I accept that I don't have freewill. but I behave as though I had it and try to look at others as though they didn't have it. The former saves me from compliancy, the latter makes me more compassionate. And Off course, I was determined to view the whole matter this way.
+MrSidney9 How can pretending that others don't have free wil make you more compassionate? Certainly, the opposite is what must be true. If we recognize that people aren't fundamentally responsible for what they do, then no matter how horrendous one's actions are, one cannot be blamed for those actions. Instead, empathetic "problem-solvers" should seek to help that person become a better person.
+MrSidney9 You're right. I misread what you wrote , erred in my response, and made a typo too. To clarify: Acknowledging that others don't have free will should make one more compassionate.
macnolds Well...except for the punishment part. I have a more nuanced, compassionate strategy that is an alternative to punishment. Still, a minor point.
+macnolds I feel exactly the same way! I feel so liberated. . . and vindicated! I have been wrestling with this for several years, especially the practical application for our legal system. Because of a very personal family situation with a sis who is mentally ill, I rejoice that I will be able to bite anyone's head off who would dare to claim that she could 'just be different'. Exactly how could she be different? I'm glad to know there are like minded folks out there. : )
+SweetPea Brown _"I rejoice that I will be able to bite anyone's head off who would dare to claim that she could 'just be different'. Exactly how could she be different?"_ Well, she could decide that her behavior was antisocial and change it for example. Humans change all the time - we are deterministic feedback systems after all. Of course, if she's unwilling or incapable of changing antisocial behavior, then society might have to step in and restrain her. At the end of the day it doesn't really matter much - society has to demand certain types of social conformance at the point of a gun and it doesn't matter if deviant behavior is caused by someone inherently being an ass or inherently being incapable of controlling behavior.
Gnomefro Great! The first person whose head I can bite off. I know you mean well, but mental illness is not something she can 'just change your behavior about'. She suffers from depression and anxiety disorders. She is finally taking medication which makes it possible for her to keep her job. As an intelligent person you need to educate yourself on the issues of mental illness. Then there are so many questions about useful treatment of criminals, where the answers are more like the Norwegian programs than those of the US or the biblical ideals.. Well, I guess I'm not much of a 'head biter offer' but I will say that you demonstrate no history of experience with the mentally ill. Go out and help somebody that is and have a great day! : )
Basically everything he said reflects my own personal understanding of freewill or just adds to it. You might decide to stay in bed all day after finding out you have no free will, but you have no choice in the matter. The brain will want to get up for practical reasons eventually, so attempts to fight no-free-will are impossible as the attempt itself is due to not having free will.
@@usernameryan5982 I actually feel this is the best lecture on free will I have heard (incl. Sam Harris). So if you say his writing is better than his speaking, have you just nudged me in a deterministic way to buy a book of his? Will let you know 😉
A truly mind-boggling, refreshing, and unexpectedly liberating talk. Thanks to Jerry for such a good talk. This and Sam Harris' discussion of free will is what I keep going back to as the concept still rattles me to the core.
In my late teens, not well versed in science, I had a hunch that man was just a biological robot, simply more complicated than the bugs at our feet. I considered that none of us choose to be born from our parents, fall in love with the people we do, what hobbies make us happy - we just seem to discover them and most of us simply feel like we actually are making choices. If we cannot choose the most important aspects of who we are, then we can't have free will, because every choice is born out of our accidents of birth. I guess coming across Sam Harris later in life determined that I would finally feel vindicated about these hunches. I have to say that I don't find this depressing, because it allows us accept who we are going forward, rather than be muddled by regret and insecurity from shortcomings. And good job to you Jerry Coyne, as well. Love your writings.
Damn, you must have some demons in your past to do away with free will without any negative emotion. This also works both ways. If you achieve something spectacular it is just merely happenchance thus taking credit and feeling proud just an empty feeling. This is the cruelest thing I can imagine. That and questioning why you love the people you do. You realize that they are not special. They themselves and your love for them is just happen chance too. Your empathy? Happenchance. Your compassion? Happen chance. Your will to live? Happenchance. I am no more valid than a genocidal maniac who rapes little children.
ken thomas Either way according to determinism things are inevitable. If someone lived a happy life then it was destined. If someone killed themselves then that is destined too. You can fight for compassion or you can fight for ruin. Either way those decisions are made for you. And the results are determined too. It is pretty much the definition of hopelessness if you were determined to kill yourself.
ken thomas Fate is fate. People are determined to be happy and live their lives. People are determined to be unhappy and commit suicide. You cannot change your rail. Knowledge cannot change your rail. Knowledge is just a part of the rail you are on. Determinism to most people is a negative quality.
ken thomas Either way the universe gives people horrible cards to play with. Living is no more valid than not living. It is just happenchance that people value living. If someone is happy there is nothing special about it. Their happiness is just a consequence from previous conditions. This is partly why I think about nihilism. There is no meaningful difference between happiness and pain. No meaningful difference between good and evil. Whether something is good or evil is just happenchance. You are just determined to value knowledge and science. If you were determined to value massacring groups of people it is just as valid. One path is no more valid than the other.
I love the way he gives this lecture. It's like he laughing as speaks, because even though he fully understands what he's saying, he knows many people don't and won't accept the fact that we don't have free will and that everything is determined.
He covered all the relevant things about free will in less than an hour. Overally a very good talk. Not just why we can't have free will but also why it matters.
@Scot D It does matter when it comes to organizing society, for instance, it is very relevant for developing good educational systems, to determine what sort of propaganda should be permitted by the state, to determine what we should do with criminals etc.
@Scot D I think you fall for a very common misconception about what determinism entails. Let me try to illustrate what I think is the problem with your reasoning: It is s very common misrake to confound the possibility of "making choices" with having free will, but that is not what most determinists argue. Most people (including myself) agree that we human make choices; what we reject is that these choices are self-caused, instead of being completely determined by antecedent causes. Freedom has nothing to do with "will" and everything to do with knowledge and reason. For instance: If I were an architect, I could design a house that would not fall down; but I am not, and anyone who has that knowledge is more free than myself in that regard. We become more free in proportion as we understand more about ourselves, our circumstance and the way the world works, which in turn results in our making more rational choices. Since no one can be "causa sui" i.e the cause of his own actions and volitions, it is imperious that society or the state sets rational goals to its members because no change of conduct can be the result of "reflexion" or come from "within". In this regard I recommend that you read the works of Spinoza (his "Ethics" in particular). Spinoza was the first philosopher to arrive at a correct understanding of the concept of freedom. I also recommend that you read Walden II and other works by B.F Skinner and his fellow behaviourists to get some pointers as to how a society in which the non-existence of free will is recognized can be organized.
@@paulheinrichdietrich9518 if I now make the choice to change my inputs (more philosophy videos, less true crime) as a result of your comment, than the 'output' would be different. The concept of behaviourists to change the architecture of your living space (e.g. have the TV in a less prominent place, put fresh food in a more visible part of the fridge) would also change your life course. Am I missing something/misunderstood? I am at the stage where I think that the argument of 'free' will is sophistry, and that it doesn't really change anything much. We still punish people for crimes, now simply under the guise of protecting the community from further harm, rather than retribution old style. I have a feeling I am wrong somewhere, and likely have not grasped the concept of 'free will' as promulgated by Harris et al properly. I am a flesh robot 🤖
I agree with everything except his contention that the feeling of agency can't be overcome. If we keep determinism in mind as we observe our behavior, the feeling that our actions are determined can become just as ubiquitous as the feeling of agency has been. We can watch our decisions unfold with wonder rather than ownership.
@@alittleofeverything4190 Like everything else, intention is the result of cause-and-effect. If the organism acts according to the intention, that act is determined too. In such a chain of causation, no free will is involved-no free agent.
One small thing missed, was that you can let go of anger if someone has done you wrong as they had no choice. It does make us into machines, but if that's the case then so be it, rejoice in this fact.
It was determined that I would be the thousandth liker of this video entry on my birthday lol. Excellent presentation by Jerry. I was a compatibilist purely through semantics. This video showed me what I was doing within the first few minutes and I knew right then I was a determinist. Liberating stuff to think about.
Very interesting talk, I found myself agreeing with the man. The agency thing cannot be resisted, but I can understand I have no free will. It doesn't make me depressed, just happy that my molecules have arranged themselves in such a way to make me a happy, healthy, peace loving human. Being in jail or on death row must really suck!
Smoothmicra Those prisoners were determined to be sick murderers and they were determined to rot away in prison. Just as starving kids in Africa are determined to starve. Just as a pedophile is determined to rape little kids. Just as people are determined to be unhappy and commit suicide.
Thank you so much for your lucid lecture on this subject. I have been trying to understand this concept for several years by listening to lectures and reading articles. What a breath of fresh air to find another human being that sees the world the way that I do. Will be following your lectures. Keep up the good work!
Thank you for posting. I've long held similar sentiments after reading about other decision making experiments. Its good to have more precise language to describe and categorize these thoughts.
NOTES ON THE WILL: 1) As an innate property of mind-consciousness, the will is the determination or the intent of the inborn sentience in the living being to act in a specific manner and in no other. 2) To begin with, the will-impulse arises from the melange of thoughts, memories, instincts, hunches, experiences, emotions, sights, sounds, desires and other sentient inputs stored in the subliminal (or subconscious) aspect of the mind-consciousness and it then draws on the interactions with the current environmental factors and personality features of the individual to make a choice in a given situation. 3) As a result, once the will-impulse to act in a particular way, based on the above, is formed in these subliminal/subconscious depths then it rises to the surface mind where the human subject now takes note of it and attempts to realise it to the best of his/her capacity.
FREE WILL: Freedom to do anything that we have the desire and ability to do. Only 25% of society is rich, for though most all desire to be rich, only the 25% most intelligent have the ability. Those who are good natured have a desire to produce a grateful response by showing compassion and being generous, so it is impossible for them to do evil. On the other hand, those who have a desire to be enriched upon the misery of those who have less education, less wealth or less whiteness of skin, for them it is impossible to do anything but evil.
In short: The idea of determinism is not the same as the idea of destiny. Just because some person committed a crime, that doesn't mean determinists believe that this person will continue to commit crimes despite any rehabilitation someone goes through.
+Bram Kaandorp "that doesn't mean determinists believe that this person will continue to commit crimes despite any rehabilitation someone goes through." I agree with this. But the real mindfuck of determinism is that whether or not we choose to rehabilitate someone is already determined. That is, even if we rehabilitate people (which presumably leads to desirable consequences), we had no choice but to do so. And I had no choice but to type this comment.
+synchronium24 _"And I had no choice but to type this comment."_ Sure you did. The fact that it's predetermined doesn't change the fact that you considered your options, made a decision and typed out that comment. You could say it was impossible for you to choose differently, but that's not really because of determinism so much as it's a logical consequence of you being "you". Even people who believe in libertarian free will will start squirming at the idea that if you replayed history 100 times, they'd make 100 different decisions at random.
Well presented argument on a massively important topic. Parallels the way society views morality, which of course is determined also. Deeply liberating.
QUESTIONS ON THE WILL: 1) What is the will in terms of electrochemical reactions ? 2) Can the will be detected, isolated, quantified, transplanted and stored? 3) Can the will be created from scratch using electrochemical methods?
I think Sean Carroll does the best at explaining how the idea of "Free Will" is still a very useful higher level description of animal behavior. Saying "Free will" isn't real because everything obeys the deterministic laws of physics would also mean you'd have to say the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is equally untrue. It's a law that only holds in large complicated systems where brute statistically probability means things tend to disorder. But this fact that you won't find support for the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics in the fundamental laws of physics doesn't mean it isn't a hugely useful higher level description of our world. This goes for other higher level descriptions like temperature, entropy etc. And when you get to the social sciences, basically everything is a higher level description. It has to be. You can't develop an economic theory using Schrodinger's equation. You have to use higher level description to do anything worth doing.
I would suggest that the reason we feel like we have agency is because our behaviors are dictated by our desires. It may not be a simple relationship, for example a person being mugged does not desire to give away their wallet, but they do desire to live and so the act of giving away the wallet is in line with a second order desire. We feel like we are choosing to do things because we are doing what we want to do. If there were a discord between our desires and our actions, we would not feel like we had agency.
One is the force of desire within oneself, the other is someone else's desire over another. I think this is where most people get confused. Either way, no one chooses those desires. We just have a problem when it goes against our wishes.
+Sorry about my premature response to your comment. Later in the video he actually do, wrongly I think. What acts to punish is decided by society, roughly based on a pragmatic evaluation of how individuals are effected by collective judgment. Coyne somehow manages to simultaneously believe in non-responsibility of individuals and the concept of good and bad. i.e. If an individual do not understand why not to commit murder, then why not kill him? I think the early parts of this video do not make the case against punishment in the later part make sense.
+Tomas Pettersson he believes that society believes in good and bad, not that it exists as a concept outside of the physical structure of the brain (as there is no evidence for this). The argument is that punishment that is doled out to make the collective feel better about the grievance an individual commited needs to stop because there may be a way to make them be a productive member of society or to deal with them nonviolently, and since humans would rather not have violence enacted upon them, that every society would be better off focusing efforts on understanding why people do what they do (even "bad" people) and rehabilitating instead of taking group retribution on a collectively decided wrong.
+Tomas Pettersson and the reason he thinks this needs to be done is because he thinks people will be better off. in the end humans are worried about things like this while there are countless species of animals and plants we kill, even though the main difference between us is that we see ourselves as worth being alive and have the tools to keep ourselves that way.
+Tomas Pettersson There is no reason not to kill a person who doesnt know its wrong to kill, if you assume they cant be convinced otherwise or made to be useful to society. but the point is that rehabilitation (learning) is possible. if a group ends up killing you for something you didnt really chose to do they might be wasting your potential because of their base reaction of disgust. we dont know why they did what they did so there may be a chance to change them. once again. this train of logic is based on the preference that humanity should exist.
This is awesome as I've thought the same thing about compatibilism for a while. Concerning free will, compatibilists (many of whom are atheists) are like moderate liberal theists who acknowledge and accept scientific truths that conflict with their religion but still refuse to let go of their religion and claim that science and religion are compatible. Compatibilists acknowledge that determinism is true and that the classical definition of free will is false, but in order to save some form of free will, they'll twist the definition and claim compatibility between free will and determinism. Presumably, they have trouble fully accepting a total lack of free will, and so they want to rescue it at least in some form. But as atheists and scientifically minded people we're supposed to be the ones who are always ready to face and accept scientific truths regardless of how grim we may think they are. Compatibilists need to let go of their unnecessary "free will" delusions and just simply embrace determinism outright. Besides, why is the total lack of free will so mentally disturbing? Is it really that bad? I've never thought that. In some ways it's comforting, as it eliminates all regrets you may have. You certainly may wish some things had turned out differently, but you know you didn't have control over them.
Do we have free will? My position is I don't know...but then that makes me wonder. How would I know if I did? How would I know if I decided, or if the decision was made before I had the capacity to construct the thought to attempt to?
What you can know is it makes no difference. Either you're predetermined to deliberate over options and act accordingly or you're not. Either way which choice you make ultimately boils down to luck simply because you don't choose which choice you make.
Toward the end, he says that killing someone for committing a crime would be unjustifiable, but wouldn't that also apply to the people doing the punishing? That's just as determined as the initial crime and hence they wouldn't be responsible either. It's actually a self-refuting position.
you have a point there. A man who get paid by the mafia for killing is criminal. A man who get paid by the state for killing is not. How does that make sense?
this takes me back to memories of the nurture vs. nature argument, with people divided and arguing either side, when in reality, the truth is that life is BOTH deterministic and compatibilist in nature.
Quantum indeterminacy does not imply that some particles or waves defy some laws of physics, it just says their measurement depends on when and how they are measured. In addition, randomness is a concept and does not exist in reality. No event can have a random consequence.
Yes it can! If we actually take on Schrödingers idea and put a cat in a box with poison gas that has a 50% chance of being released (by some quantum process) before we open the box, the consequence of our action is random, at least in the sense "caused by, but not determined by that action".
Tomas Pettersson Schrödinger's cat does not prove randomness in nature. Here's an example what true randomness means: A pool ball at 5mph hits a stationary pool ball, and both end up moving at 100mph. I know that's a macro-world example, but it's to demonstrate a truly random outcome
Random (used in the cat case) does not mean "anything can happen". It means undetermined. If water turns into wine it is a conjurers trick, a misinterpretation by intoxicated witnesses, a lie or a miracle, not a random event. If there ever was a "truly random event" without any restrictions the world as we know it would not be any more. The difference between events on micro- (single particles) or macrolevel (directly observable) is statistical. A pool ball taking of at any speed, in any direction, without an observable cause could happen, it just doesn´t in human experience, due to low possibility.
Tomas Pettersson "A pool ball taking of at any speed, in any direction, without an observable cause could happen, ..." Wouldn't that violate conservation of momentum and conservation of energy?
That is exactly why it is unlikely to happen within the lifespan of humankind in the observable universe. Those rules are, as far as we know true, but only down to the quantum level (Heisenbergs uncertainty principle) where they give the probability of possible events. That it is so is strongly supported by observations of double slit interference of electrons and tunneling.
“I want to challenge the view ... that you can make any decision that is not constrained by the laws of physics.” Thus stated, the problem is whether free will is within the scope of natural law. Thus “limited,” free will exists. I understand it to be exemplified by any conscious choice.
I also gradually reached this conclusion from my late teens until it crystallized and informed my perspective on life by age 21. I do not say this to claim any special intellectual gift. In fact, many would use it to explain the opposite and reasons for certain struggles with direction and meaning despite, or again because of, earning a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology. It started with questioning what I was taught by the Catholic Church. The idea of going to heaven or hell based on one's acceptance of a religion that began with Jesus preaching for about 3 years of his life in one part of the world thousands of years ago seemed an inefficient way to spread the word. It also seemed petty and vain for a "God" who possessed such insight, power, and love for mankind, his creation. And then I thought about free will. God instilled in all of us a free will. I thought, "What drives this aspect of mind that makes decisions?”. If all are created equal, how do things go wrong with those whose "free will" makes bad choices? Were they defective somehow from the start the way some infants are born with physical defects? I could not reconcile all of this. It made no sense. Empirically oriented from a young age, I embraced evolution and determinism, rejecting free will. I read a book about the use of subliminal suggestion in advertising. It illustrated how people can be influenced and manipulated by subtle but powerful cues, some not available to their conscious awareness. When later asked why they made certain purchasing choices, the subjects had various cognitive narratives that were consistent with their behavior but lacked insight that included the manipulated variable outside their conscious awareness that was what correlated significantly with the purchasing decisions. This powerful effect has been demonstrated in many ways.
Technically, nothing could have made this video better. That said, the video didn't dedicate enough time to the difficulty of simultaneously believing in strict determinism and living as if (libertarian) free will is true. The reconciliation of these two ideas via Compatibilism offers a way to function in society for the small price of a semantic white lie, or the idea that free will exists IN PRACTICE. In my experience, believing that free will is an illusion can often lead to fatalistic behaviors. My question for anyone who happens to read this: "How might the two ideas be reconciled in order to prevent or reduce these fatalistic behaviors?"
+Jay Konkol _"The reconciliation of these two ideas via Compatibilism offers a way to function in society for the small price of a semantic white lie, or the idea that free will exists IN PRACTICE."_ Nonsense. Compatibilism doesn't involve lying. It involves making it completely clear what people are actually talking about when they use the expression "free will" and this is absolutely never that people violate the laws of physics when making decisions. It's always a question of making a consideration of how environmental restrictions impact decision making. _"In my experience, believing that free will is an illusion can often lead to fatalistic behaviors. My question for anyone who happens to read this: "How might the two ideas be reconciled in order to prevent or reduce these fatalistic behaviors?""_ Easy. You don't know the future, so you typically have no rational basis for being "fatalistic". At worst you may rationally conclude that some outcomes have such a low probability that it's not worth your time to pursue them, but that's usually not called being fatalistic, but rather "realistic" or "rational".
Jay Konkol Believing in no free will will influence your behavior. Most people who are exposed to only arguments against free will not that they believe it is an illusion themselves will behave fatalistically. They will loosen their morals and indulge their instincts. They may fall into a deep state of depression like I have. It is likely impact your motivation. What high bar you set for yourself might not be possible anymore if you continue to believe in no free will. Control is essential to the human endeavor. This has negatively impacted my life too. All I can tell you is too stop believing in it. There has been some studies on this. You telling people there is no free will will negatively impact people’s lives despite what this speaker says. That is why I refrain from talking about it to people irl and only talk about it online if the subject is already brought up. Even prominent anti free willers discourage telling people who are unaware about this that there is no free will.
Jay Konkol All of this is uncertain anyways. Scientists are too early to throw away free will. Determinism might not be true. And the experiments on the brain do not tell us much. All they tell us is that the subconscious primes our body to move.
Our subconscious is thousands of times more powerful than our conscious mind. This can give the illusion that we do not have influence over that process. We do have influence over that process however it might not be pure free will as in being in control of every aspect of consciousness. We can influence our will through conscious actions and interactions in conjunction with our subconscious. Through slow, deliberate, and intentional influence, we can have free will.
This guy is the proof that not all human looking creatures possess a free will. Anyone who is not an automaton will be embarrassed to claim all individual choices are determined by antecedent causes and claim in the very next sentence on what to do to "create a better" society. This guy is most certainly an automaton and those impressed by its talk must be automatons as well.
Regarding the MRI test of flashing numbers once a second and monitoring brain activity prior to consciously deciding. it certainly shows that capricious impulses without serious consequences begin below the conscious level. But here's a variation: Flash images of household pets at subjects, one per second, instructing them to choose one pet at random - after which they'll have to take care of it for a week. How many with a fear of reptiles will subconsciously choose the salamander, several seconds before they see it? There may indeed be impulses seconds before the image, but how many with allergies to cats will go through with the impulse when they see the cat image? And how many will "cancel" the impulse when they see the cat?
In a deterministic universe, people do still need to be held morally responsible for their actions. The fact that they will be held responsible is just another factor that could positively affect their behavior. That individual can't make a decision outside of what the laws of physics determine, but outside influences (like laws and responsibility) can act as input that allows them to make different decisions. Even just having moral standards as a society influence peoples behavior.
By deliberate thinking we can change the inputs into our brains, change our environment. Maybe not control every thought, but have "veto power" over whether we act on them.
Reflexive Thinking. It is well-known that we can watch our own thinking. It is called Reflexive Thinking. We can see ourselves think. This trait allows us to make decisions. Consider phrases like, "make up your mind" and "he is beside himself with anger". These and other such phrases point to this trait.
Does this guy realize that he is using free will to choose not to have free will right? The same way as you cant not have desires because the wish of not wanting desires is by its own right. A desire. The same way deciding that you have no free will, is a choice of free will. I would implore to everyone to question this man and his "teachings", at the same time please make your own mind about this rather than also listening to me or this bloke.
I would say that the deterministic outcome of evolution has been that intelligence has developed that has discovered its own history of causes which lead in rational people to the conclusion that free will does not exist. In people who still believe in free will, irrational impulses determine their view. So this guy had no free choice in not believing in free will, but that is entirely consistent with his view.
People that don't understand this don't understand that someone who does not believe in free will can "choose" between going to Subway or Burger King for lunch. We are still stuck in this world with this physics, so we act as if we have free will, but it is still determined that we chose Burger King or Subway. If someone gets confused about that, then there's not much you can say to them. They are too confused.
True. Contrary to popular religious belief that says we do have free will. The laws of physics will always prevail to make sure that we behave in a manner that supports survival.
i always call my self a hardcore materialist, which ulitmately leads to me being a materialistic determinist, which leads to not believing in free will. it is almost impossible to find people that even remotely understand me :D conversations about these topics are so difficult, because of the incredibly strong feeling people have towards free will. i always think that these people do not lack the intellect to understand materialism/naturalism and determinism, but they simply can't accept the fact that they personally have no free will. they immediately reject that idea. it just cant be possible for them. you can see their whole worldview beginning to crumble as they try to understand naturalism, so they just reject it. VERY similar to theists when they hear atheist arguments. amazing talk! love it !
How in the world could a determinist fuss over the fact that he doesn't have any success in changing people's minds. You know for an ontological fact that they are incapable of choosing to accept your position, no matter how much sense it makes. (sarc)
*Any action of a human is a free choice (or is the consequence of a previous free choice), unless he is a slave, or in jail etc. when he cannot choose what will happen next with him (but only others decide for him).* Our instinctive choices have been always changed through proper education (the wisdom from God/Jesus perpetuated through generations from thousands of years ago). Being rational beings, we can understand why some choices are good and others are evil, to make informed choices, but the fallen angels always try to manipulate us. _"Indeed, all who desire to live godly lives in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil men and impostors go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived."_ 2 Timothy 3, 12-13
I have the feeling that this entire discussion is riddled with substance dualism, where it shouldn't. A sentence like "Your brain is telling you to drink milk." Makes it seem as if 'your brain' and 'you' are not the same, or at least part of the same. I think a lot of the problems are removed once you treat a person ('mind', body and brain) as one thing. In my view, yes, free will does not exist. I make choices, based on my preferences, and I cannot change those, since they're stored in my brain. Of course, I can go out into the world, live new experiences, and thereby change my brain and thus my preferences. Good talk!
Maarten Kok The idea of "self" is simply the illusion you're living in. The sentence you mentioned about the brain telling the mind to drink milk is not to be taken literal. In other words, the definition of "brain" in that context is all the neurophysiological events -- which themselves are the result of prior causes either internally or externally -- that give rise to one's wanting to drink milk. The idea that you can change your brain is simply to say that the brain can change itself, which is a paradox. The brain is influenced & thus changed by a concatenation of prior causes. We don't have bodies; we are bodies. Your choices are simply impulses that careen into consciousness, where "you" as the conscious witness will assume responsibility for that choice(impulse). Assuming you made a choice based on your preference is a classic misconception often seen psychology. People simply cannot explain the cause of their actions, thoughts, and intentions. So, according to your view, free will does in fact exist & seems to be playing an interesting role in your life. I hope sarcasm plays a role in your life too.
Maarten Kok You say, '"Your brain is telling you to drink milk." Makes it seem as if 'your brain' and 'you' are not the same', then in the next paragraph say, 'I cannot change those, since they're stored in my brain', which as far as I can see is exactly the same thing -- it is only a rhetorical device which we understand, not a scientific claim.
Maarten Kok Free will is really a nonsense term. To the extent that it means behavior/decision making that can't be predicted, ie. is not deterministic it is equivalent to randomness. If this is the definition then it certainly exists on a quantum level. Furthermore since the brain is a non linear chaotic system made up of quantum particles, the function of the brain is non deterministic, with feedback loops that can make it even less deterministic then quantum particles. Thus, free will, if defined as above exists, but it isn't really your free will or my free will. In fact, you and I are not well defined. Are we our brains? Our nervous system? Our entire body? Where does our body end and the universe end? Is our dead skin and hair part of our body? If so, what about the skin and hair that falls off? What about the fact that every atom in our body is replaced multiple times in our life span. Furthermore even if we came up with a fairly good definition, how would we even go about proving that we exist? As far as I understand solipsism and nihilism are perfectly valid in the sense that there is no rational argument that has disproved them. It's just that those two concept are useless to us, they don't get us anywhere, just like the concept of free will.
Religions create, in the individual, a need for themselves. That's another way that religions self-perpetuate. They make the individual death obsessed. .
This video states that a free will is: An ability to behave independent of the restrictions imposed by genes, experience and the laws of nature. In short, a free will is a free will, a grasp of the obvious that is most astounding. Problem is, unless we want suicide, it is impossible to jump off a high cliff as we lack the desire. And without the talent, a piano we can never play.
Being aware of our choices being predetermined, would actually amplify the range of possible choices made by our unconsciousness. Free will restricts us instead of making us "free", since we think we are chosing something we want to instead of questioning the causes and hence not acting necessarily reasonable. But causes can be numerous. Social expectations, morals!, belief, knowledge, emotions, genetics, etc.. Not considering those aspects into the calculation of your supposedly free choice, actually restricts the number of possible outcomes, so believing in free will is even more deterministic. So asking yourself: Why do I think this way or that way anyway actually complexifies our thought process. Which is good. The more we know, the better solution we can find. It is the new era of reason. Evolution proves that avoidance is the key for survival and development. Increasing the scope of possibilities of choices increases the chance of finding the right avoidance strategy. Being more constrained is contra-productive. Free will constrains us, since we start generalizing, categorizing and indentifying with concepts. It might be efficient and simplifies the world, but we need to complexify it in order to comprehend the universe better and progress as a species.
QM indeterminacy has NOTHING to do with free will. Niels Bohr, one of the main architects of quantum theory, said that: --- "No connection can be made between indeterminism of nature and freedom of will. " --- Here's why!: Determinism does NOT require predictability. It only requires that each moment in the future will have one and only one outcome. That's ALL!! Whether an electron would have done differently in another identical universe IS IRRELEVANT, because we ONLY live IN THIS ONE universe, and all future moments in this one universe will be as they turn out to be. There IS NO "QM free will" or, more accurately, "free whim". --- Humans believe in free will because they fancy that upon another occasion, they could well have chosen vanilla instead of chocolate!! Yes, they might well do so, but that would either be a DIFFERENT occasion in the future that their mind is PLANNING FOR, or another universe, however identical or not! It would NOT be the PAST in THIS universe, which is FIXED!! We only live in THIS universe, and a DIFFERENT occasion says NOTHING about your free will IN THE PAST EVENT you experienced!! The human failing is fancying the future is sort of like the past, and IT ISN'T!! The future is unknown, and so we imagine we can do whatever we want THEN!! But we CAN'T change the PAST!! It is OVER!! It is FIXED!!! The belief in "free will", then, is just a slip of the mind. A mistake of a human mind that just isn't very developed yet. In the future, with either more educated or more evolved humans, we will probably laugh at our foolishness, like WE are amused by a child who doesn't yet possess a theory about the minds of others!
He says: "I want you to think about it." So, he asks you to use your free will to deny your free will. How did he come up with his ideas if he doesn't have free will to form his own thoughts? If the future is fixed and determined, then why do anything? If we can't change anything, why even try? Why is he trying to change minds if the future is already set? If we can't affect the future, there's no reason to do anything. That's a philosophy of futility and passivity.
In the implications section he is still holding his emotional responses as free will, somehow distinct from actions. But these emotional responses are neurological too - once you execute the ghost in the machine you can't resurrect it when it suits you. Also why would you have any more responsibility than a bouncing ball, moral or otherwise? The real wonder is consciousness - what is the point of it?
The definition of "I' seems crucial here. While there is a part of my brain that initiates a decision before I'm consciously aware of it, this doesn't mean that "I" didn't do all of it. It is kind of like a train bumping into a line of railroad cars. Bumping the first one, makes the first bump the second etc. At the end of the line is the decision or the action, but just before that is my conscious awareness of what I was doing. It is all something I did. The train represents the stimulus.
Were you trying to argue for free will here? Because it sounds like you just described determinism lol. The train bumping is the cause, the final carriage moving the effect. If conscious awareness begins at the second last carriage, and so now “you” you are bumping into the last carriage, you made no choice or decision, you simply became aware of a movement you were making which you had no causal agency in initiating.
Dennett says "In a deterministic world there are avoiders....". He might as well say "In a deterministic world not all events are deterministic" which is a contradiction in terms.
Hope Hurteau I understand how you see the issue. My take, as a materialist, is there are no if's or but's within the laws of physics, not even in QM. Every event in the brain had a cause and is a cause. I have a hunch that most compatibilists are not physicists.
Hope Hurteau Only dualists like Chalmers have a hard problem with consciousness - I don't. To me: Consciousness is the sum total of all external and internal sensations.
To me there is no such thing as consciousness as there is no such thing as cold. Consciousness is just shorthand for saying "the sum total of all sensations." Cold is shorthand for saying "10 or 20 or 30 degrees Fahrenheit." Sensations are neither conscious nor unconscious (for there are no such things), they are just sensations. A sensor, the source of a sensation, is a device that converts raw energy into code. A sensation is the processing of that code. This hypothesis of mine is intimately connected to the phenomenon of attention. I define attention thusly: Attention is the automatic, genetically engineered, process of modifying the resistance of information processing channels. I could elaborate on that, but I don't want to make this too lengthy.
The original premise is that we are conscious, if we can be sure of anything is that, everything comes after that. We cannot have reason if we are not conscious. Because of we are conscious we try explaining the things as we perceive them (with no guarantee at all that we perceive things as they are). We use our reason to make hypothesis as the materialistic reductionism view. Concluding with that that hypothesis that our consciousness is an illusion (so our “reason”) and we have no free will is the perfect “Reductio ad absurdum” that those hypotheses are false. To choose between a God creator and that we are robot made out of meat is a false dichotomy. Gödel already demonstrate the reason has limits even in the “perfect” bubble of Maths (not to mention physics, biology…). I don’t totally trust my reason because it not always right, what surprise me very much is that if you think you reason is a sub product of your consciousness which is an illusion generated by a blind chance process you give some credit to it. To put in on a nutshell, the whole point is ridiculous and unscientific but dogmatic.
Jerry Coyne brushes off quantum indeterminism effortlessly. But surely if there's physics we don't understand then physics does not explain everything. At this point I think it's just a matter of being an optimist and believing that there's more to life and death, or being a pessimist and believing that existence is black and white and we have no control.
"the feeling of agency is so strong that we cannot overcome it but once we recognise it then there are things that we can do to improve society " ... dammit! If only we had free will we could totally do that!
I don’t think I’ve ever read or heard a discussion about determinism versus free will that didn’t include examples of food choices when there is a selection of foods available.
Don’t get all bent out of shape. Though you don’t have freewill, you are still you. No need confuse the two. All that material wrapped within your skin is still you. It ain’t me and it ain’t nobody else.
Excellent. I've been waiting for this since his interview with Sam Harris. An argument I consistently run into is that determinism equals fatalism or predeteminsm. This is usually followed by the notion of some dualistic free will Coyne defines, or that I have no choice if I accept determinism. I have choice; its just that those choices are made by factors mostly external to my conscious mind and therefore, not freely chosen in the libertarian sense. Free will is an illusion.
It is truly an affront to intellectuals everywhere that this guy has been selected to speak. He truly does not know what he is talking about. Quantum mechanics tells us that time proceeds forward in time by alternating between 2 well-defined mechanisms: Unitary and stochastic evolution. Unitary evolution is the continuous and deterministic part that this Coyne fellow seems to understand. On the other hand, stochastic evolution occurs each time a quantum wavefunction collapses, and consists of the series of quantum random selections which the Universe makes with each succeeding quantum observation. The thing is that NO ONE knows what "quantum random" selection of the projected quantum state is - OTHER THAN THAT IT APPEARS TO BE DESCRIBED AS IF IT WERE SELECTIONS FROM A SERIES OF FULLY RANDOM NUMBERS. It may well be that human force of will may influence the precise random selections which become the real future in this Universe. It is both curious and ironic that the Universe has been constructed such that such a loophole of faith not only exists in our present advanced understanding of Nature, but has always been available to all humans throughout history via the prevalence of a sequence of various scientific models so permitting. Why has someone so ignorant on this subject been allowed to influence public opinion regarding a subject of which his knowledge is so obviously lacking? The neo-ignorati must have selected this speaker. My advice is that whomsoever has control over the selection committee for this group's speakers replace the members of the selection committee who made this blatantly ignorant selection ASAP.
+MantisNoMore Coyne addresses quantum randomness but says it is not under our control and so our futures are determined, but not predictible as he states at around 11 minutes in. Please explain your contention that "human force of will may influence the precise random selections which become the real future in this Universe" and what do you mean by "loophole of faith"?
+ok fanriffic coyne may not be entirely right (I wouldnt be the one to to know) but he does counter many misconceptions about free will in this talk. it seems like the person who wants this talk removed has an emotional attachment to another train of thought, because even if coyne blatantly misrepresented everything, the video could still exist as the source material for people to refute it, I see no reason to make it so that people couldnt see this video without some sort of emotional bias.
Your idea that there is a human will that can control quantum states is nothing more than conjecture and an attempt at finding a loophole for free will. The way you framed this objection makes me wonder if you get your information about science from Wikipedia. I don't say that because of inaccuracy, I say that because of how you present it. I have never seen objections framed that way from any of my professors, and it makes no sense to frame things like that since starting off so combative almost assures that people will ignore your arguments. By the by, libertarian free will makes no sense even without the evidence from physics and biology. Any decision that anything makes whether it be a biological life form or a disembodied soul or even a god boils down to a thought of the ilk "I will do X". Now, how could you choose to have that thought or any thought for that matter? The choice to have that thought would itself boil down to the thought "I will decide that I will do X". This means that the thought "I will do X" was not actually a choice, but really just the result of the previous thought or interplay of thoughts in which the thought "I will decide that I will do X" won out. This can be applied to all of the thoughts in the series of thoughts leading to any decision which, again, is nothing other than the thought "I will do X". There is no point at which a free choice is ever made, all that happens is thoughts generating successive thoughts. Of course there must be something to stimulate the first thought since otherwise we get an infinite regress, but again no free choice is ever made.
Even if we could (or rather if our thoughts in some non-materialistic way did... )influence events on the quantum level it would not give us more free will than we already have. It would just mean that the causality was more complex, in the same way as stock market reacts to news. I.e. bad news make people nervous - they sell shares - prices drop - more people getting worried - decide to sell...in a loop that is highly unpredictable. We already have the means to influence our future by our actions. If I decide to read a book rather than take a drink and watch "the big bang theory" it may in some way, at some time influence my thinking in a completely unpredictable if not random way. Influencing the quantum level would not make it any different.
I don't think Coyne presented fairly Dennett's thesis of compatibilism. Dennett's "free will" is a little harder to explain, you cannot do it in 10 seconds, as Coyne attempted. It took me a lot of effort to finally understand what Dennett means, and I was coming from Coyne's camp, 100%. When I understood Dennett, I was convinced compatibilism makes sense.
Lack of free will is a revelation of science. But people should not just be told this with no context. They need to actually understand what this means, and what it's implications are. This should be an entire class taught in schools on a mandatory basis (of course that won't happen for a very long time because the majority of people don't believe it).
This is one of those things that if you get it, then you will also get that you are just one, non dual you might say, a log floating down the river of experience. If you don’t get it, perhaps one day you will. Perhaps not.
When there is 50% of reason to choose A, and there's 50% the reason to choose B after all the factors have been considered, a human then makes a conscious choice. A choice of awareness. Whether he bounces to A or to B is his decision, his souls decisions. It boils down to God or the Devil, who's side do you take? I take God's side. When you take God's choice over and over again, that focus grows, so you rise to heaven on a subconscious level, so there might be times where you are not making a conscious decision but because you choose A over B consciously throughout your life, the positive over the negative, the good over the bad, your subconscious mind makes the right decision without the need of conscious effort. Deep down, (again on a poetic level) you know what is right, and what is wrong, but whether you focus on the right or the wrong is your choice, your decision, and that IS the cause, that is what causes some people to save, others to spend recklessly. Some to love, some to hate. Some to Give, some to Take, it explains pleasure and suffering. It takes 50% of effort to focus (right now) on good and 50% of the effort to focus on the bad. You can either let a bad experience make you, or break you, it is your decision. You can either interpret something in a positive way, or a negative way, it is your choice. Depending on how you interpret your circumstance, when you interpret them in a certain way, you react to them in relation to how you interpreted them. How you interpret things you see, feel and experience is your choice. You can either interpret the good, or the bad. God or the Devil, and that decision is not governed by anything else but your free will. So what are you going to choose? Does Free will exist, or does it not?
God or devil? An invisible man in the sky who hates shrimp and homosexuals and an invisible man with pitchforks...? Religion really has poisoned your mind. If you want to dwell on religious stupidity, go to your local church. Stop spreading religious stupidity on the Internet!
Michael Kennedy Damn, I had hoped the devil could at least be an invisible incredibly hot woman! Cause I'm regularly told that I'll end up in Hell for an eternity for not believing - and I would prefer spending an imaginary eternity with a woman rather than a man.... :-D ;-)
The screen you are looking at is produced by millions of tiny single color squares called pixels. The "picture" is an emergent property in our minds. I think free will is a similar property, and it's silly to look at as nothing more than mental states. It's possible that the purely mechanical view is correct; however, it's just as likely that the supposed illusion of free will experienced by every free thinker is as much a part of reality as our bodies are. We are still bound as a single entities to our bodies and suffer the same fate as our bodies, just like the picture is still dependent upon the underlying pixels.
Gnomefro wrote to Jose Laboy "and don't have any problem with rampant disagreement with other computers being fed the same data." Please explain how other deterministic computers fed the same data can produce rampant disagreement ... please.
To be honest, it doesn't matter to me if I have free will or not; the illusion of free will is good enough for me; At least I think this is how I feel, because without free-will I really can't say for sure.
How would the world or my life be different if I actually did have free will? If it would essentially be the same, then perhaps we should all live just as if we do have it.
Actually there has been studies of how the knowledge of no free will effects people. With that knowledge people tend to become fatalistic and less moral. Despite what the speaker says how it didn’t effect him it effects other people regardless. So people’s would be different if we had free will.
Kent Linkletter Free will is a myth, and it actually cannot exist. It’s analogous to saying, “Why don’t we just live as if we were invincible.” We can’t. It’s impossible.
I experience free will and I trust other people do so to. I do not accept the idea that free will is the result of some non-materialistic agency (that would of course have to be operated by some higher level non-material agency and so on ad infinitum). Hence, I do not agree with the line of thought presented by Coyne here. He simply defines "free will" as not determined by physical (natural) factors, including the indeterministic quantum level. I would argue that even in a perfectly deterministic universe a creature can possess free will, as long as the brain is sufficiently complex, so as to never be in the same state twice or as another brain. In that case the individuals, provided they reach a sufficiently high cognitive level, can (subjectively) experience free will, their will can not be (perfectly) predicted or controlled and may be influenced by any event in that universe (the butterfly effect) thereby making it in principle impossible to have some control mechanism working in that universe (since that mechanism itself must be built of parts that may influence the brain it tries to control.) Coyne, it seems to me, has bought the anti-naturalistic religious argument that free will needs a soul and because his atheism he gives up free will rather than accepting an unmaterial soul. I maintain he has fallen in a trap set by theists.
Now I don't know whether we have free will (and frankly I don't really care all that much) but it is my firm opinion that as a society we need to treat people as if they had free will. What other choice do we have?
Agree - because whilst we may not have free will , our actions are still influenced by our environments. And seeing a guy fry in an electric chair would most certainly change my brain electrons to choose not to commit a similar crime to his.
I think dennet has spent his whole life working on moral responsibility and stuff like that, and I don't think he likes the idea as it goes against everything he knows
So choosing not to act on our wants is not an act of free will because we wanted not to act on them and therefore it was not free will? sounds like a circular argument to me.
Notice when he uses someone having a gun to their head as an example that of course a person would choose a certain way in that situation and then says the brain operates in a similar fashion. This seems to suggest that a gun to the head is in some way preventing someone from choosing a certain way. This has been proven not to be true especially in the case of the death penalty. The death penalty is in fact not a deterrent for crime. There is evidence to suggest that rather than being a deterrent, it actually motivates people to disobey law in even more extreme ways because once they cross that line, there is no point in adhering to any kind of morals any longer. "They are going to kill me anyway so it doesn't matter what I do" kind of thinking.
Guy says we don't really have a mind capable of making conscious free choice then says punishment deters crime because you will think I don't want that to happen to me. He also says the brain makes us think that because of self preservation but the death penalty has no effect on deterrence. You can't choose to be gay because you always felt that way but the feeling of freewill that you always had is an illusion. So many contradictions feels more like a political speech. If we were to live more harmoniously with others or know If our bodies are being moved by something else or even a drive to do more, none of these things need a sense of self or a sense of freewill be necessary to achieve this. In fact the contrary would be better for self preservation and drive and harmony among man because we would not decide to put ourselves into situations of war or suicide. The reason people listen to philosophers over people like this is because science is probabilistic and has been proven wrong time and time again throughout the centuries and philosophy comes to a conclusion based in pure reasoning. Hence why you brought up the infinite regress which by the way was an argument for a God. You literally just used this platform to bash religion and push an agenda thank God that person got away
@Reality Check Not sure if you knew it or not but there's a difference between being butt hurt and calling out BS. If you ever picked up a book and learned the difference between Metaphysical Reductionism vs Methodological Reductionism maybe you would be intelligent enough to recognize it too.
I think that Dr. Coyne is missing a very important distinction between computers and us. What keeps us so far from AI is getting artificial systems that actually go BEYOND their programming. This "beyond" means not just improving its decisions, etc., but also coming up new, innovation decisions, as well as, bad, detrimental decision. IOW, when AI takes on a will of it's own.
So, when someone commits murder or suicide or rape or burglary, they really had no choice? Someone needs to tell the judge. In fact, we don't even need judges or a legal system because it's all predetermined. ?
There are all sorts of complicated threads arising from this talk -- for example how can we decide whether or not criminals should be punished, and by what right (or even by what process) could people make such a decision? Also, if changing the minds of the public were to lead to social change on a large scale, by what right did this lecturer take it upon himself (or not) to give the lecture, and thereby destroy society as we know it. If everything is predetermined, is it not the case that we will come to realise that there is no free will regardless or whether he wrote his book or not, or is the writing of his book the channel by which determinism changes the world? It seems rather a large responsibility -- but is he really to blame for destroying the universe (hyperbole) in the next century (suggestion) when this notion really takes off? If, as I believe, the world will continue exactly as before (at least as regards free will), even if the notion of free will is rejected, then it all becomes an exercise in semantics, in which case... what is the point of rejecting the idea of free will? We will simply change the definition, and carry on.
The strange thing about him bringing up religion and God in this is that the same conflict is within theological circles. There is a strong belief that God controls everything(divine sovereignty) and yet we still have free will. This in theological terms is often seen as the Calvinistic approach in which salvation is pre-determined. Sound familiar? Its almost as if humans have been arguing about the same things for time immemorial and we just use the newest evidence that comes along to swing one way or the other.
