Wow, this was an excellent and thought-provoking interview. One thing, I think there is a conflation of terms here with determinism. Complex chaotic systems are still following deterministic laws, it’s only epistemically that we cannot determine their outcomes because we can never know the initial conditions in fine enough detail. This is touched on in the interview, and extended to show that since there is some noise and epistemic indeterminacy in neural systems that somehow means they aren’t deterministic. I think that is a conflation, and going too far. I would say that chaotic, noisy, epistemically indeterminative systems are still ontologically deterministic, it’s just that WE don’t have enough information to accurately compute their future outcomes. That doesn’t mean there’s enough wiggle room to squeeze in free will
Very interesting point. To be honest I had a few points I wanted to pushback on but for the sake and flow of the podcast I wanted to move to other topics. While Free Will is a fascinating topic it can be a bit inaccessible due to it’s philosophical nature and verbose language. Inaccessible to me included. Would have loved more time to dive into the details but there was just so many other topics I wanted to discuss with him. Appreciate the kind words and the support. Lots more podcasts coming soon!
True, unless those (theoretically deterministic) chaotic systems are susceptible to non-deterministic interference from the quantum level, in which case they could also be considered non-deterministic on an ontological level. I do agree there's often too much of a focus on predictability in free will debates, however.
@@SchepersP10 the thing with quantum mechanics though is that it is deterministic on a macro scale. Individual particles behave probabilistically, but large groups of particles? You can predict exactly how large groups of particles will behave. A single particle may have a 30% chance of decaying, but it is extremely reliable that 30% of a large group of particles WILL decay. The brain is a large group of particles. Also the professor here even mentions how the brain course grains over individual neurons and it’s more about larger scale patterns of neural activity
@@criticalbasedtheory True, but doesn't that just mean the quantum indeterminacy "averages out" on a larger scale? We do know quantum mechanical effects can sometimes play a role in macroscopic processes (I believe photosynthesis is often cited as an example); whether or not they play a role in neural activity in the brain is an open question as far as I can tell.
@@SchepersP10 Would anyone argue that photosynthesis is indeterministic? I don’t think so. Quantum coherence improves the efficiency of energy transfer but I don’t see how indeterminacy plays any role in the process when at the end of the day it’s the most efficient pathway that is taken by the deterministic principle of least action
Just found your channel and I’m glad someone finally did a video on Steven Bartlett. He had another person on his channel talking about how autism is caused by diet.
Well... He says it ,,you'' who executing decisions and impacting them. But they are kind of coded, influence. I think that gest simplified it. And it is not black and white. But that is my impression. So it is how you understand stuff
