The more I've listened to Sapolsky talk about Free Will, the more I've come to recognize that he really hasn't thought about things very deeply. So shallow is his understanding that I don't think he can even define a version of Free Will such that it *could* exist. It's too bad that Dan Dennett has passed as Dennett's understanding of what Free Will is, what it means, and how it came into existence, was head and shoulders above Sapolsky.
Michael just claimed that we are in control of our beliefs and that arguments against that position are demonstrably false and have overwhelming conclusive evidence. If that is true, does Michael believe it is possible to make himself believe in the Greek pantheon of gods? Are the Greek pantheon of gods demonstrably false with overwhelming conclusive evidence?
LOL If determinism were good enough for mother nature, brains would never have evolved. Brains evolved precisely because autonomous decision making gave an animal a tremendous survival advantage.
After reading the comments I won't give it time especially when I read about the name calling garbage I respect Robert far too much to even listen to such childish degrading behavior
The more I hear Sapolsky's arguments the more I find them most absurd. It appears there is no agency in a deterministic cosmos for him, everything is deducted to a simple rock that happens to move and blink. The only argument that could win him over is the proof of a "soul" or a "god" moving outside the physical realm, thus making "free" decisions independently of any conditions. Paradoxically he is in a theological quest and he is not aware of it.
and because the conversation was "trapped" in human intuition for so long and how bad it can be, Free Will is the ability to ignore intuition sometimes and move our knowledge further.
Jack lost the argument. ECON average IQ = 132, Socio's avg IQ = 105. it is not even fair! How the hell Jack made 400K many years ago as an academic beats me. People in his field get paid 100K today! (AND IS 2X THAT OF BRYAN'S = 200K)
The paper Huemer uses at the star of his opening statements about the people smelling garbage was backed by terrible science so bad in fact the guy had to retract that paper along with a number of his other papers .
gender is a social construct in the secular study of history and ethnographic methods "woman" is specifically an English word the civilized and secular world does not actually pay much attention to occidental etymology or their abrahamic and reactionary insecurities. while they argue over the arbitrary definitions in their tainted language, the rest of us will continue to observe and record reality using sensible frameworks based in mathematics (such as differentiating sexual anatomy from gender), and will remain decades ahead in STEM and education 😂
To find out if free will exists or not, philosophy does not cut it. Devise an experiment to show if it does or does not. If you can't just say is not decidable. A real experiment !!!!
The real social issue is whether one's income is earned producing goods and services of DERIVED on the basis of legal privileges under law that reward "rent-seeking" behavior that results in the redistribution of income and wealth from producers to non-producing rentier interests. The ideal source of revenue with which to pay for public goods and services is the monetary value of that portion of tangible wealth produced that comes from either natural or societally-created advantage. One professor of economics, Fred Foldvary, some years ago estimated that societally-created rent is as much as 30 to 50 percent of gross domestic product.
Living is all about awareness. The deeper our awareness, the more choice we have. Obviously, if we take the analogy of buying a car, choice is always within constraints, but it is there nonetheless. So we look up reviews of various makes of car, we know the budget we have, we settle for a model and drive away happy. That is free will. To suggest that from the moment of birth, even prior to that, dictates our choice of car, etc, is plain nonsense. Yes, it is based on information, as we live in an information world. However, choice remains for those aware... and just as we can suddenly change direction when driving our new car, so too can we change our thoughts, our beliefs, etc. Thoughts are fleeting and not all powerful. Thought only becomes a power when concentrated, as with a belief... and so much of science is merely belief. Just look at the history of that "we are absolutely certain", and then comes along a new certainty which, if it gets established, becomes the only certainty until shoved off the shelf by yet another "new discovery". Data is open to interpretation, just as consciousness is fundamentally delusional, but when all the noise of words and images subside, there is awareness, untainted by memory.
Over the past 4 days I've been immersing myself in these videos, and more generally videos that discuss the concept of free will. I do remain with questions on my hands even though I can understand easily that there is no such thing as an undetermined choice, and I hoped you could share your thoughts with me. So let's agree that following deterministic thinking: - you are a robot, spectator of your own life - you do not have choices - you are not free Besides this, we can agree that, as a human being, you are presented with options all the time, from which you pick (let's say, a menu at a restaurant as the most common example) There, you make determined choices, they are not free, but they are choices, you take decisions, determined decisions but you take decisions nonetheless, you think, and you act, you compare, and you choose We established that this is not free will, but how should we call that process? Could we call it an act of the self? On another note, let's say we can theoretically calculate the number of constraints someone is facing, leading up to an action from their part: if you add more constraints to a situation, you will get a different outcome (or maybe the intensity of the constraint rather than the number, how the constraint deviates us from our own personal interests) Let's consider two realities: one where someone wakes up and does whatever action they feel like doing at this moment (let's say they have a day off, and want to do things that make them happy), and one where that same person gets robbed inside of their home and is being held at gunpoint and told to do things. Couldn't we say that the person facing less constraints is more free than the one who is held at gunpoint? This is, I think, what Patricia Churchland would call self-control, this idea that we can quantify our freedom (for lack of a better word) and our ability to act. Though I would agree that the person who's not at gunpoint doesn't have a completely free choice, their actions are still predetermined and therefore have no real self-control, isn't there still a distinction to make between those two cases? How should we name that gap? I am happy to read the comments here and see that @PercyPrior1 is reporting a similar idea coming from Dr. Iskra Fileva: "If freedom sometimes increases, then it exists. So we have (some) freedom." Thank you for taking the time to read, and maybe to answer
I have just written something on this topic that might also be of interest to you. Here is my translated contribution on (psychological) free will: (nature/ conflicts of interest/ solution) I. In general, psychological functions are by no means "illusory", because that would mean that they are superfluous or even harmful. But the fact of determinacy is of merely "academic" significance for decision-making itself. The capacity for free will has developed evolutionarily because it helps to protect our range of options from potentially harmful influence and/or hindrance by other people. II. It is of course more rational to know whether we should be influenced in ways that are potentially harmful to us and how to avoid this in the future. In this respect, everyone actually wants to be (unfortunately also egocentrically) an "unmoved mover". III. People who could regularly choose what is most useful have more opportunities to provide value to a society (through trade or donations). In all decisions, one would also have to "keep an eye" on long-term effects on the framework conditions. Because it may be in the short-term interest of individuals to maximize their own freedom of will at the expense of others (e.g. through ideological communication), rights to (primarily) physical non-aggression (and secondarily to the pursuit of truth) should (like all others) be universally reciprocal. It should be possible to demand the principle (of reciprocity) from all institutions and citizens.
I'm not clear what the difference is between a choice that is free, a choice that is random, and a choice that is unpredictable. You can say that your choice is free, but to the extent you can explain why you made it, it becomes more predictable and less random. Software engineers use something that's called a "random number generator." The sequence of numbers it produces, while 100% predictable if you know how it works, is indistinguishable from a random sequence if you don't. Free will is like that, except that the "random decision generator" is astronomically more complicated, having evolved for billions of years.
Yes, our intuition is that there is free will. However, that intuition is cultural, not innate. If we lived in a world in which culture had evolved with our current understanding of the behavior of the physical world, our intuitions would be completely different.
Am i stupid? This is so boring. Alex showed examples of 4 very different women. They're all women. And Gender is some other thing noone can agree on or define. It's simple, really.
49:35 "it's a social change" (...) 49:52: "lets put it this way Im not in favor of redistribution, Im in favor of changing the laws regarding the ACQUISITION AND DISPOSITION OF WEALTH" Yeah, let a bunch of bureaucrats decide how much can each one earn, therefore have. Work in whatever we approve, and you will get this meagre salary, no more, no less. Thats communism folks, thats why the soviet union colapsed.
Wonderful debate and I enjoyed listening to both speakers. MH seems to make the argument that he doesn’t like the consequences of not having free will, so it follows free will can’t exist. This is not an argument. It shows to me again that Philosophy is not the place to have this discussion. From a scientific point of view there is no evidence for free will at all. So the onus is on those that say it exists to explain how. I would also guess that many would agree the liver or pancreas etc does not have free will. What magic therefore does the brain have that allows it to defy the laws of physics? I just don’t think philosophy has anything to contribute to this.
I think that even "there is no evidence for free will" is overly generous, since there's not even a definition for free will that makes sense. To the extent you know what circumstances led to your choices, you are admitting that they are (to that extent) determined, and if you can't explain your choices, you're admitting your ignorance of their causes (or saying that they're just random).
@@smalinThere is a very clear and simple definition that makes perfect sense. Given exactly the same initial conditions, at the point of a decision, could one have done otherwise. It has been stated many times in debates on free will
This whole incident reveals the degenerate state of feminist philosophy--probably the weakest and least-philosophical area of philosophy. There's a lot of bad theology, too, for similar reasons: both areas are antecedently committed to absurd propositions, and they'll do anything to defend them. This is an open-and-shut case: women are adult, human females. The only people who think otherwise are people with personal, political, or professional stakes in muddying the waters. And that is all they really ever manage to do (all that Antony does here). If we consider this to still be an open question--despite the very strong arguments on one side and the almost laughably weak (and obviously politically-motivated) arguments on the other--then philosophy is in a sorry state indeed. And, since the political left has managed now to infect philosophy as it has the other humanities, we will find ourselves in this situation pretty often. Progress in philosophy might be possible under better conditions. But one has to wonder whether it is practically possible when there is a quasi-religious group with ulterior, non-philosophical motives arguing dogmatically for ridiculous positions in a widespread way...and when that group is not only taken seriously, but is virtually immune to criticism...
sometimes when you tell the truth you are punished. sometimes when you lie you get out of it. but you get to choose which one and telling the truth is morally better. i think it shows that free will is real. that some actions lead to negative responses and you still choose them.
Absolutely. Men and women, and those who can be neither, due to different abnormalities (in embryonic development etc). The most important thing for living creatures is to give live, be a father or a mother in natural way and give normal birth. Only this means to be men (male) or woman (female), and not how you look or behave.
Does emergence or emergent process appear on this debate? Consciousness seems to be an emergence of brain processes and free will could be an emergence of consciousness. Appart from that I have to say that any discussion about free will runs inside circular thoughts because you are trying to observe your consciousness from inside it, like in a Matrix. It´s not possible to get out to have a "from nowhere" point of view. This is a pointless and wasting time discussion...We are responsible for our decisions with or without free will, please don´t pretend to find childlish excuses
does the word "emergence" or the idea of emergent process appear in this debate? If not, think that consciousness/mind seems to be an emergent process of the brain and free will maybe an emergent process of consciousness. And also consider that any discussion about free will is just running in circular reasoning because it´s impossible to get out of our consciousness to observe it from "outside" like from a nowhere point of view. So stop wasting our and your time...
and if you want to use to get rid of moral reponsibility, please don´t be childlish, it´s just another excuse. With or without free will we are reponsible for our decisions. The universe made us take that decision and even made us feel reponsible , guilty or proud? so what? We are responsible anyway, as we love our beloved (with or without free will) , etc.
Huemer talks about how without free will there wouldn't be a point in deliberating, or having discussions about possible options. But I think you could still argue that most people deliberate in response to salient things in the environment, which are determined. Even getting into a situation where you are deliberating, could have been determined by the previous chain of events, and biology and environment.
The professor complaining that 100% of his income is taxed, whereas if he were a Consultant or RE Developer he'd be able to pay tax on only 80% of his income, is completely neglecting the fact that his salary is guaranteed until he retires (assuming he has tenure), and that he'll have a defined benefits package FOR LIFE upon his retirement. The Consultant or the RE developer can lose - literally - EVERYTHING in one bad deal. The Consultant or the RE developer might have to endure several years of earning ZERO DOLLARS before snagging a big contract or commencing construction on a property. And they get ZERO retirement package. They have to save up for their retirement. Given inflation, at 65 I'd want at least 5 or 10 million to feel remotely comfortable. That said, I'm poor and I'll have neither the gold-plated retirement package, nor the $5-$10 milly in the bank. Of the two, I side with the people who make it in private business. Professors and other government workers make it all sound so easy, knowing they have guaranteed six-figure salaries and guaranteed high-five-figure retirement packages. Very easy for them to shit on people trying to make it.
Yes it is, of course it is. That is because wealth inequality is power inequality and that tends to snowball to subsistence societies, where a small minority does nothing but has everything and the rest does everything and has nothing until some shock changes the conditions.
When you spend your money on frivolous things aren't you helping others who earn a living from your frivolity? I think those working in boat yards building yachts, the tailors making tuxedos, and those working in vineyards making Champaign would say so.
