Do We Have Free Will? - Philosophy Tube
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- Опубликовано: 26 авг 2024
- Do you have free will? Are you sure? David Hume might know.
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We can choose to do whatever we want but we can't choose to want to do what we want to do.
Jack Carton
You can't.
like Schopenhauers "A man can do what he wants but not want what he wants."
Or can we choose? :)
we might have 3rd order volitions, ya never know
...Except you can?
OMG, I've learned more about determinism and free will in five minutes than I have at school in the pas two weeks, and not in a super over-complicated way!!!
Bless this channel!
zombiesandteaparties My pleasure!
Olly, please don't ever stop making videos!
+Sean Sheppheard I'll do my best!
+Philosophy Tube a smart phone..... it behaves in a certain way according to inputs given to it using a operating system to control and organizes everything to make it more manageable. this operating system simplifies what is truly happening ( in a physical way ) into something we can adapt to very quickly, giving us the sense that we have complete control over it. first question is do we have control?
now I take that smart phone and erase all soft wear off the device. I then connect it to a power source and permanently fix the power button on. second question, have I given the smart phone free will? and just because I dnt see anything happening on its screen dos that mean that it is not operating. we cant say it is not operating but we cant prove it is operating. but the smart phone now has the ability to use all its hard wear for what ever it wants to use it for.thirdly, just because I took away my controlling forces on the smart phone, did I give it consciousness or did it have true consciousness and I just gave it the free dome to realize.
it's 2019 and he's still doing them congratulations on making sure he did that
thanks to you he's still making them, I can't express how glad I am!!
I'm here from the future to tell you he won't. Don't worry. But also, things will go places. Strap yourself in and stockpile toilet paper and hand sanitizer.
When my maid comes over she never wants to hang out and have a couple beers.
LOL
Human Resources You have to pay extra for that. Mostly in the form of replacing all your stuff every week.
She actually may want to, but her want to do a good job and not potentially get fired overrides her want to chill with a beer. She can’t control what she wants based on the massive domino effect of events leading to her current mindset.
I could listen to you talk all day. lol. & I might actually pass my midterm now!
Shelby Kupiainen Good luck!
Philosophy Tube Hey, good video.
I have to ask, how does dualism get out of the standard argument?
The argument against free will? Well if you're a hardcore substance dualist you can just say that whilst physical stuff is causally determined mental stuff isn't, or as far as we know isn't. Of course you'd have to argue for dualism first though!
Philosophy Tube Yes! What would mental stuff being indeterministic do though? I don't see how that's any less random then physical things being indeterministic.
Quite!
this channel has helped me so much with my philosophy class. By breaking everything down, I understand everything more clearly with your explanations.
+shaakira brown Glad to help!
+Philosophy Tube hey I'm in ninth grade and my public high school doesn't offer any philosophy class. This is unfortunate because I love thinking, so your channel has been a god send. Keep it up.
Man, this video is fucking great. It is extremely pleasant to know that someone has arrived at the same conclusions as you have, and even in the same way, and that they understand and agree with you.
Thanks! IMO my more recent videos are way better but I'm glad people still like the old ones!
Yeah, I agree.
When I was younger I developed a similair idea to this.
I truly believe everything is pre-determined in a cause in effect way as science dictates events through past stuff (just generalising)
However, this troubles me. I don't know where my morality sits anymore.
For example; if we as complicated "objects" aren't responsible for commiting a crime (as you mentioned in the video) that either means in knowledge of this they are innocent or still held responsible.
If they aren't responsible;
This rids good, evil and any sense of morality because it isn't wrong to act a certain way.
If they are responsible however;
This means that all eniquality is irrelevant as everyone is still responsible for their pre-determined lives.
Like to say that helping another person or leaving a legacy is typically pointless.
I find this hard to explain so let me just put it like this, in relatable and more understandable terms.
With Determinism comes the absense of Morality. Society and life cannot function without Morality.
Is it "wrong" or "ok" to have eniquality and the sheer chaos that would come of no responsibility?
Is their any reason to stop such, (rather sadistic, i know) espicially if the is simply "no real point" to life?
they are trully good - old and new videos =)
Agree. I will just reject it without evidence so I don't really need to answer this question to my own self... Maybe we should look for more material on determinism.
that's exactly what i just said to my self and i'm like a universal moral and reality turth may really exist and every question would have a single right answer
I always think about this problem a little differently. If there is no free will, well, then what I think about free will has been determined and that's that. However if I do have free will and I decide to act as if I don't then I'm really throwing my life away. So I should "choose" to believe in free will.
I'm really glad that you pointed out a few different philosophical responses to hard determinism. Certain deterministic arguments make my depression and anxiety worsen when they come to mind, so just knowing that there are positions that aren't completely exclusionary of the possibility of choice is helpful.
Determinism in of it’s self does not mean choices don’t matter or that change can’t happen(that’s fatalism )but rather weather that change can happen is down to what options are available(circumstances,genetics,etc).
For context a fatalist would say weather or not you die in an earthquake is up to fate while a determinist would say it’s up to the previous decisions you made,how you responded to conflict,the environment your in,etc.
I hate when people say determinism means morality doesn't exist. If someone does something wrong, even if that is determined, the consequence is also determined, so while you can't say they could've done any different, you also can't say they could've been punished any differently.
Exactly my thinking
The fact they couldn't be acted upon any differently has no relation to how just that acting may be...
If a lightning bolt strikes someone does that mean that's fair? In our classical understanding, no.
Does whether someone has or hasn't control over something matter as to how accountable he is to that something? Classically, yes - see how mentally ill, intoxicated, non-premeditated criminals and crimes are treted differently, for example.
Good point. But by saying "if someone does something wrong" u presuppose that an action can be right or wrong in a determined world. This presupposition can't be contained within your argument for morality still existing in a determined world, without begging the question. You argument also implies that an actions moral value is determined by its consequences, this( while not be necessarily wrong) is a highly debated viewpoint with many detractors( which I'm not saying is an argument against it)
it can also be said that laws and punishements help rightening your actions and shapes them into something good instead of complete chaos morality is just including other factors that determin your actions
legal insanity is by definition not having any control over your actions by the time the crime was commited and thus they cant be found guilty, because punishing someone for something they have no control over is irrational and draconian.
I see freedom as the space between order and chaos, where there is just enough order for structure and just enough chaos for possibility.
I liked how you addressed some posts at the end of this. As someone who came out of a strong religious background it is sad that so many people today are repeating the same things they did in the 80s. One would hope that people would be more knowledgeable today. Thanks for taking the time to once again set things straight.
Olly I know you’ve come on a very complicated and necessary journey but my god, the glow up, dramatisation, and queering in your recent videos was such a positive direction
From our perspective and for all practical intents and purposes yes.
Objectively, no. Free will is an illusion.
+Insufferable Realist Jackanapes Nothing is practical.
+Insufferable Realist Jackanapes I noticed that's the position that most determinists take. Acknowledge that it doesn't exist, yet still insist that we should "act" as if it did.
Sideeq Mohammad It's a function of our limited awareness of and ability to interact with any specific series of causal chains at any one time. That's all.
So far there's absolutely no way to prove that free will doesn't exist and we don't have an even remotely decent knowledge about physics and neuroscience to make the claim that it likely doesn't exist.
Darmo Dak Saying that there is any possibility for free will to exist is a much more extraordinary and irrational claim than saying that unicorns exist.
As a materialist, I tend to think determinism is unproblematically true. Like Hume, I also feel that the so-called "problems" for compatibilism tend to be due more to semantic sloppiness rather than real philosophical holes in the argument.
I do agree with Hume's definition of free will being something like, "the ability to take action based on one's preferences or personal disposition", but wasn't that given much earlier in the freewill/determinism debate during the Hellenistic Period? Didn't the Stoics make similar claims about the universe being fundamentally deterministic, and yet maintain that our actions are "up to us"? I think Chrysippus defined free will in a similar way to what you cite as Hume's notion of free will; was Chrysippus the first one to define free will this way? Or, am I totally misremembering?
I also wanted to say a few words about my personal way of thinking about compatibilism and why I think it is fairly unproblematic as general idea.
So, when we talk about determinism, we are speaking of the entire universe and every material thing in it (which, as a materialist, I tend to think of those two things as being identical) as one whole thing composed of many predictably interacting physical parts. We are saying: If you could stand "outside" or "above" the universe-with a complete and total understanding of its physical laws and mechanisms-you would see an internally-determined system. Why? Because, with a full and complete understanding of the physical laws that govern the PARTS of the system, you can then make extrapolations about events that will happen at many separate levels of complexity. You can determine the movement of atoms over milliseconds, or you can determine the outcome of a decades-long political tussle.
My thought is this: why are we assuming that "free will" refers to that grandiose of an assumption? When I say that I have free will, I don't mean to say that I have direct and total control/agency at the micro-level of atoms or the macro-level of geopolitical events. After all, as a mere human, I am extremely limited in the possibilities of what I can do at any given moment. I can't stretch my body at will like Jake from Adventure Time; I can't do magic like Twilight Sparkle or fly like Rainbow Dash; I can't even see the wide variety of colors a butterfly or mantis shrimp can see.
So, when I say "I have free will", I don't mean that I can make ANYTHING happen at will. I'm referring only to my ability to CHOOSE BETWEEN a fairly modest set of physically possible options that correspond to the moment in question. And it seems to me that, when I freely choose to stand up and walk across the room, I don't have to be directly choosing how my atoms are moving and which neurons fire at what moment in order for that action to be considering an act of "free will".
When we define free will more carefully, as something like "the ability to freely choose between a set of possible actions" you are really just defining the domain you're talking about. In the human-experience-domain, the fact that, in principle, our universe is deterministic doesn't matter. And in the entire-universe-domain, the fact that humans think and feel as though they make choices doesn't matter that much either!
But the ability to choose between a set of actions is still supposedly set in stone due to determinism, so it could not have gone any other way than the way it went lmao, and that's not free will or free choice. That's forced choice by the determinism itself.
watch alex o connor compatibilism. just youtube him or his channel cosmic skeptic.
Many folks dismiss determinism immediately because they don't like the idea of having no say in their actions and are terrified by the implications of what the point of living would be. However, the way I think of life is like a movie or novel; you know it's determined to end a certain way and that it will follow that path no matter what, however, one can still derive pleasure and fulfillment by finding out what will happen next regardless of having a choice.
but if think you have no freedom, arent you just living life as a slave in a guilded cage?
But these people can't just think the way you think because, well... they are determined to think the other way...
@@DuchAmagi I know this is a joke but it was determined that I would chime in and say he was determined to post a message on this video and is will linger in the minds of some of the people who believe in free will until perhaps some of them continue to come back to this question and in the moment they change their mind to determinism it will be in part due to the fact that he made this post just like it was determined that you make that joke and me determined to beat this dead horse into the ground.
I'm on board for compatibalism for exactly the reasons he states. David Hume FTW!
Compatibilism is like shouting really loud that there is a fire and then adding silently your personal definition of "fire".
@@MrCmon113 Compatibilism is like someone else is shouting "fire" and you look and see a fireplace so you say "you are technically correct but please shut the fuck up"
My regret today is that I did not find this channel sooner. Good job.
Free will is something I have been pondering for quite a while now, though I drift towards determinism I do not have a conclusion yet so I still say "I don't know". Like most things in philosophy though, I think there is more to look at when questioning free will rather than solely focusing on it. Lets keep thinking though.
+Malaama John Wachi (MJ Wachi) Welcome to the little community! Tell your friends, we might just make it to 50,000 by 2016, there's only 50 or so to go!
That was probably one of the best summaries of the free will debate I have ever heard. You got a lot of information across in a very short turn period. Well done!
Aaron Scardina Thanks!
A nice argument for compatalism I read: "Not all factors are causal. Not all are neccessities. Many factors combine into a a context of _sufficient conditions._ Initial- and boundry- conditions, like "I live in a world, where cars have been invented, gravity is not ridicualously strong... are _sufficient_ conditions for me to drive with my car to the gas station. _Then_ comes the additional neccessity, that motivates me to actually do so. And if it rains or not might be totally contingent."
Taking philosophy right now... you just helped me a ton w/ my homework!!!!
Okay, so here's my theory (it might be similar to 'Quantum mind', which is, to be honest, beyond my understanding, but here's my own take). In quantum mechanics, you cannot know anything about a body until you 'observe' it. And the very act of observing it makes the body change its state. Now, it is known that thoughts are neural signals (action potentials), very much in the quantum domain (due to there being interactions on the scales of a single atom). This makes thoughts probabilistic, which rules determinism out. However, when we think actively (as opposed to passive thoughts, like dreams, maybe), we force the neural signals to do certain things, so that we make the thoughts collapse in the states we want them to, which gives rise to free will.
Now, comes the major distinction between the active and passive thoughts. Active thoughts use feedback mechanisms from the various neurons in the body to arrive at what you or your body 'wants to do' (i.e. free will). Passive thoughts use feedback mechanisms differently to arrive at what your body 'needs to do' (this essentially allows you to stay alive, by making the heart beat, etc.).
There is a definite Darwinian fitness advantage to free will. Passive thoughts make you live, but in order to optimize your fitness, you can do much more than that. You can eat different things, you can try to develop your physical strength and stamina, you can try to improve your 'fecundity'. And these often require you to make decisions based on your environment, your experience and your 'wants'. And because your thought process related to your wants is probabilistic, but influenced by feedbacks, you have 'free will' which is neither deterministic, nor random.
Tushar Shrotriya That's the biggest bullshit I've ever read in my life, there's no free will
Okay so this is officially the best RUclips channel ever
+April Raver Aww, thanks! Welcome to the community!
It was refreshing that you immediately identified determinism as a philosophical position (I would say religious) since most people seem to think that it is a scientific principle. Determinism tells you nothing about the real world and how it works.
Free will is a red herring. People will act like they have it regardless of what they tell you. I, for instance, don't believe in free will at all. I think it is literally one of the dumbest ideas still seriously discussed by intelligent people. But I still act like I have a choice in things, feel offended when that choice is not considered of value or is thwarted, and blame myself and others for doing things I think poorly of. I have absolutely no clue how I would even begin to talk myself out of all of those things. Hence, the discussion is purely academic. I am no less capable of not judging a person who has horribly wronged me or my loved ones than I am of outrunning a fighter jet.
+sean rodgers it seems that you're thinking of the unintelligible while your own common sense is trying to convince you otherwise. the problem with these kinds of beliefs is it creates disparity between our perceptions and what we think to be reality to a point where we find reality is something that is too far from our experience to know. but is that the truth? is reality that far from our senses? or are we just deluding ourselves based on false assumptions. I would say that our experience is all we have, and when we start to doubt our fundamental senses of reason we start to commit intellectual suicide.
+sean rodgers I think Kant alluded to something similar to what you're saying. Whilst we can't rationally prove Free Will, we have to accept it because it's part of our mode of cognition, part of the way in which our mind sees the world. It's not something we can actually break out of. He thought something similar about God too, which is why he remained a Christian despite raising objections to the ontological, cosmological and design arguments.
Kant was a smart guy. My familiarity with him is passing at best. I do recall enjoying the text he wrote on morality I encountered in an ethics class many years ago. As for his Critique of Pure Reason, that sent me running for cover on no less than three occasions. That and Being and Time are the two only books I've ever given up reading for sheer difficulty.
+sean rodgers I agree that to start *without* a strong definition of "Free Will", the +Philosophy Tube speaker was loosened to go off on commonly-spit tangents. It's funny that during the babbling, the need to define his topic eventually became apparent ... buuuuut, he ignored and spat some more red herring.
Olehenry1 I don't see what is wrong with the definition of free will: the ability to act, think, or decide without any force or coercion by factors that are beyond your control. now force or coercion does not imply that there can't be factors that influence your decision such as circumstances of your upbringing... but those who believe in libertarian free will believe that those factors do not determine the outcome of your choice, they merely influence it. philosophy tube stated that free will doesn't make sense given law of causation, but this is a very narrow view of causation. material causation is not the only causation, and this has been acknowledged very early in philosophy. this is also assuming materialism off the bat which is far from settled. materialism seems to be the metaphysical position most people assume which causes them to believe what appears to be counter intuitive. it causes us to doubt the most basic of beliefs such as free will, it causes us to doubt our senses and worst of all it causes us to doubt our senses of reason. the position of materialism thus implies logical nihilism which is self refuting. to get past this, people tend to adopt a pragmatic approach to knowledge, that it doesn't matter if it's true so long as we can make predictions of what we observe in our experiences. however this also has problems, if all beliefs are tentative then no belief can be said to be wrong. they respond with the statement that we can know things to be false but we can't know them to be true, but this itself granted true must also be granted tentatively true (you can't generalize knowledge with special exclusion or that would be special pleading) which means we can't know it to be true... thus the foundation of all beliefs must grant that our senses of reason are fundamentally accurate and reliable. if they are not accurate then we can't know truth which is incoherent.
2:18 I had to rewind cause I heard that line as: “you are in most animes”
There's a few I never made it into but I'm in most
Sam Harris on "Free Will"
Here's an interesting lecture regarding the subject from Sam Harris.
Let's suppose that people do have free will. How would that cause morality to exist?
Freedom to have intentions is a psychological reality that defines free will when someone wants to defend it. The material correlates of consciousness is a physical reality for when someone wants to "disprove" it.
Many of the recurring arguments in philosophy come about due to confusing psychological (subjective) realities and material realities.
2:37 "...Especially Chad from accounting."
Question about the "morality relies on free will" thing:
Isn't this only true for some kind of "ultimate/immovable morality"?
Can we not take our morals from past experience....without feeling we're contradicting ourselves?
"You're punishing me for something I couldn't help!!!"
"No...I'm protecting society from your actions"....(& then to rub salt in; "And I don't have any choice about it!)
Am I confusing "morals" with "laws" or "deductions" or some such?
I believe in free will yes, because when faced with options we can actively chose amongst them, being them either "good" or "bad".
And even, making an association to quantum uncertainty and how the "observer" changes the results. I'm not that studied in the matter to explain it well, but it all leads me to think that even though a buckload of things can be predicted, the uncertainty will always be there. There will always be someone or something not doing the predicted, and I don't know, maybe that's an expression of will
How do you know you good have done otherwise? How do you know that, if we rewound the clock, that you could have done differently? You feel a sense of choice, but perhaps that sense is more akin to a computer running calculations before reaching an answer. A complicated, mushy, and unreliable computer.
And as was said in the video, yeah, the uncertainty principle may mean you can’t perfectly predict the outcome of an event, but can you really call what is the equivalent to a quantum coin toss, free? If all my “choices” were a determined by a random factor, can you really call that free will?
My thoughts have always been, that there a number of countless dimension, each dimension is a derived from each choice we make. Since we have made every variation of choices possible that leaves us having done all possible choices and thus there is no free will.
No attempt at answering the free will question will be convincing without a theory of time and a theory of causation on which it must be based. The reasons for that should be obvious.
The question of determinism also sounds like it can be reduced to a problem in theoretical physics: e.g. if you consider the universe to be a path through some state space then determinism would be the state of affairs if paths are continuous (i.e. different possible histories do not cross at some angle, introducing a kink in the path, and do not contain breaks, which could be one description of "branching" histories).
Finally, the challenge for epiphenomenalists is how does such a strong impression of having a free will come about?
I like the idea of thematically linked videos so I'll side with "what is weakness of will" for the next topic.
>how does such a strong impression of having a free will come about
There is no such thing. There is a weak, superficial impression. It's just that most people never analyze their moment-to-moment experience. You really never have a feeling of free will, you merely believe in it. It's a delusion, not an illusion.
Another thing I just remembered is that if we're going to bring quantum uncertainty into this, then could it be a combination of uncertainty with causality? Take the sun for example. The sun is a macroscopic object, but it still behaves in a quantum way. It's not possible to predict exactly when a solar flare will happen, since the mechanism that triggers is is, in its nature, a probabilistic effect called quantum tunneling. So knowing this, we do know that solar flares can and do have a lot of effects down here on Earth, as they knock out power grids, and disrupt wireless communications. These disruptions can have huge effects on what people do, and can change the course of someone's life, but the thing that caused that change was initially uncertain, and it was possible that it might not have happened at all. So can we combine uncertainty with causality as it pertains to us in this way? what do you think?
the sun doesn't 'act in a quantum way', fusion can happen--and can only happen--because of quantum effects at the sub-atomic particle level. Very very different. The sun's too big and energetic to be a quantum object in itself.
My brother saw this on my recommended and just said "free my man Will"
Why is this so funny
I agree with Hume on this topic; I believe in the idea that even when people do something wrong, they mostly would do it for the right reasons, basically weighing the moral action on one side versus another side.
Thanks a lot! I'm passing my philosophy course because of your videos!
I thinik I stick to the compatibilism part. Sounds about right to me.
It makes sense to punish people to a certain degree in order to deter others from doing „bad“ things in the future. Morality is not out the window. In contrary, our morality improves due to determinism; it increases our compassion and capability to forgive.
How I see it is, if we pretend we have free will we can go on believing we have choice (even if we don't) because if we decide we haven't got choice we might miss opportunities. I believe we can't prove it either way. So if we pretend we have and we don't we haven't lost anything, but if we don't believe we have free will and we do, we have lost something.
Causality itself is an illusion, as Hume so pointed out. When a billiard ball strikes another, and the second ball rolls away, there is no little flag that pops up and says, "This is causliaty." This is simply an interpretation from the human perspective in regards to reality. Determinism is the greatest illusion.
omg your channel is the best, I didn't like philosophy , but now , I want MORE !! :)) :D
Good job :)
Maryam M Aww, thank you!
This is definitely a great channel, he does a great job. Other great sources are The School of Life and Wired Philosophy.
I would say, free will is the ability to choose something regardless of predictability or desire. We have free will because if we desire something, one might predict we would choose that. However, if what I desire is an outcome that someone would not be able to predict, my desire would change based on the prediction of that certain individual or society. Or, if you said that my desire to be unpredictable was in fact, predictable, I could then choose to be predictable. A prediction is an estimate, an educated guess. There is no absolute certainty in predictability. I feel our minds can only think about things in a linear manner, that one event must happen because an event previous caused it to. But many topics in psychology have no causation, no truth. Only chance, and variables.
Nome Chomsky has some really good talks about free will. His main points are that there is no reason to expect that minds work in a way that is understandable by thise sane minds. Just because we can only really understand the concepts of determined and random doesn't mean minds have to work in those ways. Similer to how we can understand waves and particles but the reality of light is some combonation of the two that we can only understand by refrence to waves and particles. His hypothesis is what he calls 'appropriate to situations but not caused by situations ' which has elements of both randomness and determinism. Though he also says we know way too little about what thought and mind are to be anywhere near answering questions like 'do we have free will' 😀
not sure if this follows but, If causes and effects means that a murder couldn`t choose otherwise, wouldn`t the action of punish such murder be the cause for other people not to kill. I mean even from a cause and effect approach, punish certain actions seems viable and morality seems to keep playing a roll.
Or even morality towards being the cause for stopping someone from killing.
I mean for example, even if choosing is just an illusion, we can spread the word of why killing is counter productive and bad for the well being of our species in order for that message (information input) to be the cause of us to behave morally.
Not sure if this follow, is just a thought.
Yeah, well Sam Harris argues that we don't have contra-causal free will. He says that punishment no longer makes sense in any way other than as a deterrent to others. It seems like the best way to take care of murderers is to rehabilitate them and take measures to protect the public from them (imprisonment perhaps).
Even if we don't have contra-causal free will, there are still consequences for our actions. He also argues that morality can be objective if we set a criteria. I think he uses "wellbeing of conscious beings" as his criteria but I have to read more.
Bertrand Russell addressed this problem. He referred metaphorically to criminal activity as having a car that doesn't work. He said we take broken cars off the street and do what's needed to fix them. If they are a permanent danger then they cannot be put back on the street. What he advised was an attitude change from blaming, cursing, and abusing the car with kicks, etc. to understanding what the problem is and taking care of it. There is an interesting report on the Norwegian model prison system. They set up their society to have the best chance for their citizens to succeed as productive members of society. It's too long to include all the details here (I'll include the site at the end.) Their record speaks for itself. They have an incarceration rate of 71 per 100,00 while ours is around 700, Their recidivism rate is about 23% ours is closer to 60%. The system the U.S. has now is an embarrassment. Why is Norway doing something we can't do?
mic.com/articles/81233/norway-treats-its-inmates-like-people-the-result-is-a-system-america-can-only-dream-of
Please do not complain that the prison looks too nice. The humanizing effect of being treated like a. . . human means a more successful system. At the end of the day we have to decide what our goal is, revenge or creating productive citizens. Can you imagine the savings in money and human misery?
SweetPea Brown exactly, we might even say "you wouldn't punish a car for breaking down, you'd just try to fix it".
Really good comment
mongke Thanks! It's a very complex issue. We're immeshed in a system that doesn't work and it's 'for profit' so there's not much incentive to change it. Also, I sense that revenge is the type of correction American's like best.
SweetPea Brown
I think that is a great way of extrapolate.
I haven't put much thought at it, but the very difference as to a car is that we perceive, lets say, and from there the idea of "Punishment" to a car breaks down, as I guess, you can "fix" other cars that see what happens to cars that are not working well, per say.
but even like that as you said there are better results by not seeing it as punishment, but as a fix.
But I guess that even punishment does count in determinism, is also implying being the cause of change, even i there are better ways.
PS_ sorry if this sound morronic, but as I said I haven't put much thought to it.
I figured this out when I was 11, i fell into deep depression. I had no exposure to this theory. Figured it out on my own
I was the same, even knew that meant I was a moral subjectivist and that nothing mattered, and most human states are illusions that pass with no effect, most knowledge will be forgotten, just thought everything was arbitrary lol. Was not healthy haha
yup shiraz d. esufali
+Offensive White Family There is something wrong with you if that made you depressed.
+Offensive White Family
On sober inspection it should make you rejoice.
I was a child but yes Taxtro
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love your newer work, the more theatric stuff, but there's some quality to this much older stuff that I just adore. I'm not sure what it is.
7 years late but "do we have individual duties for environment " is fantastic subject ti discuss 🌊
Better to place this in a recent video than an ancient one.
How can determinism be correct if the Heisenberg uncertainty principle tells us that we cannot ever know every possible outcome, even if we know the exact arrangement of every particle and energy distribution everywhere in the universe?
+Randomaited Even if the uncertainty principle implied that the Universe was inherently built on randomness, that would simply mean that we can't PREDICT outcomes. It doesn't mean you have any control over them.
Consider, for example, if our mental states are determined by the uncertainty principle. Can u control the outcome of the uncertainty principle? Whether an electron is spin up or spin down? No? Then ur still not ultimately in control of your mental states and, hence, your actions.
+Randomaited
Effects of uncertainty play no role on the scale of the neuron.
There is an interesting theory saying our brain actually works like a kind of 'quantum computer', in that model quantum effects do have significant effects on our mental states due to the butterfly effect. It has no direct effect on the scale of the neuron, but it has effect on a smaller scale, and through a chain reactions it could have effects on neurons and larger system.
For example, the spin up or down position of an electron effects it's tiny magnetic field, this may effect some other electrons moving through a currect, and they may effect yet others, etc. All this may eventually get effects on macroscopic levels, as in, if the electron would have been spin down that would have led to a different chain reaction than if it had been spin up. So the uncertainty principle could accumulate to macroscopic systems by the butterfly effect.
If the uncertainty is between finite number of state [one among them will be the final state] than a system to handle those inputs [uncertain but finite number of inputs] can still be designed to give us a definite output.
You reference Hume a LOT, how about you just do a whole episode on him? I would personally love to see that, and I think a lot of people would agree with me on that.
As long as thier is duality, which there is on earth, then their has to be free will. Its the arguments we have with ourselves and how we react in any situation. It is in that moment that we decide how choose to react to any given moment, yet there are many different ways of reating to any situation. In the moment your true colours manifest.
I personally recognized that we do not have free will. And my personal experience is that the recognition of having free will (or not) is an personal recognition. Nobody is able to achieve this recognition by intention. Thus free will is considered as true until it is not.
You might wanna move the camera back a few feet bro.
Nips 😂😂😂😂
You're ignoring quantum indeterminacy and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
He mentioned that there are things at the quantum level that are random, or at least unpredictable, but he followed it that something random isnt something that is free.
We've always had an intuitive definition of free will that went something like, "Free will is purpose that is nether caused by nor entangled with external factors." The problem with this definitions is that it is self defeating once you really look at it, since purpose is something that is, by definition, entangled with an external factor.
Your distinct lack of free will is only most obvious when you make large decisions, like choosing a house to move in to, or picking a college to attend, because at this point, you are conscious of the many many variables that drove you towards one outcome or the other. Even when you make small decisions, like choosing pepperoni or mushrooms on your pizza, the variables that determine what you pick aren't brought up consciously, and just stay in your subconscious. But when you do order a topping, you knew that you had a purpose for choosing what you did, but since you don't know why that purpose came to be, you assume that it exists somehow free of time and space and energy.
I am not a native english speaker but i will try to make my point clear and speak simply: I think there is something wrong in the way we treat the subject. If you put it in an other way, something appears to be quite obvious: what would it truly mean to have free will? I think it is simply unthinkable! We cannot be what we are not, and what are we? I think we are what Schopenhauer calls the Will, and we could not want to be something else, it is not possible to be what we are not.. Everything is determined which means we had to be this way because everything follows the will, but now, we, humans, think that we are seperated from
the will, as if we were detached from a sort of survival instinct, but in fact i think that it is still the case exepted that we got more and more complex and invented tons of beliefs and concepts... We make one with everything in the universe, because we are the same thing, we are the will itself but it is like we don't know it because we invented more and more words and more and more concepts , as we evoluated which drove us away from our primal animal will.. did i make my point? so whatever we choose is to be choosen because it responds to the will, and we cannot complain about it because it is unthinkable that we could want to be something else. And what is now arising within us would be the will recognizing itself through all of our humans sensations and thoughts etc... Things are the way they are because they could not be otherwise, as if it responds to a necessity... and it is normal that we humans think that it is unfair because we invented concepts of morality and justice. A deer who sees her dead mom may feel in danger and hurt but does not think it is unfair... In the other hand i think that knowledge
still drives us away from a primitive will and that it can extend our possibilities of choices, even if we don't choose, by experiencing life and learning every sort of things we bring to our brain all kind of experiences that offers the will various possibilities... so it is not : our self is determined by the will, but rather : our self is the will and cannot be nor want to be something else. because if we say that we are trapped in a body and mind determined by all sort of causes and effects, then we suppose that there is something that is not and which undergoes the will..i think we are the will itself, what could we be otherwise?
Wow 😂😂 sorry earliest one I've watched yet...so young🤣
Also great video I should have said that as well
Of course we have free will. All of society relies on the idea that we have free will and can hold people responsible for their actions. So I will always side with the idea that we have free will. Free will isn't the idea that you can do whatever you want to do or that you can act randomly without consequences, but it's the idea that you can do what you want to do as long it falls within the rules of society and nature. If what you want to do goes against the rules of society or nature there are consequences to attempting those actions. So there's that to think about. That's what sounds best to me.
I don't see how this addresses the metaphysical argument here. All it seems to do is say that it doesn't fit with society, which doesn't contradict the argument.
Sporkabyte You missed my point.
You said that you would always side with free will because society relies on it to work, but is that a good reason to agree with a certain position? Certainly, something can't be true just because it's used as a foundation for something else. How have I missed your point?
Sporkabyte I started out with that statement yes, but then I later explained a more compatibilism version of free will. This ultimately was the point I was trying to get at. I mayn't have a very good way of going about it, but that his the point that I was trying to get at and you missed it entirely. Okay?
Compatibilism is the belief that free will and determinism are compatible ideas, and that it is possible to believe in both without being logically inconsistent. Compatibilists believe freedom can be present or absent in situations for reasons that have nothing to do with metaphysics.
***** I understand what you're saying, but I reject your premise. I do this because I think your thinking is flawed.
Thank you for this! It has helped me explain, in much better terms, what I was trying to explain to my family over dinner.
I do have to say, it is quite eerie the similarity between determinism and the Judeo - Christian - Islamic references to being a slave to your flesh, knowing that you "could" do one thing and knowing OF multiple things, but being compelled to do others.
+Monkey Enma Do you happen to know the specific passages/ verses that mention that?
Surprised I missed this, give me a day or so and I can absolutely give at least judaic and christian quotes on it
I'm a little less experienced with the Qu'ran, but that will show it as well.
Really, though, a basic google search will turn it up.
None of the theories of anything whether it be Philosophy or Science will ever be completely correct. The universe's laws are way too complicated to have clearly defined dividers. Rather, the true answer would be a mix of almost any combination of any two or more. Because the Universe doesn't play by our rules. We can't even prove whether or not this universe is real let alone try to isolate its rules. Light has weight. The Earth is heavier during the day. Solar winds can be studied themselves but we haven't been able to determine just what causes them. Simply observing an object can have measurable effects on it. Life is beautifully meaningless and even the words words words I just spouted will probably be long gone by the time Humanity can actually, objectively prove any of our long-standing theories. I'm also retarded so that helps
You're wrong. You can only say such things if you know it, which you don't.
For all you know, it's extremely simple ... so simple that you find it too complex to *understand*.
Light does not have "weight" in the same way we usually mean "weight". Wtf does "the Earth is heavier during the day" even mean? We do know what causes solar winds. We also have proved many theories. I mean I don't get how you can disprove evolution by natural selection.
lmao
I believe in determinism/no free will since:
1. I believe nature is a system in which any event has a cause.
We may not know the cause, fx we don't know for sure how the universe came into existence, and how it will end. But since the demise of the universe (assuming it will die eventually) PRESUMABLY depends on factors within itself (as opposed to outside forces like gods, which are impossible to prove/disprove) then it is in fact determined
2. I hold a materialist view of the mind. I don't belive in souls whatsoever.
We are alive and have consciousness yes, but we are "only" intelligent animals . We are not above the laws of nature that governs our universe.
If Hume says that 'free will' is just the ability to "do what want" then I say
That would just be 'will', not necessarily 'free will'
Freedom of will means (in my eyes) the ability to do otherwise. We may have the ability to do what we want, but if we simultaneously are unable to do otherwise than the thing we consciously or subconsciously "want", then we don't possess free will.
I'd argue that a lot of the time we aren't even aware what we "really want" or why we do things on a deeper level. We act on 'impulse', or 'instinct' if you will. (in everyday life we usually do what is familiar, what others do etc.)
Of course one's will may be ambiguous. It may relate to several wants at the same time, rather than one particular.
Our will may also change because we reflect on things and then change our minds.
However that DOESN'T defy determinism, since our minds are also part of the 'system of the universe'. Not seperate from it.
Also there seem to be indications (from psychological studies) that our subconsciousness MAY make decisions for us long before we are aware we "made a decision. What we perceive as a making a decision is actually post-rationalization. The mind is already made up.
The way he described free will was a little bit confusing. I'll agree with you that what he described was simply "will". However free will is still not maximal autonomy. Sam Harris loves to point out that since we can't choose our background and genes and where we were born that we don't have free will. But if I have the free will to do something and my brain is only influencing it and not unconsciously predetermining it then I have free will. I will agree that if the mind was materialist then we don't have free will though. Though there's way more evidence towards the mind being immaterial rather then material. It's idealism when it comes to the brain and the mind interacting with one another. One proof is the visual binding problem, where there is parts in the brain that store information, but not one part of the brain that holds perception. Just like there is not one part of the brain (to be found at least) that makes us do an act and that makes us decide. If there was we would be able to stimulate a part of a brain that makes us decide and act but it's clearly not on the brain.
***** The mind is what the brain does :)
The distinction I draw is between the conscious and the subconscious, nothing else.
"But, was the signal involuntary? What, exactly, is it that triggers the signal initially? "
The participants were asked to raise their arms whenever they "felt like it", so it was voluntary.
However since the situation didn't lend itself to meaningful decision making, I would guess that most would just:
1. Raise their arm at some point since that was what they were asked to do.
2. Do it sooner rather than later. It's unlikely that people would sit around for more than a few minutes.
To answer your second question: I don't know! :)
those studies were proven to be inconclusive and still heavily debated, so your beliefs are purely confrontational and based on whats most convenient to your self esteem at the moment. hence why I'm beginning to despise philosophy in general.
it always seems to just provide excuses for ones views/actions through un-falsifiable claims rather than being capable of being built upon through trial and error and ironically as a result, promotes closed mindedness.
I feel like the idea that things happen at random is just we don’t know all the variables that we can’t yet see
Nice slap to the unpredictability principle! When I heard the argument, I was like how does chaos equal control?
There is one little problem with this reasoning mister 'philosopher'. You were not free to come up with it and we are not free to accept or reject your reasoning. The statement that free will does not exists self-destroys. Determinism is non-falsifiable. Since our actions are supposed to be determined by previous materialistic causes, arguments for and against determinism couldn't even be weight if determinism were true. In short: why are you trying to defend a position that is so obviously false. Like I just demonstrated it is trivially easy to debunk determinism.
***** I'm not sure why people not being free to reject an argument if it is determined that they would is incompatible with determinism? Your idea about determinism being unfalsifiable is actually a separate concern, but it's not the case because an uncaused event would falsify it.
The entire point is that arguing for determinism makes no sense if our convictions are not based on arguments but every one of our thoughts, dispositions and opinions are decided for us by factors completely out of our control. Moreover if you are to reject self-evident positions the burden of proof is on you, So you have to come up with some evidence in stead of some circular reasoning. Could it be that the lack of evidence for the religion of philosophical naturalism forces you to do this?Please don't come up with bold statements when you lack the evidence to back them up.
I'm sorry, I think you've conflated whether an argument is likely to convince anybody with whether it's true. It might well be the case that someone will not in fact be convinced by an argument from determinism because it is determined that they won't be for whatever reason, but that doesn't mean the argument isn't also true.
I think you've also conceptually separated 'factors beyond our control' from thoughts and arguments a little too much: determinism doesn't deny that arguments can play a causal role in convincing somebody.
I think I haven't conceptually seperated factors beyond our control from thoughts and arguments. People can only convinced by arguments when they are not fully determined by previous factors. In fact terms like 'arguments, reasoning, logic and philosophy' don't make any sense in such a setting. I'd like to see how you've 'freely' come to the conclusion that free will does not exist.
I'm not sure why people could only be convinced by arguments if determinism was false? It's consistent to say both that someone was convinced by an argument and that they could not fail to have been convinced. The argument is part of the causal chain in their being convinced.
God is omniscient so he knows everything including the future. so lets say one morning, you are choosing what to wear the black shoes or the white ones. You decide to choose the white ones but you never really had the choice to choose the black ones. why ? thats because God knew that you will choose the white pair from the beginning of the universe so you could never really choose the black pair of shoes. You have the illusion of free will but if you've chosen the black pair of shoes then congrats you have single handedly stripped God of his omniscience... 😊 I hope you've learnt something from this
Ah but putting God into the mix makes things even harder to explain. If, as you say, we have no free will and God knows exactly what we are going to do then why bother creating the world in its first state rather than its last state?
Why bother waiting for people to live their lives on Earth before judging them and putting the into either Heaven or Hell? God could surely create them with memories of Earth even if they never lived, simply will them into existence in either Heaven or Hell with a full earth backstory.
And if he could do that why create the people who go to Hell? It seems immoral to create beings with no free will who commit acts that force them into Hell and eternal torment.
Your either controled by the flesh or your controled by the spirit. There is no free will. When Jesus said; follow me, to the disciples they had no real choice in the matter. The world is controled by the flesh, gods church is controled by the spirit.
Lmao, I love how some people always use God as a gap filler whenever it's convenient. They used to do the exact same thing when we didn't know what caused lightnings or diseases.
Besides, what makes you assume that it is God that is making me do things? It could just as well be the flying spaghetti monster that controls my brain with it's noodly appendages.
I can see no way that an atheist could rationally believe in free will. Really nice work on this video: it does a great job presenting all the different views I have come across after discussing matters of free will with people on the internet.
When I think about Free Will, I think about exercising self control, that is actively and consciously making decisions regardless of emotional motivation. Contemporary psychology separates conscious decisions and thought and unconscious mechanical behavior as separate functions of the mind. The mechanical behavior may be influenced by outside forces, but the ability to influence outside forces actively arises from conscious decision.
there can exist both determinism and morality together since morality is part of causality as well... so saying to someone "You shouldn't do this" is valuable because it will have an impact. morality doesn't have to be outside of the determined world. does anyone agree?
I don't think "'ought' implies 'can'" stands up to much examination.
I can say "This room should be more green." or "It should be warm outside." in contrast to how things presently are (not how they will be in the future) and the statements are still coherent. I can even say "You shouldn't have broken that window." Even without determinism, the past is set and there's no way it can now be different.
thats a great way of putting it. just because something is set in stone doesn't mean it "should" be that way, and even if our actions to change future events are predetermined, that's no reason to not take them
oh my god watching this in 2020 after seeing new philosophy tube oh my god, what happened to this sweet boy.
Well explained, but it confirms my view that whether we have Free Will or not depends completely on whether or not we define ourselves as having it.
Not Olly calling me out on lying in bed even with less than 5 hours left before deadline to furiously type out my essay.
The argument against free will runs straight into the issue that once you accept the argument, all arguments themselves vanish. Not only is there no point in making the argument, as no one who would be persuaded are done so by an act of agency, there is likewise no point in NOT making the argument, as there is no agency to do otherwise. In the small scope, the argument against free will is not just an argument about will, but the very meaning of the argument itself. It reduces to nihilism, which is a very bad signal for any argument.
However, perhaps our belief is itself determined, and how would we ever know differently? I may say "I could have chosen otherwise" but lacking the ability to literally go back to that one moment and do so, we also lack any evidence that one could have actually acted differently.
But if we expand our parameters to life itself, beyond the rigor and structure of philosophical proof, we can call upon a science rooted in determinism itself to demonstrate some reason to argue for free will, instead of against it.
As a species we are optimized (by all observation) to believe we have free will. The very act that we may make a clever argument against free will is itself a sign that we do beleive in free will universally, even if we could argue correctly that we dont. The argument itself is a clear signal that we universally have a sense of agency, even if that agency is pure illusion. In evolutionary terms, this level of niche specialization does not happen unless it somehow optimizes the survival of the species along the way. It is inarguable to say that our particular sense of agency is not highly specialized, and therefore must have served us to survive within a particular niche for a very long time....even if this trait only coincidentally served us, apart from our delusional beleif that it is real.
This is where it gets a little tricky, because we are about to utilize self-referencing reasoning, which is always dodgy, but I've already made the argument that this is a corner we are forced to paint ourselves into...because when we deny agency, we deny meaning. We cannot but paint ourselves into this corner. I apologize for the questionable reasoning, but if there truly is no free will, this dodgy bit of logic is essentially unavoidable.
If agency does not exist, it serves no benefit to falsely believe it does. It wont matter at all if we were no more than rocks moving because we were kicked...whether or not we believe we moved because we chose to. Kicked rocks move because they are kicked, no matter how they feel about the situation.
In that vein...what possible advantage could a species gain by falsely believing they had free will...if that beleif gained them no benefit? If that beleif gave them an advantage, by definition that advantage itself is evidence that things CAN indeed be done differently. Either there is no difference, and the beleif is of no consequence, or there is a difference, because the belief is real and true. Before you make many arguments against this...consider the billions of years of selection pressures arguing against our own niche taking such a radical left turn departure to no actual benefit, against reality itself (assuming free will is an illusion).
Apart from that, on more rigorous and philosophical terms, free will is the least problem that Determinism holds...so is quantum theory. These are minor problems with determinism. It has a much larger gaping hole in the middle of it, which wasnt as evident back when, as it is today. It is the problem of infinite turtles.
At its core, Determinism states that every event is an effect, which is preceded by a cause. As causes are themselves events, every cause is in turn an effect, also preceded by a cause. All of Determinism is based on this assumption, and back when people thought it was a nifty idea, the idea that all of creation was itself eternal didnt have a lot of evidence against it. There were bishops, priests, and all manner of religious folk who insisted that the universe was finite, and had a beginning, but there really wasnt much evidence to point to whose beginning was the "actual" beginning. It relied on what one preferred to believe which makes for poor science, and poverty stricken philosophy. In the end...no one really knew.
Today, however, we have mountains of reasonable evidence based on observations, and reliable science backed by sound philosophies that all the religious folk were actually right about one thing. The universe had a beginning. There is a first cause. There is a last turtle. While we havent pinned that down exactly, much to the delight of religious people...that there is a first cause is not a very strongly debated point.
I'm not one to throw out the baby with the bathwater and claim Determinism to be dead. It is certainly useful enough to have guided us straight into quantum science...something we could not have done without the philosophy of Determinism...
But I would argue that it cant possibly be "The Truth" but rather a useful tool for finding the truth. It has its limits no matter how wide ranging its uses are. I would propose...given that we do know of a hard limit to the uses of Determinism in discovering the truth...that Determinism may be as ill suited in application to the question of free will as hammers are ill suited to cutting boards. The question isnt difficult because free will might not exist, it's because we are trying to saw boards with hammers.
I think we humans have freewill but also have some form of determinism when it come to not having a choice as to how they were born. Freewill is the idea that we can do as we please without being controlled by a higher power.
The funny thing about this problem is, that nobody can tell what we are missing if everything is really predetermined by physics. What is the differece between having free will (whatever that means and how ever that could work) and being a biological "machine" that only follows physical rules? In both cases you only can make the decision which seems to be the best. There is no reason to make another decision.
determinism is not the same as pre-determinism. Pre-determinism is a predetermined outcome that you can not change or alter, determinism is that there are a series of events that affect each other, not random like in-determinism.
I can't believe I actually figured this out by myself as a 12yo
Basically, whatever we do, even if change our minds a the last second. It Was always going to happen because it happened. We can't escape our own choices but we always make a choice, and that choice was determined because we did that. So really we have no choice because we always do what we did.
Hume also pointed out that the argument for causal determinism is one of induction by enumeration, and we know now even more than when he was around that we have yet to see the vast majority of events. Even without the quantum confusion we have way to small a sample size of the universe to consider causality to be a 100% law.
Personally I like David Lewis' free will solution using counterfactual logic (if you can conceive of a plausible universe in which you chose to make a future decision differently but in which everything else is roughly the same then it cannot be said that you must make that decision, it can only be said that you will make that decision). Unlike Lewis though I believe it necessary for us to live in a universe in which the laws of causality are more guidelines because otherwise it would literally be impossible for the universe to exist in any way other than the way it does.
I feel like the biggest cripple to this arguement is people who believe free will when we talk about our choices as “The ability to choose”, which doesn’t help address the real topic. Because unless an obvious external factor of someone like threatening with a gun or forcing out hand will be the only factors in stopping us from making a choice. Which this isn’t the topic free will is addressing. It’s talking about our ability to choose one over another under the same situation. It’s “our ability to be able to choose differently” which is hard to debate because we can’t fully proove that you WOULD have done something else back when you made the first choice. We can’t rewind time. And not many people are thinking of free will in this term. Libertarian Free will.
A lot of people I’ve talked about with this keep going back to the point that if they are able to make an unpredictable choice that goes against their expected nature, then that disproves determinism. But that still proves determination as their desire to prove me wrong overrides their desire to do what is expected of them. Their desire to rebel against the wishes of their parents is a direct result of negative experiences from them. Every decision we made is a reaction of something we want to do or proove. And at diffeeent ponts in time what we can’t can change based on what we want to prove at the current moment.
If I want to eat a slice of cake, I will eat one. But if I want to watch my weight, I will choose the salad. If I had a good relationship with my parents, I would be more open to believe whatever they say. Everything is one massive complicated domino effect, and the fact that we can only see a very tiny part of that domino effect at any given time and we are not able to rewind time and test this, makes us believe that what little we are able to experience and see proves their version of free will.
Free Will is the ability to pick whichever you prefer inside a set (which is not always clear) of possible choices, and don't actually contradict causality...
I won't go deep into the science of it, but Wilder Penfield conducted a study of the brain where he stimulated parts of the brain to see what reactions it caused... He was able to move limbs, vocalize and even recall memories, but after finishing the research, he concluded that there was no part on the brain which would cause a person to decide, we could only use the body like a puppet, exactly like our will does.
So this is what I take of this: the will is received by the brain, like a processor receives input from the OS, the brain then process the input and turn it into an output (changing itself on the way), which is externalized in the form of actions. But in order to chose, the will has to take information from the brain, which received this information from the senses...
It is a "symbiotic" relationship, a two-lane road.
Also, couldn't the "randomness" of QM, when applied to thought processes (Orch-OR for scientific reference on this), be interpreted as "spontaneity"? The part of us that don't act following a chain reaction of causes?
I'm pulling an all nighter on my philosophy essay on free will and this really really helps. Thank you!! Also I liked and subscribed :D
Generally, when someone says "You shouldn't have done that", they mean "You are going to regret that action, and likely avoid taking similar actions in the future".
"I don't know" is the best answer. Science has found causal roles for lots of things, but not all human activity can be predicted, because the brain is still too complex. It would also be wrong to suppose something that has no physical evidence to fill the unknown information and call it free will. As our knowledge of the limitations of human decisions becomes more well known, the way we think of morality will change. We do need to protect society from some dangerous people, but the reasons they behaved in dangerous ways may not have been their choice. But until we can show that with evidence, which seems like a near impossible standard, the ethics we have work "well enough."
I think I agree with Hume. Tomorrow if some alien species came and revealed that they created humans and all of our thoughts are preprogrammed, it still wouldn't change the fact that we FEEL free and have motivation and desires that we'd like to fulfill. So as long as we FEEL free we'd still want to live in a land of laws and morality as we'd be afraid of being harmed in lawless state no matter how aware we're of the fact that it's all preprogrammed. The emotions, sensations felt even in absence of free will needs the illusion of morality to FEEL safe.
The progression of human knowledge and understanding reminds me of the way separate streams of trickling water gravitate towards each other and inevitably merge into a single stream.
Likewise, the pitfalls and mistakes carved out by earlier scientists will simply be repeated by following generations - if they blindly follow the same path without any original thinking.
It surprises me how, many smart people repeat the fallacies and follies of yesteryear, simply because they repeat answers that they have not thought out for themselves.
You seem to be a smart guy, but this applies to you too.
So thinking about it... I'm not really sure how much it's practical to worry about free will. I mean lacking it we can't make any judgement meaningful, like you can say we shouldn't punish people for bad things, but people couldn't any more NOT punish them then the people could not do bad things.
And really, it seems if anywhere is a good place to think about free will is seeing if randomness exist
and I want to see the environment one
(Also I like you talking to people in the little ending bit, I think you covered it really well)
I think that we do have free will. Inconsistency in some people's behavior can be indicative of this. As you stated (paraphrasing here), "if a mate comes over, one can reasonably predict that he will want to hang out, to watch a movie, etc", but what if that mate is predictably unpredictable or even predictably indecisive? However, I don't necessarily think that free will is necessarily incompatible with Determinism; the main difference lies in what is determined. Sure, we are the way we are due to evolution and epigenetic inheritance, but what if what is determined for us is the possible paths we can take or the possible decisions we can make. There is still room for choice, but our choices are quite often limited by what has come before and what the circumstances are in which choose. For example, if, due to budgeting, I get paid via a stipend on Mondays and I get to choose how I spend that money, I usually eat out. I might choose my usual buffalo wings, but on occasion I might choose Mexican or Chinese food instead. These choices, while randomly decided, might impact who I meet, what events I might find myself in or circumstances that vary wildly from the norm. And from these different encounters, new circumstances, new possibilities arise. If I were to meet someone who is a book agent specializing in paranormal fiction and becomes intrigued by it at a Chinese restaurant, this could radically alter my life simply because I chose to eat Chinese than my usual routine. However, if I had chosen my usual buffalo wings, I might have missed the encounter and thus the circumstances which arose from that encounter. Ergo, it is the possibilities that are determined by circumstances (whether those created by our decisions or those which exist due to factors beyond our control). However, with the creation of new possibilities with each new encounter or each decision made, we are still free to pick our path to tread.
Of course, this has some interesting implications regarding Fate and the role that this may or may not play in how our lives play out. Might be worth exploring the concept of Fate as it relates to Free Will.
whenever people have this conversation I think of the episode of futurama where Bender is acquitted for a crime on account of him being a robot and therefore not having freewill. He proceeds to have an existential crisis because nothing he does matters because he doesn't have free will, and he almost ceases to function as a result, even though he clearly takes as many self determined actions as anyone else on the show. Its a great sort of absurdist comment about the paradoxical nature of this question
But the point I wanted to make was a comment that was made by one of the council members on "the high council of robots" that bender talks to. he says something like "the choices we make will have tremendous consequences for all of robot kind. it doesn't matter if those choices are predetermined, it just matters that we make them"
I can't necessarily back this up logically (sorry I don't have a philosophy degree) but I feel that the answer to this question is obvious: humans have no more free will than a computer or a germ or a falling boulder, because we are part of the natural world, not the exception to it. However I don't think that that poses an issue with morality because the perception of human morality (key world being perception) is also part of the natural world and human beings can be held accountable to our standards of morality regardless of free will. think of it this way: our institution of morality adds creates a cause that will lead to the effect of fewer people doing bad things, whereas not instituting morality leads to more people doing bad things because nothing stopped their natural chemical processes in their brains from reasoning out that stealing or murdering or committing fraud was not the optimal thing to do. people can obey moral codes with or without free will.
On the subject of free will:
I am convinced that we do have free will. However, I present a new definition of free will which adds to Hume's; free will is the choice of doing what you want. This does not gel with determinism or compatibilism. Also, Hume's definition does not overcome the morality problem, since, as you say, we can't really change what we do, it's just that what we do is (according to Hume) what we want to do. You see, the problem with Hume's definition is that if you are playing a video game (and want to continue doing so), but your mum says you should study for your exams (which you want to pass), which do you choose, since you want to do both? Seemingly, it's what you want to do most. However, I can tell you from experience, I did not want to study as much as I wanted to finish that game. But you know what? I did study. I reluctantly *chose* to study. This seems too easy to counter... maybe you could elaborate on Hume's definition if I've misunderstood.
Now, do we actually have free will, or is it all just an illusion? There is no short way to answer this in full. Because of this, we will make some assumptions:
1) God exists
2) God loves us (wants us to be in communion with Him)
(the latter is dealt with further on)
With these in place, we can deduce that we have free will. This is how: if God wants us to be in communion with Him (He loves us), then He cannot gain in the act of loving itself. This is because love is defined as 'to will the good of the other as other'. This means that He must love us not for His sake (that He may gain directly from said love), but that only by our love of Him (from our free will to love Him) does He "gain" us. If we don't have free will, it is up to Him whether we are in communion with Him. This is not love, for if He wills our good (to be with Him) He gains our communion. You see, He loves us truly, that He would not force us into communion with Him; we do it of our own accord.
If we assume that God does not exist, free will ceases it's necessity. Thus the question remains. I think someone mentioned the Uncertainty Principle somewhere in the comments? If so, that does not count towards free will. U.P. states that we cannot know both the position and velocity of an electron at the same time. This is because when you measure one, the other changes due to the actual measurement. Photons knock off the electron (changing it's velocity) and then comes back to tell us it's position. If one could measure the electron's position without light (or any physical means) one could then also know it's velocity at that time and position. An omniscient God could (since He is immaterial and outside nature).
Also, I'd like to respond to what you said about the comments in the last video:
The Euthyphro Dilemma:
I argue that this dilemma can be overcome and lead us to the conclusion that if God exists, morality must come from Him. In the Euthyphro dilemma, there are two 'horns', as they are called. The first says that things are morally good because 'the gods' love it. This means that the gods' love of moral things is incidental. This cannot be true, since morality comes from God. The second horn is that moral things are moral because the gods say they are; morality is determined on the whim of the gods. This cannot be true because they disagree. Even when they unanimously agree, what is to stop them changing their minds later? This, Plato concludes, is why morality cannot come from God.
However, if we can show that God's will cannot change, and what He wills must be good, we can overcome this dilemma. Sin (moral evil), as Socrates (and many others) says, must occur only with some ignorance (or lack of knowledge) on the sinner's part. This is derived from good being what people want (also Socrates). All people want good, but if you don't have full knowledge of all things, how can you be sure what you do is good? You cannot. However, God (who is omniscient) can only do good, for He knows all things. If He cannot do nor will evil (since that would be against His nature), what He wills must only be good. Goodness in it's highest form is found in God. Thus morality is found in God. Since He is the highest essence, He must be the source of morality.
*St. Aquinas' writings (especially Summa Contra Gentiles) will explain this in much more detail and with better clarity of language.
On the subject of your questions to your theology professor (which relates to assumption 2 above)
You can't accept that God loves us because history tells us that Adam and Eve didn't exist? Ok, let's get some things straight. Firstly, Genesis is not literalistic history; it's very theological. I would agree that Adam and Eve isn't history (at least in our modern sense of the word 'history'). The story is heavily theological and should be interpreted as such, not in a "here's a literal historical account for people with less sophistication than us who'll live 4000 years later" way. Secondly, what does Genesis actually mean? what it is telling us is that we are a fallen people (prone to sin). It also let's us know the source of our wrong-doing; "Do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil". This means that all sin (moral evil) has it's source as the act of deciding what is right and wrong by our own volition. In other words, we make ourselves into God. This is The Fall. This is why Christ came; to raise us up. Before, we were unworthy of God, but by the self-sacrificial love of the Son, we are made worthy of the Father.
Now you may see how if there is a God, He loves us. Also, God is perfect and needs nothing (again, Aquinas for why). If He created the universe, He could only have done it out of love, not out of necessity. I hope that clears things up a little bit. I think I've said enough for now.
One more thing: I'd like to stay on the will a bit, so I'd like to see a video on the weakness of will. Sorry we never seem to want anything to do with our part in the environment. Do you think that says something about us?
so glad you discovered punctuation and slowed down.
As an side note there are interpretations of quantum mechanics wich are deterministic
I think we dont have free will because any decison is either caused by a deterministic or random process wich both cant be atributed to the person making the decison
and to hume if we take his definiton of free will then yes we have free will but it dosent mean much because it is not enough for grounding ethiks and dosent mean what a normal person means with free will
In a determistic approach, consequentialist views still stand. The punishment won't be about morality but about being yet another factor that will determine your action. Knowing that you will be punished will be taken into account when you have the illusion of making a choice.
And, yes, I could not not write this.
Just a note on causality, we ascribe a casual relation between two events but this does not mean there is a necessary connection between these two events. We could just be privileging a particular causal chain, without it having any objective basis for why we privilege that particular chain. Causality could just be a falsification, as in nature we find an infinite amount of causes never being reduced to a first cause meaning there is essentially chaos that we try to order. In fact this is almost what Kant says, although the world being the set of representations implies that there is a causal structure governing the realm of phenomena. It isn't until Goethe that this radical conception of causality (as something belonging to the mechanism of the mind) is taken to its logical conclusion-that we priviledge certain causal chains with no objective basis. And this critique of causality reaches TD culmination in Tolstoy who uses it to critique the historical methodology uses to make sense of the Napoleonic wars.
Point is, causality could be just a falsification. Not a concept rooted in some reality
Just realized you basically said the same thing about Kant. My bad
Descissons are based upon what we know,( fluid and crystalized intellegence) nutrion, sleep ,our needs, phsycical disabilities or abilities, hormon levels, the fuction or malfuction of regulatory systems in the brain, knowledge or lack there of, options avaliable, stress, influence from others and the envierement, moral, emphaty, coping strategies, ressilaince, courage, memory, focus and drugs.
I'm a PhD student in theoretical nuclear physics, and I just want to point out that Quantum mechanics is deterministic at its core. The apparent random behavior of quantum systems, that it seems like the wave-function "collapse", is because we only looking at part of the full quantum system when doing quantum mechanical. The full quantum system consists of three objects, the object of our experiment, the observer (us), and the thermal background (the rest of the universe). The state of the full quantum system evolves in accordance with the Schrödinger equation, which is a completely determined process, but since we are a part of the system and can not know our state (or the state of the rest of the universe) we will perceive the time evolution of the quantum system as random when we measure it. This is not supposed to be a proof that the universe is deterministic, just that quantum mechanics as a mathematical framework has determinism built in to it. Quantum mechanics has had a lot of success in terms of being heavily supported by empirical evidence through out the last century, and therefore it is not unreasonable to assume that the universe would have similar underlying properties as quantum mechanics including determinism. Therefore, I do not believe in the incompatibalistic definition of free will.
If you imagine time as spacial instead of linear, it's not hard to believe that conscience has free will that can move indeterminably in at least one dimension greater than three physical dimensions we use to measure space, meanwhile that conscience operates within a frame of reference that has to experience time linearly. In this view, time is more of a 3D space that something can "move through" in many directions, not just one-dimensionally in one direction. If the conscious mind can affect the actions of a human frame of reference, then it's like very small causal adjustments are being made one step a time through time and space because of that human's mind's "free will."
This view of time and space as simultaneously spacial also leads me to believe that the process of thought or imagination is merely the conscious mind asking itself to experience or observe other information from our "omniverse" and then trying to translate that experience to the human brain in a coherent way.
...to determinism. Even if some quantum events happen randomly, even if predictability is accepted, we can never truly be in control of our futures. And while it would be nigh impossible to abandon morality, one has to wonder if, in a non-dualist world, such a system is inherently unfair.
If someone is determined to breaking the window and someone else punishes him it's because someone else was determined to punish him in the first place.
If someone morally condem someone else because something that person did, then that was because this person was determined to morally condemn that other person.
You cannot say that one action was predetermined and then forget that all consequent actions caused by the first one where also predetermined.
You cannot go halfway with determinism, you have to go all the way through it to the end of times.
It's determinism all the way to infinity!