Thank you for the talk. I believe compatibitists ‘s position is simply “wordsmithing”. They redefine free will based on a person’s “wants” or “desires “. It seems to me they presuppose that the person has a choice in what to “want” or “desire “
The compatibilist position has an older history in western philosophy than the incompatibilist position, and the earliest use of the words free will was adopted at a time when both positions existed. If compatibilism is word smithing then so is incompatibilism.
This is what we normally mean by free in every day living. When someone say feel free to do what you want they do not literally mean you have the ability to do everything nor do they mean that you are free to do everything that comes to your mind. Freedom in the context of its meaning in everyday conversation is freedom with limitation.
I'm pretty sure Hobbes' notion of "impediments" wasn't about surmountable challenges, but about *in*surmountable ones; if you manage to surmount the impediments in your way, your "will" (in the Hobbeesian sense) is free, but if something successfully stops you from doing something, then your will has been thwarted.
What I think the compatiblists get right is that there is a difference between "your" will and "free" will. They get at the intuition that an action is free when it somehow flows from you without coercion, like how Aristotle discussed actualizing potentials. What they get wrong is that "your" will is not the same as "free" will. For your will to be free, there has to be an ability to choose otherwise, and compatibilists deny this. Determinists of all kinds say our choices are unfree decision in a causal web going back to the creation of the universe.
The last counter to Wolf's objection touches on an important point: there are different kinds of freedom. This also factors into the Jones and Black scenario, or the robber caught by the cops. Just because you're not free in the sense that you will suffer consequences for choosing otherwise or in the sense that someone will force you to do other than you try to do doesn't mean that your *will* isn't free. It's likewise questionable whether being metaphysically determined to make some choice or another makes that choice unfree. All different senses of "freedom" are some kind of ability to do otherwise than X would make you do, but there's different kinds of X: - X could be the laws of physics / God's plan / whatever (metaphysical freedom). - X could be the physical force of chains / bars / someone literally forcing your hand (Hobbesian freedom of action). - X could be coercion, the threat of punishment for disobedience (social or political freedom). - X could be your own mental habits, compulsions, addictions, phobias, etc. (Frankfurtian/Wolfian psychological freedom).
As I understand Frankfurt, having the second-order desire become effective actually makes a first-order desire. If Mil wants to steal, and wants to not want to steal, and as a consequence of that second-order desire ends up not wanting to steal, then he has brought his first-order desires into alignment with his second-order desires, precisely by extinguishing the desire to steal, or at least diminishing it enough to not act on it.
Hi, I love watching your videos and getting my fix of philosophy! Your videos about propositional attitudes really help me when I'm talking philosophy with my friends and family since a lot of them can confuse their hopes, fears, thoughts, and beliefs. Personally, I find myself among the fatalists. I deny both the first and the third premises of the trilemma because I cannot know that determinism is true, and I doubt that free will is some universal principal since it's more akin to a sociological concept that human societies would invent. Considering the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, although I know it only pertains to epistemology rather than metaphysics, it's impossible to know whether or not a quantum state is determined. If we can't know if determinism is true on the subatomic level, however, there are still no repercussions for human free will. After all, if quarks, leptons, and bosons are freely deciding our fates and setting in motion the rest of the deterministic clockwork, there's little room for humans to have any free will. While consciousness is still a mystery to me, the answer likely lies somewhere close to a bridge between qualia and quanta rather than libertarian free will. On the topic of free will as a sociological concept (or meme in memetics), there's more merit for the idea of free will springing about as an evolutionarily beneficial thought than there is to the idea that humans happened to discover free will and still haven't learned how they discovered it. In my talking and questioning of the people around me, there seems to be a lack of understanding that the general consensus isn't true, but rather helpful-or some have even gone as far as believing that whatever is advantageous is also thus true. The idea of agency is a powerful one and really does help, even if not true. Those who responded to the rustling of a bush or a ripple in the water as if a conscious agent purposefully caused it are the people and animals that survived and passed on this trait. It's no wonder to me that most people believe in free will but a sad reflection that most will never come to understand the concept more intimately than an intuitive feeling. If anybody read all of that, thank you. I give everybody an earache and a headache when I go on and on about this stuff, so it's nice that someone listens. :)
Thank you for taking the time to write it down, Jack. I read it all and I couldn't agree more with you. I had some sort of debate several weeks ago about determinism and free will with a FB friend and I find myself reflected on your thoughts.
"After all, if quarks, leptons, and bosons are freely deciding our fates and setting in motion the rest of the deterministic clockwork, there's little room for humans to have any free will." I understand why you'd think this but are you not denying the fact that you feel like you can make choices? Free will could just be an illusion but that doesn't necessarily mean it doesn't exist. "there's more merit for the idea of free will springing about as an evolutionary beneficial thought than there is to the idea that humans happened to discover free will and still haven't learned how they discovered it." Your argument here seems to be that people believe this? Just because you believe something doesn't make it true, for example many people believe different cosmologies about the creation of existence but that doesn't necessarily make a bunch of seemingly conflicting ideas true. I'm not sure your thinking what I think you're thinking though. I'm not going to try and read your mind. Which I kind of feel most arguments supporting incompatabalism would be because they would seek to define what is free will and it could merely be a very convincing illusion produced by our conscious experience.
What is z source of 1st oreder desires ? Is it inherited in our genes ? Thus we should adopt a hard determinism view or it comes from our environment which we have no or minimal control on it ? & does our knowledge affects our desires ? It even makes the qtn more difficult to answer .
Man, you explain things in very cool way... But you have to do something with those extensive texts, I'm sure other people told you that before. It will make the videos better. Thank you, anyways, for your videos, ALL your topics are pure philosophy ;-)
I’m not sure I exactly agree with any of the 6 positions except some of compatibleism. I agree the universe is deterministic, as I agree human brains are bound by the limits of their own biology (you can’t think something your brain is physically incapable of thinking) But I also agree free will exists within this boundary. Human brains are so vastly complex that even within the limitations of their biology, there is still the capability to make decisions based on (or perhaps in active spite of) the influences around you. More simply put, just because your brain has physical limits on it capabilities and beliefs, that is no excuse to not try
Moral responsibility can only truly be asserted or demonstrated on individual, case by case level. Most, if not all people will be "held hostage" to some situation and what we have to evaluate is if, with her context at hand in the most complete way possible, whatever holds that person hostage can be a "good enough" excuse to take responsibility out of her hands entirely. Then again, here rises the problem on how to judge that context objectively, which isn't at all possible because each person will conduct judgement according to it's own set of values, personal experience and other cultural and psychological "luggage". So, I guess I would say I don't believe free will actually exists, but I understand that we kinda need to pretend it does in order to have some semblance of structure to our society... Sorta. Maybe.
Compatibilism has come into vogue "lately"? I thought compatibilism was the old-school dominant position throughout Modern philosophy and only recently (well, if four decades is "recently") went out of fashion thanks to Van Inwagen.
I think another issue with wolfs reason compatibility argument is what is good, what is moral? Morality is subjective from person to person, group to group, dogma to dogma.
Morality is not really subjective. You can increase unnecessary suffering or decrease it. Maybe certain people's incorrect views on morality can be subjective but then that is not morality it's just a control mechanism, right?
@@uncertaintytoworldpeace3650 whose suffering? Others, in general, or just their own? for some morality isn't about suffering, but power, as Nietzsche and machiavelli argued. Some like Kant would never lie, even if it meant saving someone's life, while others like Hume would see lying to be okay given a certain circumstance. There are some who believe in utilitarianism, meaning it's considered good as long as it benefits the most people, while others only focus on the good that benefit themselves or close loved ones. Morality is subjective, it's why philosophers have contested the issue for literal ages.
@@uncertaintytoworldpeace3650 Why is suffering the metric of morality? Why not efficiency, or why not blood spilled, or any other metric? Not to mention -- if suffering is the metric, then you have a system based on what IS, and not what OUGHT -- which means you can get no derived oughts and therefore no morality. All moral systems are necessarily goal-based. All goal-based system fail to be moralities. (Both, see Hume & G.E. Moore) Given these, the second we assume there is a morality, we have a contradiction. It is a goal based system, but, that means it isn't a morality. The only way to avoid the paradox is to reject the possibility of there being a moral system.
🐟 11. FREE-WILL Vs DETERMINISM: Just as the autonomous beating of one's heart is governed by one's genes (such as the presence of a congenital heart condition), and the present-life conditioning of the heart (such as myocardial infarction as a consequence of the consumption of excessive fats and oils, or heart palpitations due to severe emotional distress), each and every thought and action is governed by our genes and environmental conditioning. If humans TRULY possessed freedom of will, then logically speaking, a person who adores cats and detests dogs, ought to be able to suddenly switch their preferences at any point in time, or even voluntarily pause the beating of their own heart. This teaching is possibly the most difficult concept for humans to accept, because we refuse to believe that we are not the author of our thoughts and actions. From the appearance of the pseudo-ego (one’s inaccurate conception of oneself) at the age of approximately two and a half, we have been constantly conditioned by our parents, teachers, and society, to believe that we are solely responsible for our thoughts and deeds. This deeply-ingrained belief is EXCRUCIATINGLY difficult to abandon, which is possibly the main reason why there are very few persons extant who are spiritually-enlightened, or at least liberated from the five manifestations of mental suffering explained elsewhere in “F.I.S.H”. The most common argument against this concept of “non-doership”, is that humans (unlike other animals) have the ability to CHOOSE what they can do, think or feel. First of all, many species of (higher) mammals also make choices. For instance, a cat can see two birds and choose which one to prey upon, or choose whether or not to play with a ball that is thrown its way, depending on its conditioning (e.g. its mood). That choices are made is indisputable, but those choices are dependent entirely upon one’s genes and conditioning. There is no third factor involved on the phenomenal plane. On the noumenal level, thoughts and deeds are in accordance with the preordained “Story of Life”. N.B. According to some geneticists, it is possible for genes to mutate. However, that phenomenon would be included under the "conditioning" aspect. The genes mutate according to whatever conditioning is imposed upon the human organism. It is simply impossible for a person to use sheer force of will to change their own genetic code. Essentially, “conditioning” includes everything that acts upon the person from conception. We did not choose which deoxyribonucleic acid our biological parents bequeathed to us, and the conditions to which we were exposed throughout our lives, yet we somehow believe that we are fully-autonomous beings, with the ability to feel, think and behave as we desire. The truth is, we cannot know for certain what even our next thought will be. Do we DECIDE to choose our thoughts and deeds? Not likely. Does an infant choose to learn how to walk or to begin speaking, or does it just happen automatically, according to nature? To claim that one is the ultimate creator of one’s thoughts and actions is tantamount to believing that one created one’s very BEING. If a computer program or artificially-intelligent robot considers itself to be the cause of its activity, it would seem absurd to the average person. Yet, that is precisely what virtually every person who has ever lived mistakenly believes of their own thoughts and deeds. The IMPRESSION that we have free-will can be considered a “Gift of Life” or “God’s Grace”, otherwise, we may be resentful of our lack of free-will, since, unlike other creatures, we humans have the intelligence to comprehend our own existence. When someone blames another person for his or her actions, it is akin to blaming the penultimate domino in a row of dominoes for doing what it did to fell the final domino, when in actual fact, the ultimate cause of the final domino falling was the INITIAL domino which fell. If anyone is to blame for anything, surely it is the Person who created everything. Who then, is that Supreme Creator? That thou art ("tat tvam asi", in Sanskrit). Read Chapter 08 for a succinct, yet accurate, explanation for this chain of causation, and Chapter 05 to understand the Primal Self. Therefore, EVERY action, including seemingly-heinous deeds, is ultimately in alignment with the predestined "Story of Life" (or, for those who are attached to a theistic viewpoint, "God's Perfect Will"), since nothing could have happened differently, given the circumstances. That does not mean that a person ought to deliberately perform criminal acts and use his lack of free-will to justify his actions. If, however, he does, in fact, blames his dastardly deeds on a lack of personal freedom, that blame too was destined, just as any consequences were destined. Unfortunately, very few crimes are punished in so-called "first-world" societies, which helps to explain why the "Westernized" nations are morally bankrupt. When did you last hear of an adulterous couple being put to death for their sin? Never, I would posit. That explains why this so-called “Wisdom Teaching” was traditionally reserved for students of high-calibre. It requires an unusually wise and intelligent person to understand that, despite everything being preordained, to blame one's lack of free-will for criminal actions and expecting NOT to be punished for them is unbeneficial to a peaceful society. Even today, with easy access to knowledge and information, few persons will come to hear this teaching, and fewer still will realize it, and integrate it into their daily lives. Obviously, that too is a consequence of destiny. Everything is permissible but not everything is BENEFICIAL. One can eat junk "food" but that is not going to benefit one’s physiology in any way (unless, of course, it enables one to temporarily survive a famine). We can murder our enemy, but we may not escape being punished by the local judicial system. Therefore, lack of free-will is not to be used as an excuse for immoral behaviour or for negligence of one’s societal duties. To assume that free-will suddenly and INEXPLICABLY appeared on this planet at the birth of the first Homo sapiens, is the height of presumption. This assumption alone is sufficient cause for the notion of free-will to be critically-questioned, what to speak of the wealth of evidence provided in the preceding paragraphs. One day, humanity will come to see the obvious truth of its lack of freedom of volition. “The Lord dwelleth in the hearts of all beings, causing all to behave as if seated on a machine, under His illusory spell.” Lord Śri Krishna, “Bhagavad-gītā”, 18:61. “To be, or not to be, that is the question.” ************* "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players." William Shakespeare, English Playwright.
An interesting argument, but some concepts seem confused. The ability to change your beliefs at will is generally referred to as doxastic voluntarism (czcams.com/video/aTtdaJVagvg/video.html), which is in some ways related to free will, but also importantly distinct. That said, the position you present is clearly an incompatibilist one, specifically a hard deterministic one. And you seem to be happy to bite the moral non-realist bullet that this means there are no ethics. As I mention in the video on hard determinism, this position has the strongest metaphysical claim, it is the concerns of blameworthiness that are more challenging to address. czcams.com/video/M6wNi_wo8WU/video.html
@@SpiritualPsychotherapyServices Thought what you wrote was from somewhere else, given that it was written ~20 minutes after the video was published and was several paragraphs. Turns out I was wrong, and you can write really really fast.
the Milo problem seems fake. Milo does not steal. But Milo wants to steal. But Milo wants to be the kind of person that doesn't want to steal ie. he wants to not want to steal. In my opinion this kind of conflict of wants is impossible. Since his higher order desire is to not steal he has ultimately decided that not stealing is the best choice. his wanting to not want to steal simply dissolves into not wanting to steal. since he also does not steal he made a free choice because he did exactly what he ultimately considered the best choice ie. his highest order desire.
1:11 P2 is just wrong. IMO. What makes these incompatibilists think free will is anything but an illusion produced by conscious experience? Seems like they are arguing just to argue. I sure hope you're arguing just to argue. Otherwise why hold a position like this? How can one even be an incompatabilist if all compatabilists will deny the second premise?
Defining free will as an illusion is begging the question. You may as well define free will as "a nonexistent feeling," then use that to argue free will doesn't exist, because it doesn't exist by definition
Hard Incompatibilist, Hard Determinist. Free will is an impossible concept. We are nothing more than quantum fields, and quantum fields evolve deterministically as Schrodinger's Equation is deterministic.
This only cashes out if you believe in a universal wave function, which is highly dubious. You would have to show that the relationship between a system's wave function and the observable properties of the system simply appear to be indeterministic. Scientific experiment rules this out as a being a limitation of our knowledge, for this is how the mathematical formalism (Fourier transform) works. The only way to avoid saying that indeterminacy is ontic, is to say that the mathematics is wrong (which is laughable) or that science is instrumentalist and doesn't describe the world.
@@Philosophuncultist Bell's Inequalities only require that you sacrifice one of realism, localism, or determinism -- and then only if you're unwilling to accept superdeterminism, which allows you to keep all three (at which point you might as well lean eternalist block universe, which means there is no actual movement or change, just all of the universe, all events, fixed and unchanging). Given the consequences of GR, I see no reason NOT to lean to superdeterminism and eternalist block time. Even if we don't go with superdeterminism, we still find that the most basic interpretation - that with the fewest necessary entities, we end up with the Many Worlds Interpretation, which is also perfectly deterministic at the quantum field level, as the quantum fields are -- again -- the only thing that actually exists. Neo-Copenhagen approaches commit to randomness. That still doesn't get you free will since the consciousness isn't involved in those collapses. So even if the chosen interpretation is ontologically in error, the consequences are not.
@@lrwerewolf Yes, I agree that one would still be left with the problem of making indeterminism and free will compatible. My beef isn't with free will, which I see as very unlikely, but with the assumption of any determinism. Before one reaches for the laws of physics, remember the problem of induction. It is impossible to prove determinism, so why favour it in theory? As given in the Ensemble interpretation, why not be agnostic or favour indeterminism, given the results of experiment? Unless science is not a description of the world, then the uncertainty principle is ontic, and determinism is an unneeded assumption. Why believe in anything beyond a constant conjunction and use Occam's razor to make the theory simpler? What explanatory role does superdeterminism have, or what explaining can be done by it? Very little from what I can see. Moreover, superdeterminism violates the classical principle of statistical independence, and I see no good reason to give this logic up. On top, there is no dynamical law (aside from a mysterious universal wavefunction) that can demonstrate superdeterminism. Even in classical mechanics, we know that determinism is inadequate: If we deal with point particles whose strength of interaction gets unlimited as the particles approach a zero separation, it becomes impossible to follow the states deterministically through collisions of particles - See Norton's Dome & Painlevé non-collision singularities. For a long time, scientists have tried to say this was an epistemic problem, but quantum mechanics is leading us to say it is ontic. The uncertainty is just in the way the world is, apart from human beings; the information in existence is random.
@@Philosophuncultist Problem of induction's one of those ones that might as well be bootstrap in how efficiently it defeats all of philosophy. You can't get started without induction and you can't get started without bootstrapping. So one might as well just assume it as one is going to have to assume a bootstrap (or go pyrrhonic). Heisenburg being ontic is not a problem for determinism if one assumes superdeterminism. The other nice aspect of superdeterminism is that it solves the measurement problem, something Neo-Copenhagen, Bohmian, and Many Worlds do not do. It also solves issues such as underdetermination. It eliminates Bell's Inequalities being an issue. In short, it solves the most problems while requiring very few axioms and is favored. As for point particles, it seems rather a moot point since all work on Beyond-the-Standard-Model models ends up leading to point particles not being the case. But if we do assume point particles or non-point particles, superdeterminism also resolves problems of underdetermination. If the whole block time came into existence all at once, and the classical laws of logic hold, then there can be no inconsistency baked into it -- granted that's a huge assumption that the laws of non-contradiction and excluded middle hold, but given we generally hold these in the sciences, not really a problem.
this video is too hard to follow lol. this is like the definition of semantics. edit: fuck i was watching it at 1.25x speed. omg i feel like an idiot lmao
Thank you for the talk.
I believe compatibitists ‘s position is simply “wordsmithing”. They redefine free will based on a person’s “wants” or “desires “. It seems to me they presuppose that the person has a choice in what to “want” or “desire “
The compatibilist position has an older history in western philosophy than the incompatibilist position, and the earliest use of the words free will was adopted at a time when both positions existed. If compatibilism is word smithing then so is incompatibilism.
This is what we normally mean by free in every day living.
When someone say feel free to do what you want they do not literally mean you have the ability to do everything nor do they mean that you are free to do everything that comes to your mind.
Freedom in the context of its meaning in everyday conversation is freedom with limitation.
I'm pretty sure Hobbes' notion of "impediments" wasn't about surmountable challenges, but about *in*surmountable ones; if you manage to surmount the impediments in your way, your "will" (in the Hobbeesian sense) is free, but if something successfully stops you from doing something, then your will has been thwarted.
What I think the compatiblists get right is that there is a difference between "your" will and "free" will. They get at the intuition that an action is free when it somehow flows from you without coercion, like how Aristotle discussed actualizing potentials.
What they get wrong is that "your" will is not the same as "free" will. For your will to be free, there has to be an ability to choose otherwise, and compatibilists deny this. Determinists of all kinds say our choices are unfree decision in a causal web going back to the creation of the universe.
This series comes right as my metaphysics course finishes up and it's been very helpful. Thank you very much!
Awesome! Glad to help.
The last counter to Wolf's objection touches on an important point: there are different kinds of freedom. This also factors into the Jones and Black scenario, or the robber caught by the cops. Just because you're not free in the sense that you will suffer consequences for choosing otherwise or in the sense that someone will force you to do other than you try to do doesn't mean that your *will* isn't free. It's likewise questionable whether being metaphysically determined to make some choice or another makes that choice unfree. All different senses of "freedom" are some kind of ability to do otherwise than X would make you do, but there's different kinds of X:
- X could be the laws of physics / God's plan / whatever (metaphysical freedom).
- X could be the physical force of chains / bars / someone literally forcing your hand (Hobbesian freedom of action).
- X could be coercion, the threat of punishment for disobedience (social or political freedom).
- X could be your own mental habits, compulsions, addictions, phobias, etc. (Frankfurtian/Wolfian psychological freedom).
As I understand Frankfurt, having the second-order desire become effective actually makes a first-order desire. If Mil wants to steal, and wants to not want to steal, and as a consequence of that second-order desire ends up not wanting to steal, then he has brought his first-order desires into alignment with his second-order desires, precisely by extinguishing the desire to steal, or at least diminishing it enough to not act on it.
Hi, I love watching your videos and getting my fix of philosophy! Your videos about propositional attitudes really help me when I'm talking philosophy with my friends and family since a lot of them can confuse their hopes, fears, thoughts, and beliefs. Personally, I find myself among the fatalists. I deny both the first and the third premises of the trilemma because I cannot know that determinism is true, and I doubt that free will is some universal principal since it's more akin to a sociological concept that human societies would invent.
Considering the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, although I know it only pertains to epistemology rather than metaphysics, it's impossible to know whether or not a quantum state is determined. If we can't know if determinism is true on the subatomic level, however, there are still no repercussions for human free will. After all, if quarks, leptons, and bosons are freely deciding our fates and setting in motion the rest of the deterministic clockwork, there's little room for humans to have any free will. While consciousness is still a mystery to me, the answer likely lies somewhere close to a bridge between qualia and quanta rather than libertarian free will.
On the topic of free will as a sociological concept (or meme in memetics), there's more merit for the idea of free will springing about as an evolutionarily beneficial thought than there is to the idea that humans happened to discover free will and still haven't learned how they discovered it. In my talking and questioning of the people around me, there seems to be a lack of understanding that the general consensus isn't true, but rather helpful-or some have even gone as far as believing that whatever is advantageous is also thus true. The idea of agency is a powerful one and really does help, even if not true. Those who responded to the rustling of a bush or a ripple in the water as if a conscious agent purposefully caused it are the people and animals that survived and passed on this trait. It's no wonder to me that most people believe in free will but a sad reflection that most will never come to understand the concept more intimately than an intuitive feeling.
If anybody read all of that, thank you. I give everybody an earache and a headache when I go on and on about this stuff, so it's nice that someone listens. :)
Thank you for taking the time to write it down, Jack. I read it all and I couldn't agree more with you. I had some sort of debate several weeks ago about determinism and free will with a FB friend and I find myself reflected on your thoughts.
Read it all. My conversational problem is shared albeit that observation provides no solace.
"After all, if quarks, leptons, and bosons are freely deciding our fates and setting in motion the rest of the deterministic clockwork, there's little room for humans to have any free will." I understand why you'd think this but are you not denying the fact that you feel like you can make choices? Free will could just be an illusion but that doesn't necessarily mean it doesn't exist. "there's more merit for the idea of free will springing about as an evolutionary beneficial thought than there is to the idea that humans happened to discover free will and still haven't learned how they discovered it." Your argument here seems to be that people believe this? Just because you believe something doesn't make it true, for example many people believe different cosmologies about the creation of existence but that doesn't necessarily make a bunch of seemingly conflicting ideas true. I'm not sure your thinking what I think you're thinking though. I'm not going to try and read your mind. Which I kind of feel most arguments supporting incompatabalism would be because they would seek to define what is free will and it could merely be a very convincing illusion produced by our conscious experience.
Loving it
Great!
What is z source of 1st oreder desires ? Is it inherited in our genes ? Thus we should adopt a hard determinism view or it comes from our environment which we have no or minimal control on it ? & does our knowledge affects our desires ? It even makes the qtn more difficult to answer .
Man, you explain things in very cool way... But you have to do something with those extensive texts, I'm sure other people told you that before. It will make the videos better. Thank you, anyways, for your videos, ALL your topics are pure philosophy ;-)
I’m not sure I exactly agree with any of the 6 positions except some of compatibleism.
I agree the universe is deterministic, as I agree human brains are bound by the limits of their own biology (you can’t think something your brain is physically incapable of thinking)
But I also agree free will exists within this boundary. Human brains are so vastly complex that even within the limitations of their biology, there is still the capability to make decisions based on (or perhaps in active spite of) the influences around you.
More simply put, just because your brain has physical limits on it capabilities and beliefs, that is no excuse to not try
This is the best explanation iv'e ever read on this topic.
I think this implies that reality is *not* determined... quantum mechanics supports this view...
Hello Carneades
Hello! :)
Moral responsibility can only truly be asserted or demonstrated on individual, case by case level. Most, if not all people will be "held hostage" to some situation and what we have to evaluate is if, with her context at hand in the most complete way possible, whatever holds that person hostage can be a "good enough" excuse to take responsibility out of her hands entirely. Then again, here rises the problem on how to judge that context objectively, which isn't at all possible because each person will conduct judgement according to it's own set of values, personal experience and other cultural and psychological "luggage".
So, I guess I would say I don't believe free will actually exists, but I understand that we kinda need to pretend it does in order to have some semblance of structure to our society... Sorta. Maybe.
Compatibilism has come into vogue "lately"? I thought compatibilism was the old-school dominant position throughout Modern philosophy and only recently (well, if four decades is "recently") went out of fashion thanks to Van Inwagen.
The most convincing position is hard incompatibilism.
I think another issue with wolfs reason compatibility argument is what is good, what is moral? Morality is subjective from person to person, group to group, dogma to dogma.
Morality is not really subjective. You can increase unnecessary suffering or decrease it. Maybe certain people's incorrect views on morality can be subjective but then that is not morality it's just a control mechanism, right?
@@uncertaintytoworldpeace3650 whose suffering? Others, in general, or just their own? for some morality isn't about suffering, but power, as Nietzsche and machiavelli argued. Some like Kant would never lie, even if it meant saving someone's life, while others like Hume would see lying to be okay given a certain circumstance. There are some who believe in utilitarianism, meaning it's considered good as long as it benefits the most people, while others only focus on the good that benefit themselves or close loved ones. Morality is subjective, it's why philosophers have contested the issue for literal ages.
@@uncertaintytoworldpeace3650 Why is suffering the metric of morality? Why not efficiency, or why not blood spilled, or any other metric? Not to mention -- if suffering is the metric, then you have a system based on what IS, and not what OUGHT -- which means you can get no derived oughts and therefore no morality.
All moral systems are necessarily goal-based.
All goal-based system fail to be moralities.
(Both, see Hume & G.E. Moore)
Given these, the second we assume there is a morality, we have a contradiction. It is a goal based system, but, that means it isn't a morality.
The only way to avoid the paradox is to reject the possibility of there being a moral system.
They were not “robbign” the bank
10 seconds and he reminds me of them f****** Carnival people that talk a lot so he can get you to play them games that are scam holyshit flashback
🐟 11. FREE-WILL Vs DETERMINISM:
Just as the autonomous beating of one's heart is governed by one's genes (such as the presence of a congenital heart condition), and the present-life conditioning of the heart (such as myocardial infarction as a consequence of the consumption of excessive fats and oils, or heart palpitations due to severe emotional distress), each and every thought and action is governed by our genes and environmental conditioning.
If humans TRULY possessed freedom of will, then logically speaking, a person who adores cats and detests dogs, ought to be able to suddenly switch their preferences at any point in time, or even voluntarily pause the beating of their own heart.
This teaching is possibly the most difficult concept for humans to accept, because we refuse to believe that we are not the author of our thoughts and actions. From the appearance of the pseudo-ego (one’s inaccurate conception of oneself) at the age of approximately two and a half, we have been constantly conditioned by our parents, teachers, and society, to believe that we are solely responsible for our thoughts and deeds. This deeply-ingrained belief is EXCRUCIATINGLY difficult to abandon, which is possibly the main reason why there are very few persons extant who are spiritually-enlightened, or at least liberated from the five manifestations of mental suffering explained elsewhere in “F.I.S.H”.
The most common argument against this concept of “non-doership”, is that humans (unlike other animals) have the ability to CHOOSE what they can do, think or feel. First of all, many species of (higher) mammals also make choices. For instance, a cat can see two birds and choose which one to prey upon, or choose whether or not to play with a ball that is thrown its way, depending on its conditioning (e.g. its mood).
That choices are made is indisputable, but those choices are dependent entirely upon one’s genes and conditioning. There is no third factor involved on the phenomenal plane. On the noumenal level, thoughts and deeds are in accordance with the preordained “Story of Life”.
N.B. According to some geneticists, it is possible for genes to mutate. However, that phenomenon would be included under the "conditioning" aspect. The genes mutate according to whatever conditioning is imposed upon the human organism. It is simply impossible for a person to use sheer force of will to change their own genetic code. Essentially, “conditioning” includes everything that acts upon the person from conception.
We did not choose which deoxyribonucleic acid our biological parents bequeathed to us, and the conditions to which we were exposed throughout our lives, yet we somehow believe that we are fully-autonomous beings, with the ability to feel, think and behave as we desire. The truth is, we cannot know for certain what even our next thought will be. Do we DECIDE to choose our thoughts and deeds? Not likely. Does an infant choose to learn how to walk or to begin speaking, or does it just happen automatically, according to nature?
To claim that one is the ultimate creator of one’s thoughts and actions is tantamount to believing that one created one’s very BEING. If a computer program or artificially-intelligent robot considers itself to be the cause of its activity, it would seem absurd to the average person. Yet, that is precisely what virtually every person who has ever lived mistakenly believes of their own thoughts and deeds.
The IMPRESSION that we have free-will can be considered a “Gift of Life” or “God’s Grace”, otherwise, we may be resentful of our lack of free-will, since, unlike other creatures, we humans have the intelligence to comprehend our own existence.
When someone blames another person for his or her actions, it is akin to blaming the penultimate domino in a row of dominoes for doing what it did to fell the final domino, when in actual fact, the ultimate cause of the final domino falling was the INITIAL domino which fell. If anyone is to blame for anything, surely it is the Person who created everything. Who then, is that Supreme Creator? That thou art ("tat tvam asi", in Sanskrit). Read Chapter 08 for a succinct, yet accurate, explanation for this chain of causation, and Chapter 05 to understand the Primal Self.
Therefore, EVERY action, including seemingly-heinous deeds, is ultimately in alignment with the predestined "Story of Life" (or, for those who are attached to a theistic viewpoint, "God's Perfect Will"), since nothing could have happened differently, given the circumstances. That does not mean that a person ought to deliberately perform criminal acts and use his lack of free-will to justify his actions.
If, however, he does, in fact, blames his dastardly deeds on a lack of personal freedom, that blame too was destined, just as any consequences were destined. Unfortunately, very few crimes are punished in so-called "first-world" societies, which helps to explain why the "Westernized" nations are morally bankrupt. When did you last hear of an adulterous couple being put to death for their sin? Never, I would posit.
That explains why this so-called “Wisdom Teaching” was traditionally reserved for students of high-calibre. It requires an unusually wise and intelligent person to understand that, despite everything being preordained, to blame one's lack of free-will for criminal actions and expecting NOT to be punished for them is unbeneficial to a peaceful society. Even today, with easy access to knowledge and information, few persons will come to hear this teaching, and fewer still will realize it, and integrate it into their daily lives. Obviously, that too is a consequence of destiny.
Everything is permissible but not everything is BENEFICIAL. One can eat junk "food" but that is not going to benefit one’s physiology in any way (unless, of course, it enables one to temporarily survive a famine). We can murder our enemy, but we may not escape being punished by the local judicial system. Therefore, lack of free-will is not to be used as an excuse for immoral behaviour or for negligence of one’s societal duties.
To assume that free-will suddenly and INEXPLICABLY appeared on this planet at the birth of the first Homo sapiens, is the height of presumption.
This assumption alone is sufficient cause for the notion of free-will to be critically-questioned, what to speak of the wealth of evidence provided in the preceding paragraphs. One day, humanity will come to see the obvious truth of its lack of freedom of volition.
“The Lord dwelleth in the hearts of all beings, causing all to behave as if seated on a machine, under His illusory spell.”
Lord Śri Krishna,
“Bhagavad-gītā”, 18:61.
“To be, or not to be, that is the question.”
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"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players."
William Shakespeare,
English Playwright.
wtf I can't even find this copy pasted from anywhere else
An interesting argument, but some concepts seem confused. The ability to change your beliefs at will is generally referred to as doxastic voluntarism (czcams.com/video/aTtdaJVagvg/video.html), which is in some ways related to free will, but also importantly distinct.
That said, the position you present is clearly an incompatibilist one, specifically a hard deterministic one. And you seem to be happy to bite the moral non-realist bullet that this means there are no ethics. As I mention in the video on hard determinism, this position has the strongest metaphysical claim, it is the concerns of blameworthiness that are more challenging to address. czcams.com/video/M6wNi_wo8WU/video.html
@@ijaeik kindly repeat that in ENGLISH, Miss.☝️
@@CarneadesOfCyrene Have you CAREFULLY read my comment?☝️
If not, I suggest you re-read it.
@@SpiritualPsychotherapyServices Thought what you wrote was from somewhere else, given that it was written ~20 minutes after the video was published and was several paragraphs. Turns out I was wrong, and you can write really really fast.
the Milo problem seems fake. Milo does not steal. But Milo wants to steal. But Milo wants to be the kind of person that doesn't want to steal ie. he wants to not want to steal. In my opinion this kind of conflict of wants is impossible. Since his higher order desire is to not steal he has ultimately decided that not stealing is the best choice. his wanting to not want to steal simply dissolves into not wanting to steal. since he also does not steal he made a free choice because he did exactly what he ultimately considered the best choice ie. his highest order desire.
1:11 P2 is just wrong. IMO. What makes these incompatibilists think free will is anything but an illusion produced by conscious experience? Seems like they are arguing just to argue. I sure hope you're arguing just to argue. Otherwise why hold a position like this? How can one even be an incompatabilist if all compatabilists will deny the second premise?
Defining free will as an illusion is begging the question. You may as well define free will as "a nonexistent feeling," then use that to argue free will doesn't exist, because it doesn't exist by definition
真的是和尚念经……
Hard Incompatibilist, Hard Determinist. Free will is an impossible concept. We are nothing more than quantum fields, and quantum fields evolve deterministically as Schrodinger's Equation is deterministic.
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This only cashes out if you believe in a universal wave function, which is highly dubious. You would have to show that the relationship between a system's wave function and the observable properties of the system simply appear to be indeterministic. Scientific experiment rules this out as a being a limitation of our knowledge, for this is how the mathematical formalism (Fourier transform) works. The only way to avoid saying that indeterminacy is ontic, is to say that the mathematics is wrong (which is laughable) or that science is instrumentalist and doesn't describe the world.
@@Philosophuncultist Bell's Inequalities only require that you sacrifice one of realism, localism, or determinism -- and then only if you're unwilling to accept superdeterminism, which allows you to keep all three (at which point you might as well lean eternalist block universe, which means there is no actual movement or change, just all of the universe, all events, fixed and unchanging). Given the consequences of GR, I see no reason NOT to lean to superdeterminism and eternalist block time.
Even if we don't go with superdeterminism, we still find that the most basic interpretation - that with the fewest necessary entities, we end up with the Many Worlds Interpretation, which is also perfectly deterministic at the quantum field level, as the quantum fields are -- again -- the only thing that actually exists.
Neo-Copenhagen approaches commit to randomness. That still doesn't get you free will since the consciousness isn't involved in those collapses. So even if the chosen interpretation is ontologically in error, the consequences are not.
@@lrwerewolf Yes, I agree that one would still be left with the problem of making indeterminism and free will compatible. My beef isn't with free will, which I see as very unlikely, but with the assumption of any determinism. Before one reaches for the laws of physics, remember the problem of induction. It is impossible to prove determinism, so why favour it in theory? As given in the Ensemble interpretation, why not be agnostic or favour indeterminism, given the results of experiment?
Unless science is not a description of the world, then the uncertainty principle is ontic, and determinism is an unneeded assumption. Why believe in anything beyond a constant conjunction and use Occam's razor to make the theory simpler? What explanatory role does superdeterminism have, or what explaining can be done by it? Very little from what I can see.
Moreover, superdeterminism violates the classical principle of statistical independence, and I see no good reason to give this logic up. On top, there is no dynamical law (aside from a mysterious universal wavefunction) that can demonstrate superdeterminism. Even in classical mechanics, we know that determinism is inadequate: If we deal with point particles whose strength of interaction gets unlimited as the particles approach a zero separation, it becomes impossible to follow the states deterministically through collisions of particles - See Norton's Dome & Painlevé non-collision singularities. For a long time, scientists have tried to say this was an epistemic problem, but quantum mechanics is leading us to say it is ontic. The uncertainty is just in the way the world is, apart from human beings; the information in existence is random.
@@Philosophuncultist Problem of induction's one of those ones that might as well be bootstrap in how efficiently it defeats all of philosophy. You can't get started without induction and you can't get started without bootstrapping. So one might as well just assume it as one is going to have to assume a bootstrap (or go pyrrhonic).
Heisenburg being ontic is not a problem for determinism if one assumes superdeterminism. The other nice aspect of superdeterminism is that it solves the measurement problem, something Neo-Copenhagen, Bohmian, and Many Worlds do not do. It also solves issues such as underdetermination. It eliminates Bell's Inequalities being an issue. In short, it solves the most problems while requiring very few axioms and is favored.
As for point particles, it seems rather a moot point since all work on Beyond-the-Standard-Model models ends up leading to point particles not being the case. But if we do assume point particles or non-point particles, superdeterminism also resolves problems of underdetermination. If the whole block time came into existence all at once, and the classical laws of logic hold, then there can be no inconsistency baked into it -- granted that's a huge assumption that the laws of non-contradiction and excluded middle hold, but given we generally hold these in the sciences, not really a problem.
this video is too hard to follow lol. this is like the definition of semantics. edit: fuck i was watching it at 1.25x speed. omg i feel like an idiot lmao