true but then its not really a justice system, it’s a social protection system
M Wills Perhaps that’s so. It functions exactly the same regardless of the perpetrators motivation. The perpetrator is aware of legal constraints which is another determinist factor born of necessity.
The proper response to the question wether free will exists or not would be: "What difference does it make?"
@@mardy3732 : You may be right and it's just a matter of philosophical curiosity.
What is actually the arguement for free will? Not in the sense if determinism might be wrong or anything, but just "what compells a person to even consider free will" as an axiom in life in the first place?
Good video. I just finished this book by Rabbi Dr. Shmuel Asher, The Land of Meat and Honey. Why do you believe what you believe and many truths and hidden biblical understanding brought to light. Your consent and free will explained. This book really spoke to me and answered a lot of questions I was searching for. I found it on Amazon.
Had this debate with a professor a few weeks ago. He's in the camp that says the emergent complexity of the human mind separates it from the type of thing which can be said to be determined. I don't understand why that would be the case unless there is some type of extraphysical aspect of mind that itself is unbounded by deterministic factors, yet he insists he doesn't incorporate a sort of "soul" into his model. I fail to understand how a materialist can avoid determinism on the level of metacognition.
The professor may be suggesting that uncoerced choice is not deterministic. Given the uncoerced choice between a blue shirt and a brown shirt, the natural laws of chemistry and bioelectricity are not controlling your choice of shirt. If nothing else, you have the choice of going with your emotion/instinct (I like brown better) or logic (but research says that blue is better for job interviews), which might only be the emotion/instinct of wanting to do well on the interview. Just like we don't know how the universe started, how life started, etc., it is okay to say we don't know how choice happens. The professor's point is that we cannot yet PROVE that uncoerced choice is affected 100% by determinism so the door is open for free choice.
@@AndyAlegria but even in a case like that, it's not really free will. You can choose the brown shirt because you like it better, but you can't choose the things you like. You can choose blue because of the evidence presented to you, but you can't choose what's convincing to you.
@@cladoxylopsida568 well, if physics is truly random all the way at the bottom, then that's not a "free choice" either; it's a truly random act over which you had no ultimate control. If it's not random, then there must be some causal chain, thus determinism again.
Mind is by nature metaphysical and so materialism is demonstrably false
@@baronfromthebaronies7628 After a few days of thought, I have a question for you. I like the brown shirt better AND I am convinced that blue is better for interviews. What decides which one I go with, emotion or logic? Last week, I wore a black shirt on Monday and this week I chose the blue shirt, yet I decidedly prefer black over blue at all times (consciously) and I did not have an interview. If I'm driven by preference, what happened? Science has not proven what drives that choice: chemistry, bioelectricity, or something else. Until science proves how that choice is made, no one can claim determinism or freedom. Or can you demonstrate that most scientists agree on how choice is made?
I’m sad because I don’t even have control over why I’m sad that I had no control to like this video. I feel so used. 😢
I think the example of jumping to aviod the boulder is mistaken because such a jump would literally mean a reflex so it's already merely controlled by an external cause (the brainstem)
*External here obviously doesn't mean outside of the body but a material cause outside of the interal decision making process
Important note, you can have strict physical laws that INCLUDE true random events.
If nuclear decay for example were proven to be truly random, then this wouldn't really undermine any aspect of how physical laws play out - save that if you rewound and replayed the universe, it would come out differently every time even though the same rules applied.
There's also the problem that the Uncertainty Principle prevents us from knowing the exact state of any subatomic system - this has the effect of making it impossible to predict how it will evolve from that point forwards. This is why all our particle collider data is necessarily statistical, rather than being based on specific observations.
So, regardless of whether the Universe is actually deterministic, from our viewpoint it CANNOT be, because we can never know its current state. Nor is the universe rewindable - the arrow of time moves strictly in one direction, so any assumption about what might happen if it did is entirely irrelevant.
None of this protects Free Will however. It doesn't give us any more or less control to say that the universe is truly deterministic or not. All the real action is happening far below our conscious control either way, and we have no real say in how it plays out. If anything a random universe gives us even less agency. Frankly, the concept of Free Will is a purely human conception that has no bearing on or relationship to physical reality.
HOWEVER, societally Free Will remains a useful - if fictional - concept. Even a purely deterministic system like a strictly rules based AI can be provably be made to respond in different ways to the same stimuli based on how it can expect to be treated in response to its actions. If it learns that it may be punished for some actions and rewarded for others, it will weight actions that reward it more heavily, and ones that are likely to draw punishment less so.
In this way the fact that we TREAT people as if their actions are their own choices with potential societal consequences does in fact affect the deterministic outcome of their actions. Whether this is 'fair' or not isn't really relevant, only that the outcome is favorable for us as a society or species.
The exceptions we make to this rule, such as when someone is mentally incompetent or under the influence of illness or drugs over which they have no control, is a general nod to the fact that such people may become unable to competently recognize the likely outcomes of their actions AT ALL, regardless of the threat of punishment or the promise of reward.
This is also sensible. If I know that a system cannot identify or respond to social reward/penalty stimuli, then those reward/punishment systems become a pointless exercise that cannot affect the outcome. A waste of time, and in the human context, a pointless cruelty.
Whether in any case someone does or does not respond favorably to these external 'social' stimuli is not especially relevant. They don't have any free will in the matter and we could never really determine whether they will or not any more than we can guess which way a particle is going to go in a subatomic collision - but statistically we can still see the effects, at least, if we chose effective stimuli with which to nudge people's behaviors.
In short Free Will is not an individual concept. It's a purely societal one. It is something Society applies to US as a principle of behavior and consequence, not something we actually possess as a property of being human or conscious.
There are a few (lack of) free-will arguments, mine is pretty similar, that we can only act in accordance to the person we are, and the person we are is tetramine by experiences that happen onto us. My argument possibly leaves room for some smaller decision making that I haven't quite worked the quirks out of yet. But I also believe in that multiverse hypothesis that deals with time being a tree and whatnot, that there is a universe for every possible decision not made, but if I believe my own free will argument, then the conditions for that decisions must have been started at the beginning of the universe, in which case time is not a tree, but a series of rays all conjoining in the same point (the big bang) and dispersing based on very minor differences.
I’m confident that the words “free will” are far too confusing for most people to even have productive discussions over the matter. Just about every debate comes back to something like: “well, you and I are talking about 2 different things.”
Beyond matters of justice, I don’t think this topic is all that important. While I agree with determinism, I also have no problem with laymen saying they have free will.
If I calculator can make infinite number of calculations why can't our brain and if it can that's free will sure it's limited by environment and maybe DNA but with an infinite number of calculations surely it's at least partly free
@@davidevans3223 But calculator can not make infinite number of calculations. There is a limit on both power(energy), how many calculations you can run, but also in memory/calculating power, in that you can input only so many characters before either the software or hardware imposed limits kicks in.
But matters of justice are of utmost importance. Recognizing that we lack free will undermines the whole concept of retribution.
@@davidevans3223 Neither of your comments made any sense either in logically or colloquially.
Wood Croft, yes, free will is important to justice systems.
Perhaps everything is determined but I don’t think we should just give up and put life on pause simply due to that fact. The truth is we don’t know what the future holds, and we still have a will, even though it may not be a will of our choosing but it’s what we have. The best we can do is try our best to live the lives we want and if possible make life a little less horrible for someone else.
If you read this till the end, thank you.
I love watching topics like this. I enjoy having my head all bent up 😅
When it gets interesting it gets abstract such that it becomes hard to follow.
Hi, I don't know much about philosophy but i'd have 2 questions for you :
1. How do you articulate determinism with the uncertainty principle of quantum physics, which (i believe) states that P could result in Q1 or Q2 in a probabilistic manner ?
2. I also think that a lot of our actions and desire are kind of "programmed" by our environnement and our genes, but that is just a first step of what we are made of. I also believe that what we usually think and most of our knowledge isn't aquired by our own thinking capacity (we rely heavily on others). But we don't always follow the path of what's better for us and philosophy is a way (i think) to consider what would be right to do, even though it's not in our own interest. Therefore, values can contradict nature and what should be the "natural" way to act, isn't it ? Otherwise, what it would say about our values, or any value, if we have no choice ? Ultimately, what would be the purpose of thinking and trying to be a better person if that will has to be or not, out of our own ? (not sure i phrase it the right way but i guess you'll get what i mean)
Thanks for your work anyway, i've discovered your channel just a couple days ago and it's really interesting. I hope my english is good enough to understand what i want (or do i ?) to express.
1- random is not free will. Random is random.
2- quick example: in Philippines they eat dogs. Because they were told it was a fine thing to do. And everyone falls in line in accordance to the information at hand. Some might steer away but the casual relationship would tell you that something acted upon them. While in other countries it's not a good thing, maybe even repulsive, guess the reason.
Thirdly, the illusion of free will is helpful to society, because it let us deal with criminals and put them in prison (which is weird). As a personal experience, i have been much more kinder to people since i stopped believing we have free will, i know it's not their fault and i feel a peace of mind sometimes actually.
I discovered determinism at the age of 10. I said to my younger brother: "We often hear someone say that 'if I were you, I would rather do this or that', but, in fact, if I WERE you, I would do exactly as you do, because ...", and I explained about brain states, desires, inclinations, situation and past history in the language of a ten-year-old. However, however, however, ... At the age of sixty, I am still working on the perennial philosophical problem. My only 'discovery' along the way, is that the answer should not make the slightest difference to our everyday lives. Does determinism imply "they couldn't HELP it"? Or is there a hell of a lot more to say about the meaning of "helping it"? I just saw a determinist thanking his patreons, but why thank them if they couldn't help what they did, sorry, chose to do and then did? Then again, if he couldn't help thanking them ... uh ... couldn't help choosing to thank them ... whatever, if he couldn't help it, I suppose he doesn't owe me an answer. O k, I really think Alex is one of the most intelligent, most conscientious and most consistent youtube content creators in the world. Just admire the guy.
Great video! Here's my problem with the argument, though:
I define "internal factor" as any factor that was influenced by my personality. So when you say "I can't choose my wants," I don't have to, because I AM my wants. What I want makes me, me. Makes me who I am. So, even if there's some external factor that caused me to be me, if there's anything that happened because I am the way I am, because of the influence of my personality, then it happened because of me. Free will to me is just the extent to which my actions were decided by my personality. If you put a gun to my head, any influence my personality has is diminished to null.
Just my two cents.
Yes I agree. This separation of who we are and our wants as somehow separate things I find the biggest flaw.
Further I contend we can have influence on our wants, whenever we come up to a difficult situation, thinking about it and weighing the benefits etc. We can influence that internal weighting and final want.
Granted it's very hard to argue against determinism without knowing the future.
@@PBMS123 I've never thought about us influencing our wants in that way, that's really interesting. I guess our intelligence and sensibilities and maybe even our willingness to use our sensibilities (I guess those are parts of our personalities) do end up influencing our goals.
@@pearlmas5924 the problem with that is, where does that influence comes from? it always comes from some other want or a want which is stronger.. no matter how much you contemplate over something, at the end, you will only give value to the choice which is more aligned with the want which is stronger at that moment.
personally for me not having free will is not a bad thing either it's liberating actually, but the real issue is not, who you are, or what makes you, the real issue is not having power over your design ..every human carry two kinds of wants in them, one which they approve and other which they don't, the problem is you don't get to choose which kind is going to be stronger.... most psychopaths hates themselves for doing what they do, most offenders never wanted to commit offense...and yet they are all helpless against the want ..these are extreme examples but we all face this everyday in our lives..we wanted to do something far better but we settle for less, small habits that we wanted to change but kept doing them again nd again, things we don't like about our nature and yet we still do them, most people want to change themselves for better and yet they can't, addicts remains addicts, and even if something changes, look deeper, you will find it's bcs the want just lost its strength, one day change just started happening.....true horrer of not having free will is far more disturbing than what we usually like to believe just to keep our minds intact.......and the thing is THERE IS NO WAY AROUND IT.
@@Enoynanone " most psychopaths hates themselves for doing what they do, most offenders never wanted to commit offense.." this is just wrong.
Some offenders may not have, a lot of those cases are treated under mental health conditions.
I don't see how it's liberating AT ALL.
Addicts remain addicts for other reasons other than just not wanting to.
Theoretical question:
If, as per the deterministic view, everything is predetermined based on external factors. Then it would be theoretically possible to create an algorithm (if it could take all input that exists in the universe) that could perfectly predict the future of a person. Seeing this, said person could choose to stop this future from happening - does this imply free will???. Remember that the algorithm could also know that the person would see the future as this counts as an input.
In this case the algorithm would predict that the person would know their future and in that future that would be taken into account.
This means that the future would be affected by that knowledge. Whatever the subjects “tries” to do to change what he sees in the algorithm would already be presented in the future he sees. So no, the subject wouldn’t be able to change anything.
It would be a useful algorithm, the problem is, within that prediction, you would have to include the algorithm itself, which would also have a prediction, which itself would have to include another algorithm. So it is like having matryoshka doll with infinite layers of algorithms and compute all that takes infinite time, so you can't actually accurately predict the future.
I can buy the argument that we cannot control our wants, but on the other hand we are perfectly capable of choosing to go against our own wants, often in favor of abiding by certain rules, or in favor of assisting another person. Sometimes we have a choice between equal wants and the choice is arbitrary, but seemingly not constrained by pre-determined factors. We also can choose something that we should do over something we want to do, as in we can spend time exercising, educating ourselves, doing chores, etc, rather than doing what our instincts tell us that we want in the moment. You could argue that I want to be in shape, educated, or clean, but in the moments that I choose to pursue such things, I often feel that I want to relax, eat a snack, play a game, watch a video, etc, rather than bettering myself. I would describe that ability to deny your more immediate wants as “free will”.
O'Connor is correct to say that we are not free in the way that most people think we are. We cannot choose our desires, and our actions are determined by our desires. However, I believe that there is a deeper kind of freedom, a freedom that is not bound by our desires or by the laws of cause and effect.
This deeper kind of freedom is the freedom to choose our true nature. Our true nature is pure consciousness, which is free from all limitations. We can choose to identify with our true nature, or we can choose to identify with our desires and ego.
When we identify with our true nature, we are free. We are not bound by our desires or by the laws of cause and effect. We are able to live our lives in a state of peace and joy.
When we identify with our desires and ego, we are not free. We are enslaved by our desires. We are constanstly chasing after things that will not bring us lasting happiness. We are also constantly struggling with negative emotions such as anger, fear, and jealousy.
There are many references in both philosophy and religious texts that support the view that we have a deeper kind of freedom. For example, in the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna that he is free to choose his own path. He says, "You are not bound by your past actions. You are free to choose your own destiny."
In the Bible, Jesus says, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." The truth that Jesus is referring to is the truth of our true nature. When we know the truth of our true nature, we are free from the bondage of our desires and ego.
There is also a lot of scientific evidence that supports the view that we have a deeper kind of freedom. For example, quantum mechanics suggests that there is an element of randomness in the universe. This means that our actions are not completely determined by the laws of cause and effect.
In addition, there have been many studies that have shown that we have the ability to control our own thoughts and emotions. This suggests that we are not simply victims of our circumstances. We have the power to choose how we respond to our circumstances.
I believe that we have a deeper kind of freedom than the freedom to choose our desires or our actions. This deeper kind of freedom is the freedom to choose our true nature. When we choose to identify with our true nature, we are free from the bondage of our desires and ego. We are able to live our lives in a state of peace and joy.
No. I'm not letting go of compatibilism. And I'm not ready for this video. I haven't left my house in 7 months. My children have established a separatist region in my front parlor. The soundtrack of my life is my husband shouting on conference calls. I need time before I revisit this issue. I'm giving you a like on this video, in recognition of discussing something that matters to me. But it will be a while before I watch it. In a month or two, I'll have three stiff drinks and weather it. I'll update my comment with my reaction. God bless America, God save the Queen, forgive my atheistic irony, and please make me a cup of tea.
Damn this comment wasn’t just a roller coaster, it was the entire fucking amusement park
Hahah. I’ll have a drink for you cheers!
Leaving a reply for the update
I'm also leaving a reply to see the eventual update. Compatibilism has always seemed like a cop out to me, or at the very least missing the point. I find drawing a distinction between an external influence in the present, and an external influence in our past (e.g, upbringing), to be arbitrary. Never been a Compatibilist, so I wanna hear your response.
@@connorjennings5852 If compatibilism is missing the point, what is the point though? From my perspective, there are different approaches within philosophy: Creating an ontology, explaining the universe and all that is - and there is ethics, guiding people in making good decisions. Therefore, the question of free will can have multiple answers - and the answer to the ethical question not only can, but must be "yes". You can't tell people how to make good decisions, you can't think about the quality of your own decisions without acknowledging that you yourself have an influence on them.
This is basically in the same ballpark as consciousnes: It might not exist in a broader view of the universe, but in terms of ethics it's not even a conclusion, but a premise.
Can you imagine he made an entire video criticizing free will and compatibilism just for the ExpressVPN ad? This is what I call dedication and craftsmanship. Well done! :P
(Note, not come across compatibilism before, so I am just going by this video) I agree with the compatibilist view as you've expressed it here in the context that that the practical day to day lived experience of "free will" is necessary for mental health. Therefor, the absolute fact of determinism is in the day to day is something best kept on a shelf only to pull out when it's useful to us, for example in reminding us that nothing "just happens", there is always a cause, motivating us to find that cause. Free will is an illusion, but it is a necessary one for us to embrace. So, compatibilism as you've described it is determinism for daily life without suffering for the awareness of it.
I think it depends on what you identify as yourself. If you consider your conscious self your true self then no you don’t have free will. But, If you consider your subconscious self or existence itself as your true self then yes you have free will.
How does that change anything? They both operate by natural processes that are predictable or random as best as we can tell.
So free will doesn't exist? Who cares. Let's just do what we want.
This^. A bunch of old German guys telling you don't have free will won't stop you from having it
@@gizzhead7941 Even if free will doesn't exist, we must still keep asking questions and never lose the curiosity.
@@gizzhead7941 Ummmmm...
You already can't do what you want
all the times anyway. And your want isn't something divine to be worshipped, it's something to be understood as part of a universal process.
lmao did you write this as a joke
Hey Alex
I'm a fan from S.A I'd like to thank you for introducing me to philosophy. It's the best thing I've ever studied.
And I agree hard determinism is hard and so far impossible to debunk
Bruh. Compatibilism is the most popular view on free will among professional philosophers. By far.
@@process6996 so what ? I hope you dont believe it because of an ad populum
How is compatabalism not merely a semantic difference from hard determinism anyway? If it's just semantics then to me they're basically the same thing.
@@Sepear305 they are not the same thing. Compatibilists don't think so since its pro internal agents and against event agents
Compatibilism is just a way to reconcile their religious faith with the realities of determinism that they cant avoid.