Dr. Jordan B Peterson is a Professor of Psychology, a clinical psychologist, a public speaker and a creator of Self Authoring. Source: • 2017 Maps of Meaning 0...
Why the "Grandfather Paradox" demonstrates "Determinism" as more paradoxical and totally incoherent; Let's say in 5,000 years from now mankind learns and knows everything about everything and everyone and thus are able to predict every individual's human actions to a "T" for the next 24 minutes when measured against every other sub atomic partial and progress of such occurring in real time. They now are able to simply map everything known and have everyone and every living thing contected to a master system also taking real time measurements of "everything" in our closed Universe so as to not miss a single fact, action or event. With everyone now in this future world contected to this technology neurologically via wifi, this future master computer system is taking every reading of everyone and everything so the authorities can now know 23.59 minutes in advancement when someone will commit a crime. Because of this they can now capture the criminal before he or she commits the crime. Questions for the Determinist; 1. Is determinism still true if the future measured to happen was changed thus never occurred as it was measured to occur deterministically because it was prevented due to this foreknowledge? How and in what sense is it still true? 2. Would there be some unforeseen force preventing these future authorities from changing a future they foresee will occur because it was and is determined to occur as they accurately measured? If yes, provide me your speculation, conjecture or hypothesis of what this unforeseen force could be? 3. If determinism is true and they act upon this because of this knowledge prior to it occurring, how and why did they predict a crime that was to never occur if it was determined to occur knowing everything? 4. If determinism is true and no crime ever really occurs if predictable and preventable, how can they ever predict and prevent a crime that eventually they actually prevented? In this case does logic conclude conscious intent itself is able to trump determinism? If not, why not? This is called the Grandfather Paradox but without the option of the hypothesized solution of a parallel Universe being created. Dr. Sam Harris, any answers please, this is your argument put into a specific scenario. Not sure that you thought out your assumptions on this fully. Wg Williams
Here are my answers/thoughts to/on your questions: 1. You are mixing in free will into your statement. Let's hypothesize that you did indeed posses full information, then you would be able to predict any future and you could not change the future because of you knowing it, since if that were the case you did not posses all information. 2. This is also explained by my answer in 1 3. Interesting hypothetical scenario. I would say that if you had all information you would know that the criminals mind is set and committed to perform a crime, but you would also know that the crime would never happen since you had all information and knew about it. 4. Okay so this question is twofold. Firstly, I think you are still mixing in the concept of free will into your hypothetical scenarios as well as not considering all information, because if you had all information then I guess you could also make tweak some variable in your forecasting model in order to extrapolate a hypothetical future in which you would not interfere with crimes. Then I guess you could predict them without them actually happening? Secondly, I'm not really sure what you mean by "In this case does logic conclude conscious intent itself is able to trump determinism?" I guess you could argue that my answer in 4 violates your restriction that parallel universes cannot be created. I would argue that any forecasting does note "create" anything and thus the answer still holds. Furthermore, I don't think it is helpful to construct problems in such a way that certain means of falsification are constrained.
@@Lederfisken 1. & 2. You are conflating "freewill" with mere "will" then simply stating I am using "freewill" in my argument. You provide no argument that demonstrates your assertion nor differentiates mere choice from freewill and how I have made this distinction error. 3. Your answer is convoluted and makes clear nothing. This is my point. 4. Same as 1 & 2 for likewise contention. While we are on this subject, here is more food for thought; Has science demonstrated freewill as mere illusory? While scientists agree we know and understand so very little about the human consciousness, some nevertheless fallaciously extrapolate meaning to test results merely to verify their own internal biases. These are religious type claims rather than an informed scientific interpretation. No human free will? This materialistic reductionism really baffles me. I propose that if determinism were true we couldn't and wouldn't have the faculties to have discovered this as any valid fact claim. Take Sam Harris's argument for example; Harris never goes into the biological reasons why the human brain has evolved functions to store memories or gained such a level of learning as it has. I would argue that we would have no freewill without retaining memory or gaining knowledge but his argument seems to indicate that these functions in part lead to freewill as mere illusory. He further argues that freewill is necessarily biochemical illusory but in the same sense so are all the aspects of human consciousness then. It would then seem to be just cherry-picking to trust logic and human reason while discarding one's self-awareness and freewill and in the end be begging the question. We have in fact only consciousness to rationalize consciousness. All rational inferences, testing models against experienced reality, conceptualizing models, logic and probability theories; arise from consciousness and all of these don't and can't exist without the first the origin of consciousness. Conscious minds account for the origin of reasoning with nothing left outside of this self-awareness that is able to freely encounter or freely reason reality otherwise. One's self is the objective reasoner and if we are to assert that reasoning leads to objective truths, freewill is essential for this claim to be valid. Consciousness is the only substrate of any possible claim to knowledge, thus the starting and ending point to posit any reality or any truth. Is not inductive and deductive reasoning dependent on some level of freewill to make a truth claim that is not merely deterministic, therefore neither true or false nor reasoned at all, but just determined data? Without some level of freewill, how does a mind come to any knowledge claim that this determined data is fact and not fiction or reality rather than illusory? If I damage the electrical chip of a drone aircraft and it starts to fly around crazy, I do not now assume the remote pilot is now crazy or that he never even existed at all. We know and understand so very little about human consciousness and how such a phenomena arises or how such an information system and all it's aspects operate. This is not my mere asserted claim but a scientific consensus that this huge lack of knowledge and understanding exists in the scientific community. All other information systems are the result of this one original information system called the mind or referred to as the human consciousness. We are trapped in and utilizing alone the very thing we are trying to test and understand without any means of gaining an unobstructed outside view. Science may not even be able to verify or falsify any of the intuitive aspects of consciousness no more than it could verify or falsify any true reality outside of these aspects themselves. Science requires that our human consciousness is reliable so to falsify any intuitive aspect of consciousness as mere illusory also discounts the very meathod used for such a discovery also as illusory. Empiricism and the scientific meathod itself is solely dependent on the reliability of human observation to be validated. Human observation is filtered in every aspect through human consciousness which is the mere result of atoms bouncing off of each other in a biochemical soup. One needs only to commit the genetic fallacy in order to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We are in the infancy of the science of consciousness, quantum mechanics and any Grand Unified Theory. I'm just asking we not commit any genetic fallacies in our scientific conclusions while we are not even sure of the real causes to fallacious attack. Definitions; Mind; (1) (in a human or other conscious being) the element, part, substance, or process that reasons, thinks, feels, wills, perceives, judges, etc.: the processes of the human mind. (2) Psychology. the totality of conscious and unconscious mental processes and activities. (3) intellect or understanding, as from the faculties of feeling and willing; intelligence. (4) a particular instance of the intellect or intelligence, as in a person. Information; Data that is (1) accurate and timely, (2) specific and organized for a purpose, (3) presented within a context that gives it meaning and relevance, and (4) can lead to an increase in understanding and decrease in uncertainty. An information system is an integrated set of components for collecting, storing, and processing data or information. Wg Williams
@@WgWilliams I am not Sam Harris but from my point of view of determinism is not that hard to answer this questions. 1 question: if the future was changed because of a 100% accurate precision, then that change is determined. That society was determined to acquire that master system, and that master system will determine everything that will happen next. The future doesn't exist until is present, but if you know what is going to happen you will do everything to make it the best possible future, and that is determined by our evolution and our biology. 2 question: determinism isn't about fairy tales or your destiny wrote by some aliens or some god, determinism is about cause and effect, there will be no force preventing these future authorities because this changes that the future authorities will make is what is determined. Understand it from this perspective, you dont have to have a master system to know that if you throw something up is going to go down, even though you know that, because is a simple cause and effect related to gravity, if you throw something up because you know is going to go down there is no force preventing that to happen, because that knowledge about gravity is determined, as the same as that master system. 3 question: what? dont understand that question sowwy. question 4: conscious intent is determined, determinism is not a grand plan, is not something that has to happen. Determinism is something that happens because thats how our universe works, is cause and effect, simple as that. Our minds and our bodies are very complex making it very difficult to us to understand it and determine what is going to happen or what are we going to do, and that is what we need free will, because determinism doesnt let us make decisions when free will can, and we need to make decisions. I belive in free will, but I believe that that free will is determined, everithing you do is determined by something prior, and if you follow that tree of causes and effects you have to go (at least thats what I think) to the begining of times to really understand why you are how you are. Just know that determinism isnt about fairy tales, as about logic and physics. sorry for bad english not native
I’m glad he name dropped because I can’t wrap my head around Sam Harris’ belief that we have ZERO free will. It is an illusion. I was hoping Jordan would give his position clearly. Instead he acknowledged it and said it doesn’t feel that way. But that is exactly what Harris says. It feels like we have free will, but in actuality we don’t.
@AgentX7k2 yes well sam Harris is the stupidest smart guy in the world lol , , don't matter how you look that that it's jus a opinion n a pretty dumb one at that , , it's what scientists always do when there's no answer but a spiritual one to describe something, , it's pathetic
@@viveksharma9566 not me. That means some people are destined to have terrible lives and that they have no way around it... Everyone should be given a good chance but life the way it is is the complete opposite, no one has real control
@@Imortalcat exactly right, Yahweh God Almighty has given his creation free will and the ability to gain for or forget knowledge and make the best of or the worst of what we have been given
@@viveksharma9566 no it exists, if it didn’t everyone would be doomed, but there is constant stories of people getting blessed and getting it easy from birth but making the worst of it, and people getting crapped on but making the best of it and their life changes around, Faith in God, In the Lord Jesus Christ and having relationship with him will change your life
@@harip.2814I think free will is something cannot be proven materialistically, science only can tell the fact of determinism. but I think, we can’t generalise determinism as the absolute answer just bcs we don’t have a materialistic evidence of free will, we cant deny the human’s life experience; bcs his life experience is a sequence of interactions that take place in reality, human can affect and impact his surroundings. It’s very complicated to tell the psychology and the nature of human being, and we can tell there’s an unresolved mystery of the human nature as Jordan mentioned “Consciousness”. At the consciousness point, let’s be honest science is useless to validate a complete answer, we can look at philosophy maybe or field that can explains the metaphysical things to offer a realistic answer collaborating it with the answer of science perspective.
@@Stran11 Humans can affect their surroundings and they are conscious about it, BUT we do not have control over those effects we cause with our body. We think we have control over some things precisely because we are conscious about our effects. We also cannot comprehend all the causes that determined our mind.
@@marcospina162 he's not gonna respond to you by using his free will to remain obtuse the rest of his life, else his ideological framework would shatter
Holy shit! I was thinking this exact question when I was about 7 or 8. I remember arguing with my mom that I don’t really have “another” way of living. Like I’m just gonna follow this fixed path until I die. Whatever I do, all my decisions, actions are purely based on my gene and the environment I grew up with. I had no idea this random thought of mine has a name. After a couple years I forgot about it and now I’m 20 and am in college. I was watching a video of Ben Shapiro debating someone and he mentioned this word determinism. I’m not sure what does it mean so I looked it up on CZcams and found this video. It brings back all the memory 10 years ago :). I don’t know how to describe my feelings now but it does feel very special.
hfzelman I think even if we can’t find out someone’s next word based on his brainwave, believing something else is in control (other than chemicals in your brain and the nature that shaped them) is kinda like believing in supernatural stuff... Anyways, I also believe in capitalism because capitalism, although not perfect, is the best we have. I’d say it’s the best system in the world and nothing has worked better than our system. All countries that have tried socialism failed. Korea is another perfect example. You split a country into 2, one of them adapt socialism the other capitalism. After a couple decades compare them again. I don’t think you could have a better experiment that this. And the result is pretty self explanatory. North Korea is now one of the worlds poorest countries with Kim’s (Idk how to spell his full name) dictatorship. And South Korea on the other hand being one of the most technologically and economically advance nations in the world. History taught us that capitalism simply works better. Again, not perfect, but better than anything else.
hfzelman I think the reason all those countries don’t have true communism or socialism is because it just won’t happen. The system is deeply flawed. There’s no rule in the universe that says everyone has to be equal. Or how wealth is distributed. I think communism is just immoral because it’s basically saying the government owns everything and “distribute” it by people’s needs. Imagine there’s a room with 5 people. One of them has 5 dollars and the other four don’t have money. Communism is saying, we take all your 5 bucks and give 1 dollar to each person. So everyone can go out and buy an ice cream or whatever. The problem is if a system works this way, why does the rich person want to work again? You’ll just take it away from him and give it to other people who “need” the money. And why do the other 4 poor people ever wanna work again? They get free shit from the rich people anyway. This is immoral and won’t work. Capitalism on the other hand, is saying you four poor people do something and maybe, if I’m satisfied, I’ll give you a dollar. So maybe they’ll give me a nice massage or give me the pot pie they made. If you have interesting stuff that I want, ill take it and hence you’ll survive in the world. If you don’t you’ll starve to death. This is what capitalism is about. It’s about hard work. In a communist society, you just need to suck up to the powerful people. In a capitalism society, you work your ass off to have a roof over your head. Also an interesting thing about China. They were doing worse than those African countries back in the 70s, then they opened the market, join the global trading system. More stuff came to the country, prices drop and all that leads to prosper. The reason all those countries don’t have true communism is because nobody can. It’s a wet dream.
hfzelman It is almost impossible for monopolies to exist in free market capitalism. 99% of the existing monopolies only exist because they are protected by the government. As in free market capitalism the government does not intervene in the economy in any way, 99% of the monopolies will rest in peace. For a monopoly to exist in a free market system, they need to be very good at delivering quality products/services at cheap prices, and the area must not be really worth investing in at all (those are called good monopolies). Inequality is not bad. The 1% produces much more than the 99%, that's why they are on top (the exceptions are government protected monopolies). As the 1% is producing more, we are advancing more, and things will only get cheaper and cheaper, and everyone's purchasing power is increased over time. Also explain me why the fuck I never saw people running away hungry and opressed from free market capitalistic economies.
Rhetorical man The reality is that almost all governments are retarded. Democracy itself discredit the governments capacity of doing things. Even Japan failed (107 avg is and smart government). I believe AI would be the only thing that should be allowed to "control" or guide the economy. People's greediness drives the economy better than any government.
It seems to me that the determinist argument mainly says that we haven't found free will rather than saying it doesn't exist. As in, every event CAN be explained as inevitable interactions between all KNOWN physical components of reality across time via cause and effect. However it is possible that free will does exist in reality and that it even might have some measurable quality to it but we just don't know what it is. Human beings are flawed and we don't know everything (or maybe even anything). The point is saying that you can't possibly have free will because every decision you make can be explained as being a combination of your genetics (which you didn't chose) and your environment (which you didn't chose), isn't actually eliminating the possibility of free will it is simply providing a possibility of it not existing. I think. I will say now. I have no idea what I'm talking about.
Despite your genetics and environment, in terms of behaviorial decisions, free-will has a way of showing up from its hidding place, and you are given options to pull the trigger or not pull the trigger. There are always decisive moments in your life whereby you must act independantly from usual influences. So yes, free-will exist. And thank God for free-will because we can hold certain criminals responsible for their actions☝🏾 Without it, how would we have an effective Justice system?
@Dylan [Smith] It means that we are not free to think that we are not free; we are determined to think that we have free will. We can end up using reason and discovering that causality and the laws of physics are universal laws and that they also apply to our brains; but then we discover that the human brain evolved in a way that actively prevents us from truly aknowledging causal determination when we go about our everyday lives. The fact that we happen to reflect upon free will and determinism is itself causally-determined, like everything else since the Big Bang and the beginning of time itself.
As a debater and influencer, Peterson mops the floor with Sapolsky. The latter would of course not be bothered, accepting the fact that Peterson was pre-determined to be much more communicatively brillian than he, and is doing would think he proved his point, when all he really accomplished was to lose an argument.
This concept is such a great debate - unfortunately, most people I've tried talking to about it assume I'm absolutely crazy for believing that we live in a deterministic universe rather than one with free will. I don't deny free will, just waiting for the evidence since it is technically the side of the debate which has the burden of proof.
Jack, I can see why you would feel that way. Technically, one side is making a positive statement, so the burden of proof is on them. I feel that since the experience of free will, like consciousness, is universal and easily demonstrated to oneself, it is a little perverse to declare it "not real" until there is a complete and total understanding of all the relevant processes and interactions in a living system which demonstrated an actual causal relationship between past inputs and future outputs such that there could only be one outcome. I could understand you rejecting this level of proof, especially since it is literally impossible to demonstrate without a parallel universe as a control.
I'm the same as yourself I believe in a deterministic universe for a few reasons. Number one being as you stated, there's no evidence that we have free will. We are made out of chemicals ie. Matter therefore we are governed by the laws of physics. Since the world around us can be proved to be deterministic, even libertarians would agree, and we ourselves are made out of matter then we are deterministic. Unless of course we have a soul or whatever inside us that spontaneously decides on things but of course there's no evidence for such a thing. The evidence and reasoning all points towards determinism and it might seem nihilistic but sure be grand :)
At first glance, the burden of proof appears to be on side of determinists since their claim runs so counter-intuitive to our everyday experience. But yeah, once you think about how everything we are made out of obeys the laws the of physics & chemistry or whatever, and that there’s no evidence for free will being an emergent property, and that we haven’t found any examples of “true random” events in the universe (except perhaps a few at the quantum level, which seem insignificant for free will), the burden of proof would appear to be shifted to the people who are claiming free will
Some have argued that the introduction of truly random events (such as those involved in quantum physics) give us free will. Even if this does mean the universe can’t be absolutely deterministic in the traditional sense, it seems clear to me that it still doesn’t give us any kind of meaningful free will. If I go to do something and I just “randomly” do something else, it’s not like my will was done.
@@ryandubois7419 I think one of the fundamental problems is that people make a mistake when they equate determined with cause and effect. Determinism is a religious concept called Fate, but just dressed up in the shiny new armor of Science. You would be welcome in Ancient Greece with the same arguments by replacing "Physics" with "The Will of the Gods". Human weakness brings even the proudest Atheists back to religion sooner or later.
Free will and determinism both exist. Thinking they are mutually exclusive is a result of the misunderstanding of the ego and self as a seperate identity and originator of action.
Dylan [Smith] I love Sam Harris, but I can’t see a way around that. If there is no self, your will is the will of the entire universe. I tend to lean towards the views of Alan Watts, which is where I think Sam Harris is almost at, but just still needs to take his own beliefs one step further to their logical conclusion.
Dylan [Smith] well that’s why I was saying I’m more in line with the philosophy of Alan Watts which is a form monism. I think Sam Harris just hasn’t followed his own ideas out to their logical conclusion, as it inevitably arrives at a kind of pantheism. If there is no self, it’s because separate things and processes in of themselves don’t exist, which leaves you with monism.
Even in the conceptions of Carl Y., our ego is built up by causality. We cannot choose to choose what we cannot choose; I'm here because my instincts, in balance, brought me here.
Consciousness is possibly the most abstract thought. Determinism is an interesting concept, although science takes the best answer (at the time) and claims it as truth. Which is cool, although it’s not a stable construct. As long as we know it’s not absolute rather then the best guess. It gives us a chance to dissect it. Some people claim determinism as truth and live by it, and get extremely depressed. When in all actuality, it’s just a concept, I believe in free will and God. I cannot explain God on paper, but the accounts and the evidence I’ve seen In my own life is undeniable. I cannot un-see it, but I also enjoy the abstract.
Noooo a lot of us actually definitely don't get depressed. It ironically is so freeing to know we aren't free. No more guilt, shame or blame or pride. Understanding determinism has improved my mental health so much.
Everyone has things comforting them. Some people comfort with free will, some people comfort with determinism. They will actively defend their particular side and won't attempt to understand the other@@breakingzilian5371
What if the part of us that has free will is not the part that experiences it cognitively. Which means although it is free, it is already decided, and we experience it through flesh, cognitively, like a movie reel, we go back and forth to find changes or patters but the reel has neither end nor beginning. Which if go further explains the purpose of spiritual enlightenment, to transcend the cognition of flesh and its cycles which is samsara, and thus awaken as the universal will.
When I had a waking grand mal seizure I was aware of my brain malfunctioning. We are separate from our brain. There was me thinking clearly while my brain was not working. I was also hitting my face and head. I hit my head so hard that I put a big cut in my eyebrow such as if you were in a fight, but I was unaware of this happening. I wasn't aware of my body malfunctioning, but knew that my brain was malfunctioning. I was separate from both my body and my brain.
Same, I have been on antidepressants. My brain was broken for 7 months straight. If we are determinist we are only build upon chemical reactions the universe controlling our actions. First of all the debate is useless. i'm more of a dualistic nature, determinism is just machine thinking but we aren't machines. we can feel and think but also born in certain situations. I was on antidepressants when i got off, i got the worst thoughts even a bit psychotic alot of the time. Thoughts a person should not have i could distance myself from the thoughts. If we are determinist it dehumanizes us to a certain extent. I'm true to nature, everything that is in nature is true, healthy and good. why are we drawn to it? so here is my argument if we humans are to have free will, which we all think even to a deep level. that means we have free will. Long story short, everything set by nature is set in stone just like freewill.
@@Hans-um6lu That makes sense! I believe in both as well. We have waking conscious actions which transcend our brain and body, but then we also have the dictates of our subconscious, which are based on previous karma. Our consciousness definitely transcends our brain and body, and the memory of our brain and body does affect our consciousness. This is the grand illusion of the physical dimension.
@@krisvibes4501 I believe in both as well. We have waking conscious actions which transcend our brain and body, but then we also have the dictates of our subconscious, which are based on previous karma. Our consciousness definitely transcends our brain and body, and the memory of our brain and body does affect our consciousness. This is the grand illusion of the physical dimension.
well why don't u choose to be constantly happy u have to go trough experience in ur life to feel it but if u control ur brain u wouldn't need to do that mate just think those idea i said rationally and deeply in ur head mate u cant have free will it cannot make sense hope that help you
@@neverstopaskingwhy1934 true if ur a naturalist humanist then we have no free will and no actual identity, everything is a controlled outcome of purely unguided scientific bio-chemical interactions, so you are a thing and not a unique valuable individual. So have at it to your hearts content mate because life has no ultimate meaning or purpose other than reproduction. 😱
life is is a whole bunch of states. the choices which state and which route you take to them are free will. similar to the concept of non deterministic turing machines. it's kinda scary but a releasing thought if you are stuck in the idea of the full determined life.
@0 your desires are an input. how you threat them is the algorithmn. you have to work on your algorithmn to alliviate this problem. desires are in interplay with the intercore of consciousness, the inner drive, what excites you etc.. it's possible to observe them and reevaluate and deal with your desires by changing your behaviour by introspection.
@@MrElCojones no, deterministic or not, doesn't mean we have the choice, ai are non deterministic, do they have free will? Many things in quantum physics are non deterministic, does they have free will? Of course not, it's just a matter of probability, but you are not free of choosing, no more than a coin can choose in which side it will turn, and even if you wanna think yeah but I'm a human, I can put my thought and change the state of the machine and blabla, the fact that the thought arise in ur mind, it's something that happened based on what you lived and how you processed, so even if it's not deterministic, it's not free as you can't choose, if the ai used their own answer to give other answer would that be free will? Ofc no(we already do that), so yeah, it's adorable how people want to hope in a free will, but it's like believing in Santa Claus
The premise is wrong on this, we do have a physical explanation of real choice, its called Emergence. When we encounter a novel situation we must react to it in real time and our physical history up until that point may have no bearing on it... emergence is when two or more determined things produce something completely unpredictable in combination, like water and salt and such but when mind are involved the results are not often reproducible. There is often several possible outcomes in any novel encounter and the mind must gamble on which one to chose and the difference between a mind and a current mindless computer is that a mind has awareness that its gamble will have consequences for its pain and pleasure and its goals and ideals... computer do not give rats arse which outcome occurs they just brute force the best calculation and go with it damn the consequences to itself... this SELF interest, self concern, this is what is lacking in current computers and it seems consciousness is a vital part of this and there currently is no way to install that into any known computing device. Legal freewill makes us responsible for our actions and contracts when there is no external coercion and no internal corruption to our standard functioning systems... as free agents we are free to accept rewards and punishments and own property.
@Paul Away Real time means the present... the NOW. As for time being an illusion, thats just stupid. Time is the measure of changing relationships amongst matter and energy as gauged by stable countable cycling events (which are also changing relationships of matter and energy). Where is the illusion?
@Paul Away You are over thinking this... When I said we must make decisions in real time, I mean we are dealing with a current circumstance and reacting and acting because of it... there is no predetermined path that leads to the outcome of our decisions we make as things are happening... the results emerge from the merging of different paths that individually cannot predict the combined outcomes. As to relativity, that has nothing to do with anything I am talking about. You deal with YOUR situation in your present moment.
It seems like you do not fully understand determinism. If you go into an ice cream shop you might think you have the choice to choose whichever flavour you want. But you are born with genetics that make you prone to like certain things more than others, and you might have had more good experiences with vanilla than strawberry. So you think you freely choose vanilla, but really it’s based on your genes and environment, which ultimately is based on the laws of nature. Therefore actual free will is not a possibility, even if we experience it as such.
So if I go into a darkness retreat and I experience a sense of no time and experience a blissful now moment. Is my mind the one that creates the distinction of free will or was it deterministic that I was supposed to go the darkness retreat and experience this phenomenon. Either way I feel it doesn’t matter in the end. If I let my ego try to debate the reality of life I always lose. It is such a freeing feeling to embrace. Debating the topic will leave you researching this for lifetimes. The mind wants to make sense of the “reality” it is experiencing.
Religious stories have dealt with this. On the one hand, older, more "primitive" religions place a high focus on fate (though they did believe we had wiggle room in fate), while newer ones place a far higher focus on free will (eating the apple of Eden). It seems to me, as we have become more focused on free will, we have begun to treat each other better than we did when we were doing human sacrifices and blaming what we do on being the "playthings of the gods". If something works better in the world than another, the chances that it's truer are higher.
I'd disagree that the chances of truth are higher if it works better. If everyone believed every human was the same consciousness born into different incarnations, the majority of people would treat each other way better and care about each other a lot more, but would you say that that makes it more likely to be true?
I could feasibly argue that belief in free will would lead to a significantly more vindictive and self-righteous person, incapable of acknowledging the role of luck in their life-outcome compared to others, thus yielding low empathy. It’s not such a simple thing.
If something works better (an unhelpfully non-specific term), it just means it works better. It works better for mass-production that excessive carbon emissions don't have an impact on the global climate, does that make it truer? Of couse not. Without defining your terms ("the world", "works better") you've just said something that's not even wrong, because it doesn't mean anything.
I'm with Peterson on this. Perhaps we do have free will: a natural physiobiological first person experience produced by the brain, not some Decartasian dualism but just one unified, qualitive subjective experience.
Dylan Stewart - SH is just saying because we are made of something we don’t choose and to some extent understand, then how possible can that group of cells come to decisions that are beyond its sum. Those decisions are just a function of that group of cells. This is very compelling because it’s just a very clever argument, but why can’t that group of cells, when grouped in that way generate an outcome that is beyond that group of cells sum, through a synergy (2 + 2 = 5) argument why is consciousness not the fundamental sum of those cells, but rather the synergy of those cells. Therefore why can’t consciousness not be free will in itself, if we create AI we know it will become sentient, it doesn’t have to understand the hardware it’s built on to function. It becoming sentient is not predetermined either it is just a decision that we make, if we chose not to make it sentient then it wouldn’t be, but once we have built it, and if becomes sentient then it will have been a function of our creation, but it will also be beyond the hardware and the creators themselves! The point i am making here is that past determinates don’t determine the present, past actions effect the present but then don’t determine the present, the present is determined by decisions you make now. Which mean more than you past decisions, you have not acted because of your past, you’ve acted with your past in mind, but in the present your actions are not predetermined!
well why don't u choose to be constantly happy u have to go trough experience in ur life to feel it but if u control ur brain u wouldn't need to do that mate just think those idea i said rationally and deeply in ur head mate u cant have free will it cannot make sense hope that help you
@@neverstopaskingwhy1934 I only claim to have the agency of myself, not of you or anyone else, but me and only me. There's at least one thing that Descartes got right: the fact that he thinks means he exists, not necessarily you and I, but necessarily him because he's doing the thinking. I could be a product of his imagination but not he, the thinker that thinks. Sapere aude. I do hope this helps but then again perhaps you were determined not to question.
@akshay satish We order the chicken, our choice, or we choose not. We have agency, either in the doing or not doing. The question is: how do I reconcile my undetermined free will in an otherwise determined universe? Perhaps that's just the way it is, some fundamental, like gravity, or secondary, like the Higgs Boson.
@@TheBenchPressMan the ai's decisions could always be predetermined by a more advanced ai with the exact preexisting knowledge or and program it was running
Even though we don't have free will, it doesn't change the fact that we hold each other responsible for our actions, and prisons still make perfect sense to have. And as Sam said, we would put earthquakes in prisons if we could, even though they don't have free will.
Frey Vestergaard We cannot restrain hurricanes, or tornados, volcanos, stars in supernova, the fact we can with a criminal is irrelevant, non of them could have done otherwise, it's simply in our best interests to limit these dangers as much as possible, you shoot a home intruder not because they freely chose to attack you, but because you want to live and you do what you have to.
@@NexusBladeGaming Yeah, criminals should also still be put in prison for the better of society, and maybe most of all to create an incentive to motivate people not to commit crimes.
@@Kanzu999 That's true. However, given the fact that prisoners didn't have a choice then the main focus of prisons should be to reform rather than punishment (in an ideal world of course). I know not every country has the resources to try to reform every prisoner.
@@teamatfort444 It only seems pointless because you are still assuming that there is free will in the back of your mind. If you are a coherent determinist your assesment would be that the debate is part of the causal chain that leads to change (or not, I may be determined, but I don't know the future).
You might also be interested in philosopher Lewis Gordon's differentiation between freedom, license and liberty, and his black existentialist response to Kanye West's ideas about slavery and choice czcams.com/video/7WxKoOKoXkU/video.html
About three minutes in my brain said “you are getting as much from this as you would from listening to two teenage girls having a conversation in mandarin”
Sounds almost like Schopenhauer's view on the subject. Although he used the word "will". You can do what you will, but cannot will what you will. But that's an empirical side of the matter so to say. That asshole Schopenhauer also believed in the transcendental freedom from the kantian perspective. I've been trying to figure it out, but it's bullocks
Even when randomness is introduced during the training of a neural network, the overall process remains deterministic because the network's behavior is ultimately governed by its weights and architecture. The randomness typically influences factors like the initial weights, the order of training examples, or the dropout of units, but once the training is complete, the resulting neural network model is deterministic given fixed inputs. The network's states, represented by its weights, determine its behavior, making it ultimately deterministic. Is same in a biological system if you have exactly same conditions.
@@JonasLindekrantz It doesn't matter. Random and deterministic are both unprovable propositions that came out of the philosophy department like all kinds of other bullshit.
Perhaps the simplest way to put it is yes we make choices. But whichever way you look at it we are fated to select the option we select. So, no, we don't have free will.
@@stephenlawrence4821 nah I don't think that's right, because that argument would make it seem like any criminal was fated to commit the crime. So punishment or justice is moot.
@@steezytracks7815 i think if i had the exact same genes and the exact same circumstances as a criminal, even then before the moment i committed the crime id have a choice not to. and if what you said is true, then criminals should be executed the moment any sign of ciminality comes from any child adolescent or adult. but i dont think the latter is correct and hence the usual justice system.
Free will is something we perceive to be real just like we perceive the earth to be stationary (since it feels like we are stationary). Our perception and intuitions do not prove free will in any case since we know that the earth is in constant spin through the scientific study and i would argue that free will needs to be examined in much the same way. Outside of our own personal experience
Motion is always relative to something else. You can view the Earth as stationary and everything else spinning around it in a very complex way and it's not wrong.
@@spaceslav8954 Yes well, regardless of whether the sun or earth are chosen as the center of the solar system you end up with the planets forming elipses around the sun, not the earth. So no. Even when you chose the earth as the center of all other objects you still end up calculating the correct motion of planetary bodies (spoiler alert; the earth isn't the center of the universe)
@@darestone3335 But nothing is the center of the universe. Or anything. You can choose to view the Earth as unmoving and you can choose the Earth as the center of the universe. You can too choose Mars, or a planet a long time ago in a galaxy far far away... It's not wrong.
@@spaceslav8954 Alright. Idk, i guess it doesn't matter. It's just a hypothetical, don't read to much into it. Free will could be explained through an even better analogy. The rotation of the earth was just the one that popped into my head at the time. It was simply to illustrate that our assumptions based on intuitions are often flawed.
@@darestone3335 I think you (maybe accidentally) greatly illustrated a solution to this problem. We can view the Earth as the center of the universe, or not. It doesn't really matter. The same goes for free will. It's just a perspective thing. I'm not saying I hold this view. I just think it's a very interesting thought!
our mind is the consciousness of space time our body is the universe That's an intriguing perspective! Viewing the mind as the consciousness of space-time and the body as the universe can be seen as a metaphorical way to express the interconnectedness between our individual existence and the broader cosmos. It emphasizes the idea that our consciousness, which arises from the workings of our mind, allows us to perceive and interact with the world. Additionally, it highlights the notion that our bodies are a part of the larger universe, influenced by and connected to the natural laws and processes that govern it. While this analogy may not align with literal scientific descriptions, it offers a poetic way to contemplate our place in the grand scheme of things.
Some people do want to imagine that you could choose who you are or what you want. That is a silly view of free will. Free will is only there to get you what you want at the moment. So it makes sense to say that you did "will" it at the moment of decision, even if you immediately regretted it. It's just bad luck if you were saddled by nature with limited impulse control.
I don’t equate will with desires. Desires are things that you want, while will is what you feel most inclined to do, and by extension what you end up doing, at least as far as what is within your means to do. So no, freedom of choice does not really exist. Every choice you make is a result of neurons firing in your brain which is just another physical reaction that was already fated to occur from the Big Bang.
I don’t have proof of free will so I can’t say I believe in it, although I prefer it more than determinism. Anyways, if determinism was true, like there is no doubt it exists, then I wouldn’t care much, I won’t let it affect me because I know I will live the best life possible. I believe the future is uncertain, sure, some things are more likely to happen than others, but that’s doesn’t mean they will surely happen.
Actually you can predict things by cause and effect, eg islam is growing as a religion, and most of europe has a decent amount of muslims that impose there religious will on others, therefore you can predict that this will cause conflict between the two groups which will eventually lead to civil war, theres a prediction of the future using cause and effect, i can give more examples if you want.
I don’t see a mechanism other than randomness or cause/effect which could bring about a choice. What is in between a comprehensible ordered bringing about, and an incomprehensible unordered bringing about? I don’t see a way that a person could ever do other than they did in a given situation. The ability to do otherwise is very important to me.
A healthy growth pattern of a human, would always mean possibility of indeterministic behaviour in a mostly deterministic world. A healthy growth pattern of a human means experience in the ways of the world, nature and it's deterministic to indeterministic ratios. Human systems of control through domestication, keep people under-educated and under-experienced , that way consciousness does not interrupt the status quo.
Did you notice that Jordan Peterson is a clinical psychologist and he conspicuously avoids speaking about the actual process of socialization that determines our behavior, identity, shadow and hidden reasoning?
Exactly! Peterson is a biological determinist who believes in wildly outdated theories not taking into account any kind of social or cultural influence. It is evident in the biased sources he provides and even in offhanded remarks about Chomsky having "solved linguistics" with universal grammar...
okay... And the debate on free will is out of date. Scientists have been talking about it for years and still don't have empirical evidence that free will doesn't exist. All of this stuff is old and new and they are still taking about it
This is easy, every time you make decision, the universe is in a certain state, you move on and feel you decided something, it's just that if you think back to that time and state of deciding, how could you have done anything differently? Everything was the same. All this is just events anyway, decisions are just illusions and words in our vocabulary
It's an illusion to look back in time, after you know the outcome, and construct a chain of causation the leads inevitably to the end, the end you already know. It's like doing last weeks weather forecast, you can be 100% correct.
@@caricue that is not a relevant comparison, what will happen will happen whether you know it or not, the future is as real as the present and past, there will be only one outcome
@@caricue ha ha, it may help for your well-being to sacrifice a goat, but the universe is going in one direction no matter what, and you sacrificing that goat is just a part of it 😂
Jebediah Blingfield Yep. Re-ignited my interest in quantum mechanics and philosophy. I’m whiling my day between the Stanford philosophy encyclopaedia and battling bouts of existential crises.
If someone could convince me that we have free will, I could choose to support equality of opportunity. Since no one yet have been able to, I seem determined to support equality of outcome.
@@happydeathfish2166 Because heredity and envirnorment controls me to prefere one over the other. It seems reasonable to not procreate since there might be someone that do not want to exist. Do you agree?
@@steveprofiler I dont think there is free will. But basically live as if its there. I think you need both for good society. Like to me equality of oppertunity would be having access to education. Where as equality of outcome would be something like a UBI. I do support both. I think humanity should have both. I am not sure if I fully agree with you. But then again its hard to have conversation about anything if we dont view ourselfs as free agents. I dont have the awnsers to be honest. I would just make framework for humanity to live in. I am determinist aswell. Mainly because science today proves it.
@@happydeathfish2166 Since people can not choose to be born or not and determinism can be prooven, we can rationalize equality of outcome because then no one can take credit for anything either god bad right wrong or other. Whats your view?
It actually has both think of it as a fork in the rd with a path forward a path to the left an a path to the right. Now free will is making the choice on to witch path you take an destiny is realizing that no matter Wich path you take you'll end up in the same spot
I think determinism and free will occur simultaniously throughout reality in the same way that chaos and order do. If your mindset is Mind over matter, then YOU are in control of your reality (unless a universal force intervenes and says otherwise).
Do you choose what thoughts you have, or do they pop out of your subconscious? If the latter, how could you be in control if not even your own mind is under your control?
@@Anarkitty420 without discipline, you can only control impulses to a certain degree. stumbling is inevitable. that's how determinism works. whatever thoughts your mind produces, you really don't have control over. its our actions that we have power to control.
@@xperiagalvez2398 I think one's reactions to thoughts also happens on impulse, without *you* having any input on how you react. As numerous experiements have shown, our subconscious knows we are making a decision before it happens, we just rationalize the reasons to ourselves afterwards.
@@Anarkitty420wonder if you could help me out in I guess what I am believing in, because I agree with Xperia. Lots of my friends tell me that “everything happens for a reason” and destiny and such. I think that’s not true, I think things just happen. The universe is random, so we aren’t bound to a destiny. There are definitely things we can’t control, like where we were born, our genes, what time period, etc, but we do have control over what we do given the situation thrown at us. Some people could come from the same exact background, but some may find a way out and learn healthy habits while others succumb to how they grew up and never improve. And sometimes in life you gotta decide between two different things, really big things that will alter your life. It’s hard to choose, and if you can’t choose, you flip a coin and just let it play out. Sometimes u may be completely fucked as well, and you don’t really have a choice there, but I guess you have the choice to try to escape to no avail, or to just be at peace and accept it. Idk. I feel you guys understand what I’m going for.
"it seems as if we have free will" I believe this is not true, test it for yourself. Try to meditate, take an object of awareness--e.g. your breath--and focus on it, 10 minutes, or even 5; if one has free will, this would be effortless. I fail often after minutes, or even seconds, finding myself hopped on a thought train; this is also the response I get from people who tried to meditate "I start thinking"... Do we have free will if we can't even not think for a minute when we consciously made an objective when commencing the mediation session? "We don't treat each other that way, our entire legal system is predicated on the idea that you have in fact free will." So likely it is predicated on a illusion, I wonder, if we would benefit more or less when would treat each other like we don't have free will.
If we treated each other like we didn't have free will, we would treat each other like machines. Simply because you don't have perfect control over everything you do doesn't mean you don't have any, that is free will.
@@sguraya7223 i'm a believer over natural law, If we by nature believe in free will it's most likely true. Nature is set in stone. Old believes are now more and more proven by science.
Imagine not being able to understand that it's your ego that craves free will, and your ego is why you believe in it. You can't handle the idea that you aren't free because it makes you feel less important. It's one of the unfortunate pitfalls of an evolutionary history that depended largely on irrational thought for survival.
You're implying that we have a choice to satisfy our ego or accept the truth. Yet you claim not to believe we're free to choose. If he can't handle the truth then he can't handle the truth for the same reasons you can--physical causes outside of our control. You just don't realize how nonsensical your claim is.
Is there really a problem with consciousness? Objectively it is an ability to demonstrate awareness of the surroundings; it is testable through asking simple questions. Of course if Dr Peterson is referring to a subjective sense of his own consciousness, it is indeed inaccessible to anyone else, but by the same token everyone else's subjective consciousness is inaccessible to him. He cannot rationally talk for anyone else about the subjective sense of consciousness. His point is akin to that of a solipsist marvelling that his own world contains other solipsists. I don't think my subjective sense of consciousness is or should be an issue for anyone else; it is a blind alley.
I dont think determinism/free will can be compared to the inability to understand consciousness. Sure I like the argument that we FEEL like we are free, but that to me means nothing. Meanwhile, I feel determinism to be much more logical sounding than free will.
There is no real logic in free will other than the feeling of it but there’s no science in that and like Ben Shapiro says the facts don’t care about your feelings
@@ConsumeristScroffa well why don't u choose to be constantly happy u have to go trough experience in ur life to feel it but if u control ur brain u wouldn't need to do that mate just think those idea i said rationally and deeply in ur head mate u cant have free will it cannot make sense hope that help you!
@@neverstopaskingwhy1934 No, it does not... mate... Did you even read my comment? I simply said that it makes sense there are people disagreeing about the matter. Don't try to convert me into determinism with such a silly argument. I already understand it and I accept it in retrospect.
@@sdprz7893 you refuse to see the end point of your philosophy. So you say you are empathetic cause you understand we're just victims of circumstances. No one is to blame, no one is to praise. Cool, but I would go one step further: no one is. Following your philosophy you end up realising that the self is not really a thing as "we"(whatever the fuck that means at this point, lol) are no different from natural phenomena. Good luck making sense of the world from that perspective.
@@heirofthesith970 I think the same way you do. Determinists simply act like they and other people have free will. They say I, we and you. What the hell??
@@heirofthesith970 I'm a determinist and I agree with what you just said. We have no choice but to perceive the world as if we have free will. But we probably don't. Everything except quantum uncertainty seems to thoroughly support that. I think life is such a farce because we get to have a glimpse into the mechanics of the Universe, but we ultimately can't ever organically comprehend things that are outside of our relatable experience on Earth. One of the best examples: imagining the edge of the Universe, or the lack thereof.
How is that Peterson believes we have free will yet simultaneously believes that our thoughts and dreams are involuntary at their core nature? This seems to poke holes through his thinking and reminds me of doublethink from 1984. - "Doublethink is the ability to hold two completely contradictory beliefs at the same time and to believe they are both true." I love Peterson, i agree with almost everything he says. My one major gripe with him is his belief in free will. He is ignoring what newton discovered ages ago - every action has an equal and opposite reaction. This rule applies to matter and energy. It is also one of the core teachings in buddhism known as dharma. All of the evidence suggests we don't have free will. Perhaps the dogmatic education of the bible has influenced his thinking ("god gave us free will") ??? Or perhaps he is afraid of feeling like he is losing control? Either way I am religious and here is what I think. God = that which is = Life = The present
His argument would be that while you can't control your thoughts necessarily (a position I would disagree with), you can control the way you allow your actions to be impacted by that thought.
@@texasvet2729 well why don't u choose to be constantly happy u have to go trough experience in ur life to feel it but if u control ur brain u wouldn't need to do that mate just think those idea i said rationally and deeply in ur head mate u cant have free will it cannot make sense hope that help you!
The problem I have with the deterministic view is impulses. Impulses go against any idea of temperamental following that's been explained to me in determinism thus far. I have numerous impulses to do things that go completely against what is "determined" for me to do. Peterson has a good point bringing up consciousness. We can't Scientifically explain consciousness within the confines of modern science, and Determinism to me sounds like pretending we know what it is just because you can play the chance game.
Impulses are still biological phenomena, and same are reflexes. Impulses and reflexes are deterministic effects of causes in your environment which trigger neural pathways in your mind. This doesn’t disprove determinism but affirms it. Even if you recognise that your impulse ought not be acted in, this inhibition is, again, the product of your neural activity based in your environment (internal and external) which gives rise to this inhibition.
@Bruno Pereira Compatabilism is simply a perspective. It attempts to reconcile determinism with free will, and fails to do so. Those from scientific backgrounds have no time for trying to frame reality in line with our personal whims. Determinism is reality, and free will does not exist.
@@jodo6329 I think it's interesting that you can accept one philosophy as the completely true philosophy. I understand the determinism concept but it still hasn't been completely proven. I think that people like Sam Harris like to dig deep into the rabbit hole that is free will, but if you really want to dig deep you have to understand that you ultimately don't know anything. You really are clueless to everything. No one knows why they are here are what happens after you die. You don't know if you are in a dream or not. You could be in a goddamn simulation. The fact that you are concluding that determinism is reality, isn't free will. You didn't conclude that idea on your own, and you certainly didn't allow for it to make sense to you. The only truth, is that you believe you are living a life. You believe that determinism is true, but that does not make it true in the slightest. You can try to make it make sense in your life but that is an illusion. All you know is this single second and these sensations, everything else may or may not be an abstraction. What I'm saying is, don't take one philosophy as reality because then you have allowed your ego to take control because I think its somewhat of a depressing viewpoint and you might just end up becoming a SJW or white supremacist.
@@liamquinan9148 You seem to have the approach that nothing is knowable, we have no understanding of the material world etc. If that's your opinion, so be it. Most of us operate under the paradigm that the natural world is in fact scientific and knowable. We can replicate experiments, and get the same results no matter how many times we conduct them. Science, from what can tell, is how the universe operates. Of course, you can take the unassailable solipsistic perspective that 'it could all be a dream' etc, but to my view that's just a cop out in itself. Sure, it's possible, in the same sense that it's also possible that invisible fairies are dancing around your room right now. From what we can tell, with the scientific method, replicated experiments, and thousands of years of human endeavour, the universe operates deterministically, and that includes us.
A highly complex deterministic system (such as reality) is indistinguishable from a freewill system at the level of the finite human observer. That is why the Apostle Paul ascribed knowledge of the predetermined outcomes to God alone. Only a God could look down on the complex system of reality and make accurate predictions about the outcomes of the interactions of the creatures within it.
the theoretical fact that its possible to predict what will happen means that there is only 1 possible outcome and the universe is in fact deterministic, we just dont know whats gonna happen yet
Or a god that isn’t infinitely intelligent simply knows all possible futures, but not which one will happen. Only understands the likelihood of which ones can happen
Reality is by all accounts indeterministic however, not only due to free will but due to how matter and energy operate at the quantum level; it is completely, utterly, random. God as a concept is logically inconsistent, as is omnipresence when faced with the fact that reality is not wholly predictable.
Muckraker Joe The outcome of quantum randomness always results in particles that behave perfectly deterministic. Also it is not true that everything on a quantum level is utterly random you just cant make a difference between cause an effect on this level so it looks random for the observer. The mere fact that you and me are using this machines (based on quantum technology) to communicate shows that behavior of quantum particles can be calculated (therefor the "randomness" always result in predictable deterministic behavior)
Prometheus Ok, have you actually looked into quantum mechanics? Randomness happens at a wave function collapse, and this doesn’t require a conscious observer like some quantum woo bullshitters have postulated, but the requirements to observe it do cause the wave function collapse. determinism of our world is soft; it is not perfect. Look up shrodinger’s cat to understand how quantum mechanics can still affect things at the macro level
Is it not both? A cylinder can be experienced as both a circle and a rectangle. As humans we experience free will within a deterministic universe. Through one lens we have a supernatural ability to transcend space-time and alter the universe. Through another we are pawns being acted upon by an infinitely complex and incomprehensible Sequence. To act or to be acted upon. To act is a divine gift; to be acted upon, a mortal duty.
We don't decide our wants/ preferences: on what basis would we choose to like or dislike one thing over another? If we chose our preferences we'd not be able to pick anything because *we'd have to already have preferences for one thing or another before we could begin*. We'd have to have pre-programmed preferences, and that is how it is, and that debunks free will.
How so? Why would having inclinations or predispositions mean you have no choice? Why are many people able to change their behavior (including their desires) over time through sheer will? Under a nonfree will model this would imply that there’s at least something in your brain that’s making the decisions, maybe even many things, but that you’re just along for the ride. This of course would also imply that “you” are not really the physical thing you call your body. But why would a brain, supposedly running on nothing but primal urges, go to war with itself over what it really wants? Why does the alcoholic/drug addict seek treatment? Why are we able to rewire the structure of our brain for self behavioral modification through self discipline and will? I say at best, the closest you can get to a viable deterministic model is one where the brain lays out the options but the mind makes the final decision. But there is clearly something in your head making decisions.
Jamie Urwin My intuition says no, but in reality I’m not sure. I can choose to educate myself, but I’m not sure if that qualifies as “choosing what I know.” I do believe there’s evidence that the deeper parts of the brain contain “knowledge” that it may choose to reveal to the conscious part of the mind at certain moments or circumstances. I suppose a more scientific label for this subconscious knowledge would be instinct. But even if you can’t control what you know, I’m not sure how that would support determinism. People often choose completely opposite actions in response to the same information.
@@TheNightWatcher1385 you can choose to educate yourself and have more knowledge to determine what you want. I heard cheese was bad so I studied if it was or not and now I choose not to eat cheese due to my knowlegde that I chose to know.
Yeah, your thoughts are caused. Free will is just a feeling, but that feeling also has a cause. The only way out of this is trying to push for a metaphysical explanation, and that is where you aren't concerned with what's observable, but rather what is preferable. But it isn't all gloom. Most automatons are social. They cannot help but love.
Who would you rather trust. 1. Free will believer who has to constantly and actively "choose" not to rape or murder you. 2. Determinism believer who doesn't suffer with having to make those choices in the first place. They simply don't have the propensity, proclivity, predisposition, capacity, or capability to commit such an act. It simply isn't their nature. Geez it's a tough choice.
@@TheAltruismActivist Well i quess there are dualistic views of spiritual origins of deterministic universe and god? But those are not much to do modern day scientific views of free will or causal deterministic physics of larger universe!
@@TheAltruismActivist No not much! My ontological view is materelistic and i am determinist! I see our brains processes purely causal with interaction of causal world. There is compatibilism which try to build bridge between libertarianism and determinism but it does not make much sense to me!
What does that mean though? If you have your own characteristics then that was beyond your control. Something CAUSES you to make the choices that you make, even if that cause is knowledge of a past experience.
Do you believe there is wrong and right? Where did that come from? Why don’t we just call murder survival of the fittest, and why is murder wrong. Wrong and right proves that we are more than just physical beings.
@@DanielM-kl3bvright and wrong don’t exist. They are emotions we feel towards certain actions that promote survival as an evolutionarily derived trait that emerges in social species, as evidenced by exhibitions of morality in primates, crows, elephants and infants.
The only way to escape the grasp of determinism is through spirituality. By seeking guidance from our God, we can receive enlightenment and guidance through our souls divine connection to our creator. This enlightenment and guidance we are able to receive through our souls connection to the divine, is not of this world. Even if pre determined factors led us to ultimately seek divine guidance/enlightenment, this guidance/enlightenment in itself is not of us, nor any earthly/physical predisposition. This form of guidance/enlightenment is the closest thing we can get to free will. Because the nature of the received information that can lead to action is not from us or our circumstances even if the decision to follow it or not is.
Jordan Peterson does not understand what the free will delusion is. Clearly we have options and select from them. But we are deluded about what that amounts to. The first illusion is we think having alternatives in "the circumstances" means the *actual* circumstances. It just doesn't and countless examples will show that. The second illusion is that somehow we had access to options that we didn't select, that we couldn't possibly have. Determinism has nothing to do with it, it's just impossible. What would need to be the case is that we could select other options without the need for circumstances we didn't choose to be different in order to do so. It just couldn't happen and again this is easy to check and see. The case is always that: If circumstances I didn't choose had been appropriately different I would have done otherwise. And in order for me to have done otherwise circumstances I didn't choose would have had to have been different. There is luck there, good or bad and the illusion is to think it isn't there. We cannot have control that overcomes this luck. This changes our view of moral responsibility for the better and rightly so.
No but you are also wrong because you don’t grasp that the present is different from the past, we don’t make decisions today because of everything that has come before, we make decisions today because everything that came before happened but that doesn’t effect our decision in the present, because the present is not the past. When you are building a brick wall it can go anywhere, irrelevant of the fact that it is made of bricks. It’s pretty simply that if determinism was true, and we know that also reversion to the mean is also true, the we would be able to predict the future. Because everything would be predetermined, which apparently it is but clearly isn’t.
@@TheBenchPressMan Determinism being true is a necessary condition of being able to predict the future with certainty, since there must be only one possible future to do that. But it's not a sufficient condition for at least 3 reasons. Perhaps it's impossible to have all the required information. Perhaps it's impossible to do the calculation in time. And lastly perhaps the result of the calculation will change what will happen. Whether determinism is true or not, nobody knows. But it does seem certain that indeterminism cannot get us free will.
@@Wtahc Then you're defining options incorrectly. The thing to do is observe yourself making choices and check and see how you could select the options you reject.
The universe itself is not determined, neither are you determined. The only reason why humans assert that it is determined is because of our observation, which implies that simple things can only be examined when complex things aren't taken into consideration. Delve into those simple things, and you'll see they aren't simple at all.
Jordan Peterson is a fascinating guy. Often very frustrating to listen to, but 'fascinating nonetheless'. I respect the fact that he conceded that there really is no way that anyone can make a logically viable argument for 'freewill' given what we know about neuroscience and immutable physical laws (cause and effect in particular) and other factors like genetics all working together in a completely methodological, predictable manner. I've spent a considerable amount of time trying to figure out a way to somehow circumvent the aforementioned, but I have yet to accomplish that feat (which very well maybe impossible). So... Peterson knows that the prospect of 'freewill is dubious. He does very often 'conveniently forget' this when speaking to certain people. One of the only things that ALWAYS remains consistent with him is his very eccentric obsession with Carl Jung and never failing to establish Jungian Psychology as some sort of axiomatic precept. Let's be honest. We all had our 'Carl Jung' phase. Jung was a fascinating guy. That being said, I don't LITERALLY think there's validity to his 'model of the psyche'. I've seen so many Peterson videos, and it never fails. He always ensures to put an incredibly unessecary amount of emphasis on Jung. He could be talking about anything. He could be discussing how to decorate his living room with his wife, and it wouldn't surprise me if he still manages somehow ensure that Carl Jung oriented commentary dominates the majority of the discourse. 'Well, wife. I understand that YOU want a Black leather couch, but have you ever considered what Carl Jung would want? You have to understand that in the 'world of archetypes' this leather couch has a completely different meaning and significance. You call it a leather couch. I call it a symbol of The 'Fallen Man yelling into the abyss for meaning. For what good is anything if Carnal Man does not realize his True 'God Concousness'. Allow me to read the Babonian Creation story in The Enuma Elish. I think this will help provide you perspective'. Anyway. He is 'fascinating. Often frustrating, but... he really is a character.
I think you have the reality thing all backwards. There is no obligation or need for you or me to understand or be able to explain anything that happens in the natural world in order for it to exist. We experience our free will every moment of every day, so just because it is impossible for you to wrap your head around how this could possibly work within your conception of how the universe works, doesn't have any effect on this everyday reality. As Philip K Dick put so well, "Reality is that which, after you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
@@YoungMommy14 Fine, if all else fails, I suppose agreement is marginally acceptable. Peterson is super smart and super interesting, but there is something seriously amiss in this incarnation of him. Peace.
@@caricue The following isn't the most relevant thing in the World. That being said, I 'feel' as though Jordan Peterson can and hopefully will be a prominent 'voice' in 'bridging the divide between 'Left' and 'Right'. You almost certainly think that I'm 'pulling your leg'. I'm actually not, but I almost certainly AM being unrealistically 'hopefull'. All I know, is we need more and more discourse between people on both sides without any government involvement (and without The Fringe Nutcases on either side). Democrats putting their faith in Biden to manifest 'unity' was arguably one of the dumbest things that Left (or anyone) has ever done. And I AM Left Wing (At least, I THINK I am... it's really hard to say in today's dynamic). Anyway. The thing about Peterson he Uber-diplomatic. Sometimes to the point where you want to shake him and scream 'GET TO THE POINT'! But, this 'eccentricity' of his is actuallya very good thing when it comes to 'sociopolitical' matters. The truth is The Majority of Left Wing modererates (like myself) aren't nearly as different than Right Wing Moderates as most people think. One huge problem is that we're all terrified at the prospect of 'being canceled' if we speak out against 'foolishnes'. Peterson can be helpful, because he's 'diplomatic' to the point where no one has the slightest idea where he stands 'politically (I'm not sure he knows). So... I recognize that was off topic but i l honestly think I'm 'on to SOMETHING' (I sure hope I am). Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Sam Harris are also good in this regard. I want to hear more from guys like this and less and less from Govt. Officials and Corporations that push 'wokeness' because it's lucrative.
Determinism can only be established backwards. By standing on top of the pyramid looking down at all the building blocks that got you there. However, with all these factors 'known', you should also be able to predict the future. Or at least with a decent percentage of accuracy. They never seem to be able to. Also, on a casual side note, it takes away all (moral) agency from a person.
Very true, but the compute power needed to do that would be very far off. Even then you’d need a near infinite amount of detail about the person plugged into the computer to predict their outcome. You’d also need to know all the future events and without knowing the exact state of the universe and all prior states it’s not possible. At the end of the day you can believe in determinism but it is also so infinitely complex does it even matter?
The world is a chaotic deterministic system. The level of disorder in the world will always be greater than the level of disorder we will be able to compute in a computer. Think of the world as one big computer. A computer within the world-computer cannot possibly be equally complex.
Given that Chaos theory shows that the simulation of every purely deterministic process depends intimately upon the numerical precision used to simulate such processes,.. that the use of a different precision will yield wildly different results,.. and that no one knows what is the correct numerical precision to use to mimic most any complex, iterative, physical process (that there is *_ALWAYS_* an inherent indeterminacy in just what is the best precision to use; too much precision leads to error, just like too little does also),.. I believe this leaves more than enough room for the indeterminacy of free will to reside within. Add also such qualities as moral courage, virtue, and valor,.. and that over time such qualities tend to be ever more self-reinforcing,... and, yes, I believe in free will,.. abridged perhaps,.. not libertarian free will,.. not a ghost in the machine free will,.. but how about a Daoist conception of free will in which every action is formed out of all of one's past actions,.. including one's acts of moral effort and/or indifference. To a substantial extent, we are all beings of self-made souls; not entirely free,.. but not entirely unfree or predetermined either.
Why one person's will breaks in Auschwitz, while another lives to tell their story,.. may well be largely, even substantially, outside their control,.. but *_entirely_* outside their control,.. that one person had no choice but to quit, while another had no choice but to persevere,.. I don't believe it,.. and I genuinely doubt Sam Harris believes this either.
If there is no free will, what utility does consciousness have then? Ignoring for the moment the amazing qualia of the phenomenon of consciousness which would certainly seem not to be reducible to the known laws of physics,.. why would nature create such an elaborate epiphenomena if it has no purpose,.. and what purpose could consciousness have *_except_* to inform free will so that free will can make well informed choices?
*_Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others._* ~ Aristotle
*_Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts._* ~ Aristotle
*_Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives -- choice, not chance, determines your destiny._* ~ Aristotle
*_Man is a goal seeking animal. His life only has meaning if he is reaching out and striving for his goals._* ~ Aristotle
*_First, have a definite, clear practical ideal; a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends; wisdom, money, materials, and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end._* ~ Aristotle
*_Anybody can become angry -- that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way -- that is not within everybody's power and is not easy._* ~ Aristotle
*_It was pride that changed angels into devils; it is humility that makes men as angels._* ~ Augustine of Hippo
*_Only he whose soul is in turmoil, forced to live in an epoch where war, violence and ideological tyranny threaten the life of every individual, and the most precious substance in that life, the freedom of the soul, can know how much courage, sincerity and resolve are required to remain faithful to his inner self in these times of the herd's rampancy. Only he knows that no task on earth is more burdensome and difficult than to maintain one's intellectual and moral independence and preserve it unsullied through a mass cataclysm. Only once he has endured the necessary doubt and despair within himself can the individual play an exemplary role in standing firm amidst the world's pandemonium._* ~ Stefan Zweig, _Montaigne_
@@myusernameusedtobereallycr2075 Thank You!! Since I tend to agree with your comment,.. Here's a follow-up I hope you will enjoy as much. I am an eclectic, autistic, NT Rational, Libertarian, Deist, Daoist for whom my doubts are very very precious to me! I have become a cognitive dissonance junkie who has learned to enjoy my confusion as being among my highest sources of enjoyment?!? My doubts and fears feed me at least as much as my certainties and courage ever did,.. usually more! *Who Loves God More...*
The one who seeks God for righteousness sake, or for salvation’s sake.
Over my years I have imagined myself in several religious fantasies. I’ve imagined myself at the Sanhedrin trial of Jesus en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanhedrin_trial_of_Jesus where I would ask my own questions of Jesus and of Caiaphas. I have also often asked myself if the following proposition were offered to me, should I accept it.
The proposition is that I agree to go to hell alone without even a tormentor for company, with no further possibility of achieving salvation, to be lost and forgotten by everyone, even by God; in exchange everyone else in hell achieves salvation. Even Satan and the one third of the angels that fell with him go back to God. Even the absolutely unrighteous get forgiven and go back to God. Notice that my question is not would I accept this proposition, but should I accept it. Would you? What do you think you should do if offered this choice. What would Jesus do, you think? I am asking, would you be willing to be the forgotten and neglected Christ who does not get to rise to Heaven or ever be praised for your sacrifice, but instead achieves salvation for everyone else, except yourself?
*_I have not served God from fear of hell for I should be a wretched hireling if I served Him from fear; nor from love of heaven for I should be a bad servant if I served for what is given; I have served Him only for love of Him and desire for Him._* ~ al-Hasan al-Basri (642-728)
When I was six and attending Baptist Sunday school, my class was given a lecture on heaven and hell, death and the afterlife. When the lecture was over, I asked, *Is there free will in the afterlife?* Apparently no one else had ever asked this question. I was told that, _No, there is no free will in the afterlife because then good deeds could be done in hell, while bad deeds could be done in heaven. But all that is already sorted out before anyone dies, so there is no room for moral agency after one is dead._ So then I asked, *If I don’t take my body with me, and I don’t take my free will with me, why am I supposed to care about having an afterlife at all?* The reaction I got was very surprising at the time, and at 66 it is still surprising. In response, I was told, _Don’t ask such silly questions, and stop being a smartass._ That was the end of the discussion.
It was not long before I made myself a prayer, which I have always kept in my heart and in my mind. *_Dear Lord, let it be your will that will direct my life. Not as I would choose, nor as any person would choose, nor as any religious text would choose, but as you, dear Lord, would choose for me. This being done, I am content._* I am now curious. Although I may dot my I’s and cross my T’s differently from you, in your own faith, do I sound like someone who would be damned for my honest trust and questions?
*_Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear._* ~ Thomas Jefferson
I believe that as a racist bigot must die to the person he has been when he hates, the unrighteous person must die to the person they have been before they can turn toward the one true God. Such a death is frightening because it requires one to abandon the only sense of identity one has ever had. It requires one to leap into an unknown stranger’s identity and to trust it will be better than what one has always known. For the fear of hell I could not do such a thing. I doubt many of us could. For the love of righteousness I can do such a thing easily. As naturally as a simple child loves and is loved by their parents.
The following is from what I hope will be on my gravestone so as to provoke a thoughtful reaction from anyone passing by in happenstance. I offer it now as a thoughtful alternative to an afterlife of merely heaven, hell, purgatory, reincarnation, or the many other imagined possibilities.
*The Lake*
*_It is said by some that there is a place where a bright, clear, mountain lake resides, a place where people of this world never visit. To attempt to describe it is possible, but all such tales are probably just fancy. Be that as it may, here is how it was described to me, in my sleep, by the spring rain, when I was still very small and trusting. I was very certain at the time that the rain had not lied or exaggerated, but as I grew older I came to doubt. This would seem to be our way. How sad._*
*_The rain told me that the air at the lake was fresh and clean and yet so thin that I would faint were I to be there. This lake was in the midst of a forest of giant pine trees that appeared to reach forever to the skies above. In contemplating these trees one would wonder if this lake were not really just a small puddle on the forest floor. But as all bodies of water were the same to my singing spring rain, I imagine these distinctions had simply gone unnoticed._*
*_There was something most remarkable about this lake. For I was told that all the souls of all the men & women & little children like myself washed through this water. There seemed to be some hint that all of life had passed by and was passing by this oasis whose place could not be named. As each new life was made, a handful of water was removed from the lake and placed within a mortal body. Day by day the water would be made purer or filthier as that life spent it’s limited time in the world. When that life was done, the water that had been given to it was returned to the lake as it's body was returned to dust._*
*_And such was how all the hope and travail of life would come to each new generation. Some would succeed more than it would seem they should and so returned to the lake the courage and celebration that they had made of their lives. Others learned the habit of fear and distrust in their lives when they were very young and so took very meanly of every opportunity as only a threat. They only returned water that was foul and putrid for what else did they ever know._*
*_And so I was told, that was how it was with me and everyone who ever had been, or was, or would be. Parts of me had passed through many lives and parts of me were utterly new and untried. Parts of me would live other lives again and others would be forever still when I was done. None of us was ever created entirely alone nor could we ever be, for like the air and water of this world, which we all communally use and of which our bodies are literally made, our souls are unique and yet all made of the same stuff. How many times would you have to draw water from a lake to draw the same handful? Or is it just a silly question? I don’t know. Somehow it just doesn’t seem to be a very important question now._*
*_What would be an important question anyway?_*
--- End of *The Lake* ---
I am asking the question *Why do I love God?* Do I stand before God with the attitude that he is the biggest, baddest, tyrant of all? Do I respect God for fear’s sake or for admiration’s sake? If I could serve God best by losing my own personal salvation, then should I?
I ask you… What is the prize?
---------------------------------------------
I wrote the above originally back in 1986, and while my views have evolved somewhat, I still substantially agree with what I stated above. I've been told that my greatest, and most dangerous heresy, is that I like God,... more than I love God, or fear God, or hate God,... I like God. I feel comfortable about God in the same manner that I am comfortable with all of existence. And my most happy and most selfish desire is to give myself to righteousness for it is only by submitting myself to that which is greater than myself can I ever hope to find myself at all. But what is righteousness? Is it submission to authority? And which authority do we submit to? Is it always the same standard of value in all cases, or does right and wrong depend upon the context always? Does morality require supernaturalism in order to be perfectly grounded? The thought that a repentant Nazi (with *_Gott mit uns_* on his belt buckle) went to Heaven while Anne Frank is in Hell makes my soul shudder. I regard God not as a wishing well, or a means not to die, and especially not as a guarantee that others will spend an eternity in hell and damnation,... but as the perfect embodiment of righteousness, whatever that may mean. God is my sign, my landmark, my goal, my thirst for truth, value, and what is right for it's own sake and not merely instrumental in gaining some personal advantage. As all mathematics rely upon the existence of axioms, which are self-evidently true statements requiring no further effort to prove,... I find that God is the necessary axiom from which every truth flows.
As a libertarian, my most fundamental value is free will. But, so long as there is free will, there will always be evil,... or, at least, the possibility of evil.
*_Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have._* ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
I hope I've have given you something to consider,... and, as always, I would appreciate everyone's thoughts and comments in reply.
*"Add also such qualities as moral courage, virtue, and valor,.. and that over time such qualities tend to be ever more self-reinforcing,..."* all of which are acquired deterministically and, which you tacitly concede, are deterministic, themselves. KEvron
@@KEvronista Being Daoist, the whole random versus deterministic debate concerning _free will_ just strikes me as being off and representing equally false alternatives. Just because humanity knows of no alternatives between random versus deterministic first causes,.. doesn't mean that reality itself feels itself to be so constrained.
*_I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose._* ~ John Burdon Sanderson Haldane I strongly suspect that _free will_ & _consciousness_ may well be as strange and mysterious as the mystery of how existence came to be at all in the first place. Either something has *_ALWAYS_* existed, or there was a time when nothing existed at all,.. and then there was a first cause of all existence where, apparently, there can be no first cause for the first cause. Put another way,... in a purely deterministic universe, how can anyone be held morally responsible for either their good or bad actions?
@@davidhunt7427 *"Just because humanity knows of no alternatives between random versus deterministic first causes"* fine, then it may be neither, but neither also excludes free will. *"doesn't mean that reality itself feels itself to be so constrained."* i would never make the claim that reality feels. *"I strongly suspect that free will & consciousness may well be as strange and mysterious as the mystery of how existence came to be at all in the first place."* you present your stance on free will as one predicated on affectation. *"when nothing existed"* nothing cannot exist, and there has never been a time when all matter did not exist. KEvron
I am a physicist and I will provide solid arguments that prove that consciousness cannot be generated by the brain (in my youtube channel you can find a video with more detailed explanations). Many argue that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain, but it is possible to show that such hypothesis is inconsistent with our scientific knowledges. In fact, it is possible to show that all the examples of emergent properties consists of concepts used to describe how an external object appear to our conscious mind, and not how it is in itself, which means how the object is independently from our observation. In other words, emergent properties are ideas conceived to describe or classify, according to arbitrary criteria and from an arbitrary point of view, certain processes or systems. In summary, emergent properties are intrinsically subjective, since they are conceptual models based on the arbitrary choice to focus on certain aspects of a system and neglet other aspects, such as microscopic structures and processes; emergent properties consist of ideas through which we describe how the external reality appears to our conscious mind: without a conscious mind, these ideas (= emergent properties) would not exist at all. Here comes my first argument: arbitrariness, subjectivity, classifications and approximate descriptions, imply the existence of a conscious mind, which can arbitrarily choose a specific point of view and focus on certain aspects while neglecting others. It is obvious that consciousness cannot be considered an emergent property of the physical reality, because consciousenss is a preliminary necessary condition for the existence of any emergent property. We have then a logical contradiction. Nothing which presupposes the existence of consciousness can be used to try to explain the existence of consciousness. Here comes my second argument: our scientific knowledge shows that brain processes consist of sequences of ordinary elementary physical processes; since consciousness is not a property of ordinary elementary physical processes, then a succession of such processes cannot have cosciousness as a property. In fact we can break down the process and analyze it step by step, and in every step consciousness would be absent, so there would never be any consciousness during the entire sequence of elementary processes. It must be also understood that considering a group of elementary processes together as a whole is an arbitrary choice. In fact, according to the laws of physics, any number of elementary processes is totally equivalent. We could consider a group of one hundred elementary processes or ten thousand elementary processes, or any other number; this choice is arbitrary and not reducible to the laws of physics. However, consciousness is a necessary preliminary condition for the existence of arbitrary choices; therefore consciousness cannot be a property of a sequence of elementary processes as a whole, because such sequence as a whole is only an arbitrary and abstract concept that cannot exist independently of a conscious mind. Here comes my third argument: It should also be considered that brain processes consist of billions of sequences of elementary processes that take place in different points of the brain; if we attributed to these processes the property of consciousness, we would have to associate with the brain billions of different consciousnesses, that is billions of minds and personalities, each with its own self-awareness and will; this contradicts our direct experience, that is, our awareness of being a single person who is able to control the voluntary movements of his own body with his own will. If cerebral processes are analyzed taking into account the laws of physics, these processes do not identify any unity; this missing unit is the necessarily non-physical element (precisely because it is missing in the brain), the element that interprets the brain processes and generates a unitary conscious state, that is the human mind. Here comes my forth argument: Consciousness is characterized by the fact that self-awareness is an immediate intuition that cannot be broken down or fragmented into simpler elements. This characteristic of consciousness of presenting itself as a unitary and non-decomposable state, not fragmented into billions of personalities, does not correspond to the quantum description of brain processes, which instead consist of billions of sequences of elementary incoherent quantum processes. When someone claims that consciousness is a property of the brain, they are implicitly considering the brain as a whole, an entity with its own specific properties, other than the properties of the components. From the physical point of view, the brain is not a whole, because its quantum state is not a coherent state, as in the case of entangled systems; the very fact of speaking of "brain" rather than many cells that have different quantum states, is an arbitrary choice. This is an important aspect, because, as I have said, consciousness is a necessary preliminary condition for the existence of arbitrariness. So, if a system can be considered decomposable and considering it as a whole is an arbitrary choice, then it is inconsistent to assume that such a system can have or generate consciousness, since consciousness is a necessary precondition for the existence of any arbitrary choice. In other words, to regard consciousness as a property ofthe brain, we must first define what the brain is, and to do so we must rely only on the laws of physics, without introducing arbitrary notions extraneous to them; if this cannot be done, then it means that every property we attribute to the brain is not reducible to the laws of physics, and therefore such property would be nonphysical. Since the interactions between the quantum particles that make up the brain are ordinary interactions, it is not actually possible to define the brain based solely on the laws of physics. The only way to define the brain is to arbitrarily establish that a certain number of particles belong to it and others do not belong to it, but such arbitrariness is not admissible. In fact, the brain is not physically separated from the other organs of the body, with which it interacts, nor is it physically isolated from the external environment, just as it is not isolated from other brains, since we can communicate with other people, and to do so we use physical means, for example acoustic waves or electromagnetic waves (light). This necessary arbitrariness in defining what the brain is, is sufficient to demonstrate that consciousness is not reducible to the laws of physics. Besides, since the brain is an arbitrary concept, and consciousness is the necessary preliminary condition for the existence of arbitrariness, consciousness cannot be a property of the brain. Based on these considerations, we can exclude that consciousness is generated by brain processes or is an emergent property of the brain. Marco Biagini
@@davidhunt7427 My point is that if we rationally analize our scientific knowledges about cerebral processes, on the basis of the laws of physics, we understand that the hypothesis that consciousness is an emergent property of such processes is inconsistent. It is worth considering that the current laws of physics explain with great accuracy all chemical and biological processes, including cerebral processes. Devolopments in physics are expected to refer to high energy processes or cosmology, but it is unreasonable to hypothesize that we will find new laws of physics that will change our descriptions of biological processes. The point is that we do not need new laws of physics to explain biological and cerebral processes, because such processes are perfectly reducible to the current laws of physics, while consciousness is not. Consciousness is irreducible to cerebral processes and to the laws of physics; the only rational explanation for the existence of consciousness is that an immaterial/unphysical element exists in us and interacts with cerebral processes, and consciousness is the result of such interaction. The nature of such unphysical element and of its interaction with the brain cannot be investigated through the scientific method, since it is not physical. Therefore, the problem to establish the nature of such unphysical element does not belong to the scientific domain, but to the metaphysical/phylosophical/religious domain. As a christian, I identify such unphysical element with the soul.
@@marcobiagini1878 Just curious,.. but how is your entire statement not equivalent to saying that the only explanation that satisfies as to how Consciousness arises is Supernaturalism? Or, at the very least, it requires physics Humanity presently has no understanding of.
@@davidhunt7427 Well, I have never used the word "supernaturalism". Personally, I find the idea of the soul as the only fully convincing explanation. However, I know that some people would disagree and some would say that we need some new physics.
@@davidhunt7427 When I had a waking grand mal seizure I was aware of my brain malfunctioning. We are separate from our brain. There was me thinking clearly while my brain was not working.
There is a plot of how interesting his lectures sound with time. Initially you are blown by his ideas, the more you listen the more interesting it gets and then it hits that point where he starts talking shit and it's all downhill from there.
Do you think we evolve to have a consciousness so that we could protect or destroy ourselves? It seems to me the evolution of our consciousness and ego was a response to pain. We either have the choice or the illusion of choice to use our environment to our benefit to reduce pain. The survival of the fittest argument states that life evolves to beat its competition so that it may outlive its competition. The human ego often attaches an assumption to this argument: that life *wants* to live. The reality is that life is bound to a path of competition by necessity, not because it actually has any underlying greater reason to survive. Humans like to attach purpose to life, but ultimately any purpose you have is set in motion by the mere circumstantial competition. It is just as valid to argue that consciousness evolved so that we may end ourselves, as it is to argue consciousness evolved so that we may better ourselves. A conscious desire to live is perhaps nothing more than pattern recognition echoing the competitive nature of our DNA. It follows that our body as a unit lives and dies at the whim of instinctual competition, not free will.
I find this debate of free will to be another one of these situations where scientists have a great theory and big words that simply are not applicable to the real world. Free will should be an obvious conclusion. As Jordan stated, what basis would be have for justice? What grounds do we have for merit in education or sports? And what about instances when individuals act directly in opposition to their "determined" path? George Price is a great example of this.
The basis for justice would be, this person has no free will therefore they are liable to do what they did again and the thing they did is something we don't want happening because it's bad for us so we have to deal with them. Same with sports and education, people who have a knack for things will excel at them and people who don't are forced by the will of another person i.e their teachers to do classwork just like we do now. And people who act in opposition to their determined path aren't actually doing so, they are acting in opposition to the path that other people think is determined for them because of how they see reality. Even if you try to disprove determinism by intentionally deciding to do something in opposition to what you want to do, you're only thinking that because someone has told you about determinism and your brain is disagreeing with it. If you were never made aware of the concept of determinism you wouldn't be trying to disprove it
@@arletottens6349 Effective is not the argument, Justice is based on retribution and punishment. This can only be effective with those who are able to be rehabilitated therefore establishing free will as a necessary component to things such as prison and rehabilitation programs. If this were not the case then the death penalty would only be necessary for all criminals as their nature dictates they have no choice or potential to decide to act against their nature in the future.
When somebody acts" in opposition to their determined path" we should assume they were determined to do it. We don't have free will. How things rightly change as a result is where it gets interesting.
*"what basis would be have for justice?"* preference, of course, which is acquired deterministically. *"What grounds do we have for merit in education or sports?"* again: preference. *"And what about instances when individuals act directly in opposition to their "determined" path?"* whatever path is ultimately taken, the choice one makes is of preference. KEvron
@@cohendavidson3510 just because free will doesnt exist doesnt mean people cant change. We undoubtedly have the capacity for change but not of our own agency
always painful to see the outro
Why the "Grandfather Paradox" demonstrates "Determinism" as more paradoxical and totally incoherent;
Let's say in 5,000 years from now mankind learns and knows everything about everything and everyone and thus are able to predict every individual's human actions to a "T" for the next 24 minutes when measured against every other sub atomic partial and progress of such occurring in real time. They now are able to simply map everything known and have everyone and every living thing contected to a master system also taking real time measurements of "everything" in our closed Universe so as to not miss a single fact, action or event.
With everyone now in this future world contected to this technology neurologically via wifi, this future master computer system is taking every reading of everyone and everything so the authorities can now know 23.59 minutes in advancement when someone will commit a crime. Because of this they can now capture the criminal before he or she commits the crime.
Questions for the Determinist;
1. Is determinism still true if the future measured to happen was changed thus never occurred as it was measured to occur deterministically because it was prevented due to this foreknowledge? How and in what sense is it still true?
2. Would there be some unforeseen force preventing these future authorities from changing a future they foresee will occur because it was and is determined to occur as they accurately measured? If yes, provide me your speculation, conjecture or hypothesis of what this unforeseen force could be?
3. If determinism is true and they act upon this because of this knowledge prior to it occurring, how and why did they predict a crime that was to never occur if it was determined to occur knowing everything?
4. If determinism is true and no crime ever really occurs if predictable and preventable, how can they ever predict and prevent a crime that eventually they actually prevented? In this case does logic conclude conscious intent itself is able to trump determinism? If not, why not?
This is called the Grandfather Paradox but without the option of the hypothesized solution of a parallel Universe being created.
Dr. Sam Harris, any answers please, this is your argument put into a specific scenario. Not sure that you thought out your assumptions on this fully.
Wg Williams
Here are my answers/thoughts to/on your questions:
1. You are mixing in free will into your statement. Let's hypothesize that you did indeed posses full information, then you would be able to predict any future and you could not change the future because of you knowing it, since if that were the case you did not posses all information.
2. This is also explained by my answer in 1
3. Interesting hypothetical scenario. I would say that if you had all information you would know that the criminals mind is set and committed to perform a crime, but you would also know that the crime would never happen since you had all information and knew about it.
4. Okay so this question is twofold. Firstly, I think you are still mixing in the concept of free will into your hypothetical scenarios as well as not considering all information, because if you had all information then I guess you could also make tweak some variable in your forecasting model in order to extrapolate a hypothetical future in which you would not interfere with crimes. Then I guess you could predict them without them actually happening? Secondly, I'm not really sure what you mean by "In this case does logic conclude conscious intent itself is able to trump determinism?"
I guess you could argue that my answer in 4 violates your restriction that parallel universes cannot be created. I would argue that any forecasting does note "create" anything and thus the answer still holds. Furthermore, I don't think it is helpful to construct problems in such a way that certain means of falsification are constrained.
@@Lederfisken
1. & 2. You are conflating "freewill" with mere "will" then simply stating I am using "freewill" in my argument. You provide no argument that demonstrates your assertion nor differentiates mere choice from freewill and how I have made this distinction error.
3. Your answer is convoluted and makes clear nothing. This is my point.
4. Same as 1 & 2 for likewise contention.
While we are on this subject, here is more food for thought;
Has science demonstrated freewill as mere illusory?
While scientists agree we know and understand so very little about the human consciousness, some nevertheless fallaciously extrapolate meaning to test results merely to verify their own internal biases. These are religious type claims rather than an informed scientific interpretation.
No human free will? This materialistic reductionism really baffles me. I propose that if determinism were true we couldn't and wouldn't have the faculties to have discovered this as any valid fact claim. Take Sam Harris's argument for example; Harris never goes into the biological reasons why the human brain has evolved functions to store memories or gained such a level of learning as it has. I would argue that we would have no freewill without retaining memory or gaining knowledge but his argument seems to indicate that these functions in part lead to freewill as mere illusory. He further argues that freewill is necessarily biochemical illusory but in the same sense so are all the aspects of human consciousness then. It would then seem to be just cherry-picking to trust logic and human reason while discarding one's self-awareness and freewill and in the end be begging the question.
We have in fact only consciousness to rationalize consciousness. All rational inferences, testing models against experienced reality, conceptualizing models, logic and probability theories; arise from consciousness and all of these don't and can't exist without the first the origin of consciousness. Conscious minds account for the origin of reasoning with nothing left outside of this self-awareness that is able to freely encounter or freely reason reality otherwise.
One's self is the objective reasoner and if we are to assert that reasoning leads to objective truths, freewill is essential for this claim to be valid. Consciousness is the only substrate of any possible claim to knowledge, thus the starting and ending point to posit any reality or any truth. Is not inductive and deductive reasoning dependent on some level of freewill to make a truth claim that is not merely deterministic, therefore neither true or false nor reasoned at all, but just determined data? Without some level of freewill, how does a mind come to any knowledge claim that this determined data is fact and not fiction or reality rather than illusory?
If I damage the electrical chip of a drone aircraft and it starts to fly around crazy, I do not now assume the remote pilot is now crazy or that he never even existed at all. We know and understand so very little about human consciousness and how such a phenomena arises or how such an information system and all it's aspects operate. This is not my mere asserted claim but a scientific consensus that this huge lack of knowledge and understanding exists in the scientific community. All other information systems are the result of this one original information system called the mind or referred to as the human consciousness.
We are trapped in and utilizing alone the very thing we are trying to test and understand without any means of gaining an unobstructed outside view. Science may not even be able to verify or falsify any of the intuitive aspects of consciousness no more than it could verify or falsify any true reality outside of these aspects themselves. Science requires that our human consciousness is reliable so to falsify any intuitive aspect of consciousness as mere illusory also discounts the very meathod used for such a discovery also as illusory. Empiricism and the scientific meathod itself is solely dependent on the reliability of human observation to be validated. Human observation is filtered in every aspect through human consciousness which is the mere result of atoms bouncing off of each other in a biochemical soup. One needs only to commit the genetic fallacy in order to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We are in the infancy of the science of consciousness, quantum mechanics and any Grand Unified Theory. I'm just asking we not commit any genetic fallacies in our scientific conclusions while we are not even sure of the real causes to fallacious attack.
Definitions;
Mind; (1) (in a human or other conscious being) the element, part, substance, or process that reasons, thinks, feels, wills, perceives, judges, etc.: the processes of the human mind. (2) Psychology. the totality of conscious and unconscious mental processes and activities. (3) intellect or understanding, as from the faculties of feeling and willing; intelligence. (4) a particular instance of the intellect or intelligence, as in a person.
Information; Data that is (1) accurate and timely, (2) specific and organized for a purpose, (3) presented within a context that gives it meaning and relevance, and (4) can lead to an increase in understanding and decrease in uncertainty.
An information system is an integrated set of components for collecting, storing, and processing data or information.
Wg Williams
@@WgWilliams I am not Sam Harris but from my point of view of determinism is not that hard to answer this questions.
1 question: if the future was changed because of a 100% accurate precision, then that change is determined. That society was determined to acquire that master system, and that master system will determine everything that will happen next. The future doesn't exist until is present, but if you know what is going to happen you will do everything to make it the best possible future, and that is determined by our evolution and our biology.
2 question: determinism isn't about fairy tales or your destiny wrote by some aliens or some god, determinism is about cause and effect, there will be no force preventing these future authorities because this changes that the future authorities will make is what is determined. Understand it from this perspective, you dont have to have a master system to know that if you throw something up is going to go down, even though you know that, because is a simple cause and effect related to gravity, if you throw something up because you know is going to go down there is no force preventing that to happen, because that knowledge about gravity is determined, as the same as that master system.
3 question: what? dont understand that question sowwy.
question 4: conscious intent is determined, determinism is not a grand plan, is not something that has to happen. Determinism is something that happens because thats how our universe works, is cause and effect, simple as that. Our minds and our bodies are very complex making it very difficult to us to understand it and determine what is going to happen or what are we going to do, and that is what we need free will, because determinism doesnt let us make decisions when free will can, and we need to make decisions. I belive in free will, but I believe that that free will is determined, everithing you do is determined by something prior, and if you follow that tree of causes and effects you have to go (at least thats what I think) to the begining of times to really understand why you are how you are.
Just know that determinism isnt about fairy tales, as about logic and physics. sorry for bad english not native
Y'all getting caught up discussing determinism when this dude commented on the outro lmao
"I was having a conversation with Sam Harris the other day" - That casual name drop though.
if i was being payed thousands just to ramble on i'd name drop myself tbh
Drop it from a chopper.
I’m glad he name dropped because I can’t wrap my head around Sam Harris’ belief that we have ZERO free will. It is an illusion.
I was hoping Jordan would give his position clearly. Instead he acknowledged it and said it doesn’t feel that way.
But that is exactly what Harris says. It feels like we have free will, but in actuality we don’t.
@@jennymisteqq695 wtf does that even mean ,??? What does Sam Harris mean by. Saying that
@AgentX7k2 yes well sam Harris is the stupidest smart guy in the world lol , , don't matter how you look that that it's jus a opinion n a pretty dumb one at that , , it's what scientists always do when there's no answer but a spiritual one to describe something, , it's pathetic
ive been watching too many free will vs determinism yt vids and now im having an existential crisis
On the contrary, I find it comforting that free will does not exist.
@@viveksharma9566 not me. That means some people are destined to have terrible lives and that they have no way around it... Everyone should be given a good chance but life the way it is is the complete opposite, no one has real control
We have free will but we are limited... So with knowledge and experience and technology we expand our freedom and gain control over our environment.
@@Imortalcat exactly right, Yahweh God Almighty has given his creation free will and the ability to gain for or forget knowledge and make the best of or the worst of what we have been given
@@viveksharma9566 no it exists, if it didn’t everyone would be doomed, but there is constant stories of people getting blessed and getting it easy from birth but making the worst of it, and people getting crapped on but making the best of it and their life changes around, Faith in God, In the Lord Jesus Christ and having relationship with him will change your life
Everytime I learn about determinism and free will, I get more confused 🤷♀️
I'll explain
@@harip.2814I think free will is something cannot be proven materialistically, science only can tell the fact of determinism. but I think, we can’t generalise determinism as the absolute answer just bcs we don’t have a materialistic evidence of free will, we cant deny the human’s life experience; bcs his life experience is a sequence of interactions that take place in reality, human can affect and impact his surroundings.
It’s very complicated to tell the psychology and the nature of human being, and we can tell there’s an unresolved mystery of the human nature as Jordan mentioned “Consciousness”.
At the consciousness point, let’s be honest science is useless to validate a complete answer,
we can look at philosophy maybe or field that can explains the metaphysical things to offer a realistic answer collaborating it with the answer of science perspective.
@@Stran11 Humans can affect their surroundings and they are conscious about it, BUT we do not have control over those effects we cause with our body. We think we have control over some things precisely because we are conscious about our effects. We also cannot comprehend all the causes that determined our mind.
@@Stran11 everyone in this comment section including you is so loud yet so incredibly wrong lol
@@marcospina162 he's not gonna respond to you by using his free will to remain obtuse the rest of his life, else his ideological framework would shatter
I always think of Kermit when i hear his voice
SPEEDIO lmao
Bert and Ernie's love child
:'D
Wassup can a loc come up in yo crib?
SPEEDIO That's why he posed with the Kekistan flag, I guess 😊.
Holy shit! I was thinking this exact question when I was about 7 or 8. I remember arguing with my mom that I don’t really have “another” way of living. Like I’m just gonna follow this fixed path until I die. Whatever I do, all my decisions, actions are purely based on my gene and the environment I grew up with. I had no idea this random thought of mine has a name. After a couple years I forgot about it and now I’m 20 and am in college. I was watching a video of Ben Shapiro debating someone and he mentioned this word determinism. I’m not sure what does it mean so I looked it up on CZcams and found this video. It brings back all the memory 10 years ago :). I don’t know how to describe my feelings now but it does feel very special.
hfzelman I think even if we can’t find out someone’s next word based on his brainwave, believing something else is in control (other than chemicals in your brain and the nature that shaped them) is kinda like believing in supernatural stuff... Anyways, I also believe in capitalism because capitalism, although not perfect, is the best we have. I’d say it’s the best system in the world and nothing has worked better than our system. All countries that have tried socialism failed. Korea is another perfect example. You split a country into 2, one of them adapt socialism the other capitalism. After a couple decades compare them again. I don’t think you could have a better experiment that this. And the result is pretty self explanatory. North Korea is now one of the worlds poorest countries with Kim’s (Idk how to spell his full name) dictatorship. And South Korea on the other hand being one of the most technologically and economically advance nations in the world. History taught us that capitalism simply works better. Again, not perfect, but better than anything else.
hfzelman I think the reason all those countries don’t have true communism or socialism is because it just won’t happen. The system is deeply flawed. There’s no rule in the universe that says everyone has to be equal. Or how wealth is distributed. I think communism is just immoral because it’s basically saying the government owns everything and “distribute” it by people’s needs. Imagine there’s a room with 5 people. One of them has 5 dollars and the other four don’t have money. Communism is saying, we take all your 5 bucks and give 1 dollar to each person. So everyone can go out and buy an ice cream or whatever. The problem is if a system works this way, why does the rich person want to work again? You’ll just take it away from him and give it to other people who “need” the money. And why do the other 4 poor people ever wanna work again? They get free shit from the rich people anyway. This is immoral and won’t work. Capitalism on the other hand, is saying you four poor people do something and maybe, if I’m satisfied, I’ll give you a dollar. So maybe they’ll give me a nice massage or give me the pot pie they made. If you have interesting stuff that I want, ill take it and hence you’ll survive in the world. If you don’t you’ll starve to death. This is what capitalism is about. It’s about hard work. In a communist society, you just need to suck up to the powerful people. In a capitalism society, you work your ass off to have a roof over your head.
Also an interesting thing about China. They were doing worse than those African countries back in the 70s, then they opened the market, join the global trading system. More stuff came to the country, prices drop and all that leads to prosper. The reason all those countries don’t have true communism is because nobody can. It’s a wet dream.
hfzelman
The "invisible hand" determines the economy better than any government. Check it out.
hfzelman
It is almost impossible for monopolies to exist in free market capitalism. 99% of the existing monopolies only exist because they are protected by the government. As in free market capitalism the government does not intervene in the economy in any way, 99% of the monopolies will rest in peace. For a monopoly to exist in a free market system, they need to be very good at delivering quality products/services at cheap prices, and the area must not be really worth investing in at all (those are called good monopolies). Inequality is not bad. The 1% produces much more than the 99%, that's why they are on top (the exceptions are government protected monopolies). As the 1% is producing more, we are advancing more, and things will only get cheaper and cheaper, and everyone's purchasing power is increased over time. Also explain me why the fuck I never saw people running away hungry and opressed from free market capitalistic economies.
Rhetorical man
The reality is that almost all governments are retarded. Democracy itself discredit the governments capacity of doing things. Even Japan failed (107 avg is and smart government). I believe AI would be the only thing that should be allowed to "control" or guide the economy. People's greediness drives the economy better than any government.
It seems to me that the determinist argument mainly says that we haven't found free will rather than saying it doesn't exist. As in, every event CAN be explained as inevitable interactions between all KNOWN physical components of reality across time via cause and effect. However it is possible that free will does exist in reality and that it even might have some measurable quality to it but we just don't know what it is.
Human beings are flawed and we don't know everything (or maybe even anything).
The point is saying that you can't possibly have free will because every decision you make can be explained as being a combination of your genetics (which you didn't chose) and your environment (which you didn't chose), isn't actually eliminating the possibility of free will it is simply providing a possibility of it not existing.
I think. I will say now. I have no idea what I'm talking about.
It would be basically impossible for it to exist in our society, but I get what you're saying
@@milesnoname7904 Yeah practically speaking it seems impossible.
luis araujo Everything is possible to some extent, doesn’t mean we can’t make claims.
Despite your genetics and environment, in terms of behaviorial decisions, free-will has a way of showing up from its hidding place, and you are given options to pull the trigger or not pull the trigger. There are always decisive moments in your life whereby you must act independantly from usual influences. So yes, free-will exist. And thank God for free-will because we can hold certain criminals responsible for their actions☝🏾 Without it, how would we have an effective Justice system?
Mat R Choices are always determined. It doesn’t mean we can’t enact justice.
“I have free will because I have no choice but to have it.” - Christopher Hitchens
That's pretty much paraphrasing a statement by David Hume, though. Hume beat Hitchens to the punch by a couple centuries.
Gabdube Hitchens acknowledged that he got it from Hume, I just quoted Hitch cuz Peterson mentioned him.
@Dylan [Smith] It means that we are not free to think that we are not free; we are determined to think that we have free will. We can end up using reason and discovering that causality and the laws of physics are universal laws and that they also apply to our brains; but then we discover that the human brain evolved in a way that actively prevents us from truly aknowledging causal determination when we go about our everyday lives. The fact that we happen to reflect upon free will and determinism is itself causally-determined, like everything else since the Big Bang and the beginning of time itself.
You're not determined to think like that.
The statement is beautiful irony. Free will exists, but you begin to exist as a thing with free will and are stuck in a position of making choices.
Robert Sapolsky and Jordan Peterson should have a conversation about this topic.
As a debater and influencer, Peterson mops the floor with Sapolsky. The latter would of course not be bothered, accepting the fact that Peterson was pre-determined to be much more communicatively brillian than he, and is doing would think he proved his point, when all he really accomplished was to lose an argument.
@@johnpatzold8675LOL
This concept is such a great debate - unfortunately, most people I've tried talking to about it assume I'm absolutely crazy for believing that we live in a deterministic universe rather than one with free will. I don't deny free will, just waiting for the evidence since it is technically the side of the debate which has the burden of proof.
Jack, I can see why you would feel that way. Technically, one side is making a positive statement, so the burden of proof is on them. I feel that since the experience of free will, like consciousness, is universal and easily demonstrated to oneself, it is a little perverse to declare it "not real" until there is a complete and total understanding of all the relevant processes and interactions in a living system which demonstrated an actual causal relationship between past inputs and future outputs such that there could only be one outcome. I could understand you rejecting this level of proof, especially since it is literally impossible to demonstrate without a parallel universe as a control.
I'm the same as yourself I believe in a deterministic universe for a few reasons. Number one being as you stated, there's no evidence that we have free will. We are made out of chemicals ie. Matter therefore we are governed by the laws of physics. Since the world around us can be proved to be deterministic, even libertarians would agree, and we ourselves are made out of matter then we are deterministic. Unless of course we have a soul or whatever inside us that spontaneously decides on things but of course there's no evidence for such a thing. The evidence and reasoning all points towards determinism and it might seem nihilistic but sure be grand :)
At first glance, the burden of proof appears to be on side of determinists since their claim runs so counter-intuitive to our everyday experience. But yeah, once you think about how everything we are made out of obeys the laws the of physics & chemistry or whatever, and that there’s no evidence for free will being an emergent property, and that we haven’t found any examples of “true random” events in the universe (except perhaps a few at the quantum level, which seem insignificant for free will), the burden of proof would appear to be shifted to the people who are claiming free will
Some have argued that the introduction of truly random events (such as those involved in quantum physics) give us free will.
Even if this does mean the universe can’t be absolutely deterministic in the traditional sense, it seems clear to me that it still doesn’t give us any kind of meaningful free will. If I go to do something and I just “randomly” do something else, it’s not like my will was done.
@@ryandubois7419 I think one of the fundamental problems is that people make a mistake when they equate determined with cause and effect. Determinism is a religious concept called Fate, but just dressed up in the shiny new armor of Science. You would be welcome in Ancient Greece with the same arguments by replacing "Physics" with "The Will of the Gods". Human weakness brings even the proudest Atheists back to religion sooner or later.
Free will and determinism both exist. Thinking they are mutually exclusive is a result of the misunderstanding of the ego and self as a seperate identity and originator of action.
Dylan [Smith] I love Sam Harris, but I can’t see a way around that. If there is no self, your will is the will of the entire universe. I tend to lean towards the views of Alan Watts, which is where I think Sam Harris is almost at, but just still needs to take his own beliefs one step further to their logical conclusion.
Dylan [Smith] well that’s why I was saying I’m more in line with the philosophy of Alan Watts which is a form monism. I think Sam Harris just hasn’t followed his own ideas out to their logical conclusion, as it inevitably arrives at a kind of pantheism. If there is no self, it’s because separate things and processes in of themselves don’t exist, which leaves you with monism.
czcams.com/video/jJnjbGtWNe0/video.html
Even in the conceptions of Carl Y., our ego is built up by causality. We cannot choose to choose what we cannot choose; I'm here because my instincts, in balance, brought me here.
Consciousness is possibly the most abstract thought. Determinism is an interesting concept, although science takes the best answer (at the time) and claims it as truth. Which is cool, although it’s not a stable construct.
As long as we know it’s not absolute rather then the best guess. It gives us a chance to dissect it. Some people claim determinism as truth and live by it, and get extremely depressed.
When in all actuality, it’s just a concept, I believe in free will and God. I cannot explain God on paper, but the accounts and the evidence I’ve seen In my own life is undeniable. I cannot un-see it, but I also enjoy the abstract.
Noooo a lot of us actually definitely don't get depressed. It ironically is so freeing to know we aren't free. No more guilt, shame or blame or pride. Understanding determinism has improved my mental health so much.
No stress on the determinism side. Learning that we're not free frees us
Why some people actively believe in determinism?
Everyone has things comforting them. Some people comfort with free will, some people comfort with determinism. They will actively defend their particular side and won't attempt to understand the other@@breakingzilian5371
Even in 2017, nobody needed a key chain like that on their hip.
Respect to the professor for putting clips of monster at the end
Consciousness just means that you're aware of what's going on. That doesn't make your will free. If it was you could overcome any issues in your life.
What if the part of us that has free will is not the part that experiences it cognitively. Which means although it is free, it is already decided, and we experience it through flesh, cognitively, like a movie reel, we go back and forth to find changes or patters but the reel has neither end nor beginning. Which if go further explains the purpose of spiritual enlightenment, to transcend the cognition of flesh and its cycles which is samsara, and thus awaken as the universal will.
1:43 for title
Tysm
I would LOVE to take a class by him!-Awesome. Thank you for the information. Great for helping towards my paper on free will.
He is a disinformation agent
Buy a copy of Joseph Campbell's: `Hero with a thousand faces.´
"It's everything at once".
Holy fuck
Jordan's ability to sort of whip up these fantastical philosophical an intellectual themes around any simple story is truly amazing
Yes, he is very good at bullshitting. ;-)
I think JP drives a VW judging from his key change.
shit was seriously distracting and i honestly felt disrespectful to him by being so focussed on it haha
Lmao, how our minds wonder
When I had a waking grand mal seizure I was aware of my brain malfunctioning. We are separate from our brain. There was me thinking clearly while my brain was not working. I was also hitting my face and head. I hit my head so hard that I put a big cut in my eyebrow such as if you were in a fight, but I was unaware of this happening. I wasn't aware of my body malfunctioning, but knew that my brain was malfunctioning. I was separate from both my body and my brain.
So do you agree with determinism or free will
@@alexkoble9303 they're arguing for the existence of free will
Same, I have been on antidepressants. My brain was broken for 7 months straight. If we are determinist we are only build upon chemical reactions the universe controlling our actions. First of all the debate is useless. i'm more of a dualistic nature, determinism is just machine thinking but we aren't machines. we can feel and think but also born in certain situations.
I was on antidepressants when i got off, i got the worst thoughts even a bit psychotic alot of the time. Thoughts a person should not have i could distance myself from the thoughts. If we are determinist it dehumanizes us to a certain extent. I'm true to nature, everything that is in nature is true, healthy and good. why are we drawn to it? so here is my argument if we humans are to have free will, which we all think even to a deep level. that means we have free will.
Long story short, everything set by nature is set in stone just like freewill.
@@Hans-um6lu That makes sense!
I believe in both as well. We have waking conscious actions which transcend our brain and body, but then we also have the dictates of our subconscious, which are based on previous karma. Our consciousness definitely transcends our brain and body, and the memory of our brain and body does affect our consciousness. This is the grand illusion of the physical dimension.
@@krisvibes4501 I believe in both as well. We have waking conscious actions which transcend our brain and body, but then we also have the dictates of our subconscious, which are based on previous karma. Our consciousness definitely transcends our brain and body, and the memory of our brain and body does affect our consciousness. This is the grand illusion of the physical dimension.
What a talk. Really had to go back and read what Dan Dannet’s idea of consciousness is all about.
Do you know what the song is at the end?
Limited free will, not full nor none.
Explains alot.
well why don't u choose to be constantly happy u have to go trough experience in ur life to feel it
but if u control ur brain u wouldn't need to do that mate just think those idea i said rationally and deeply in ur head mate u cant have free will it cannot make sense hope that help you
@@neverstopaskingwhy1934 true if ur a naturalist humanist then we have no free will and no actual identity, everything is a controlled outcome of purely unguided scientific bio-chemical interactions, so you are a thing and not a unique valuable individual. So have at it to your hearts content mate because life has no ultimate meaning or purpose other than reproduction. 😱
life is is a whole bunch of states. the choices which state and which route you take to them are free will. similar to the concept of non deterministic turing machines. it's kinda scary but a releasing thought if you are stuck in the idea of the full determined life.
@0 your desires are an input. how you threat them is the algorithmn. you have to work on your algorithmn to alliviate this problem. desires are in interplay with the intercore of consciousness, the inner drive, what excites you etc.. it's possible to observe them and reevaluate and deal with your desires by changing your behaviour by introspection.
@@MrElCojones no, deterministic or not, doesn't mean we have the choice, ai are non deterministic, do they have free will? Many things in quantum physics are non deterministic, does they have free will? Of course not, it's just a matter of probability, but you are not free of choosing, no more than a coin can choose in which side it will turn, and even if you wanna think yeah but I'm a human, I can put my thought and change the state of the machine and blabla, the fact that the thought arise in ur mind, it's something that happened based on what you lived and how you processed, so even if it's not deterministic, it's not free as you can't choose, if the ai used their own answer to give other answer would that be free will? Ofc no(we already do that), so yeah, it's adorable how people want to hope in a free will, but it's like believing in Santa Claus
He's quite a character!
Our legal system also works that it gives u a negative experience to associate with something u did so you don't do it again. (Determinism)
The premise is wrong on this, we do have a physical explanation of real choice, its called Emergence. When we encounter a novel situation we must react to it in real time and our physical history up until that point may have no bearing on it... emergence is when two or more determined things produce something completely unpredictable in combination, like water and salt and such but when mind are involved the results are not often reproducible. There is often several possible outcomes in any novel encounter and the mind must gamble on which one to chose and the difference between a mind and a current mindless computer is that a mind has awareness that its gamble will have consequences for its pain and pleasure and its goals and ideals... computer do not give rats arse which outcome occurs they just brute force the best calculation and go with it damn the consequences to itself... this SELF interest, self concern, this is what is lacking in current computers and it seems consciousness is a vital part of this and there currently is no way to install that into any known computing device. Legal freewill makes us responsible for our actions and contracts when there is no external coercion and no internal corruption to our standard functioning systems... as free agents we are free to accept rewards and punishments and own property.
@Paul Away Real time means the present... the NOW. As for time being an illusion, thats just stupid. Time is the measure of changing relationships amongst matter and energy as gauged by stable countable cycling events (which are also changing relationships of matter and energy). Where is the illusion?
@Paul Away You are over thinking this... When I said we must make decisions in real time, I mean we are dealing with a current circumstance and reacting and acting because of it... there is no predetermined path that leads to the outcome of our decisions we make as things are happening... the results emerge from the merging of different paths that individually cannot predict the combined outcomes. As to relativity, that has nothing to do with anything I am talking about. You deal with YOUR situation in your present moment.
It seems like you do not fully understand determinism. If you go into an ice cream shop you might think you have the choice to choose whichever flavour you want. But you are born with genetics that make you prone to like certain things more than others, and you might have had more good experiences with vanilla than strawberry. So you think you freely choose vanilla, but really it’s based on your genes and environment, which ultimately is based on the laws of nature. Therefore actual free will is not a possibility, even if we experience it as such.
So if I go into a darkness retreat and I experience a sense of no time and experience a blissful now moment. Is my mind the one that creates the distinction of free will or was it deterministic that I was supposed to go the darkness retreat and experience this phenomenon. Either way I feel it doesn’t matter in the end. If I let my ego try to debate the reality of life I always lose. It is such a freeing feeling to embrace. Debating the topic will leave you researching this for lifetimes. The mind wants to make sense of the “reality” it is experiencing.
The moment you can predict the future you will have free will. To do that we would have to simulate our universe.
What you just said is counterintuitive lmao
The universe is constantly changing by our own thoughts and actions. Impermanent permutations
nope. It's probability streams
citing this for my reasearch paper for psychology. thanks JP
Religious stories have dealt with this. On the one hand, older, more "primitive" religions place a high focus on fate (though they did believe we had wiggle room in fate), while newer ones place a far higher focus on free will (eating the apple of Eden). It seems to me, as we have become more focused on free will, we have begun to treat each other better than we did when we were doing human sacrifices and blaming what we do on being the "playthings of the gods".
If something works better in the world than another, the chances that it's truer are higher.
czcams.com/video/GUPO1ZvHTtM/video.html
I'd disagree that the chances of truth are higher if it works better.
If everyone believed every human was the same consciousness born into different incarnations, the majority of people would treat each other way better and care about each other a lot more, but would you say that that makes it more likely to be true?
I could feasibly argue that belief in free will would lead to a significantly more vindictive and self-righteous person, incapable of acknowledging the role of luck in their life-outcome compared to others, thus yielding low empathy. It’s not such a simple thing.
If something works better (an unhelpfully non-specific term), it just means it works better. It works better for mass-production that excessive carbon emissions don't have an impact on the global climate, does that make it truer? Of couse not. Without defining your terms ("the world", "works better") you've just said something that's not even wrong, because it doesn't mean anything.
@@acex222 you debunked their statement perfectly, nice one
Well said..
I'm with Peterson on this. Perhaps we do have free will: a natural physiobiological first person experience produced by the brain, not some Decartasian dualism but just one unified, qualitive subjective experience.
Dylan Stewart - SH is just saying because we are made of something we don’t choose and to some extent understand, then how possible can that group of cells come to decisions that are beyond its sum. Those decisions are just a function of that group of cells.
This is very compelling because it’s just a very clever argument, but why can’t that group of cells, when grouped in that way generate an outcome that is beyond that group of cells sum, through a synergy (2 + 2 = 5) argument why is consciousness not the fundamental sum of those cells, but rather the synergy of those cells.
Therefore why can’t consciousness not be free will in itself, if we create AI we know it will become sentient, it doesn’t have to understand the hardware it’s built on to function. It becoming sentient is not predetermined either it is just a decision that we make, if we chose not to make it sentient then it wouldn’t be, but once we have built it, and if becomes sentient then it will have been a function of our creation, but it will also be beyond the hardware and the creators themselves!
The point i am making here is that past determinates don’t determine the present, past actions effect the present but then don’t determine the present, the present is determined by decisions you make now. Which mean more than you past decisions, you have not acted because of your past, you’ve acted with your past in mind, but in the present your actions are not predetermined!
well why don't u choose to be constantly happy u have to go trough experience in ur life to feel it
but if u control ur brain u wouldn't need to do that mate just think those idea i said rationally and deeply in ur head mate u cant have free will it cannot make sense hope that help you
@@neverstopaskingwhy1934
I only claim to have the agency of myself, not of you or anyone else, but me and only me.
There's at least one thing that Descartes got right: the fact that he thinks means he exists, not necessarily you and I, but necessarily him because he's doing the thinking.
I could be a product of his imagination but not he, the thinker that thinks.
Sapere aude.
I do hope this helps but then again perhaps you were determined not to question.
@akshay satish We order the chicken, our choice, or we choose not. We have agency, either in the doing or not doing. The question is: how do I reconcile my undetermined free will in an otherwise determined universe? Perhaps that's just the way it is, some fundamental, like gravity, or secondary, like the Higgs Boson.
@@TheBenchPressMan the ai's decisions could always be predetermined by a more advanced ai with the exact preexisting knowledge or and program it was running
Even though we don't have free will, it doesn't change the fact that we hold each other responsible for our actions, and prisons still make perfect sense to have. And as Sam said, we would put earthquakes in prisons if we could, even though they don't have free will.
Frey Vestergaard We cannot restrain hurricanes, or tornados, volcanos, stars in supernova, the fact we can with a criminal is irrelevant, non of them could have done otherwise, it's simply in our best interests to limit these dangers as much as possible, you shoot a home intruder not because they freely chose to attack you, but because you want to live and you do what you have to.
@@NexusBladeGaming Yeah, criminals should also still be put in prison for the better of society, and maybe most of all to create an incentive to motivate people not to commit crimes.
@@Kanzu999 That's true. However, given the fact that prisoners didn't have a choice then the main focus of prisons should be to reform rather than punishment (in an ideal world of course). I know not every country has the resources to try to reform every prisoner.
Smay pointless it’s pointless to debate this as what ever solution we come up with was already determined as to how we deal with then
@@teamatfort444 It only seems pointless because you are still assuming that there is free will in the back of your mind. If you are a coherent determinist your assesment would be that the debate is part of the causal chain that leads to change (or not, I may be determined, but I don't know the future).
You might also be interested in philosopher Lewis Gordon's differentiation between freedom, license and liberty, and his black existentialist response to Kanye West's ideas about slavery and choice czcams.com/video/7WxKoOKoXkU/video.html
I love this video
About three minutes in my brain said “you are getting as much from this as you would from listening to two teenage girls having a conversation in mandarin”
You can do as you wish, but not wish as you wish.
which makes you free in a sense
i would wish to control the feeling of happiness to my own will but that is not possible...
wish it was truly possible
life is hard!!!!
Sounds almost like Schopenhauer's view on the subject. Although he used the word "will". You can do what you will, but cannot will what you will. But that's an empirical side of the matter so to say. That asshole Schopenhauer also believed in the transcendental freedom from the kantian perspective. I've been trying to figure it out, but it's bullocks
Not even two, just Spinoza's QED.
Even when randomness is introduced during the training of a neural network, the overall process remains deterministic because the network's behavior is ultimately governed by its weights and architecture. The randomness typically influences factors like the initial weights, the order of training examples, or the dropout of units, but once the training is complete, the resulting neural network model is deterministic given fixed inputs. The network's states, represented by its weights, determine its behavior, making it ultimately deterministic. Is same in a biological system if you have exactly same conditions.
The randomness isn't just introduced during the training. It is being introduced into the stimuli and the weights. Such networks are no deterministic.
@@schmetterling4477 even randomness is not really random
@@JonasLindekrantz It doesn't matter. Random and deterministic are both unprovable propositions that came out of the philosophy department like all kinds of other bullshit.
Perhaps the simplest way to put it is yes we make choices. But whichever way you look at it we are fated to select the option we select.
So, no, we don't have free will.
Simply stupid.
@@emmashalliker6862
It's the truth.
@@emmashalliker6862 Simply the truth tho
@@stephenlawrence4821 nah I don't think that's right, because that argument would make it seem like any criminal was fated to commit the crime. So punishment or justice is moot.
@@steezytracks7815 i think if i had the exact same genes and the exact same circumstances as a criminal, even then before the moment i committed the crime id have a choice not to.
and if what you said is true, then criminals should be executed the moment any sign of ciminality comes from any child adolescent or adult.
but i dont think the latter is correct and hence the usual justice system.
Free will is something we perceive to be real just like we perceive the earth to be stationary (since it feels like we are stationary). Our perception and intuitions do not prove free will in any case since we know that the earth is in constant spin through the scientific study and i would argue that free will needs to be examined in much the same way. Outside of our own personal experience
Motion is always relative to something else. You can view the Earth as stationary and everything else spinning around it in a very complex way and it's not wrong.
@@spaceslav8954 Yes well, regardless of whether the sun or earth are chosen as the center of the solar system you end up with the planets forming elipses around the sun, not the earth.
So no. Even when you chose the earth as the center of all other objects you still end up calculating the correct motion of planetary bodies (spoiler alert; the earth isn't the center of the universe)
@@darestone3335 But nothing is the center of the universe. Or anything. You can choose to view the Earth as unmoving and you can choose the Earth as the center of the universe. You can too choose Mars, or a planet a long time ago in a galaxy far far away...
It's not wrong.
@@spaceslav8954 Alright. Idk, i guess it doesn't matter. It's just a hypothetical, don't read to much into it. Free will could be explained through an even better analogy. The rotation of the earth was just the one that popped into my head at the time. It was simply to illustrate that our assumptions based on intuitions are often flawed.
@@darestone3335 I think you (maybe accidentally) greatly illustrated a solution to this problem. We can view the Earth as the center of the universe, or not. It doesn't really matter. The same goes for free will. It's just a perspective thing.
I'm not saying I hold this view. I just think it's a very interesting thought!
our mind is the consciousness of space time our body is the universe
That's an intriguing perspective! Viewing the mind as the consciousness of space-time and the body as the universe can be seen as a metaphorical way to express the interconnectedness between our individual existence and the broader cosmos. It emphasizes the idea that our consciousness, which arises from the workings of our mind, allows us to perceive and interact with the world. Additionally, it highlights the notion that our bodies are a part of the larger universe, influenced by and connected to the natural laws and processes that govern it. While this analogy may not align with literal scientific descriptions, it offers a poetic way to contemplate our place in the grand scheme of things.
Will is our desires. Choice is independent of desires. Free Will doesn’t exist, but freedom of choice exists.
Some people do want to imagine that you could choose who you are or what you want. That is a silly view of free will. Free will is only there to get you what you want at the moment. So it makes sense to say that you did "will" it at the moment of decision, even if you immediately regretted it. It's just bad luck if you were saddled by nature with limited impulse control.
I don’t equate will with desires. Desires are things that you want, while will is what you feel most inclined to do, and by extension what you end up doing, at least as far as what is within your means to do. So no, freedom of choice does not really exist. Every choice you make is a result of neurons firing in your brain which is just another physical reaction that was already fated to occur from the Big Bang.
I don’t have proof of free will so I can’t say I believe in it, although I prefer it more than determinism. Anyways, if determinism was true, like there is no doubt it exists, then I wouldn’t care much, I won’t let it affect me because I know I will live the best life possible.
I believe the future is uncertain, sure, some things are more likely to happen than others, but that’s doesn’t mean they will surely happen.
I think you should think deeper about it. Anyone who really dives into the rabbit hole comes out a determinist
@@luked4043 Ok
@@carlosvsiguejugando3102 ok
@@luked4043 ok
Actually you can predict things by cause and effect, eg islam is growing as a religion, and most of europe has a decent amount of muslims that impose there religious will on others, therefore you can predict that this will cause conflict between the two groups which will eventually lead to civil war, theres a prediction of the future using cause and effect, i can give more examples if you want.
great work
Culture is a part of nature, genius.
Or to be more exact, all culture are the result of material interactions.
I don’t see a mechanism other than randomness or cause/effect which could bring about a choice. What is in between a comprehensible ordered bringing about, and an incomprehensible unordered bringing about? I don’t see a way that a person could ever do other than they did in a given situation. The ability to do otherwise is very important to me.
A healthy growth pattern of a human, would always mean possibility of indeterministic behaviour in a mostly deterministic world.
A healthy growth pattern of a human means experience in the ways of the world, nature and it's deterministic to indeterministic ratios.
Human systems of control through domestication, keep people under-educated and under-experienced , that way consciousness does not interrupt the status quo.
Babble. Just pure babble. I hope you've grown up from a year ago.
question:
If a tree falls in the woods and no one sees it does it fall and all that
"and all that" lol
@@technofeeling2462 yes, that was my mate's question. That's how he phraised it. I just copypasta'd it lol
you would have to check and see if it did
If the tree falls then it fell
Jungle fires happen for a reason....
Did you notice that Jordan Peterson is a clinical psychologist and he conspicuously avoids speaking about the actual process of socialization that determines our behavior, identity, shadow and hidden reasoning?
Exactly! Peterson is a biological determinist who believes in wildly outdated theories not taking into account any kind of social or cultural influence. It is evident in the biased sources he provides and even in offhanded remarks about Chomsky having "solved linguistics" with universal grammar...
okay... And the debate on free will is out of date. Scientists have been talking about it for years and still don't have empirical evidence that free will doesn't exist. All of this stuff is old and new and they are still taking about it
This is easy, every time you make decision, the universe is in a certain state, you move on and feel you decided something, it's just that if you think back to that time and state of deciding, how could you have done anything differently? Everything was the same. All this is just events anyway, decisions are just illusions and words in our vocabulary
It's an illusion to look back in time, after you know the outcome, and construct a chain of causation the leads inevitably to the end, the end you already know. It's like doing last weeks weather forecast, you can be 100% correct.
@@caricue that is not a relevant comparison, what will happen will happen whether you know it or not, the future is as real as the present and past, there will be only one outcome
@@bennyandersen742 How do you know this? Can I at least sacrifice a goat in order to convince the gods to change my Fate?
@@caricue ha ha, it may help for your well-being to sacrifice a goat, but the universe is going in one direction no matter what, and you sacrificing that goat is just a part of it 😂
Anyone here after watching Devs?
Jebediah Blingfield Yep. Re-ignited my interest in quantum mechanics and philosophy. I’m whiling my day between the Stanford philosophy encyclopaedia and battling bouts of existential crises.
If someone could convince me that we have free will, I could choose to support equality of opportunity. Since no one yet have been able to, I seem determined to support equality of outcome.
Well would not equality of outcome ,be the same as equality of opportunity? Why would you prefer one or the other, if everthing is determinstic?
@@happydeathfish2166 Because heredity and envirnorment controls me to prefere one over the other. It seems reasonable to not procreate since there might be someone that do not want to exist. Do you agree?
@@steveprofiler I dont think there is free will. But basically live as if its there. I think you need both for good society. Like to me equality of oppertunity would be having access to education. Where as equality of outcome would be something like a UBI. I do support both. I think humanity should have both. I am not sure if I fully agree with you. But then again its hard to have conversation about anything if we dont view ourselfs as free agents. I dont have the awnsers to be honest. I would just make framework for humanity to live in. I am determinist aswell. Mainly because science today proves it.
@@happydeathfish2166 Since people can not choose to be born or not and determinism can be prooven, we can rationalize equality of outcome because then no one can take credit for anything either god bad right wrong or other. Whats your view?
It actually has both think of it as a fork in the rd with a path forward a path to the left an a path to the right. Now free will is making the choice on to witch path you take an destiny is realizing that no matter Wich path you take you'll end up in the same spot
I did not expect that monster outro
I think determinism and free will occur simultaniously throughout reality in the same way that chaos and order do. If your mindset is Mind over matter, then YOU are in control of your reality (unless a universal force intervenes and says otherwise).
Do you choose what thoughts you have, or do they pop out of your subconscious? If the latter, how could you be in control if not even your own mind is under your control?
@@Anarkitty420 without discipline, you can only control impulses to a certain degree. stumbling is inevitable. that's how determinism works. whatever thoughts your mind produces, you really don't have control over. its our actions that we have power to control.
@@xperiagalvez2398 I think one's reactions to thoughts also happens on impulse, without *you* having any input on how you react. As numerous experiements have shown, our subconscious knows we are making a decision before it happens, we just rationalize the reasons to ourselves afterwards.
@@xperiagalvez2398I think you have a very fantastical ideal of humanity. What determines if someone is more or less "disciplined" as you put it.
@@Anarkitty420wonder if you could help me out in I guess what I am believing in, because I agree with Xperia.
Lots of my friends tell me that “everything happens for a reason” and destiny and such. I think that’s not true, I think things just happen. The universe is random, so we aren’t bound to a destiny. There are definitely things we can’t control, like where we were born, our genes, what time period, etc, but we do have control over what we do given the situation thrown at us.
Some people could come from the same exact background, but some may find a way out and learn healthy habits while others succumb to how they grew up and never improve. And sometimes in life you gotta decide between two different things, really big things that will alter your life. It’s hard to choose, and if you can’t choose, you flip a coin and just let it play out. Sometimes u may be completely fucked as well, and you don’t really have a choice there, but I guess you have the choice to try to escape to no avail, or to just be at peace and accept it. Idk. I feel you guys understand what I’m going for.
Peterson-sama
That outro was rough and out of left field. If you're gonna keep it please do something with the audio level. Preferably lower
I can do what I want; but I can’t want what I want.
fair.
"it seems as if we have free will"
I believe this is not true, test it for yourself.
Try to meditate, take an object of awareness--e.g. your breath--and focus on it, 10 minutes, or even 5; if one has free will, this would be effortless. I fail often after minutes, or even seconds, finding myself hopped on a thought train; this is also the response I get from people who tried to meditate "I start thinking"... Do we have free will if we can't even not think for a minute when we consciously made an objective when commencing the mediation session?
"We don't treat each other that way, our entire legal system is predicated on the idea that you have in fact free will."
So likely it is predicated on a illusion, I wonder, if we would benefit more or less when would treat each other like we don't have free will.
If we treated each other like we didn't have free will, we would treat each other like machines.
Simply because you don't have perfect control over everything you do doesn't mean you don't have any, that is free will.
@@sguraya7223 i'm a believer over natural law, If we by nature believe in free will it's most likely true.
Nature is set in stone. Old believes are now more and more proven by science.
@@Hans-um6lu What? That's completely meaningless.
What is natural law? Where is it written down? Natural law is made up horseshit
Imagine not being able to understand that it's your ego that craves free will, and your ego is why you believe in it. You can't handle the idea that you aren't free because it makes you feel less important. It's one of the unfortunate pitfalls of an evolutionary history that depended largely on irrational thought for survival.
If there's an Ego than there's me
Stop sounding so condescending, will you.
You're implying that we have a choice to satisfy our ego or accept the truth. Yet you claim not to believe we're free to choose. If he can't handle the truth then he can't handle the truth for the same reasons you can--physical causes outside of our control. You just don't realize how nonsensical your claim is.
So basically determinists are not bound by the same nature since they're determinists, makes perfect sense my dude....
@@GizmoMaltese he did not say that we have a choice. It might as well be determined who choses which position.
Is there really a problem with consciousness? Objectively it is an ability to demonstrate awareness of the surroundings; it is testable through asking simple questions. Of course if Dr Peterson is referring to a subjective sense of his own consciousness, it is indeed inaccessible to anyone else, but by the same token everyone else's subjective consciousness is inaccessible to him. He cannot rationally talk for anyone else about the subjective sense of consciousness. His point is akin to that of a solipsist marvelling that his own world contains other solipsists.
I don't think my subjective sense of consciousness is or should be an issue for anyone else; it is a blind alley.
wow!
I love Jordan Peterson. One of the greatest personalities of the 21st century period.
glad you said "personalities" instead of "thinker"
I dont think determinism/free will can be compared to the inability to understand consciousness. Sure I like the argument that we FEEL like we are free, but that to me means nothing. Meanwhile, I feel determinism to be much more logical sounding than free will.
It is more logical by far. But we don't really act like it and that's why the other side of the argument even exists.
There is no real logic in free will other than the feeling of it but there’s no science in that and like Ben Shapiro says the facts don’t care about your feelings
@@ConsumeristScroffa well why don't u choose to be constantly happy u have to go trough experience in ur life to feel it
but if u control ur brain u wouldn't need to do that mate just think those idea i said rationally and deeply in ur head mate u cant have free will it cannot make sense hope that help you!
@@neverstopaskingwhy1934 No, it does not... mate...
Did you even read my comment? I simply said that it makes sense there are people disagreeing about the matter.
Don't try to convert me into determinism with such a silly argument. I already understand it and I accept it in retrospect.
Thomas Hardy was so ahead of his time. The very theme of his novel #Tess refutes existence of free will.
Sophocles did that 2400 years before him.
@@rajazahidyaseen9518 Various religions did that likely tens of thousands of years before
@@sguraya7223 yes, exactly.
Best video for me in 2024 I almost cried
When he says you're still going to get angry if someone's rude to you, I think if you are a determist, you won't get angry anymore.
Determinists are nothing but empathetic to others because they understand no ones truly to blame
@@sdprz7893 you refuse to see the end point of your philosophy. So you say you are empathetic cause you understand we're just victims of circumstances. No one is to blame, no one is to praise. Cool, but I would go one step further: no one is. Following your philosophy you end up realising that the self is not really a thing as "we"(whatever the fuck that means at this point, lol) are no different from natural phenomena. Good luck making sense of the world from that perspective.
@@heirofthesith970 I think the same way you do. Determinists simply act like they and other people have free will. They say I, we and you. What the hell??
@@felipedezan1924 you literally can't function in the world without believing you have free will so yeah, of course they act like everyone else.
@@heirofthesith970 I'm a determinist and I agree with what you just said. We have no choice but to perceive the world as if we have free will. But we probably don't. Everything except quantum uncertainty seems to thoroughly support that. I think life is such a farce because we get to have a glimpse into the mechanics of the Universe, but we ultimately can't ever organically comprehend things that are outside of our relatable experience on Earth. One of the best examples: imagining the edge of the Universe, or the lack thereof.
How is that Peterson believes we have free will yet simultaneously believes that our thoughts and dreams are involuntary at their core nature? This seems to poke holes through his thinking and reminds me of doublethink from 1984. - "Doublethink is the ability to hold two completely contradictory beliefs at the same time and to believe they are both true."
I love Peterson, i agree with almost everything he says. My one major gripe with him is his belief in free will. He is ignoring what newton discovered ages ago - every action has an equal and opposite reaction. This rule applies to matter and energy. It is also one of the core teachings in buddhism known as dharma. All of the evidence suggests we don't have free will. Perhaps the dogmatic education of the bible has influenced his thinking ("god gave us free will") ??? Or perhaps he is afraid of feeling like he is losing control?
Either way I am religious and here is what I think. God = that which is = Life = The present
His argument would be that while you can't control your thoughts necessarily (a position I would disagree with), you can control the way you allow your actions to be impacted by that thought.
@@texasvet2729 well why don't u choose to be constantly happy u have to go trough experience in ur life to feel it
but if u control ur brain u wouldn't need to do that mate just think those idea i said rationally and deeply in ur head mate u cant have free will it cannot make sense hope that help you!
S
Jordan Patersons voice is like dragging a wooden table on a concrete surface.
The problem I have with the deterministic view is impulses. Impulses go against any idea of temperamental following that's been explained to me in determinism thus far. I have numerous impulses to do things that go completely against what is "determined" for me to do.
Peterson has a good point bringing up consciousness. We can't Scientifically explain consciousness within the confines of modern science, and Determinism to me sounds like pretending we know what it is just because you can play the chance game.
Impulses are still biological phenomena, and same are reflexes. Impulses and reflexes are deterministic effects of causes in your environment which trigger neural pathways in your mind. This doesn’t disprove determinism but affirms it. Even if you recognise that your impulse ought not be acted in, this inhibition is, again, the product of your neural activity based in your environment (internal and external) which gives rise to this inhibition.
Ever heard about compatibilism?
Yeah. It's a cop out.
Well they're just defining away the problem tho. It's not the free will actual libertarians mean.
@Bruno Pereira Compatabilism is simply a perspective. It attempts to reconcile determinism with free will, and fails to do so. Those from scientific backgrounds have no time for trying to frame reality in line with our personal whims. Determinism is reality, and free will does not exist.
@@jodo6329 I think it's interesting that you can accept one philosophy as the completely true philosophy. I understand the determinism concept but it still hasn't been completely proven. I think that people like Sam Harris like to dig deep into the rabbit hole that is free will, but if you really want to dig deep you have to understand that you ultimately don't know anything. You really are clueless to everything. No one knows why they are here are what happens after you die. You don't know if you are in a dream or not. You could be in a goddamn simulation. The fact that you are concluding that determinism is reality, isn't free will. You didn't conclude that idea on your own, and you certainly didn't allow for it to make sense to you. The only truth, is that you believe you are living a life. You believe that determinism is true, but that does not make it true in the slightest. You can try to make it make sense in your life but that is an illusion. All you know is this single second and these sensations, everything else may or may not be an abstraction. What I'm saying is, don't take one philosophy as reality because then you have allowed your ego to take control because I think its somewhat of a depressing viewpoint and you might just end up becoming a SJW or white supremacist.
@@liamquinan9148 You seem to have the approach that nothing is knowable, we have no understanding of the material world etc. If that's your opinion, so be it. Most of us operate under the paradigm that the natural world is in fact scientific and knowable. We can replicate experiments, and get the same results no matter how many times we conduct them. Science, from what can tell, is how the universe operates. Of course, you can take the unassailable solipsistic perspective that 'it could all be a dream' etc, but to my view that's just a cop out in itself. Sure, it's possible, in the same sense that it's also possible that invisible fairies are dancing around your room right now. From what we can tell, with the scientific method, replicated experiments, and thousands of years of human endeavour, the universe operates deterministically, and that includes us.
A highly complex deterministic system (such as reality) is indistinguishable from a freewill system at the level of the finite human observer. That is why the Apostle Paul ascribed knowledge of the predetermined outcomes to God alone. Only a God could look down on the complex system of reality and make accurate predictions about the outcomes of the interactions of the creatures within it.
the theoretical fact that its possible to predict what will happen means that there is only 1 possible outcome and the universe is in fact deterministic, we just dont know whats gonna happen yet
Or a god that isn’t infinitely intelligent simply knows all possible futures, but not which one will happen. Only understands the likelihood of which ones can happen
Reality is by all accounts indeterministic however, not only due to free will but due to how matter and energy operate at the quantum level; it is completely, utterly, random. God as a concept is logically inconsistent, as is omnipresence when faced with the fact that reality is not wholly predictable.
Muckraker Joe
The outcome of quantum randomness always results in particles that behave perfectly deterministic.
Also it is not true that everything on a quantum level is utterly random you just cant make a difference between cause an effect on this level so it looks random for the observer.
The mere fact that you and me are using this machines (based on quantum technology) to communicate shows that behavior of quantum particles can be calculated (therefor the "randomness" always result in predictable deterministic behavior)
Prometheus Ok, have you actually looked into quantum mechanics? Randomness happens at a wave function collapse, and this doesn’t require a conscious observer like some quantum woo bullshitters have postulated, but the requirements to observe it do cause the wave function collapse. determinism of our world is soft; it is not perfect. Look up shrodinger’s cat to understand how quantum mechanics can still affect things at the macro level
I'm just gonna comment because of the pictures of happy and chopper
Is it not both? A cylinder can be experienced as both a circle and a rectangle.
As humans we experience free will within a deterministic universe.
Through one lens we have a supernatural ability to transcend space-time and alter the universe. Through another we are pawns being acted upon by an infinitely complex and incomprehensible Sequence.
To act or to be acted upon. To act is a divine gift; to be acted upon, a mortal duty.
sometimes I end a conversation with a determinist with "You're free to disagree with me. Oh wait you're not."
Clive Aw neither are you.
You're not free either.
ignorance is bliss boi...
Clive Aw well he knows that, and you not.
Thejuz Thejus butt hurt
We don't decide our wants/ preferences: on what basis would we choose to like or dislike one thing over another? If we chose our preferences we'd not be able to pick anything because *we'd have to already have preferences for one thing or another before we could begin*. We'd have to have pre-programmed preferences, and that is how it is, and that debunks free will.
How so? Why would having inclinations or predispositions mean you have no choice?
Why are many people able to change their behavior (including their desires) over time through sheer will? Under a nonfree will model this would imply that there’s at least something in your brain that’s making the decisions, maybe even many things, but that you’re just along for the ride. This of course would also imply that “you” are not really the physical thing you call your body.
But why would a brain, supposedly running on nothing but primal urges, go to war with itself over what it really wants? Why does the alcoholic/drug addict seek treatment? Why are we able to rewire the structure of our brain for self behavioral modification through self discipline and will?
I say at best, the closest you can get to a viable deterministic model is one where the brain lays out the options but the mind makes the final decision. But there is clearly something in your head making decisions.
@@TheNightWatcher1385 you control what you want by what you know. The more I know changes what I want. Can you control what you know?
Jamie Urwin My intuition says no, but in reality I’m not sure. I can choose to educate myself, but I’m not sure if that qualifies as “choosing what I know.”
I do believe there’s evidence that the deeper parts of the brain contain “knowledge” that it may choose to reveal to the conscious part of the mind at certain moments or circumstances. I suppose a more scientific label for this subconscious knowledge would be instinct.
But even if you can’t control what you know, I’m not sure how that would support determinism. People often choose completely opposite actions in response to the same information.
@@TheNightWatcher1385 you can choose to educate yourself and have more knowledge to determine what you want. I heard cheese was bad so I studied if it was or not and now I choose not to eat cheese due to my knowlegde that I chose to know.
Jamie Urwin okay, but I’m still not sure how this supports determinism.
Yeah, your thoughts are caused. Free will is just a feeling, but that feeling also has a cause.
The only way out of this is trying to push for a metaphysical explanation, and that is where you aren't concerned with what's observable, but rather what is preferable.
But it isn't all gloom. Most automatons are social. They cannot help but love.
Who would you rather trust.
1. Free will believer who has to constantly and actively "choose" not to rape or murder you.
2. Determinism believer who doesn't suffer with having to make those choices in the first place. They simply don't have the propensity, proclivity, predisposition, capacity, or capability to commit such an act. It simply isn't their nature.
Geez it's a tough choice.
Hmm... I like how the video ended with the monster anime
Could determinism be identical with divine-will?
What is divine will?
jamppa 83 An omniscient god’s divine plan
@@TheAltruismActivist
Well i quess there are dualistic views of spiritual origins of deterministic universe and god? But those are not much to do modern day scientific views of free will or causal deterministic physics of larger universe!
jamppa 83 Have you heard of any reasonable, scientific explanations of free-will?
@@TheAltruismActivist
No not much! My ontological view is materelistic and i am determinist! I see our brains processes purely causal with interaction of causal world. There is compatibilism which try to build bridge between libertarianism and determinism but it does not make much sense to me!
It seems to me that determinism often puts the focus on the physical aspects of our being. However, we are more than just a physical brain.
Are we? Can you prove it?
What does that mean though? If you have your own characteristics then that was beyond your control. Something CAUSES you to make the choices that you make, even if that cause is knowledge of a past experience.
Do you believe there is wrong and right? Where did that come from? Why don’t we just call murder survival of the fittest, and why is murder wrong. Wrong and right proves that we are more than just physical beings.
We have an eternal soul. That’s what makes us more than just physical matter.
@@DanielM-kl3bvright and wrong don’t exist. They are emotions we feel towards certain actions that promote survival as an evolutionarily derived trait that emerges in social species, as evidenced by exhibitions of morality in primates, crows, elephants and infants.
Ok i been thinkin about this shit for the last 4 years in a prison cell. We are divine.
The soul'd experience is the free will part
The only way to escape the grasp of determinism is through spirituality. By seeking guidance from our God, we can receive enlightenment and guidance through our souls divine connection to our creator. This enlightenment and guidance we are able to receive through our souls connection to the divine, is not of this world.
Even if pre determined factors led us to ultimately seek divine guidance/enlightenment, this guidance/enlightenment in itself is not of us, nor any earthly/physical predisposition. This form of guidance/enlightenment is the closest thing we can get to free will. Because the nature of the received information that can lead to action is not from us or our circumstances even if the decision to follow it or not is.
Jordan Peterson does not understand what the free will delusion is. Clearly we have options and select from them. But we are deluded about what that amounts to. The first illusion is we think having alternatives in "the circumstances" means the *actual* circumstances. It just doesn't and countless examples will show that. The second illusion is that somehow we had access to options that we didn't select, that we couldn't possibly have. Determinism has nothing to do with it, it's just impossible. What would need to be the case is that we could select other options without the need for circumstances we didn't choose to be different in order to do so.
It just couldn't happen and again this is easy to check and see. The case is always that:
If circumstances I didn't choose had been appropriately different I would have done otherwise.
And in order for me to have done otherwise circumstances I didn't choose would have had to have been different.
There is luck there, good or bad and the illusion is to think it isn't there. We cannot have control that overcomes this luck. This changes our view of moral responsibility for the better and rightly so.
No but you are also wrong because you don’t grasp that the present is different from the past, we don’t make decisions today because of everything that has come before, we make decisions today because everything that came before happened but that doesn’t effect our decision in the present, because the present is not the past.
When you are building a brick wall it can go anywhere, irrelevant of the fact that it is made of bricks.
It’s pretty simply that if determinism was true, and we know that also reversion to the mean is also true, the we would be able to predict the future. Because everything would be predetermined, which apparently it is but clearly isn’t.
@@TheBenchPressMan
Determinism being true is a necessary condition of being able to predict the future with certainty, since there must be only one possible future to do that. But it's not a sufficient condition for at least 3 reasons. Perhaps it's impossible to have all the required information. Perhaps it's impossible to do the calculation in time. And lastly perhaps the result of the calculation will change what will happen.
Whether determinism is true or not, nobody knows. But it does seem certain that indeterminism cannot get us free will.
A person disagreeing with something doesn’t me he doesn’t understand it.
@@stephenlawrence4903 the third option is not an option by definition
@@Wtahc
Then you're defining options incorrectly. The thing to do is observe yourself making choices and check and see how you could select the options you reject.
Nice outro music.
The universe itself is not determined, neither are you determined. The only reason why humans assert that it is determined is because of our observation, which implies that simple things can only be examined when complex things aren't taken into consideration. Delve into those simple things, and you'll see they aren't simple at all.
Jordan Peterson is a fascinating guy. Often very frustrating to listen to, but 'fascinating nonetheless'.
I respect the fact that he conceded that there really is no way that anyone can make a logically viable argument for 'freewill' given what we know about neuroscience and immutable physical laws (cause and effect in particular) and other factors like genetics all working together in a completely methodological, predictable manner.
I've spent a considerable amount of time trying to figure out a way to somehow circumvent the aforementioned, but I have yet to accomplish that feat (which very well maybe impossible).
So... Peterson knows that the prospect of 'freewill is dubious.
He does very often 'conveniently forget' this when speaking to certain people.
One of the only things that ALWAYS remains consistent with him is his very eccentric obsession with Carl Jung and never failing to establish Jungian Psychology as some sort of axiomatic precept. Let's be honest. We all had our 'Carl Jung' phase. Jung was a fascinating guy. That being said, I don't LITERALLY think there's validity to his 'model of the psyche'.
I've seen so many Peterson videos, and it never fails. He always ensures to put an incredibly unessecary amount of emphasis on Jung.
He could be talking about anything. He could be discussing how to decorate his living room with his wife, and it wouldn't surprise me if he still manages somehow ensure that Carl Jung oriented commentary dominates the majority of the discourse.
'Well, wife. I understand that YOU want a Black leather couch, but have you ever considered what Carl Jung would want? You have to understand that in the 'world of archetypes' this leather couch has a completely different meaning and significance. You call it a leather couch. I call it a symbol of The 'Fallen Man yelling into the abyss for meaning. For what good is anything if Carnal Man does not realize his True 'God Concousness'. Allow me to read the Babonian Creation story in The Enuma Elish. I think this will help provide you perspective'.
Anyway. He is 'fascinating. Often frustrating, but... he really is a character.
I think you have the reality thing all backwards. There is no obligation or need for you or me to understand or be able to explain anything that happens in the natural world in order for it to exist. We experience our free will every moment of every day, so just because it is impossible for you to wrap your head around how this could possibly work within your conception of how the universe works, doesn't have any effect on this everyday reality. As Philip K Dick put so well, "Reality is that which, after you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
@@caricue well... any way you slice it, Peterson really is an interesting fellow. I'm sure THAT we can both agree upon.
@@YoungMommy14 Fine, if all else fails, I suppose agreement is marginally acceptable. Peterson is super smart and super interesting, but there is something seriously amiss in this incarnation of him. Peace.
@@caricue The following isn't the most relevant thing in the World.
That being said, I 'feel' as though Jordan Peterson can and hopefully will be a prominent 'voice' in 'bridging the divide between 'Left' and 'Right'.
You almost certainly think that I'm 'pulling your leg'.
I'm actually not, but I almost certainly AM being unrealistically 'hopefull'.
All I know, is we need more and more discourse between people on both sides without any government involvement (and without The Fringe Nutcases on either side).
Democrats putting their faith in Biden to manifest 'unity' was arguably one of the dumbest things that Left (or anyone) has ever done.
And I AM Left Wing (At least, I THINK I am... it's really hard to say in today's dynamic).
Anyway. The thing about Peterson he Uber-diplomatic. Sometimes to the point where you want to shake him and scream 'GET TO THE POINT'!
But, this 'eccentricity' of his is actuallya very good thing when it comes to 'sociopolitical' matters.
The truth is The Majority of Left Wing modererates (like myself) aren't nearly as different than Right Wing Moderates as most people think. One huge problem is that we're all terrified at the prospect of 'being canceled' if we speak out against 'foolishnes'.
Peterson can be helpful, because he's 'diplomatic' to the point where no one has the slightest idea where he stands 'politically (I'm not sure he knows).
So... I recognize that was off topic but i l honestly think I'm 'on to SOMETHING' (I sure hope I am). Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Sam Harris are also good in this regard.
I want to hear more from guys like this and less and less from Govt. Officials and Corporations that push 'wokeness' because it's lucrative.
@@caricue
*"We experience our free will every moment of every day"*
sounds like it's inescapable, which would make it deterministic.
KEvron
Determinism can only be established backwards. By standing on top of the pyramid looking down at all the building blocks that got you there. However, with all these factors 'known', you should also be able to predict the future. Or at least with a decent percentage of accuracy. They never seem to be able to. Also, on a casual side note, it takes away all (moral) agency from a person.
Very true, but the compute power needed to do that would be very far off. Even then you’d need a near infinite amount of detail about the person plugged into the computer to predict their outcome. You’d also need to know all the future events and without knowing the exact state of the universe and all prior states it’s not possible.
At the end of the day you can believe in determinism but it is also so infinitely complex does it even matter?
The world is a chaotic deterministic system. The level of disorder in the world will always be greater than the level of disorder we will be able to compute in a computer. Think of the world as one big computer. A computer within the world-computer cannot possibly be equally complex.
@@markusnygard6883 if complexity is infinite, could the simulated complexity also be infinite then ? just asking i could be wrong
@@markusnygard6883 mmmmmm thats not actually true
Given that Chaos theory shows that the simulation of every purely deterministic process depends intimately upon the numerical precision used to simulate such processes,.. that the use of a different precision will yield wildly different results,.. and that no one knows what is the correct numerical precision to use to mimic most any complex, iterative, physical process (that there is *_ALWAYS_* an inherent indeterminacy in just what is the best precision to use; too much precision leads to error, just like too little does also),.. I believe this leaves more than enough room for the indeterminacy of free will to reside within. Add also such qualities as moral courage, virtue, and valor,.. and that over time such qualities tend to be ever more self-reinforcing,... and, yes, I believe in free will,.. abridged perhaps,.. not libertarian free will,.. not a ghost in the machine free will,.. but how about a Daoist conception of free will in which every action is formed out of all of one's past actions,.. including one's acts of moral effort and/or indifference. To a substantial extent, we are all beings of self-made souls; not entirely free,.. but not entirely unfree or predetermined either.
Why one person's will breaks in Auschwitz, while another lives to tell their story,.. may well be largely, even substantially, outside their control,.. but *_entirely_* outside their control,.. that one person had no choice but to quit, while another had no choice but to persevere,.. I don't believe it,.. and I genuinely doubt Sam Harris believes this either.
If there is no free will, what utility does consciousness have then? Ignoring for the moment the amazing qualia of the phenomenon of consciousness which would certainly seem not to be reducible to the known laws of physics,.. why would nature create such an elaborate epiphenomena if it has no purpose,.. and what purpose could consciousness have *_except_* to inform free will so that free will can make well informed choices?
*_Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others._*
~ Aristotle
*_Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts._*
~ Aristotle
*_Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives -- choice, not chance, determines your destiny._*
~ Aristotle
*_Man is a goal seeking animal. His life only has meaning if he is reaching out and striving for his goals._*
~ Aristotle
*_First, have a definite, clear practical ideal; a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends; wisdom, money, materials, and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end._*
~ Aristotle
*_Anybody can become angry -- that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way -- that is not within everybody's power and is not easy._*
~ Aristotle
*_It was pride that changed angels into devils; it is humility that makes men as angels._*
~ Augustine of Hippo
*_Only he whose soul is in turmoil, forced to live in an epoch where war, violence and ideological tyranny threaten the life of every individual, and the most precious substance in that life, the freedom of the soul, can know how much courage, sincerity and resolve are required to remain faithful to his inner self in these times of the herd's rampancy. Only he knows that no task on earth is more burdensome and difficult than to maintain one's intellectual and moral independence and preserve it unsullied through a mass cataclysm. Only once he has endured the necessary doubt and despair within himself can the individual play an exemplary role in standing firm amidst the world's pandemonium._*
~ Stefan Zweig, _Montaigne_
this is definitely one of the most thoughtful youtube comments ive seen in a while
@@myusernameusedtobereallycr2075 Thank You!! Since I tend to agree with your comment,.. Here's a follow-up I hope you will enjoy as much. I am an eclectic, autistic, NT Rational, Libertarian, Deist, Daoist for whom my doubts are very very precious to me! I have become a cognitive dissonance junkie who has learned to enjoy my confusion as being among my highest sources of enjoyment?!? My doubts and fears feed me at least as much as my certainties and courage ever did,.. usually more!
*Who Loves God More...*
The one who seeks God for righteousness sake, or for salvation’s sake.
Over my years I have imagined myself in several religious fantasies. I’ve imagined myself at the Sanhedrin trial of Jesus en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanhedrin_trial_of_Jesus where I would ask my own questions of Jesus and of Caiaphas. I have also often asked myself if the following proposition were offered to me, should I accept it.
The proposition is that I agree to go to hell alone without even a tormentor for company, with no further possibility of achieving salvation, to be lost and forgotten by everyone, even by God; in exchange everyone else in hell achieves salvation. Even Satan and the one third of the angels that fell with him go back to God. Even the absolutely unrighteous get forgiven and go back to God. Notice that my question is not would I accept this proposition, but should I accept it. Would you? What do you think you should do if offered this choice. What would Jesus do, you think? I am asking, would you be willing to be the forgotten and neglected Christ who does not get to rise to Heaven or ever be praised for your sacrifice, but instead achieves salvation for everyone else, except yourself?
*_I have not served God from fear of hell for I should be a wretched hireling if I served Him from fear; nor from love of heaven for I should be a bad servant if I served for what is given; I have served Him only for love of Him and desire for Him._*
~ al-Hasan al-Basri (642-728)
When I was six and attending Baptist Sunday school, my class was given a lecture on heaven and hell, death and the afterlife. When the lecture was over, I asked, *Is there free will in the afterlife?* Apparently no one else had ever asked this question. I was told that, _No, there is no free will in the afterlife because then good deeds could be done in hell, while bad deeds could be done in heaven. But all that is already sorted out before anyone dies, so there is no room for moral agency after one is dead._ So then I asked, *If I don’t take my body with me, and I don’t take my free will with me, why am I supposed to care about having an afterlife at all?* The reaction I got was very surprising at the time, and at 66 it is still surprising. In response, I was told, _Don’t ask such silly questions, and stop being a smartass._ That was the end of the discussion.
It was not long before I made myself a prayer, which I have always kept in my heart and in my mind. *_Dear Lord, let it be your will that will direct my life. Not as I would choose, nor as any person would choose, nor as any religious text would choose, but as you, dear Lord, would choose for me. This being done, I am content._* I am now curious. Although I may dot my I’s and cross my T’s differently from you, in your own faith, do I sound like someone who would be damned for my honest trust and questions?
*_Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear._*
~ Thomas Jefferson
I believe that as a racist bigot must die to the person he has been when he hates, the unrighteous person must die to the person they have been before they can turn toward the one true God. Such a death is frightening because it requires one to abandon the only sense of identity one has ever had. It requires one to leap into an unknown stranger’s identity and to trust it will be better than what one has always known. For the fear of hell I could not do such a thing. I doubt many of us could. For the love of righteousness I can do such a thing easily. As naturally as a simple child loves and is loved by their parents.
The following is from what I hope will be on my gravestone so as to provoke a thoughtful reaction from anyone passing by in happenstance. I offer it now as a thoughtful alternative to an afterlife of merely heaven, hell, purgatory, reincarnation, or the many other imagined possibilities.
*The Lake*
*_It is said by some that there is a place where a bright, clear, mountain lake resides, a place where people of this world never visit. To attempt to describe it is possible, but all such tales are probably just fancy. Be that as it may, here is how it was described to me, in my sleep, by the spring rain, when I was still very small and trusting. I was very certain at the time that the rain had not lied or exaggerated, but as I grew older I came to doubt. This would seem to be our way. How sad._*
*_The rain told me that the air at the lake was fresh and clean and yet so thin that I would faint were I to be there. This lake was in the midst of a forest of giant pine trees that appeared to reach forever to the skies above. In contemplating these trees one would wonder if this lake were not really just a small puddle on the forest floor. But as all bodies of water were the same to my singing spring rain, I imagine these distinctions had simply gone unnoticed._*
*_There was something most remarkable about this lake. For I was told that all the souls of all the men & women & little children like myself washed through this water. There seemed to be some hint that all of life had passed by and was passing by this oasis whose place could not be named. As each new life was made, a handful of water was removed from the lake and placed within a mortal body. Day by day the water would be made purer or filthier as that life spent it’s limited time in the world. When that life was done, the water that had been given to it was returned to the lake as it's body was returned to dust._*
*_And such was how all the hope and travail of life would come to each new generation. Some would succeed more than it would seem they should and so returned to the lake the courage and celebration that they had made of their lives. Others learned the habit of fear and distrust in their lives when they were very young and so took very meanly of every opportunity as only a threat. They only returned water that was foul and putrid for what else did they ever know._*
*_And so I was told, that was how it was with me and everyone who ever had been, or was, or would be. Parts of me had passed through many lives and parts of me were utterly new and untried. Parts of me would live other lives again and others would be forever still when I was done. None of us was ever created entirely alone nor could we ever be, for like the air and water of this world, which we all communally use and of which our bodies are literally made, our souls are unique and yet all made of the same stuff. How many times would you have to draw water from a lake to draw the same handful? Or is it just a silly question? I don’t know. Somehow it just doesn’t seem to be a very important question now._*
*_What would be an important question anyway?_*
--- End of *The Lake* ---
I am asking the question *Why do I love God?* Do I stand before God with the attitude that he is the biggest, baddest, tyrant of all? Do I respect God for fear’s sake or for admiration’s sake? If I could serve God best by losing my own personal salvation, then should I?
I ask you… What is the prize?
---------------------------------------------
I wrote the above originally back in 1986, and while my views have evolved somewhat, I still substantially agree with what I stated above. I've been told that my greatest, and most dangerous heresy, is that I like God,... more than I love God, or fear God, or hate God,... I like God. I feel comfortable about God in the same manner that I am comfortable with all of existence. And my most happy and most selfish desire is to give myself to righteousness for it is only by submitting myself to that which is greater than myself can I ever hope to find myself at all. But what is righteousness? Is it submission to authority? And which authority do we submit to? Is it always the same standard of value in all cases, or does right and wrong depend upon the context always? Does morality require supernaturalism in order to be perfectly grounded? The thought that a repentant Nazi (with *_Gott mit uns_* on his belt buckle) went to Heaven while Anne Frank is in Hell makes my soul shudder. I regard God not as a wishing well, or a means not to die, and especially not as a guarantee that others will spend an eternity in hell and damnation,... but as the perfect embodiment of righteousness, whatever that may mean. God is my sign, my landmark, my goal, my thirst for truth, value, and what is right for it's own sake and not merely instrumental in gaining some personal advantage. As all mathematics rely upon the existence of axioms, which are self-evidently true statements requiring no further effort to prove,... I find that God is the necessary axiom from which every truth flows.
As a libertarian, my most fundamental value is free will. But, so long as there is free will, there will always be evil,... or, at least, the possibility of evil.
*_Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have._*
~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
I hope I've have given you something to consider,... and, as always, I would appreciate everyone's thoughts and comments in reply.
*"Add also such qualities as moral courage, virtue, and valor,.. and that over time such qualities tend to be ever more self-reinforcing,..."*
all of which are acquired deterministically and, which you tacitly concede, are deterministic, themselves.
KEvron
@@KEvronista Being Daoist, the whole random versus deterministic debate concerning _free will_ just strikes me as being off and representing equally false alternatives. Just because humanity knows of no alternatives between random versus deterministic first causes,.. doesn't mean that reality itself feels itself to be so constrained.
*_I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose._*
~ John Burdon Sanderson Haldane
I strongly suspect that _free will_ & _consciousness_ may well be as strange and mysterious as the mystery of how existence came to be at all in the first place. Either something has *_ALWAYS_* existed, or there was a time when nothing existed at all,.. and then there was a first cause of all existence where, apparently, there can be no first cause for the first cause.
Put another way,... in a purely deterministic universe, how can anyone be held morally responsible for either their good or bad actions?
@@davidhunt7427
*"Just because humanity knows of no alternatives between random versus deterministic first causes"*
fine, then it may be neither, but neither also excludes free will.
*"doesn't mean that reality itself feels itself to be so constrained."*
i would never make the claim that reality feels.
*"I strongly suspect that free will & consciousness may well be as strange and mysterious as the mystery of how existence came to be at all in the first place."*
you present your stance on free will as one predicated on affectation.
*"when nothing existed"*
nothing cannot exist, and there has never been a time when all matter did not exist.
KEvron
I love Pinocchio
I am a physicist and I will provide solid arguments that prove that consciousness cannot be generated by the brain (in my youtube channel you can find a video with more detailed explanations). Many argue that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain, but it is possible to show that such hypothesis is inconsistent with our scientific knowledges. In fact, it is possible to show that all the examples of emergent properties consists of concepts used to describe how an external object appear to our conscious mind, and not how it is in itself, which means how the object is independently from our observation. In other words, emergent properties are ideas conceived to describe or classify, according to arbitrary criteria and from an arbitrary point of view, certain processes or systems. In summary, emergent properties are intrinsically subjective, since they are conceptual models based on the arbitrary choice to focus on certain aspects of a system and neglet other aspects, such as microscopic structures and processes; emergent properties consist of ideas through which we describe how the external reality appears to our conscious mind: without a conscious mind, these ideas (= emergent properties) would not exist at all.
Here comes my first argument: arbitrariness, subjectivity, classifications and approximate descriptions, imply the existence of a conscious mind, which can arbitrarily choose a specific point of view and focus on certain aspects while neglecting others. It is obvious that consciousness cannot be considered an emergent property of the physical reality, because consciousenss is a preliminary necessary condition for the existence of any emergent property. We have then a logical contradiction. Nothing which presupposes the existence of consciousness can be used to try to explain the existence of consciousness.
Here comes my second argument: our scientific knowledge shows that brain processes consist of sequences of ordinary elementary physical processes; since consciousness is not a property of ordinary elementary physical processes, then a succession of such processes cannot have cosciousness as a property. In fact we can break down the process and analyze it step by step, and in every step consciousness would be absent, so there would never be any consciousness during the entire sequence of elementary processes. It must be also understood that considering a group of elementary processes together as a whole is an arbitrary choice. In fact, according to the laws of physics, any number of elementary processes is totally equivalent. We could consider a group of one hundred elementary processes or ten thousand elementary processes, or any other number; this choice is arbitrary and not reducible to the laws of physics. However, consciousness is a necessary preliminary condition for the existence of arbitrary choices; therefore consciousness cannot be a property of a sequence of elementary processes as a whole, because such sequence as a whole is only an arbitrary and abstract concept that cannot exist independently of a conscious mind.
Here comes my third argument: It should also be considered that brain processes consist of billions of sequences of elementary processes that take place in different points of the brain; if we attributed to these processes the property of consciousness, we would have to associate with the brain billions of different consciousnesses, that is billions of minds and personalities, each with its own self-awareness and will; this contradicts our direct experience, that is, our awareness of being a single person who is able to control the voluntary movements of his own body with his own will. If cerebral processes are analyzed taking into account the laws of physics, these processes do not identify any unity; this missing unit is the necessarily non-physical element (precisely because it is missing in the brain), the element that interprets the brain processes and generates a unitary conscious state, that is the human mind.
Here comes my forth argument: Consciousness is characterized by the fact that self-awareness is an immediate intuition that cannot be broken down or fragmented into simpler elements. This characteristic of consciousness of presenting itself as a unitary and non-decomposable state, not fragmented into billions of personalities, does not correspond to the quantum description of brain processes, which instead consist of billions of sequences of elementary incoherent quantum processes. When someone claims that consciousness is a property of the brain, they are implicitly considering the brain as a whole, an entity with its own specific properties, other than the properties of the components. From the physical point of view, the brain is not a whole, because its quantum state is not a coherent state, as in the case of entangled systems; the very fact of speaking of "brain" rather than many cells that have different quantum states, is an arbitrary choice. This is an important aspect, because, as I have said, consciousness is a necessary preliminary condition for the existence of arbitrariness. So, if a system can be considered decomposable and considering it as a whole is an arbitrary choice, then it is inconsistent to assume that such a system can have or generate consciousness, since consciousness is a necessary precondition for the existence of any arbitrary choice. In other words, to regard consciousness as a property ofthe brain, we must first define what the brain is, and to do so we must rely only on the laws of physics, without introducing arbitrary notions extraneous to them; if this cannot be done, then it means that every property we attribute to the brain is not reducible to the laws of physics, and therefore such property would be nonphysical. Since the interactions between the quantum particles that make up the brain are ordinary interactions, it is not actually possible to define the brain based solely on the laws of physics. The only way to define the brain is to arbitrarily establish that a certain number of particles belong to it and others do not belong to it, but such arbitrariness is not admissible. In fact, the brain is not physically separated from the other organs of the body, with which it interacts, nor is it physically isolated from the external environment, just as it is not isolated from other brains, since we can communicate with other people, and to do so we use physical means, for example acoustic waves or electromagnetic waves (light). This necessary arbitrariness in defining what the brain is, is sufficient to demonstrate that consciousness is not reducible to the laws of physics. Besides, since the brain is an arbitrary concept, and consciousness is the necessary preliminary condition for the existence of arbitrariness, consciousness cannot be a property of the brain.
Based on these considerations, we can exclude that consciousness is generated by brain processes or is an emergent property of the brain. Marco Biagini
Apparently the only explanation that satisfies as to how Consciousness arises is Supernaturalism.
@@davidhunt7427 My point is that if we rationally analize our scientific knowledges about cerebral processes, on the basis of the laws of physics, we understand that the hypothesis that consciousness is an emergent property of such processes is inconsistent. It is worth considering that the current laws of physics explain with great accuracy all chemical and biological processes, including cerebral processes. Devolopments in physics are expected to refer to high energy processes or cosmology, but it is unreasonable to hypothesize that we will find new laws of physics that will change our descriptions of biological processes. The point is that we do not need new laws of physics to explain biological and cerebral processes, because such processes are perfectly reducible to the current laws of physics, while consciousness is not. Consciousness is irreducible to cerebral processes and to the laws of physics; the only rational explanation for the existence of consciousness is that an immaterial/unphysical element exists in us and interacts with cerebral processes, and consciousness is the result of such interaction.
The nature of such unphysical element and of its interaction with the brain cannot be investigated through the scientific method, since it is not physical. Therefore, the problem to establish the nature of such unphysical element does not belong to the scientific domain, but to the metaphysical/phylosophical/religious domain. As a christian, I identify such unphysical element with the soul.
@@marcobiagini1878 Just curious,.. but how is your entire statement not equivalent to saying that the only explanation that satisfies as to how Consciousness arises is Supernaturalism? Or, at the very least, it requires physics Humanity presently has no understanding of.
@@davidhunt7427 Well, I have never used the word "supernaturalism". Personally, I find the idea of the soul as the only fully convincing explanation. However, I know that some people would disagree and some would say that we need some new physics.
@@davidhunt7427 When I had a waking grand mal seizure I was aware of my brain malfunctioning. We are separate from our brain. There was me thinking clearly while my brain was not working.
There is a plot of how interesting his lectures sound with time.
Initially you are blown by his ideas, the more you listen the more interesting it gets and then it hits that point where he starts talking shit and it's all downhill from there.
You're saying nothing he said in this video is worth listening to? (Sorry for doing a Cathy Newman)
@@giftedguitarist161 so you're saying that Cathy newman isnt respectable because she's female???? (Im jk)
Couldn't have put it better myself
that is exactly how I feel
Hakuna Matata , guys
Do you think we evolve to have a consciousness so that we could protect or destroy ourselves? It seems to me the evolution of our consciousness and ego was a response to pain. We either have the choice or the illusion of choice to use our environment to our benefit to reduce pain.
The survival of the fittest argument states that life evolves to beat its competition so that it may outlive its competition. The human ego often attaches an assumption to this argument: that life *wants* to live. The reality is that life is bound to a path of competition by necessity, not because it actually has any underlying greater reason to survive. Humans like to attach purpose to life, but ultimately any purpose you have is set in motion by the mere circumstantial competition. It is just as valid to argue that consciousness evolved so that we may end ourselves, as it is to argue consciousness evolved so that we may better ourselves. A conscious desire to live is perhaps nothing more than pattern recognition echoing the competitive nature of our DNA. It follows that our body as a unit lives and dies at the whim of instinctual competition, not free will.
I find this debate of free will to be another one of these situations where scientists have a great theory and big words that simply are not applicable to the real world. Free will should be an obvious conclusion. As Jordan stated, what basis would be have for justice? What grounds do we have for merit in education or sports? And what about instances when individuals act directly in opposition to their "determined" path? George Price is a great example of this.
The basis for justice would be, this person has no free will therefore they are liable to do what they did again and the thing they did is something we don't want happening because it's bad for us so we have to deal with them. Same with sports and education, people who have a knack for things will excel at them and people who don't are forced by the will of another person i.e their teachers to do classwork just like we do now. And people who act in opposition to their determined path aren't actually doing so, they are acting in opposition to the path that other people think is determined for them because of how they see reality. Even if you try to disprove determinism by intentionally deciding to do something in opposition to what you want to do, you're only thinking that because someone has told you about determinism and your brain is disagreeing with it. If you were never made aware of the concept of determinism you wouldn't be trying to disprove it
@@arletottens6349 Effective is not the argument, Justice is based on retribution and punishment. This can only be effective with those who are able to be rehabilitated therefore establishing free will as a necessary component to things such as prison and rehabilitation programs. If this were not the case then the death penalty would only be necessary for all criminals as their nature dictates they have no choice or potential to decide to act against their nature in the future.
When somebody acts" in opposition to their determined path" we should assume they were determined to do it. We don't have free will.
How things rightly change as a result is where it gets interesting.
*"what basis would be have for justice?"*
preference, of course, which is acquired deterministically.
*"What grounds do we have for merit in education or sports?"*
again: preference.
*"And what about instances when individuals act directly in opposition to their "determined" path?"*
whatever path is ultimately taken, the choice one makes is of preference.
KEvron
@@cohendavidson3510 just because free will doesnt exist doesnt mean people cant change. We undoubtedly have the capacity for change but not of our own agency
"vs"
Determinism 🆚 Free Will
czcams.com/video/vCGtkDzELAI/video.html
(10 minute video | Crash Course # 24)
@@platoscavealum902 nice spooks, tovarisch.
🇷🇺 Товарищ Max , excuse my ignorance, what do you mean?
What was with the weird ending?
Just because humans believe that way doesn’t constitute evidence that it is that way 2:20