Thanks for the comments all! I do read most of them. Lots there to respond to, which I'll do properly in a follow up video (so subscribe if that interests you). But just quickly: (1) I deal with causal determinism and how that relates to the laws of physics later in the video, so please watch that section before assuming I ignore that major issue. (I have labeled the sections to make this easy). It is a very detailed discussion as the nuances are often overlooked in the debate. (2) O'Connor's first argument is a psychological argument, so I don't deal with causal determinism in my response. See above, and skip to the later arguments if that's more your thing. (3) If you say all reasons have to be wants (as many seem to suggest), then the claim we can't choose our wants becomes implausible. E.g. in the chess example, if you insist I must 'want' to move the knight if I moved it, that 'want' would arise _from_ my deliberation about the best move and so be a want that arose from my decision. Also, in the gym case O'Connor mentions, this thinking would result in a contradiction: the person both wants and does not want to go to the gym. To avoid contradiction you should say: they want to get healthy and do not want to go to the gym, so the want to get healthy is their _reason_ for going to the gym. This is because going to the gym is a means to an ends, and the ends have been calculated by our capacity for causal reasoning (which I discuss nearer the end of the video). (4) In the free will debate you should not assume materialism (O'Connor doesn't), i.e. don't assume the mind-brain identity thesis. So appealing to brains and their behavior as discussed by neuroscientists is beside the point. And since I made this video about O'Connor's arguments, which are purely philosophical, I saw no reason to engage in a topic outside my discipline (if only neuroscientists would do the same). P.S. The Libet experiments have been heavily critiqued regarding their import for the question of free will.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy the decision to deliberate on the chess move was itself the result of a want. So it had its origins in want, rather than the decision that followed. Also, the gym is not a contradiction. The want to get the results of going simply out weighed the want not to go.
@@sigigle But with the chess example, the want does not provide any explanatory power. There may be other explanations such as the chess players prior education in how to achieve the goal of winning or prior experience or even just good ol fashioned free will. The point is that want itself is not an explanation of behavior and Alex who he is responding to does not give an adequate account. Not to mention there can be multiple causes for a decision. Multiple causes means even if want does play a role it does not completely determine my decision but only partially. This would even be true under determinism. Pointing out some causal factors that may be involved does nothing whatsoever to negate the possibility of free will being an additional cause. It would be like if I was cooking you a dinner (romantic I know) and you asked me if it has meat in it. If my response was that "it can't have meat in it. It has carrots in it." The fact there is carrots are in the meal does not mean that there can be no meat. Similarly, if there is a choice made, it can be partly determined by wants and partly determined by free will. You need an argument that negates free will entirely. That has not been provided.
@@adenjones1802 I agree with all of that (and thanks for the dinner btw, much appreciated lol). I'm only taking issue with AP's formulation of his argument: "If you say all reasons have to be wants, then the claim we can't choose our wants becomes implausible" He's saying that the 'want' to move his knight in a particular way, ultimately stemmed from his decision to deliberate/calculate, and therefore did not have it's origins in a 'want', but a decision. And I quote: "that 'want' would arise from my deliberation about the best move and so be a want that arose from my decision." My point is that even his decision to deliberate, is itself rooted in a want. And so it doesn't demonstrate that decision was the root cause of the action, as apposed to a want. "You need an argument that negates free will entirely." The burden of proof is also up to him to prove that freewill does exist, rather than just up to me to prove that it doesn't. My only point here, is that he has not done this. It's like if I claimed an invisible fairy from the Pleiades sitting on our shoulder is what causes our decisions. It's not just up to the other to prove that it doesn't exist, it's also up to me to prove that it does. And by default we ought to reject an unsubstantiated claim, until given sufficient reason to accept it.
> In the free will debate you should not assume materialism (O'Connor doesn't), i.e. don't assume the mind-brain identity thesis. Why not? Isn't materialsm/physicalism essentially a default position supported by virtually all current human knowledge?
@@AbsolutePhilosophy You basically redefined "want." Yes, the colloquial "I don't want to fight in a war, but I'm obligated to because of duty" doesn't seem like a "want," but you "want" to do your duty. You don't "want" to go to jail for not doing your duty and breaking the law. There are other motivators that would all equally count as "wants" if a want is simply a preference. I think that's what Alex was getting at.
@@robertshindeliii Okay but if 'want' simply means 'preference' then it is not clear anymore that you can't control your 'wants'. And it seems like 'my preference is' can simply mean 'my choice is', which suggests free will. That's why I use the more usual terminology from the literature and call them 'reasons' not simply 'wants', as 'wants' biases towards an emotional understanding of motivation. And then I explain a theory of choosing for reasons that allows for free will. Anyone familiar with the philosophical literature will recognise what I'm doing as pretty standard.
@@gabri41200 That’s a common trope, but it is either misleading or flat out false . It’s really just a form of special pleading - implicit is an ocean of “free” and “control” that is nonsense to begin with, and unreasonably rules out normal coherent notions of freedom and control. When we are deliberating, we are often contemplating the different things we will to do , our motivations for different actions, and we are seeing which of those fit into a more coherent hole as far as our wider goals. Yes our supervening “want” is selecting from among our other wants, but that is a form of choosing what we will to do! And to object that our supervening will that did the selection may not itself have been selected will amount to goalpost moving. Further , we are constantly creating future things we will through our own deliberations and selection process. Right now I don’t have a desire to go running. I’m out of shape. But since I have a wider concern for my health and would like to get in shape, I can reason from experience that I can produce that desire in me over time. And so the conflict that I currently have and what I desire to do - lie on the sofa - will be reduced overtime. I know that if I can just start myself even walking each day, it will make it easier to develop the desire to run. And once I have developed the desire to run that more running will increase that desire. And that once I’m at that stage, I can’t have produced a habit where at a certain time per day. I am desiring to run rather than desiring to lie on the sofa as I am now. I can see ahead and producing a “want” and something I “will to do” and a way that I do not possess now. And it is my own deliberations that gets that ball rolling.
@@robertwarner-ev7wp I think you need to clarify what you mean by "you" in these questions. I don't believe in free will as "could have done otherwise" but for cases where responsibility is concerned (which your question seem be getting at), the question isn't necessarily about the responsibility of the decision-maker but the whole mind. So a person can deny that they have free will, but still find their deterministic causal processes "responsible" for certain actions in the same way the wind is responsible for shaking a tree. Then of course they wouldn't be punished but in an abstract sense the process that is responsible may be (for example by getting destroyed or sidelined through correctional facilities).
@@robertwarner-ev7wp i doubt they are trying to frame themselves as a victim. a more charitable reading suggests they're saying the appearance of free will comes out of the delay in time between your brain physically computing some idea or impulse, and the time that the calculation propagates up to the conscious layer. you become aware of your desires at some point, you check against your internal risk-reward probability tables, then take some action. your tables are modified by your experiences (hopefully) as you pass through time, and so your actions seem to move freely in response to your stimuli. but closer inspection reveals they are driven by it
@@robertwarner-ev7wp to take it a step further and preempt a possible question of personal responsibility, no, i don't think this line of thinking commits one to say people shouldn't face consequences for their actions
Here's how I think about free will. Consider a person sitting in a chair in an otherwise empty room. We wait until the person chooses to stand up. Then, we rewind time back to the start of the thought experiment. Every atom, every quark, every quantum wave fluctuation is precisely the same as it was the first time around, and we hit play without changing anything, and we wait for the person to stand up again. If the person always chooses to stand up at exactly the same time, they have no free will, else they would eventually choose to stand up at a different time. If the person does choose to stand up at a different time, it is still not clear that they do have free will. It could equally as possibly be explained as the macroscopic consequences of randomness on a smaller scale cascading to impact a decision about whether to remain seated or stand. But for the sake of the thought experiment, let's suppose that we've somehow predetermined any and all truly random processes to always resolve in the same way between experiments. Only then, if the person chooses to stand at different times experiment to experiment, would that demonstrate free will. I believe we have will, but not free will. We make choices, but making a choice is a physical event, like two rocks colliding. It is a physical process, like everything else, and like everything else, it is deterministic in nature. We just intuit that it is special because it is something that we do, that we can't easily observe like how we might observe two rocks colliding.
thats exactly it and how i think about it. The video wasnt really convincing even though he addressed this argument it wasnt sufficient. I completely agree
This thought experiment, even if it were a verifiable truth, would have such a limited nature it could never be generalized to all decision-making. If one singular decision that involves little thought is predetermined by material conditions it doesn’t necessarily follow that all decisions are the same. To present an equally unfalsifiable thought experiment. If a laplace demon type supercomputer existed that understood the material conditions of the whole universe and could supposedly predict all of human behavior, and I ask this machine about a decision I will make in the near future, it should be able to tell me. Yet if it does say something like “you will go to the grocery store today” I could just not go. Giving its prediction to me should theoretically be a stimulus that it can factor into its prediction yet it’s inconceivable that I couldn’t just decide the opposite. Because a complete lack of free will is even more counterintuitive than pure solipsism because it’s an experience we observe prima facie it supersedes all conclusions drawn from observing the outside world. Frankly, every time there is a counter against hard determinism in the free will discourse on the internet, the comment section is just brigaded with people saying why they have already made up their mind without engaging with the critique.
@@lendrestapas2505I'm not sure if I disagree... But I definitely need more info regarding that statement "making a choice is a physical event", for me to decide if I agree or disagree with it.
If you pick duty over desire, all that means is you desire duty over pleasure. It's not that hard to parse. Choose to abandon your deep desire for duty, you can't unless something causes you to think it's pointless. Zero free will.
The problem is that regardless of what decision someone made, you'd just retroactively justify it as being zero free will. If you want to show zero free will you need to be able to predict the choice BEFORE it happens, not retroactively fit it into your belief system. Otherwise it's just "whatever happens, that was God's plan all along" lines of thinking.
@@taragnor 1, we have brain scans that can predict someone's choice before they make it. 2, that's wrong, I don't need that, all I need is to show the decision has a cause. I can do that with all decisions. Except seemingly random decisions, which are an even worse problem for free will. You don't have free will if your preferences are simply set for you, or if you just roll the dice for a random action. That's the thing about free will. It is an IMPOSSIBLE concept. Everything is either determined (not free will) or random (also not free will.) Free will is a MEANINGLESS phrase people say to make themselves feel good. If I'm wrong, please define free will and show me how a decision is made using that will. I will inevitably show that your will was either determined by some random product of your nature, which you did not choose, or was the only inevitable outcome determined by a brain state which is caused by the outside world. Example: you think you freely chose chocolate over vanilla? No, you simply prefer chocolate. You did not choose to have a preference for chocolate, you were born with it. If you DID somehow choose chocolate, that is because you already have a preference for that choice, or else you wouldn't have picked it at all, and you didn't determined that preference for yourself either, and that's just an infinite regress. You might say, ha, I picked chocolate even though I prefer vanilla simply to show I have free will! And you'd just prove me right yet again. It was caused by your emotional need to validate the concept of free will, which you conceive as being able to choose whatever you want. Except, no matter what you want, you didn't choose to want that. Go ahead, choose to want what you hate right now. Choose to believe you can fly. Choose to be attracted to someone you find disgusting. Choose to want your worst fear. You can't do it because you can't determine your own will, whatever that even means, since you ARE your will.
@@taragnorthis is true, which is what we would expect in a universe without free will. The burden of proof is on the positive claim (that free will exists). If there were a single mechanism where free will could come from (which might be a contradiction in principle) we could have a serious discussion about it, but alas, we do not, we only have an instinct in our experience
@@harstar12345 Your argument is: "if you pick A, I was right. If you pick B, I was right. No matter what you choose, I'll retroactively say I was right and everything fits perfectly into my theory." That's garbage science. Real science needs falsifiable claims. It needs actual predictions and not "heads I win, tails you lose" arguments. The very fact that you leave no room for yourself to be wrong is very problematic. That's no longer science, it's religion. Second, you can't prove something is unpredictable. That's like proving God doesn't exist. You can never prove something is non-deterministic, because the claim can always be made that "it is deterministic you just haven't found the pattern yet". Ultimately it turns into a version of the "God of the gaps" argument. If decision-making is in fact something predictable/deterministic, then the burden is on those making that claim to show it's predictable. That's how all other scientific theories are proven. If decisions are indeed predetermined, then logic states you should be able to predict them before they happen. The same way in which physicists can predict how a falling object will land, or how a travelling comet will be impacted by gravity of local stars and planets. Make falsifiable predictions based on a hypothesis, then test those predictions. That's real science.
@@harstar12345 Your argument is : "If you pick A, I'm right. If you pick B, I'm also right. Whatever you pick, I'll retroactively say I was right." That's not science. That's religion. Science needs falsifiable claims. And no the burden of proof isn't on saying free will exists, because free will simply means "There's no way to predict what a person will do, there is no predetermination". The claim that human decision-making is deterministic (and therefore predetermined) is a claim that requires proof.
@@CloudAkura7Yeah, the longer the video went on, the less it made sense to even bother. Either he thought he was cooking, yet failed, or he's being disingenuous, playing word games with "desire" and "duty" and arbitrarily separating "reasons for choises" from "wants", without even trying to connect them back together, like those reasons just dropped out of the frickin sky or something.
Never mind, I thought I was almost done, but I just passed the 40-minute mark, and now it gets really bad. The "he has no idea what Alex is arguing for, does he?" kind of bad. It's like, no, my guy, you ALONE didn't determine/cause the shadow, the state of the universe did. I would have been pro debate/conversation earlier, but this guy needs to go back to the kitchen for now, and those were all sincere mistakes, I'm sure he'll spot them.
I think you failed to disprove Alex’s premises. With the chess example you don’t have choice over the rules of chess, why you’re playing the game, or why you want to win. You may be able to delineate on which piece to move, and that may be very close to what we see as free will, but doesn’t get you there. In the duty example one may not even want to choose duty. However they may be forced to. If you’re the kind of person to believe that duty exists you may also have had certain values placed into your head without your own freedom. You may get a feeling of unease or displeasure from not “fulfilling your duty” which may force you to do this. Duty is either something you want or something forced upon you by moral intuitions. Everything you do is because you want to or because you’re made to.
@@GodlessCommie free will is not a thing to be "proven". You are not understanding. Anyway its irrelevant, I can believe whatever I want, you little control freaks cant do anything about it Go ahead get trying to "disprove" yourself
The problem with your reply is the same as I pointed out for many others here: When you say that the video author has failed to establish control or freedom with the chess example, that’s only if you have reserved some untenable, impossible, or even incoherent version of what it would be to have control or freedom! Basically seem to have adopted a special demand that has no connection to reasonable real world versions of those terms. And I see no reason to adopt the version you have assumed. The version of freedom and control that we actually use and every day life are the relevant and reasonable ones. So for instance: imagine you are stopped by a cop for speeding through a school zone in your car. Now try this logic to get out of the ticket: “ but Officer, I was not a control of where the streets were placed in the city, nor was I in control of any of the traffic laws, and that being the case clearly I had no real control, no real freedom, no real choice of where or how to drive. And so it makes no sense for you to give me a ticket for doing something over which I had no control!” Do you think that will fly? Do you think that type of reasoning should be acceptable to get people out of the consequences of actions? I’m going to assume you are reasonable enough to say : of course not. Clearly that type of reasoning misses everything of importance they would apply to terms like control, freedom, and choice and such situations. Nobody thinks you needed to be in control of “ everything” or where the roads were replaced etc. The number of roads, and the traffic laws nonetheless afford you plenty of freedom of choice and control of where you want to go! ( in fact cars, roads and traffic rules are not merely sources of restriction; they give you all those possible driving related choices to begin with!) And yet the same zany “ but there were some things out of your control” reasoning is what you were using to denying that we have any real freedom, control or choice when playing chess !
@@QuintEssential-sz2wn Yes well said, I think what these people are doing is confusing Maximal Autonomy and Free Will. We can't control our character, genes, the feeling of hunger, etc, but we can take a 'vote' in our brain whether we want to appeal to those desires or not, I once saw a philosophy comment that suited this idea, someone said instead of calling it free will it shouldn't be called free don't, because your brain in like the government, you get a bunch of appeals and choices, then you vote for whether saying yes to those appeals or saying no to them. I hope that makes sense
@@QuintEssential-sz2wnand yet you had no choice but to play Chess. Chess in this example is life and its circumstances. That is not something any of us choose and author. And yet here we all are playing that game.
You moved the knight because the sum total of your past experiences was the cause. All of this can be predicted if one has all the data points. Interviewer: "Is the universe predetermined?" Dr. Stephen Hawking: "Yes, but we don't know what is predetermined".
It's a total presumption to believe we could possibly calculate any state of chaotic emergent phenomena, even with all the previous data points. Wholesale belief in a lack of free will is akin to wholesale belief in any religion. We simply lack enough evidence to suggest anything so grand.
@@matthewtaber9635 literally never seen any argument against freewill suggest that we can calculate all the variables. And I don't see why you would need to. Can any influence on the output of the system "choice" be neither 1. Random 2. Determined ? What would that be? The reason I don't believe in libertarian free will is because I don't think it's a coherent concept. I can grant somebody whatever metaphysics or woo they feel like-- we are biological creatures which process information and react to our environment. If the material of my mind doesn't decide my actions -- in what sense do "I"? I think when you try to get a clear concept of "free will" people are doing a magical kind of thinking where they think a person can make multiple different choices with all the variables of the persons mind being the exact same. Same tastes, desires, faults, emotions, knowledge, and same random chances of certain neurons firing. But this is clearly not the case in any other situation. A person decides because they ARE this physical process. But they can't decide differently than they do anymore than a tree decides to grow upwards.
Assuming that if you had all the data points you’d be able to calculate all future actions is a stretch. The outcomes of some quantum behavior we can not know.
@@Hugoknots currently, at least. there seems to be some confusion across various comments here about the difference between practical computability and ontological determinacy
12:54 "Perhaps their desire to do their duty is just stronger than their dislike of fighting. But I think such a conclusion is just mere prejudice. It would be perfectly reasonable for your friend to say that no, they don't want to do their duty at all. The only reason they're doing it, is because it is their duty. In other words, the explanation they give for their action, is one that appeals to duties and not to wants." This makes no sense. They must 'want' to fulfill their duty for one reason or another, otherwise they simply wouldn't do it.
I think your claim doesn't allow for indifference This is leaving the military duty argument (which i agree with the OP on) but sticking with your insistence on having a greater want I also dont think "because its the first thing that came to mind" Or "because you asked me to" Has an origin in greater want I especially dont think a choice that brings about relief from choice overload/paralysis can be attributed to a greater want. A want to be left alone maybe but having nothing to do with the actual decision between multiple options
@@derekofbaltimoreI think in your last case, you lose the “will” part of free will though. If a choice comes strictly from overload, and has no reasonable distinction, we can regard the resulting choice as purely random, and thus no true “will” seems to have been involved. That is, a choice made with indifference would seem to be a choice made without meaning, and such a free will ought to seem fairly hollow.
@@evan9224 i suppose i disagree. If you choose indifferently then if the tape plays back you could certainly choose something else. Sure it doesn't have meaning behind it but it came from you and you decided. Yoy could have said "just leave me alone", "it doesnt matter", etc but in the cereal aisle, you choose count chocola
@@derekofbaltimore the point you raised is a fair one. But I would point out that just because we’re not always consciously aware of the forces that make us drawn to one option in particular, doesn’t demonstrate that such forces don’t exist. A lot occurs in our subconscious that we’re not aware of.
@@sigigle i agree but two things Im not fully comfortable to just support any argument using the "mysterious forces which we dont know about" tactic. It allows for too many possibilities, conspiracies, etc - there COULD be aliens or time travelers controlling all of industry on earth but we cant see them because they are well hidden.. This is true but unsatisfactory Second I have deep experience with talking my subconscious into doing what i want. People have trained themselves to directly control their body temperature. I am able to have lucid dreams. I have turned dislikes into likes. Many people have self diagnosed fears and then talked themselves out of them. Etc Im typing on phone so while my examples above require much more detail and support its hard to give them the defense they need in this format
This video really opened my mind. I used to think that freewill was impossible, and I couldn't make sense of it. I'm still not entirely convinced that it exists but I feel these arguments deepened my understanding of what it means to have freewill
you moved the knight because you wanted him on a specific spot, which increases you're likelihood of winning, you will keep on finding the wants till you realise: 1- you will move the knight cause its the smartest choice (concluded through calculations & wants) 2- you will choose to move the bishop even though it is a less of a smart choice, only to prove you have free will thus free will doesn't exist
@@theautodidacticlaymanPutting a decision tree in front of a want and calling those sub decisions desires or duty instead of want doesn't magically mean you'd ever do otherwise. It's wants/desires/motivation all the way down, and at no point can you do otherwise, regardless of if you're the "source"
So many comments actually not listening to what he says… so many people getting hung up on details they just interpret through their own views instead of trying to understand the point he is making… please rewatch the video and think about it before you comment
Probabilistic causation doesn’t undermine Alex’s argument of effects without causes being random. Probabilistic causation is a mix of determinism and indeterminism; take radioactive decay, if we know the half-life of a radioactive substance, we can predict the average time it will take for half of a sample to decay. This means that, in a large enough sample, we can determine the decay rate with precision, leading to predictable outcomes based on the initial conditions. Conversely, from an indeterministic standpoint, the exact moment when a particular atom will decay is inherently unpredictable. Each atom behaves randomly, with a certain probability of decaying at any given time. This randomness means that while we can predict trends for large groups of atoms, individual decay events cannot be determined, illustrating the fundamental uncertainty present in quantum mechanics. This duality highlights how the same phenomenon can be viewed through both deterministic and indeterministic lenses, depending on the scale and context of observation.
13:50 - The deliberation process is bounded by time, by our intelligence, our psychology, by all these things that we do not have control over. We have freedom (options to choose from), certainly, and we certainly have will (the power to choose). But having options and the power to choose (and even reason-sensitivity) just entails that you will engage in a deliberation process when faced with choosing. But that deliberation process is not self-determined. So what you ultimately choose is not self-determined. What misleads people into thinking there is free will is the sense of choosing. (I bet folks are confusing moral responsibility with causal responsibility too.) We are witnesses to our own choices, but that witness is not control. You are merely along for the ride, and that ride happens to include complex things like introspective choosing. Galen Strawson lays out the argument like this (Norton introduction of philosophy, chapter 13): 1) You do what you do because of the way you are. So (2) To be truly morally responsible for what you do, you must be truly responsible for the way you are. But (3) You can’t be truly responsible for the way you are, so you can’t be truly responsible for what you do. Strawson takes premise 1 as incontrovertible. I agree. Robert Kane challenges premise 3, saying that some of our actions are Self-forming Actions (SFAs). But on what basis do we perform SFAs? They must be performed on the basis of "N", with N being our nature, or our values, preferences, etc., (all of the ingredients of a deliberation process) at the time the action is taken. But where did N come from? If it was not self-determined, then we are not free. If N _is_ self-determined through SFAs, then again, on what basis were _those_ actions performed? At the time _those_ actions were performed, you must have had nature N+1 that served as the basis for the deliberation process for those actions. But where did N+1 come from? It's a regress. It's impossible to have a self-caused nature that would serve as the basis for the SFAs needed for moral responsibility. This explanation also defends premise 2. Strawson puts the argument another way: A) Nothing can be _causa sui_ -nothing can be the cause of itself. B) To be ultimately morally responsible for one’s actions, one would have to be causa sui. C) Therefore, no one can be ultimately morally responsible. I believe this applies to even an all-powerful being like God. Even God cannot have free will, which means free will is impossible.
Great video. I really like the point developed around 50 minutes in where the very semantics behind "cause" are shown to be intimately tied to the prior conception of free will. I think it's a very powerful point that ties well with the earlier point about how mathematical relationships between variables don't necessarily have a built-in frame of cause. I almost never enjoy free will / determinism discussions but this was quite good.
@@derendohoda3891 Cause and effect aren’t tied to freewill. Maybe will, but not freewill. His argument was that we observe cause and effect when we will to do something, do it and see the effect. That just requires will, not freewill.
The drunk wills to drink, but he also wills to have a good relationship with his family. The choice he makes to either pick up a bottle or go home has an effect on what his will will be inclined to do the next day, week, year. Whether he is a lifelong drunk or a good father is not rooted in his "will", but rather in a series of decisions by which the inclination of his will is built like a tower, brick by brick. The question is unchanged: are each of those decisions simply a result of molecules bumping into each other, or is there something more? Does anyone have a choice in anything they do/say/believe? If not, why keep talking?
How very Aristotelean of you! I agree though. Will and character formation work together in a process of self realisation. But an element in this process is that of free will, influenced though it is by our character, which is in turn influenced by our past decisions. They form a symbiotic relationship across time.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy I apologize, I commented before finishing the video mostly in reply to the current top comment rather than to yourself. Your video was well thought out, particularly the second half.
Thanks for this, I cannot say that I found myself convinced, especially not by the argument that our will can apparently affect the formation of the earth. I do see your point about counterfactuals and holding too many things fixed, but I suppose for the determinist, those things already seem fixed, and more strongly than the intuitive notion of their own free will. Likewise, I find the final bit somewhat self defeating, when you say that we started assuming will in both ourselves and nature, but now see more mechanistic action in nature. This seems to be the deterministic point exactly, that the momentum of philosophy is on their side. Overall, I enjoyed listening to your video, and appreciated hearing from a view that I didn't hold. I found this far more substantial than Heumor's quip of "if you have no will, why deliberate?" As that seemed as silly as asking a computer why it takes so long to create a list of the fist million prime numbers...
Addictions will do that it is the addiction that acts. The addiction wasnt a choice it was a byproduct of wanting something leading to craving that something to ignore another want. Lets say they drink do to feeling bad. Did they want to feel bad. If so why would you want to feel bad? Do they want to feel good? What does the drunk do? He drinks. Why because it helps with their perfered state? Why does something perfer a state other than their own?
@@AbsolutePhilosophy I dont understand how you faill to see that an uncaused choice is a choice made by chance snd therefore void of responsibility. Let's try to take this again from a different way. The net of causality affects me and I like it or do not like it and respond according to how I was affected. That in turn propagates other consequences which will probably get around to affecting me in some kind of way again. We are in an endless cycle of cause and effect and the randomness of things that are not in our control is why there appears to be any freedom of will in it at all. I have a right to affect the net because I am affected by it. Both my positive reactions and my negative reactions are species of vengeance. I'm getting back for the good or for the bad of what was done to me. I'm rewarding or punishing so call it justice if you like. I would not be aware of it at all if I were not affected by it. Here is responsibility and here is why responsibility adheres. If there were no causes outside of myself for why I did what I did then nobody is held responsible. That includes myself. If I did not have subconscious reasons that I do not understand for what I did, subconscious causes being involved, then I would have no responsibility over them because they would not be controllable. They would be simply random things like random thoughts. Those subconscious causes which I cannot directly consciously control affect me consciously and they are responsible for how I am affected consciously but I am also responsible to outside forces which I know can react against my behavior which I must take into account before I decide to act in any way that I do. Subconscious causes are responsible for my conscious state of mind and my conscious state of mind is responsible for attempting to understand how my actions will be responded to. I let choices based on those facts and both work together as causes for the choices that I make. Where is there room for free will in any of this? And don't say that it is in the video because the video does not actually deal with this particular point. How can it? Here's your proof against free will: You cannot will yourself into believing something you know to be untrue and you cannot will yourself into disbelieving something you know to be true. Simply by acknowledging this simple point you can carry on from there to ask how is it that you know? If you do not have empirical data then you are simply stipulating an article of faith and you should admit to the fact that you are doing so.
It’s simple: is your will dependent on anything? Careful, it’s a trick question: If no, then your will must be random, since only truly random things don’t depend on anything. If yes, then how can you call it free?
If it is dependent upon my consciousness then it is free. If it is dependent upon something without my consciousness then it is not. The word free willwas intended to make this distinction. The action of a spasm is different then a freely chosen dance. The action of passing out is different from laying down with the intention to sleep.
@@Ugeen-Huge-Jeans Yes. We will call it the set of events and objects that my consciousness depends on or is caused by C1. Is C1 caused by or dependent on anything?
I agree with these arguments and I believe they do a fantastic job of destroying libertarian free will... but......... they can't really debunk compatibilism.
@definitelynotcole Yes. Your actions are governed by your wills which are controlled by your "consciousness" which is a result of the position of each particle that make up your neurons which all are all a result of cause and effect of other particles. All of physics is deterministic going back to the big bang. Ergo your every though and actions are deterministic by definition.
Want and desire are loaded terms. We have tendencies and heuristics foisted onto us by case and circumstance. Our neurophysiology them reacts to stimuli. Freedom then exists only from a subjective, high-order perspective. It can be called an "illusion", or perhaps more accurately, a naive intuition.
Free will does not exist because we never ultimately choose what motivates us to take action. After all, in order to choose something, we need to already have some motivation, which would make it impossible to choose what motivates us without already having some motivation. If I choose to go to war because I believe it is my duty to do so, I still probably did not choosed to be motivated to do what I have a duty to do. If I did choosed to be motivated to do what I have a duty to do, it was only possible because I already had some other motivation that I did not choosed to have. After all, how could I choose anything without already having some motivation?
You have a strong desire to believe in free will at all cost, no one's going to blame you for it, as you did not choose what you desire. Your fear of unknown chose it for you.
Also this argument fails to acknowledge how each choice is really a deeper want. He just claims that’s not true, when in fact it is. Behind every action there is a morphological impulse to act, which is tantamount to a want. I’d like to see how many evolutionary biologists believe in free will, not philosophers
You are free to be who you are and nothing else. Answers all sides and not reliant on definition. To expand, we hold you accountable for your actions because it helps you do better which matters more than moral responsibility after an action.
7:26 maybe i am misunderstanding but i dont see your argument here. why do 'wants' have to be 'emotional' in the way you put it? i probably wouldn't define 'want' in the sort of way you have. 9:12 i know you're just critiquing his argument and you only say (at this point), we 'might' have a limited kind of freedom, but doesn't leeway freedom need to be proved in your chess example to show you are free (along with the sourcehood)? 9:24 in what sense do you mean we are free to move the knight or the bishop? i probably couldn't give a concrete definition of freewill, but to me even if we are the source of our intellectual deliberations, they still wouldn't seem 'free' to me 9:35 what about actions purely motivated by wants, like alex's ice cream example? would we be free then? 9:44 this doesn't seem to follow for me. just because it seems i could've moved the knight or bishop (epistemological possibility) it doesn't follow i could've moved the either the knight or bishop (metaphysical possibility) 9:49 in what sense are we the source? do we have to be the ultimate source to have free will? how much of the source do we have to be? maybe the amount and fundamentality of the source we are increases the freewill we have in a certain action, but do i control my intellectual deliberations in a way that i could sufficiently be said to be the source of my actions? i understand that something does not have to control something to be the source of it, but still to me it seems the sort of sourcehood we have in our intellectual deliberations is not sufficient for freewill 13:03 i couldn't give an argument against this as this is just a speculative example, but this doesn't seem right to me. intuitively, i am with alex, that our actions in these sorts of cases have more fundamental or more significant wants that guide them seemingly against less fundamental wants 13:09 this is the explanation they give, which to me isn't enough to say there are cases where people are ultimately not motivated by wants alone 13:43 it doesn't seem almost certain to me
Wow, you sure have a lot of issues with this long, drawn out critique of such a simple claim. 45 minutes in, and I'm yelling, "Holy father of Aquinas, just give us a solid argument already!" I thought I'd be hearing an actual argument against O'Connor, but ironically, all I've heard so far is an unintended expansion on O'Connor's argument. Somebody here hasn't thought through their arguments very well. One of the mistakes that I see being made here is that of composition. "Want," is the set of, "desire," and it's subsets, "appetite" and it's subsets, etc.. This guy is trying to compare subsets to sets, and subsets to other subsets, which is ultimately muddying his own waters seemingly to the point of him being not able to see that he's not even addressing the actual claim being made with intellectual integrity. Semantics are necessary, but they sure can be a pain in the ass. 45 minutes was too long to wait just to NOT hear a valid point (concerning the rebuttal of the claim) by someone who just made the claim, "He's wrong."
yeah about 13 in, concerning duty, i don't think it tracks fully. surely the individual is wanting to do their duty, they place that higher than the want to fight or want to not fight independent of some duty
3:39 the issue with Alex‘ premise is that he says that the „action must come from your _conscious_ self“. the decisions come from the mind. most of them remain unconscious. some of the decisions (and in some cases also the choices) are presented to consciousness. when it comes to free will, we should first clear the understanding who and what makes decisions. it seems reasonable to assume that consciousness does not take any decision, as it is the platform of perceiption of thoughts, affects, sensory input.
if i believed that moving the knight would make me win the game over the bishop, isnt that still out of my control? since i cant control whether i want to win the game and i also cant control which move i believe is the right one
My thoughts exactly. He acts like just because there are different reasons for different choices means that people don’t still choose based on their physiology, beliefs and experience. Which aren’t things we choose. A reason will only resonate with the type of person it’s compatible with
Jesus fucking christ, determinism is so unfalsifiable is ridiculous. All of these replies are so bad, "uhh uhh but the horse has to move that way" yeah mf, i also cant grow wings and fly in to space, doesn't mean i dont have free will. You literally cant even prove your own theory, if determinism was true there was no truth value, because youre not actually making judgements, you would have said that anyways, so true or fake cant exist in determinism, so its self-defeating, there, fuck off and read Bergson now.
The deliberation comes in reasoning which move would help us win the game. We experience and observe control over this process of reasoning because we actively consider different possibilities and the different outcomes that might follow them. Then we experience choosing one of the moves even though many potential moves can have strong reasoning for why they would lead to victory. We also have the subjective experience of making chess moves reflexively or unfreely (less freely at least) versus the experience of having more control and rejecting our reflex when we actively deliberate. The higher evidentiary burden is on the claim that the experience of making the choice or deliberating between possible options was an illusion because that denies direct observation.
We have the freedom to choose between the options presented to us. While we may not be able to choose what we want, we can choose what influences our wants. You are able to chart your own course through your own awareness. Free will is real, morals are real, love is real, and God is real. God bless you all
You say that deliberation is freewill demonstrated, but it's not. It's just the observation of a process. 53:03 "We know what having freewill is like by reflection. We experience it in the most direct and intimate way imaginable. As Wittgenstein might say: Since everything is open to view, there is nothing to explain." We don't. All that we observe is the arising of thoughts into conscious awareness. The idea that these arising thoughts are separated from the causal chain, is one that gets added on afterwards, without justification. Try it now, and notice that all we observe is a sequence of arising thought phenomena.
It seems a lot of this debate would benefit from the distinction between agency and non-agency. Animals and insects and things with brains have agency, because they take in information and *act* on that information. That is, (at least part of) the causal chain goes through the individual. I think agency is what many people, professional philosophers included, refer to when they say “it’s obvious we do have free will.” But, however complex the causal chain, and however much it runs through the individual who appears to make “choices” based on that, this is an illusion. The causal chain remains completely deterministic no matter how complex. It’s hard to see that, apparently, but…to coin a phrase…it could not be otherwise. In sum, we have agency, which is often misconstrued as “will,” but that agency is just as determined as any other physical process, so it cannot be “free.”
Unfortunately, if we are just atoms and nothing, else we are also not humans. We are not objects. We are not things. This means the definition of we or I is null. If this is the case then we cannot make the necessary deductions and comparisons to state that we are just atoms because there is no we. In addition the claim 'we' have no free will is equally valid to the claim 'we' have free will because the definition of we is nonsensical so both statements are nonsensical. We are then left with saying we are both atoms and humans. Because humans emerge from atoms defined within a given set. If this is true then there is nothing stopping a compatibilist from saying that free will exists because free-will emerges from a limited set of determinism.
@@definitelynotcole Humans clearly arise from atoms since they are physical beings which can be defined (although defining a human on the atomic level makes no sense really). Free-will, which is a conceptual process and supposed ability of humans, cannot arise as simply as the human itself. Humans are demonstrably collections of atoms, no matter how complex these arrangements are, just as a block of pure aluminium exists, even though it is still just a collection of atoms. There is evidence of humans existing, but there is no evidence of humans being able to insert themselves as an uncaused cause into the physical causality of the universe.
Every time I have sat with myself and looked at my thought process in a meditative way, not at the content of thought, I see that: 1) we don't see where thoughts are coming from, and 2) thoughts aren't chosen, or if they are, it does not happen within our conscious experience, and thus we do not do the choosing of thoughts. Thoughts just appear; it is not seen where they appear from or what creates them. Therefore, life seems more like a river that just flows-a river that itself thinks it chooses its own direction, but that doesn't seem to be the case when you directly look at it. Philosophize all you want about it, or take a direct look during something like meditation.
Statement may be both correct and insufficient. Statement "you made the video because you were born" is true. If you were not born you couldn't made a video. That's just simple fact of reality, even if it is low resolution statement. Same with wants. Trying to go into the weeds and attack the premise as invalid because of lack of detail misses the point.
Every decision you make, you make because you are who you are. Who you are, is a product of your DNA and experiences. You do not have 100 percent control over your DNA or your experiences. Therefore, who you are is not something you had 100 percent control over. It does not even make sense to imagine having 100 percent control over who you are, because in order to make a choice about your own identity, you would have to already have an identity with values, creating an infinite regress. It doesn't make sense to want that kind of free will because that type of free will is conceptually incoherent. Whether determinism is true, or indeterminism, is irrelevant. I think people get so lost on this issue. The first important question is, why do people care about free will? I think its because they think its important for moral responsibility. I would argue that you don't need the libertarian conception of freewill to exist to make sense of moral responsibility at all though. I think you can make perfect sense of common sense notions of moral responsibility even if determinism is true. In fact, I think you can have a much more useful and coherent understanding of moral responsibility without the libretarian conception of freewill. So I see no point at all in all the magical thinking 'god of the gaps' appeal to ignorance people try to do to try to justify believing it exists.
You are who you are because you are a result of your DNA and experiences which you are. In other words you are who you are because you are who you are. This is a fallacy of circular reasoning and a category error as this classification has nothing to do with the things you cause. The question is if you have determining power over your actions. And since you are the very things you mentioned and are part of the deterministic chain you have determining power over anything your consciousness has effect over. Any action taken under free will is one in which your consciousness was the determining Factor. Free Will does not state that you need to be the determining factor of you in order for you to be the determining factor of the decision.
@@definitelynotcole It is not circular reasoning to say that your identity is formed as result of your DNA and experiences. There are many different definitions of free will in the academic literature. I am talking about a specific definition, the classic or libretarian conception of free will. That is the type of free will I do not think we have. That free will is the ability to act in a way that is not caused by anything outside of your control. We act based on our identity, our values and our desires and so on. Our identity is at least partly caused by things we did not have control over. Thats the point. Im not saying there are no other conceptions of freewill or freedom that are useful. There is still a meaningful difference between someone who has the option to do something they want to do and someone who does not have that option, or is forced to do something they don't want to do. That difference still matters. Especially when we are determining moral responsibility for actions. One of the main reasons its important is because it highly correlates with how likely someone is to repeat an undesirable behaviour in the future.
@@moyga The problem is is if you focus on the nonsensical definition of free will, you can only derive nonsensical things. If the definition of free will is inherently ridiculous, incoherent, and inconsequential; then to say we have no free will is equally inconsequential as saying we have free will. Here let me show an example: A philosopher says either we have a body and we are responsible for our actions -or- we do not have a body and we are not responsible for our actions. We both agree with the axiom for the sake of the parable. Then he proves that the definition of a body is a nonsensical illogical definition. He now says because this definition does not make sense we do not have bodies and therefore we do not have responsibility. We both look at each other and then at him and say "well, We do have bodies, perhaps we just need a different definition" He retorts that they are simply illusions. And we say back " Cannot the illusion of responsibility apply to the illusion of the body just as easily as it cannot?" "Certainly, but what does it matter if it is an illusion" Well now this whole conversation's an illusion. We can't derive anything meaningful from anything we've said. …… In this case, it's no different. We have created a nonsensical definition of causation, choice, power, and ourselves. I can just as easily state that: you = All things that resulted in your conscious self, as the sum function of all those things results in you and you contain all of the deterministic information of all those things. Free Will = The ability to act in a way that is not caused by anything outside of your control. •=> Under these definitions We derive that any observation or input into 'you' is you. Therefore, any output is caused by you. Yes this means, that if I do something to you in the past to get you to do something it is equivalent to you now doing it because my actions towards your past are part of you. You can claim that your past self and me interacting with your past self are events outside of your control. This is true. But those events are you by our definition, and they along with all other things that encompass you are in complete control of your next conscious actions. Therefore, you are in complete control of your next actions. If you haven't noticed, this entire thing is nonsensical. Why? Because The definition of free will given in this discussion contains a fallacy of circular reasoning and a missing definition. We do not know what you are. Because of this we can give endless definitions for you and what your consciousness is and what constitutes it. It is circular in its lack of specification over control (causation in the usual discussion). If you do not have control over yourself because something else has control over you, what has control over that and does it have control over itself? Because if it doesn't have control over itself, how could it control you? But then if it's not controlling itself and therefore not controlling you then what is controlling you? Certainly not the thing that's controlling the thing that is not really controlling you because the other thing is controlling it! Never go in against a Sicilian, when death is on the line! It is much better to contextualize the observation of free will in a way that actually has consequences. For an example defining Free Will as a result caused by a conscious drive, or a calculation determined by empathy, or the effect determined by the awareness of consequence. We can derive meaningful conclusions, including the conclusion that our bodies may want to convince our conscious selves that we have control when we don't. Otherwise, why would our bodies be wasting so much energy to create such illusions? There are obviously times when consciousness is beneficial to an organism and times when it may be detrimental. So, it is in an organism's best interest at times to make the conscious systems believe they have control when they do not. But this insinuates that there are times in which consciousness does have control and that it has the capacity to control things. We can then analyze the type of things it controls and further understand the actual nature of consciousness and perhaps even the underlying mechanisms. Instead, we have so many intelligent philosophy majors circle jerking a definition of free will from the age of Descartian dualism instead of exploring the actual free will we experience.
@@definitelynotcoleIt seems to me like your problem is not necessarily with me or what I have said. I agree that the classic definition of free will is non-sensical and it doesn't matter whether we have it or not. That's basically what I said in my original comment. That is why I don't think that type of free will exists and I also don't think it really matters that it doesn't exist because I think we can make sense of moral responsibility without it existing. Isn't that what I said from the start? But its important to understand that, that classic definition is the definition most lay-people use and has been extremely influential over history. Thats why almost every time you watch free will debates between people who are not academic philosophers, they are generally talking about that libertarian conception of free will vs determinism as a kind of false dichotomy, without really even addressing why people care about free will in the first place. What I would say is that, when it comes to moral responsibility and freedom, the main concerns are whether we can do what we want to do, encouraging people to do things we consider good and discouraging people from doing things we consider bad. Regardless of whether determinism is true or not, the concept of punishments having a deterance effect still makes sense, the concepts of rewards having an encouraging effect still makes sense too. It also still makes sense that people who do something bad because it was what they wanted to do (as opposed to being forced or having no other option) are more likely to do those bad things in the future, which is why we have the intuition it makes more sense to hold them morally accountable by 'punishing them' (punishment should be conceptualised as simply taking action to prevent future bad behaviour with no focus on inflicting suffering separate from that goal). The deterance effect of punishments will also only impact choices that are what people wanted to do rather than things they were forced to do. So yeah, I think moral responsibility and certain notions of freedom can make complete sense even under determinism and without the libretarian conception of free will.
I agree, except that it's not that we have less than 100 percent, we have literally 0 percent control about who we are because free will either existis or it doesn't.
You think you have and we respect that, it’s ok for the brain to retaliate against facts, but try to look more into this subject, and your brain may change its retaliation to acceptance, once it’s convinced and you won’t be able to do anything about it, now go fetch bulldog.
Most smart people try to attack free will without attacking agency, or the fact that you have will. Agency is the sense of control that you feel in your life, your capacity to influence your own thoughts and behavior, and have faith in your ability to handle a wide range of tasks and situations. This definition is never debunked, free will deniers are not denying your agency
You must have free will as you are part of reality. Since reality is all there is and could not be determined by anything external to it, everything within it is self-determined.
the video opens with how most philosophers reject "no free will" but the majority support compatibilism, not libertarianism. while I'm not dogging on the video for that alone, I had the impression that this video would represent that majority consensus among philosophers, but it doesn't.
@@lavabeard5939 all of this talks are BS Its all arrogance and ego. You want to believe you understand the world, and since you cant explain free will with your understanding, you outright deny it. Philosophers are bs as well, they only take that "compatibilism" stance because otherwise they cut off their own legs and their arrogant arguments would truly make no sense, so they are forced to integrate free will Nobody knows nothing, this whole discussion is pure hubris and arrogance
@@skepticmonkey6923 libertarianism is barely more popular than no free will. the majority are compatibilists, which isn't represented here in this video, since he rejects causal determinism.
16:14 here's another way of framing that exact same argument. You wanted to go to Spain, and you wanted to go to Italy, but your want to go to one outweighs your want to go to the other. I think it covers all of the same bases but in a more simple format
17:00 I don't think this is sufficient. The reason you choose one way or another boils down to what you value, and that's once again something outside your control. A rational decision is the process of evaluating the reasons to choose between two options against your preferences, ie. wants. I don't think you have any meaningful control over how that evaluation happens, either.
Would you have a debate with him? I find the topic of freewill rather interesting despite not believing we possess it. Certain things only have certain options, and eventually, you run out of options and wills. You would've made the same decision because of who you are. Other people disagree, but that's just how life is! I'd love to see you both speak on it.
I can't remember if he's explicit about it in that specific video, but in general, he grants that it's free will if any of our actions are free. I remember him saying it specifically in the Ben Shapiro discussion.
13:10 okay, I feel that the Duty argument felt a little silly because they may just be going to war for Duty, but why are they so compelled to complete their duty? Isn’t it just because they have a stronger want or desire to fulfill their duty, then to not fight? So in essence, this can still be considered a want versus force argument.
I also thought that argument was entirely silly as well. I am currently in the Army and I too do not want to fight in a war. But the thing is, this guy is only giving the 1 reason for not wanting to fight in a war which is duty. How about this option, because I don't want to die in a war? See this guy fundamentally equates performing service for the country equal to fighting in a war. They are similar but they may not have the same reasons for doing so. I want to serve my country because I feel obligated to defend my country as a duty. But I don't want to go to war because my want to live is stronger. They simply are not related in the same way he is proposing in my opinion.
As he said, that line of argument begs the question, reducing all normative instances to covert desires. You CAN do it, but you do it because you presuppose the conclusion is true. In other words, this line of reasoning doesn't demonstrate that behind the force of a duty there is a desire, it presupposes it.
I think the disagreement lies not in wants (which seems to just be a question of what you define as wanting.) its manly that you argue that deliberation is a free process while I would assume that O'Conner would argue that even the process of deliberating between options is predetermined. (which is also what neurology seems to suggest)
I agree there is a semantic element to the issue. But O'Connor justifies the impossibility of controlling wants by just asking us whether we can control them, and concludes there's 'not a chance' as wants are just facts. But this of course would not fly with decisions or deliberation, since it seems, intuitively, that we can control these. If he thinks deliberation is predetermined he'd need an argument for it beyond what he supplies. And appeals to neuroscience etc. would require a raft of metaphysical assumptions about the nature of the mind to go through, and would make the claim far less plausible.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy it seems like you are deliberately trying to miss the point....which is the case, most of the time in this matter with everyone who WANTS free will to be true.....yes, you can change your wants ..we change them all the time but the point is you would still require another want to change that want and we don't create our wants we only realise them because again to even create a want we would require a want first to create it... I love some really deep philosophical discussion, but at this point... i would have to say all these free will supporters are coming off more and more ridiculous... trying to preserve an obviously false idea by any means necessary.
@cabellocorto5586 neuroscience itself doesn't appeal to metaphysics, not does physics. But if you apply neuroscientific results to philosophical issues like free will, you need some metaphysical assumptions to bridge the conceptual gap. For example, that mental states are identical to brain states. Or that mental states cannot be multiply realised in the brain. And that, even if so, the brain is prior to the mind. All these are highly dubious assumptions.
@Enoynanone why assume every course of action must be explained by a want (including changing your wants)? O'Connor gets this idea from Schopenhaur, and as far as I know, no one thinks that these days. If you do insist on there being a fully explanatory set of wants for every decision, this is similar to the idea of having explanatory reasons for every choice. In which case there is perhaps an infinite regress and the result is that everything is chosen for a reason, which if you can choose those reasons/wants as you say, gives you everything you could want for free will. I.e. it is pretty much the view I defend.
I firmly believe that if a person believes in free will, it's just because that person is really damn bad with logic. Im convinced, it's almost like a test to see how good someone is with it.
@@justanothernick3984Up to a point, but then nature takes over. There was some comparison with a dog on a leash following a cart. It can move around a bit, but still it stricty has to follow the cart. It could try many different things, but at some point it realizes that it's only making him tired and hurt so he decides out of hia "free will" to just follow the cart.
People have come to the belief that they don't have free will because of their environment. Real academic level philosophy is shut off. People encounter a cartoon version and have said "No thank you". They have said "No" to the crazy ideologies that tell people that they are "lazy" or responsible for all the wrong in the world and should only blame themselves for their situation. The problem is that to turn the tables on the ideologues we need "free will" so that we can blame them for contributing to our toxic society. It is not necessary for them to be toxic and manipulative.
@@yoooyoyooo If the dog had the capability to cut the leash it would be a more accurate description because the more means you have, the bigger the free will. I get that biologically we all are like fish swimming in a stream and you tire if you swim against it but clearly not all fish swim the same.
3:55 in academic philosophic circles Alex' definition of free will may be "high bar", however I would argue he hits the nail on the head considering that to my knowledge, this is infact how most people think and feel about their supposed free will.
The fundamental problem of Alex is that he does not distinguish sensual appetite (we can call it: desire) from rational appetite (we can call it: will). We do not control our sensual appetites or desires, but we control our rational appetites or what we want which is moved by what appears to us as good and what appears to us as good is like that due to our beliefs about reality which ultimatelly depends on our mind.
Yep. Its combined with a typical special pleading many on Alex‘s side make: their argument, implicitly, or explicitly assumes that to be “in control” would require being in control of everything - Every antecedent to all your decisions, including every single desire. So he makes it into an incoherent “it’s turtles all the way down they can never be satisfied” argument. This is clearly not the normal and reasonable notion of “control” - Nobody normally asserts that you need to have been control of everything in order to have some relevant instance of “control.” If I’m driving my car safely where I want to go and you asked me if I’m in control, the correct answer is “yes.” Nobody thinks that before I’m justified in that affirmation that I must be in control of where all the roads were laid in my city, or in control of absolutely everything I think, or in control of having chosen my parents, etc. But I certainly am and control of the car in the sense that is relevant: I can direct it to where I choose to go and coordinate its actions safely. I’m also in control of my body because otherwise how would I be in control of the car using my body? And I am also in a relevant sense and control of my thoughts because if I wasn’t, how could my thoughts control my body to do what I want? If I did not have some relevant sense of controlling what I think and controlling my thoughts to direct them at the task at hand, then I could never accomplish anything - I’d just be at the mercy of random thoughts. But Alex just wants to keep asking “ OK you might be in control of D but then are you in control of C? But if you are in control of C, are you in control of B? And he will simply keep moving that goalpost back until he hit something that you were not in control of and then declare “, therefore you were not REALLY in control! Which is just a nonsense notion of control to begin with.
We don’t control what you call our “Rational appetite” either. If we follow this because it aligns with what we see as good then it is once again beyond our will because we don’t control what we see as “good”.
Whether or not we are really moved by rational thought is disputable. Many psychologists find that what we believe is based more on intuitions, and the rationality comes in as post-hoc justification.
Both of which are, "wants." You guys are doing a horrible job at trying to sink O'Connor's claim. Desire, Instead of trying to semantically tapdance around the word, "want," why don't you give just one example of a conscious choice made that ISN'T rooted in a want. All this talking, and I have yet to hear any arguments that aren't inadvertently fortifying O'Connor's argument.
It's good to see more people making good arguments for free will on RUclips. It's also very interesting to see See an argument for free will from a non-Christian perspective I am a Christian and before this video the best arguments for free will I found involved some form of dualism.
Hang on, the fact that causal relationships were developed in the context of free will debates has nothing to do with whether free will actually exists. It's like saying science is compatible with a religious world view (maybe Muslim or Christian) just because it stemmed from the same institutions. Or that Christianity and slavery are compatible because one was used to justify the other. Interesting video by the way 👍
I like this guy’s analysis a lot. I too am libertarian (though maybe in a slightly attenuated way), and I think our “acquaintance” with our freedom is epistemically so deep, it is only “that I exist at all” which is more epistemically certain, including the existence of an outside world. A choice is free iff an agent could have done otherwise and what determined what was done was the agent’s causal power to choose from a repertoire of possibilities. If the choice was 100% objectively predictable, and/or retroactively causally necessary, one is not free. The paradox of free will is that the more your choices are determined (intrinsically) the more you “feel” free. (Because you simply “flow” with your “wants” without external hindrance). Any time a counterfactual course of action is entertained by the mind the ontological possibility of that choice coming into being is real, however likely or unlikely it is to be chosen for. If I entertain the idea, “should I jump in front of this moving bus?” the possibility of this action coming into being is real, however unlikely. (And this “unlikeliness” is both objective and subjective). My reasons, which are real things in my mind, make it extremely unlikely that this will occur, because, say, I don’t want to be injured, but if it did occur, for other reasons, like perhaps my desire to demonstrate my free will, then there will still be no objective contradiction. Either choice was truly a possible way things could have gone. Usually our reasons are clear and therefore we are very determined by them. But, in cases where reasons conflict in my own tribunal of consciousness, the reasons that win win ONLY because those are the reasons that are chosen. Free will implies that reality could have been otherwise. Any model of reality which doesn’t admit this potentiality into reality is an impoverished model. How this relates to morality is a further and more nuanced question.
great video, thanks. I'm personally more interested in the sourcehood conception of freewill. I've never heard that terminology before. I'm agnostic about determinism, so I think that makes me more of a compatibalist. I've never heard the mathematical conception of science as being at odds with a causal-mechanistic conception. a good resource about agency is the philosophy of biology: there's literature about how living things are distinct from non-living things, even if they can share a similar kind of organized complexity. a hurricane is self-sustaining but it's entirely the product of external sources, while living things have their own autopoiesis and change their environment to suit their needs.
Just to clarify, compatibilism is simply the thesis that "Free will and determinism are compatible". Usually, when someone says they are a compatibilist, they mean to say they believe determinism is true and we have free will. However, you could be a compatibilist and still think we don't have free will, or determinism isn't true, or both. Your stance on determinism does not make you a compatibilist, your stance on the relationship between free will and determinism does.
Is there a reason for your decisions or actions? If yes then they are necessarily determined by the reasons for them, by their explanation. If not then they are random... there's no free will. Free will is an attempt to mesh these two unmeshable answers into a justification for praise and blame
I watched about 20 minutes of this. This is just a word game around the definition of the word want. You're trying to make want mean desire like some emotional implication, when Alex says want he simply means an action with your body and brain work together to attempt to manifest. After all the inputs are weighed in a particular moment, your brain comes to some conclusion as to what is the best action to take, it sends impulses to your body to then take those actions. That feeling you have between when your brain decides that it's going to do something and the thing happens is want. You cannot control your wants.
I read about 2 sentences of this, how is this any different from the word games played by the guy who made the video? Alex’s argument is all word games too, that’s called philosophy and it formed the basis of reason necessary to formulate science. Mathematics could also be considered a form of philosophy, you can’t escape it if you want to make logical arguments, even if the logical positivists would like to.
@@ZackaryReavesbecause the definition doesn't change the validity of the conclution if the logic is valid, and it is. You can change definitions but free will was still proven non existant as far as we know. The name of any definition you use is just a name it doesn't really matter, call it 'want' or whatever, ehat matter is what you mean by that and the conclution is tied to the meaning not the word.
Wanting to chess is a want, choosing moves to facilitate that are based on said want and picking a move between options is based on intuition which feels better and this is also a want.
Yeah he's just adding "deliberation". But just because you deliberate doesn't really move the argument. Because deliberation is just another process, and moving the knight is the output. I don't understand why he thinks moving the want down a level via a game changes anything
Yes, he completely fails to explain this point. It makes the rest of the video unwatchable since he can’t seem to understand or fully appreciate this criticism
Thanks for the comment. If I must first 'want' to move the knight before I can move it, then that 'want' arose from my reasoning processes about what was most suited to winning the game. So it is not explanatory. If someone asked why I moved the knight and I simply said 'because I wanted to' that would explain nothing. Nor would it connect it to the true reason which is about how it was directed to my explanatory want of winning the game (or controlling the centre, or threatening a fork, etc.) and how the knight move supported that aim. @wgo523 Moving back to deliberation is how the process becomes centred in the reasoning mind rather than external drivers like desires that we do not typically associate with ourselves or as being controllable. We intuit we have control over our reasoning, but not our desires. So by emphasising the role of deliberation, the capacity for choice is included in the process. If you say the process of reasoning is automated, that is pure dogma. And I have no idea what kind of 'control' might satisfy the conditions required for free will. Basically, if I can show our actions are explained by our decisions, and these are not caused by prior events (which is what the video argues for) I am happy to say we have free will, even if others are not.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy You're merely kicking the can down the road. You assert that your desire to move that piece came from your reasoning. But where did that reasoning come from? Your desire to win? Where did your desire to win come from? Whatever type of reasoning that you try to give as explanation for that desire, I will also be able to show you had a desire behind it. But with just a little bit of meditation on the emergence of your own thoughts, you can verify for yourself that in reality, you're not reasoning through every desire. They will just emerge from the abyss. Next time you go to the fridge and grab something out stop and ask yourself, what made me grab the snack that I just grabbed? Did I really just reason through that? Or did I just want that? You will recognize that those desires are fed to you through your subconscious. And it is testable and verifiable that your subconscious has determined what choice you will make before your conscious self knows that a choice has been made
@adenjones1802 I watched the entire video. His argument breaks down quite explicitly. I'm not free of the illusion yet, either. If I were, I wouldn't spend any time responding, lol!
Im not sure "free" means something in itself. I dont have a "free will". I have a will, and I am "free" to use it as I wish. Also I think if I "have" freedom, it ceases to be free. Possession implies restriction.
Neh, you dont have free will. People usually come up with a definition that perfectly copes with how illusionary the concept of free will even is. I remember at some point, some dude said that the fact that he thinks that he has free will, is perfectly enough to consider him having free will. So naturally I asked him if thinks he's a genius...
what about things you do randomly? e.g. slicing vegetables uncontrolled? Did I want to do it uncontrolled? What about actions based on reflexes, something scared me and I lift my arm. Were I forced to do it? I can train myself to avoid this reaction and lift my other arm instead. so I am not really forced and I also dont have any "wants" involved. what if I decide all my actions based on a dice. i will do many things because I just follow it. this is basically the duty-argument
Completely disregard the words "Free Will". Instead recognize that we don't get to decide when an epiphany or great idea occurs, and we don't forget people's names on purpose. Just made a response 📽️
minute 9.21 in a game of chess you WANT to do the best moove to win the game or to prevent your oponent from wining. You analize possible outcomes for each moove and choose the one than you think can put you in a better possition towards the objective you WANT!!! -.- your opponent can force you to moove a piece also!!! where´s the free will???
Great video! I don't usually appreciate philosophical content on RUclips due to consistent misrepresentation of the material but it seems that you have done a great job at both keeping the material friendly to the general public and not giving into inaccurate simplifications! I hope that your channel grows to rival the others. That being said I also wish to ask a question about something that was not clear to me: If we accept the notion that the state of the universe at time t>0 is causally determined by its state at time t-1 and the governing laws, and do not comment on any cause of the state of the universe at time t=0, we can arrive at both the notions of "could have been otherwise" and "some events are caused by me" without ever arriving at "I could have made some events be different" which I believe would be the ordinary understanding of free will as someone being the source of some events and having the ability to have done otherwise. I believe you clarify this later on by saying that free will should not be thought to require choices between possible futures from a determined present, but rather could also be thought as the same mental states (local sameness across realities or possible worlds) causing different outcomes. From these I understand that you believe that free will can be neatly separated into its causation and "could have been otherwise" elements which is very hard for me understand. If I am a deterministic causer (every mind-state* I have has a deterministic output) of events that also have non-deterministic causes (governing laws of nature, the state of the universe at time t=0, quantum wave function collapse etc.) and hence "could have been different" how can we conclude that "I" have free will? I may cause different events in this conception, as non-deterministic elements may cause me to be in different mind-states, but clearly events could not have been different due to me, therefore, I may conclude that something has a free will, like the universe at time t=0, but I don't seem to. Could you clarify if I have missed something? Thanks, X *using this very broadly to also include things like decisions and "the decision-maker" and the soul if it exists and so on.
Everyone knows they have free will. It's a fundamental experience that you cannot prove, but instead you can demonstrate that those who deny it behave aa if they believe it's true. As soon as you make the statement "I believe" or "I don't believe" then you are already making an implicit free will claim. The statement implies that you are choosing between alternatives; that you are accepting one idea and not the other. That's a choice. Everyone knows they have free will and they believe in free will; as soon as something was stolen from them or they were punched in the face they would want justice for themselves, which desire implies they understood the act was volitional, or, performed with free will. If a person truly rejected the concept of free will they would not ever seek justice for themselves or others, they would not use terms like "believe" which imply choice, and they most certainly would not bother to do debates or make persuasive arguments to convince people that free will does not exist because no one could freely change their mind anyway! If you make any kind of persusive argument at all then it demonstrates that you actually do believe in free will. Free will is a fundamentally self-evident experience which cannot be denied, the same way the hotness of fire cannot be denied, and the way that the wetness of water is directly experienced. You don't prove free will exists; you prove that those who deny that it exists are lying by showing that their behavior is inconsistent with their claims. Of course, a determinist believes that I had no choice but to follow my own free will to write that, so why should such a person argue with me?
The idea that people are "lying" doesn't mean their argument is wrong though, that is a fundamentally incorrect approach. There is exactly one correct rebuttal to hard determinists and no other: compatibilism. Determinists are correct in stating that all behavior is predetermined, but they are wrong to assume free will and causality are at odds.
@@fellinuxvi3541 *By material causes, since the beginning of the universe, everything can only turn out a certain way* Ok, fine. Could you explain intelligence and purpose of human actions with pure and determined material causes? how can purpose emerge from determined causes since they are totally contradictory?
Lovely video! Fun! BUT… issues. Regarding the chess game. Cross examination afterwards can sure lead the player to assume they could’ve moved the knight or the rook to accomplish a win. But, the huge punch with anti free will arguments is that the player would have ALWAYS moved the rook. Regardless of understanding in hind sight he could have moved the knight. If you replayed the scenario 1000 times it’s always the rook that is moved. In regards to the soldier going off to war to serve his duty. A better way to have said Alex’s initial argument was: “You either do things because you want to, or you feel like you must” In respects to epistemology. So the solder just feels that must serve his duty. It’s still congruent with the initial argument. Just some thoughts! Again cool vid!
The reason Alex doesn’t include contrast reasons. Are because those don’t matter. They are just the wide spectrum of reasons. You do not control your will. Your reasons control your will. Alex doesn’t harp on the specifics because they are all vastly different How on earth is it free will because the details are clearer? If your reason dictates your decision then you have no free will
"if your reason dictates your decision then you have no free will" what an absolutely absurd thing to say. All of you are begging the question with this garbage kind of reasoning.
@@davidryan8547 is your will your ability to choose? Do you have a way to choose against your reasons? How could a will be possible, if all your decisions are 100% dependent on your reasons(convictions, external experience, wisdom, knowledge, attitude, emotions, hunger, evidence, epistemology…etc All of which are dependent on external causes)
@@johnmacias488 "Reasons" is a very vague term, as is "external causes". As the video pointed out, the fact that there is a reason does not mean we did not deliberate on that reason. We often deliberate among different seemingly plausible and/or desirable reasons. The reasoning behind deliberation will be based on logical necessity, or on logical mistakes, or there might be non-rational desires behind it rather than logical reasoning, and all these processes are necessary rather than free; it is the deliberation among them that is free, though. Also "reasons" are not the same thing as causes. As the video implicitly pointed out, causes can be intended in a temporal sense (first event causes second event), as well as in a formal sense (the formal law of gravity or the structure of spacetime causes all bodies with mass to accelerate in specific directions). Neither of these have to be ALL encompassing or absolutely universal in order for science to work and make sense. There can be regularities that work alongside autonomous choices. The phenomenon of regularities is the one that gives us the (partial) idea of causal determinism, the phenomenon of choices is the one that gives us the idea of "reasons" to act in one way or another. I cannot choose my causes, of course, but I can very well choose my reasons. The base assumption of free will is merely the assumption that there are uncaused causes, or that the concept of causation doesn't work the way our intuition suggests. It is the process of deliberation that, according to the libertarian, is uncaused in that sense. And there is nothing irrational in the idea of an uncaused cause - even in a fully materialist worldview, unless you accept infinite causal regress (which itself opens up a whole bunch of problems), you need at least one uncaused cause to get things started.
@@johnmacias488 thats a chicken or egg question. I can have 5 reasons for one thing but then come up with a brand new reason for something else at any time. Do you understand that yours and Alex's argument would lead us to not being able to trust our reasoning in the philosophical sense of the term? We would no longer be able to trust our very thoughts.
I recommend reading the work of Professor Robert Sapolsky especially his book 'Determined' which is a deep dive into the neuroscience and behavioural science behind the fact that we don't have any free will whatsoever, truly brilliant reading.
Did they choose to believe that? Or was it predetermined? Also it's well understood that you can't choose what you believe, too, so your argument falls apart before it's even been formulated
2:30 saying the person "compulsively liking and subscribing" to philosophy videos is the SOURCE of their actions presupposes an individualistic, boundary creating philosophy of self which I would argue against. In my view, which is supported by physics, there is no seperate YOU from the Universe, so ultimately, the source of his actions comes from the first mover, which we do not know anything about but which certainly tracks back to the big bang at least. This way of understanding living beings as part of the universe allows for a full picture of the real factors in any action taken by any so-called "individual".
The problem with so many of these "we have free will" arguments is the implicit disaggregation of the universe. Stuff, matter, whatever there is, we will just call the universe. The universe has behaviour. We have observed many types of behaviours which we model as physics, for example. Our conciousness is a behaviour of the universe as we are of the universe. Certain configurations of the universe can self-organize into our bodies, producing all the amazing emergent behaviours that we can observe. The configuration of our bodies determines the set of behaviours it can generate. This is a very large set of behaviours. Moreover, it is a dynamic set of behaviours as our configuration of the universe that is our bodies is continually changing over time. So then, what is free will? Free will is the ability of the universe to perform behaviours that are independent on the universe itself, i.e., the universe is insufficient to generate its own complete set of behaviours. In other words, for the universe to do what it does, it needs external behaviours to generate the universe as we know it. I am firmly in the camp of we do not have free will as I think the universe's behaviour is entirely self-dependent.
Would you be open to the idea that the universe has free will on how to behave, and we inherit a part of that (and hence have free will) as we are a part of it?
I would replace universe with a set of things that are real. Then "it needs external behaviours to generate the universe as we know it." becomes an certain falsehood because no behaviors exist outside of a set of all behaviors that exist. Bit less visual but more solid for the nitpickers.
You have free will to act within the boundaries that the universe puts in place. Arguing free will is more or less a semantics game. I can choose freely to either engage with this comment, or to ignore it. We have an innumerable amount of thoughts that we choose not to act on. The argument can be extended to endless hypothetical situations where we construct a thought that is restricted by the boundaries of reality, but then we are just bending the concept of choice and will to fit our idea. Free will is not the same concept as omnipotent access to boundless realities of choice.
@@chasemiles9569 your ability to choose to engage with this comment or not is itself a behaviour of your brain. People conflate agents with free will. The ability to make decisions is a part of the system.
As one of Alex’s fans, it’s good for me to remember that he’s not infallible. A lot of this video went over my head, but at least it opened me up to the wider debate. Thank you!
show me a brain that acts independently of stimuli. What this guy will try to do is selectively pick which stimuli that fits into his world view rather than consider all stimuli. shortcut to the answer is the brain cannot exist independent of its environment, many fold over, and is subject to inputs from each level of system that acts upon it or within it. You don't have free will, you have a narrow hallway of choices that gives you the illusion of free will. That hallway is dictated by your environment and brain chemistry whether you like it or not. Libertarians are myopic ideologues
Just a simple repackage of Dennett's arguments, including the misunderstanding of both classical and quantim physics and how subatomic-level phenomena apply to whole organisms with consciousness. If you are beinf absolutely generous, you could call it an appeal to possibility fallacy rather then outright ignorance, but a meager argument regardless.
I suggest going back to the drawing board. And while you're there, look up steelmaning because apparently not really doing that is what I believe the biggest reason as to why you seem to fail at pretty much every step. Edit: I'm trying to be reasonably charitable and polite, but sentences like "the decision itself is the uncaused cause" make me wanne throw out the charity with the bathwater.
Wait the OP should look up steel manning? Or maybe you were responding to a specific comment thread? And are you saying that because he did NOT steel man Alex's argument then its a failure in your eyes?
@@derekofbaltimore I'm saying that I think he didn't steelman Alex's argument (enough), so he missed the mark and got lost in semantics. As I believe I've mentioned, I'm not quite sure how charitable I should be, but while his argument seems honest enough, I also got the impression that he only tried to counter Alex's exact words, more or less, not the reasoning and meaning behind them, as to make the his own counter-argument easier. A bit of a strawman, basically, by being too technical and pedantic about the words used or not used, mixed with rather baseless or poorly reasoned assertions. Examples: "desire" vs. "want" "duty" somehow being (based on) neither force nor want Edit: Or he just doesn't get it. Some sections I found very silly.
@@se7enhaender i see. So for you a legitimate debate requires both sides to steelman each others arguments else (and wait for validation from the other side) to prove you indeed are understanding the full thrust of each others points? Sounds good but i wonder how many arguments, online or off-line, academic or otherwise, hold to that structure? Things certainly would be better if they did, barring direct emotional communication through brain chips. I didnt watch Alex's account. Does he often follow this structure?
@@derekofbaltimore I believe Alex does it at least more often than a lot of other people. That being said, in a direct discussion, asking for clarification right away does the same job in most cases, without the need for a steelman, if the person who is giving the clarification doesn't have some inability to put their ideas in the proper words.
@@Omnis-Determinatio-Est-Negatio The arguments made in this video were just bad imo. It's really not that deep. And I don't get paid enough (literally nothing) to go through this awful video again to dissect it for you. I gave my immediate thoughts, and if that isn't good enough for you, so be it. I have no desire to convince you. (Pun intended)
Does a chess playing computer executing a program have free will? The decision of the computer obviously has a rational explanation. Once the program is loaded and runs, all of the decision making is located within the computer. Was the decision made within the computer? Yes. If the compter program includes monitoring the environment, or perhaps a Monte Carlo simulation to model the effects of a given choice (in this case, the exthernal input can be a series of random numbers, which could be provided by monitoring Brownian noise in another electronic component of the computer). it could have done otherwise. It is obvious to me that it does not have free will. But how is this different than the chess player that does have free will? It seems to me that the only difference is that we don't have a clear understanding as to how the wetware Baysean inference engine between our ears work. We can even use proper functional programming, so that every decision by the program is determined by the inputs to the program, so that the program is analogous to the laws of physics. Now all the decisions are the result of functions of state and a random number generator, all of which are contained 'within the computer'.
Thanks for the comment. This is a good line of thinking, but I would say the answer is 'no'. What the computer does is not a 'decision' since it involves no rationality, which requires a mind. The rational explanation you allude to is one that _we_ provide and not one deliberated by the computer. Also, the notion of the decision being 'within' is not about the location of the decision, as it is in the computer case, but of 'proceeding from' the rationality of the human mind. And, finally, computers cannot value anything, and so, technically, I don't even think they can play chess. Sure, they can process information to result in a given set of board positions (ones we would call checkmating the opponent) under conditions of what pieces can legally move where, but they have no concept of 'winning', which is a value concept, and so cannot, strictly speaking, play chess (this is an argument made very well in a paper called _Truth_ by Michael Dummett).
That's funny, you wish to invoke the lack of free will as a way of giving glory to God. Most people who believe in free will invoke free will in order to excuse him for all the evils in the world which they suppose him to have created. What if God just doesn't exist?
Not necessarily. See Molinism as a solution to the problem of divine foreknowledge and free will. Of course, it has its critiques but there are responses as well etc. It gives a reasonable answer to the problem at hand.
Dan Barker argues that God cannot have free will if he knows the future. He can't just do what he wants once he knows the future. The omni-powers seem paradoxical and illogical in many ways.
Very early in the video. We are shown why philosophy is not the field of study to answer the question of free will. When the question is asked The assumption is that you are asking about the common understanding of free will. But off the bat, the philosopher proposes more than one model of free will. The problem with this is once the philosopher deviates from the common understanding they have Begun equivocating.
First, the notion of free will is, i think incoherent, because it involves both determinism and the lack of it... Plus 1. Any action is either caused or uncaused. 2. If its uncaused, its random. 3. if its caused, the cause is either caused or uncaused. 4. This repeats until you get an infinite chain of deterministic causation (if the action is determined it's not free will) or until it terminates at something uncaused (again random therefore no free will).
I find that all of your examples of 'free will' in action are nothing more than an arbitrary point at which you elected to stop investigating the chain of cause and effect. For one example, in the Spain vs. Italy example, you claim that we make our choice based on criteria, but ultimately choose which criteria are more important to us. What you fail to realize is that we have absolutely no reason at all to believe that we are able to choose which criteria are more important to us. Which option we choose is based on how we value the criteria, which is in turn based on how much we personally want each one. You agree that we can't control what we want or how much we want it, and this is clearly an example of wanting something.
for the slower members at the back, I'll explain some of the examples. why did you go to spain? I wanted to... this explanation of events does not delve deep into explaining the causation. why did you go to itali. It was a toss up between Spain for XYZ and Itali for ABC. I ultimately decided reasons XYZ were more compelling. that is a far better explaination of events then. i wanted to to to itali, but wanted to go to spain for more. people ask you, what reasons, and you give reasons to your reasons why you wanted it more. but it is, the reasons that ultimately explain why you chose to do S over I. The chess example; you can't choose to want to lose, but you can choose how you will win. saying you moved knight to D4 instead of bishop to C5. you'd provide an explaination why that would be more conducive to winning. not that you simply wanted to win. that alone does not explain why you did that. specifically want, does not explain why you chose A instead of B in any circumstances. because it assumes that you could not have made a different decision. this relates to O'conners premise regarding determinism. if you're truly curious, and don't like analogies to simplify abstract and difficult to define concepts. you'd look into his paper, instead of this advertisement for his paper. this is like a cliff notes summary.
Okay we dont have a 100% free will if that means that the only thing deciding what you'll do is your will. We have limitations to what we can do always and in certain situations. Furthermore will is in it self not free. What our will says can be effected by what we know for instance
Great video! I believe the mistake Alex is making in his line of reasoning, is how he equates our desires as being the casual determinants behind all of our decisions, as opposed to just “influencing factors.” Moreover, I do not think it is logically feasible to reduce our subjective experience of agent causation, (i.e. feeling as if we are first acting causes in a chain of causal events), to event causation (physical event causes another physical event,…)
My observation about this topic is that the denial of free will is an ideological position. There isn't any argument that will change someone's position, because they do not want to change their mind. People deny free will because that belief appeals to a passive fatalist who feels powerless in their life and lacks self control and self discipline. It externalizes the locus of control. It's comforting to those who believe it especially if they lack self efficacy. Having free will is not the default state of a person, it is something that is developed and exists on a spectrum. Someone's understanding of their present moment and their ability to realize the choices that are being made, and or could be made and foresee the results of them and plan and execute those plans is a measure of how much "free will" someone has. Someone on the path of least resistance who is deep in the groove of it and coasting by will not want to believe that there is something else that they could be doing, something that takes immense effort and sacrifices, but will put them on a radically different path. You are in control. That is what this life is. You have something very special and decide what to do with it. If you are in a circumstance with some level of freedom, there are things that you can think and plan and then actualize which will make you the cause of effects, not the effect of causes.
@@BlackthorneSoundandCinema i believe I have control because that’s what the complicated system of sensory and processing neurons provide me with. I’m not fatalist, I accept responsibility for actions that I take. I cannot fathom a society that operates differently. However, I don’t see how I can have free will. The fact that I take certain actions based on how my brain operates gives me no more “will” than a computer that interacts with its environment with sensors. The difference between me and a computer is that I experience my existence - probably in part due to sufficiently recursive networks in my brain that allow me to reflect and pontificate endlessly. And as a human, I experience a range of emotions that are unique to human beings, who have a shared understanding of what “emotions” are. Interestingly, in many/most cases I am not in control about how a stimulus rises an emotion out of me. So in that way I have even less will than a computer, which likely isn’t emotionally affected by things outside its control. In other ways of course, I have much more control than a computer does, and while it of course FEELS like I internally will these actions into existence upon my external surroundings, I can easily see how that’s merely an illusion. I am an individual that carries out his own actions and should be held responsible for them, but I can’t simply concede that I pull this “will” to act from nowhere, in a way that is somehow immaterial and acutely sourced from within.
Nonsense. Fundamental attribution error. I don’t believe in free will because I see no evidence for it. Read Sapolsky s book. This has nothing to do with what’s confortable and everything to do with what is true. Such a narrow minded view
@@skepticmonkey6923 that's dehumanising. I love life, I deeply care about how my actions affect others and strive to be a better person. But from a logical point of view I simply cannot (😉) see how my actions can be free. So yeah, it's easy for you to think that people you disagree with are just bad awful people but this is such a dangerous mindset. Please don't
Being the source of your own actions but not being able to do otherwise is not a form of free. Will, it's a form of fate. We can see examples of this in Greek mythology When heroes cause their fate by trying to circumvent it. They are the source of the actions that lead to the eventuality they could not avoid.
The first time I heard a true debate about having real "free will", I thought people are nuts if they think I do not have free will. We grow up in a culture that sensitized us to think that we have free will as Judeo Christian beliefs start with Eve "freely" choosing to eat an apple and therefore we are all sinners. Seriously listen to Sam Harris, Galen Strawson or Robert Sapolsky. I will bet you will still think that you have free will but as the information settles in, you will realize that you probably have none or very little. Learn this fact will do wonders for hate, empathy and anger. It does not mean you will think criminals should go free as they have shown that they need to be rehabilitated and many kept from society as they are a danger to all.
If 'I' "want" something, then there must be an 'I' in the first place. And if 'I' exist then I will have preferences of which are based on experiences, genetics and feelings. If I have feelings then I can feel good or bad about something. Just because I might not understand why I feel good or bad does not negate the relevance or importance of choice based on how I feel. It is the ability to feel that makes life worth living. "Without feeling there is no meaning" Cher Lokk The very fact that money markets have acronyms such as 'FOMO' and' FUD' (Fear of Missing Out and Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) proves that the, so called 'logical' environment of money, is really driven by feelings. Fear. Let's take the game of Golf - imagine we made an Ai robot that could strike a ball perfectly every time and could score a hole-in-one every time. Would any one play golf again? Would anyone even bother to watch it? I highly doubt it. It is the very fact that a human being can a bad shot at any time ( make mistakes or bad choices) that makes the game so interesting. How the golfer reacts to the bad shot and deals with where the ball lies is why it is s captivating a sport. This is why I believe Ai will help reveal what it is to be human more than ever. For consciousness and free-will to exist then the ability to have feelings are vital. When searching for a house or an apartment to buy, one can factor in all the data possible as a good investment, but ask any real estate agent and they will tell you that the sale always comes down to how the buyer "feels". In effect, what we feel is what is real. Philosophers often eagerly forget to over look intuition and feelings into any calculation of consciousness. Oh and where do new ideas come from?
In the instance i tell you to think of a number from one to one hundred... But wait, think on it for 10 seconds or so, dont just give me first number that jumps into your mind. You will find your mind is capable of producing a string of random numbers outside of your control. Its like you open the flood gates and the mind just produces one after the next BUT then You choose one... Why did you choose that particular one? Coercion? A want or desire? A special relationship you have with this number?
I (freely) chose 77 because it’s cute. You don’t understand the causal chain behind my free choice because all the deterministic and cosmological factors burned out long ago at lower levels of abstraction. The impulse of determinists to want to explain the causal chain or claim without evidence that it exists says more about them than anything else.
If someone were to walk up to Alex and slap him in the face, it would be expected that Alex might ask the person why he did that. If free will doesn't exist, as Alex contends, then his question would be illogical and nonsensical. The slapper simply had no choice, as it was already predetermined at the Big Bang. In Alex's eyes, the same would hold true for choosing chocolate over vanilla, to someone committing mass murder.
@@TerryUniGeezerPeterson while I do believefree will exists, your statement is countered by alex saying he had no choice but to ask why the other person slapped him
@@TerryUniGeezerPeterson i understand that. I know we are on the same side. Im just saying i dont know if that example would stand up against scrutiny. His response of "why did you do that" would just be the result of a chain of events and not a freely made question... In his framework
I agree w/parts of your vid and not with others. For the most part I think Alex (and Sam Harris) are correct for how they define free will, but over the past few years, I've come to appreciate how Sean Carroll defines it. At the emergent level of humans, free will exists, that is, the form that we care about.
in the spain and italy example you say you chose spain over italy bc you choose architecture over wine but you dont provide an explanation on why you have chosen archotecture over wine
What does "could have done otherwise", or "could not have done otherwise" even mean? "... could have ... if ..." makes sense to me. But just a bare "could have"? But "could'nt have" fails to be meaningful in the same way.
The answer is simple as well. In "could have" and "could not have" the "If" that is assumed is "If all else was equal", so if you rewound time like a movie could past you with all of the desires and memories of you in the same world have done otherwise. This does not really conflict with laws being governing obviously. That is because of what is implied by "you", Well more "I" but the result is the Same, if there was a different universe in which my mother existed as she does in this one but had a child with a different father then this child could have done different things than I did. But I would not recognize that other child as myself because it would have a different father and different memories than I do, and I recognize my past memories and the traits I have as a result of being a child of my actual parents as a part of who "I" am. For the same reason I recognize those traits if "you" as part of "you". And therefore alternative universes can exist, but I and you do not exist within those alternative universes, neither does annyone from those alternative universes exist in ours, so they are not relevant to the free will discussion. And therefore, as was mentioned in the video already, concluding that free will does not exist is infact a triviality.
@@younasdar5572 Why do you count your desires and memories as part of "all else"? That is, why do you conceive of such differences as being differences external to the self? Surely, differences internal to the self being necessary for a difference in one's will, doesn't refute Free Will, but is a pre-condition of it (or else, one is not the cause of one's actions). The question, surely, is wither the self and the not-self can independently vary. But if you get the boundary between the self and not-self wrong, you will get the answer to that question wrong.
@@jeffreyscott4997 I do not count them as external but stil as unchangable facts. Because if time was rewound to any given Moment then I would always have the desires and memories that I have had at that point in time in the past and because every theoretical universe in which you would find a Person who is identical to me except for having different memories or desires at that given point in time might be possible but is stil not applicable because I remember myself as having those desires and memories at that past Moment in time and therefore I would not recognize that Person in the theoretical universe as myself. And since my future actions are determined by me having had those memories and desires, and having had them is a prerequisite to being me, it therefore follows that I could not have done anything different.
@@younasdar5572 You are counting them as external, because you are supposing them to be unchangeable facts, in the hypothetical of you being different (in that you have made a different choice). They are invariants under variations of you, that's what them being external to you means.
There are plenty of times people make a snap decision to resolve a stalemate, which neither forces one outcome or involves a desire for one outcome. As for whether want is not free, this already assumes the listener subscribes to a philosophy that sees wants and desires as separate entities from a true mind. I don't, and therefore the argument falls flat. If I want something, it's because I have decided that I need it, or it will bring me more joy than other outcomes, or that it will help or please someone I care about, or any number of other reasons. My wants are a result of my thought process, regardless of whether or not I am consciously monitoring and logging every thought running through my head like some sort of philosophical debug mode. From this perspective, Alex's 3rd proposition fails because it draws a false separation between desires and making decisions ("unless you're free to make a decision about making a decision, you're not free to make a decision"), and the fourth proposition is just a declaration of the outcome Alex has chosen "by assumption you are not free to make a decision about making a decision".
At 16:26. The argument isnt solely on the reasons why you choose Spain over Italy but rather if you went back in time would you stop wanting to go to Spain for the said reasons and go to Italy? I think the definition we have for free will either isn't sufficient enough or doesnt hold. Also we can't control all the things that make us want what we want, we can't control the influence of past experiences, environment, mood etc and this is fundamentally why we may not have as much free will as we think we have. Even a chess player has a style largely hinged on their internal beliefs that they can't control. In other words there is a fundamental reason why he chose to move a given piece over the other although at the surface it looks like he just wanted to win the game.
Thanks for the comments all! I do read most of them. Lots there to respond to, which I'll do properly in a follow up video (so subscribe if that interests you). But just quickly:
(1) I deal with causal determinism and how that relates to the laws of physics later in the video, so please watch that section before assuming I ignore that major issue. (I have labeled the sections to make this easy). It is a very detailed discussion as the nuances are often overlooked in the debate.
(2) O'Connor's first argument is a psychological argument, so I don't deal with causal determinism in my response. See above, and skip to the later arguments if that's more your thing.
(3) If you say all reasons have to be wants (as many seem to suggest), then the claim we can't choose our wants becomes implausible. E.g. in the chess example, if you insist I must 'want' to move the knight if I moved it, that 'want' would arise _from_ my deliberation about the best move and so be a want that arose from my decision. Also, in the gym case O'Connor mentions, this thinking would result in a contradiction: the person both wants and does not want to go to the gym. To avoid contradiction you should say: they want to get healthy and do not want to go to the gym, so the want to get healthy is their _reason_ for going to the gym. This is because going to the gym is a means to an ends, and the ends have been calculated by our capacity for causal reasoning (which I discuss nearer the end of the video).
(4) In the free will debate you should not assume materialism (O'Connor doesn't), i.e. don't assume the mind-brain identity thesis. So appealing to brains and their behavior as discussed by neuroscientists is beside the point. And since I made this video about O'Connor's arguments, which are purely philosophical, I saw no reason to engage in a topic outside my discipline (if only neuroscientists would do the same). P.S. The Libet experiments have been heavily critiqued regarding their import for the question of free will.
What’s your thoughts on Robert sapolsky’s arguments against free will ?
@@AbsolutePhilosophy the decision to deliberate on the chess move was itself the result of a want.
So it had its origins in want, rather than the decision that followed.
Also, the gym is not a contradiction.
The want to get the results of going simply out weighed the want not to go.
@@sigigle But with the chess example, the want does not provide any explanatory power. There may be other explanations such as the chess players prior education in how to achieve the goal of winning or prior experience or even just good ol fashioned free will. The point is that want itself is not an explanation of behavior and Alex who he is responding to does not give an adequate account.
Not to mention there can be multiple causes for a decision. Multiple causes means even if want does play a role it does not completely determine my decision but only partially. This would even be true under determinism. Pointing out some causal factors that may be involved does nothing whatsoever to negate the possibility of free will being an additional cause. It would be like if I was cooking you a dinner (romantic I know) and you asked me if it has meat in it. If my response was that "it can't have meat in it. It has carrots in it." The fact there is carrots are in the meal does not mean that there can be no meat. Similarly, if there is a choice made, it can be partly determined by wants and partly determined by free will. You need an argument that negates free will entirely. That has not been provided.
@@adenjones1802
I agree with all of that (and thanks for the dinner btw, much appreciated lol).
I'm only taking issue with AP's formulation of his argument:
"If you say all reasons have to be wants, then the claim we can't choose our wants becomes implausible"
He's saying that the 'want' to move his knight in a particular way, ultimately stemmed from his decision to deliberate/calculate, and therefore did not have it's origins in a 'want', but a decision.
And I quote:
"that 'want' would arise from my deliberation about the best move and so be a want that arose from my decision."
My point is that even his decision to deliberate, is itself rooted in a want.
And so it doesn't demonstrate that decision was the root cause of the action, as apposed to a want.
"You need an argument that negates free will entirely."
The burden of proof is also up to him to prove that freewill does exist, rather than just up to me to prove that it doesn't.
My only point here, is that he has not done this.
It's like if I claimed an invisible fairy from the Pleiades sitting on our shoulder is what causes our decisions.
It's not just up to the other to prove that it doesn't exist, it's also up to me to prove that it does.
And by default we ought to reject an unsubstantiated claim, until given sufficient reason to accept it.
> In the free will debate you should not assume materialism (O'Connor doesn't), i.e. don't assume the mind-brain identity thesis.
Why not? Isn't materialsm/physicalism essentially a default position supported by virtually all current human knowledge?
Everyone has free will if you define it however you want
You win lmao
Right. But I didn't. I took the same definition as Alex.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy You basically redefined "want." Yes, the colloquial "I don't want to fight in a war, but I'm obligated to because of duty" doesn't seem like a "want," but you "want" to do your duty. You don't "want" to go to jail for not doing your duty and breaking the law. There are other motivators that would all equally count as "wants" if a want is simply a preference. I think that's what Alex was getting at.
It works both ways. I see a bunch of loaded non-sensical definitions most commonly on the anti-free will side usually, but it's not exclusive to that.
@@robertshindeliii Okay but if 'want' simply means 'preference' then it is not clear anymore that you can't control your 'wants'. And it seems like 'my preference is' can simply mean 'my choice is', which suggests free will. That's why I use the more usual terminology from the literature and call them 'reasons' not simply 'wants', as 'wants' biases towards an emotional understanding of motivation. And then I explain a theory of choosing for reasons that allows for free will. Anyone familiar with the philosophical literature will recognise what I'm doing as pretty standard.
One can freely do what he wills, but cannot will what he wills.
@robertwarner-ev7wp oh, my desires can change, but i have no control over that
@@gabri41200
That’s a common trope, but it is either misleading or flat out false .
It’s really just a form of special pleading - implicit is an ocean of “free” and “control” that is nonsense to begin with, and unreasonably rules out normal coherent notions of freedom and control.
When we are deliberating, we are often contemplating the different things we will to do , our motivations for different actions, and we are seeing which of those fit into a more coherent hole as far as our wider goals. Yes our supervening “want” is selecting from among our other wants, but that is a form of choosing what we will to do! And to object that our supervening will that did the selection may not itself have been selected will amount to goalpost moving.
Further , we are constantly creating future things we will through our own deliberations and selection process. Right now I don’t have a desire to go running. I’m out of shape. But since I have a wider concern for my health and would like to get in shape, I can reason from experience that I can produce that desire in me over time. And so the conflict that I currently have and what I desire to do - lie on the sofa - will be reduced overtime. I know that if I can just start myself even walking each day, it will make it easier to develop the desire to run. And once I have developed the desire to run that more running will increase that desire. And that once I’m at that stage, I can’t have produced a habit where at a certain time per day. I am desiring to run rather than desiring to lie on the sofa as I am now. I can see ahead and producing a “want” and something I “will to do” and a way that I do not possess now. And it is my own deliberations that gets that ball rolling.
@@robertwarner-ev7wp I think you need to clarify what you mean by "you" in these questions. I don't believe in free will as "could have done otherwise" but for cases where responsibility is concerned (which your question seem be getting at), the question isn't necessarily about the responsibility of the decision-maker but the whole mind. So a person can deny that they have free will, but still find their deterministic causal processes "responsible" for certain actions in the same way the wind is responsible for shaking a tree. Then of course they wouldn't be punished but in an abstract sense the process that is responsible may be (for example by getting destroyed or sidelined through correctional facilities).
@@robertwarner-ev7wp i doubt they are trying to frame themselves as a victim. a more charitable reading suggests they're saying the appearance of free will comes out of the delay in time between your brain physically computing some idea or impulse, and the time that the calculation propagates up to the conscious layer. you become aware of your desires at some point, you check against your internal risk-reward probability tables, then take some action. your tables are modified by your experiences (hopefully) as you pass through time, and so your actions seem to move freely in response to your stimuli. but closer inspection reveals they are driven by it
@@robertwarner-ev7wp to take it a step further and preempt a possible question of personal responsibility, no, i don't think this line of thinking commits one to say people shouldn't face consequences for their actions
Literally all his alguments can still easily be explained using Alex's simple premises
By now its just arguing over semantics
@@michelkliewer3996aka. Philosophy
Ikr that was exactly what I was thinking 😅
@@michelkliewer3996 Semantics is the discussion of the meaning of language, I think that's pretty important, no?
Who is the “his” you are referring to
Here's how I think about free will.
Consider a person sitting in a chair in an otherwise empty room. We wait until the person chooses to stand up. Then, we rewind time back to the start of the thought experiment. Every atom, every quark, every quantum wave fluctuation is precisely the same as it was the first time around, and we hit play without changing anything, and we wait for the person to stand up again. If the person always chooses to stand up at exactly the same time, they have no free will, else they would eventually choose to stand up at a different time.
If the person does choose to stand up at a different time, it is still not clear that they do have free will. It could equally as possibly be explained as the macroscopic consequences of randomness on a smaller scale cascading to impact a decision about whether to remain seated or stand. But for the sake of the thought experiment, let's suppose that we've somehow predetermined any and all truly random processes to always resolve in the same way between experiments. Only then, if the person chooses to stand at different times experiment to experiment, would that demonstrate free will.
I believe we have will, but not free will. We make choices, but making a choice is a physical event, like two rocks colliding. It is a physical process, like everything else, and like everything else, it is deterministic in nature. We just intuit that it is special because it is something that we do, that we can't easily observe like how we might observe two rocks colliding.
thats exactly it and how i think about it. The video wasnt really convincing even though he addressed this argument it wasnt sufficient. I completely agree
This thought experiment, even if it were a verifiable truth, would have such a limited nature it could never be generalized to all decision-making. If one singular decision that involves little thought is predetermined by material conditions it doesn’t necessarily follow that all decisions are the same.
To present an equally unfalsifiable thought experiment. If a laplace demon type supercomputer existed that understood the material conditions of the whole universe and could supposedly predict all of human behavior, and I ask this machine about a decision I will make in the near future, it should be able to tell me. Yet if it does say something like “you will go to the grocery store today” I could just not go. Giving its prediction to me should theoretically be a stimulus that it can factor into its prediction yet it’s inconceivable that I couldn’t just decide the opposite. Because a complete lack of free will is even more counterintuitive than pure solipsism because it’s an experience we observe prima facie it supersedes all conclusions drawn from observing the outside world.
Frankly, every time there is a counter against hard determinism in the free will discourse on the internet, the comment section is just brigaded with people saying why they have already made up their mind without engaging with the critique.
How do you know it‘s a physical event? I would disagree with this.
It can't be as you say because of quantum randomness there can be no control test
@@lendrestapas2505I'm not sure if I disagree...
But I definitely need more info regarding that statement "making a choice is a physical event", for me to decide if I agree or disagree with it.
If you pick duty over desire, all that means is you desire duty over pleasure. It's not that hard to parse. Choose to abandon your deep desire for duty, you can't unless something causes you to think it's pointless. Zero free will.
The problem is that regardless of what decision someone made, you'd just retroactively justify it as being zero free will. If you want to show zero free will you need to be able to predict the choice BEFORE it happens, not retroactively fit it into your belief system. Otherwise it's just "whatever happens, that was God's plan all along" lines of thinking.
@@taragnor 1, we have brain scans that can predict someone's choice before they make it. 2, that's wrong, I don't need that, all I need is to show the decision has a cause. I can do that with all decisions. Except seemingly random decisions, which are an even worse problem for free will. You don't have free will if your preferences are simply set for you, or if you just roll the dice for a random action.
That's the thing about free will. It is an IMPOSSIBLE concept. Everything is either determined (not free will) or random (also not free will.)
Free will is a MEANINGLESS phrase people say to make themselves feel good.
If I'm wrong, please define free will and show me how a decision is made using that will.
I will inevitably show that your will was either determined by some random product of your nature, which you did not choose, or was the only inevitable outcome determined by a brain state which is caused by the outside world.
Example: you think you freely chose chocolate over vanilla? No, you simply prefer chocolate. You did not choose to have a preference for chocolate, you were born with it. If you DID somehow choose chocolate, that is because you already have a preference for that choice, or else you wouldn't have picked it at all, and you didn't determined that preference for yourself either, and that's just an infinite regress.
You might say, ha, I picked chocolate even though I prefer vanilla simply to show I have free will! And you'd just prove me right yet again. It was caused by your emotional need to validate the concept of free will, which you conceive as being able to choose whatever you want. Except, no matter what you want, you didn't choose to want that.
Go ahead, choose to want what you hate right now. Choose to believe you can fly. Choose to be attracted to someone you find disgusting. Choose to want your worst fear. You can't do it because you can't determine your own will, whatever that even means, since you ARE your will.
@@taragnorthis is true, which is what we would expect in a universe without free will. The burden of proof is on the positive claim (that free will exists). If there were a single mechanism where free will could come from (which might be a contradiction in principle) we could have a serious discussion about it, but alas, we do not, we only have an instinct in our experience
@@harstar12345 Your argument is: "if you pick A, I was right. If you pick B, I was right. No matter what you choose, I'll retroactively say I was right and everything fits perfectly into my theory."
That's garbage science. Real science needs falsifiable claims. It needs actual predictions and not "heads I win, tails you lose" arguments. The very fact that you leave no room for yourself to be wrong is very problematic. That's no longer science, it's religion.
Second, you can't prove something is unpredictable. That's like proving God doesn't exist. You can never prove something is non-deterministic, because the claim can always be made that "it is deterministic you just haven't found the pattern yet". Ultimately it turns into a version of the "God of the gaps" argument.
If decision-making is in fact something predictable/deterministic, then the burden is on those making that claim to show it's predictable. That's how all other scientific theories are proven. If decisions are indeed predetermined, then logic states you should be able to predict them before they happen. The same way in which physicists can predict how a falling object will land, or how a travelling comet will be impacted by gravity of local stars and planets. Make falsifiable predictions based on a hypothesis, then test those predictions. That's real science.
@@harstar12345 Your argument is : "If you pick A, I'm right. If you pick B, I'm also right. Whatever you pick, I'll retroactively say I was right."
That's not science. That's religion. Science needs falsifiable claims.
And no the burden of proof isn't on saying free will exists, because free will simply means "There's no way to predict what a person will do, there is no predetermination". The claim that human decision-making is deterministic (and therefore predetermined) is a claim that requires proof.
Have a debate with him.
Lmao nah his entire argument for free will would fall apart
@@CloudAkura7Yeah, the longer the video went on, the less it made sense to even bother. Either he thought he was cooking, yet failed, or he's being disingenuous, playing word games with "desire" and "duty" and arbitrarily separating "reasons for choises" from "wants", without even trying to connect them back together, like those reasons just dropped out of the frickin sky or something.
Never mind, I thought I was almost done, but I just passed the 40-minute mark, and now it gets really bad.
The "he has no idea what Alex is arguing for, does he?" kind of bad.
It's like, no, my guy, you ALONE didn't determine/cause the shadow, the state of the universe did. I would have been pro debate/conversation earlier, but this guy needs to go back to the kitchen for now, and those were all sincere mistakes, I'm sure he'll spot them.
Debates are useless.
@@subcitizen2012no
I think you failed to disprove Alex’s premises. With the chess example you don’t have choice over the rules of chess, why you’re playing the game, or why you want to win. You may be able to delineate on which piece to move, and that may be very close to what we see as free will, but doesn’t get you there.
In the duty example one may not even want to choose duty. However they may be forced to. If you’re the kind of person to believe that duty exists you may also have had certain values placed into your head without your own freedom. You may get a feeling of unease or displeasure from not “fulfilling your duty” which may force you to do this. Duty is either something you want or something forced upon you by moral intuitions. Everything you do is because you want to or because you’re made to.
@@GodlessCommie free will is not a thing to be "proven". You are not understanding.
Anyway its irrelevant, I can believe whatever I want, you little control freaks cant do anything about it
Go ahead get trying to "disprove" yourself
The problem with your reply is the same as I pointed out for many others here: When you say that the video author has failed to establish control or freedom with the chess example, that’s only if you have reserved some untenable, impossible, or even incoherent version of what it would be to have control or freedom! Basically seem to have adopted a special demand that has no connection to reasonable real world versions of those terms. And I see no reason to adopt the version you have assumed. The version of freedom and control that we actually use and every day life are the relevant and reasonable ones.
So for instance: imagine you are stopped by a cop for speeding through a school zone in your car. Now try this logic to get out of the ticket: “ but Officer, I was not a control of where the streets were placed in the city, nor was I in control of any of the traffic laws, and that being the case clearly I had no real control, no real freedom, no real choice of where or how to drive. And so it makes no sense for you to give me a ticket for doing something over which I had no control!”
Do you think that will fly? Do you think that type of reasoning should be acceptable to get people out of the consequences of actions?
I’m going to assume you are reasonable enough to say : of course not. Clearly that type of reasoning misses everything of importance they would apply to terms like control, freedom, and choice and such situations. Nobody thinks you needed to be in control of “ everything” or where the roads were replaced etc. The number of roads, and the traffic laws nonetheless afford you plenty of freedom of choice and control of where you want to go!
( in fact cars, roads and traffic rules are not merely sources of restriction; they give you all those possible driving related choices to begin with!)
And yet the same zany “ but there were some things out of your control” reasoning is what you were using to denying that we have any real freedom, control or choice when playing chess !
@@QuintEssential-sz2wn Yes well said, I think what these people are doing is confusing Maximal Autonomy and Free Will.
We can't control our character, genes, the feeling of hunger, etc, but we can take a 'vote' in our brain whether we want to appeal to those desires or not, I once saw a philosophy comment that suited this idea, someone said instead of calling it free will it shouldn't be called free don't, because your brain in like the government, you get a bunch of appeals and choices, then you vote for whether saying yes to those appeals or saying no to them. I hope that makes sense
@@QuintEssential-sz2wnand yet you had no choice but to play Chess. Chess in this example is life and its circumstances. That is not something any of us choose and author. And yet here we all are playing that game.
Yes, he just said "I disagree with Alex" and then just moved on lol.
You moved the knight because the sum total of your past experiences was the cause. All of this can be predicted if one has all the data points.
Interviewer: "Is the universe predetermined?"
Dr. Stephen Hawking: "Yes, but we don't know what is predetermined".
It's a total presumption to believe we could possibly calculate any state of chaotic emergent phenomena, even with all the previous data points. Wholesale belief in a lack of free will is akin to wholesale belief in any religion. We simply lack enough evidence to suggest anything so grand.
@@matthewtaber9635if you don’t have the knowledge to determine this, how could you possibly have free will?
@@matthewtaber9635 literally never seen any argument against freewill suggest that we can calculate all the variables. And I don't see why you would need to.
Can any influence on the output of the system "choice" be neither 1. Random 2. Determined ?
What would that be?
The reason I don't believe in libertarian free will is because I don't think it's a coherent concept. I can grant somebody whatever metaphysics or woo they feel like-- we are biological creatures which process information and react to our environment.
If the material of my mind doesn't decide my actions -- in what sense do "I"?
I think when you try to get a clear concept of "free will" people are doing a magical kind of thinking where they think a person can make multiple different choices with all the variables of the persons mind being the exact same. Same tastes, desires, faults, emotions, knowledge, and same random chances of certain neurons firing.
But this is clearly not the case in any other situation. A person decides because they ARE this physical process. But they can't decide differently than they do anymore than a tree decides to grow upwards.
Assuming that if you had all the data points you’d be able to calculate all future actions is a stretch. The outcomes of some quantum behavior we can not know.
@@Hugoknots currently, at least. there seems to be some confusion across various comments here about the difference between practical computability and ontological determinacy
12:54
"Perhaps their desire to do their duty is just stronger than their dislike of fighting.
But I think such a conclusion is just mere prejudice.
It would be perfectly reasonable for your friend to say that no, they don't want to do their duty at all. The only reason they're doing it, is because it is their duty.
In other words, the explanation they give for their action, is one that appeals to duties and not to wants."
This makes no sense.
They must 'want' to fulfill their duty for one reason or another, otherwise they simply wouldn't do it.
I think your claim doesn't allow for indifference
This is leaving the military duty argument (which i agree with the OP on) but sticking with your insistence on having a greater want
I also dont think "because its the first thing that came to mind"
Or
"because you asked me to"
Has an origin in greater want
I especially dont think a choice that brings about relief from choice overload/paralysis can be attributed to a greater want. A want to be left alone maybe but having nothing to do with the actual decision between multiple options
@@derekofbaltimoreI think in your last case, you lose the “will” part of free will though. If a choice comes strictly from overload, and has no reasonable distinction, we can regard the resulting choice as purely random, and thus no true “will” seems to have been involved. That is, a choice made with indifference would seem to be a choice made without meaning, and such a free will ought to seem fairly hollow.
@@evan9224 i suppose i disagree. If you choose indifferently then if the tape plays back you could certainly choose something else. Sure it doesn't have meaning behind it but it came from you and you decided. Yoy could have said "just leave me alone", "it doesnt matter", etc but in the cereal aisle, you choose count chocola
@@derekofbaltimore the point you raised is a fair one.
But I would point out that just because we’re not always consciously aware of the forces that make us drawn to one option in particular, doesn’t demonstrate that such forces don’t exist.
A lot occurs in our subconscious that we’re not aware of.
@@sigigle i agree but two things
Im not fully comfortable to just support any argument using the "mysterious forces which we dont know about" tactic. It allows for too many possibilities, conspiracies, etc - there COULD be aliens or time travelers controlling all of industry on earth but we cant see them because they are well hidden.. This is true but unsatisfactory
Second
I have deep experience with talking my subconscious into doing what i want. People have trained themselves to directly control their body temperature. I am able to have lucid dreams. I have turned dislikes into likes. Many people have self diagnosed fears and then talked themselves out of them. Etc
Im typing on phone so while my examples above require much more detail and support its hard to give them the defense they need in this format
This video really opened my mind. I used to think that freewill was impossible, and I couldn't make sense of it. I'm still not entirely convinced that it exists but I feel these arguments deepened my understanding of what it means to have freewill
Im sorry to hear that. You were so close
I would absolutely love to see a longform debate between Alex O'Connor and yourself. Both wonderfully careful thinkers.
you moved the knight because you wanted him on a specific spot, which increases you're likelihood of winning,
you will keep on finding the wants till you realise:
1- you will move the knight cause its the smartest choice (concluded through calculations & wants)
2- you will choose to move the bishop even though it is a less of a smart choice, only to prove you have free will
thus free will doesn't exist
How can a person with a Cambridge phd in philosophy, fail to understand the argument against free will this badly, I’m genuinely baffled.
If you're baffled, then free-will yourself out of your bafflement.
Guess you can't "free will" your way out of ignorance 😂😂😂
What part of this presentation in particular merits your allegation?
Hilarious
@@theautodidacticlaymanPutting a decision tree in front of a want and calling those sub decisions desires or duty instead of want doesn't magically mean you'd ever do otherwise. It's wants/desires/motivation all the way down, and at no point can you do otherwise, regardless of if you're the "source"
So many comments actually not listening to what he says… so many people getting hung up on details they just interpret through their own views instead of trying to understand the point he is making… please rewatch the video and think about it before you comment
Yes! Exactly! Thank you 😊
Probabilistic causation doesn’t undermine Alex’s argument of effects without causes being random.
Probabilistic causation is a mix of determinism and indeterminism; take radioactive decay, if we know the half-life of a radioactive substance, we can predict the average time it will take for half of a sample to decay. This means that, in a large enough sample, we can determine the decay rate with precision, leading to predictable outcomes based on the initial conditions.
Conversely, from an indeterministic standpoint, the exact moment when a particular atom will decay is inherently unpredictable. Each atom behaves randomly, with a certain probability of decaying at any given time. This randomness means that while we can predict trends for large groups of atoms, individual decay events cannot be determined, illustrating the fundamental uncertainty present in quantum mechanics.
This duality highlights how the same phenomenon can be viewed through both deterministic and indeterministic lenses, depending on the scale and context of observation.
13:50 - The deliberation process is bounded by time, by our intelligence, our psychology, by all these things that we do not have control over. We have freedom (options to choose from), certainly, and we certainly have will (the power to choose). But having options and the power to choose (and even reason-sensitivity) just entails that you will engage in a deliberation process when faced with choosing. But that deliberation process is not self-determined. So what you ultimately choose is not self-determined. What misleads people into thinking there is free will is the sense of choosing. (I bet folks are confusing moral responsibility with causal responsibility too.) We are witnesses to our own choices, but that witness is not control. You are merely along for the ride, and that ride happens to include complex things like introspective choosing.
Galen Strawson lays out the argument like this (Norton introduction of philosophy, chapter 13):
1) You do what you do because of the way you are.
So
(2) To be truly morally responsible for what you do, you must be truly responsible for the way you are.
But
(3) You can’t be truly responsible for the way you are, so you can’t be truly responsible for what you do.
Strawson takes premise 1 as incontrovertible. I agree.
Robert Kane challenges premise 3, saying that some of our actions are Self-forming Actions (SFAs). But on what basis do we perform SFAs? They must be performed on the basis of "N", with N being our nature, or our values, preferences, etc., (all of the ingredients of a deliberation process) at the time the action is taken. But where did N come from? If it was not self-determined, then we are not free. If N _is_ self-determined through SFAs, then again, on what basis were _those_ actions performed? At the time _those_ actions were performed, you must have had nature N+1 that served as the basis for the deliberation process for those actions. But where did N+1 come from? It's a regress. It's impossible to have a self-caused nature that would serve as the basis for the SFAs needed for moral responsibility.
This explanation also defends premise 2.
Strawson puts the argument another way:
A) Nothing can be _causa sui_ -nothing can be the cause of itself.
B) To be ultimately morally responsible for one’s actions, one would have to be causa sui.
C) Therefore, no one can be ultimately morally responsible.
I believe this applies to even an all-powerful being like God. Even God cannot have free will, which means free will is impossible.
Great video. I really like the point developed around 50 minutes in where the very semantics behind "cause" are shown to be intimately tied to the prior conception of free will. I think it's a very powerful point that ties well with the earlier point about how mathematical relationships between variables don't necessarily have a built-in frame of cause. I almost never enjoy free will / determinism discussions but this was quite good.
Thanks for the comment! Glad you liked it.
@@derendohoda3891 Cause and effect aren’t tied to freewill. Maybe will, but not freewill.
His argument was that we observe cause and effect when we will to do something, do it and see the effect.
That just requires will, not freewill.
@@oabh1808 I know :P But at least it might plant a seed.
Saying reason motivates our ‘wants’ is simply moving the goalpost one step further.
Yep, doesn't matter, we cant control our reasonings, because we didn't control how our brains were formed.
The drunk wills to drink, but he also wills to have a good relationship with his family. The choice he makes to either pick up a bottle or go home has an effect on what his will will be inclined to do the next day, week, year. Whether he is a lifelong drunk or a good father is not rooted in his "will", but rather in a series of decisions by which the inclination of his will is built like a tower, brick by brick. The question is unchanged: are each of those decisions simply a result of molecules bumping into each other, or is there something more? Does anyone have a choice in anything they do/say/believe? If not, why keep talking?
How very Aristotelean of you! I agree though. Will and character formation work together in a process of self realisation. But an element in this process is that of free will, influenced though it is by our character, which is in turn influenced by our past decisions. They form a symbiotic relationship across time.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy I apologize, I commented before finishing the video mostly in reply to the current top comment rather than to yourself. Your video was well thought out, particularly the second half.
Thanks for this, I cannot say that I found myself convinced, especially not by the argument that our will can apparently affect the formation of the earth.
I do see your point about counterfactuals and holding too many things fixed, but I suppose for the determinist, those things already seem fixed, and more strongly than the intuitive notion of their own free will.
Likewise, I find the final bit somewhat self defeating, when you say that we started assuming will in both ourselves and nature, but now see more mechanistic action in nature. This seems to be the deterministic point exactly, that the momentum of philosophy is on their side.
Overall, I enjoyed listening to your video, and appreciated hearing from a view that I didn't hold. I found this far more substantial than Heumor's quip of "if you have no will, why deliberate?" As that seemed as silly as asking a computer why it takes so long to create a list of the fist million prime numbers...
Addictions will do that it is the addiction that acts. The addiction wasnt a choice it was a byproduct of wanting something leading to craving that something to ignore another want. Lets say they drink do to feeling bad. Did they want to feel bad. If so why would you want to feel bad? Do they want to feel good? What does the drunk do? He drinks. Why because it helps with their perfered state? Why does something perfer a state other than their own?
@@AbsolutePhilosophy I dont understand how you faill to see that an uncaused choice is a choice made by chance snd therefore void of responsibility. Let's try to take this again from a different way.
The net of causality affects me and I like it or do not like it and respond according to how I was affected. That in turn propagates other consequences which will probably get around to affecting me in some kind of way again. We are in an endless cycle of cause and effect and the randomness of things that are not in our control is why there appears to be any freedom of will in it at all.
I have a right to affect the net because I am affected by it. Both my positive reactions and my negative reactions are species of vengeance. I'm getting back for the good or for the bad of what was done to me. I'm rewarding or punishing so call it justice if you like. I would not be aware of it at all if I were not affected by it. Here is responsibility and here is why responsibility adheres.
If there were no causes outside of myself for why I did what I did then nobody is held responsible. That includes myself. If I did not have subconscious reasons that I do not understand for what I did, subconscious causes being involved, then I would have no responsibility over them because they would not be controllable. They would be simply random things like random thoughts.
Those subconscious causes which I cannot directly consciously control affect me consciously and they are responsible for how I am affected consciously but I am also responsible to outside forces which I know can react against my behavior which I must take into account before I decide to act in any way that I do. Subconscious causes are responsible for my conscious state of mind and my conscious state of mind is responsible for attempting to understand how my actions will be responded to. I let choices based on those facts and both work together as causes for the choices that I make. Where is there room for free will in any of this? And don't say that it is in the video because the video does not actually deal with this particular point. How can it?
Here's your proof against free will: You cannot will yourself into believing something you know to be untrue and you cannot will yourself into disbelieving something you know to be true.
Simply by acknowledging this simple point you can carry on from there to ask how is it that you know? If you do not have empirical data then you are simply stipulating an article of faith and you should admit to the fact that you are doing so.
It’s simple: is your will dependent on anything? Careful, it’s a trick question:
If no, then your will must be random, since only truly random things don’t depend on anything.
If yes, then how can you call it free?
If it is dependent upon my consciousness then it is free.
If it is dependent upon something without my consciousness then it is not.
The word free willwas intended to make this distinction. The action of a spasm is different then a freely chosen dance. The action of passing out is different from laying down with the intention to sleep.
@@definitelynotcole does your consciousness depend on anything?
@@Ugeen-Huge-Jeans Yes. We will call it the set of events and objects that my consciousness depends on or is caused by C1.
Is C1 caused by or dependent on anything?
I agree with these arguments and I believe they do a fantastic job of destroying libertarian free will...
but......... they can't really debunk compatibilism.
@definitelynotcole Yes. Your actions are governed by your wills which are controlled by your "consciousness" which is a result of the position of each particle that make up your neurons which all are all a result of cause and effect of other particles. All of physics is deterministic going back to the big bang. Ergo your every though and actions are deterministic by definition.
Want and desire are loaded terms. We have tendencies and heuristics foisted onto us by case and circumstance. Our neurophysiology them reacts to stimuli.
Freedom then exists only from a subjective, high-order perspective. It can be called an "illusion", or perhaps more accurately, a naive intuition.
So many people in the comments only watching till minute 13….
Free will does not exist because we never ultimately choose what motivates us to take action. After all, in order to choose something, we need to already have some motivation, which would make it impossible to choose what motivates us without already having some motivation.
If I choose to go to war because I believe it is my duty to do so, I still probably did not choosed to be motivated to do what I have a duty to do.
If I did choosed to be motivated to do what I have a duty to do, it was only possible because I already had some other motivation that I did not choosed to have. After all, how could I choose anything without already having some motivation?
It depends by what you mean by you.
I know a lawyer who will write up a will for free. Free Will. QED.
You have a strong desire to believe in free will at all cost, no one's going to blame you for it, as you did not choose what you desire. Your fear of unknown chose it for you.
Is this an original quote
Nice quote
Also this argument fails to acknowledge how each choice is really a deeper want. He just claims that’s not true, when in fact it is. Behind every action there is a morphological impulse to act, which is tantamount to a want. I’d like to see how many evolutionary biologists believe in free will, not philosophers
You are free to be who you are and nothing else. Answers all sides and not reliant on definition. To expand, we hold you accountable for your actions because it helps you do better which matters more than moral responsibility after an action.
7:26 maybe i am misunderstanding but i dont see your argument here. why do 'wants' have to be 'emotional' in the way you put it? i probably wouldn't define 'want' in the sort of way you have.
9:12 i know you're just critiquing his argument and you only say (at this point), we 'might' have a limited kind of freedom, but doesn't leeway freedom need to be proved in your chess example to show you are free (along with the sourcehood)?
9:24 in what sense do you mean we are free to move the knight or the bishop? i probably couldn't give a concrete definition of freewill, but to me even if we are the source of our intellectual deliberations, they still wouldn't seem 'free' to me
9:35 what about actions purely motivated by wants, like alex's ice cream example? would we be free then?
9:44 this doesn't seem to follow for me. just because it seems i could've moved the knight or bishop (epistemological possibility) it doesn't follow i could've moved the either the knight or bishop (metaphysical possibility)
9:49 in what sense are we the source? do we have to be the ultimate source to have free will? how much of the source do we have to be? maybe the amount and fundamentality of the source we are increases the freewill we have in a certain action, but do i control my intellectual deliberations in a way that i could sufficiently be said to be the source of my actions? i understand that something does not have to control something to be the source of it, but still to me it seems the sort of sourcehood we have in our intellectual deliberations is not sufficient for freewill
13:03 i couldn't give an argument against this as this is just a speculative example, but this doesn't seem right to me. intuitively, i am with alex, that our actions in these sorts of cases have more fundamental or more significant wants that guide them seemingly against less fundamental wants
13:09 this is the explanation they give, which to me isn't enough to say there are cases where people are ultimately not motivated by wants alone
13:43 it doesn't seem almost certain to me
That you have the time and energy to respond to these points lmao
Wow, you sure have a lot of issues with this long, drawn out critique of such a simple claim. 45 minutes in, and I'm yelling, "Holy father of Aquinas, just give us a solid argument already!" I thought I'd be hearing an actual argument against O'Connor, but ironically, all I've heard so far is an unintended expansion on O'Connor's argument.
Somebody here hasn't thought through their arguments very well.
One of the mistakes that I see being made here is that of composition. "Want," is the set of, "desire," and it's subsets, "appetite" and it's subsets, etc.. This guy is trying to compare subsets to sets, and subsets to other subsets, which is ultimately muddying his own waters seemingly to the point of him being not able to see that he's not even addressing the actual claim being made with intellectual integrity.
Semantics are necessary, but they sure can be a pain in the ass.
45 minutes was too long to wait just to NOT hear a valid point (concerning the rebuttal of the claim) by someone who just made the claim, "He's wrong."
That was well stated, and you covered the same points I was about to reply to.
yeah about 13 in, concerning duty, i don't think it tracks fully. surely the individual is wanting to do their duty, they place that higher than the want to fight or want to not fight independent of some duty
@@Alexmw777i dont know if i would equate "want" with "compulsion"
Seems far too simplistic to call all these things "wants"
3:39 the issue with Alex‘ premise is that he says that the „action must come from your _conscious_ self“. the decisions come from the mind. most of them remain unconscious. some of the decisions (and in some cases also the choices) are presented to consciousness. when it comes to free will, we should first clear the understanding who and what makes decisions. it seems reasonable to assume that consciousness does not take any decision, as it is the platform of perceiption of thoughts, affects, sensory input.
if i believed that moving the knight would make me win the game over the bishop, isnt that still out of my control? since i cant control whether i want to win the game and i also cant control which move i believe is the right one
My thoughts exactly. He acts like just because there are different reasons for different choices means that people don’t still choose based on their physiology, beliefs and experience. Which aren’t things we choose. A reason will only resonate with the type of person it’s compatible with
Jesus fucking christ, determinism is so unfalsifiable is ridiculous. All of these replies are so bad, "uhh uhh but the horse has to move that way" yeah mf, i also cant grow wings and fly in to space, doesn't mean i dont have free will. You literally cant even prove your own theory, if determinism was true there was no truth value, because youre not actually making judgements, you would have said that anyways, so true or fake cant exist in determinism, so its self-defeating, there, fuck off and read Bergson now.
Well, you really dont have much of a choice if your moves are limited.
The deliberation comes in reasoning which move would help us win the game.
We experience and observe control over this process of reasoning because we actively consider different possibilities and the different outcomes that might follow them. Then we experience choosing one of the moves even though many potential moves can have strong reasoning for why they would lead to victory. We also have the subjective experience of making chess moves reflexively or unfreely (less freely at least) versus the experience of having more control and rejecting our reflex when we actively deliberate.
The higher evidentiary burden is on the claim that the experience of making the choice or deliberating between possible options was an illusion because that denies direct observation.
@@felixamadi2237it doesn’t actually matter
We have the freedom to choose between the options presented to us. While we may not be able to choose what we want, we can choose what influences our wants. You are able to chart your own course through your own awareness. Free will is real, morals are real, love is real, and God is real. God bless you all
You say that deliberation is freewill demonstrated, but it's not.
It's just the observation of a process.
53:03
"We know what having freewill is like by reflection.
We experience it in the most direct and intimate way imaginable.
As Wittgenstein might say: Since everything is open to view, there is nothing to explain."
We don't.
All that we observe is the arising of thoughts into conscious awareness.
The idea that these arising thoughts are separated from the causal chain, is one that gets added on afterwards, without justification.
Try it now, and notice that all we observe is a sequence of arising thought phenomena.
Explain to me how "my duty is X" is not a his preference for X, however strong. How it is not "a want"
It seems a lot of this debate would benefit from the distinction between agency and non-agency. Animals and insects and things with brains have agency, because they take in information and *act* on that information. That is, (at least part of) the causal chain goes through the individual. I think agency is what many people, professional philosophers included, refer to when they say “it’s obvious we do have free will.” But, however complex the causal chain, and however much it runs through the individual who appears to make “choices” based on that, this is an illusion. The causal chain remains completely deterministic no matter how complex. It’s hard to see that, apparently, but…to coin a phrase…it could not be otherwise.
In sum, we have agency, which is often misconstrued as “will,” but that agency is just as determined as any other physical process, so it cannot be “free.”
Unfortunately, if we are just atoms and nothing, else we are also not humans. We are not objects. We are not things. This means the definition of we or I is null.
If this is the case then we cannot make the necessary deductions and comparisons to state that we are just atoms because there is no we. In addition the claim 'we' have no free will is equally valid to the claim 'we' have free will because the definition of we is nonsensical so both statements are nonsensical.
We are then left with saying we are both atoms and humans. Because humans emerge from atoms defined within a given set.
If this is true then there is nothing stopping a compatibilist from saying that free will exists because free-will emerges from a limited set of determinism.
@@definitelynotcole Humans clearly arise from atoms since they are physical beings which can be defined (although defining a human on the atomic level makes no sense really). Free-will, which is a conceptual process and supposed ability of humans, cannot arise as simply as the human itself. Humans are demonstrably collections of atoms, no matter how complex these arrangements are, just as a block of pure aluminium exists, even though it is still just a collection of atoms.
There is evidence of humans existing, but there is no evidence of humans being able to insert themselves as an uncaused cause into the physical causality of the universe.
Every time I have sat with myself and looked at my thought process in a meditative way, not at the content of thought, I see that: 1) we don't see where thoughts are coming from, and 2) thoughts aren't chosen, or if they are, it does not happen within our conscious experience, and thus we do not do the choosing of thoughts.
Thoughts just appear; it is not seen where they appear from or what creates them.
Therefore, life seems more like a river that just flows-a river that itself thinks it chooses its own direction, but that doesn't seem to be the case when you directly look at it. Philosophize all you want about it, or take a direct look during something like meditation.
Statement may be both correct and insufficient. Statement "you made the video because you were born" is true. If you were not born you couldn't made a video. That's just simple fact of reality, even if it is low resolution statement. Same with wants. Trying to go into the weeds and attack the premise as invalid because of lack of detail misses the point.
Every decision you make, you make because you are who you are. Who you are, is a product of your DNA and experiences. You do not have 100 percent control over your DNA or your experiences. Therefore, who you are is not something you had 100 percent control over. It does not even make sense to imagine having 100 percent control over who you are, because in order to make a choice about your own identity, you would have to already have an identity with values, creating an infinite regress. It doesn't make sense to want that kind of free will because that type of free will is conceptually incoherent. Whether determinism is true, or indeterminism, is irrelevant.
I think people get so lost on this issue. The first important question is, why do people care about free will? I think its because they think its important for moral responsibility. I would argue that you don't need the libertarian conception of freewill to exist to make sense of moral responsibility at all though. I think you can make perfect sense of common sense notions of moral responsibility even if determinism is true. In fact, I think you can have a much more useful and coherent understanding of moral responsibility without the libretarian conception of freewill. So I see no point at all in all the magical thinking 'god of the gaps' appeal to ignorance people try to do to try to justify believing it exists.
You are who you are because you are a result of your DNA and experiences which you are.
In other words you are who you are because you are who you are.
This is a fallacy of circular reasoning and a category error as this classification has nothing to do with the things you cause.
The question is if you have determining power over your actions. And since you are the very things you mentioned and are part of the deterministic chain you have determining power over anything your consciousness has effect over.
Any action taken under free will is one in which your consciousness was the determining Factor.
Free Will does not state that you need to be the determining factor of you in order for you to be the determining factor of the decision.
@@definitelynotcole It is not circular reasoning to say that your identity is formed as result of your DNA and experiences.
There are many different definitions of free will in the academic literature. I am talking about a specific definition, the classic or libretarian conception of free will. That is the type of free will I do not think we have. That free will is the ability to act in a way that is not caused by anything outside of your control. We act based on our identity, our values and our desires and so on. Our identity is at least partly caused by things we did not have control over. Thats the point.
Im not saying there are no other conceptions of freewill or freedom that are useful. There is still a meaningful difference between someone who has the option to do something they want to do and someone who does not have that option, or is forced to do something they don't want to do. That difference still matters. Especially when we are determining moral responsibility for actions. One of the main reasons its important is because it highly correlates with how likely someone is to repeat an undesirable behaviour in the future.
@@moyga The problem is is if you focus on the nonsensical definition of free will, you can only derive nonsensical things. If the definition of free will is inherently ridiculous, incoherent, and inconsequential; then to say we have no free will is equally inconsequential as saying we have free will.
Here let me show an example:
A philosopher says either
we have a body and we are responsible for our actions
-or-
we do not have a body and we are not responsible for our actions. We both agree with the axiom for the sake of the parable.
Then he proves that the definition of a body is a nonsensical illogical definition.
He now says because this definition does not make sense we do not have bodies and therefore we do not have responsibility.
We both look at each other and then at him and say "well, We do have bodies, perhaps we just need a different definition"
He retorts that they are simply illusions.
And we say back " Cannot the illusion of responsibility apply to the illusion of the body just as easily as it cannot?"
"Certainly, but what does it matter if it is an illusion"
Well now this whole conversation's an illusion. We can't derive anything meaningful from anything we've said.
……
In this case, it's no different. We have created a nonsensical definition of causation, choice, power, and ourselves.
I can just as easily state that:
you = All things that resulted in your conscious self, as the sum function of all those things results in you and you contain all of the deterministic information of all those things.
Free Will = The ability to act in a way that is not caused by anything outside of your control.
•=> Under these definitions We derive that any observation or input into 'you' is you. Therefore, any output is caused by you.
Yes this means, that if I do something to you in the past to get you to do something it is equivalent to you now doing it because my actions towards your past are part of you.
You can claim that your past self and me interacting with your past self are events outside of your control. This is true. But those events are you by our definition, and they along with all other things that encompass you are in complete control of your next conscious actions. Therefore, you are in complete control of your next actions.
If you haven't noticed, this entire thing is nonsensical. Why? Because The definition of free will given in this discussion contains a fallacy of circular reasoning and a missing definition.
We do not know what you are. Because of this we can give endless definitions for you and what your consciousness is and what constitutes it. It is circular in its lack of specification over control (causation in the usual discussion).
If you do not have control over yourself because something else has control over you, what has control over that and does it have control over itself? Because if it doesn't have control over itself, how could it control you? But then if it's not controlling itself and therefore not controlling you then what is controlling you? Certainly not the thing that's controlling the thing that is not really controlling you because the other thing is controlling it!
Never go in against a Sicilian, when death is on the line!
It is much better to contextualize the observation of free will in a way that actually has consequences.
For an example defining Free Will as a result caused by a conscious drive, or a calculation determined by empathy, or the effect determined by the awareness of consequence. We can derive meaningful conclusions, including the conclusion that our bodies may want to convince our conscious selves that we have control when we don't. Otherwise, why would our bodies be wasting so much energy to create such illusions? There are obviously times when consciousness is beneficial to an organism and times when it may be detrimental. So, it is in an organism's best interest at times to make the conscious systems believe they have control when they do not. But this insinuates that there are times in which consciousness does have control and that it has the capacity to control things. We can then analyze the type of things it controls and further understand the actual nature of consciousness and perhaps even the underlying mechanisms.
Instead, we have so many intelligent philosophy majors circle jerking a definition of free will from the age of Descartian dualism instead of exploring the actual free will we experience.
@@definitelynotcoleIt seems to me like your problem is not necessarily with me or what I have said. I agree that the classic definition of free will is non-sensical and it doesn't matter whether we have it or not. That's basically what I said in my original comment. That is why I don't think that type of free will exists and I also don't think it really matters that it doesn't exist because I think we can make sense of moral responsibility without it existing. Isn't that what I said from the start? But its important to understand that, that classic definition is the definition most lay-people use and has been extremely influential over history. Thats why almost every time you watch free will debates between people who are not academic philosophers, they are generally talking about that libertarian conception of free will vs determinism as a kind of false dichotomy, without really even addressing why people care about free will in the first place.
What I would say is that, when it comes to moral responsibility and freedom, the main concerns are whether we can do what we want to do, encouraging people to do things we consider good and discouraging people from doing things we consider bad. Regardless of whether determinism is true or not, the concept of punishments having a deterance effect still makes sense, the concepts of rewards having an encouraging effect still makes sense too. It also still makes sense that people who do something bad because it was what they wanted to do (as opposed to being forced or having no other option) are more likely to do those bad things in the future, which is why we have the intuition it makes more sense to hold them morally accountable by 'punishing them' (punishment should be conceptualised as simply taking action to prevent future bad behaviour with no focus on inflicting suffering separate from that goal). The deterance effect of punishments will also only impact choices that are what people wanted to do rather than things they were forced to do. So yeah, I think moral responsibility and certain notions of freedom can make complete sense even under determinism and without the libretarian conception of free will.
I agree, except that it's not that we have less than 100 percent, we have literally 0 percent control about who we are because free will either existis or it doesn't.
I would also question the motivation of anyone trying to convince me that I have no agency over my decisions and actions.
You think you have and we respect that, it’s ok for the brain to retaliate against facts, but try to look more into this subject, and your brain may change its retaliation to acceptance, once it’s convinced and you won’t be able to do anything about it, now go fetch bulldog.
well of course to manipulate you, you poor paranoic boy
The fact that you instantly go there shows a lot about you. Maybe you're not mature enough for this conversation...
@@Sweeti924not fact. The Free will argument has been going on for thousands of years without resolution.
Most smart people try to attack free will without attacking agency, or the fact that you have will. Agency is the sense of control that you feel in your life, your capacity to influence your own thoughts and behavior, and have faith in your ability to handle a wide range of tasks and situations. This definition is never debunked, free will deniers are not denying your agency
You must have free will as you are part of reality. Since reality is all there is and could not be determined by anything external to it, everything within it is self-determined.
the video opens with how most philosophers reject "no free will" but the majority support compatibilism, not libertarianism. while I'm not dogging on the video for that alone, I had the impression that this video would represent that majority consensus among philosophers, but it doesn't.
Normal distribution type of distribution right? The majority goes to the center
@@lavabeard5939 all of this talks are BS
Its all arrogance and ego. You want to believe you understand the world, and since you cant explain free will with your understanding, you outright deny it.
Philosophers are bs as well, they only take that "compatibilism" stance because otherwise they cut off their own legs and their arrogant arguments would truly make no sense, so they are forced to integrate free will
Nobody knows nothing, this whole discussion is pure hubris and arrogance
Most philosophers definitley support free will. Lol.
@@skepticmonkey6923 libertarianism is barely more popular than no free will. the majority are compatibilists, which isn't represented here in this video, since he rejects causal determinism.
@@DavidAlejandroMoraCampos-vn2pu there isn't a center here.
16:14 here's another way of framing that exact same argument. You wanted to go to Spain, and you wanted to go to Italy, but your want to go to one outweighs your want to go to the other. I think it covers all of the same bases but in a more simple format
17:00 I don't think this is sufficient. The reason you choose one way or another boils down to what you value, and that's once again something outside your control. A rational decision is the process of evaluating the reasons to choose between two options against your preferences, ie. wants. I don't think you have any meaningful control over how that evaluation happens, either.
Would you have a debate with him? I find the topic of freewill rather interesting despite not believing we possess it. Certain things only have certain options, and eventually, you run out of options and wills. You would've made the same decision because of who you are.
Other people disagree, but that's just how life is! I'd love to see you both speak on it.
Alex also implies *all* actions must be subject to free will. Thus, delusion or deceit (but not necessarily intentional).
I can't remember if he's explicit about it in that specific video, but in general, he grants that it's free will if any of our actions are free.
I remember him saying it specifically in the Ben Shapiro discussion.
@@tokeivo Sure, but he should be consistent. Sometimes he makes me wonder.
13:10 okay, I feel that the Duty argument felt a little silly because they may just be going to war for Duty, but why are they so compelled to complete their duty? Isn’t it just because they have a stronger want or desire to fulfill their duty, then to not fight? So in essence, this can still be considered a want versus force argument.
I also thought that argument was entirely silly as well. I am currently in the Army and I too do not want to fight in a war. But the thing is, this guy is only giving the 1 reason for not wanting to fight in a war which is duty. How about this option, because I don't want to die in a war? See this guy fundamentally equates performing service for the country equal to fighting in a war. They are similar but they may not have the same reasons for doing so. I want to serve my country because I feel obligated to defend my country as a duty. But I don't want to go to war because my want to live is stronger. They simply are not related in the same way he is proposing in my opinion.
As he said, that line of argument begs the question, reducing all normative instances to covert desires. You CAN do it, but you do it because you presuppose the conclusion is true. In other words, this line of reasoning doesn't demonstrate that behind the force of a duty there is a desire, it presupposes it.
I think the disagreement lies not in wants (which seems to just be a question of what you define as wanting.) its manly that you argue that deliberation is a free process while I would assume that O'Conner would argue that even the process of deliberating between options is predetermined. (which is also what neurology seems to suggest)
I agree there is a semantic element to the issue. But O'Connor justifies the impossibility of controlling wants by just asking us whether we can control them, and concludes there's 'not a chance' as wants are just facts. But this of course would not fly with decisions or deliberation, since it seems, intuitively, that we can control these. If he thinks deliberation is predetermined he'd need an argument for it beyond what he supplies. And appeals to neuroscience etc. would require a raft of metaphysical assumptions about the nature of the mind to go through, and would make the claim far less plausible.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy it seems like you are deliberately trying to miss the point....which is the case, most of the time in this matter with everyone who WANTS free will to be true.....yes, you can change your wants ..we change them all the time but the point is you would still require another want to change that want and we don't create our wants we only realise them because again to even create a want we would require a want first to create it... I love some really deep philosophical discussion, but at this point... i would have to say all these free will supporters are coming off more and more ridiculous... trying to preserve an obviously false idea by any means necessary.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy I don't understand how neuroscience appeals to metaphysics. Could you expand on that?
@cabellocorto5586 neuroscience itself doesn't appeal to metaphysics, not does physics. But if you apply neuroscientific results to philosophical issues like free will, you need some metaphysical assumptions to bridge the conceptual gap. For example, that mental states are identical to brain states. Or that mental states cannot be multiply realised in the brain. And that, even if so, the brain is prior to the mind. All these are highly dubious assumptions.
@Enoynanone why assume every course of action must be explained by a want (including changing your wants)? O'Connor gets this idea from Schopenhaur, and as far as I know, no one thinks that these days. If you do insist on there being a fully explanatory set of wants for every decision, this is similar to the idea of having explanatory reasons for every choice. In which case there is perhaps an infinite regress and the result is that everything is chosen for a reason, which if you can choose those reasons/wants as you say, gives you everything you could want for free will. I.e. it is pretty much the view I defend.
I firmly believe that if a person believes in free will, it's just because that person is really damn bad with logic. Im convinced, it's almost like a test to see how good someone is with it.
FREE WILL is how we respond to our environment, but environmental circumstances and not based on our FREE WILL.
That's a great, concise way of saying it.
That means we have different degrees of free will depending on how well we know our environment.
@@justanothernick3984Up to a point, but then nature takes over.
There was some comparison with a dog on a leash following a cart. It can move around a bit, but still it stricty has to follow the cart. It could try many different things, but at some point it realizes that it's only making him tired and hurt so he decides out of hia "free will" to just follow the cart.
People have come to the belief that they don't have free will because of their environment. Real academic level philosophy is shut off. People encounter a cartoon version and have said "No thank you". They have said "No" to the crazy ideologies that tell people that they are "lazy" or responsible for all the wrong in the world and should only blame themselves for their situation.
The problem is that to turn the tables on the ideologues we need "free will" so that we can blame them for contributing to our toxic society. It is not necessary for them to be toxic and manipulative.
You don't necessarily have the capacity to control that too,
@@yoooyoyooo
If the dog had the capability to cut the leash it would be a more accurate description because the more means you have, the bigger the free will.
I get that biologically we all are like fish swimming in a stream and you tire if you swim against it but clearly not all fish swim the same.
3:55 in academic philosophic circles Alex' definition of free will may be "high bar", however I would argue he hits the nail on the head considering that to my knowledge, this is infact how most people think and feel about their supposed free will.
The fundamental problem of Alex is that he does not distinguish sensual appetite (we can call it: desire) from rational appetite (we can call it: will). We do not control our sensual appetites or desires, but we control our rational appetites or what we want which is moved by what appears to us as good and what appears to us as good is like that due to our beliefs about reality which ultimatelly depends on our mind.
Love the way you put this.
Yep. Its combined with a typical special pleading many on Alex‘s side make: their argument, implicitly, or explicitly assumes that to be “in control” would require being in control of everything - Every antecedent to all your decisions, including every single desire. So he makes it into an incoherent “it’s turtles all the way down they can never be satisfied” argument. This is clearly not the normal and reasonable notion of “control” - Nobody normally asserts that you need to have been control of everything in order to have some relevant instance of “control.” If I’m driving my car safely where I want to go and you asked me if I’m in control, the correct answer is “yes.” Nobody thinks that before I’m justified in that affirmation that I must be in control of where all the roads were laid in my city, or in control of absolutely everything I think, or in control of having chosen my parents, etc. But I certainly am and control of the car in the sense that is relevant: I can direct it to where I choose to go and coordinate its actions safely. I’m also in control of my body because otherwise how would I be in control of the car using my body? And I am also in a relevant sense and control of my thoughts because if I wasn’t, how could my thoughts control my body to do what I want? If I did not have some relevant sense of controlling what I think and controlling my thoughts to direct them at the task at hand, then I could never accomplish anything - I’d just be at the mercy of random thoughts. But Alex just wants to keep asking “ OK you might be in control of D but then are you in control of C? But if you are in control of C, are you in control of B? And he will simply keep moving that goalpost back until he hit something that you were not in control of and then declare “, therefore you were not REALLY in control! Which is just a nonsense notion of control to begin with.
We don’t control what you call our “Rational appetite” either. If we follow this because it aligns with what we see as good then it is once again beyond our will because we don’t control what we see as “good”.
Whether or not we are really moved by rational thought is disputable. Many psychologists find that what we believe is based more on intuitions, and the rationality comes in as post-hoc justification.
Both of which are, "wants." You guys are doing a horrible job at trying to sink O'Connor's claim. Desire, Instead of trying to semantically tapdance around the word, "want," why don't you give just one example of a conscious choice made that ISN'T rooted in a want.
All this talking, and I have yet to hear any arguments that aren't inadvertently fortifying O'Connor's argument.
It's good to see more people making good arguments for free will on RUclips. It's also very interesting to see See an argument for free will from a non-Christian perspective I am a Christian and before this video the best arguments for free will I found involved some form of dualism.
Hang on, the fact that causal relationships were developed in the context of free will debates has nothing to do with whether free will actually exists. It's like saying science is compatible with a religious world view (maybe Muslim or Christian) just because it stemmed from the same institutions. Or that Christianity and slavery are compatible because one was used to justify the other.
Interesting video by the way 👍
I like this guy’s analysis a lot. I too am libertarian (though maybe in a slightly attenuated way), and I think our “acquaintance” with our freedom is epistemically so deep, it is only “that I exist at all” which is more epistemically certain, including the existence of an outside world.
A choice is free iff an agent could have done otherwise and what determined what was done was the agent’s causal power to choose from a repertoire of possibilities. If the choice was 100% objectively predictable, and/or retroactively causally necessary, one is not free. The paradox of free will is that the more your choices are determined (intrinsically) the more you “feel” free. (Because you simply “flow” with your “wants” without external hindrance). Any time a counterfactual course of action is entertained by the mind the ontological possibility of that choice coming into being is real, however likely or unlikely it is to be chosen for. If I entertain the idea, “should I jump in front of this moving bus?” the possibility of this action coming into being is real, however unlikely. (And this “unlikeliness” is both objective and subjective). My reasons, which are real things in my mind, make it extremely unlikely that this will occur, because, say, I don’t want to be injured, but if it did occur, for other reasons, like perhaps my desire to demonstrate my free will, then there will still be no objective contradiction. Either choice was truly a possible way things could have gone. Usually our reasons are clear and therefore we are very determined by them. But, in cases where reasons conflict in my own tribunal of consciousness, the reasons that win win ONLY because those are the reasons that are chosen. Free will implies that reality could have been otherwise. Any model of reality which doesn’t admit this potentiality into reality is an impoverished model. How this relates to morality is a further and more nuanced question.
Well said!
great video, thanks. I'm personally more interested in the sourcehood conception of freewill. I've never heard that terminology before. I'm agnostic about determinism, so I think that makes me more of a compatibalist. I've never heard the mathematical conception of science as being at odds with a causal-mechanistic conception.
a good resource about agency is the philosophy of biology: there's literature about how living things are distinct from non-living things, even if they can share a similar kind of organized complexity. a hurricane is self-sustaining but it's entirely the product of external sources, while living things have their own autopoiesis and change their environment to suit their needs.
Just to clarify, compatibilism is simply the thesis that "Free will and determinism are compatible".
Usually, when someone says they are a compatibilist, they mean to say they believe determinism is true and we have free will.
However, you could be a compatibilist and still think we don't have free will, or determinism isn't true, or both.
Your stance on determinism does not make you a compatibilist, your stance on the relationship between free will and determinism does.
Is there a reason for your decisions or actions?
If yes then they are necessarily determined by the reasons for them, by their explanation.
If not then they are random... there's no free will.
Free will is an attempt to mesh these two unmeshable answers into a justification for praise and blame
I watched about 20 minutes of this. This is just a word game around the definition of the word want. You're trying to make want mean desire like some emotional implication, when Alex says want he simply means an action with your body and brain work together to attempt to manifest. After all the inputs are weighed in a particular moment, your brain comes to some conclusion as to what is the best action to take, it sends impulses to your body to then take those actions. That feeling you have between when your brain decides that it's going to do something and the thing happens is want. You cannot control your wants.
I read about 2 sentences of this, how is this any different from the word games played by the guy who made the video? Alex’s argument is all word games too, that’s called philosophy and it formed the basis of reason necessary to formulate science. Mathematics could also be considered a form of philosophy, you can’t escape it if you want to make logical arguments, even if the logical positivists would like to.
@@ZackaryReavesbecause the definition doesn't change the validity of the conclution if the logic is valid, and it is. You can change definitions but free will was still proven non existant as far as we know. The name of any definition you use is just a name it doesn't really matter, call it 'want' or whatever, ehat matter is what you mean by that and the conclution is tied to the meaning not the word.
@@m.dave2141 Proven? When? How?
Wanting to chess is a want, choosing moves to facilitate that are based on said want and picking a move between options is based on intuition which feels better and this is also a want.
if you moved the one chess piece, you would have to want to move that peice more than the other or you wouldn't have moved that piece, correct?
Yeah he's just adding "deliberation". But just because you deliberate doesn't really move the argument. Because deliberation is just another process, and moving the knight is the output. I don't understand why he thinks moving the want down a level via a game changes anything
Yes, he completely fails to explain this point. It makes the rest of the video unwatchable since he can’t seem to understand or fully appreciate this criticism
Thanks for the comment.
If I must first 'want' to move the knight before I can move it, then that 'want' arose from my reasoning processes about what was most suited to winning the game. So it is not explanatory. If someone asked why I moved the knight and I simply said 'because I wanted to' that would explain nothing. Nor would it connect it to the true reason which is about how it was directed to my explanatory want of winning the game (or controlling the centre, or threatening a fork, etc.) and how the knight move supported that aim.
@wgo523 Moving back to deliberation is how the process becomes centred in the reasoning mind rather than external drivers like desires that we do not typically associate with ourselves or as being controllable. We intuit we have control over our reasoning, but not our desires. So by emphasising the role of deliberation, the capacity for choice is included in the process. If you say the process of reasoning is automated, that is pure dogma. And I have no idea what kind of 'control' might satisfy the conditions required for free will. Basically, if I can show our actions are explained by our decisions, and these are not caused by prior events (which is what the video argues for) I am happy to say we have free will, even if others are not.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy You're merely kicking the can down the road. You assert that your desire to move that piece came from your reasoning. But where did that reasoning come from? Your desire to win? Where did your desire to win come from? Whatever type of reasoning that you try to give as explanation for that desire, I will also be able to show you had a desire behind it. But with just a little bit of meditation on the emergence of your own thoughts, you can verify for yourself that in reality, you're not reasoning through every desire. They will just emerge from the abyss. Next time you go to the fridge and grab something out stop and ask yourself, what made me grab the snack that I just grabbed? Did I really just reason through that? Or did I just want that? You will recognize that those desires are fed to you through your subconscious. And it is testable and verifiable that your subconscious has determined what choice you will make before your conscious self knows that a choice has been made
@@AbsolutePhilosophy recommend looking into the libbet studies. And perhaps some neuroscientists like Heather Berlin and Sam Harris
5:34 You can have free wants that are open to many possibilities, control isn’t required for making a decision
The cognitive blindness that the illusion of free will facilitates is practically all powerful.
I dont understand
Oh but your so strong and enlightened that you have over come it? Did you actually watch the video or just read the title?
@@Arbitrary_Moniker Quite the opposite.
@@derekofbaltimore The illusion tricks highly intelligent people into thinking there is no illusion.
@adenjones1802 I watched the entire video. His argument breaks down quite explicitly. I'm not free of the illusion yet, either. If I were, I wouldn't spend any time responding, lol!
Im not sure "free" means something in itself.
I dont have a "free will". I have a will, and I am "free" to use it as I wish.
Also I think if I "have" freedom, it ceases to be free. Possession implies restriction.
Neh, you dont have free will. People usually come up with a definition that perfectly copes with how illusionary the concept of free will even is. I remember at some point, some dude said that the fact that he thinks that he has free will, is perfectly enough to consider him having free will. So naturally I asked him if thinks he's a genius...
what about things you do randomly?
e.g. slicing vegetables uncontrolled?
Did I want to do it uncontrolled?
What about actions based on reflexes, something scared me and I lift my arm.
Were I forced to do it?
I can train myself to avoid this reaction and lift my other arm instead.
so I am not really forced and I also dont have any "wants" involved.
what if I decide all my actions based on a dice.
i will do many things because I just follow it. this is basically the duty-argument
Completely disregard the words "Free Will". Instead recognize that we don't get to decide when an epiphany or great idea occurs, and we don't forget people's names on purpose. Just made a response 📽️
minute 9.21 in a game of chess you WANT to do the best moove to win the game or to prevent your oponent from wining. You analize possible outcomes for each moove and choose the one than you think can put you in a better possition towards the objective you WANT!!! -.- your opponent can force you to moove a piece also!!! where´s the free will???
Great video! I don't usually appreciate philosophical content on RUclips due to consistent misrepresentation of the material but it seems that you have done a great job at both keeping the material friendly to the general public and not giving into inaccurate simplifications! I hope that your channel grows to rival the others.
That being said I also wish to ask a question about something that was not clear to me:
If we accept the notion that the state of the universe at time t>0 is causally determined by its state at time t-1 and the governing laws, and do not comment on any cause of the state of the universe at time t=0, we can arrive at both the notions of "could have been otherwise" and "some events are caused by me" without ever arriving at "I could have made some events be different" which I believe would be the ordinary understanding of free will as someone being the source of some events and having the ability to have done otherwise. I believe you clarify this later on by saying that free will should not be thought to require choices between possible futures from a determined present, but rather could also be thought as the same mental states (local sameness across realities or possible worlds) causing different outcomes. From these I understand that you believe that free will can be neatly separated into its causation and "could have been otherwise" elements which is very hard for me understand. If I am a deterministic causer (every mind-state* I have has a deterministic output) of events that also have non-deterministic causes (governing laws of nature, the state of the universe at time t=0, quantum wave function collapse etc.) and hence "could have been different" how can we conclude that "I" have free will? I may cause different events in this conception, as non-deterministic elements may cause me to be in different mind-states, but clearly events could not have been different due to me, therefore, I may conclude that something has a free will, like the universe at time t=0, but I don't seem to. Could you clarify if I have missed something?
Thanks,
X
*using this very broadly to also include things like decisions and "the decision-maker" and the soul if it exists and so on.
Everyone knows they have free will. It's a fundamental experience that you cannot prove, but instead you can demonstrate that those who deny it behave aa if they believe it's true.
As soon as you make the statement "I believe" or "I don't believe" then you are already making an implicit free will claim. The statement implies that you are choosing between alternatives; that you are accepting one idea and not the other. That's a choice.
Everyone knows they have free will and they believe in free will; as soon as something was stolen from them or they were punched in the face they would want justice for themselves, which desire implies they understood the act was volitional, or, performed with free will. If a person truly rejected the concept of free will they would not ever seek justice for themselves or others, they would not use terms like "believe" which imply choice, and they most certainly would not bother to do debates or make persuasive arguments to convince people that free will does not exist because no one could freely change their mind anyway! If you make any kind of persusive argument at all then it demonstrates that you actually do believe in free will.
Free will is a fundamentally self-evident experience which cannot be denied, the same way the hotness of fire cannot be denied, and the way that the wetness of water is directly experienced. You don't prove free will exists; you prove that those who deny that it exists are lying by showing that their behavior is inconsistent with their claims.
Of course, a determinist believes that I had no choice but to follow my own free will to write that, so why should such a person argue with me?
Great comment here!
The idea that people are "lying" doesn't mean their argument is wrong though, that is a fundamentally incorrect approach. There is exactly one correct rebuttal to hard determinists and no other: compatibilism.
Determinists are correct in stating that all behavior is predetermined, but they are wrong to assume free will and causality are at odds.
@@fellinuxvi3541 *Determinists are correct in stating that all behavior is predetermined*
Predeterminded by what? Or by who?
@@gaiusbaltar7122 By material causes, since the beginning of the universe, everything can only turn out a certain way
@@fellinuxvi3541 *By material causes, since the beginning of the universe, everything can only turn out a certain way*
Ok, fine. Could you explain intelligence and purpose of human actions with pure and determined material causes? how can purpose emerge from determined causes since they are totally contradictory?
Lovely video! Fun! BUT… issues.
Regarding the chess game. Cross examination afterwards can sure lead the player to assume they could’ve moved the knight or the rook to accomplish a win. But, the huge punch with anti free will arguments is that the player would have ALWAYS moved the rook. Regardless of understanding in hind sight he could have moved the knight. If you replayed the scenario 1000 times it’s always the rook that is moved.
In regards to the soldier going off to war to serve his duty. A better way to have said Alex’s initial argument was:
“You either do things because you want to, or you feel like you must”
In respects to epistemology.
So the solder just feels that must serve his duty. It’s still congruent with the initial argument.
Just some thoughts! Again cool vid!
The reason Alex doesn’t include contrast reasons. Are because those don’t matter. They are just the wide spectrum of reasons. You do not control your will. Your reasons control your will. Alex doesn’t harp on the specifics because they are all vastly different
How on earth is it free will because the details are clearer? If your reason dictates your decision then you have no free will
"if your reason dictates your decision then you have no free will" what an absolutely absurd thing to say. All of you are begging the question with this garbage kind of reasoning.
@@davidryan8547 can you choose outside of your reasons?
@@davidryan8547 is your will your ability to choose?
Do you have a way to choose against your reasons?
How could a will be possible, if all your decisions are 100% dependent on your reasons(convictions, external experience, wisdom, knowledge, attitude, emotions, hunger, evidence, epistemology…etc All of which are dependent on external causes)
@@johnmacias488 "Reasons" is a very vague term, as is "external causes". As the video pointed out, the fact that there is a reason does not mean we did not deliberate on that reason. We often deliberate among different seemingly plausible and/or desirable reasons. The reasoning behind deliberation will be based on logical necessity, or on logical mistakes, or there might be non-rational desires behind it rather than logical reasoning, and all these processes are necessary rather than free; it is the deliberation among them that is free, though.
Also "reasons" are not the same thing as causes. As the video implicitly pointed out, causes can be intended in a temporal sense (first event causes second event), as well as in a formal sense (the formal law of gravity or the structure of spacetime causes all bodies with mass to accelerate in specific directions). Neither of these have to be ALL encompassing or absolutely universal in order for science to work and make sense. There can be regularities that work alongside autonomous choices. The phenomenon of regularities is the one that gives us the (partial) idea of causal determinism, the phenomenon of choices is the one that gives us the idea of "reasons" to act in one way or another. I cannot choose my causes, of course, but I can very well choose my reasons.
The base assumption of free will is merely the assumption that there are uncaused causes, or that the concept of causation doesn't work the way our intuition suggests. It is the process of deliberation that, according to the libertarian, is uncaused in that sense.
And there is nothing irrational in the idea of an uncaused cause - even in a fully materialist worldview, unless you accept infinite causal regress (which itself opens up a whole bunch of problems), you need at least one uncaused cause to get things started.
@@johnmacias488 thats a chicken or egg question. I can have 5 reasons for one thing but then come up with a brand new reason for something else at any time.
Do you understand that yours and Alex's argument would lead us to not being able to trust our reasoning in the philosophical sense of the term? We would no longer be able to trust our very thoughts.
I recommend reading the work of Professor Robert Sapolsky especially his book 'Determined' which is a deep dive into the neuroscience and behavioural science behind the fact that we don't have any free will whatsoever, truly brilliant reading.
A person who says there is no free will freely choose to believe there is no free will, thus contradicting their whole belief.
Did they choose to believe that? Or was it predetermined? Also it's well understood that you can't choose what you believe, too, so your argument falls apart before it's even been formulated
@@scarlethart7745i agree. Being so smug you think you can disprove determinism with a mere RUclips comment is so sad
No
2:30 saying the person "compulsively liking and subscribing" to philosophy videos is the SOURCE of their actions presupposes an individualistic, boundary creating philosophy of self which I would argue against.
In my view, which is supported by physics, there is no seperate YOU from the Universe, so ultimately, the source of his actions comes from the first mover, which we do not know anything about but which certainly tracks back to the big bang at least.
This way of understanding living beings as part of the universe allows for a full picture of the real factors in any action taken by any so-called "individual".
The problem with so many of these "we have free will" arguments is the implicit disaggregation of the universe. Stuff, matter, whatever there is, we will just call the universe. The universe has behaviour. We have observed many types of behaviours which we model as physics, for example. Our conciousness is a behaviour of the universe as we are of the universe. Certain configurations of the universe can self-organize into our bodies, producing all the amazing emergent behaviours that we can observe. The configuration of our bodies determines the set of behaviours it can generate. This is a very large set of behaviours. Moreover, it is a dynamic set of behaviours as our configuration of the universe that is our bodies is continually changing over time.
So then, what is free will? Free will is the ability of the universe to perform behaviours that are independent on the universe itself, i.e., the universe is insufficient to generate its own complete set of behaviours. In other words, for the universe to do what it does, it needs external behaviours to generate the universe as we know it.
I am firmly in the camp of we do not have free will as I think the universe's behaviour is entirely self-dependent.
Would you be open to the idea that the universe has free will on how to behave, and we inherit a part of that (and hence have free will) as we are a part of it?
I would replace universe with a set of things that are real. Then "it needs external behaviours to generate the universe as we know it." becomes an certain falsehood because no behaviors exist outside of a set of all behaviors that exist.
Bit less visual but more solid for the nitpickers.
You have free will to act within the boundaries that the universe puts in place. Arguing free will is more or less a semantics game. I can choose freely to either engage with this comment, or to ignore it. We have an innumerable amount of thoughts that we choose not to act on. The argument can be extended to endless hypothetical situations where we construct a thought that is restricted by the boundaries of reality, but then we are just bending the concept of choice and will to fit our idea. Free will is not the same concept as omnipotent access to boundless realities of choice.
@@chasemiles9569 your ability to choose to engage with this comment or not is itself a behaviour of your brain.
People conflate agents with free will. The ability to make decisions is a part of the system.
@@Jacob_A_OBrien yet without the system there would be no agent. My brain is a means to an end, not the end itself
As one of Alex’s fans, it’s good for me to remember that he’s not infallible. A lot of this video went over my head, but at least it opened me up to the wider debate. Thank you!
show me a brain that acts independently of stimuli. What this guy will try to do is selectively pick which stimuli that fits into his world view rather than consider all stimuli. shortcut to the answer is the brain cannot exist independent of its environment, many fold over, and is subject to inputs from each level of system that acts upon it or within it.
You don't have free will, you have a narrow hallway of choices that gives you the illusion of free will. That hallway is dictated by your environment and brain chemistry whether you like it or not.
Libertarians are myopic ideologues
Just a simple repackage of Dennett's arguments, including the misunderstanding of both classical and quantim physics and how subatomic-level phenomena apply to whole organisms with consciousness. If you are beinf absolutely generous, you could call it an appeal to possibility fallacy rather then outright ignorance, but a meager argument regardless.
I suggest going back to the drawing board.
And while you're there, look up steelmaning because apparently not really doing that is what I believe the biggest reason as to why you seem to fail at pretty much every step.
Edit: I'm trying to be reasonably charitable and polite, but sentences like "the decision itself is the uncaused cause" make me wanne throw out the charity with the bathwater.
Wait the OP should look up steel manning? Or maybe you were responding to a specific comment thread?
And are you saying that because he did NOT steel man Alex's argument then its a failure in your eyes?
@@derekofbaltimore I'm saying that I think he didn't steelman Alex's argument (enough), so he missed the mark and got lost in semantics.
As I believe I've mentioned, I'm not quite sure how charitable I should be, but while his argument seems honest enough, I also got the impression that he only tried to counter Alex's exact words, more or less, not the reasoning and meaning behind them, as to make the his own counter-argument easier.
A bit of a strawman, basically, by being too technical and pedantic about the words used or not used, mixed with rather baseless or poorly reasoned assertions.
Examples:
"desire" vs. "want"
"duty" somehow being (based on) neither force nor want
Edit: Or he just doesn't get it. Some sections I found very silly.
@@se7enhaender i see. So for you a legitimate debate requires both sides to steelman each others arguments else (and wait for validation from the other side) to prove you indeed are understanding the full thrust of each others points?
Sounds good but i wonder how many arguments, online or off-line, academic or otherwise, hold to that structure? Things certainly would be better if they did, barring direct emotional communication through brain chips.
I didnt watch Alex's account. Does he often follow this structure?
@@derekofbaltimore I believe Alex does it at least more often than a lot of other people. That being said, in a direct discussion, asking for clarification right away does the same job in most cases, without the need for a steelman, if the person who is giving the clarification doesn't have some inability to put their ideas in the proper words.
@@Omnis-Determinatio-Est-Negatio The arguments made in this video were just bad imo. It's really not that deep.
And I don't get paid enough (literally nothing) to go through this awful video again to dissect it for you. I gave my immediate thoughts, and if that isn't good enough for you, so be it. I have no desire to convince you. (Pun intended)
Does a chess playing computer executing a program have free will? The decision of the computer obviously has a rational explanation. Once the program is loaded and runs, all of the decision making is located within the computer. Was the decision made within the computer? Yes. If the compter program includes monitoring the environment, or perhaps a Monte Carlo simulation to model the effects of a given choice (in this case, the exthernal input can be a series of random numbers, which could be provided by monitoring Brownian noise in another electronic component of the computer). it could have done otherwise. It is obvious to me that it does not have free will. But how is this different than the chess player that does have free will? It seems to me that the only difference is that we don't have a clear understanding as to how the wetware Baysean inference engine between our ears work. We can even use proper functional programming, so that every decision by the program is determined by the inputs to the program, so that the program is analogous to the laws of physics. Now all the decisions are the result of functions of state and a random number generator, all of which are contained 'within the computer'.
Thanks for the comment. This is a good line of thinking, but I would say the answer is 'no'. What the computer does is not a 'decision' since it involves no rationality, which requires a mind. The rational explanation you allude to is one that _we_ provide and not one deliberated by the computer. Also, the notion of the decision being 'within' is not about the location of the decision, as it is in the computer case, but of 'proceeding from' the rationality of the human mind. And, finally, computers cannot value anything, and so, technically, I don't even think they can play chess. Sure, they can process information to result in a given set of board positions (ones we would call checkmating the opponent) under conditions of what pieces can legally move where, but they have no concept of 'winning', which is a value concept, and so cannot, strictly speaking, play chess (this is an argument made very well in a paper called _Truth_ by Michael Dummett).
Free will implies that god is not omniscience. Omniscience is all knowing, past, present, and future.
If I can surprise god, he does not know all
That's funny, you wish to invoke the lack of free will as a way of giving glory to God. Most people who believe in free will invoke free will in order to excuse him for all the evils in the world which they suppose him to have created. What if God just doesn't exist?
Not necessarily. See Molinism as a solution to the problem of divine foreknowledge and free will. Of course, it has its critiques but there are responses as well etc. It gives a reasonable answer to the problem at hand.
@@g_man_rising4345 well what you should do is establish whether he does or does not firstly.. quite simple
Funny quote:
Yes i have free will; i have no choice but to have it.
Dan Barker argues that God cannot have free will if he knows the future. He can't just do what he wants once he knows the future.
The omni-powers seem paradoxical and illogical in many ways.
Disliked and unsubscribed, good video though
A truly free thinker!
What a performance.
Very early in the video. We are shown why philosophy is not the field of study to answer the question of free will. When the question is asked The assumption is that you are asking about the common understanding of free will. But off the bat, the philosopher proposes more than one model of free will. The problem with this is once the philosopher deviates from the common understanding they have Begun equivocating.
13:00 - So their desire/want to do their duty is greater? I dont see a contradiction to Alex's position.
First, the notion of free will is, i think incoherent, because it involves both determinism and the lack of it... Plus
1. Any action is either caused or uncaused.
2. If its uncaused, its random.
3. if its caused, the cause is either caused or uncaused.
4. This repeats until you get an infinite chain of deterministic causation (if the action is determined it's not free will) or until it terminates at something uncaused (again random therefore no free will).
I find that all of your examples of 'free will' in action are nothing more than an arbitrary point at which you elected to stop investigating the chain of cause and effect. For one example, in the Spain vs. Italy example, you claim that we make our choice based on criteria, but ultimately choose which criteria are more important to us. What you fail to realize is that we have absolutely no reason at all to believe that we are able to choose which criteria are more important to us. Which option we choose is based on how we value the criteria, which is in turn based on how much we personally want each one. You agree that we can't control what we want or how much we want it, and this is clearly an example of wanting something.
for the slower members at the back, I'll explain some of the examples.
why did you go to spain? I wanted to...
this explanation of events does not delve deep into explaining the causation.
why did you go to itali. It was a toss up between Spain for XYZ and Itali for ABC. I ultimately decided reasons XYZ were more compelling. that is a far better explaination of events then. i wanted to to to itali, but wanted to go to spain for more. people ask you, what reasons, and you give reasons to your reasons why you wanted it more. but it is, the reasons that ultimately explain why you chose to do S over I.
The chess example;
you can't choose to want to lose, but you can choose how you will win. saying you moved knight to D4 instead of bishop to C5. you'd provide an explaination why that would be more conducive to winning. not that you simply wanted to win. that alone does not explain why you did that. specifically want, does not explain why you chose A instead of B in any circumstances. because it assumes that you could not have made a different decision.
this relates to O'conners premise regarding determinism.
if you're truly curious, and don't like analogies to simplify abstract and difficult to define concepts. you'd look into his paper, instead of this advertisement for his paper. this is like a cliff notes summary.
Okay we dont have a 100% free will if that means that the only thing deciding what you'll do is your will. We have limitations to what we can do always and in certain situations. Furthermore will is in it self not free. What our will says can be effected by what we know for instance
Damn, the comments here are crazy. Feels like Reddit came to RUclips. Bunch of fanboys and teenagers with their degrees from reddit-academy lmao
Great video! I believe the mistake Alex is making in his line of reasoning, is how he equates our desires as being the casual determinants behind all of our decisions, as opposed to just “influencing factors.”
Moreover, I do not think it is logically feasible to reduce our subjective experience of agent causation, (i.e. feeling as if we are first acting causes in a chain of causal events), to event causation (physical event causes another physical event,…)
My observation about this topic is that the denial of free will is an ideological position. There isn't any argument that will change someone's position, because they do not want to change their mind. People deny free will because that belief appeals to a passive fatalist who feels powerless in their life and lacks self control and self discipline. It externalizes the locus of control. It's comforting to those who believe it especially if they lack self efficacy. Having free will is not the default state of a person, it is something that is developed and exists on a spectrum. Someone's understanding of their present moment and their ability to realize the choices that are being made, and or could be made and foresee the results of them and plan and execute those plans is a measure of how much "free will" someone has. Someone on the path of least resistance who is deep in the groove of it and coasting by will not want to believe that there is something else that they could be doing, something that takes immense effort and sacrifices, but will put them on a radically different path. You are in control. That is what this life is. You have something very special and decide what to do with it. If you are in a circumstance with some level of freedom, there are things that you can think and plan and then actualize which will make you the cause of effects, not the effect of causes.
Spot on, determinists are life-negating cynicists, its actually quite gross that people would even associate with such a position.
@@BlackthorneSoundandCinema i believe I have control because that’s what the complicated system of sensory and processing neurons provide me with. I’m not fatalist, I accept responsibility for actions that I take. I cannot fathom a society that operates differently.
However, I don’t see how I can have free will. The fact that I take certain actions based on how my brain operates gives me no more “will” than a computer that interacts with its environment with sensors. The difference between me and a computer is that I experience my existence - probably in part due to sufficiently recursive networks in my brain that allow me to reflect and pontificate endlessly. And as a human, I experience a range of emotions that are unique to human beings, who have a shared understanding of what “emotions” are.
Interestingly, in many/most cases I am not in control about how a stimulus rises an emotion out of me. So in that way I have even less will than a computer, which likely isn’t emotionally affected by things outside its control. In other ways of course, I have much more control than a computer does, and while it of course FEELS like I internally will these actions into existence upon my external surroundings, I can easily see how that’s merely an illusion.
I am an individual that carries out his own actions and should be held responsible for them, but I can’t simply concede that I pull this “will” to act from nowhere, in a way that is somehow immaterial and acutely sourced from within.
Nonsense. Fundamental attribution error. I don’t believe in free will because I see no evidence for it. Read Sapolsky s book. This has nothing to do with what’s confortable and everything to do with what is true. Such a narrow minded view
@@skepticmonkey6923 that's dehumanising. I love life, I deeply care about how my actions affect others and strive to be a better person. But from a logical point of view I simply cannot (😉) see how my actions can be free. So yeah, it's easy for you to think that people you disagree with are just bad awful people but this is such a dangerous mindset. Please don't
Being the source of your own actions but not being able to do otherwise is not a form of free. Will, it's a form of fate. We can see examples of this in Greek mythology When heroes cause their fate by trying to circumvent it. They are the source of the actions that lead to the eventuality they could not avoid.
The first time I heard a true debate about having real "free will", I thought people are nuts if they think I do not have free will. We grow up in a culture that sensitized us to think that we have free will as Judeo Christian beliefs start with Eve "freely" choosing to eat an apple and therefore we are all sinners. Seriously listen to Sam Harris, Galen Strawson or Robert Sapolsky. I will bet you will still think that you have free will but as the information settles in, you will realize that you probably have none or very little. Learn this fact will do wonders for hate, empathy and anger. It does not mean you will think criminals should go free as they have shown that they need to be rehabilitated and many kept from society as they are a danger to all.
If 'I' "want" something, then there must be an 'I' in the first place. And if 'I' exist then I will have preferences of which are based on experiences, genetics and feelings. If I have feelings then I can feel good or bad about something. Just because I might not understand why I feel good or bad does not negate the relevance or importance of choice based on how I feel. It is the ability to feel that makes life worth living.
"Without feeling there is no meaning" Cher Lokk
The very fact that money markets have acronyms such as 'FOMO' and' FUD' (Fear of Missing Out and Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) proves that the, so called 'logical' environment of money, is really driven by feelings. Fear.
Let's take the game of Golf - imagine we made an Ai robot that could strike a ball perfectly every time and could score a hole-in-one every time. Would any one play golf again? Would anyone even bother to watch it? I highly doubt it. It is the very fact that a human being can a bad shot at any time ( make mistakes or bad choices) that makes the game so interesting. How the golfer reacts to the bad shot and deals with where the ball lies is why it is s captivating a sport. This is why I believe Ai will help reveal what it is to be human more than ever. For consciousness and free-will to exist then the ability to have feelings are vital. When searching for a house or an apartment to buy, one can factor in all the data possible as a good investment, but ask any real estate agent and they will tell you that the sale always comes down to how the buyer "feels". In effect, what we feel is what is real. Philosophers often eagerly forget to over look intuition and feelings into any calculation of consciousness. Oh and where do new ideas come from?
In the instance i tell you to think of a number from one to one hundred... But wait, think on it for 10 seconds or so, dont just give me first number that jumps into your mind.
You will find your mind is capable of producing a string of random numbers outside of your control. Its like you open the flood gates and the mind just produces one after the next
BUT then
You choose one... Why did you choose that particular one? Coercion? A want or desire? A special relationship you have with this number?
I (freely) chose 77 because it’s cute. You don’t understand the causal chain behind my free choice because all the deterministic and cosmological factors burned out long ago at lower levels of abstraction. The impulse of determinists to want to explain the causal chain or claim without evidence that it exists says more about them than anything else.
If someone were to walk up to Alex and slap him in the face, it would be expected that Alex might ask the person why he did that. If free will doesn't exist, as Alex contends, then his question would be illogical and nonsensical. The slapper simply had no choice, as it was already predetermined at the Big Bang. In Alex's eyes, the same would hold true for choosing chocolate over vanilla, to someone committing mass murder.
@@TerryUniGeezerPeterson while I do believefree will exists, your statement is countered by alex saying he had no choice but to ask why the other person slapped him
@@derekofbaltimore I was playing devil's advocate, and demonstrating the irrationality of Alex's position.
@@TerryUniGeezerPeterson i understand that. I know we are on the same side. Im just saying i dont know if that example would stand up against scrutiny. His response of "why did you do that" would just be the result of a chain of events and not a freely made question... In his framework
I agree w/parts of your vid and not with others. For the most part I think Alex (and Sam Harris) are correct for how they define free will, but over the past few years, I've come to appreciate how Sean Carroll defines it. At the emergent level of humans, free will exists, that is, the form that we care about.
Great lecture, professor. I really looking up to you as a philosopher.
in the spain and italy example you say you chose spain over italy bc you choose architecture over wine but you dont provide an explanation on why you have chosen archotecture over wine
What does "could have done otherwise", or "could not have done otherwise" even mean?
"... could have ... if ..." makes sense to me. But just a bare "could have"?
But "could'nt have" fails to be meaningful in the same way.
Sounds simpel at first , but I agree. Underrated comment in my opinion.
The answer is simple as well. In "could have" and "could not have" the "If" that is assumed is "If all else was equal", so if you rewound time like a movie could past you with all of the desires and memories of you in the same world have done otherwise.
This does not really conflict with laws being governing obviously. That is because of what is implied by "you", Well more "I" but the result is the Same, if there was a different universe in which my mother existed as she does in this one but had a child with a different father then this child could have done different things than I did. But I would not recognize that other child as myself because it would have a different father and different memories than I do, and I recognize my past memories and the traits I have as a result of being a child of my actual parents as a part of who "I" am. For the same reason I recognize those traits if "you" as part of "you". And therefore alternative universes can exist, but I and you do not exist within those alternative universes, neither does annyone from those alternative universes exist in ours, so they are not relevant to the free will discussion. And therefore, as was mentioned in the video already, concluding that free will does not exist is infact a triviality.
@@younasdar5572 Why do you count your desires and memories as part of "all else"? That is, why do you conceive of such differences as being differences external to the self?
Surely, differences internal to the self being necessary for a difference in one's will, doesn't refute Free Will, but is a pre-condition of it (or else, one is not the cause of one's actions). The question, surely, is wither the self and the not-self can independently vary. But if you get the boundary between the self and not-self wrong, you will get the answer to that question wrong.
@@jeffreyscott4997 I do not count them as external but stil as unchangable facts. Because if time was rewound to any given Moment then I would always have the desires and memories that I have had at that point in time in the past and because every theoretical universe in which you would find a Person who is identical to me except for having different memories or desires at that given point in time might be possible but is stil not applicable because I remember myself as having those desires and memories at that past Moment in time and therefore I would not recognize that Person in the theoretical universe as myself.
And since my future actions are determined by me having had those memories and desires, and having had them is a prerequisite to being me, it therefore follows that I could not have done anything different.
@@younasdar5572 You are counting them as external, because you are supposing them to be unchangeable facts, in the hypothetical of you being different (in that you have made a different choice). They are invariants under variations of you, that's what them being external to you means.
There are plenty of times people make a snap decision to resolve a stalemate, which neither forces one outcome or involves a desire for one outcome. As for whether want is not free, this already assumes the listener subscribes to a philosophy that sees wants and desires as separate entities from a true mind. I don't, and therefore the argument falls flat. If I want something, it's because I have decided that I need it, or it will bring me more joy than other outcomes, or that it will help or please someone I care about, or any number of other reasons. My wants are a result of my thought process, regardless of whether or not I am consciously monitoring and logging every thought running through my head like some sort of philosophical debug mode. From this perspective, Alex's 3rd proposition fails because it draws a false separation between desires and making decisions ("unless you're free to make a decision about making a decision, you're not free to make a decision"), and the fourth proposition is just a declaration of the outcome Alex has chosen "by assumption you are not free to make a decision about making a decision".
At 16:26. The argument isnt solely on the reasons why you choose Spain over Italy but rather if you went back in time would you stop wanting to go to Spain for the said reasons and go to Italy? I think the definition we have for free will either isn't sufficient enough or doesnt hold.
Also we can't control all the things that make us want what we want, we can't control the influence of past experiences, environment, mood etc and this is fundamentally why we may not have as much free will as we think we have. Even a chess player has a style largely hinged on their internal beliefs that they can't control. In other words there is a fundamental reason why he chose to move a given piece over the other although at the surface it looks like he just wanted to win the game.