wow, i never knew that free will is this much debatable. All along , i though that my decisions are my own, but as with everything, life is still a mystery.
There is a tedx video of Dr. David Vago (mindfulness is in the title). He shows that our conscious experience begins about 1/2-second before we experience it. I believe that takes Libet's discovery further (he discovered that our choices/decisions/judgments occur 1/4-second before our conscious brain says "I did that." It's already done when we do it. ). If you're into mindfulness, (awareness, presence, being individuated from your habituated thinking/explaining self, more "in the moment"), I think free will is our ability to be aware of what's emerging (from the subconscious) and not blindly identify with it (attach to it) as if it's real and actually happening. When we practice some awareness in the moment, and not losing track of how we're having it done to us (not doing it), then we can exercise a veto power. We can say "that past even makes me sick. I don't need to keep thinking about it. I can let those thoughts pass through me without identifying with them as real. The past is just a story I tell myself. The only thing that's real is this moment." We can question our choices before acting upon them. Or, we can realize how we caught in analysis paralysis in a way Vago demonstrates -- when we're not present in the moment, and get tangled up in evaluation, the last stage before emergence). If we just attach to what emerges because that's what we've always practiced our entire life, then there's no free will. It's literally predestined (whatever emerges from behind the curtain of consciousness. The 5% of our brain following the 95% subconscious part.). But, if we can be aware, "this is really how it is" and not be fully engaged with it, the ego, the explaining voice, the rationalizing, labeling, narrating voice, then that is free will (by comparison). We know what's going on and can attend to our self, not just follow. We can be conscious instead of letting the subconscious fill our conscious mind with whatever emerges. I think it's really powerful. The 1st video in my playlist is the guided meditation that made all this very real to me.
11:30 maybe “our brains are making our decisions and we are not” ... I would think this comment may be based on a false presumption that “we” are not our subconscious self but are only our conscious self or no more than the physical response self ... why can’t free will be centered at the subconscious level and the “conscious” level is some kind of feedback or display loop which evolved for “re-examination” like a teleplay ... useful for adjusting values for future free willed decisions?
I've also noticed this weird sort of dualism. I think it comes a lot from the fact that free will and consciousness are examined only by introspection. If you look at a person from the outside, you would never separate out the decisions that were made consciously vs unconsciously. From the outside, a person is an integrated whole organism with various motivations and responses that are based on whatever is going on around it. If you point this out to determinist that they are making an artificial distinction between conscious and unconscious cognition, they will just move the goalpost and say that the particle interactions are actually in control. It's a waste to try to talk to determinists since it is almost a faith based position and impervious to doubt, or even reasonable discussion.
Excellent. This approach makes a lot more sense than the merely abstract and philosophical method. The bible says of humans beings *DUST THOU ART.* This means we are material or physical beings first of all. Maybe with a " spiritual " component.
free will is not atomic decisions we make based on sensory input at the moment. It's the decisions we make based on a thought process of weighing in the pros and cons and risks and rewards for now and the future. Maybe people have different definition of what consciousness is, like the two scientists @ 24:00.
The best quote in this video was, “…Our brains are making decisions and we’re not.” Think about how confused this statement is and yet this is exactly why people fail to grasp the truth that Free Will doesn’t exist. People think they’re separate from their brains. This is the common error.
The conclusion is totally clear, for those who are actually open minded and want to know the truth, instead of confirming their biases - the free will is an illusion.
Nikolay Tonev, are you saying that conscious free will is an illusion, as some of these results could be interpreted, or are you saying that the brain itself has no free will, which was the opposite of the results?
@@caricue What are you even saying? I'm saying, that all choices that we make have underlying causes. Therefor, we can choose not a single thing 'free'. We're not free to choose, no matter that it can feel like it. All the choices we make are happening on the basis of underlying processes (biological, chemical, physical).
@@ConnoisseurOfExistence I thought you were commenting on the video, which is about experiments on people to see if their conscious choices have direct causal power on their choices and actions, or whether unconscious brain processes actually initiate the actions. If you really believe what you said just now, what was the point of watching the video if you already know that even the brain itself isn't really able to do anything, and is just a mechanism that is totally controlled by the underlying physics. Maybe the real question is, would you be able to change your mind if the video had presented compelling evidence to contradict what you already believe? Or would someone have to mess with your particle interactions in order to compel a change in your mechanical brain? Maybe a better, and less sarcastic question might be, can information be causal in your scheme of reality? And if new information can change your thinking and decisions, where does the information make this causal effect? Does new information change your particles or your mind? That's a real question, by the way.
@@ConnoisseurOfExistence If you don't answer, that is fine, you are under no obligation and obviously, it is a leading question. Strangely enough, I almost never seem to get actual new information in the comment section, but being forced to articulate my views clarifies my own thinking and keeps me honest since I will get immediate feedback if I say something too dumb. Cheers.
Superb, 10/10. My first significant thought? What do you mean by free will? What I especially find stands out. 1. No identity politics 2. States a premise 3. Uses science to measure that premise 4. Debates with alternate views One of these is reasonably uncommon today. Having all four is extremely rare. I believe the more significant the criteria, the higher the threshold to bypass the free will. The gent at the end talked about marriage. It’s a good example but clouded by emotion. Pick something discrete like a career choice. I do believe we have free will. I believe that will is variable, from person to person and topic to topic. Pick a disciplined person and a gambling addict. Then pick a behaviour related to adrenaline and risk and see the comparison. Great work! Great videos. Thank You!!
I came up with idea of using hypnosis to investigate free will before I saw this video. I had not seen or heard anything about this line of investigation prior to my idea. I thought I had came up with a new unexplored original idea, only to discover truly original ideas are rare.
The experiment around 17 mins isn’t about free will v determinism. It’s about how different conditions lead to different outcomes. It’s entirely consistent with determinism. It presents no evidence of free will.
I have a hypothesis that allows for free will even though the experiments seem to show that our brain has already made a decision before we are conscious of it. It involves retrocausality, aka backwards causation. Retrocausality can be thought of as information from the future that affects the present. Or, from another perspective, information from the present affecting the past. Retrocausality is conjectured by many quantum physicists as the explanation for the "Delayed Choice, Quantum Eraser Experinent". Also, some scientists (Stuart Hammeroff and Sir Roger Penrose) contend that conciousness originates from quantum states in neural microtubules within the brain. I suggest that thoughts and other sensory inputs from the near future affect the neural activity of the present. I suggest this ability to tap into the near future gave our ancestors a survival advantage by enhancing their reaction times. It may explain why people seem able to react to sensory stimuli quicker than the physics/chemistry can explain. It can also explain the origins of premonitions (Dean Radin experiments). Incorporating retrocausality into the quantum brain saves free will, or at least, doesn't allow these experiments to shut the door on it. IMHO, Robert Kuhn has had episodes with Dean Radin and Stuart Hammeroff and could have put this all together himself. Instead, he keeps asking the "Why something rather than nothing" question and talking to theologians. Robert Kuhn could facilitate the understanding of conciousness by using his access to all the "big thinkers" in the fields of QM and neuroscience.
In quantum mechanics, retrocausality (delayed choice experiments) affects the interpretation of past events only, not the raw events themselves. It is well explained in Anton Zeilinger's book "Dance of the Photons". On the other hand, psychology experiments (reported in one of Dean Radin's books) showed that a person can predict, with an involuntary physiological-emotional reaction, the character of an image that will be randomly displayed by a computer some seconds later (call it retrocausality, future forecasting, or future influencing, as you wish...).
First question for these weird science experimenters - how do you choose and/or filter subjects? How do are your experiments rooted in confirmation bias? Would you like to experiment on subjects who have a strongly different confirmation bias than you do, and aren't at risk of losing something if they don't fit your desires?
If free will exists to some degree, then this is one of my favorite areas of thought. If it's an illusion created by my brain-meat, then the past experiences of said brain-meat have primed this predilection. Either way, even though yes, this video is an amalgamation of others i've already viewed, it was still refreshing and interesting to watch.
Past experiences just form the context in which you make our decisions. People generally have varying degrees self consciousness or self awareness. So these things are hard to measure and/or prove.
Fascinating that the 2 scientists disagree on the conclusion of the free will test. Also, how does ones resistance/susceptibility to hypnosis factor into the free will test?
I believe I've commented on this same video posting. A few times. There is a measure of both. We are driven by major needs and the way life unfolds for earthlings. But in any given moment when you're driven to eat, you get to decide if it's ham and cheese or PB&J.
When you pick han or cheese , why did you pick that one ? Probably because you wanted to. Why do you want to ? Did you chose to want that or did your brain come to want that out of past stimuli. If it's the later then you never really made a choice and just feel like you did
re. the first experiment (lifting hands in unisons, or not). Could they not be detecting her conscious decision to lift her hand? Have I missed something? People often plan for games like this. "hmmm, okay, I'll lift my left hand..." etc.
I was raised in a Christian culture, and am now am an Atheist, so I definitely had the free will to change my system of belief. And if a god exists that intends to punish me for my choice, then free will doesn't exist, because what is free, can't "be controlled" ... no matter how much the truth is stretched and bent out of shape ... by over-active human imagination.
@S_K C I'm a Canadian, and I'm very thankful that we no longer live under the laws of what were once imposed by the supposed god-fearing Protestant Christians. From the book … Drop Dead: A Horrible History of Hanging in Canada, author … Lorna Poplak. Capital punishment, the execution of someone found guilty of a crime, dates back to arrival of the European explorers on our shores. In those days, if you were condemned to death, quite a wide range of methods could be used to punish you. You could be hanged, or face a firing squad, or be burned at the stake. Although Canada remained a collection of separate British colonies until Confederation in 1876, a Royal Proclamation in 1763 replaced the prevailing Canadian legal system with the laws of England.
By the end of the 1700s in Britain, however, the litany of crimes regarded as sufficiently horrible to warrant the death penalty had swelled to 220, including nefarious acts as keeping company with gypsies or skulking in the dark with a blackened face. In 1828, Patrick Burgan of Saint John, New Brunswick, aged eighteen or nineteen, received the death penalty for the double offence of stealing a watch and some money from his former employer and clothing from a sailors’ boarding house. Given the power and pre-eminence of religion in Canada at that time, your very life would have been in jeopardy if you were caught scrawling slogans on the side of a church. You could also be hanged for stealing your neighbor’s cow, which was the fate of B. Clement of Montreal. And just in case you thought that the law protected the young as it does today, think again. Children were regarded as miniature adults and treated as such - Clement was only thirteen years old when executed.
Anyone got a link to the Christof Koch experiment? Perhaps the Closer to truth crew can assist me in this? I want to examine that experiment before I come to any conclusions.
Problem is, most people's definition of "free will" is wrong. Of course if you defined free will as some sort of super power or magical phenomenon, it will be impossible to prove. The fact is, free will cannot be removed. Why? Because we have free will. No one can just take it away. We always have the free will to make our own choices, which includes our bodies, not just our conscious brains. Do I lack free will because I can't just decide to stop my heart from beating? Of course not. So all these notions about "your subconscious" being evidence of a lack of free will is ridiculous.
Man can not devise a test for free will. It can always be argued that our actions are a result of bazzillions of factors in environment, experiences, all the way down to quantum mechanics. Yet people do believe in free will or why hold people accountable for bad behavior even at times when the goal is not to change a persons behavior?
I think free will is something about the process of process information. So we learn to process information, this over time makes us to express free will. But we have been programmed to do the most best for us during evolution. The more we like an outcome we will vote for that hopefully. But look at society, why we split up socially is maybe not free will but the negative of free will, we have no free will to be strong under certain circumstances. This is very interesting, rather than saying we have no free will under experiment maybe we have no free will from sociological causes which is worse.
Our systems also balance out when one is in use over the other either by choice or by asymmetric error correction. If your brain knows you're incapacitated outside your autonomic systems parameters the autotomic system compensates. Like balanced sleep walking. Or extra sensory suppression via hypnotic distraction.
As well as our unspoken etherial mycelium connection, preprogramming your deepest wishes explained as personal external manifestation. Sure is fun to talk about how wild it all is.
11:39 "Our brain is making our decisions and we're not" What does he mean by "we"? Who is "we" (the self)? Are the brain and body, the self? Are the beliefs of the mind, the self? Are feelings, the self? Is the self just a word to refer to a collection of things? 16:24, if free-will has constraints, then it isn't free. It's not free will, it's just will (with constraints/limitations).
Free will or Determinism , if you are making a truth claim , you`re rising above the bondage of total subjectivity , and the moment you claim a truth claim , you`re violating determinism.
God has free will which everything in general uses to move; at the same time, the use of free will moves everything in the direction of the goal of free will (a little like the force in Star War). In a sense local individual freedom is channeled to God's will in the biggest picture.
You're certainly on the right track there. I wouldn't call it God's 'free will' however, but simply God's nature. In other words, the 'movement' of everything (which you mention) as well as God's own nature (or what you are calling God's 'free will') - the very 'mover' itself - _all_ happens naturally, spontaneously and inevitably. And can you see what that means? It means there's no such thing as real free will on any level of reality. Even God itself doesn't have free will. Why? Because God doesn't _need_ free will - there's nothing God is hoping to gain or achieve. Of course, on our human plane of existence however, the situation is very different, and the question of free will is a big one. Why? Because there's lots we humans want to achieve in life, and so 'free will' (or at least the illusion of it) is very important to us! But if you go deeply enough into what I've just said, you realize that this reality of 'free will' being merely illusory, is actually most liberating for us! Because it turns out that _not_ having 'free will' is, strangely and paradoxically, the highest freedom in itself. Think about that for a moment, and become one of only a tiny percentage of the human kingdom to understand it.
@@cosmikrelic4815 I got your sarcasm, and raised you with my own! Sarcasm aside, I count on the comments section to give me alternative views and even "crazy" ideas that might be of interest. I love science, but some of these "scientists" are really out there, talking about fate, but science-ing it up with the word "determinism". I'll take the comments commandoes over that any day.
For me, unless the hypnotism is medically induced with a setative before the instruction are given, it isn't real. People can roleplay too often at hypnotism. I don't beleive anyone is that much of a simplton to be hypnotised while fully awake and conscious! Just way too far fetched a concept for a scientific experiment.
And what uses are they going too put this knowledge toward ? This can get dark really quick. Our mind and body grew up together as a completely interconnected system. That slowly developed the integration of those separate control systems over time and with a lot of practice. Your free will is only limited by your social, economic and biological restraints.
We are all finite NUMBERS. Yes, numbers. For each person and each yes/no decision that person takes over his/her entire life we can assign one bit (0 = no, 1 = yes) and we end up with a long, finite binary string and convert it to decimal.
That which you call your soul or spirit is your consciousness, and that which you call “free will” is your mind’s freedom to think or not, the only will you have, your only freedom, the choice that controls all the choices you make and determines your life and your character. -Ayn Rand
@@TeaParty1776 The problem is: How can an outside observer determine if such a will exists? The mind itself may _experience_ that it is making its own choices. But an observer sees only the actions that follow. Those actions can be explained as the result of some kind of free will, but also as the logical outcome of a (very complex) deterministic process. I see no way to distinguish between these two. For me, all debates about the existence of free will are useless.
@@dalstein3708 Mans power to control his mind is experienced from within the mind. That self-evidence is the evidence. Nothing further is needed or possible. Your implicit context, mechanical (or material) causality and the event-event theory of causality is invalid. Causality is the thing-action relation. A things identity is what acts. Wood burns because, not basically from outside heat, basically because of the nature of wood. Frogs croak but dont sing opera because they are frogs. Reality is definite things acting in definite ways, not a random chaos of events without identity. There are three _types_ of things in reality: matter, life and mind. Each type has its own, specific _type_ of action: material, teleological, volition. Free will cant be reduced to material action. You need a rational philosophy to guide science. Volitional Consciousness-N. Branden, in Psy Self-Esteem
@@TeaParty1776 Postulating something and then claiming that it is self-evident does not make it true. It could just as well be a delusion. A madman may be convinced that he can fly, and delare that as obviously true. The rest of the world will demand proof.
@@danielpaulson8838 Ad hominem. The symbolism is there all the time and if you haven't picked that up yet it doesn't impact me one bit because I and many others have...So at the end of the day you are only doing a disservice to yourself. Best of luck on your journey.
@@lovestarlightgiver2402 of course :) I still intake information from as many sources as I can get my hands on but when that symbolism is present we need to be more on guard for our own protection. Doesn't mean it is all lies by any means because people wouldn't gravitate to the information if it was. A good disinformation operation typically consists of 80-90% truth and 10-20% lies. Discernment is key 🙏
@@ForeverConsciousResearch We don't even know if he sees that "fire red black pyramid" in the same way that you do. We shouldn't assume that everyone has the same interpretation of colors or shapes that we do. The color red can mean different things to different people. Triangles or pyramids can mean different things to different people too.
I’m Not sure what you mean. I’ll illustrate. I almost married an abusuve woman. She was beautiful and funny and charming and destructive. She was (in some ways) a dream and a nightmare rolled into one. Now I found it very hard to let her go. I weighed up the benefits and the disadvantages (including my own health suffering). I eventually let her go and married a much more stable woman. Was that free will, or was there a threshold I had to reach before I would let go? I also recognise there’s a tipping point where I could have fallen into despair and become trapped. I am inclined to agree with the gentleman at the end although I don’t believe he articulates his perspective eloquently. Now, if you’ve paid attention to the Johnny Depp case, you will know he was beaten repeatedly and had his finger smashed off by his wife... the media refuse to cover the significant evidence supporting Mr Depp. In that instance, I would argue the behaviour from our community leaders is extreme and abusive and thus, some free will is compromised. I don’t think Mr Depp has changed his mind but his willingness to speak up (and not just for himself but all others who are pigeon joked based on their sex, despite brutal treatment) has been impacted. Free will is a very complex subject and despite these two (at the end of the video) debating the topic for 7 years, they didn’t have a clear definition of free will!! I don’t blame them, it’s a very complex domain.
@@yeh2319 The power to focus or evade is independent of anything external to mind. This is known via common human experience. Denying this is as unrealistic as denying the concrete, material universe.
Neural activity is similar for an action whether person decides or another person decides? Maybe the feeling of free will in what starts neural activity for action?
This topic has already been explored and the question answered by Jonathan Edwards in his phenominal work, "The Freedom of the Will." Martin Luther also whote a great work on this as well entitled, "The Bondage of the Will." Trust me, it's a lot less expensive than the work being presented in this video, and the answers are much clearer.
@@matswessling6600 No, they are not wrong. Have you even read the material I referenced? We are “free” to do what we want to do, but what is it that determines our "wants?" Indeed, we are bound in what we want to do by our nature; that is, we are bound by our moral condition and its desires (Romans 8:7). *We may do as we please, but we cannot please as we please.* That is, man acts according to his strongest desires, and yet man does not determine his desires. We cannot use our will to shape our nature - our moral condition - but rather, it is our nature that determines how we will use our wills, and every man born of natural generation from Adam is born into an imputed, Adamic, sinful condition that determines his morality (Romans 5:12ff). The will of man can desire only what his nature permits him to desire, therefore his will is by no means free, but rather it is a slave to his nature, and his nature is a slave to the will of God who ordains whatsoever comes to pass (Ephesians 1:11, Romans 11:36), and this includes the fall which enslaved all of Adam’s descendants to a corrupt moral condition.
@cognito: if this is the answer then why are all these people bothering to try to find out? i think it is much more likely that you don't know what you are talking about.
The brain is only important as the chief coprocessor to the soul. Actually several coprocessors, since the brain is made of of several organs, each with their own individual subsoul with its own strengths and weaknesses.
@Maria Radulovic You're in denial. Read up on the work of then down Stevenson. A fool will cling to a falsewood even when it is dragging them over a waterfall. Don't wait till the moment of death to discover what a fool you are. You'll have missed many opportunities in this incarnation
Ok, so how can someone who supposedly has no free will, hypnotise someone else to prove that that person has no free will without any free will being exercised on either of their parts? I'm not convinced about any conclusions from that about free will or about hypnotism. I am however convinced that I've seen this video posted before?
Fascinating so, is all muscle movement is precluded by similar neural activity. It would seem that some experiences are so intensely burned into us, like a burn for example. That we can develop 'reflex' actions; pulling your hand away when it senses heat. Which would probably cause similar neural activity? Or is reflex action a more localised concern? Is hypnosis a form of programming or tricking the consciousness? So consciousness may still play a part? If free will is like a muscle, then it can be exercised; as is practised by Sou Ling monks. As we have no equations that can start from the big bang and produce 'life digits' or societies. All this sound a bit ambiguous still.
Where excactly does the freedom come from? I am unfimiliar about thing that could bring about the "free" will.. As I see it we are fyschichal machines that feel they intent their actions and it would require something supernatural to overcome.
Unless the brain is playing quantum tricks with time, it could be like this perhaps,? In part based on who we are and the environment, the brain makes a decision but it takes a while before we know it since at the same time the action is being prepared too. It all takes some time.The brain is not as fast as a computer. But but so it's still we who choose and it's not determinism. You could say, no it's my brain deciding after a kind of calculation being made but the problem is that there are no clear external influences forcing that choice. They have done some experiment too with flies flying in the dark where they say they really made choices since there were no external stimuli telling them where to fly and it also didn't look like a random generator was being at work.
E.F. Schumacher sees three levels of consciousness, like plants (reaction to outer stimuli), like animals (action by inner intuition, instinctive or learned) and like humans (self-aware evaluation). Or more specifically humans have all 3 levels, with self-awareness the weakest one, the most subtle, but becomes what differentiates us from lower animals and what enables humans to do all the surprising things we can do. We choose as self-aware beings imagining the future, we practively practice action with intention and concentration, until we can do it without thinking, and then we could forget how much work it took to get there. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Guide_for_the_Perplexed "Human beings are highly predictable as physico-chemical systems, less predictable as living bodies, much less so as conscious beings and hardly at all as self aware persons."
So, given that using free will takes, and uses up, energy, does it follow that medical conditions that affect the amount of energy someone has will make their decision making and life choices more difficult?
If a person who is chronically fatigued due to an illness say cancer ( an example) then the person may just wish to pass away as it is too much effort to think if it’s better to live I have seen patients say “ I just want to go!”
Thalia seems to invested in her hypothesis. She's clearly only searching for something to confirm her belief and that makes it hard for me to take her seriously.
I think you need to put her into a certain context in order to see what she is trying to accomplish. She is a researcher in science, so she has a completely materialistic view of free will that is exclusively about conscious free will. She isn't considering the religious free will that says everything you do is on you without regard to whether you were consciously considering your choice or even paying attention. She is not considering physical free will which says that you are a unified evolved organism that makes choices from the available options based on local conditions. Since the only view she can consider is the idea that you consciously choose actions, or they are not free will actions, she is simply trying to find the brain mechanism for this to happen, or show the whole idea of consciously choosing to be false. This is the current paradigm and even if she had other ideas, funding only flows to consensus science. So I agree that she is not to be taken seriously since she is in such a tight little box that her conclusions are already built into her premises.
Seems silly. I recall how squirrels will run across a road or path, and then see you, and turn around back into oncoming traffic, since they decided to turn around before they crossed, but didn't get to their muscles until after it is too late. So how can they jump limb to limb in a tree? Because they can model the limb as moving in a predictable way, so they anticipate action to create result, even with the delay. So brain decisions can be made a fraction of a second before you can be fully aware of the decision, but what does it mean? It means we have "fast thinking, slow thinking" and most thinking is done with intuitive mind, and slow thinking takes time to step back and reassess to change course.
I wasn't going to watch this but then I decided I should? Then I decided maybe I didn't decide? Then I decided I'm not actually deciding anything? Then I realized Its impossible for me to decide if I decided LOL! I mean if I did decided that I'm not actually deciding ... I would have no respect for that decision ha ha.
Answers? We can "believe" (because of religious indoctrination) that the universe was created ... or we can believe (because of scientific theory) ... that the universe always existed. But we don't "have" answers to prove that either system of belief, is true. From the book Albert Einstein … THE WORLD AS I SEE IT An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise: such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls. It was the experience of mystery-even if mixed with fear-that engendered religion.
@@junevandermark952 We have to follow the belief system that has highest probability, but taking the post-modernism approach or high skepticism is not the answer, it's one life, one death, it's a yes/no game, you have to pick a side. I feel like a lab rat and must accomplish the experiment. I don't think that dropping Einstein name can give his words some validity. Walking the path (experience) is way more important than knowing the path(knowledge).
@@junevandermark952 The universe is designed, complex and dependent so it entails an independent designer. If not so then what is the alternative belief and you can use imagination.
@@mahmoudgouda7972 All we have in IS our imagination. I also was raised to believe in the existence of a creator, but it never made any sense to me that if a creator existed ... that suffering of all forms of life would also exist ... unless the creator was a monster. When I studied Stephen Hawking's theory, that the universe in one form or another always existed, and then studied that there were those back in history such as Plato and Aristotle that believed the same … at the age of 70, that was the end of my religious indoctrination. It all made sense, that if the universe always existed, there could not have been a creator, and it also made sense that suffering of all forms of life, was and is, natural. I'm almost 84 years of age now, and feel whole just as I am, and I realize that if I try to treat others with as much kindness as each situation in which I find myself allows, I will always feel better about myself. It's as simple as that.
“I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.” Stephen Hawking From the book … 2000 Years of Disbelief … author … James A. Haugt … “None of the gods has formed the world, nor has any man; it has always been.”-Empedocles (495-435 B.C.E.), Greek philosopher and statesman (Noyes) … “The universe has been made neither by gods nor by men, but it has been, and is, and will be eternally.”-Heraclitus (Noyes) ... “The nature of the universe has by no means been made through divine power, seeing how great are the flaws that mar it”-Lucretius, ibid.
I think we can know what free will is. The starting place is free will= free choice. The idea is we have options we can select in a special way that gives us control of the choice. Control we couldn't have if we were predetermined or fated to select the option we do. I could go into more depth but won't here. Anyhow when you get clear about what it is we obviously don't and can't have it. It's logically impossible.
The determinists will just assert that you couldn't have done differently. They will defend this position to the death, but mostly just by saying the same thing over and over until you block them. I'm beginning to think it is a mental condition.
@@caricue Well I won't. It's all about how we could have done otherwise. If we just might have done otherwise that won't do because then we could have chosen A, we could have chosen B and it so happens we chose A. The question is what would have been different if I had done otherwise?
@@stephenlawrence4821 Isn't it just the same concept as "fate", but replacing the will of the gods with prior causes? It's a metaphysical question about the nature of reality and the universe to imagine that something different could have happened. We live in a real physical world that only has one run through, so imagining alternate realities is not science, and saying that you have no input into the immediate future is the religious concept called fate. Let's face it, even the hardest of the hard determinists will concede that if you want something to happen in your life, you will need to do the mental work, make a plan and use your own initiative to see it to completion. If you don't feel comfortable calling that free will, then you might as well make a sacrifice to Dionysus and pray for her intercession. Of course, as a determinist, you will say that you had no choice to make the sacrifice either!
@@caricue I think we make choices just as we experience. I think we weigh up our options and act accordingly and that influences our future. I just think that's all there is to choosing. How could I do otherwise? What ever your answer to that is, it will be a matter of my good or bad fortune which of the possible choices is the one I actually make.
@@caricue It's a matter of good or bad fortune, just like "the will of the gods" which ever way you look at it. Either we just go through whatever process we go through, well that's just a matter of fortune which process it is. Or we're caused to go through that process, well that's just a matter of fortune. Anyway you look at it the result is the same.
Science does not demonstrate that every event is fully, causally determined by prior events. It is true that in very simple interactions, such as one ball colliding into another ball, the outcome is very predictable. But in more complex interactions, the predictability of outcome follows _statistical_ patterns. In the opening of a game of pool, when the cue ball strikes the other balls, science does not demonstrate that, even with a subsequent opening shot having been identical, that the resulting movements and resting positions could not have been different. The claim that, had all inputs been known and calculable, then the outcome would necessarily have been perfectly known, is pure speculation. That is simply not what the definitions of Newtonian physics are able to predict. (And quantum behavior defies Determinism further.) When a burst of spray paint is sprayed, the circular pattern that results is predictable. But science does not demonstrate that the final placement of each particle is summarily determined by prior events. The question of randomness in nature is open, and as such, Determinism is mere dogma.
we are more than mere chemicals in our brain, that's for sure, nor is the mind just the result of billions of cells neurons and synapses all collaborating nor can AI produce consciousness through machines..free will, the self and indeed our mind is more mysterious and unique than that. and no , i am not religious. i am more fascinated by how our very existence is more amazing than we will ever realise.
Talk to other people!:) I’m a huge believer in diversity ... of thought ONLY! I surround myself by people who think differently. I am making no assumptions about what you do... however, I hear a diversity of perspectives because I seek them out. Regardless of gender and skin pigmentation levels (the modern meaning of diversity), I can easily find an array of perspectives. Young, old, poor, rich, different career paths, nationalities, social interests.... I will find many perspectives... but if I pick buff, sporty, hyper masculine peers (men and women), the diversity of thought will be less, despite the gender diversity.
Am I crazy, or does Roy display clear negative emotion toward Michael at 12:48, perhaps resentment? It seems at odds with the apparently genuine credit he gives Michael for having the idea of the experiment. I suppose this could just be their 7th take or something and he simply wants to get out of there.
Will, Drive, Desire and Motivation (WDDM) share the same meaning. Choosing and deciding are determined by the strength and intensity of your WDDM to experience PLEASURE (the Purpose of Life); therefore, choosing and deciding are not 'freely willed': they are solely determined by - not free of, or free from - your WDDM to experience PLEASURE. It is not WDDM that is free or unfree; it is the PHYSICAL MOVEMENT caused and compelled by WDDM that is free or unfree. As puppets or marionettes are compelled (or 'willed') to MOVE by strings attached to their limbs, humans are INSTINCTUALLY compelled to MOVE by WDDM. We are 'Pleasure Puppets' in the Puppet Show of Life
free will is a logical fallacy. all action is determined by something. The only true random(free) acts are in quantum physics and they are random because they are not influenced by anything, so there is no will involved.
What if cause and effect is not the same thing as determinism. Determinism is the same as fate, just a philosophical musing that has no basis in reality. There's conservation of energy and conservation of angular momentum, but no conservation of control. The past powers the present, it doesn't control it. That is fate, not causation. Reliable causation is what allows you to take control of the present and influence, not control, your future. Determinism is the logical fallacy.
I think choosing to do something or not it’s the only free will we humans have, as all kind of biological processes are automatic. It’s all inside a small part of our brain that we have control of from the hole humans bodyies. Choosing to long thinking about something could also be a free will. Fact is free will is so much limited for all kind of creates. We will be judged only in our free will decisions by God.
Also where modern western science sort of fail, this always looking for less and less error in measurement does not accommodate deeper ecosystem properties of social life.
You send me word and word thoughts and one thought competes with another don't make me think over words and process thoughts just let them pass through my mind and my spiritual ears, my consciousness is not a garbage dump of collective thoughts..I'm looking, you think you've already found, your find is not mine,The purity of spiritual speech knows no alphabet of lies, better an empty vessel than a vessel filled with impurities,Scientists are unable to discover and know all the mechanisms of the mind, because they did not create it, God is the Creator of all minds...The mind and heart do not always tell the truth, because the mind and heart do not know the truth, and that absolute, ultimate truth is God...God is our creator of the mind and the heart is a question that has no satisfactory answer because what is love and God.There is nothing better for scientists than to do something good and useful for themselves and others, and the paradox of science is that you will never know the answers to all your questions, because you did not create this world and you did not create the tools for the human soul, which is the organ thinking called the brain and this force that created and designed this whole universe and created you and your mind has the answer to every question you have, the force that created this whole universe called God is a great mystery.. All human facts, ideas, and truths are not absolute, irrefutable truths, they lack the perfection of God
How do you know? By what process did a god give free-will to human beings, and how is will free if it is limited by a god's power or even by nature's power?
I got as far as the description of the first experiment but no further. The experiment was absurd and illogical. These people need to learn to think straight.
Free Willy? I thought this was a movie review. I wonder was it the free will of the lady researcher to plant a post hypnotic suggestion for the unwitting subject to squeeze balls alternately, or did she simply have no choice? I'll give this movie a three out of five for the hilarious last 30 seconds and the chemistry between the lovers.
@@cosmikrelic4815 I should have elaborated. What I should have said was that the first experiment can't be used to make any deductions about ''free will''. It is a good experiment to explore how intention operates in the brain, which is the purpose of the experiment 👍.
wow, i never knew that free will is this much debatable. All along , i though that my decisions are my own, but as with everything, life is still a mystery.
There is a tedx video of Dr. David Vago (mindfulness is in the title). He shows that our conscious experience begins about 1/2-second before we experience it. I believe that takes Libet's discovery further (he discovered that our choices/decisions/judgments occur 1/4-second before our conscious brain says "I did that." It's already done when we do it. ).
If you're into mindfulness, (awareness, presence, being individuated from your habituated thinking/explaining self, more "in the moment"), I think free will is our ability to be aware of what's emerging (from the subconscious) and not blindly identify with it (attach to it) as if it's real and actually happening. When we practice some awareness in the moment, and not losing track of how we're having it done to us (not doing it), then we can exercise a veto power. We can say "that past even makes me sick. I don't need to keep thinking about it. I can let those thoughts pass through me without identifying with them as real. The past is just a story I tell myself. The only thing that's real is this moment." We can question our choices before acting upon them. Or, we can realize how we caught in analysis paralysis in a way Vago demonstrates -- when we're not present in the moment, and get tangled up in evaluation, the last stage before emergence).
If we just attach to what emerges because that's what we've always practiced our entire life, then there's no free will. It's literally predestined (whatever emerges from behind the curtain of consciousness. The 5% of our brain following the 95% subconscious part.). But, if we can be aware, "this is really how it is" and not be fully engaged with it, the ego, the explaining voice, the rationalizing, labeling, narrating voice, then that is free will (by comparison). We know what's going on and can attend to our self, not just follow. We can be conscious instead of letting the subconscious fill our conscious mind with whatever emerges. I think it's really powerful. The 1st video in my playlist is the guided meditation that made all this very real to me.
11:30 maybe “our brains are making our decisions and we are not” ... I would think this comment may be based on a false presumption that “we” are not our subconscious self but are only our conscious self or no more than the physical response self ... why can’t free will be centered at the subconscious level and the “conscious” level is some kind of feedback or display loop which evolved for “re-examination” like a teleplay ... useful for adjusting values for future free willed decisions?
I've also noticed this weird sort of dualism. I think it comes a lot from the fact that free will and consciousness are examined only by introspection. If you look at a person from the outside, you would never separate out the decisions that were made consciously vs unconsciously. From the outside, a person is an integrated whole organism with various motivations and responses that are based on whatever is going on around it. If you point this out to determinist that they are making an artificial distinction between conscious and unconscious cognition, they will just move the goalpost and say that the particle interactions are actually in control. It's a waste to try to talk to determinists since it is almost a faith based position and impervious to doubt, or even reasonable discussion.
Excellent. This approach makes a lot more sense than the merely abstract and philosophical method. The bible says of humans beings *DUST THOU ART.* This means we are material or physical beings first of all. Maybe with a " spiritual " component.
free will is not atomic decisions we make based on sensory input at the moment. It's the decisions we make based on a thought process of weighing in the pros and cons and risks and rewards for now and the future. Maybe people have different definition of what consciousness is, like the two scientists @ 24:00.
The best quote in this video was, “…Our brains are making decisions and we’re not.” Think about how confused this statement is and yet this is exactly why people fail to grasp the truth that Free Will doesn’t exist. People think they’re separate from their brains. This is the common error.
The conclusion is totally clear, for those who are actually open minded and want to know the truth, instead of confirming their biases - the free will is an illusion.
Nikolay Tonev, are you saying that conscious free will is an illusion, as some of these results could be interpreted, or are you saying that the brain itself has no free will, which was the opposite of the results?
@@caricue What are you even saying? I'm saying, that all choices that we make have underlying causes. Therefor, we can choose not a single thing 'free'. We're not free to choose, no matter that it can feel like it. All the choices we make are happening on the basis of underlying processes (biological, chemical, physical).
@@ConnoisseurOfExistence I thought you were commenting on the video, which is about experiments on people to see if their conscious choices have direct causal power on their choices and actions, or whether unconscious brain processes actually initiate the actions. If you really believe what you said just now, what was the point of watching the video if you already know that even the brain itself isn't really able to do anything, and is just a mechanism that is totally controlled by the underlying physics. Maybe the real question is, would you be able to change your mind if the video had presented compelling evidence to contradict what you already believe? Or would someone have to mess with your particle interactions in order to compel a change in your mechanical brain? Maybe a better, and less sarcastic question might be, can information be causal in your scheme of reality? And if new information can change your thinking and decisions, where does the information make this causal effect? Does new information change your particles or your mind? That's a real question, by the way.
@@caricue I might come back here and answer you once...
@@ConnoisseurOfExistence If you don't answer, that is fine, you are under no obligation and obviously, it is a leading question. Strangely enough, I almost never seem to get actual new information in the comment section, but being forced to articulate my views clarifies my own thinking and keeps me honest since I will get immediate feedback if I say something too dumb. Cheers.
Superb, 10/10.
My first significant thought? What do you mean by free will?
What I especially find stands out.
1. No identity politics
2. States a premise
3. Uses science to measure that premise
4. Debates with alternate views
One of these is reasonably uncommon today. Having all four is extremely rare.
I believe the more significant the criteria, the higher the threshold to bypass the free will. The gent at the end talked about marriage. It’s a good example but clouded by emotion. Pick something discrete like a career choice.
I do believe we have free will. I believe that will is variable, from person to person and topic to topic.
Pick a disciplined person and a gambling addict. Then pick a behaviour related to adrenaline and risk and see the comparison.
Great work! Great videos. Thank
You!!
I came up with idea of using hypnosis to investigate free will before I saw this video. I had not seen or heard anything about this line of investigation prior to my idea. I thought I had came up with a new unexplored original idea, only to discover truly original ideas are rare.
it's fun to watch very smart people disagreeing respectfully.
The experiment around 17 mins isn’t about free will v determinism.
It’s about how different conditions lead to different outcomes.
It’s entirely consistent with determinism.
It presents no evidence of free will.
I have a hypothesis that allows for free will even though the experiments seem to show that our brain has already made a decision before we are conscious of it. It involves retrocausality, aka backwards causation. Retrocausality can be thought of as information from the future that affects the present. Or, from another perspective, information from the present affecting the past. Retrocausality is conjectured by many quantum physicists as the explanation for the "Delayed Choice, Quantum Eraser Experinent". Also, some scientists (Stuart Hammeroff and Sir Roger Penrose) contend that conciousness originates from quantum states in neural microtubules within the brain. I suggest that thoughts and other sensory inputs from the near future affect the neural activity of the present. I suggest this ability to tap into the near future gave our ancestors a survival advantage by enhancing their reaction times. It may explain why people seem able to react to sensory stimuli quicker than the physics/chemistry can explain. It can also explain the origins of premonitions (Dean Radin experiments). Incorporating retrocausality into the quantum brain saves free will, or at least, doesn't allow these experiments to shut the door on it. IMHO, Robert Kuhn has had episodes with Dean Radin and Stuart Hammeroff and could have put this all together himself. Instead, he keeps asking the "Why something rather than nothing" question and talking to theologians. Robert Kuhn could facilitate the understanding of conciousness by using his access to all the "big thinkers" in the fields of QM and neuroscience.
In quantum mechanics, retrocausality (delayed choice experiments) affects the interpretation of past events only, not the raw events themselves. It is well explained in Anton Zeilinger's book "Dance of the Photons".
On the other hand, psychology experiments (reported in one of Dean Radin's books) showed that a person can predict, with an involuntary physiological-emotional reaction, the character of an image that will be randomly displayed by a computer some seconds later (call it retrocausality, future forecasting, or future influencing, as you wish...).
First question for these weird science experimenters - how do you choose and/or filter subjects? How do are your experiments rooted in confirmation bias? Would you like to experiment on subjects who have a strongly different confirmation bias than you do, and aren't at risk of losing something if they don't fit your desires?
Might what is making decision in the brain have free will?
If free will exists to some degree, then this is one of my favorite areas of thought. If it's an illusion created by my brain-meat, then the past experiences of said brain-meat have primed this predilection. Either way, even though yes, this video is an amalgamation of others i've already viewed, it was still refreshing and interesting to watch.
Past experiences just form the context in which you make our decisions.
People generally have varying degrees self consciousness or self awareness. So these things are hard to measure and/or prove.
Is this a re-upload? I have a feeling that I’ve seen this video before.
Yes I swear that I saw this a few months ago
Maybe you could’ve chosen not to watch it again.
@@goliath257 yes, but I thought at first that it was a new video. Well. Nevermind
Fascinating that the 2 scientists disagree on the conclusion of the free will test. Also, how does ones resistance/susceptibility to hypnosis factor into the free will test?
A person present in awareness cannot be hypnotized.
I believe I've commented on this same video posting. A few times.
There is a measure of both. We are driven by major needs and the way life unfolds for earthlings. But in any given moment when you're driven to eat, you get to decide if it's ham and cheese or PB&J.
When you pick han or cheese , why did you pick that one ?
Probably because you wanted to. Why do you want to ? Did you chose to want that or did your brain come to want that out of past stimuli. If it's the later then you never really made a choice and just feel like you did
re. the first experiment (lifting hands in unisons, or not). Could they not be detecting her conscious decision to lift her hand? Have I missed something? People often plan for games like this. "hmmm, okay, I'll lift my left hand..." etc.
I was raised in a Christian culture, and am now am an Atheist, so I definitely had the free will to change my system of belief. And if a god exists that intends to punish me for my choice, then free will doesn't exist, because what is free, can't "be controlled" ... no matter how much the truth is stretched and bent out of shape ... by over-active human imagination.
@S_K C I'm a Canadian, and I'm very thankful that we no longer live under the laws of what were once imposed by the supposed god-fearing Protestant Christians.
From the book … Drop Dead: A Horrible History of Hanging in Canada, author … Lorna Poplak.
Capital punishment, the execution of someone found guilty of a crime, dates back to arrival of the European explorers on our shores. In those days, if you were condemned to death, quite a wide range of methods could be used to punish you. You could be hanged, or face a firing squad, or be burned at the stake.
Although Canada remained a collection of separate British colonies until Confederation in 1876, a Royal Proclamation in 1763 replaced the prevailing Canadian legal system with the laws of England.
By the end of the 1700s in Britain, however, the litany of crimes regarded as sufficiently horrible to warrant the death penalty had swelled to 220, including nefarious acts as keeping company with gypsies or skulking in the dark with a blackened face.
In 1828, Patrick Burgan of Saint John, New Brunswick, aged eighteen or nineteen, received the death penalty for the double offence of stealing a watch and some money from his former employer and clothing from a sailors’ boarding house.
Given the power and pre-eminence of religion in Canada at that time, your very life would have been in jeopardy if you were caught scrawling slogans on the side of a church. You could also be hanged for stealing your neighbor’s cow, which was the fate of B. Clement of Montreal. And just in case you thought that the law protected the young as it does today, think again. Children were regarded as miniature adults and treated as such - Clement was only thirteen years old when executed.
Anyone got a link to the Christof Koch experiment? Perhaps the Closer to truth crew can assist me in this? I want to examine that experiment before I come to any conclusions.
isn't this episode several years old?
What happens to the free will of women after 4 drinks and the free will of men after 6 drinks?
Problem is, most people's definition of "free will" is wrong. Of course if you defined free will as some sort of super power or magical phenomenon, it will be impossible to prove. The fact is, free will cannot be removed. Why? Because we have free will. No one can just take it away. We always have the free will to make our own choices, which includes our bodies, not just our conscious brains. Do I lack free will because I can't just decide to stop my heart from beating? Of course not. So all these notions about "your subconscious" being evidence of a lack of free will is ridiculous.
Man can not devise a test for free will. It can always be argued that our actions are a result of bazzillions of factors in environment, experiences, all the way down to quantum mechanics. Yet people do believe in free will or why hold people accountable for bad behavior even at times when the goal is not to change a persons behavior?
I think free will is something about the process of process information. So we learn to process information, this over time makes us to express free will. But we have been programmed to do the most best for us during evolution. The more we like an outcome we will vote for that hopefully. But look at society, why we split up socially is maybe not free will but the negative of free will, we have no free will to be strong under certain circumstances. This is very interesting, rather than saying we have no free will under experiment maybe we have no free will from sociological causes which is worse.
Intention is able to make physical changes as decision which sends signals from the brain for and action?
Autotomic vs autonomic response systems, running synonymously. We can choose to trigger our own automatic responses.
Our systems also balance out when one is in use over the other either by choice or by asymmetric error correction. If your brain knows you're incapacitated outside your autonomic systems parameters the autotomic system compensates. Like balanced sleep walking. Or extra sensory suppression via hypnotic distraction.
As well as our unspoken etherial mycelium connection, preprogramming your deepest wishes explained as personal external manifestation. Sure is fun to talk about how wild it all is.
11:39 "Our brain is making our decisions and we're not"
What does he mean by "we"? Who is "we" (the self)? Are the brain and body, the self? Are the beliefs of the mind, the self? Are feelings, the self? Is the self just a word to refer to a collection of things?
16:24, if free-will has constraints, then it isn't free. It's not free will, it's just will (with constraints/limitations).
Free will or Determinism , if you are making a truth claim , you`re rising above the bondage of total subjectivity , and the moment you claim a truth claim , you`re violating determinism.
If you can predict one day before what hand she will raise then there is no free will. Not just few seconds before
God has free will which everything in general uses to move; at the same time, the use of free will moves everything in the direction of the goal of free will (a little like the force in Star War). In a sense local individual freedom is channeled to God's will in the biggest picture.
You're certainly on the right track there. I wouldn't call it God's 'free will' however, but simply God's nature. In other words, the 'movement' of everything (which you mention) as well as God's own nature (or what you are calling God's 'free will') - the very 'mover' itself - _all_ happens naturally, spontaneously and inevitably.
And can you see what that means? It means there's no such thing as real free will on any level of reality. Even God itself doesn't have free will. Why? Because God doesn't _need_ free will - there's nothing God is hoping to gain or achieve. Of course, on our human plane of existence however, the situation is very different, and the question of free will is a big one. Why? Because there's lots we humans want to achieve in life, and so 'free will' (or at least the illusion of it) is very important to us!
But if you go deeply enough into what I've just said, you realize that this reality of 'free will' being merely illusory, is actually most liberating for us! Because it turns out that _not_ having 'free will' is, strangely and paradoxically, the highest freedom in itself. Think about that for a moment, and become one of only a tiny percentage of the human kingdom to understand it.
the think i like most about these videos is the comment section. so many people know the answers. i wonder why we have scientists at all?
Cosmik Relic, Free will and consciousness are philosophical questions, so there probably isn't any reason to have scientist who study these things.
@@caricue i was being sarcastic. scientists tale philosophical ideas and design theories and experiments to explain these ideas.
@@cosmikrelic4815 I got your sarcasm, and raised you with my own! Sarcasm aside, I count on the comments section to give me alternative views and even "crazy" ideas that might be of interest. I love science, but some of these "scientists" are really out there, talking about fate, but science-ing it up with the word "determinism". I'll take the comments commandoes over that any day.
For me, unless the hypnotism is medically induced with a setative before the instruction are given, it isn't real. People can roleplay too often at hypnotism. I don't beleive anyone is that much of a simplton to be hypnotised while fully awake and conscious! Just way too far fetched a concept for a scientific experiment.
I’m skeptical about hypnosis because I haven’t seen enough examples, it looks suspicious idk
I tend to agree. Despite her protestations, I still think it's some kind of silly circus act.
I wouldn't go as far as saying it isn't real, just less rigorous a scientific conclusion.
And what uses are they going too put this knowledge toward ? This can get dark really quick.
Our mind and body grew up together as a completely interconnected system. That slowly developed the integration of those separate control systems over time and with a lot of practice.
Your free will is only limited by your social, economic and biological restraints.
Bing bro you answered my question God bless you lol
@@wallsofjerico9516
😆👍
@@thomasridley8675 lol man this was driving me mad 😅
@@wallsofjerico9516
Me too !!
@@thomasridley8675 😅😅
We are all finite NUMBERS. Yes, numbers. For each person and each yes/no decision that person takes over his/her entire life we can assign one bit (0 = no, 1 = yes) and we end up with a long, finite binary string and convert it to decimal.
you are number 6. i am not a number. you do it differently to me, i assign 0=yes, 1=no.
Decision making has a physical basis if used up?
It's determined to appear we have free will, so might as well run with it.
There is only one big question about free will, and that is: what on earth IS free will? I have yet to see a good definition of it.
That which you call your soul or spirit is your consciousness, and that which you call “free will” is your mind’s freedom to think or not, the only will you have, your only freedom, the choice that controls all the choices you make and determines your life and your character.
-Ayn Rand
@@TeaParty1776 The problem is: How can an outside observer determine if such a will exists?
The mind itself may _experience_ that it is making its own choices. But an observer sees only the actions that follow. Those actions can be explained as the result of some kind of free will, but also as the logical outcome of a (very complex) deterministic process. I see no way to distinguish between these two.
For me, all debates about the existence of free will are useless.
@@dalstein3708 Mans power to control his mind is experienced from within the mind. That self-evidence is the evidence. Nothing further is needed or possible. Your implicit context, mechanical (or material) causality and the event-event theory of causality is invalid. Causality is the thing-action relation. A things identity is what acts. Wood burns because, not basically from outside heat, basically because of the nature of wood. Frogs croak but dont sing opera because they are frogs. Reality is definite things acting in definite ways, not a random chaos of events without identity. There are three _types_ of things in reality: matter, life and mind. Each type has its own, specific _type_ of action: material, teleological, volition. Free will cant be reduced to material action. You need a rational philosophy to guide science.
Volitional Consciousness-N. Branden, in Psy Self-Esteem
@@TeaParty1776 Postulating something and then claiming that it is self-evident does not make it true. It could just as well be a delusion.
A madman may be convinced that he can fly, and delare that as obviously true. The rest of the world will demand proof.
5:35 LOL! Sitting under a fire red black pyramid. Yeah I bet this guy can be trusted 😂
Best keep your shiny metal hat on.
@@danielpaulson8838 Ad hominem. The symbolism is there all the time and if you haven't picked that up yet it doesn't impact me one bit because I and many others have...So at the end of the day you are only doing a disservice to yourself.
Best of luck on your journey.
It's better not to judge by appearances, but to consider information.
@@lovestarlightgiver2402 of course :) I still intake information from as many sources as I can get my hands on but when that symbolism is present we need to be more on guard for our own protection. Doesn't mean it is all lies by any means because people wouldn't gravitate to the information if it was. A good disinformation operation typically consists of 80-90% truth and 10-20% lies. Discernment is key 🙏
@@ForeverConsciousResearch We don't even know if he sees that "fire red black pyramid" in the same way that you do. We shouldn't assume that everyone has the same interpretation of colors or shapes that we do. The color red can mean different things to different people. Triangles or pyramids can mean different things to different people too.
Something in the person / brain exercises free will?
Free with directive principles operates
If you’re highly attracted to somebody that person can greatly interfere with your free will.
I’m
Not sure what you mean. I’ll illustrate.
I almost married an abusuve woman. She was beautiful and funny and charming and destructive. She was (in some ways) a dream and a nightmare rolled into one.
Now I found it very hard to let her go. I weighed up the benefits and the disadvantages (including my own health suffering). I eventually let her go and married a much more stable woman.
Was that free will, or was there a threshold I had to reach before I would let go? I also recognise there’s a tipping point where I could have fallen into despair and become trapped.
I am inclined to agree with the gentleman at the end although I don’t believe he articulates his perspective eloquently.
Now, if you’ve paid attention to the Johnny Depp case, you will know he was beaten repeatedly and had his finger smashed off by his wife... the media refuse to cover the significant evidence supporting Mr Depp. In that instance, I would argue the behaviour from our community leaders is extreme and abusive and thus, some free will is compromised. I don’t think Mr Depp has changed his mind but his willingness to speak up (and not just for himself but all others who are pigeon joked based on their sex, despite brutal treatment) has been impacted.
Free will is a very complex subject and despite these two (at the end of the video) debating the topic for 7 years, they didn’t have a clear definition of free will!! I don’t blame them, it’s a very complex domain.
They can interfere w/your emotions and associations ,not your power to focus or evade.
@@TeaParty1776... and thus it affects your power to focus or evade
@@yeh2319 The power to focus or evade is independent of anything external to mind. This is known via common human experience. Denying this is as unrealistic as denying the concrete, material universe.
@@yeh2319 That power is a unique cause that starts within the mind. Nothing affects it.
Neural activity is similar for an action whether person decides or another person decides? Maybe the feeling of free will in what starts neural activity for action?
This topic has already been explored and the question answered by Jonathan Edwards in his phenominal work, "The Freedom of the Will." Martin Luther also whote a great work on this as well entitled, "The Bondage of the Will." Trust me, it's a lot less expensive than the work being presented in this video, and the answers are much clearer.
what were the answers to the questions?
but their answers are wrong...
@@matswessling6600
No, they are not wrong. Have you even read the material I referenced?
We are “free” to do what we want to do, but what is it that determines our "wants?" Indeed, we are bound in what we want to do by our nature; that is, we are bound by our moral condition and its desires (Romans 8:7).
*We may do as we please, but we cannot please as we please.* That is, man acts according to his strongest desires, and yet man does not determine his desires.
We cannot use our will to shape our nature - our moral condition - but rather, it is our nature that determines how we will use our wills, and every man born of natural generation from Adam is born into an imputed, Adamic, sinful condition that determines his morality (Romans 5:12ff). The will of man can desire only what his nature permits him to desire, therefore his will is by no means free, but rather it is a slave to his nature, and his nature is a slave to the will of God who ordains whatsoever comes to pass (Ephesians 1:11, Romans 11:36), and this includes the fall which enslaved all of Adam’s descendants to a corrupt moral condition.
We all have the free will to influence someone else or, ourselves, succumb to the influence of others.
then it's not free, it's influenced by something
@cognito: if this is the answer then why are all these people bothering to try to find out? i think it is much more likely that you don't know what you are talking about.
The brain is only important as the chief coprocessor to the soul. Actually several coprocessors, since the brain is made of of several organs, each with their own individual subsoul with its own strengths and weaknesses.
There is no soul.
@Maria Radulovic You're in denial. Read up on the work of then down Stevenson. A fool will cling to a falsewood even when it is dragging them over a waterfall. Don't wait till the moment of death to discover what a fool you are. You'll have missed many opportunities in this incarnation
@@mariaradulovic3203 and a very cult marxist sentiment unless you'd care to offer any proof of your assertion
What effect does feeling of involuntary action have in brain?
Ok, so how can someone who supposedly has no free will, hypnotise someone else to prove that that person has no free will without any free will being exercised on either of their parts? I'm not convinced about any conclusions from that about free will or about hypnotism.
I am however convinced that I've seen this video posted before?
what is definition of free will? Such a thing may not be exist
Very good
Fascinating so, is all muscle movement is precluded by similar neural activity.
It would seem that some experiences are so intensely burned into us, like a burn for example. That we can develop 'reflex' actions; pulling your hand away when it senses heat. Which would probably cause similar neural activity? Or is reflex action a more localised concern?
Is hypnosis a form of programming or tricking the consciousness? So consciousness may still play a part?
If free will is like a muscle, then it can be exercised; as is practised by Sou Ling monks.
As we have no equations that can start from the big bang and produce 'life digits' or societies. All this sound a bit ambiguous still.
Where excactly does the freedom come from? I am unfimiliar about thing that could bring about the "free" will.. As I see it we are fyschichal machines that feel they intent their actions and it would require something supernatural to overcome.
That's unfair editing. It is made to show that Peter Tse conceded, somewhat unwillingly that Thalia was right.
No, that's not the case at all
13:30 that’s an ingenious idea 😝
I used my free will to comment
Unless the brain is playing quantum tricks with time, it could be like this perhaps,? In part based on who we are and the environment, the brain makes a decision but it takes a while before we know it since at the same time the action is being prepared too. It all takes some time.The brain is not as fast as a computer. But but so it's still we who choose and it's not determinism. You could say, no it's my brain deciding after a kind of calculation being made but the problem is that there are no clear external influences forcing that choice. They have done some experiment too with flies flying in the dark where they say they really made choices since there were no external stimuli telling them where to fly and it also didn't look like a random generator was being at work.
I'm a little bamboozled.
wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow
E.F. Schumacher sees three levels of consciousness, like plants (reaction to outer stimuli), like animals (action by inner intuition, instinctive or learned) and like humans (self-aware evaluation). Or more specifically humans have all 3 levels, with self-awareness the weakest one, the most subtle, but becomes what differentiates us from lower animals and what enables humans to do all the surprising things we can do. We choose as self-aware beings imagining the future, we practively practice action with intention and concentration, until we can do it without thinking, and then we could forget how much work it took to get there.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Guide_for_the_Perplexed
"Human beings are highly predictable as physico-chemical systems, less predictable as living bodies, much less so as conscious beings and hardly at all as self aware persons."
10:15 she went through operation only to lose in his lill game ;) Why not intentionally let her win damn it. Still the same data.
The biological restraints are added to by the experiences of previous incarnations. This is how karma works.
So, given that using free will takes, and uses up, energy, does it follow that medical conditions that affect the amount of energy someone has will make their decision making and life choices more difficult?
Yes, absolutely.
If a person who is chronically fatigued due to an illness say cancer ( an example) then the person may just wish to pass away as it is too much effort to think if it’s better to live
I have seen patients say “ I just want to go!”
Thalia seems to invested in her hypothesis. She's clearly only searching for something to confirm her belief and that makes it hard for me to take her seriously.
I think you need to put her into a certain context in order to see what she is trying to accomplish. She is a researcher in science, so she has a completely materialistic view of free will that is exclusively about conscious free will. She isn't considering the religious free will that says everything you do is on you without regard to whether you were consciously considering your choice or even paying attention. She is not considering physical free will which says that you are a unified evolved organism that makes choices from the available options based on local conditions.
Since the only view she can consider is the idea that you consciously choose actions, or they are not free will actions, she is simply trying to find the brain mechanism for this to happen, or show the whole idea of consciously choosing to be false. This is the current paradigm and even if she had other ideas, funding only flows to consensus science.
So I agree that she is not to be taken seriously since she is in such a tight little box that her conclusions are already built into her premises.
Is this a repost ?
Seems silly. I recall how squirrels will run across a road or path, and then see you, and turn around back into oncoming traffic, since they decided to turn around before they crossed, but didn't get to their muscles until after it is too late. So how can they jump limb to limb in a tree? Because they can model the limb as moving in a predictable way, so they anticipate action to create result, even with the delay.
So brain decisions can be made a fraction of a second before you can be fully aware of the decision, but what does it mean? It means we have "fast thinking, slow thinking" and most thinking is done with intuitive mind, and slow thinking takes time to step back and reassess to change course.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow
I wasn't going to watch this but then I decided I should? Then I decided maybe I didn't decide? Then I decided I'm not actually deciding anything? Then I realized Its impossible for me to decide if I decided LOL! I mean if I did decided that I'm not actually deciding ... I would have no respect for that decision ha ha.
I really like when science is used to get answers about metaphysics.
Answers?
We can "believe" (because of religious indoctrination) that the universe was created ... or we can believe (because of scientific theory) ... that the universe always existed. But we don't "have" answers to prove that either system of belief, is true.
From the book Albert Einstein … THE WORLD AS I SEE IT
An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise: such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls.
It was the experience of mystery-even if mixed with fear-that engendered religion.
@@junevandermark952
We have to follow the belief system that has highest probability, but taking the post-modernism approach or high skepticism is not the answer, it's one life, one death, it's a yes/no game, you have to pick a side.
I feel like a lab rat and must accomplish the experiment.
I don't think that dropping Einstein name can give his words some validity.
Walking the path (experience) is way more important than knowing the path(knowledge).
@@mahmoudgouda7972 Which system do you believe has the highest possibility of being the right way to believe?
Please explain in detail.
@@junevandermark952 The universe is designed, complex and dependent so it entails an independent designer.
If not so then what is the alternative belief and you can use imagination.
@@mahmoudgouda7972 All we have in IS our imagination.
I also was raised to believe in the existence of a creator, but it never made any sense to me that if a creator existed ... that suffering of all forms of life would also exist ... unless the creator was a monster.
When I studied Stephen Hawking's theory, that the universe in one form or another always existed, and then studied that there were those back in history such as Plato and Aristotle that believed the same … at the age of 70, that was the end of my religious indoctrination.
It all made sense, that if the universe always existed, there could not have been a creator, and it also made sense that suffering of all forms of life, was and is, natural.
I'm almost 84 years of age now, and feel whole just as I am, and I realize that if I try to treat others with as much kindness as each situation in which I find myself allows, I will always feel better about myself. It's as simple as that.
“I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.” Stephen Hawking
From the book … 2000 Years of Disbelief … author … James A. Haugt … “None of the gods has formed the world, nor has any man; it has always been.”-Empedocles (495-435 B.C.E.), Greek philosopher and statesman (Noyes) … “The universe has been made neither by gods nor by men, but it has been, and is, and will be eternally.”-Heraclitus (Noyes) ... “The nature of the universe has by no means been made through divine power, seeing how great are the flaws that mar it”-Lucretius, ibid.
I think we can know what free will is. The starting place is free will= free choice. The idea is we have options we can select in a special way that gives us control of the choice. Control we couldn't have if we were predetermined or fated to select the option we do.
I could go into more depth but won't here. Anyhow when you get clear about what it is we obviously don't and can't have it. It's logically impossible.
The determinists will just assert that you couldn't have done differently. They will defend this position to the death, but mostly just by saying the same thing over and over until you block them. I'm beginning to think it is a mental condition.
@@caricue
Well I won't. It's all about how we could have done otherwise. If we just might have done otherwise that won't do because then we could have chosen A, we could have chosen B and it so happens we chose A.
The question is what would have been different if I had done otherwise?
@@stephenlawrence4821 Isn't it just the same concept as "fate", but replacing the will of the gods with prior causes? It's a metaphysical question about the nature of reality and the universe to imagine that something different could have happened. We live in a real physical world that only has one run through, so imagining alternate realities is not science, and saying that you have no input into the immediate future is the religious concept called fate. Let's face it, even the hardest of the hard determinists will concede that if you want something to happen in your life, you will need to do the mental work, make a plan and use your own initiative to see it to completion. If you don't feel comfortable calling that free will, then you might as well make a sacrifice to Dionysus and pray for her intercession. Of course, as a determinist, you will say that you had no choice to make the sacrifice either!
@@caricue
I think we make choices just as we experience. I think we weigh up our options and act accordingly and that influences our future.
I just think that's all there is to choosing. How could I do otherwise? What ever your answer to that is, it will be a matter of my good or bad fortune which of the possible choices is the one I actually make.
@@caricue
It's a matter of good or bad fortune, just like "the will of the gods" which ever way you look at it. Either we just go through whatever process we go through, well that's just a matter of fortune which process it is. Or we're caused to go through that process, well that's just a matter of fortune. Anyway you look at it the result is the same.
Science does not demonstrate that every event is fully, causally determined by prior events.
It is true that in very simple interactions, such as one ball colliding into another ball, the outcome is very predictable. But in more complex interactions, the predictability of outcome follows _statistical_ patterns. In the opening of a game of pool, when the cue ball strikes the other balls, science does not demonstrate that, even with a subsequent opening shot having been identical, that the resulting movements and resting positions could not have been different.
The claim that, had all inputs been known and calculable, then the outcome would necessarily have been perfectly known, is pure speculation. That is simply not what the definitions of Newtonian physics are able to predict. (And quantum behavior defies Determinism further.)
When a burst of spray paint is sprayed, the circular pattern that results is predictable. But science does not demonstrate that the final placement of each particle is summarily determined by prior events. The question of randomness in nature is open, and as such, Determinism is mere dogma.
we are more than mere chemicals in our brain, that's for sure, nor is the mind just the result of billions of cells neurons and synapses all collaborating nor can AI produce consciousness through machines..free will, the self and indeed our mind is more mysterious and unique than that. and no , i am not religious.
i am more fascinated by how our very existence is more amazing than we will ever realise.
Do you know when it is even more mysterious and unique? When you suffer from something like bipolar or schizophrenia. ;)
@@ezbody yes or when you take certain substances like DMT.
the brain limits our perception in so many ways.
If I talk to some people about this stuff I get reply’s like, this isn’t important and why don’t they research more practical stuff.
Talk to other people!:)
I’m a huge believer in diversity ... of thought ONLY!
I surround myself by people who think differently.
I am making no assumptions about what you do... however, I hear a diversity of perspectives because I seek them out.
Regardless of gender and skin pigmentation levels (the modern meaning of diversity), I can easily find an array of perspectives.
Young, old, poor, rich, different career paths, nationalities, social interests.... I will find many perspectives... but if I pick buff, sporty, hyper masculine peers (men and women), the diversity of thought will be less, despite the gender diversity.
Scientists and magicians are given equal standing at Templeton. The biology is clear, the magic disagrees
does this channel ever interview anyone who has not been retreaded over and over again? how about some new thinking?
I like free food!!
Her body language! She is leaning far away from her co-worker. Clearly there is tension.
Well spotted. A battering ram meets an immovable object.
Both have good minds, and very different modus operandi.
Am I crazy, or does Roy display clear negative emotion toward Michael at 12:48, perhaps resentment? It seems at odds with the apparently genuine credit he gives Michael for having the idea of the experiment. I suppose this could just be their 7th take or something and he simply wants to get out of there.
What kind of hypnosis are you going for? The controlling, manipulating kind is very bad karma.
You have to Fart that's fate. But you will or will not that's free will 😂
Will, Drive, Desire and Motivation (WDDM) share the same meaning. Choosing and deciding are determined by the strength and intensity of your WDDM to experience PLEASURE (the Purpose of Life); therefore, choosing and deciding are not 'freely willed': they are solely determined by - not free of, or free from - your WDDM to experience PLEASURE. It is not WDDM that is free or unfree; it is the PHYSICAL MOVEMENT caused and compelled by WDDM that is free or unfree. As puppets or marionettes are compelled (or 'willed') to MOVE by strings attached to their limbs, humans are INSTINCTUALLY compelled to MOVE by WDDM. We are 'Pleasure Puppets' in the Puppet Show of Life
free will is a logical fallacy. all action is determined by something. The only true random(free) acts are in quantum physics and they are random because they are not influenced by anything, so there is no will involved.
What if cause and effect is not the same thing as determinism. Determinism is the same as fate, just a philosophical musing that has no basis in reality. There's conservation of energy and conservation of angular momentum, but no conservation of control. The past powers the present, it doesn't control it. That is fate, not causation. Reliable causation is what allows you to take control of the present and influence, not control, your future. Determinism is the logical fallacy.
I think choosing to do something or not it’s the only free will we humans have, as all kind of biological processes are automatic. It’s all inside a small part of our brain that we have control of from the hole humans bodyies.
Choosing to long thinking about something could also be a free will.
Fact is free will is so much limited for all kind of creates.
We will be judged only in our free will decisions by God.
Also where modern western science sort of fail, this always looking for less and less error in measurement does not accommodate deeper ecosystem properties of social life.
You send me word and word thoughts and one thought competes with another don't make me think over words and process thoughts just let them pass through my mind and my spiritual ears, my consciousness is not a garbage dump of collective thoughts..I'm looking, you think you've already found, your find is not mine,The purity of spiritual speech knows no alphabet of lies, better an empty vessel than a vessel filled with impurities,Scientists are unable to discover and know all the mechanisms of the mind, because they did not create it, God is the Creator of all minds...The mind and heart do not always tell the truth, because the mind and heart do not know the truth, and that absolute, ultimate truth is God...God is our creator of the mind and the heart is a question that has no satisfactory answer because what is love and God.There is nothing better for scientists than to do something good and useful for themselves and others, and the paradox of science is that you will never know the answers to all your questions, because you did not create this world and you did not create the tools for the human soul, which is the organ thinking called the brain and this force that created and designed this whole universe and created you and your mind has the answer to every question you have, the force that created this whole universe called God is a great mystery..
All human facts, ideas, and truths are not absolute, irrefutable truths, they lack the perfection of God
dont you have to decide to ask the question
Rehashing and chopping up old videos for clicks is getting tiresome.
Agreed, big thumbs down here
I did’t choose to watch this
God gave us freewill but, there is a consequence for every consciousness action we take. That's called KARMA
That's just a mythological assertion.
How do you know? By what process did a god give free-will to human beings, and how is will free if it is limited by a god's power or even by nature's power?
I got as far as the description of the first experiment but no further. The experiment was absurd and illogical. These people need to learn to think straight.
ONLY youtoobera have free well, the rest are sheep watching their videos, baaaah, baaaah
U still have no free will
@@domersgay28647 Oh yes I do
@@WalayatFamily not in an metaphysical sense
Free Willy? I thought this was a movie review.
I wonder was it the free will of the lady researcher to plant a post hypnotic suggestion for the unwitting subject to squeeze balls alternately, or did she simply have no choice?
I'll give this movie a three out of five for the hilarious last 30 seconds and the chemistry between the lovers.
she is missing the point
The first guy's experiment is flawed😂
It doesn't disprove the fact your brain are making the decisions and not the other way around
@@domersgay28647 All I said was that his experiment is flawed, that's all 😅
@@lateesjp oops my bad I was going after libterRian free willers, forgive me.
in what way is it flawed?
@@cosmikrelic4815 I should have elaborated. What I should have said was that the first experiment can't be used to make any deductions about ''free will''. It is a good experiment to explore how intention operates in the brain, which is the purpose of the experiment 👍.
This episode kind of freely sucks.
Hypnotic suggestion… and what does actual science say? Pure nonsense…
Lovely 😍💋 💝💖❤️