Robert Sapolsky and Kevin Mitchell both released books on free will recently, both using science to make opposing cases. I saw a video of a discussion between the two and now I want to buy both books (and I may have no choice).
I loved the psychologists dancing around. Saying psychologists don't argue yes or no, that a persons ability to act in a free will manner...that means, yes. If it doesn't exist, there is no capacity for it.
Nice, thanks! I have never ever been able to understand why some people bring determinism on the discussion of free will because we know that, based on quantum mechanics, the world is not totally deterministic. Not totally meaning that altough, well say at the coarse scale, physical phenomena happen quite deterministically. For ex.if you throw a stone in the air, it will fall back on the ground etc. But, in that movement of the stone, not everything is deterministic, only the coarse scale observation of the overall event is. I give a challenge to to watchers of this video: Give me an example of a physical process/event that goes from start to finnish with absolute determinism when the total description, not jut the overal of what is happening, is wanted.
If you're a hidden variable theorist, which I am, then quantum processes are also explained by underlying deterministic physics that we don't understand yet. But even if physics is fundamentally probabilistic, that doesn't save free will unless you posit some kind of causation that isn't bottom-up. Top-down causation might exist with or without fundamental indeterminacy of physics.
Physics is one thing as i see the point in your analogy but lets say you give a human 3 choices like this guy said half way through the video, and everything about this human we knew up to what they had for breakfast 15 years ago, we would always know what this human would pick however the human would ponder on these choices for as long as he needs thinking he had the free will to decide whereas everything about him has already decided. now account this for every decision we make from birth... isnt it all determined. Saying the universe is determined is meh but we as human are surely?
" Mohammed had a disciple named Ali. Ali once asked Mohammed’s opinion about whether a man is independent and free to do what he wants, or whether he is bound by his destiny in everything he does. Ali asked, ”Can one do as one wants or not?” - and man has been asking this question for a long, long time. ”If a man is not able to do as he desires,” Ali said, ”then it is useless and foolish to preach to him not to steal, not to tell lies, not to be dishonest. Or is it destiny that one man should always be there to preach to others not to steal or not to do this or that, knowing full well that it is also destiny for a dishonest man to remain dishonest, for a thief to remain a thief, for a murderer to remain a murderer? All this appears absurd. If everything is predestined, all education is useless - all prophets, all saints and all teachers are useless.” People have asked such questions to Mahavira and to Buddha also. If what is going to happen is predestined, why should Mahavira or Buddha take so much trouble to explain what is right and what is wrong? So, Ali asked Mohammed what he thought about this controversial matter. If such a question was asked to Mahavira or Buddha, they would have given a very complicated and deep reply, but Mohammed gave a reply which Ali could understand. Many of Mohammed’s replies were direct and straightforward. Ordinarily, answers given by people who are uneducated or less educated, or who are simple villagers, are direct and frank. People like Kabir, Nanak, Mohammed and Jesus were simple in that way. Answers by people like Buddha, Mahavira and Krishna were complex - Buddha and Mahavira were the cream of a rich and highly developed civilization. The words of Jesus were direct, like a blow on the head. Kabir has actually sung: ”Kabir is standing in the open market with a hammer in his hand to hit you!” If anyone came near him he would, so to speak, break open his head to remove all the rubbish that was lying inside. Mohammed did not give any metaphysical reply. He asked Ali to lift one leg and stand on it. Ali had asked a question about whether a man is free to do what he wants. Why should Ali stand on one leg? Mohammed said, ”First lift one leg.” Poor Ali lifted his left leg and stood there on one leg. Mohammed then asked him, ”Now lift the right leg also.” Ali was puzzled and asked how it was possible. Then Mohammed said, ”If you had wanted to, you could have lifted the right leg first, but now you cannot…. A man is always free to lift the first leg - it can be whichever he wants - but no sooner has the first been lifted when the other becomes bound to the earth.” With regard to the nonessential part of life, we are always free to lift the first leg. But once that is done it becomes a bondage for the essential part. We take steps that are nonessential, become entangled, and then we are not able to do the essential. So Mohammed said to Ali that he had all the freedom to lift the right or the left leg first. But once he exercised that freedom and lifted one left leg, he was incapable of lifting the other leg. So freedom is there within certain limits, but beyond those limits there is bondage."
If a human beings or homo sapiens capacity for exercising free will goes up and down depending on things like energy levels, etc, then that suggests 1) that there _is_ something like free will (what I would call just the ability to make choices given the options available to one) that plays a part in reality and 2) that free will is a component of biological life and therefore something that can be found in other animals as well. Most likely to greater or lesser degrees depending on where one falls on the phylogenetic tree.
I guess base on the assembly theory by Lee Curtis makes sense that the future is indeterminate and the past is determined wich u have a little bit of both I guess we are quantum all in one,the future is imposible to predict base on that judging part that we have inside of our duality
Of course, your assertion seems completely logical, and I'm in agreement, but where is the line? At some point, we're discussing panpsychism, and going completely metaphysical. Maybe I'm wrong...
No, because you forget one important thing about free will. It doesn't apply only to "what kind of food will I eat", but to moral statements such as "Is cutting trees to make paper ethical?". Animals may have the ability to make choices (Should I go left or right, should I eat this mouse or play with it) but nowhere in this set up do moral values emerge.
@@charlesborrasnogues5065 You make an excellent point, because, imo, when considering free will-what free will is and whether whether we have it or not-one should start with how free will played a part in our early ancestors hunting strategies and so forth; all the mundane aspects of life. All the more complicated moral questions came later in our social and cultural development, especially as we began to live in larger and larger communities. Our ability to make choices was then viewed as an essential component in understanding moral issues. But morality itself, I think, had little to do with our initial experiences of free will and the initial “purpose” of free will from an evolutionary standpoint.
What "deters" meaningful awareness from devolving into larger generalizations? For instance how do human beings maintain a cognizance of "size" without devolving into the more general "quantity"? What deters consciousness from constantly reassessing what its aware of? While size is visual is it primarily visual? Is there a "psychological" filter to visual size? Or is vision the filter to psychological meaning? If we cannot find the factor that controls meaning then is it reasonable to propose any deterrence to will? For as long as meaning can be refined or replaced what is meaningful can not be deterred. Can the will, thus, be deterred?
The person making the decision between the chicken and the fish certainly believes they have the ability to choose either but it is an absolute illusion of choice, whatever choice is made existed prior to making it and could not in any way have been otherwise. They could also make a seemingly uncharacteristic decision to change half way through receiving the first choice but this would still just be an outcome that exists within a long sequence of outcomes that are fixed and not subjected to any true agency.
This guy understands, that at each level or domain of scale, unforeseen emergent modes of causality can arise. Can these emergent 'degrees of causal freedom' possibly be predicatively simulated, with current models and computation? My guess is No...
Seems like some video editing issues at 10:15-10:49 and after. Scale of free will, linking self-control with decision making, multiple levels of determinism, complex systems with appearance of non-determinism on higher levels - good ideas.
If there is no free will, why did I decide to pause an NFL game and come here? If free will does not exist, then science is predetermined, and the results are NO BIG DEAL..
We have free will within a subset of options. We work in life to increase our agency and our subset of options. As we gain awareness we come to understand how needs, desires, abilities and circumstances restrict our subset of options, but everyone generally agrees that we make choices and have free will (it is in the bible and is the basis of our justice system) and that this will to choose is an agent of consciousness. Subsets of choice can be generated by unconscious and subconscious sensory input calculators, processed and collated to a final product. Awareness of this product is consciousness. But is consciousness an artifact of the product itself? Is consciousness the central product in a room full of collecting mirrors? Using the billiards example; all sensory input processed and patched together is represented by a billiard ball that has come to rest against the bumper. At this interface there is awareness and will, the components of consciousness. The mechanism of awareness and will is occult - hidden from our knowledge. But we can speculate, and experiment and examine its nature. Even the mechanisms of Newton's laws, simple in comparison, are difficult to explain and understand.
@@Ekam-Sat No,nor has anyone else. The OT has yet to be translated. The little-but significant parts- Kamal Salibi has tells different stories. “The Bible Came from Arabia “, Kamal Salibi,1985 plus his 3 other bible study books.
The fact that we are the only species on Earth that discusses and questions whether we have Free Will is proof that we are qualitatively unique and have Free Will.
Or proof that we are the only species on the planet with language. Many animals have very similar sensory perceptual systems (related to touch, smell, taste, hearing and seeing) and brain components as ours, suggesting that animals likely have similar experiences of consciousness as we Homo sapiens, including the experience of having the ability to make choices in their environments from among the options open to them.
@@longcastle4863 Of course, I would agree with you that other animals communicate with one another, but human language both written and spoken is on another level. We are a unique species that has created human culture with language, Science, Mathematics, Religion, Philosophy, Art, Music, amongst other things that no other species has. Animals make decisions but don't possess the capacity for rational thought to the degree that we do.
@@Resmith18SR Our capacity for rational thought does not prove we have free will. Once we utilize language and conceptualization to conceive of cause and effect, and the relationship between these concepts, we are thereby equipped to ruminate on and debate whether we ourselves are bound by the laws of causality. This debate would exist in both a universe with and without "freedom of the will."
@@Bringadingus We are bound by the laws of causality. Our unique human brain and nervous system is what I would say gives us Free Will. I'm a compatibilist.
@@Resmith18SR I also consider myself a compatibilist, but it still is worth pointing out that having a unique brain, by itself, does not bear on the question of free will.
I'm a compatibilist and I believe that every event in the Universe has a cause and that Free Will in humans is not an uncaused event but one that is uniquely human because we have self awareness, and rational thought that other species don't possess.
@@uncommonsensewithpastormar2913 I agree and these people like Sam Harris and Robert Sapolsky who strictly believe in Determinism and that we should not be held responsible or blameworthy for our behavior are wrong. Every social system on the planet has always had a legal system which punishes and holds people responsible for their behavior. They argue that Free Will is an illusion that if we just abandoned then we would understand a mass murderer like Stalin or Hitler and not blame them or punish them or hold them responsible.
We have will. We make choices. Is it FREE? If it is, it is the only thing in the universe that isn’t part of a larger system. Christianity had to introduce FREEDOM so that God could punish sinners for eternity. Before that event, it was merely Will. People make choices. Free will is ridiculous and so is eternal punishment.
Even between protestant Christians there is a large debate around free will, mainly between calvinists and arminians. Believe or not, it is possible to argue for a very deterministic God and no real free will.
@@Felipe_Ribeir0 clearly, god is an amazing physicist, being able to work out how quantum mechanics works with gravity. Unless, of course, he cannot figure it out either, although he made everything. I tend to take a very jokey approach to these questions, because everybody knows the real answers, but we need to pretend we’re baffled so we can replay the conversation.
There is no free will at the minds level but in reality there is free will , again present as we know is now the reality , reality is a series of changes happening, understanding is the way to to influence the future cause and effect of mind and matter, to know more say I love You Goldy My Wow Woke The Sun Ra The God in & of all things
Experiment: Make a list of immediate activities (eat out vs eat in; have steak vs have chicken; side dish of baked potato vs mashed potatoes; etc). Flip a coin heads/tails to decide each choice...... all free will..... my luck instead of having steak and baked potato at Ruth Chris I'll be eating chicken and mashed potatoes AGAIN at home.... bummer
I think the idea is that, if the universe is determined at the moment of the big bang, then the outcome of your coin flip was decided 13.8 billion years ago... 😛 I think that's a lot to ask of the universe, tbh. It's basically saying, 13.8 billion years ago, it was already decided that the matter spewing from the big bang would ultimately create our local group of galaxies, which created our milky way, which created our solar system, which created earth and its eventual habitability, which eventually created you to exist at the specific time and place for you to flip your coin and decide to stay in for dinner. The whole thing sounds a little too "godly" for me... If randomness exists, then the idea of you being able to freely choose staying in or going out is valid... But if it doesn't exist, then you don't have that freedom. And I feel like we've all but proven that randomness exists to varying degrees throughout the cosmos... So it's logical to assume that, if randomness exists on the universal scale, and it it exists on the quantum scale (which by all observations and calculations, does exist) then it has to exist everywhere in between. It can't just be random in once aspect, but determined in another. Thus, if randomness exists, then free will has to exist.
I haven't laughed much watching Closer to Truth but it happened with this video when the choice of having chicken rather than fish was said to be predetermined since the Big Bang :that did it for me.😅 Having said that, the argument for using psychology to understand freewill is very convincing. 👌
Degrees of free will….😏 explanation is NOT the point. if our lack of free will isn’t a monumental shock…hard to imagine one really recognizes the full subtlety
No matter the subject, paradigm, or perspective, nor the state of and reasons for existence, if one isn't confronted with shock and senses of awe, wonderment, and bewilderment when experiencing whatever this is...then they are missing something.
Roughly speaking, life nudges the universe so as to allow light to circumnavigate the universe first in one direction, and then another. This is done repeatedly, an infinite number of times. There are thus an INFINITE number of circumnavigations of light before the Omega Point is reached.
Roughly speaking we aren't currently capable of making observations on a scale necessary to make this anything other than your own personal opinion. You sure did state that opinion as if it were some sort of empirical fact though...
The interviewee seems to confuse free will with will, probably because of a lack of experience in handling these terms. Ahhh no it seems he's just a believer.
(4:50) *RB: **_"it's going to be more a matter of degree of Free Will rather than yes or no."_* ... This particular period of human history will be highly criticized by future historians. They will mock our current society for questioning everything that has ever held longstanding precedence (i.e., gender, life, right to self-defense, freedom of speech, personal pronouns, self-identity, etc.). In this particular case, we're questioning if everything is determined or if we actually have free will, but reality demonstrates that we all face a certain degree of *deterministic events* (obstacles) and a certain degree of *free willed responses* (navigation of obstacles). ... Trying to argue exclusivity for one or the other is a complete waste of everyone's time! In fact, the only reason why this debate exists today is because humanity is stuck in an intellectual quagmire, and whenever that happens, _infighting ensues!_ Should humanity suddenly become threatened with an extinction level event, all of this inane quibbling would quickly come to an end.
@@longcastle4863 *"Gender? Oh God, please tell me you’re not one of those."* ... If everyone can identify with being whatever they want to be, then everyone is one of "those" (whatever that may be).
I'm a bit more optimistic, an intellectual quagmire would be one in which progress was impaired, but i don't see any evidence for that. Technologically, socially, economically I think we're still on the up overall. There is an argument that democracy is in a bit of a crisis in the west. Maybe. There is the issue that people don't value something they haven't had to struggle for. Recent generations are more and more distant from the defining conflicts of the last century in which the continued existence of free societies was genuinely in question. There is a lack of trust in democratic institutions at the moment, but it's not like this is unprecedented in human history. There are anti-democratic forces at work in both the left and the right at the moment, but I don't see any sign of those forces becoming truly mainstream or dominant.
@@simonhibbs887 *"I'm a bit more optimistic, an intellectual quagmire would be one in which progress was impaired, but i don't see any evidence for that."* ... Big Bang and Quantum Theory have been around since the early 1900's with not much being added other than a few new particles and bosons. That's why all the crazy "theories" emerged like Simulations, String Theory, Many Worlds, and the Multiverse. These represent science "grasping at straws" trying to come up with something new. *"There is an argument that democracy is in a bit of a crisis in the west. Maybe."* ... It's the entire spectrum of individual freedom that's in crisis. It's reached its peak and is now shifting back toward authoritarian rule. Speech is now being regulated by ideologues and the government can "seize your property" (your cash) and force you to prove that it wasn't gained through nefarious means. You don't see "cancel culture" and "virtue signaling" growing rampant on your side of the pond? In 1980, our national debt was at $371B and everyone thought that was insane. Today it's at $33T and nobody seems to care. What happens when the world's greatest superpower implodes into bankruptcy? In my mind, anyone who doesn't see our world as teetering on the edge of total implosion is living in a vacuum.
*"Thumbs down for promotion of animal abuse."* ... Are you consistent in your reasoning and equally downvote videos of foxes, hawks, snakes, bears, lizards, and other predators that eat chickens and fish?
Executive function and decision making is localized in the prefrontal cortex. Self-control is lost in people with a degraded frontal lobe, and they aren’t even aware of it. So we can’t really assume we have self-control either.
How do you know,how can you be sure that your preferences are your choices? What if they already predestinated and you were born with them in your gèns. Thats a very tricky question,isn't it😉
So Evolution, through the process of biological natural selection, has selected for animals having the _illusion_ of consciousness and free will. Meaning that somehow there was an adaptive or survival benefit to animal species experiencing such an illusion? (Maybe boost to their self-esteem?) As opposed to their being adaptive and survival benefits to animal species _actually_ having such things as consciousness and free will?
@@longcastle4863 It depends what we mean by free will. I don't even think we do have the illusion of free will in the libertarian sense. We have the genuine sense of free will in the form of autonomy. If you ask someone why they made a certain choice, they will generally be able to tell you the reasons they made that choice. In other words the decision was a result of the information they had and their reasoning process. That's entirely compatible with determinism. If they didn't think it through carefully, maybe because it wasn't an important decision, they will say they just picked arbitrarily, or randomly. Again that's entirely compatible with determinism.
Materialists trying to explain"free will" is like the convoluted reasoning one would discover by asking clowns at a circus how often do the elephants talk to them. The whole premise based on an unproven fallacy (materialism itself), is a clown show.
Materialism is the basis for everything we understand about the world. It's what allows this video to exist, and what allows us to comment on it. Free will is the unproven assumption.
@@jamenta2 Correct. Over 90% of contemporary philosophers are materialists, and over 95% of scientists. You're offering nothing but Deepak Chopra nonsense.
I would like to debate with you if God is Time and Space or Jesus Christ. If you don’t know God is the creator of the universe or you believe the idea of God is fantasy or dogma of faith that belongs to religion is because they have deceived you. The question “does God exist?” means “was the universe created from an eternal entity superior to oneself?”. The truth matters and if God is Jesus Christ I would burn for eternity in hell and if God is Time and Space religious people would suffer for eternity the hell of being oneself having been deceived with a lie that looks like a lie. You don’t have to believe in God because God is necessary because logically it is impossible the existence of the creation or finitude without the creator or infinitude. Atheism is the belief immune to arguments that all reality is creation. Creation is what has a beginning of existence. Atheism is a logical fallacy that assumes God is the religious idea of the creator of the creation to conclude wrongly no creator exists because a particular idea of God doesn’t exist. Why do you believe Jesus Christ exists? I would tell you later on why I know he doesn’t exist. I would like you to reflect on the fact that regardless of when the universe was created God existed always before. It is said that Jesus Christ is omniscient and knows the future of life. If Jesus knew the future all reality would be deterministic and there would be no free will. Jesus’s own actions would be determined by his omniscience. And the argument is definitive!
@@Bringadingus Don't be a fool because nobody ever was happy being a fool. I want to end religion. Did you understand? Atheism is a logical fallacy or misunderstanding of reality. Atheism can not end religion with the nonsensical remark "who created god?". Did you understand?. I came up with the idea that God, the intelligent creator of the universe, is all eternal reality. Did you understand? My new concept of God is not to be worshipped, obeyed and feared, so what is the problem? Why i am suffering the most severe and devastating censorship in history trying to end religion? I am talking about reality that is happening in front of your eyes. To end religion and the war the discovery that atheism is a logical fallacy has to be news. Did you understand? Atheism is a logical fallacy that assumes God is the religious idea of the creator of the creation to conclude wrongly no creator exists because a particular idea of God doesn’t exist. I hope for God's sake to be understood.
Enlightenment equals free will
I am free to choose I'm going to have a beer now. Cheers.. 🍻
Robert Sapolsky and Kevin Mitchell both released books on free will recently, both using science to make opposing cases. I saw a video of a discussion between the two and now I want to buy both books (and I may have no choice).
I loved the psychologists dancing around. Saying psychologists don't argue yes or no, that a persons ability to act in a free will manner...that means, yes. If it doesn't exist, there is no capacity for it.
Nice, thanks! I have never ever been able to understand why some people bring determinism on the discussion of free will because we know that, based on quantum mechanics, the world is not totally deterministic. Not totally meaning that altough, well say at the coarse scale, physical phenomena happen quite deterministically. For ex.if you throw a stone in the air, it will fall back on the ground etc. But, in that movement of the stone, not everything is deterministic, only the coarse scale observation of the overall event is.
I give a challenge to to watchers of this video: Give me an example of a physical process/event that goes from start to finnish with absolute determinism when the total description, not jut the overal of what is happening, is wanted.
If you're a hidden variable theorist, which I am, then quantum processes are also explained by underlying deterministic physics that we don't understand yet.
But even if physics is fundamentally probabilistic, that doesn't save free will unless you posit some kind of causation that isn't bottom-up. Top-down causation might exist with or without fundamental indeterminacy of physics.
Inflation of space-time.
Physics is one thing as i see the point in your analogy but lets say you give a human 3 choices like this guy said half way through the video, and everything about this human we knew up to what they had for breakfast 15 years ago, we would always know what this human would pick however the human would ponder on these choices for as long as he needs thinking he had the free will to decide whereas everything about him has already decided. now account this for every decision we make from birth... isnt it all determined. Saying the universe is determined is meh but we as human are surely?
It is funny think though if ew could only enjoy the free will aspects of our world we'd only get excited on whether the cat is in the box or not
Yes RK, you are obsessed....
" Mohammed had a disciple named Ali. Ali once asked Mohammed’s opinion about whether a man is independent and free to do what he wants, or whether he is bound by his destiny in everything he does. Ali asked, ”Can one do as one wants or not?” - and man has been asking this question for a long, long time. ”If a man is not able to do as he desires,” Ali said, ”then it is useless and foolish to preach to him not to steal, not to tell lies, not to be dishonest. Or is it destiny that one man should always be there to preach to others not to steal or not to do this or that, knowing full well that it is also destiny for a dishonest man to remain dishonest, for a thief to remain a thief, for a murderer to remain a murderer? All this appears absurd. If everything is predestined, all education is useless - all prophets, all saints and all teachers are useless.”
People have asked such questions to Mahavira and to Buddha also. If what is going to happen is predestined, why should Mahavira or Buddha take so much trouble to explain what is right and what is wrong? So, Ali asked Mohammed what he thought about this controversial matter. If such a question was asked to Mahavira or Buddha, they would have given a very complicated and deep reply, but Mohammed gave a reply which Ali could understand. Many of Mohammed’s replies were direct and straightforward. Ordinarily, answers given by people who are uneducated or less educated, or who are simple villagers, are direct and frank. People like Kabir, Nanak, Mohammed and Jesus were simple in that way. Answers by people like Buddha, Mahavira and Krishna were complex - Buddha and Mahavira were the cream of a rich and highly developed civilization. The words of Jesus were direct, like a blow on the head. Kabir has actually sung: ”Kabir is standing in the open market with a hammer in his hand to hit you!” If anyone came near him he would, so to speak, break open his head to remove all the rubbish that was lying inside. Mohammed did not give any metaphysical reply. He asked Ali to lift one leg and stand on it. Ali had asked a question about whether a man is free to do what he wants. Why should Ali stand on one leg?
Mohammed said, ”First lift one leg.” Poor Ali lifted his left leg and stood there on one leg. Mohammed then asked him, ”Now lift the right leg also.” Ali was puzzled and asked how it was possible. Then Mohammed said, ”If you had wanted to, you could have lifted the right leg first, but now you cannot…. A man is always free to lift the first leg - it can be whichever he wants - but no sooner has the first been lifted when the other becomes bound to the earth.”
With regard to the nonessential part of life, we are always free to lift the first leg. But once that is done it becomes a bondage for the essential part. We take steps that are nonessential, become entangled, and then we are not able to do the essential. So Mohammed said to Ali that he had all the freedom to lift the right or the left leg first. But once he exercised that freedom and lifted one left leg, he was incapable of lifting the other leg. So freedom is there within certain limits, but beyond those limits there is bondage."
If a human beings or homo sapiens capacity for exercising free will goes up and down depending on things like energy levels, etc, then that suggests 1) that there _is_ something like free will (what I would call just the ability to make choices given the options available to one) that plays a part in reality and 2) that free will is a component of biological life and therefore something that can be found in other animals as well. Most likely to greater or lesser degrees depending on where one falls on the phylogenetic tree.
I guess base on the assembly theory by Lee Curtis makes sense that the future is indeterminate and the past is determined wich u have a little bit of both I guess we are quantum all in one,the future is imposible to predict base on that judging part that we have inside of our duality
Of course, your assertion seems completely logical, and I'm in agreement, but where is the line? At some point, we're discussing panpsychism, and going completely metaphysical. Maybe I'm wrong...
No, because you forget one important thing about free will. It doesn't apply only to "what kind of food will I eat", but to moral statements such as "Is cutting trees to make paper ethical?". Animals may have the ability to make choices (Should I go left or right, should I eat this mouse or play with it) but nowhere in this set up do moral values emerge.
@@charlesborrasnogues5065 You make an excellent point, because, imo, when considering free will-what free will is and whether whether we have it or not-one should start with how free will played a part in our early ancestors hunting strategies and so forth; all the mundane aspects of life. All the more complicated moral questions came later in our social and cultural development, especially as we began to live in larger and larger communities. Our ability to make choices was then viewed as an essential component in understanding moral issues. But morality itself, I think, had little to do with our initial experiences of free will and the initial “purpose” of free will from an evolutionary standpoint.
@@charlesborrasnogues5065the no parameters of consciousness are limited on other animals
What "deters" meaningful awareness from devolving into larger generalizations? For instance how do human beings maintain a cognizance of "size" without devolving into the more general "quantity"? What deters consciousness from constantly reassessing what its aware of?
While size is visual is it primarily visual? Is there a "psychological" filter to visual size? Or is vision the filter to psychological meaning?
If we cannot find the factor that controls meaning then is it reasonable to propose any deterrence to will? For as long as meaning can be refined or replaced what is meaningful can not be deterred. Can the will, thus, be deterred?
You can choose to do the right thing or not you have free will.
To believe or not to believe, whatever you believe, you are free to use your will to decide what you believe.
The person making the decision between the chicken and the fish certainly believes they have the ability to choose either but it is an absolute illusion of choice, whatever choice is made existed prior to making it and could not in any way have been otherwise.
They could also make a seemingly uncharacteristic decision to change half way through receiving the first choice but this would still just be an outcome that exists within a long sequence of outcomes that are fixed and not subjected to any true agency.
If there is no free will, then science, art, music, and higher education are meaningless, and the results, therefore, are NO BIG DEAL.
This doesn't follow at all.
This guy understands, that at each level or domain of scale, unforeseen emergent modes of causality can arise. Can these emergent 'degrees of causal freedom' possibly be predicatively simulated, with current models and computation? My guess is No...
Seems like some video editing issues at 10:15-10:49 and after.
Scale of free will, linking self-control with decision making, multiple levels of determinism, complex systems with appearance of non-determinism on higher levels - good ideas.
If there is no free will, why did I decide to pause an NFL game and come here?
If free will does not exist, then science is predetermined, and the results are NO BIG DEAL..
Just here to point out the huge editing mistake at the last couple mins of the video. Other than that, great content
*"Just here to point out the huge editing mistake at the last couple mins of the video."*
... That was your greatest takeaway from the discission?
We have free will within a subset of options. We work in life to increase our agency and our subset of options. As we gain awareness we come to understand how needs, desires, abilities and circumstances restrict our subset of options, but everyone generally agrees that we make choices and have free will (it is in the bible and is the basis of our justice system) and that this will to choose is an agent of consciousness.
Subsets of choice can be generated by unconscious and subconscious sensory input calculators, processed and collated to a final product. Awareness of this product is consciousness. But is consciousness an artifact of the product itself? Is consciousness the central product in a room full of collecting mirrors?
Using the billiards example; all sensory input processed and patched together is represented by a billiard ball that has come to rest against the bumper. At this interface there is awareness and will, the components of consciousness. The mechanism of awareness and will is occult - hidden from our knowledge. But we can speculate, and experiment and examine its nature. Even the mechanisms of Newton's laws, simple in comparison, are difficult to explain and understand.
The “creative nothing “ is still as good as it gets. “The Unique and Its Property “, Max Stirner 1844/2017 Landstreicher translation.
Have you read the Bible?
@@Ekam-Sat No,nor has anyone else. The OT has yet to be translated. The little-but significant parts- Kamal Salibi has tells different stories. “The Bible Came from Arabia “, Kamal Salibi,1985 plus his 3 other bible study books.
physcology is '' similar rights'' may lead to full free will
The fact that we are the only species on Earth that discusses and questions whether we have Free Will is proof that we are qualitatively unique and have Free Will.
Or proof that we are the only species on the planet with language. Many animals have very similar sensory perceptual systems (related to touch, smell, taste, hearing and seeing) and brain components as ours, suggesting that animals likely have similar experiences of consciousness as we Homo sapiens, including the experience of having the ability to make choices in their environments from among the options open to them.
@@longcastle4863 Of course, I would agree with you that other animals communicate with one another, but human language both written and spoken is on another level. We are a unique species that has created human culture with language, Science, Mathematics, Religion, Philosophy, Art, Music, amongst other things that no other species has. Animals make decisions but don't possess the capacity for rational thought to the degree that we do.
@@Resmith18SR Our capacity for rational thought does not prove we have free will. Once we utilize language and conceptualization to conceive of cause and effect, and the relationship between these concepts, we are thereby equipped to ruminate on and debate whether we ourselves are bound by the laws of causality. This debate would exist in both a universe with and without "freedom of the will."
@@Bringadingus We are bound by the laws of causality. Our unique human brain and nervous system is what I would say gives us Free Will. I'm a compatibilist.
@@Resmith18SR I also consider myself a compatibilist, but it still is worth pointing out that having a unique brain, by itself, does not bear on the question of free will.
I'm a compatibilist and I believe that every event in the Universe has a cause and that Free Will in humans is not an uncaused event but one that is uniquely human because we have self awareness, and rational thought that other species don't possess.
Agreed, that is why we should describe free will as “self-determination” not “nondeterminism”.
@@uncommonsensewithpastormar2913 I agree and these people like Sam Harris and Robert Sapolsky who strictly believe in Determinism and that we should not be held responsible or blameworthy for our behavior are wrong. Every social system on the planet has always had a legal system which punishes and holds people responsible for their behavior. They argue that Free Will is an illusion that if we just abandoned then we would understand a mass murderer like Stalin or Hitler and not blame them or punish them or hold them responsible.
We have will. We make choices. Is it FREE? If it is, it is the only thing in the universe that isn’t part of a larger system. Christianity had to introduce FREEDOM so that God could punish sinners for eternity. Before that event, it was merely Will. People make choices. Free will is ridiculous and so is eternal punishment.
Even between protestant Christians there is a large debate around free will, mainly between calvinists and arminians. Believe or not, it is possible to argue for a very deterministic God and no real free will.
@@Felipe_Ribeir0 clearly, god is an amazing physicist, being able to work out how quantum mechanics works with gravity. Unless, of course, he cannot figure it out either, although he made everything. I tend to take a very jokey approach to these questions, because everybody knows the real answers, but we need to pretend we’re baffled so we can replay the conversation.
@@Jalcolm1 this is another subject, to acknowledge the divergence around free will between Cristians there is no need to believe in God or not.
There is no free will at the minds level but in reality there is free will , again present as we know is now the reality , reality is a series of changes happening, understanding is the way to to influence the future cause and effect of mind and matter,
to know more say I love You Goldy
My Wow Woke
The Sun Ra
The God in & of all things
Experiment: Make a list of immediate activities (eat out vs eat in; have steak vs have chicken; side dish of baked potato vs mashed potatoes; etc). Flip a coin heads/tails to decide each choice...... all free will..... my luck instead of having steak and baked potato at Ruth Chris I'll be eating chicken and mashed potatoes AGAIN at home.... bummer
These no free will types also believe in a super deterministic world, meaning those coin flips are also predetermined
I think the idea is that, if the universe is determined at the moment of the big bang, then the outcome of your coin flip was decided 13.8 billion years ago... 😛
I think that's a lot to ask of the universe, tbh. It's basically saying, 13.8 billion years ago, it was already decided that the matter spewing from the big bang would ultimately create our local group of galaxies, which created our milky way, which created our solar system, which created earth and its eventual habitability, which eventually created you to exist at the specific time and place for you to flip your coin and decide to stay in for dinner. The whole thing sounds a little too "godly" for me...
If randomness exists, then the idea of you being able to freely choose staying in or going out is valid... But if it doesn't exist, then you don't have that freedom. And I feel like we've all but proven that randomness exists to varying degrees throughout the cosmos... So it's logical to assume that, if randomness exists on the universal scale, and it it exists on the quantum scale (which by all observations and calculations, does exist) then it has to exist everywhere in between. It can't just be random in once aspect, but determined in another. Thus, if randomness exists, then free will has to exist.
I haven't laughed much watching Closer to Truth but it happened with this video when the choice of having chicken rather than fish was said to be predetermined since the Big Bang :that did it for me.😅
Having said that, the argument for using psychology to understand freewill is very convincing. 👌
Degrees of free will….😏
explanation is NOT the point.
if our lack of free will isn’t a monumental shock…hard to imagine one really recognizes the full subtlety
No matter the subject, paradigm, or perspective, nor the state of and reasons for existence, if one isn't confronted with shock and senses of awe, wonderment, and bewilderment when experiencing whatever this is...then they are missing something.
Roughly speaking, life nudges the universe so as to allow light to circumnavigate the universe first in one direction, and then another. This is done repeatedly, an infinite number of times. There are thus an INFINITE number of circumnavigations of light before the Omega Point is reached.
Roughly speaking we aren't currently capable of making observations on a scale necessary to make this anything other than your own personal opinion. You sure did state that opinion as if it were some sort of empirical fact though...
Light doesn’t reach anything when traveling an INFINITE number of circumnavigations. Infinity means “no end.’
The interviewee seems to confuse free will with will, probably because of a lack of experience in handling these terms. Ahhh no it seems he's just a believer.
(4:50) *RB: **_"it's going to be more a matter of degree of Free Will rather than yes or no."_* ... This particular period of human history will be highly criticized by future historians. They will mock our current society for questioning everything that has ever held longstanding precedence (i.e., gender, life, right to self-defense, freedom of speech, personal pronouns, self-identity, etc.).
In this particular case, we're questioning if everything is determined or if we actually have free will, but reality demonstrates that we all face a certain degree of *deterministic events* (obstacles) and a certain degree of *free willed responses* (navigation of obstacles).
... Trying to argue exclusivity for one or the other is a complete waste of everyone's time!
In fact, the only reason why this debate exists today is because humanity is stuck in an intellectual quagmire, and whenever that happens, _infighting ensues!_ Should humanity suddenly become threatened with an extinction level event, all of this inane quibbling would quickly come to an end.
Gender? Oh God, please tell me you’re not one of those.
@@longcastle4863 *"Gender? Oh God, please tell me you’re not one of those."*
... If everyone can identify with being whatever they want to be, then everyone is one of "those" (whatever that may be).
I'm a bit more optimistic, an intellectual quagmire would be one in which progress was impaired, but i don't see any evidence for that. Technologically, socially, economically I think we're still on the up overall.
There is an argument that democracy is in a bit of a crisis in the west. Maybe. There is the issue that people don't value something they haven't had to struggle for. Recent generations are more and more distant from the defining conflicts of the last century in which the continued existence of free societies was genuinely in question. There is a lack of trust in democratic institutions at the moment, but it's not like this is unprecedented in human history. There are anti-democratic forces at work in both the left and the right at the moment, but I don't see any sign of those forces becoming truly mainstream or dominant.
@@simonhibbs887 *"I'm a bit more optimistic, an intellectual quagmire would be one in which progress was impaired, but i don't see any evidence for that."*
... Big Bang and Quantum Theory have been around since the early 1900's with not much being added other than a few new particles and bosons. That's why all the crazy "theories" emerged like Simulations, String Theory, Many Worlds, and the Multiverse. These represent science "grasping at straws" trying to come up with something new.
*"There is an argument that democracy is in a bit of a crisis in the west. Maybe."*
... It's the entire spectrum of individual freedom that's in crisis. It's reached its peak and is now shifting back toward authoritarian rule. Speech is now being regulated by ideologues and the government can "seize your property" (your cash) and force you to prove that it wasn't gained through nefarious means.
You don't see "cancel culture" and "virtue signaling" growing rampant on your side of the pond?
In 1980, our national debt was at $371B and everyone thought that was insane. Today it's at $33T and nobody seems to care. What happens when the world's greatest superpower implodes into bankruptcy?
In my mind, anyone who doesn't see our world as teetering on the edge of total implosion is living in a vacuum.
Social science seems to be relevant to the issue of free will: Are social events completely predictable? Or, are they completely determined?
Neither completely predictable nor completely determined.
Chickens and fish are friends not food. Thumbs down for promotion of animal abuse.
*"Thumbs down for promotion of animal abuse."*
... Are you consistent in your reasoning and equally downvote videos of foxes, hawks, snakes, bears, lizards, and other predators that eat chickens and fish?
@@0-by-1_Publishing_LLC I personally walk around finding foxes hawks ect. IRL and telling them "downvote!" to their faces.
Executive function and decision making is localized in the prefrontal cortex. Self-control is lost in people with a degraded frontal lobe, and they aren’t even aware of it. So we can’t really assume we have self-control either.
We ALWAYS choose our preferences and we are powerless to choose otherwise. Freewill is an illusion.
How do you know,how can you be sure that your preferences are your choices? What if they already predestinated and you were born with them in your gèns. Thats a very tricky question,isn't it😉
So Evolution, through the process of biological natural selection, has selected for animals having the _illusion_ of consciousness and free will. Meaning that somehow there was an adaptive or survival benefit to animal species experiencing such an illusion? (Maybe boost to their self-esteem?) As opposed to their being adaptive and survival benefits to animal species _actually_ having such things as consciousness and free will?
@@longcastle4863 It depends what we mean by free will. I don't even think we do have the illusion of free will in the libertarian sense. We have the genuine sense of free will in the form of autonomy.
If you ask someone why they made a certain choice, they will generally be able to tell you the reasons they made that choice. In other words the decision was a result of the information they had and their reasoning process. That's entirely compatible with determinism. If they didn't think it through carefully, maybe because it wasn't an important decision, they will say they just picked arbitrarily, or randomly. Again that's entirely compatible with determinism.
@@susannas.9582 that’s my point. Our choice is reducible to physical determinants. We don’t control our thoughts, they control us.
@@simonhibbs887 how can we have a genuine sense of free will AND love in a determined universe? Those aren’t compatible
Please speak with a Political Scientist. The Correlates of War Project is decades old, data deep, and mathematically precise.
Materialists trying to explain"free will" is like the convoluted reasoning one would discover by asking clowns at a circus how often do the elephants talk to them. The whole premise based on an unproven fallacy (materialism itself), is a clown show.
Materialism is the basis for everything we understand about the world. It's what allows this video to exist, and what allows us to comment on it. Free will is the unproven assumption.
@@Bringadingus Incorrect. Materialism is an unproven philosophy.
@@jamenta2 That's what delusional people who don't understand science or philosophy tend to say, sure.
@@Bringadingus Incorrect, again.
@@jamenta2 Correct. Over 90% of contemporary philosophers are materialists, and over 95% of scientists. You're offering nothing but Deepak Chopra nonsense.
I would like to debate with you if God is Time and Space or Jesus Christ. If you don’t know God is the creator of the universe or you believe the idea of God is fantasy or dogma of faith that belongs to religion is because they have deceived you. The question “does God exist?” means “was the universe created from an eternal entity superior to oneself?”. The truth matters and if God is Jesus Christ I would burn for eternity in hell and if God is Time and Space religious people would suffer for eternity the hell of being oneself having been deceived with a lie that looks like a lie. You don’t have to believe in God because God is necessary because logically it is impossible the existence of the creation or finitude without the creator or infinitude. Atheism is the belief immune to arguments that all reality is creation. Creation is what has a beginning of existence. Atheism is a logical fallacy that assumes God is the religious idea of the creator of the creation to conclude wrongly no creator exists because a particular idea of God doesn’t exist. Why do you believe Jesus Christ exists? I would tell you later on why I know he doesn’t exist.
I would like you to reflect on the fact that regardless of when the universe was created God existed always before. It is said that Jesus Christ is omniscient and knows the future of life. If Jesus knew the future all reality would be deterministic and there would be no free will. Jesus’s own actions would be determined by his omniscience. And the argument is definitive!
Pure word salad. Take your medication please, for the safety of those around you. 🙏
@@Bringadingus Don't be a fool because nobody ever was happy being a fool. I want to end religion. Did you understand? Atheism is a logical fallacy or misunderstanding of reality. Atheism can not end religion with the nonsensical remark "who created god?". Did you understand?. I came up with the idea that God, the intelligent creator of the universe, is all eternal reality. Did you understand? My new concept of God is not to be worshipped, obeyed and feared, so what is the problem? Why i am suffering the most severe and devastating censorship in history trying to end religion? I am talking about reality that is happening in front of your eyes. To end religion and the war the discovery that atheism is a logical fallacy has to be news. Did you understand? Atheism is a logical fallacy that assumes God is the religious idea of the creator of the creation to conclude wrongly no creator exists because a particular idea of God doesn’t exist. I hope for God's sake to be understood.
Freewill is potiential. And that's a good thing.