Full discussion here: • Sam Harris, Richard Da... A Celebration of Science & Reason Vancouver - November 2nd 2017 With Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins & Matt Dillahunty
I would like to use the same argument Sam used against Jordan " i could just change the words and it would also sound profound". Like swapping " some religious people" with " Sam Harris" and "Gay s%x" with " Donald Trump".
I could just swap void for mountain top and father for mother. Or i could even swap " some religious people" for Sam Harris and " Gay s%x" for Donald Trump.
U all need a secret before u can experience Jesus healing energy. The Illuminati aka fallen angels aliens NASA what ever you want to call them in there flying tin cans. Can't get out of lower orbit because of the vacuum. Universe is only 25 thousand SQ miles big breathable air through out space angels have to breath. Mars is only 250 miles away sun an moon are much closer an only a acre big. Heaven is on Mars moon that's what all the thrusters are for space x Star ship try to punch through the vacuum and destroy Mars moon heaven. I cleaned out hell left the light's on. I ripped the soul out the devil after he went dragon just to make it a fair fight. Now u can experience Jesus healing energy all old aches and pains will be washed away takes 30 minutes best to relax and shut yr eyes❤
In order for you to do anything at all, your neurons have to fire. In order for you to do something specific, your neurons have to fire in a specific way. We intuitively know that we have no conscious control over any one neurons. So what makes us think we are in control of billions of them at the same time.
What's crazy is when the process is disrupted while you still have some level of consciousness. I have temporal lobe seizures and have felt that "observer" dissolve a few thousand times.
Yeah, it's backwards. Intuition or consciousness is a result of the firing neurons. Harris has a talk where he goes into neurophysiological experiments showing that our nerves already act out a decision before we become consciosly aware of it as "our decision". No free will, just a neuronal network producing an output depending on its current state. Maybe we're just not more than a chatGPT implementation with a self-deception plugin ;)
@@Hambone3773 This is circular reasoning. The argument is "are we capable of making choices, or is it an illusion of choice?" You can't say I make choices because I make choices. You have no methodology to prove you make choices. There's no way to differentiate between free will and the illusion of free will using our perception. We need to look at science and philosophy to determine if we have free will. From a biological perspective, you don't have conscious control of your neurons, and your neurons are what allow you to do anything at all. From a physical perspective, we live in a deterministic universe where everything you do is an effect that was caused by things that ultimately pre-date you. (Your parents, evolution, the big bang, etc.). Quantum mechanics introduces randomness to that equation but randomness isn't free will.
Big-Data Artificial Intelligence may just need an EEG and MRI and history of your diet and TV exposures to explain any action including last-minute existentialist actions as described in the scenario.
All Sam is saying is the concept of an omnipotent, omniscient, God that knows all things past current and future is INCOMPATIBLE with the idea of "free will". While there are forces at work in life that put heavy pressure on our decisions, we DO have "free will".
The need to know why is one of the things that define us as a species. It is the basis of all scientific, technological, and medical progress. Without the need to know why, this back and forth right now would not be happening.
How can someone who says we should be able to “follow reason and logic” also believe we have no free will to decide anything we do or say? That seems super inconsistent
He himself mentions that as a problem. Whenever reason and logic actually becomes apparent to anyone, they end up following the logically right thing on their own. He also says that's why he doesn't expect people to start believing in his view right after a debate or explanation, because that's not how minds change. They change at their own pace, beyond the control of the individual.
The fact that we have difference of opinion and belief is proof there is free will of belief and living it accordingly. Why just we dont think the same by the same data and observations and logic?
If I truly have free will, how can God already know what I will choose? They say: Well.. God knows what you will do, but he has nothing to do with your choice. If that is the case, why are we required to participate in this puppet show?
@Cameron Clark Yes, you should be punished for doing bad things. However make the punishment fit the crime. Also "receiving Jesus" after a life of crime, murder and other vicious crimes should not be a free ticket to heaven without some punishment.
@Cameron Clark Sadly Ben didn't catch your trap. The entire _point_ of both hi comment and of Harris is that there _is no such thing_ as "choosing freely". _You do not choose anything independently of all other dependencies each moment in time brings with it for your conscious._ That means that people don't "choose" _anything._ They don't "choose" to do "bad things", neither do they "choose" to do "good things". They are _predestined_ through a chain of causality obeying the observed determinism of the universe, to act in certain ways. You probably never gave this any thought whatsoever, after all you were predetermined to becoming an indoctrinated believer of a religion which has no robust evidentiary proofs for any of it's claims, yet presupposes "free" will as a central tenet. Nobody "freely chooses". Nobody should be _punished_ for being who they are. But, in the interest of keeping the larger population safe and mitigating the largest amountnof suffering, it might be _necessary_ to separate people who do not behave in accordance with societal standards, or simply _re-socialize_ them. Which, incidentally, is _actually empirically proven_ to be the superior method of crime fighting rather than punishment. Probably not what you want to hear, after all the abrahamic religions really have a rage-boner for the idea of "just punishment", but in the context of our societies this just doesn't make any sense.
The other problem is that all of his conclusions were now pre-determined at the dawn of time whether they were utterly delusional or not, and there are WAY more possible delusional conclusions than ones that comport highly with reality.
Perhaps Big-Data Artificial Intelligence will answer why he chose to let the influence of existentialist affect him at the last minute in that scenario.
If materialism is true then free will certainly does not exist. This is because all life can be reduced to chemistry. When a fly evades a swatter, it is not making decisions. It is merely responding to stimuli. The chemical reactions of the human brain and it’s related systems may be more complex, but it’s still just chemistry. Free will can only exist if there is an aspect of humanity which transcends nature. Most would call this a soul.
Punishment is a mixture of deterence and restraint, in the same way that one might shore up the banks of a road to prevent a rockfall. But, we don't need to pretend that the rocks have free will.
@@roqsteady5290 the question here is: if there is no free will, and i kill a person, for example, why should i be punished for that? It was determined to be that way,right? It was an effect of a cause, i didn't decide it
@@BrunoCardoso-dp3bd If you killed someone, you would be separated from society for the protection of others. If you want to call it a punishment, it’s still deterministic. Your action caused the other one.
@@BrunoCardoso-dp3bd same answer - deterrence and restraint. You may have killed someone, but others are deterred by the fact that you ended up with a long term in jail. And restraint, because whilst you are in prison you can not easily kill again, thus protecting society. There is no need to include retribution in a punishment system, because your victim’s loved ones urge for retribution is satisfied by your sentence, which is actually intended as deterrence - there is no point in punishing people if it doesn’t provide a societal benefit. And retribution is negative, because it causes prisoners to have a grudge when they are released.
@@roqsteady5290 but there is free will or not? 🤣 i know that is a complex subject.. the madness it's other interesting subject. the status of the madman has changed over time.michel foucault in his "story of madness" describes their status since the Middle Ages: in the Middle Ages they were not seen as such. In the 17th century changed everything. the crazy were the misfits, the unemployed, the prostitutes, the profaners. but curiously there were no doctors in the asylums. psychiatry has taken over power and everything comes down to control. the use of reason to subjugate others, to point the finger at them and show them that they are crazy.
@@11235but And those arguments are pure sophistry. Because, they are, even philosophically, pointless. You can choose to believe you have or have not. But reality doesn't give a damn. You do not choose to believe and lo, you have hedonism, sophistry, agnosticism, nihilism. Party A. You choose to believe and what do you have? Stoicism, Logical Positivism, Existentialism. Party B. What is productive of the two? Party B obviously.
In his book free will, Sam debates if the judicial system should adjust their process because (from his view) each criminal was destined to have the thought process telling them to commit the crime. Recommend the book if you’re into this type of stuff
I understand that the idea that I have free will is impossible logically, but I still operate in the world as if I do and I think everyone does and should do.
If by "free will" you mean that nobody other than myself ("self" here includes all of the conscious and subconscious processes occurring in my nervous system) is deciding to move my arm, then yes, I have free will. If you mean something other than that, I would say that I don't understand the question.
What's to understand? You have free will to do literally anything in this world you want to. The only thing holding you back is the law of physics and other people imposing their free will.
You are your biology and a byproduct of your environment. You didn't choose either. In order for you to do anything at all. Your neurons have to fire. In order to do something specific. Your neurons have to fire in a specific way. Intuitively we know we don't have conscious control over any one neuron. How do you believe you have conscious control over billions of them. Couple this with the fact that we live in a cause and effect universe, your actions are ultimately caused by phenomenon that pre dates your existence. I.E. the big bang, evolution, your parents hooking up, ect. Also freewill is an unprovable phenomenon. It would require time travel. You would need to be able to reverse time and replay an exact moment in your life. With all the same knowledge, characteristics, instincts, tendancies, ect. And make a different choice the 2nd time around. Theoretically impossible. So the default understanding of our existence, is that free will is likely not possible and we likely don't possess it.
@@turkeynotfranks8491 That's why I gave the specific definition of free will that I did. "I" am not just my conscious mind. The entirely of my body and nervous system, including peripheral nerves and the spinal cord, are also part of "me." While I don't have conscious control over the actions of my neurons, those cells are still "me." Ergo, to the extent that my decisions are controlled by the behavior of those cells, "I" can be said to have "free will" in the sense that the only agents dictating my behavior are those which are a part of me. The laws of physics and chemistry are not thinking agents, so they wouldn't be relevant to this definition.
@@chameleonx9253 100% of you is chemistry obeying the laws of physics so I don't see how that isn't relevant to your definition of self. The only thinking agents in existence are chemistry obeying the laws of physics. Your notion that only your atoms are in control of your interactions with the universe is false. You are bound by the laws of physics along with having everyone of your actions be effects of causes that ultimately predate your existence. You are also constantly reacting to external stimuli. Your definition of free will could.be used to argue a tree has free will.
@@turkeynotfranks8491 Natural laws aren't thinking agents, and neither are trees. Atoms don't think. Brains do. You need to have a mind to be an agent. You need to be an agent to have a will, free or not. Also, I feel like you're missing my point. I'm not denying that all of my decisions are ultimately a product of deterministic and/or probabilistic antecedent conditions. That would be libertarian free will. I agree that doesn't seem to be possible. What I'm getting at is that having "free will" basically just means that you're not being coerced into doing something you don't want to do by another person. There are going to be antecedent causes for every action you take, but as long as those causes don't originate from a mind other than yours, your choice is a "free" choice, in the sense of nobody forcing it on you.
Have you ever “told” your hand not to move no matter how much your mind asks you to move your hand. I tried and when I told it to move again, it took a second for it to actually move. I actually had to tell my to hand override my last command not to move, then it moved. The mind works in mysterious ways.
The issue though is that while agency may be lacking, probabilistic physics allows that the "choice" you made could have been otherwise, and attributes the "determination" of that choice to a probability generating mechanism that is not scientifically objectifiable (as confirmed by the findings of the Bell theorem). It is truly probabilistic and the "dice" are not physical dice of some kind, or else they would also be ultimately mechanistic. OR, there is a manifold of 2^153! worlds stacked on each other that we can also not objectify because we can not interact with them, so probabilistic quantum physics either requires non-physicalistic "dice" or 2^153! worlds that are unobservable.
"Mysterious" doesn't mean free will doesn't exist. Infact, I would say its the opposite. You can't from a material perspective, predict this mysterious decision.
How could _pain_ be perceived without consciousness? How can consciousness arise from the laws of physics? Sam Harris accepts consciousness as an absolute necessity,.. all while rejecting free will,.. even though both qualities are equally inexplicable!?!
Sam Harris is so boring. I can't believe he used to have a massive following. These days, the leading atheist is the Cosmic Skeptic and he talks more about being anti-monarchy in England. It's too bad but there are really no more atheists to listen to. Most are dead or dying like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins.
So this is what gibberish sounds like. There's no mystery, here. They're your hands, and what you choose to do with them is your choice, and no one else's. That's free will.
What can be counter argued is Your choice is decided by your brain and the billions of neurons which make the brain, over which we have no control. Those neurons firing in a specific way introduced a desire in you to move your hand, then those neurons made your hand move using biology. Nothing was done by you in this sense.
@@davidreinker5600 neurons in my brain introduced a desire. It was not with my permission l. It just happened. Without my control. That was not free will.
@@davidreinker5600 just because it's mine doesn't mean I control it. Just like you cannot control your heart. Even if you will, you cannot change the rate at which it beats. You cannot control your kidneys or stomach to do their tasks according to your will. Similarly, just because it's my brain, doesn't mean I control what it does. It gives you desires based on the biological tendencies. What you truly are, is consciousness. That is the observer.
Exactly, the concept free will does not make any sense. We have will. Period. We can of course have conflicting wills. What will or wills will win is pure physics in the brain . You can defend a decision with arguments, but where do they come from? And what mechanisms in the brain make them available? The complexity creates the free will illusion.
@@erichstreuber735 True? True is a useless concept. Fact works better, as in logical facts. Other than that we can only orient ourselves by recognising patterns. I think you are confused about what truth is. Truth is only something we humans make up. It doesn't exist.
@@spidermonkey7280 I mean that without self-determination being a possibility personal intelligence effectively becomes meaningless. The world of humans operates as if self-determination is real.
@@Hambone3773 how can you argue that it becomes meaningless if it holds value in our society? Doesn’t matter if you’re the one constricting your thoughts or if a giant unicorn in the sky is, they’re still thoughts and actions that are performed by the individual and still have worth based on the effect those actions produce
@@spidermonkey7280 Easy. Because it was predetermined. No other outcome was ever possible. The people who are "right" aren't right because they self-acctuated. They are simply a product of cause and effect determinancy. The people who are wrong aren't wrong because of any mistake they made. They had no choice. It was all predetermined. Society valueing something may or may not be right. It was predetermined. Absolute determinism makes a mockery of any agency by anyone. So if determinists are correct they have nothing to brag about. And if free will believers are incorrect detetminists have nothing to complain about. And any bragging or complaining they do...well that was determined before the big bang. The whole system of absolute determinism breaks down the meaningfulness of any given state of reality.
@@Hambone3773 ah I see now where you’re confused I think. Free will not existing does not necessitate hard determinism. This ignores the possibility of randomness (such as when studying quantum mechanics). It’s not like dominos falling in line (cause -> effect over and over), but instead any number of dominos at any point in the line can do any number of actions which are not directly caused by another and are for all intents and purposes “random”. But this randomness still does not give rise to free will as we see it. And if anything further goes against the notion of libertarian free will as the thoughts which come from neuron activations in your brain being random means you necessarily did not intend them to happen, otherwise it would not be considered random
Free will is an incoherent concept. It's basically like saying we possess some magical ability to make free choices that aren't affected by causality or randomness. We need to get over it already. We are biological machines; our thoughts, feelings, and actions are dictated by casual influences and randomness
Zero reason to presume a "God of the gaps" did it. Or, some little homunculus soul dude inside the skull. Sorta like a child's invisible imaginary friend. 🤭
Free will is "god of the gaps". There's really no good argument for it. As Sam puts it. Thoughts will pop up in your head throughout the day. And you do not CHOOSE the thoughts. They are just there. If I ask you to think about a city, a city pops up right? Cool. Did you choose that city? Of course not. You know the name of 500 cities. Your unconscious brain pushed the thought of 1-2 specific cities to your working memory. You didn't choose which cities are presented to you. And you probably don't choose between the 2 cities that your brain presents either.
It appears that I have the “free will” not to listen to Harris. I turned the volume down so I would not have to hear him. I am so grateful that I do not! Sanjosemike (no longer in CA)
The mystery here vanishes once you realize there are two processes at work. One, where humans react in the same way other animals react. I refer to this as perceptual cognition. An animals reaction is instantaneous with its perception. Humans can still do this if they train long and hard enough. But humans have overlayed a conceptual cognitive layer in top of the perceptual base. The timing difference between choices and actions can be seen in the experiments of Tetsuro Matsuzawa. If one is defining free will by the apparent perceived delay between action and cognitive choice, then you create a reducto ad absurdum. Where other animals have free will as their choices and actions are synchronized but humans have no free will because our conceptual cognition is some small fraction of a second behind our perceptual cognition.
The brain is constructing what you perceive as well, it's not just "reading off" what the senses tell it. The brain is constantly trying to predict sensory input, and constructs an image (with sound and sensation etc) based on what it predicts. The prediction is constantly updated based on sensory input that changes, but what we perceive is still just a construction of the brain, though what it constructs is influenced by what signals it gets from the senses. Anil Seth calls out conscious experience a "controlled hallucination." Check out his TED talk, it's very fascinating. All this to say, I don't think there's a clear distinction between the perceptual and the conceptual. There's evidence that animals can form concepts too.
@@anonxnor the differences between human conceptualization and the types if conceptualization we’ve seen in animals is more of a kind than degree. Animal conceptualization is tied to an immediate perceptual experience. human conceptualization is capable abstract thought untethered to any perceptual experience. Not wanting to delve too deeply into how much our conceptual cognition overlays our perceptual cognition, the simple fact that it does seems more than sufficient to explain what Harris is describing as non-free will in the selection of which hand to move. I think he’s since rejected this definition of free will as the argument I’ve posited seems an outright refutation of it.
It is so funny to listen to the babblings of athiests. To believe in blind, chemical processes and yet speak of decisions/ choices. Their claims and argumentations clearly do not comport with their worldview.
@kevinberger9059 from the independence gained from self awareness and reflection independent of physical causation... also, quantum mechanics dispels the old clockwork universe idea. read iain McGilchrist
@TJ-kk5zf Are you suggesting that we could possess a will that is not contingent on _any_ prior causes? Surely, that is not the case, since we could not logically possess a will, if we were to not _exist;_ and the mere fact of our existence is itself the product of prior causes.
@kevinberger9059 we possess a will because of prior causes, if only our birth, but our decisions are not determined by prior causes. Influenced by previous circumstance, certainly, but not determined. Having a will and making decisions with it are two different things. There's a huge difference. You, along with Harris and his ilk, are making an error of category. Please read Dennett and Mcgilchrist.
@davidjanbaz7728 can't argue with that logic . We all have bias in everything we do. Definitely. Hopefully, we can b as logical as we can with t facts presented. And go from there.
Sam, a simply yes or no will suffice. We all understand determinism vs free will. Trying to play in a gray area of “mystery” is intellectual dishonesty. An atheist/naturalist has no choice (catch that) to say anything other than determinism.
It's not at all unscientific or a sign of intellectual dishonesty to talk about "mysteries." There many mysterious things about the cosmos; they are mysterious because we don't understand them. The point he's making is that from your first person perspective, even though you feel like "the mover" of the hand, it's fundamentally mysterious to you which hand is going to move, until the thought and intention to move one of the hands comes, and the choice to go with that intention comes. Why didn't the thought and intention to move the other hand come? Why did you act on the intention instead of ignoring it? Why didn't you think "fuck it, the intention came to raise my right hand so I'm going to do the opposite" and raise your left hand? "Determinism" may indeed be the ultimate explanation for why anything happens the way it happens, but we don't know what the deterministic universe will do next; what the universe will do next is fundamentally mysterious to us, as we are not separate from the universe but part of it. We are being played by the universe, and we don't know what tune the universe wants to play with us next, that's the mystery.
Full discussion here: czcams.com/video/H2R5CI9mxTY/video.html
I would like to use the same argument Sam used against Jordan " i could just change the words and it would also sound profound". Like swapping " some religious people" with " Sam Harris" and "Gay s%x" with " Donald Trump".
I could explain why I left this post.
But, it would take me 40 hours.
Lol
F-in' JP smh
I don’t think you could. Not really.
@@frozentspark2105what is jp
I could just swap void for mountain top and father for mother. Or i could even swap " some religious people" for Sam Harris and " Gay s%x" for Donald Trump.
“Of course we have free will, we have no choice.”
Lol
RIP Christopher Hitchens
U all need a secret before u can experience Jesus healing energy. The Illuminati aka fallen angels aliens NASA what ever you want to call them in there flying tin cans. Can't get out of lower orbit because of the vacuum. Universe is only 25 thousand SQ miles big breathable air through out space angels have to breath. Mars is only 250 miles away sun an moon are much closer an only a acre big. Heaven is on Mars moon that's what all the thrusters are for space x Star ship try to punch through the vacuum and destroy Mars moon heaven. I cleaned out hell left the light's on. I ripped the soul out the devil after he went dragon just to make it a fair fight. Now u can experience Jesus healing energy all old aches and pains will be washed away takes 30 minutes best to relax and shut yr eyes❤
One of Hitch's worst arguments
@@anonxnorIt was humor. 🧠
Yeah it’s mysterious but that doesn’t mean that free will doesn’t exist
"I could deliberate about this for a year"
WE KNOW YOU COULD
In order for you to do anything at all, your neurons have to fire. In order for you to do something specific, your neurons have to fire in a specific way. We intuitively know that we have no conscious control over any one neurons. So what makes us think we are in control of billions of them at the same time.
What's crazy is when the process is disrupted while you still have some level of consciousness. I have temporal lobe seizures and have felt that "observer" dissolve a few thousand times.
Yeah, it's backwards. Intuition or consciousness is a result of the firing neurons. Harris has a talk where he goes into neurophysiological experiments showing that our nerves already act out a decision before we become consciosly aware of it as "our decision". No free will, just a neuronal network producing an output depending on its current state.
Maybe we're just not more than a chatGPT implementation with a self-deception plugin ;)
The fact that I make choices and that the world operates is if those choices were mine to make.
@@Hambone3773 This is circular reasoning. The argument is "are we capable of making choices, or is it an illusion of choice?" You can't say I make choices because I make choices. You have no methodology to prove you make choices. There's no way to differentiate between free will and the illusion of free will using our perception. We need to look at science and philosophy to determine if we have free will. From a biological perspective, you don't have conscious control of your neurons, and your neurons are what allow you to do anything at all. From a physical perspective, we live in a deterministic universe where everything you do is an effect that was caused by things that ultimately pre-date you. (Your parents, evolution, the big bang, etc.). Quantum mechanics introduces randomness to that equation but randomness isn't free will.
@@turkeynotfranks8491 your logic is circular too. Inescapably so.
Big-Data Artificial Intelligence may just need an EEG and MRI and history of your diet and TV exposures to explain any action including last-minute existentialist actions as described in the scenario.
Yes, that's where the hyperbolic rationalising of Harris, Dawkins, Hitchens et al is leading. Those philosophers are totally boring.
This is the conundrum of a philosopher with nothing better to do and not a care in the world, apart from finding something to knock down.
All Sam is saying is the concept of an omnipotent, omniscient, God that knows all things past current and future is INCOMPATIBLE with the idea of "free will".
While there are forces at work in life that put heavy pressure on our decisions, we DO have "free will".
One of the biggest problems we have is this constant need to know why? Can’t we just be?
Can we not do both?
@@BigMeatyClaaws no
No, because Eve gave Adam an apple.
@@bigassdummy46No Eve, no Adam, no apple.
The need to know why is one of the things that define us as a species. It is the basis of all scientific, technological, and medical progress. Without the need to know why, this back and forth right now would not be happening.
How can someone who says we should be able to “follow reason and logic” also believe we have no free will to decide anything we do or say? That seems super inconsistent
He himself mentions that as a problem. Whenever reason and logic actually becomes apparent to anyone, they end up following the logically right thing on their own.
He also says that's why he doesn't expect people to start believing in his view right after a debate or explanation, because that's not how minds change. They change at their own pace, beyond the control of the individual.
@@shubhamjain9111 people can logically rationalize almost anything. No matter how evil or incorrect. So again, this is a non answer
The fact that we have difference of opinion and belief is proof there is free will of belief and living it accordingly. Why just we dont think the same by the same data and observations and logic?
i feel like people who become paralyzed get to experience how little control our conscious self has
That's kind of the definition of paralysis.
If I truly have free will, how can God already know what I will choose? They say: Well.. God knows what you will do, but he has nothing to do with your choice. If that is the case, why are we required to participate in this puppet show?
@Cameron Clark
I don't choose to do "bad things". But being required to worship an unproven deity, in my opinion is a "bad thing".
@Cameron Clark
Yes, you should be punished for doing bad things. However make the punishment fit the crime. Also "receiving Jesus" after a life of crime, murder and other vicious crimes should not be a free ticket to heaven without some punishment.
@cameronclark8298What is the difference between freely choosing and just choosing to do something bad? Is the difference being under pressure or not?
@Cameron Clark Sadly Ben didn't catch your trap. The entire _point_ of both hi comment and of Harris is that there _is no such thing_ as "choosing freely". _You do not choose anything independently of all other dependencies each moment in time brings with it for your conscious._
That means that people don't "choose" _anything._ They don't "choose" to do "bad things", neither do they "choose" to do "good things". They are _predestined_ through a chain of causality obeying the observed determinism of the universe, to act in certain ways. You probably never gave this any thought whatsoever, after all you were predetermined to becoming an indoctrinated believer of a religion which has no robust evidentiary proofs for any of it's claims, yet presupposes "free" will as a central tenet.
Nobody "freely chooses". Nobody should be _punished_ for being who they are. But, in the interest of keeping the larger population safe and mitigating the largest amountnof suffering, it might be _necessary_ to separate people who do not behave in accordance with societal standards, or simply _re-socialize_ them. Which, incidentally, is _actually empirically proven_ to be the superior method of crime fighting rather than punishment. Probably not what you want to hear, after all the abrahamic religions really have a rage-boner for the idea of "just punishment", but in the context of our societies this just doesn't make any sense.
@cameronclark8298 So why would I "choose" to do bad things to get punished , why would processes in the brain work in that direction?
The other problem is that all of his conclusions were now pre-determined at the dawn of time whether they were utterly delusional or not, and there are WAY more possible delusional conclusions than ones that comport highly with reality.
I feel like these conversations are the inevitable outcome of a brain as complex and with as much intelligence as ours is
Perhaps Big-Data Artificial Intelligence will answer why he chose to let the influence of existentialist affect him at the last minute in that scenario.
If materialism is true then free will certainly does not exist. This is because all life can be reduced to chemistry. When a fly evades a swatter, it is not making decisions. It is merely responding to stimuli. The chemical reactions of the human brain and it’s related systems may be more complex, but it’s still just chemistry. Free will can only exist if there is an aspect of humanity which transcends nature. Most would call this a soul.
wait, he's saying this and he's not high af?
THANK YOU FOR not having that distracting flashing script
Even if we dont have, we might act as if free will exists,in order to punish people
Punishment is a mixture of deterence and restraint, in the same way that one might shore up the banks of a road to prevent a rockfall. But, we don't need to pretend that the rocks have free will.
@@roqsteady5290 the question here is: if there is no free will, and i kill a person, for example, why should i be punished for that? It was determined to be that way,right? It was an effect of a cause, i didn't decide it
@@BrunoCardoso-dp3bd If you killed someone, you would be separated from society for the protection of others. If you want to call it a punishment, it’s still deterministic. Your action caused the other one.
@@BrunoCardoso-dp3bd same answer - deterrence and restraint. You may have killed someone, but others are deterred by the fact that you ended up with a long term in jail. And restraint, because whilst you are in prison you can not easily kill again, thus protecting society. There is no need to include retribution in a punishment system, because your victim’s loved ones urge for retribution is satisfied by your sentence, which is actually intended as deterrence - there is no point in punishing people if it doesn’t provide a societal benefit. And retribution is negative, because it causes prisoners to have a grudge when they are released.
@@roqsteady5290 but there is free will or not? 🤣 i know that is a complex subject.. the madness it's other interesting subject. the status of the madman has changed over time.michel foucault in his "story of madness" describes their status since the Middle Ages: in the Middle Ages they were not seen as such. In the 17th century changed everything. the crazy were the misfits, the unemployed, the prostitutes, the profaners. but curiously there were no doctors in the asylums. psychiatry has taken over power and everything comes down to control. the use of reason to subjugate others, to point the finger at them and show them that they are crazy.
That's still a choice. It's still free will
I'll never understand those "there's no free will" arguments. They're just doing circles
@@11235but And those arguments are pure sophistry.
Because, they are, even philosophically, pointless.
You can choose to believe you have or have not. But reality doesn't give a damn.
You do not choose to believe and lo, you have hedonism, sophistry, agnosticism, nihilism. Party A.
You choose to believe and what do you have? Stoicism, Logical Positivism, Existentialism. Party B.
What is productive of the two? Party B obviously.
So he does things for no reason. That makes sense. I must try that defense the next time I am hauled before a judge.
In his book free will, Sam debates if the judicial system should adjust their process because (from his view) each criminal was destined to have the thought process telling them to commit the crime. Recommend the book if you’re into this type of stuff
I understand that the idea that I have free will is impossible logically, but I still operate in the world as if I do and I think everyone does and should do.
It's not "impossible" logically. That is an assumption.
If by "free will" you mean that nobody other than myself ("self" here includes all of the conscious and subconscious processes occurring in my nervous system) is deciding to move my arm, then yes, I have free will.
If you mean something other than that, I would say that I don't understand the question.
What's to understand? You have free will to do literally anything in this world you want to. The only thing holding you back is the law of physics and other people imposing their free will.
You are your biology and a byproduct of your environment. You didn't choose either. In order for you to do anything at all. Your neurons have to fire. In order to do something specific. Your neurons have to fire in a specific way. Intuitively we know we don't have conscious control over any one neuron. How do you believe you have conscious control over billions of them. Couple this with the fact that we live in a cause and effect universe, your actions are ultimately caused by phenomenon that pre dates your existence. I.E. the big bang, evolution, your parents hooking up, ect. Also freewill is an unprovable phenomenon. It would require time travel. You would need to be able to reverse time and replay an exact moment in your life. With all the same knowledge, characteristics, instincts, tendancies, ect. And make a different choice the 2nd time around. Theoretically impossible. So the default understanding of our existence, is that free will is likely not possible and we likely don't possess it.
@@turkeynotfranks8491 That's why I gave the specific definition of free will that I did. "I" am not just my conscious mind. The entirely of my body and nervous system, including peripheral nerves and the spinal cord, are also part of "me."
While I don't have conscious control over the actions of my neurons, those cells are still "me." Ergo, to the extent that my decisions are controlled by the behavior of those cells, "I" can be said to have "free will" in the sense that the only agents dictating my behavior are those which are a part of me.
The laws of physics and chemistry are not thinking agents, so they wouldn't be relevant to this definition.
@@chameleonx9253 100% of you is chemistry obeying the laws of physics so I don't see how that isn't relevant to your definition of self. The only thinking agents in existence are chemistry obeying the laws of physics. Your notion that only your atoms are in control of your interactions with the universe is false. You are bound by the laws of physics along with having everyone of your actions be effects of causes that ultimately predate your existence. You are also constantly reacting to external stimuli. Your definition of free will could.be used to argue a tree has free will.
@@turkeynotfranks8491 Natural laws aren't thinking agents, and neither are trees. Atoms don't think. Brains do. You need to have a mind to be an agent. You need to be an agent to have a will, free or not.
Also, I feel like you're missing my point. I'm not denying that all of my decisions are ultimately a product of deterministic and/or probabilistic antecedent conditions. That would be libertarian free will. I agree that doesn't seem to be possible.
What I'm getting at is that having "free will" basically just means that you're not being coerced into doing something you don't want to do by another person. There are going to be antecedent causes for every action you take, but as long as those causes don't originate from a mind other than yours, your choice is a "free" choice, in the sense of nobody forcing it on you.
Have you ever “told” your hand not to move no matter how much your mind asks you to move your hand. I tried and when I told it to move again, it took a second for it to actually move. I actually had to tell my to hand override my last command not to move, then it moved. The mind works in mysterious ways.
That sounds like total nonsense.
The issue though is that while agency may be lacking, probabilistic physics allows that the "choice" you made could have been otherwise, and attributes the "determination" of that choice to a probability generating mechanism that is not scientifically objectifiable (as confirmed by the findings of the Bell theorem). It is truly probabilistic and the "dice" are not physical dice of some kind, or else they would also be ultimately mechanistic.
OR, there is a manifold of 2^153! worlds stacked on each other that we can also not objectify because we can not interact with them, so probabilistic quantum physics either requires non-physicalistic "dice" or 2^153! worlds that are unobservable.
You mean to say "if I pretend to be indecisive I can refute free will"
We work in mysterious ways 😁
"Mysterious" doesn't mean free will doesn't exist. Infact, I would say its the opposite. You can't from a material perspective, predict this mysterious decision.
We all have the free will to be Sam Harris, most chose to not be Sam Harris because we don't want to listen to ourselves talk.
Less than .000001% of the population have the intellect of Sam Harris…you and myself included!
How could _pain_ be perceived without consciousness? How can consciousness arise from the laws of physics?
Sam Harris accepts consciousness as an absolute necessity,.. all while rejecting free will,.. even though both qualities are equally inexplicable!?!
Quantum mechanics disproves free will
not sure if it does
I don't live in a mechanical universe
@outoforbit- what universe do you live in?
@phantasy8921 them read Superdeterminism
There is no free will. Google "the clockwork universe."
Google “busty college latinas”
Sam Harris is so boring. I can't believe he used to have a massive following. These days, the leading atheist is the Cosmic Skeptic and he talks more about being anti-monarchy in England. It's too bad but there are really no more atheists to listen to. Most are dead or dying like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins.
So profound !
So this is what gibberish sounds like. There's no mystery, here. They're your hands, and what you choose to do with them is your choice, and no one else's. That's free will.
What can be counter argued is Your choice is decided by your brain and the billions of neurons which make the brain, over which we have no control. Those neurons firing in a specific way introduced a desire in you to move your hand, then those neurons made your hand move using biology. Nothing was done by you in this sense.
@@Justacommentor777 Your neurons in your brain introduced your desire to move your hand. It's all done by you.
@@davidreinker5600 neurons in my brain introduced a desire. It was not with my permission l. It just happened. Without my control. That was not free will.
@@Justacommentor777 It's your brain. Your desires. Your control. Your free will.
@@davidreinker5600 just because it's mine doesn't mean I control it. Just like you cannot control your heart. Even if you will, you cannot change the rate at which it beats. You cannot control your kidneys or stomach to do their tasks according to your will. Similarly, just because it's my brain, doesn't mean I control what it does. It gives you desires based on the biological tendencies. What you truly are, is consciousness. That is the observer.
People ask IF we have free will, without first asking is it even possible? Does it make sense?
Exactly, the concept free will does not make any sense. We have will. Period. We can of course have conflicting wills. What will or wills will win is pure physics in the brain . You can defend a decision with arguments, but where do they come from? And what mechanisms in the brain make them available? The complexity creates the free will illusion.
@@erichstreuber735 True? True is a useless concept. Fact works better, as in logical facts. Other than that we can only orient ourselves by recognising patterns. I think you are confused about what truth is. Truth is only something we humans make up. It doesn't exist.
People who argue against free will argue against their own intelligence.
Umm…no. What do you mean by that? Just because you aren’t the one causing the turning of the wheels in your head doesn’t mean they aren’t turning
@@spidermonkey7280 I mean that without self-determination being a possibility personal intelligence effectively becomes meaningless. The world of humans operates as if self-determination is real.
@@Hambone3773 how can you argue that it becomes meaningless if it holds value in our society? Doesn’t matter if you’re the one constricting your thoughts or if a giant unicorn in the sky is, they’re still thoughts and actions that are performed by the individual and still have worth based on the effect those actions produce
@@spidermonkey7280 Easy. Because it was predetermined. No other outcome was ever possible. The people who are "right" aren't right because they self-acctuated. They are simply a product of cause and effect determinancy. The people who are wrong aren't wrong because of any mistake they made. They had no choice. It was all predetermined. Society valueing something may or may not be right. It was predetermined. Absolute determinism makes a mockery of any agency by anyone. So if determinists are correct they have nothing to brag about. And if free will believers are incorrect detetminists have nothing to complain about. And any bragging or complaining they do...well that was determined before the big bang.
The whole system of absolute determinism breaks down the meaningfulness of any given state of reality.
@@Hambone3773 ah I see now where you’re confused I think. Free will not existing does not necessitate hard determinism. This ignores the possibility of randomness (such as when studying quantum mechanics). It’s not like dominos falling in line (cause -> effect over and over), but instead any number of dominos at any point in the line can do any number of actions which are not directly caused by another and are for all intents and purposes “random”. But this randomness still does not give rise to free will as we see it. And if anything further goes against the notion of libertarian free will as the thoughts which come from neuron activations in your brain being random means you necessarily did not intend them to happen, otherwise it would not be considered random
The free will argument is lame. Everyone knows we have it, but know all pseudo intellectuals want to say otherwise.
Dont think ive ever heard sam drop t f bomb. And because of that, its funny. 🤙
It's not that mysterious if we do in fact have free will...
Free will is an incoherent concept. It's basically like saying we possess some magical ability to make free choices that aren't affected by causality or randomness.
We need to get over it already. We are biological machines; our thoughts, feelings, and actions are dictated by casual influences and randomness
I mean he coulda just said "i have no idea"
And we are a conscious witness to the display of foolishness from atheism right now.
It's from another
There's no such thing as free will. You could write a book about it. Oh wait.
I didn’t get the existentialist joke. Did you?
Nope.
Look up existentialism and try again
He's realising that he has thought his way out of the structure of reality. If he hadn't, next week he would be identifying as a 🧚
Zero reason to presume a "God of the gaps" did it. Or, some little homunculus soul dude inside the skull. Sorta like a child's invisible imaginary friend. 🤭
Free will is "god of the gaps". There's really no good argument for it.
As Sam puts it. Thoughts will pop up in your head throughout the day. And you do not CHOOSE the thoughts. They are just there.
If I ask you to think about a city, a city pops up right? Cool. Did you choose that city? Of course not. You know the name of 500 cities. Your unconscious brain pushed the thought of 1-2 specific cities to your working memory. You didn't choose which cities are presented to you. And you probably don't choose between the 2 cities that your brain presents either.
You know Sam DOESN'T believe in a god right
Watch out Sam a Christian apologist could try to slip god into that gap before you answer the question.
It appears that I have the “free will” not to listen to Harris. I turned the volume down so I would not have to hear him. I am so grateful that I do not!
Sanjosemike (no longer in CA)
I understand now why it is hard to take Sam Harris seriously.
The new nike slogan
The mystery here vanishes once you realize there are two processes at work. One, where humans react in the same way other animals react. I refer to this as perceptual cognition. An animals reaction is instantaneous with its perception. Humans can still do this if they train long and hard enough. But humans have overlayed a conceptual cognitive layer in top of the perceptual base. The timing difference between choices and actions can be seen in the experiments of Tetsuro Matsuzawa.
If one is defining free will by the apparent perceived delay between action and cognitive choice, then you create a reducto ad absurdum. Where other animals have free will as their choices and actions are synchronized but humans have no free will because our conceptual cognition is some small fraction of a second behind our perceptual cognition.
The brain is constructing what you perceive as well, it's not just "reading off" what the senses tell it. The brain is constantly trying to predict sensory input, and constructs an image (with sound and sensation etc) based on what it predicts. The prediction is constantly updated based on sensory input that changes, but what we perceive is still just a construction of the brain, though what it constructs is influenced by what signals it gets from the senses. Anil Seth calls out conscious experience a "controlled hallucination." Check out his TED talk, it's very fascinating.
All this to say, I don't think there's a clear distinction between the perceptual and the conceptual. There's evidence that animals can form concepts too.
@@anonxnor the differences between human conceptualization and the types if conceptualization we’ve seen in animals is more of a kind than degree. Animal conceptualization is tied to an immediate perceptual experience. human conceptualization is capable abstract thought untethered to any perceptual experience.
Not wanting to delve too deeply into how much our conceptual cognition overlays our perceptual cognition, the simple fact that it does seems more than sufficient to explain what Harris is describing as non-free will in the selection of which hand to move. I think he’s since rejected this definition of free will as the argument I’ve posited seems an outright refutation of it.
@@kencusick6311 how do chimps use tools without concepts?
this is the youtube comment section, apparently you are not aware that no one cares so I'm here to edumacate you
It is so funny to listen to the babblings of athiests. To believe in blind, chemical processes and yet speak of decisions/ choices. Their claims and argumentations clearly do not comport with their worldview.
Not a fan of enlightenment, I see.
Deepak Chopra word salad.
Do we have a will _at all?_
yes, read McGilchrist... and Dennett
@@TJ-kk5zf
From whence come our wills, if not from prior causes--our own births, at a bare minimum?
@kevinberger9059 from the independence gained from self awareness and reflection independent of physical causation... also, quantum mechanics dispels the old clockwork universe idea. read iain McGilchrist
@TJ-kk5zf
Are you suggesting that we could possess a will that is not contingent on _any_ prior causes? Surely, that is not the case, since we could not logically possess a will, if we were to not _exist;_ and the mere fact of our existence is itself the product of prior causes.
@kevinberger9059 we possess a will because of prior causes, if only our birth, but our decisions are not determined by prior causes. Influenced by previous circumstance, certainly, but not determined. Having a will and making decisions with it are two different things. There's a huge difference. You, along with Harris and his ilk, are making an error of category. Please read Dennett and Mcgilchrist.
If it's mysterious, then how can you conclude that free will is not real?
Sounds like Harris is incapable of making any decent decisions.
This guy is smart but he lacks wisdom god help us
Lolol. More bs..😂😂😅
😂😂😂 thats very amusing
Ah the arrogance of an atheist, then you die. I'd rather believe in eternity after death.
Sam Harris has the incredible ability to talk on and on and say nothing substantive
Your confusing him with peterson. 🤣
@@woody4269Both do it : Sam is just conformation bias 4 U.
@davidjanbaz7728 can't argue with that logic . We all have bias in everything we do. Definitely. Hopefully, we can b as logical as we can with t facts presented. And go from there.
Free will?
In a capitalist society?
if free will is a thing, the only place it could be exercised would be a society that uses capitalism as its economic engine.
@@warewuffdupree are you implying socialism is inherently authoritarian and anti-freedom? how DARE you become educated on socialism!
Sam, a simply yes or no will suffice. We all understand determinism vs free will. Trying to play in a gray area of “mystery” is intellectual dishonesty. An atheist/naturalist has no choice (catch that) to say anything other than determinism.
It's not at all unscientific or a sign of intellectual dishonesty to talk about "mysteries." There many mysterious things about the cosmos; they are mysterious because we don't understand them. The point he's making is that from your first person perspective, even though you feel like "the mover" of the hand, it's fundamentally mysterious to you which hand is going to move, until the thought and intention to move one of the hands comes, and the choice to go with that intention comes. Why didn't the thought and intention to move the other hand come? Why did you act on the intention instead of ignoring it? Why didn't you think "fuck it, the intention came to raise my right hand so I'm going to do the opposite" and raise your left hand? "Determinism" may indeed be the ultimate explanation for why anything happens the way it happens, but we don't know what the deterministic universe will do next; what the universe will do next is fundamentally mysterious to us, as we are not separate from the universe but part of it. We are being played by the universe, and we don't know what tune the universe wants to play with us next, that's the mystery.
The "mystery" is that the process is not transparent to the conscious mind. In this sense it is mysterious.
The line you want to highlight is fuck it? That’s the big line here?
Now, now - they DID put an asterisk in for the `u'. You're the one who though it should be spelled out, in your comment.
everything is mystery!
No
Not terribly deep, Sam.
Deepak Chopra word salad.
Deepak Chopra word salad.
Deepak Chopra word salad.