Some people are likely to pass off Chomsky's mysterianism on the grounds of, "Hey, don't worry, we'll just build a bigger telescope or microscope or gravity wave detector and then we'll have things all figured out." In another video Chomsky uses the example of a rat running a maze based on prime numbers; e.g., the only way for the rat to exit the maze is for it make a turn at every pathway represented by a prime number. You'll never be able to teach a rat to do that, it's just not within its comprehension, Chomsky says. And we may be just like the rat, only with a much more difficult "maze."
one possible difference is that there are so many things humans understand now that we didn't understand in the past-how to fly, why an apple falls down instead of up, etc. In contrast, rats have basically the same amount of knowledge now as they ever have. It seems we have a unique ability to learn more and more and surpass naturally imposed knowledge limitations. Im not necessarily disagreeing with Chomsky's point, but I'm also not sure the comparison is sound.
@@Dela0083 "surpass naturally imposed knowledge limitations" What do you mean by this? I'm guessing the knowledge we have gained through the centuries is extremely narrow when compared to all the possible things that are knowable (or not knowable) by any other kind of intelligence, if that makes sense. It must be the case if we're simply creatures of the earth like everything else. For instance I think we're closer to other organisms of the earth than we might think, as a guess I'd say we only understand slightly more than say a rat if you compared both of our species' knowledge to everything that's possible to know.
@@cp9105 whose to say the rats might not be in our position if a few things in the past changed so that they evolved instead of us? A side point sorry, but either argument to me sounds like claims to know the future which we ultimately don't. We have no idea what we'll learn or how much or how little we will grow.
@@Dela0083 Eh not so fast! Actually we still don't understand why apples go down and not up - that's part of what he is saying. What Newton showed is that we have to accept the explanatory framework but that doesn't mean we understand reality. We just call "falling" a part of "gravity" or whatever "explanations" Einstein and quantum weirdness added. Also, Marc left out something Chomsky always includes when he talks about prime number mazes. Namely: rats are pretty good at running mazes - and they do learn. Now, just as an exercise, scale it up to the level of complexity of our minds. We are just big rats scurrying around a maze with corners set at gravitational or relativistic or quantum or consciousness intervals etc.
I think I have to agree with Noam, we simply don't know if Free Will exists or not, but I think I fall more on the side of determinism, but I can't claim to know for sure if that's entirely true.
I cannot see how free will makes any sense. If we are determinists, as in causes create effects, then we know free will doesn’t exist. If we believe things are random, nothing causes anything. That is not free will either. If we mix both determinism plus randomness, that is just a mix of finding yourself at a point because it was predetermined, or that a random event occurred along that chain. You still didn’t author any of those events yourself. You were at the end of those events. Let’s move onto thinking. Or the idea that we author our thoughts, so that is an argument for free will. When a thought appears in your head, it does just that, appears. One doesn’t decide to think the thought. If you decide to think the thought, that means you think to think the thought. It requires that you think the thought twice. Firstly you decide to think about something (that is you think the thought), then you proceed to think the thought. It makes no sense what so ever. This is not our experience with thinking. And besides, where did the first thought come from? What actually happens is your thoughts simply appear from the dark. We have no idea where they come from, but they do appear. How about decision making? Let’s look at that case. When you decide to pick between two glasses of water, with exactly the same amount of water, from the same tap, etc. basically identical glasses. You mill over the decision for an hour, but simply cannot make a solid judgment on which one you like more. So you decide to just pick the one on the left. Why did you pick the one on the left?Ask yourself that question. Well if it truely were done on a whim, you don’t know why you picked it. You simply picked it. That is not free will. Not knowing why you did something is not an expression of free will. Free will implied that you authored the event, you made a choice based on preference. You acted based on your desires. However we’ve clearly described a situation where you thought it through and had no desire for one glass or the other. You hence then can not explain why you picked the glass. It is random. However, maybe though you picked the glass on the left, because the sun was bouncing off that glass into your eye. So you wanted to stop that, and picked the left glass. That is determinism. You did it because of something. If you went back in time, were sitting in exactly the same place, had the sun shining in your eye, didn’t like the sun in your eye just as much as the first time it happened, you would still grab the glass on the left. Free will is a non-sensical term.
@@saganworshipper6062 Sagan is your god, you're just another puny irrelevant speck of dust in the universe licking the sweaty nustsack of another speck.
It is interest for the fascist, consumer society to make you think that you are only a machine, you have no purpose but to "exist" so buy their products to survive and reproduce. And is far more easier to control such a depressive sensless mass without any values or standards.
@@synth1002 i have the same feeling. it's interesting that many of the loudest detractors of free will come from the imperialist core. Sam Harris needs you to not believe free will is real to push his sick liberal idealogy onto the world. Of course a man who lives a largely autonomous life, where all his luxury and lifestyle is built on the backs of others wants you to believe this. And so many of these moronic ideas are from misreadings of the Buddhist texts.
The way I explained fields (which cause forces outside of contact) was by holding two sheets of papers and waving one so that the other moved with the air. So I explained that, if we spoke with peoples without a conception of air and wind, this would seem spooky. The same is true for electric and magnetic fields (and the rest). They are something that is there, and although it’s hard to sense we have succeeded in understanding. I cannot honestly agree with Chomsky in maintaining what baffled people 300 years ago. However, it is also impossible for me to believe that anyone thinks they have no will of their own.
What's weird is that there doesn't seem to be any gravitational field that anyone has found so far. We would have flying cars and hoverboards if there was.
well for many people magnetism and electric forces are counterintuitive and when people explain it they often explain it with things like rubber bands, which relies on the very mechanics you try to explain to them, which makes it a bad explanation. our intuition depends on our daily life. magnetic forces, action at a distance isnt part of that. technically it ofc is but not in a way we perceive or realize it instantly. there is a level where you just accept the basic forces, and around that you build your theory of magnetism etc. peoples daily life experience scale doesnt allow for a real understanding of magnetism. ofc you can understand the theory but not the fundamental basics.
Free will exists in quantium physics through the isolated quantium spin of particles, this is one of the basic rules of quantium physics, and the guy in the begining said somthing about how free will would not make sence due to our understanding of the universe..... it really annoys me how this guy thinks he understands the universe just because he has a basic understanding of classical mechanics yet COMPLETELY OVERLOOKS the entire field of quantium physics....
+devin okeefe; Quantum physics is irrelevant to free will. Even if randomness does lie at the bottom of some of our decisions, still there's no room for such a thing as free will, which is a totally incoherent concept to begin with, like asking "what is north of north pole?" Whether or not god plays dice, we no more have free will than a rock or a river have it.
The uncertainty principle is an algorithm that results in randomness. You can't use quantum principles as an argument for free will as they do not support the notion at all.
+Haspdfposadf Hpsadonifaidf Maybe... but it's 21st century. Even so, there were better ideas about free will in the 20th century than a shoulder shrug and "we don't know"
+cgm778 Does that make those ideas any more true? I'd be more satisfied with not knowing than to believe some nonsense because "it's better than nothing".
I cannot see how free will makes any sense. If we are determinists, as in causes create effects, then we know free will doesn’t exist. If we believe things are random, nothing causes anything. That is not free will either. If we mix both determinism plus randomness, that is just a mix of finding yourself at a point because it was predetermined, or that a random event occurred along that chain. You still didn’t author any of those events yourself. You were at the end of those events. Let’s move onto thinking. Or the idea that we author our thoughts, so that is an argument for free will. When a thought appears in your head, it does just that, appears. One doesn’t decide to think the thought. If you decide to think the thought, that means you think to think the thought. It requires that you think the thought twice. Firstly you decide to think about something (that is you think the thought), then you proceed to think the thought. It makes no sense what so ever. This is not our experience with thinking. And besides, where did the first thought come from? What actually happens is your thoughts simply appear from the dark. We have no idea where they come from, but they do appear. How about decision making? Let’s look at that case. When you decide to pick between two glasses of water, with exactly the same amount of water, from the same tap, etc. basically identical glasses. You mill over the decision for an hour, but simply cannot make a solid judgment on which one you like more. So you decide to just pick the one on the left. Why did you pick the one on the left?Ask yourself that question. Well if it truely were done on a whim, you don’t know why you picked it. You simply picked it. That is not free will. Not knowing why you did something is not an expression of free will. Free will implied that you authored the event, you made a choice based on preference. You acted based on your desires. However we’ve clearly described a situation where you thought it through and had no desire for one glass or the other. You hence then can not explain why you picked the glass. It is random. However, maybe though you picked the glass on the left, because the sun was bouncing off that glass into your eye. So you wanted to stop that, and picked the left glass. That is determinism. You did it because of something. If you went back in time, were sitting in exactly the same place, had the sun shining in your eye, didn’t like the sun in your eye just as much as the first time it happened, you would still grab the glass on the left. Free will is a non-sensical term.
@@scoogsy If you want to have some different opinions, read the answers to the following question: www.quora.com/What-are-some-valid-criticisms-of-Galen-Strawsons-argument-The-Impossibility-of-Moral-Responsibility That Engel guy imo doesn't have much to say tough
so it seems to me that the way to have rebots do interesting things is, to allow them to ask questions, and to have them live in a conflicted world. the dissonance caused by so many contradictions in our way of trying to explain the world along with a bunch of randomization can make for a good several interesting parallel realities...probably... just a random thought and by definition at least 95% of the population will misinterpret it or totally not understand it.maybe 90...whatever
If we decide that there is no free will, should we not hold people responsible for their actions? That question is hilarious. It assumes that we have the free will to decide what to do about not having free will.
I cannot see how free will makes any sense. If we are determinists, as in causes create effects, then we know free will doesn’t exist. If we believe things are random, nothing causes anything. That is not free will either. If we mix both determinism plus randomness, that is just a mix of finding yourself at a point because it was predetermined, or that a random event occurred along that chain. You still didn’t author any of those events yourself. You were at the end of those events. Let’s move onto thinking. Or the idea that we author our thoughts, so that is an argument for free will. When a thought appears in your head, it does just that, appears. One doesn’t decide to think the thought. If you decide to think the thought, that means you think to think the thought. It requires that you think the thought twice. Firstly you decide to think about something (that is you think the thought), then you proceed to think the thought. It makes no sense what so ever. This is not our experience with thinking. And besides, where did the first thought come from? What actually happens is your thoughts simply appear from the dark. We have no idea where they come from, but they do appear. How about decision making? Let’s look at that case. When you decide to pick between two glasses of water, with exactly the same amount of water, from the same tap, etc. basically identical glasses. You mill over the decision for an hour, but simply cannot make a solid judgment on which one you like more. So you decide to just pick the one on the left. Why did you pick the one on the left?Ask yourself that question. Well if it truely were done on a whim, you don’t know why you picked it. You simply picked it. That is not free will. Not knowing why you did something is not an expression of free will. Free will implied that you authored the event, you made a choice based on preference. You acted based on your desires. However we’ve clearly described a situation where you thought it through and had no desire for one glass or the other. You hence then can not explain why you picked the glass. It is random. However, maybe though you picked the glass on the left, because the sun was bouncing off that glass into your eye. So you wanted to stop that, and picked the left glass. That is determinism. You did it because of something. If you went back in time, were sitting in exactly the same place, had the sun shining in your eye, didn’t like the sun in your eye just as much as the first time it happened, you would still grab the glass on the left. Free will is a non-sensical term.
You have zero idea what you're talking about. You're literally presupposing determinism to be true, and then deriving from that the "fact" that free will doesn't exist. No shit, Sherlock; that's what's called "assuming the conclusion", also known as "begging the question", or more colloquially as "circular reasoning". What you're e.g. fallaciously doing in the example of the glasses is to look for a cause for picking one glass over the other and discrediting "on a whim" as not representing free will; in reality, that's exactly what free will is. It's literally that "you", whatever "you" really are, are the one making a choice, and that you can't trace the cause back other than at best to some combination of that free will and a partially deterministic reality (just like a computer). That is not to say that determinism is impossible, but free will certainly is not impossible either. What Chomsky says is what's entirely true: we have zero idea whether reality is fully deterministic or whether we somehow have some degree of free will.
@@hoon_sol I’m not sure what position you hold here. Forget what Chomsky said, and just focus on the argument I presented against free will. Also, perhaps if we are to continue this conversation you can drop the sarcasm and rudeness. It wastes a lot of time. Firstly, where did I state determinism was real? I didn’t. I described what happens if determinism applies to a “choice”, and then compared it to what happens with a random “choice”. You also seem to completely ignore the infinite regress I highlighted, about having to think a thought before you think it (and think the thinking of thought before you think it, continue to infinity), which is seemingly what free will demands if we are to be the authors of our own thoughts. But let’s focus on the picking something on a whim. That is having no prior knowledge of why you picked the glass, or exercising a preference when picking a glass of water. Simply picking at random. Not knowing why something occurred is not exercising free will, at least by any common conception of the concept of free will. It in effect just happened. You can’t inspect why you picked the glass, you have no idea why you picked it. If you knew why you picked it, that is just determinism again. What free will is someone exercising by seeing their hand reach out toward a glass without having any idea why they selected that glass?
@@scoogsy: I'm not "holding any position", I'm explaining the facts to you. Those facts are, primarily: 1) We have zero idea whether or not free will exists. 2) Your reasoning for dismissing the existence of free will is completely fallacious and unsound. Also, all you did was set up a false dichotomy between determinism and randomness; that leaves out the third possibility: choice (i.e. free will). And no, I didn't ignore what you said about thoughts at all, I implicitly addressed it by addressing what you said about the glass, because they're essentially the exact same. As Chomsky repeatedly points out, there are numerous experiments that show that the neural activity associated with e.g. picking a glass occurs before the choice to do so becomes conscious, even though even that is nebulous. In other words, all this tells us, as Chomsky also repeatedly makes clear, is that most (if not all) choices (if free will exists) are made subconsciously, not that free will necessarily doesn't exist. In other words, whenever you become conscious of a thought, it's absolutely a possibility that you did indeed choose to have that thought by using free will. There's no infinite regress there of any sort. Then you again repeat the fallacy I explicitly pointed out, namely to consider picking something "on a whim" as being random. That is totally false. Doing something "on a whim" is an expression of free will, not of randomness; it indicates choice, i.e. that you choose to do it. You are, just like I said, desperately trying to find causation behind choice, not realizing that these are mutually exclusive. If you are doing something deterministically due to a prior cause, then that is by definition not choice. If free will exists, it happens because you choose to do it, and that itself is the cause. The fallaciousness of your reasoning becomes abundantly clear at the end of your last paragraph, where you write: "What free will is someone exercising by seeing their hand reach out toward a glass without having any idea why they selected that glass?" This is the most hilarious attempt at passing off circular reasoning as legitimate I've seen in a while. If free will is true, someone is not just "seeing their hand reach out", they are the ones choosing to reach out. Again you try to frame it in terms of causation instead of choice, because you're not even trying to understand the alternative. It's not that you wouldn't have any idea why you selected the glass, but that it would be framed in terms of choice instead. Why did you choose that glass? Because it felt completely arbitrary, and you simply chose to reach out to the one closest to your dominant hand to preserve energy. Why did you choose a glass at all? Because you were thirsty, and chose to quench your thirst. Why did you choose to preserve energy and quench your thirst? Because those actions are conducive to survival, and you choose to remain alive. In other words, you can see that under such a conception, where free will exists, everything begins with choice. Causes are not determined a chain of prior causes; in fact, that is what ironically leads to the infinite regress you're trying to avoid. What we call "causes" would rather be choices, and the "chain" of such choices would be determined in a recursive and hierarchical manner dating back to the very choice to exist at all. In fact, logically speaking, this is actually the only way to avoid infinite regress, so going purely by what seems to be necessarily true by virtue of metaphysical reasoning about how reality itself must necessarily work, it rather appears that free will not only exists, but actually must exist, and on top of that be the fundamental driving force behind absolutely all of reality. This is in fact the exact conclusion many philosophers have reached, perhaps most famously Schopenhauer. In more recent times, Chris Langan echoes the same sentiment in more rigorous terms: *_«While a complete set of laws would amount to a complete deterministic history of the universe, calling the universe "completely deterministic" amounts to asserting the existence of prior determinative constraints. But this is a logical absurdity, since if these constraints were real, they would be included in reality rather than prior or external to it (by the containment principle). It follows that the universe freely determines its own constraints, the establishment of nomology and the creation of its physical (observable) content being effectively simultaneous and recursive. The incoversive distribution of this relationship is the basis of free will, by virtue of which the universe is freely created by sentient agents existing within it.»_* He also points out what I mentioned above (albeit in the dense language of his own model, which requires some study), namely that reality itself must quite literally choose to exist, since this is the only way to get such a recursive structure going, due to the fact that deterministic causation will always lead to infinite regress: *_«According to the Reality Principle, the universe is self-contained, and according to infocognitive monism, it regresses to a realm of nil constraint (unbound telesis or UBT) from which it must refine itself. According to the Telic Principle, which states that the universe must provide itself with the means to do this, it must make and realize its own "choice to exist"; by reason of its absolute priority, this act of choice is identical to that which is chosen, i.e. the universe itself, and thus reflexive. I.e., "existence is everywhere the choice to exist."»_*
@@hoon_sol I think we are talking past one another. Here are a couple of questions for you: 1. Explain what you mean by choice, and how as you imply (by being a third choice) it separates itself from determinism or randomness 2. In your words what does free will mean? I think if we can define these concepts clearly, we can start to understand where our disagreement is and hopefully land on a shared understanding.
If there is no free will, then perhaps jealousy is irrational, but the inclination of a human being with fewer material goods to covet and desire to take from another human with more material goods, becomes another attribute of the physical universe. Much like a high-energy water molecule seeks to liberate itself from the surface of a lake and evaporate into air. The "seeking" here is of course a metaphor. Tl;dr socialism is compatible with determinism, understood as a physical attribute of a system that moves from a state of high economic inequality to one of low economic inequality.
I would argue that determinism does not rule out free will, but demands it. If the information we use for making a decision happened in the past, which we have accepted in some (most) scientific theories,. Therefore, conclusions will differ depending on when we get the information and whether irrational logic was used to process the information. This would apply to all animals, machines, when and what the information is, and how long the transformation of the information took to be transmitted, as well as the irrationality of the decision making processes. This does not rule out nature's laws always being consistent. It only requires not having all information simultaneously. We are human and humans will err, of this we can be sure. Since we don't have a definition of time and of simultaneous events it is information which has not come to all of us at this time and it never will. This conjecture does not place free will and "cause and effect" as being exclusionary. If we consider Gauss's statement that a correct electromagnetic theory will have to consider the information of potential (energy) from the past. The puzzle fits together in a more rational manner. This theory was subsequently used by Gerber to predict the perihelion of mercury with an amazing accuracy. The scientists of that age had free will to reject it, which most chose to do, regardless of its accuracy. We are, simply, free to err, and it is our decision which is generally more often our illogical preference based on false or illogical conclusions already made. Often it is justified as intuition.
Richard Alsenz I cannot see how free will makes any sense. If we are determinists, as in causes create effects, then we know free will doesn’t exist. If we believe things are random, nothing causes anything. That is not free will either. If we mix both determinism plus randomness, that is just a mix of finding yourself at a point because it was predetermined, or that a random event occurred along that chain. You still didn’t author any of those events yourself. You were at the end of those events. Let’s move onto thinking. Or the idea that we author our thoughts, so that is an argument for free will. When a thought appears in your head, it does just that, appears. One doesn’t decide to think the thought. If you decide to think the thought, that means you think to think the thought. It requires that you think the thought twice. Firstly you decide to think about something (that is you think the thought), then you proceed to think the thought. It makes no sense what so ever. This is not our experience with thinking. And besides, where did the first thought come from? What actually happens is your thoughts simply appear from the dark. We have no idea where they come from, but they do appear. How about decision making? Let’s look at that case. When you decide to pick between two glasses of water, with exactly the same amount of water, from the same tap, etc. basically identical glasses. You mill over the decision for an hour, but simply cannot make a solid judgment on which one you like more. So you decide to just pick the one on the left. Why did you pick the one on the left?Ask yourself that question. Well if it truely were done on a whim, you don’t know why you picked it. You simply picked it. That is not free will. Not knowing why you did something is not an expression of free will. Free will implied that you authored the event, you made a choice based on preference. You acted based on your desires. However we’ve clearly described a situation where you thought it through and had no desire for one glass or the other. You hence then can not explain why you picked the glass. It is random. However, maybe though you picked the glass on the left, because the sun was bouncing off that glass into your eye. So you wanted to stop that, and picked the left glass. That is determinism. You did it because of something. If you went back in time, were sitting in exactly the same place, had the sun shining in your eye, didn’t like the sun in your eye just as much as the first time it happened, you would still grab the glass on the left. Free will is a non-sensical term.
Yes, greatest thinker of the 20th century and even the greatest going into the 21st thus far. However, also, Noam Chomsky is one of the greatest thinkers of the last 2500 years since Plato and dawn of western philosophy.
X-Files Native American human beings think that "free will" means freedom to appreciate this paradise planet lifeboat and the miraculous works of fine art called "life" that inhabit it. And not be imprisoned and enslaved by alien vampires (greed) and their ignorance (hate). But the hostile evangelical vampires think That "free will" means freedom to suck the joy out of life and devour the planet like a ravenous cancer. And freedom to imprison and enslave humans.
Although I never heard him say it explicitly, I'm gonna go WAY out on a limb here and speculate he is kinda like Jesus Christ on that point. In other words, why not just be ethical even if you are not, or especially if you are not, compelled to be ethical.
Our immediate experience tells us the Earth is flat, that the Earth is the center of the Universe, there are only 3 dimensions of space and that matter is substantial. Why should I believe my impression that free will exists? just like most other impressions on our senses, free will is probably an illusion.
ॐ Jordan Gould I cannot see how free will makes any sense. If we are determinists, as in causes create effects, then we know free will doesn’t exist. If we believe things are random, nothing causes anything. That is not free will either. If we mix both determinism plus randomness, that is just a mix of finding yourself at a point because it was predetermined, or that a random event occurred along that chain. You still didn’t author any of those events yourself. You were at the end of those events. Let’s move onto thinking. Or the idea that we author our thoughts, so that is an argument for free will. When a thought appears in your head, it does just that, appears. One doesn’t decide to think the thought. If you decide to think the thought, that means you think to think the thought. It requires that you think the thought twice. Firstly you decide to think about something (that is you think the thought), then you proceed to think the thought. It makes no sense what so ever. This is not our experience with thinking. And besides, where did the first thought come from? What actually happens is your thoughts simply appear from the dark. We have no idea where they come from, but they do appear. How about decision making? Let’s look at that case. When you decide to pick between two glasses of water, with exactly the same amount of water, from the same tap, etc. basically identical glasses. You mill over the decision for an hour, but simply cannot make a solid judgment on which one you like more. So you decide to just pick the one on the left. Why did you pick the one on the left?Ask yourself that question. Well if it truely were done on a whim, you don’t know why you picked it. You simply picked it. That is not free will. Not knowing why you did something is not an expression of free will. Free will implied that you authored the event, you made a choice based on preference. You acted based on your desires. However we’ve clearly described a situation where you thought it through and had no desire for one glass or the other. You hence then can not explain why you picked the glass. It is random. However, maybe though you picked the glass on the left, because the sun was bouncing off that glass into your eye. So you wanted to stop that, and picked the left glass. That is determinism. You did it because of something. If you went back in time, were sitting in exactly the same place, had the sun shining in your eye, didn’t like the sun in your eye just as much as the first time it happened, you would still grab the glass on the left. Free will is a non-sensical term.
Yes, yes, yes!! Thank you! That's what I wanted to say. He just dismisses every argument with "I know that I have free will, if we can't explain it who cares" and it's astoundingly silly in my opinion. So many things seemed self evident to us and they turned out to be bs. He also says "yeah you have proven scientifically that you can predict what I'm going to do next before I am consciously aware of it but that doesn't say anything about free will, it only says that your brain decides unconsciously for you" excuse me, what?! Isn't that the definition of a proof that free will doesn't exist? I don't get it...
@@SteveRayDarrell Chomsky clearly explains the reasoning for his argument is that there is absolutely no concrete evidence for determinism, and he never makes the claim free will is a scientific truth. There is concrete evidence that the earth is flat. There is not evidence that suggests the universe is deterministic, therefore, it's more rational to conclude what our personal perception tells us where no other evidence is available. Chomsky clearly explains this. How you fail to make this distinction is laughably retarded. Open your ears and try to learn something.
Chomsky clearly explains the reasoning for his argument is that there is absolutely no concrete evidence for determinism, and he never makes the claim free will is a scientific truth. There is concrete evidence that the earth is flat. There is not evidence that suggests the universe is deterministic, therefore, it's more rational to conclude what our personal perception tells us where no other evidence is available. Chomsky clearly explains this. How you fail to make this distinction is laughably retarded. Open your ears and try to learn something.
We don't experience free will if we pay attention to our immediate experience. What Chomsky says is he's not going to select the other options. Well, no reason to think he's free to in the actual circumstances then. It actually seems like he isn't. On the experience others report they report weighing up their options and acting on the bases. Well that's what we do but again, no reason to think we are free to select the options we don't select in the actual circumstances. Bottom line is we are fated to select the option we do and that matches the experience. This is all known. The debate goes on becauae people don't accept the conclusion and think there must be something we don't understand yet.
You're literally just reasoning circularly, assuming that determinism is true in the first place. If one were to assume that free will exists instead, then there would be no reason to think Chomsky wouldn't be free to express something else, and the bottom line is that we wouldn't be "fated" to do anything in that case. It's hilariously false that determinism being true is "all known"; it's absolutely not known whatsoever. Even more hilarious is that you seemingly think your extremely limited primate mind is entitled to understand the truth of the matter. It's rather ironic, almost poetically so.
the question for me is NOT: do humans have free will RIGHT NOW? rather it should be: is free will an acheivable state? i would say yes it is. that should be the focus.
The interviewer is blowing past very simple buy profound insights about the impact of the Newtonian revolution. Most people think the world can be explained; Chomsky is saying that Newton proved it can't and that the philosophy of science, ever since, has been forced to deal with that. Somehow, we are not taught that when we study the scientific revolution. Also, Chomsky states (and rightly so, in my opinion) that human beings are biological organisms with scope and limit. I realize the interviewer is making a point/asking a question and needs to move along with the interview and that Chomsky himself doesn't obsess over these points - he just regards them as facts and continues to do science in those constraints - but I get blown away by that every time I hear him say it. I am not a scientist or academic but I get the sense that these elementary points are just missed to the detriment of cognitive science including psychology.
I like this guy. He seems to speak honestly, passionately and from an academics perspective. The trap that many scientists fall into is that everything in nature and the universe is only maths, rules and laws. But they miss several considerations. The fact that because nature in all its complexity has evolved to produce life, and it's because of this complexity that life is presented with choices within their environments. Are these choices chance only? Does life make these choices involuntarily only? Or does life allow us to learn from our choices to help us make better ones in order to improve our quality of life, chances for survival, and to evolve as a life form. Certainly we aren't forced to make good choices even though we know some may be better for us. Some know that smoking is harmful and may kill you, yet some make the choice to do it anyway. This is free will. If one person decides to quit and another smokes themselves to death what would you call it. This is free will as we've defined it. The truth is it's all of the above. Some choices life is presented with are by chance and are made randomly, and some choices presented are made instinctively particularly in the early stages of life. But with our species in particular we learn from our choices (hopefully) if we live long enough. We recognize things that work and things that don't in order to live better and attain desirable outcomes within the context of our lives and environments. We learn things that give us pleasure and often make choices to do these things even though they may not improve anything in our lives other than our happiness or how we feel. Life in the universe seems to be a wildcard. It may require certain prerequisites in order to exist. But there exists more than just the prerequisites in our lives and environments. We have options with these other things. We can investigate them, manipulate them, experiment with them. Why? To discover more about ourselves and our environments. To improve our quality of life and our security(our chances for survival). To discover more about what we are. I think the biggest thing that scientists overlook when defending this position of "No free will" is that there is chance in the universe. A certain degree of randomness, certainly from our perception of it. The foundation of Quantum physics is built on this fact. Therefore you can NOT precisely predict certain interactions and /or outcomes. In some cases you can do it very well....but not precisely. There are just too many variables at play. Life exists within this context. In order to continue to exist we need a degree of flexibility to deal with random and chance. Free will. The concept of free will was defined by us over the course of our history because we recognized we have it. I could elaborate further however I've probably lost most people at this point so i'll leave it here for now.
i think the mathematical approach is quite solid for natural STEM fields. however in social sciences it often fails yet it gets more and more implemented for emotional reasons. we assume free will and act like it exists. this is a very good concept imo. if it actually exists isnt known. i wouldnt say quitting smoking or not is a sign of free will. people have different situations and circumstances and hence this can lead to different (forced) decisions. im not saying it does, but it theoretically can. randomness is something humans are very uncomfortable with. i also think thats one of the main forces pushing the deterministic viewpoint. quantum physics, as you said, showed us that randomness is part of reality. for me it seems plausible that free will exists.
Examine your choices and the choices of others. Don't you see a certain amount of repetitive choices? For instance, the grossly overweight person who can't stop eating. The cigarette smoker. The thousands of examples of people making negative choices over and over again. If free will existed, don't you think that we would all make better choices?
+Steve Kennedy The very fact that people can break out of these molds lends to the possibility that free will does, or at least *can*, exist. I say that because there is likely an element of choice involved. There are people kick addictions that affect their lives. The fact is that there are also people that succumb to these things and never rebound. For the moment, I think that I'll agree with Chomsky in stating that we're simply ill equipped to comprehend this subject matter, as it tends to seem endlessly paradoxical. I do think, however, that it speaks volumes about our capacity as humans to just consider things like free will or even consciousness for that matter.
+Steve Kennedy What constitutes a "better choice" varies from person to person. Furthermore, for the most part nobody does something that has absolutely no benefit or value to themselves, as there's always a balance of negative and positive outcome. The cigarette smoker enjoys their nicotine rush. The morbidly obese enjoy flavors of food. Even with people who self harm, they are finding some sort of emotional satisfaction out of it. Speaking of self-harm, what about suicide? It seems like going against all basic instincts of the survival of life by committing suicide would be a good example of human free will, imo.
TheOlzee, I am not sure what point you are trying to make. Yes, you did make choices. Were these choices conscious, free will choices, or did they percolate up from your subconscious?
Has Science not amply proved that phenomenon do not have to submit to one's intuition? There is free will if you want to define free as being limited by an arbitrary limitation. But if free will is asserted to be non existent then it is a fallacious argument given the freedom of choice we do enjoy albeit under the limitations already imposed and those imposed while the choices are being made. So it is not a question of freedom but the degree of freedom...
Sam Harris is a conservative that knows very well that free will doesn't exist, but wants to maintain the current order for whatever reason, which is theological, not scientific.
It is certainly strange to deny our experience of free will on the basis of a theory (that the behavior universe is determined only by causes and effects). I doubt correctness of the idea that the universe is a big deterministic cause-effect machine that makes free-will impossible. It is certainly possible the universe is nothing like any machine we know about.
I reject free will without having to appeal to determinism. I think that regardless of whether or not the universe is deterministic we make choices based on our psychological dispositions (beliefs, desires, preferences, values, character, personality, motivations, temperament, memories, experience, etc...) Now under naturalism, our psychologies are a product of our genetics, environment, and life experience. However, if you want to posit that this isn’t the case and instead we freely choose what psychological dispositions to have, this would result in an infinite regress because in order to choose to have certain psychological dispositions we would need to already have prior psychological dispositions to inform that choice.
jjharvathh Actually let me ask you this. Why do you think some people ‘freely’ choose to commit crimes but others don’t? And why is it that more children become criminals in poor neighbourhoods than in wealthy neighbourhoods?
"Cause and effect" if absolutely true , then free will ?? when Chomsky said if he just brought into the conversation " the red skins " is that just an example of cognitive dissidence ?
TheCelticsAREboss, it's a funny approach to free will that seems to only apply to this one subject. If I am able to see the action of natural phenomena, I give it a name, and I can concoct a description of its action, but the idea of formulating a definition that then retroactively negates the very phenomena that I am defining is very strange. I see flashes of light during a thunderstorm, I call it lightning, and I can describe it as a sudden release of electrical potential, or a flash of anger from the gods, but whatever I use as a definition will never make me declare that lightning isn't a thing, or doesn't exist. I can observe myself making choices, I can see the results of other people making choices, and I give this phenomena a name, free will. I can define it as choices or wants or will, but it doesn't mean that it isn't a thing, or doesn't exist just because I define it in a certain way.
@@caricue Except that no one is saying freewill doesnt exist because we define it that way. We are saying freewill doesnt exist because all of your actions are caused by a causal chain that goes back to before you were born. If you "couldnt have done otherwise" then "making a choice" is an illusion. And in a universe based on causality and randomness you genuinely "couldnt have done otherwise". You are making as much of a choice when picking vanilla over chocolate as the wind is making when it "chooses" to blow south. No one holds the wind accountable for blowing south. Yet we hold other physical systems like human brains accountable because we are under the illusion that they didnt have to do as they did. The people who are shifting the definitions are those who believe in freewill. Not those who do not.
@@xsuploader Thanks for the reply. My point is that when you are dealing with a concept, you must have a definition. When you are dealing with a natural phenomena, you have a description. You seem to be talking about the concept of free will. I am talking about a natural phenomena, so I don't really worry about a definition. I can observe and experience choices being made by myself and others. The common name for this is free will. The term free will is used as a religious concept also, but I don't find religion very useful. You are talking about a philosophical concept of free will, and then using that to negate the natural phenomena. Like I said, you can't use a definition to negate things that are observations. Talking about how you "couldn't have done otherwise" is an assertion about the nature of reality. This is the realm of metaphysics, which isn't much more useful than religion. So I do think it is fair to say that you are saying free will doesn't exist based on a definition of the concept of free will. If I was a solipsist, I might define you as not existing, but I'm sure you would find that as absurd as saying that any other natural phenomena that is easily demonstrated doesn't exist.
@@caricue I disagree. The general accepted definition of free will involves burdening individuals with responsibility for their actions, resulting in a justification of retributive punishment. This is the main point: retributive punishment. If the widely accepted view of free will is merely observing and experiencing what others are doing, then where does the logical basis for retributive punishment come from in religion or the legal system? It obviously necessitates a view of free will that backed by ones ability to have been responsible for their actions.
Hmm. He doesn't seem to get the free will issue all that well. Determinism does rule out free will. We know this by logic. Its not a big unknown or open question.
He gets it exceedingly way; certainly way better than you, because what you're saying there is moronic nonsense. It's fully possible for reality to be partially deterministic, but to leave some input open for free will. This is, in fact, exactly how a computer works; when a computer is idling or executing some other program, it's constantly carrying out deterministic computations, never ceasing for as long as the CPU is powered and working. However, when given input through external means, this alters the course of that deterministic computation. Thus you can extremely easily see how you can have a mix of determinism and free will. Let's e.g. for the sake of argument say that "you" are some immaterial entity existing in a totally different dimension from the physical world as we know it, and that "you" are simply using your body like a biological flesh-robot. The archetypical "meat suit" as it is often know. This is eerily reminiscent of Cartesian dualism. Now, this "meat suit" is essentially a biocomputer in that case, with the brain at the core of its processing capabilities, and like the computer mentioned previously it would simply be idling or executing programs that have been programmed into it in advance whenever not given any input. This would be the classic case of a totally deterministic animal. However, under these conditions "you" would be able to access the brain via some interface; Descartes said it was done via the pineal gland, but that is highly unlikely given what we know about neuroscience today. By accessing the brain in whatever way it would be done, you could actively alter the course of its computation, e.g. inserting impulses into certain motor circuits to open or close your fist, or even to reprogram the brain entirely to respond in a different way to specific circumstances (like getting yourself a glass of water instead of beer whenever you are thirsty). While Descartes' suggestion about the pineal gland as being this interface between dimensions is likely false, there are other known mechanisms that could very well account for such a possibility, such as e.g. quantum coherence in the microtubules of brain neurons that would literally make it possible to collapse complex superpositions of such microtubules into certain configurations, making certain neural circuits trigger rather than others. So let's be clear about one thing: you are the one who doesn't understand this issue, and not just "not that well", but apparently not at all.
John 3:16-21 16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. 18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. 21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God. Mark 1.15 15 And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.
ولا قادر افهم واستوعب ليش عاملين معركة بين مدرسة حرية اتخاذ القرار ومدرسة عدم القدرة على اتخاذ قرارات بحرية حاولت اسمع مقاطع مختلفة على اليوتيوب لوجهات نظر مختلفة... لكني مش عارف ليش في ناس تدعي انها مجبورة على تصرفاتها... وانها ليست حرة في التفكير شغل هبل صرف واتهبل
@bishwash bhatta - Chomsky "If I move my hand I'm moving the moon" He is referring to Newtons law of gravity. Every object attracts every other object in the Universe. Newton referred to this spooky action at a distance as occult forces. The moon exerts an attractive force on your hand and your hand exerts an attractive force on the moon. He is simply using this reference to illustrate an idea we take for granted today seemed crazy around the time it was created.
@@kennethboykins264 but Einstein did get around it with his general theory of relativity, a corollary of getting around action at a distance is the existence of waves, in this case gravitational waves, whose detection was announced in 2016, for which the Nobel was granted in 2017. It's true that the bodies which exert forces on each other are still not in contact, but if you move your hand, it's effect on the moon is not instantaneous, but happens after some time corresponding to the time it takes a gravitational wave due to the motion of your hand to affect the moon. These waves are similar to ripples created on the water surface by drops of water, but gravitational waves are ripples that travel through space-time. Einstein did not take for granted spooky action at a distance. In fact, he hated it so much, he invented quantum entanglement just to reject quantum theory because entanglement seems like spooky action at a distance at first glance (but it's not)
@@harjotsingh8530 Thank u for your response. I did not give my opinion on the matter. I simply the restated the point Dr. Chomsky made. Einstein did not create the concept of quantum entanglement. On the contrary. Einstein and two colleagues created a thought experiment (EPR paradox) in an attempt to falsify Quantum Entanglements spooky action at a distance with a reductio ad absurdum argument and hidden variables. In this context, waves do not exist. A wave is not what something is, a wave is what something does. Water waves and gravitatiional waves are fundamentally very different. Water, air, and sound waves are mechanical waves. Electromagnetic and Gravitational waves are non-mechanical waves. The former osciallates in a (material/matter) medium, the latter propagates in a vacuum. If Gravitational waves were mechanical waves your argument would be valid. Contact force disappears in a vacuum. Einsteins theory of general relativity is regarded as the most beautiful scientific theory in history. The geometric curvature of spacetime due to the influx of matter/mass is an aesthetically pleasing picture. A real materialist would regard the warping of spacetime as an absolute monstrosity.. General Relativity is deterministic and mechanical but it is not physical in any meaningful sense. Contemporary materialism is an undefined philosphical position. Speaking plainly, materialist today are punks. They call everything material. There is a reason why they changed the name from materialism to physicalism. Innumerable scientific discoveries have completely destroyed the classic notion of materialism. They ignore this fact by calling everything science has or will discover material. Atoms in superposition=material. Quantum tunneling=material. Light (massless) =material. Spacetime curvature=material. Time dialation and space contraction = material. In Rene Descartes time, what do you think a materialist would say about the curvature of spacetime? They would regard it as witchcraft. It would be a mistake to regard these people as primitive fools. The difference between contemporary materialist and historical materialist is they actually believed in materialism back then. Why did Boltzman's (genius that discovered entropy) life end tragically? You can't fool me playboy
@@kennethboykins264 I was not trying to fool you. Just presenting the modern point of view. I agree that in the context that Chomsky mentions spooky action, modern view of action at a distance would still be spooky action. When it comes to quantum entanglement, it's not spooky action at a distance. It's correlation between quantum variables. Classical counterpart of that would be giving Alice and Bob two boxes, one of which contains a black ball and the other a white ball. If Alice and Bob now travel to far ends of the universe and let's say Alice opens her box and finds a black ball, she would know that Bob has a white ball. Quantum version of this would have to do with a quantum color, but it's not interaction at a distance.
Where does Chomsky see the room for free will? How does he even define it? The common notion of free will is simply self-contradictory nonsense; we've figured this out a long time ago. It has nothing to do with physics or neurology - even an immortal soul or a deity could not have free will. It's purely a question of terminology, logic.
+Taxtro Indeed, the common notion that decisions can be made devoid of desires or situation is absurd. People can make decisions of their own accord, but it's only according to desires and passions.
+Taxtro When you think about it or study about it, you don't have free will. Because your freedom to choose always happens NOW. This is most often talked about by philosophers like Alan Watts. We live in world of symbols which is good to classify, identify and think about the world. But we often confuse this world of symbols with reality. just like you can't bath in the word 'water', you can't define what free will is. Because it happens now and by the time I said now the NOW is already gone. But still it is always NOW and there is no such things as past and future. Ideas like past and future are all created in the present and there is only the present.
Matt, If there is no free will, then what is it that we are discussing? When you see your body move in a way that leads to you getting what you want, what do you think is happening? If I tell you that there is a tiger behind the door to the right, so you go left, what is making this decision and compelling this action? Are these just spastic reflexes of a mindless lump of flesh, or are you talking about something different than the rest of us?
@@caricue Sure you are "choosing" something, but that choice comes from your wants and desires. Did you pick your wants and desires before you were born? No, no one can do that. What makes you like the color red instead of the color blue or vice versa? Maybe you say well I like blue because that was a socially appropriate color choice being a male, and that you liked it because it is not too bright but not too dark. But the social aspect you had zero control over, and your preference for a certain light intensity is unknown, you could simply ask further...well why do I prefer a more medium brightness? Well because it seems calm. But why do I prefer calm instead of aggressive or flamboyant. Thus you can go endlessly down this line until you realize there is no way that you are the ultimate author of your desires and choices. You also have no choice over how your environment shapes your actions. Your example about the tiger proves free will does not exist. Your brain makes the decision to avoid the tiger so quickly that you could not have possibly been the author of the action. Those are instincts. When you are driving down the road and a deer jumps in front of your car and you quickly try to avoid it, there is no chance to even think about it. Honestly having no free will is not bad, it has important ethical implications and our felt experience is that we do have some level of control so it is not so bad.
@@Matt-ph8yq Ok Matt, that's a million times more than I ever get from determinists here in the comments. I'll take it. Most determinists say you aren't even making choices, just following the laws of physics or something. Other people say there is no self, so there's no one to make a choice, and no choice either, just for good measure! I mean, basically you are saying that my choices are made by me because of who I am as a person, no problem there. You are saying that my choices are based on what is happening in the environment, which is what choices are there for, so it all sounds good to me. As far as some value judgement about being "free", you are free to feel that "making choices from the available options based on local conditions" doesn't constitute "free will", but your opinion or mine doesn't constrain reality in any way, so we are left with the experience, and I'm perfectly happy with that. Thanks for sharing though.
Believing in determinism will make you fee as though you don't have to take any responsibility for your actions so you'll act much more recklessly. Don't fall for it.
We know that there is no such thing as free will, period. We are physical entities, and we follow the rules of physics. You have no option. You have free will as much as a tree growing on a hill.
+semih oguzcan No, you are not smarter than eminent philosophers, you are nobody. Nobody is arguing that we DON'T follow the rules of physics - but of course you're too obtuse to see that, and are just foaming at the mouth to exclaim your victory over nothing. We are not sure that there is no free will - it could exist in terms of physical laws but we just don't know how it works yet. Perhaps there is something besides determinism and randomness. You have as much intelligence as a tree growing on a hill.
Wrong again Chumpsky. You said you believe in the scientific method as the only valid method for acquiring knowledge. In a rational universe cause and effect is the only acceptable explanation for events. Freedom of will is an illusion that contradicts your emotional attachment to it. From the moment of the big bang, everything that ever happened or ever will happen was already determined and there is nothing you or anyone can do about it except pretend it isn't true or that you can't ever know because you don't like it. The only 2 alternatives are irrational. They are the existence of God who can change the universe at will making it pointless to try to understand it or existentialism which says I think, therefore you are.
Some people are likely to pass off Chomsky's mysterianism on the grounds of, "Hey, don't worry, we'll just build a bigger telescope or microscope or gravity wave detector and then we'll have things all figured out." In another video Chomsky uses the example of a rat running a maze based on prime numbers; e.g., the only way for the rat to exit the maze is for it make a turn at every pathway represented by a prime number. You'll never be able to teach a rat to do that, it's just not within its comprehension, Chomsky says. And we may be just like the rat, only with a much more difficult "maze."
one possible difference is that there are so many things humans understand now that we didn't understand in the past-how to fly, why an apple falls down instead of up, etc. In contrast, rats have basically the same amount of knowledge now as they ever have. It seems we have a unique ability to learn more and more and surpass naturally imposed knowledge limitations. Im not necessarily disagreeing with Chomsky's point, but I'm also not sure the comparison is sound.
@@Dela0083 "surpass naturally imposed knowledge limitations" What do you mean by this? I'm guessing the knowledge we have gained through the centuries is extremely narrow when compared to all the possible things that are knowable (or not knowable) by any other kind of intelligence, if that makes sense. It must be the case if we're simply creatures of the earth like everything else. For instance I think we're closer to other organisms of the earth than we might think, as a guess I'd say we only understand slightly more than say a rat if you compared both of our species' knowledge to everything that's possible to know.
@@cp9105 whose to say the rats might not be in our position if a few things in the past changed so that they evolved instead of us? A side point sorry, but either argument to me sounds like claims to know the future which we ultimately don't. We have no idea what we'll learn or how much or how little we will grow.
@@Dela0083 Eh not so fast!
Actually we still don't understand why apples go down and not up - that's part of what he is saying. What Newton showed is that we have to accept the explanatory framework but that doesn't mean we understand reality. We just call "falling" a part of "gravity" or whatever "explanations" Einstein and quantum weirdness added. Also, Marc left out something Chomsky always includes when he talks about prime number mazes. Namely: rats are pretty good at running mazes - and they do learn. Now, just as an exercise, scale it up to the level of complexity of our minds. We are just big rats scurrying around a maze with corners set at gravitational or relativistic or quantum or consciousness intervals etc.
These six minutes are incredibly valuable. Thank you for this video.
Amazing!
is there a link to this full interview?
I think I have to agree with Noam, we simply don't know if Free Will exists or not, but I think I fall more on the side of determinism, but I can't claim to know for sure if that's entirely true.
Gods are not real.
I cannot see how free will makes any sense.
If we are determinists, as in causes create effects, then we know free will doesn’t exist. If we believe things are random, nothing causes anything. That is not free will either. If we mix both determinism plus randomness, that is just a mix of finding yourself at a point because it was predetermined, or that a random event occurred along that chain. You still didn’t author any of those events yourself. You were at the end of those events.
Let’s move onto thinking. Or the idea that we author our thoughts, so that is an argument for free will.
When a thought appears in your head, it does just that, appears. One doesn’t decide to think the thought. If you decide to think the thought, that means you think to think the thought. It requires that you think the thought twice.
Firstly you decide to think about something (that is you think the thought), then you proceed to think the thought. It makes no sense what so ever. This is not our experience with thinking. And besides, where did the first thought come from?
What actually happens is your thoughts simply appear from the dark. We have no idea where they come from, but they do appear.
How about decision making? Let’s look at that case.
When you decide to pick between two glasses of water, with exactly the same amount of water, from the same tap, etc. basically identical glasses. You mill over the decision for an hour, but simply cannot make a solid judgment on which one you like more. So you decide to just pick the one on the left.
Why did you pick the one on the left?Ask yourself that question. Well if it truely were done on a whim, you don’t know why you picked it. You simply picked it. That is not free will. Not knowing why you did something is not an expression of free will. Free will implied that you authored the event, you made a choice based on preference. You acted based on your desires. However we’ve clearly described a situation where you thought it through and had no desire for one glass or the other. You hence then can not explain why you picked the glass. It is random.
However, maybe though you picked the glass on the left, because the sun was bouncing off that glass into your eye. So you wanted to stop that, and picked the left glass. That is determinism. You did it because of something. If you went back in time, were sitting in exactly the same place, had the sun shining in your eye, didn’t like the sun in your eye just as much as the first time it happened, you would still grab the glass on the left.
Free will is a non-sensical term.
@@saganworshipper6062 Sagan is your god, you're just another puny irrelevant speck of dust in the universe licking the sweaty nustsack of another speck.
It is interest for the fascist, consumer society to make you think that you are only a machine, you have no purpose but to "exist" so buy their products to survive and reproduce.
And is far more easier to control such a depressive sensless mass without any values or standards.
@@synth1002 i have the same feeling. it's interesting that many of the loudest detractors of free will come from the imperialist core. Sam Harris needs you to not believe free will is real to push his sick liberal idealogy onto the world. Of course a man who lives a largely autonomous life, where all his luxury and lifestyle is built on the backs of others wants you to believe this. And so many of these moronic ideas are from misreadings of the Buddhist texts.
The way I explained fields (which cause forces outside of contact) was by holding two sheets of papers and waving one so that the other moved with the air. So I explained that, if we spoke with peoples without a conception of air and wind, this would seem spooky. The same is true for electric and magnetic fields (and the rest). They are something that is there, and although it’s hard to sense we have succeeded in understanding.
I cannot honestly agree with Chomsky in maintaining what baffled people 300 years ago.
However, it is also impossible for me to believe that anyone thinks they have no will of their own.
What's weird is that there doesn't seem to be any gravitational field that anyone has found so far. We would have flying cars and hoverboards if there was.
Anyone know the works he cites of Bertrand Russell?
We're trying to gain understanding on how it works as Chomsky put it at the 5 minute 15 second mark ;)
Is action at a distance counter-intuitive? We are not astonished by magnetism or light or heat.
well for many people magnetism and electric forces are counterintuitive and when people explain it they often explain it with things like rubber bands, which relies on the very mechanics you try to explain to them, which makes it a bad explanation. our intuition depends on our daily life. magnetic forces, action at a distance isnt part of that. technically it ofc is but not in a way we perceive or realize it instantly. there is a level where you just accept the basic forces, and around that you build your theory of magnetism etc.
peoples daily life experience scale doesnt allow for a real understanding of magnetism. ofc you can understand the theory but not the fundamental basics.
When people first discovered such forces, they were absolutely astonished. Newton was livid even with regards to gravitation.
Free will exists in quantium physics through the isolated quantium spin of particles, this is one of the basic rules of quantium physics, and the guy in the begining said somthing about how free will would not make sence due to our understanding of the universe..... it really annoys me how this guy thinks he understands the universe just because he has a basic understanding of classical mechanics yet COMPLETELY OVERLOOKS the entire field of quantium physics....
+devin okeefe;
Quantum physics is irrelevant to free will. Even if randomness does lie at the bottom of some of our decisions, still there's no room for such a thing as free will, which is a totally incoherent concept to begin with, like asking "what is north of north pole?" Whether or not god plays dice, we no more have free will than a rock or a river have it.
So no dice then?
The uncertainty principle is an algorithm that results in randomness. You can't use quantum principles as an argument for free will as they do not support the notion at all.
www.ams.org/notices/200902/rtx090200226p.pdf
No way around it (for now), viborr... ;-)
he is the greatest thinker of th 20th century
+Haspdfposadf Hpsadonifaidf Maybe... but it's 21st century. Even so, there were better ideas about free will in the 20th century than a shoulder shrug and "we don't know"
+Haspdfposadf Hpsadonifaidf Nope.
+cgm778 Does that make those ideas any more true? I'd be more satisfied with not knowing than to believe some nonsense because "it's better than nothing".
I cannot see how free will makes any sense.
If we are determinists, as in causes create effects, then we know free will doesn’t exist. If we believe things are random, nothing causes anything. That is not free will either. If we mix both determinism plus randomness, that is just a mix of finding yourself at a point because it was predetermined, or that a random event occurred along that chain. You still didn’t author any of those events yourself. You were at the end of those events.
Let’s move onto thinking. Or the idea that we author our thoughts, so that is an argument for free will.
When a thought appears in your head, it does just that, appears. One doesn’t decide to think the thought. If you decide to think the thought, that means you think to think the thought. It requires that you think the thought twice.
Firstly you decide to think about something (that is you think the thought), then you proceed to think the thought. It makes no sense what so ever. This is not our experience with thinking. And besides, where did the first thought come from?
What actually happens is your thoughts simply appear from the dark. We have no idea where they come from, but they do appear.
How about decision making? Let’s look at that case.
When you decide to pick between two glasses of water, with exactly the same amount of water, from the same tap, etc. basically identical glasses. You mill over the decision for an hour, but simply cannot make a solid judgment on which one you like more. So you decide to just pick the one on the left.
Why did you pick the one on the left?Ask yourself that question. Well if it truely were done on a whim, you don’t know why you picked it. You simply picked it. That is not free will. Not knowing why you did something is not an expression of free will. Free will implied that you authored the event, you made a choice based on preference. You acted based on your desires. However we’ve clearly described a situation where you thought it through and had no desire for one glass or the other. You hence then can not explain why you picked the glass. It is random.
However, maybe though you picked the glass on the left, because the sun was bouncing off that glass into your eye. So you wanted to stop that, and picked the left glass. That is determinism. You did it because of something. If you went back in time, were sitting in exactly the same place, had the sun shining in your eye, didn’t like the sun in your eye just as much as the first time it happened, you would still grab the glass on the left.
Free will is a non-sensical term.
@@scoogsy If you want to have some different opinions, read the answers to the following question: www.quora.com/What-are-some-valid-criticisms-of-Galen-Strawsons-argument-The-Impossibility-of-Moral-Responsibility
That Engel guy imo doesn't have much to say tough
so it seems to me that the way to have rebots do interesting things is, to allow them to ask questions, and to have them live in a conflicted world. the dissonance caused by so many contradictions in our way of trying to explain the world along with a bunch of randomization can make for a good several interesting parallel realities...probably...
just a random thought
and by definition at least 95% of the population will misinterpret it or totally not understand it.maybe 90...whatever
I think you're in that 90%
If we decide that there is no free will, should we not hold people responsible for their actions? That question is hilarious. It assumes that we have the free will to decide what to do about not having free will.
I cannot see how free will makes any sense.
If we are determinists, as in causes create effects, then we know free will doesn’t exist. If we believe things are random, nothing causes anything. That is not free will either. If we mix both determinism plus randomness, that is just a mix of finding yourself at a point because it was predetermined, or that a random event occurred along that chain. You still didn’t author any of those events yourself. You were at the end of those events.
Let’s move onto thinking. Or the idea that we author our thoughts, so that is an argument for free will.
When a thought appears in your head, it does just that, appears. One doesn’t decide to think the thought. If you decide to think the thought, that means you think to think the thought. It requires that you think the thought twice.
Firstly you decide to think about something (that is you think the thought), then you proceed to think the thought. It makes no sense what so ever. This is not our experience with thinking. And besides, where did the first thought come from?
What actually happens is your thoughts simply appear from the dark. We have no idea where they come from, but they do appear.
How about decision making? Let’s look at that case.
When you decide to pick between two glasses of water, with exactly the same amount of water, from the same tap, etc. basically identical glasses. You mill over the decision for an hour, but simply cannot make a solid judgment on which one you like more. So you decide to just pick the one on the left.
Why did you pick the one on the left?Ask yourself that question. Well if it truely were done on a whim, you don’t know why you picked it. You simply picked it. That is not free will. Not knowing why you did something is not an expression of free will. Free will implied that you authored the event, you made a choice based on preference. You acted based on your desires. However we’ve clearly described a situation where you thought it through and had no desire for one glass or the other. You hence then can not explain why you picked the glass. It is random.
However, maybe though you picked the glass on the left, because the sun was bouncing off that glass into your eye. So you wanted to stop that, and picked the left glass. That is determinism. You did it because of something. If you went back in time, were sitting in exactly the same place, had the sun shining in your eye, didn’t like the sun in your eye just as much as the first time it happened, you would still grab the glass on the left.
Free will is a non-sensical term.
You can also look up the free will theorem or the strong free will theorem
You have zero idea what you're talking about. You're literally presupposing determinism to be true, and then deriving from that the "fact" that free will doesn't exist. No shit, Sherlock; that's what's called "assuming the conclusion", also known as "begging the question", or more colloquially as "circular reasoning".
What you're e.g. fallaciously doing in the example of the glasses is to look for a cause for picking one glass over the other and discrediting "on a whim" as not representing free will; in reality, that's exactly what free will is. It's literally that "you", whatever "you" really are, are the one making a choice, and that you can't trace the cause back other than at best to some combination of that free will and a partially deterministic reality (just like a computer).
That is not to say that determinism is impossible, but free will certainly is not impossible either. What Chomsky says is what's entirely true: we have zero idea whether reality is fully deterministic or whether we somehow have some degree of free will.
@@hoon_sol I’m not sure what position you hold here.
Forget what Chomsky said, and just focus on the argument I presented against free will.
Also, perhaps if we are to continue this conversation you can drop the sarcasm and rudeness. It wastes a lot of time.
Firstly, where did I state determinism was real? I didn’t.
I described what happens if determinism applies to a “choice”, and then compared it to what happens with a random “choice”.
You also seem to completely ignore the infinite regress I highlighted, about having to think a thought before you think it (and think the thinking of thought before you think it, continue to infinity), which is seemingly what free will demands if we are to be the authors of our own thoughts.
But let’s focus on the picking something on a whim. That is having no prior knowledge of why you picked the glass, or exercising a preference when picking a glass of water. Simply picking at random.
Not knowing why something occurred is not exercising free will, at least by any common conception of the concept of free will. It in effect just happened. You can’t inspect why you picked the glass, you have no idea why you picked it. If you knew why you picked it, that is just determinism again. What free will is someone exercising by seeing their hand reach out toward a glass without having any idea why they selected that glass?
@@scoogsy:
I'm not "holding any position", I'm explaining the facts to you. Those facts are, primarily:
1) We have zero idea whether or not free will exists.
2) Your reasoning for dismissing the existence of free will is completely fallacious and unsound.
Also, all you did was set up a false dichotomy between determinism and randomness; that leaves out the third possibility: choice (i.e. free will).
And no, I didn't ignore what you said about thoughts at all, I implicitly addressed it by addressing what you said about the glass, because they're essentially the exact same. As Chomsky repeatedly points out, there are numerous experiments that show that the neural activity associated with e.g. picking a glass occurs before the choice to do so becomes conscious, even though even that is nebulous. In other words, all this tells us, as Chomsky also repeatedly makes clear, is that most (if not all) choices (if free will exists) are made subconsciously, not that free will necessarily doesn't exist. In other words, whenever you become conscious of a thought, it's absolutely a possibility that you did indeed choose to have that thought by using free will. There's no infinite regress there of any sort.
Then you again repeat the fallacy I explicitly pointed out, namely to consider picking something "on a whim" as being random. That is totally false. Doing something "on a whim" is an expression of free will, not of randomness; it indicates choice, i.e. that you choose to do it.
You are, just like I said, desperately trying to find causation behind choice, not realizing that these are mutually exclusive. If you are doing something deterministically due to a prior cause, then that is by definition not choice. If free will exists, it happens because you choose to do it, and that itself is the cause.
The fallaciousness of your reasoning becomes abundantly clear at the end of your last paragraph, where you write:
"What free will is someone exercising by seeing their hand reach out toward a glass without having any idea why they selected that glass?"
This is the most hilarious attempt at passing off circular reasoning as legitimate I've seen in a while. If free will is true, someone is not just "seeing their hand reach out", they are the ones choosing to reach out. Again you try to frame it in terms of causation instead of choice, because you're not even trying to understand the alternative. It's not that you wouldn't have any idea why you selected the glass, but that it would be framed in terms of choice instead. Why did you choose that glass? Because it felt completely arbitrary, and you simply chose to reach out to the one closest to your dominant hand to preserve energy. Why did you choose a glass at all? Because you were thirsty, and chose to quench your thirst. Why did you choose to preserve energy and quench your thirst? Because those actions are conducive to survival, and you choose to remain alive.
In other words, you can see that under such a conception, where free will exists, everything begins with choice. Causes are not determined a chain of prior causes; in fact, that is what ironically leads to the infinite regress you're trying to avoid. What we call "causes" would rather be choices, and the "chain" of such choices would be determined in a recursive and hierarchical manner dating back to the very choice to exist at all. In fact, logically speaking, this is actually the only way to avoid infinite regress, so going purely by what seems to be necessarily true by virtue of metaphysical reasoning about how reality itself must necessarily work, it rather appears that free will not only exists, but actually must exist, and on top of that be the fundamental driving force behind absolutely all of reality. This is in fact the exact conclusion many philosophers have reached, perhaps most famously Schopenhauer. In more recent times, Chris Langan echoes the same sentiment in more rigorous terms:
*_«While a complete set of laws would amount to a complete deterministic history of the universe, calling the universe "completely deterministic" amounts to asserting the existence of prior determinative constraints. But this is a logical absurdity, since if these constraints were real, they would be included in reality rather than prior or external to it (by the containment principle). It follows that the universe freely determines its own constraints, the establishment of nomology and the creation of its physical (observable) content being effectively simultaneous and recursive. The incoversive distribution of this relationship is the basis of free will, by virtue of which the universe is freely created by sentient agents existing within it.»_*
He also points out what I mentioned above (albeit in the dense language of his own model, which requires some study), namely that reality itself must quite literally choose to exist, since this is the only way to get such a recursive structure going, due to the fact that deterministic causation will always lead to infinite regress:
*_«According to the Reality Principle, the universe is self-contained, and according to infocognitive monism, it regresses to a realm of nil constraint (unbound telesis or UBT) from which it must refine itself. According to the Telic Principle, which states that the universe must provide itself with the means to do this, it must make and realize its own "choice to exist"; by reason of its absolute priority, this act of choice is identical to that which is chosen, i.e. the universe itself, and thus reflexive. I.e., "existence is everywhere the choice to exist."»_*
@@hoon_sol I think we are talking past one another.
Here are a couple of questions for you:
1. Explain what you mean by choice, and how as you imply (by being a third choice) it separates itself from determinism or randomness
2. In your words what does free will mean?
I think if we can define these concepts clearly, we can start to understand where our disagreement is and hopefully land on a shared understanding.
4:00 We don't know, and the way our minds are made might make us unable to ever understand it
This is what is known as "cognitive closure" or "transcendental naturalism" in philosophy of mind.
If there is no free will than the people you're envious of ( people with more stuff than you have) are guilty of nothing.
If there is no free will, then perhaps jealousy is irrational, but the inclination of a human being with fewer material goods to covet and desire to take from another human with more material goods, becomes another attribute of the physical universe. Much like a high-energy water molecule seeks to liberate itself from the surface of a lake and evaporate into air. The "seeking" here is of course a metaphor.
Tl;dr socialism is compatible with determinism, understood as a physical attribute of a system that moves from a state of high economic inequality to one of low economic inequality.
I would argue that determinism does not rule out free will, but demands it. If the information we use for making a decision happened in the past, which we have accepted in some (most) scientific theories,. Therefore, conclusions will differ depending on when we get the information and whether irrational logic was used to process the information. This would apply to all animals, machines, when and what the information is, and how long the transformation of the information took to be transmitted, as well as the irrationality of the decision making processes.
This does not rule out nature's laws always being consistent. It only requires not having all information simultaneously. We are human and humans will err, of this we can be sure. Since we don't have a definition of time and of simultaneous events it is information which has not come to all of us at this time and it never will. This conjecture does not place free will and "cause and effect" as being exclusionary.
If we consider Gauss's statement that a correct electromagnetic theory will have to consider the information of potential (energy) from the past. The puzzle fits together in a more rational manner. This theory was subsequently used by Gerber to predict the perihelion of mercury with an amazing accuracy. The scientists of that age had free will to reject it, which most chose to do, regardless of its accuracy. We are, simply, free to err, and it is our decision which is generally more often our illogical preference based on false or illogical conclusions already made. Often it is justified as intuition.
Richard Alsenz I cannot see how free will makes any sense.
If we are determinists, as in causes create effects, then we know free will doesn’t exist. If we believe things are random, nothing causes anything. That is not free will either. If we mix both determinism plus randomness, that is just a mix of finding yourself at a point because it was predetermined, or that a random event occurred along that chain. You still didn’t author any of those events yourself. You were at the end of those events.
Let’s move onto thinking. Or the idea that we author our thoughts, so that is an argument for free will.
When a thought appears in your head, it does just that, appears. One doesn’t decide to think the thought. If you decide to think the thought, that means you think to think the thought. It requires that you think the thought twice.
Firstly you decide to think about something (that is you think the thought), then you proceed to think the thought. It makes no sense what so ever. This is not our experience with thinking. And besides, where did the first thought come from?
What actually happens is your thoughts simply appear from the dark. We have no idea where they come from, but they do appear.
How about decision making? Let’s look at that case.
When you decide to pick between two glasses of water, with exactly the same amount of water, from the same tap, etc. basically identical glasses. You mill over the decision for an hour, but simply cannot make a solid judgment on which one you like more. So you decide to just pick the one on the left.
Why did you pick the one on the left?Ask yourself that question. Well if it truely were done on a whim, you don’t know why you picked it. You simply picked it. That is not free will. Not knowing why you did something is not an expression of free will. Free will implied that you authored the event, you made a choice based on preference. You acted based on your desires. However we’ve clearly described a situation where you thought it through and had no desire for one glass or the other. You hence then can not explain why you picked the glass. It is random.
However, maybe though you picked the glass on the left, because the sun was bouncing off that glass into your eye. So you wanted to stop that, and picked the left glass. That is determinism. You did it because of something. If you went back in time, were sitting in exactly the same place, had the sun shining in your eye, didn’t like the sun in your eye just as much as the first time it happened, you would still grab the glass on the left.
Free will is a non-sensical term.
Yes, greatest thinker of the 20th century and even the greatest going into the 21st thus far. However, also, Noam Chomsky is one of the greatest thinkers of the last 2500 years since Plato and dawn of western philosophy.
I just read your comment one sec after I’d published mine !!! 🤝
X-Files
Native American human beings think that "free will" means freedom to appreciate this paradise planet lifeboat and the miraculous works of fine art called "life" that inhabit it. And not be imprisoned and enslaved by alien vampires (greed) and their ignorance (hate).
But the hostile evangelical vampires think That "free will" means freedom to suck the joy out of life and devour the planet like a ravenous cancer. And freedom to imprison and enslave humans.
I would like to hear Chomsky talk about how the fact if we ever find out we do not have free will how it affects the meaning of our lives.
Noam is not the right guy for that question. Try Sam Harris
Although I never heard him say it explicitly, I'm gonna go WAY out on a limb here and speculate he is kinda like Jesus Christ on that point. In other words, why not just be ethical even if you are not, or especially if you are not, compelled to be ethical.
Our immediate experience tells us the Earth is flat, that the Earth is the center of the Universe, there are only 3 dimensions of space and that matter is substantial. Why should I believe my impression that free will exists? just like most other impressions on our senses, free will is probably an illusion.
ॐ Jordan Gould I cannot see how free will makes any sense.
If we are determinists, as in causes create effects, then we know free will doesn’t exist. If we believe things are random, nothing causes anything. That is not free will either. If we mix both determinism plus randomness, that is just a mix of finding yourself at a point because it was predetermined, or that a random event occurred along that chain. You still didn’t author any of those events yourself. You were at the end of those events.
Let’s move onto thinking. Or the idea that we author our thoughts, so that is an argument for free will.
When a thought appears in your head, it does just that, appears. One doesn’t decide to think the thought. If you decide to think the thought, that means you think to think the thought. It requires that you think the thought twice.
Firstly you decide to think about something (that is you think the thought), then you proceed to think the thought. It makes no sense what so ever. This is not our experience with thinking. And besides, where did the first thought come from?
What actually happens is your thoughts simply appear from the dark. We have no idea where they come from, but they do appear.
How about decision making? Let’s look at that case.
When you decide to pick between two glasses of water, with exactly the same amount of water, from the same tap, etc. basically identical glasses. You mill over the decision for an hour, but simply cannot make a solid judgment on which one you like more. So you decide to just pick the one on the left.
Why did you pick the one on the left?Ask yourself that question. Well if it truely were done on a whim, you don’t know why you picked it. You simply picked it. That is not free will. Not knowing why you did something is not an expression of free will. Free will implied that you authored the event, you made a choice based on preference. You acted based on your desires. However we’ve clearly described a situation where you thought it through and had no desire for one glass or the other. You hence then can not explain why you picked the glass. It is random.
However, maybe though you picked the glass on the left, because the sun was bouncing off that glass into your eye. So you wanted to stop that, and picked the left glass. That is determinism. You did it because of something. If you went back in time, were sitting in exactly the same place, had the sun shining in your eye, didn’t like the sun in your eye just as much as the first time it happened, you would still grab the glass on the left.
Free will is a non-sensical term.
Yes, yes, yes!! Thank you! That's what I wanted to say. He just dismisses every argument with "I know that I have free will, if we can't explain it who cares" and it's astoundingly silly in my opinion. So many things seemed self evident to us and they turned out to be bs. He also says "yeah you have proven scientifically that you can predict what I'm going to do next before I am consciously aware of it but that doesn't say anything about free will, it only says that your brain decides unconsciously for you" excuse me, what?! Isn't that the definition of a proof that free will doesn't exist? I don't get it...
@@SteveRayDarrell Chomsky clearly explains the reasoning for his argument is that there is absolutely no concrete evidence for determinism, and he never makes the claim free will is a scientific truth. There is concrete evidence that the earth is flat. There is not evidence that suggests the universe is deterministic, therefore, it's more rational to conclude what our personal perception tells us where no other evidence is available. Chomsky clearly explains this. How you fail to make this distinction is laughably retarded.
Open your ears and try to learn something.
Chomsky clearly explains the reasoning for his argument is that there is absolutely no concrete evidence for determinism, and he never makes the claim free will is a scientific truth. There is concrete evidence that the earth is flat. There is not evidence that suggests the universe is deterministic, therefore, it's more rational to conclude what our personal perception tells us where no other evidence is available. Chomsky clearly explains this. How you fail to make this distinction is laughably retarded.
Open your ears and try to learn something.
@@scoogsy You should publish your thesis, you surely will get worldwide recognition for debunking the age old philosophical question of free will.
We don't experience free will if we pay attention to our immediate experience. What Chomsky says is he's not going to select the other options.
Well, no reason to think he's free to in the actual circumstances then. It actually seems like he isn't.
On the experience others report they report weighing up their options and acting on the bases. Well that's what we do but again, no reason to think we are free to select the options we don't select in the actual circumstances.
Bottom line is we are fated to select the option we do and that matches the experience.
This is all known. The debate goes on becauae people don't accept the conclusion and think there must be something we don't understand yet.
You're literally just reasoning circularly, assuming that determinism is true in the first place.
If one were to assume that free will exists instead, then there would be no reason to think Chomsky wouldn't be free to express something else, and the bottom line is that we wouldn't be "fated" to do anything in that case.
It's hilariously false that determinism being true is "all known"; it's absolutely not known whatsoever.
Even more hilarious is that you seemingly think your extremely limited primate mind is entitled to understand the truth of the matter. It's rather ironic, almost poetically so.
the question for me is NOT: do humans have free will RIGHT NOW? rather it should be: is free will an acheivable state? i would say yes it is. that should be the focus.
Source too tell
The interviewer is blowing past very simple buy profound insights about the impact of the Newtonian revolution. Most people think the world can be explained; Chomsky is saying that Newton proved it can't and that the philosophy of science, ever since, has been forced to deal with that. Somehow, we are not taught that when we study the scientific revolution. Also, Chomsky states (and rightly so, in my opinion) that human beings are biological organisms with scope and limit.
I realize the interviewer is making a point/asking a question and needs to move along with the interview and that Chomsky himself doesn't obsess over these points - he just regards them as facts and continues to do science in those constraints - but I get blown away by that every time I hear him say it. I am not a scientist or academic but I get the sense that these elementary points are just missed to the detriment of cognitive science including psychology.
I like this guy. He seems to speak honestly, passionately and from an academics perspective.
The trap that many scientists fall into is that everything in nature and the universe is only maths, rules and laws. But they miss several considerations.
The fact that because nature in all its complexity has evolved to produce life, and it's because of this complexity that life is presented with choices within their environments. Are these choices chance only? Does life make these choices involuntarily only? Or does life allow us to learn from our choices to help us make better ones in order to improve our quality of life, chances for survival, and to evolve as a life form. Certainly we aren't forced to make good choices even though we know some may be better for us. Some know that smoking is harmful and may kill you, yet some make the choice to do it anyway. This is free will. If one person decides to quit and another smokes themselves to death what would you call it. This is free will as we've defined it.
The truth is it's all of the above. Some choices life is presented with are by chance and are made randomly, and some choices presented are made instinctively particularly in the early stages of life. But with our species in particular we learn from our choices (hopefully) if we live long enough. We recognize things that work and things that don't in order to live better and attain desirable outcomes within the context of our lives and environments. We learn things that give us pleasure and often make choices to do these things even though they may not improve anything in our lives other than our happiness or how we feel.
Life in the universe seems to be a wildcard. It may require certain prerequisites in order to exist. But there exists more than just the prerequisites in our lives and environments. We have options with these other things. We can investigate them, manipulate them, experiment with them. Why? To discover more about ourselves and our environments. To improve our quality of life and our security(our chances for survival). To discover more about what we are.
I think the biggest thing that scientists overlook when defending this position of "No free will" is that there is chance in the universe. A certain degree of randomness, certainly from our perception of it. The foundation of Quantum physics is built on this fact. Therefore you can NOT precisely predict certain interactions and /or outcomes. In some cases you can do it very well....but not precisely. There are just too many variables at play. Life exists within this context. In order to continue to exist we need a degree of flexibility to deal with random and chance. Free will.
The concept of free will was defined by us over the course of our history because we recognized we have it.
I could elaborate further however I've probably lost most people at this point so i'll leave it here for now.
i think the mathematical approach is quite solid for natural STEM fields. however in social sciences it often fails yet it gets more and more implemented for emotional reasons.
we assume free will and act like it exists. this is a very good concept imo. if it actually exists isnt known. i wouldnt say quitting smoking or not is a sign of free will. people have different situations and circumstances and hence this can lead to different (forced) decisions. im not saying it does, but it theoretically can.
randomness is something humans are very uncomfortable with. i also think thats one of the main forces pushing the deterministic viewpoint. quantum physics, as you said, showed us that randomness is part of reality. for me it seems plausible that free will exists.
Examine your choices and the choices of others. Don't you see a certain amount of repetitive choices? For instance, the grossly overweight person who can't stop eating. The cigarette smoker. The thousands of examples of people making negative choices over and over again. If free will existed, don't you think that we would all make better choices?
+Steve Kennedy But you do see people turning the other direction, it's not the easier choice but nothing of value is gained easily
+Steve Kennedy The very fact that people can break out of these molds lends to the possibility that free will does, or at least *can*, exist.
I say that because there is likely an element of choice involved. There are people kick addictions that affect their lives. The fact is that there are also people that succumb to these things and never rebound.
For the moment, I think that I'll agree with Chomsky in stating that we're simply ill equipped to comprehend this subject matter, as it tends to seem endlessly paradoxical.
I do think, however, that it speaks volumes about our capacity as humans to just consider things like free will or even consciousness for that matter.
+Steve Kennedy What constitutes a "better choice" varies from person to person. Furthermore, for the most part nobody does something that has absolutely no benefit or value to themselves, as there's always a balance of negative and positive outcome. The cigarette smoker enjoys their nicotine rush. The morbidly obese enjoy flavors of food. Even with people who self harm, they are finding some sort of emotional satisfaction out of it. Speaking of self-harm, what about suicide? It seems like going against all basic instincts of the survival of life by committing suicide would be a good example of human free will, imo.
Then there's me; gave up smoking, eating shit, making stupid decisions and enjoy creating novel experiences. How's this fit with your ideas?
TheOlzee, I am not sure what point you are trying to make. Yes, you did make choices. Were these choices conscious, free will choices, or did they percolate up from your subconscious?
Has Science not amply proved that phenomenon do not have to submit to one's intuition?
There is free will if you want to define free as being limited by an arbitrary limitation. But if free will is asserted to be non existent then it is a fallacious argument given the freedom of choice we do enjoy albeit under the limitations already imposed and those imposed while the choices are being made.
So it is not a question of freedom but the degree of freedom...
You want your cake and eat it too, but I'm afraid there is no room for that.
+Sagan Worshipper please explain
I mean simply we either have free will, or we don't.
+Sagan Worshipper 🤔 If we have it then can we justify it being limited by unknown factors or else should we completely abandon it?
Another thing he disagrees with Sam Harris on.
Sam Harris is a conservative that knows very well that free will doesn't exist, but wants to maintain the current order for whatever reason, which is theological, not scientific.
It is certainly strange to deny our experience of free will on the basis of a theory (that the behavior universe is determined only by causes and effects). I doubt correctness of the idea that the universe is a big deterministic cause-effect machine that makes free-will impossible. It is certainly possible the universe is nothing like any machine we know about.
I reject free will without having to appeal to determinism. I think that regardless of whether or not the universe is deterministic we make choices based on our psychological dispositions (beliefs, desires, preferences, values, character, personality, motivations, temperament, memories, experience, etc...)
Now under naturalism, our psychologies are a product of our genetics, environment, and life experience.
However, if you want to posit that this isn’t the case and instead we freely choose what psychological dispositions to have, this would result in an infinite regress because in order to choose to have certain psychological dispositions we would need to already have prior psychological dispositions to inform that choice.
@@1999_reborn Sorry but I doubt the correctness of your faith
jjharvathh That’s not an argument. What’s one thing I said that was wrong?
jjharvathh Actually let me ask you this. Why do you think some people ‘freely’ choose to commit crimes but others don’t? And why is it that more children become criminals in poor neighbourhoods than in wealthy neighbourhoods?
@@1999_reborn I just don't agree with any of it...honest answer, hope that is ok with you.
"Cause and effect" if absolutely true , then free will ?? when Chomsky said if
he just brought into the conversation " the red skins " is that just an example
of cognitive dissidence ?
As smart as Noam is, I question his sometimes. Not sure how a guy like him still doesn’t see how free will doesn’t exist.
Because he cant feel it intuitively
Sam harris understands because he actually lives without it after years of meditation
TheCelticsAREboss, it's a funny approach to free will that seems to only apply to this one subject. If I am able to see the action of natural phenomena, I give it a name, and I can concoct a description of its action, but the idea of formulating a definition that then retroactively negates the very phenomena that I am defining is very strange. I see flashes of light during a thunderstorm, I call it lightning, and I can describe it as a sudden release of electrical potential, or a flash of anger from the gods, but whatever I use as a definition will never make me declare that lightning isn't a thing, or doesn't exist. I can observe myself making choices, I can see the results of other people making choices, and I give this phenomena a name, free will. I can define it as choices or wants or will, but it doesn't mean that it isn't a thing, or doesn't exist just because I define it in a certain way.
@@caricue Except that no one is saying freewill doesnt exist because we define it that way. We are saying freewill doesnt exist because all of your actions are caused by a causal chain that goes back to before you were born. If you "couldnt have done otherwise" then "making a choice" is an illusion. And in a universe based on causality and randomness you genuinely "couldnt have done otherwise". You are making as much of a choice when picking vanilla over chocolate as the wind is making when it "chooses" to blow south. No one holds the wind accountable for blowing south. Yet we hold other physical systems like human brains accountable because we are under the illusion that they didnt have to do as they did. The people who are shifting the definitions are those who believe in freewill. Not those who do not.
@@xsuploader Thanks for the reply. My point is that when you are dealing with a concept, you must have a definition. When you are dealing with a natural phenomena, you have a description. You seem to be talking about the concept of free will. I am talking about a natural phenomena, so I don't really worry about a definition. I can observe and experience choices being made by myself and others. The common name for this is free will. The term free will is used as a religious concept also, but I don't find religion very useful. You are talking about a philosophical concept of free will, and then using that to negate the natural phenomena. Like I said, you can't use a definition to negate things that are observations. Talking about how you "couldn't have done otherwise" is an assertion about the nature of reality. This is the realm of metaphysics, which isn't much more useful than religion. So I do think it is fair to say that you are saying free will doesn't exist based on a definition of the concept of free will. If I was a solipsist, I might define you as not existing, but I'm sure you would find that as absurd as saying that any other natural phenomena that is easily demonstrated doesn't exist.
@@caricue I disagree. The general accepted definition of free will involves burdening individuals with responsibility for their actions, resulting in a justification of retributive punishment. This is the main point: retributive punishment. If the widely accepted view of free will is merely observing and experiencing what others are doing, then where does the logical basis for retributive punishment come from in religion or the legal system? It obviously necessitates a view of free will that backed by ones ability to have been responsible for their actions.
Hmm. He doesn't seem to get the free will issue all that well. Determinism does rule out free will. We know this by logic. Its not a big unknown or open question.
He gets it exceedingly way; certainly way better than you, because what you're saying there is moronic nonsense. It's fully possible for reality to be partially deterministic, but to leave some input open for free will.
This is, in fact, exactly how a computer works; when a computer is idling or executing some other program, it's constantly carrying out deterministic computations, never ceasing for as long as the CPU is powered and working. However, when given input through external means, this alters the course of that deterministic computation. Thus you can extremely easily see how you can have a mix of determinism and free will.
Let's e.g. for the sake of argument say that "you" are some immaterial entity existing in a totally different dimension from the physical world as we know it, and that "you" are simply using your body like a biological flesh-robot. The archetypical "meat suit" as it is often know. This is eerily reminiscent of Cartesian dualism. Now, this "meat suit" is essentially a biocomputer in that case, with the brain at the core of its processing capabilities, and like the computer mentioned previously it would simply be idling or executing programs that have been programmed into it in advance whenever not given any input. This would be the classic case of a totally deterministic animal. However, under these conditions "you" would be able to access the brain via some interface; Descartes said it was done via the pineal gland, but that is highly unlikely given what we know about neuroscience today.
By accessing the brain in whatever way it would be done, you could actively alter the course of its computation, e.g. inserting impulses into certain motor circuits to open or close your fist, or even to reprogram the brain entirely to respond in a different way to specific circumstances (like getting yourself a glass of water instead of beer whenever you are thirsty). While Descartes' suggestion about the pineal gland as being this interface between dimensions is likely false, there are other known mechanisms that could very well account for such a possibility, such as e.g. quantum coherence in the microtubules of brain neurons that would literally make it possible to collapse complex superpositions of such microtubules into certain configurations, making certain neural circuits trigger rather than others.
So let's be clear about one thing: you are the one who doesn't understand this issue, and not just "not that well", but apparently not at all.
John 3:16-21
16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. 18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. 21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.
Mark 1.15
15 And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.
ولا قادر افهم واستوعب ليش عاملين معركة بين مدرسة حرية اتخاذ القرار ومدرسة عدم القدرة على اتخاذ قرارات بحرية
حاولت اسمع مقاطع مختلفة على اليوتيوب لوجهات نظر مختلفة... لكني مش عارف ليش في ناس تدعي انها مجبورة على تصرفاتها... وانها ليست حرة في التفكير
شغل هبل صرف واتهبل
للمعلومية فقط.. بالعربي المدرستين اسمها الجبرية والقدرية
I didn't get 1:08 how its even possible.
@bishwash bhatta - Chomsky "If I move my hand I'm moving the moon" He is referring to Newtons law of gravity. Every object attracts every other object in the Universe. Newton referred to this spooky action at a distance as occult forces. The moon exerts an attractive force on your hand and your hand exerts an attractive force on the moon. He is simply using this reference to illustrate an idea we take for granted today seemed crazy around the time it was created.
@@kennethboykins264 but Einstein did get around it with his general theory of relativity, a corollary of getting around action at a distance is the existence of waves, in this case gravitational waves, whose detection was announced in 2016, for which the Nobel was granted in 2017. It's true that the bodies which exert forces on each other are still not in contact, but if you move your hand, it's effect on the moon is not instantaneous, but happens after some time corresponding to the time it takes a gravitational wave due to the motion of your hand to affect the moon. These waves are similar to ripples created on the water surface by drops of water, but gravitational waves are ripples that travel through space-time. Einstein did not take for granted spooky action at a distance. In fact, he hated it so much, he invented quantum entanglement just to reject quantum theory because entanglement seems like spooky action at a distance at first glance (but it's not)
@@harjotsingh8530 Thank u for your response. I did not give my opinion on the matter. I simply the restated the point Dr. Chomsky made. Einstein did not create the concept of quantum entanglement. On the contrary. Einstein and two colleagues created a thought experiment (EPR paradox) in an attempt to falsify Quantum Entanglements spooky action at a distance with a reductio ad absurdum argument and hidden variables.
In this context, waves do not exist. A wave is not what something is, a wave is what something does. Water waves and gravitatiional waves are fundamentally very different. Water, air, and sound waves are mechanical waves. Electromagnetic and Gravitational waves are non-mechanical waves. The former osciallates in a (material/matter) medium, the latter propagates in a vacuum.
If Gravitational waves were mechanical waves your argument would be valid. Contact force disappears in a vacuum. Einsteins theory of general relativity is regarded as the most beautiful scientific theory in history.
The geometric curvature of spacetime due to the influx of matter/mass is an aesthetically pleasing picture. A real materialist would regard the warping of spacetime as an absolute monstrosity.. General Relativity is deterministic and mechanical but it is not physical in any meaningful sense.
Contemporary materialism is an undefined philosphical position. Speaking plainly, materialist today are punks. They call everything material. There is a reason why they changed the name from materialism to physicalism. Innumerable scientific discoveries have completely destroyed the classic notion of materialism.
They ignore this fact by calling everything science has or will discover material. Atoms in superposition=material. Quantum tunneling=material. Light (massless) =material. Spacetime curvature=material. Time dialation and space contraction = material.
In Rene Descartes time, what do you think a materialist would say about the curvature of spacetime? They would regard it as witchcraft. It would be a mistake to regard these people as primitive fools. The difference between contemporary materialist and historical materialist is they actually believed in materialism back then. Why did Boltzman's (genius that discovered entropy) life end tragically? You can't fool me playboy
@@kennethboykins264 I was not trying to fool you. Just presenting the modern point of view. I agree that in the context that Chomsky mentions spooky action, modern view of action at a distance would still be spooky action. When it comes to quantum entanglement, it's not spooky action at a distance. It's correlation between quantum variables. Classical counterpart of that would be giving Alice and Bob two boxes, one of which contains a black ball and the other a white ball. If Alice and Bob now travel to far ends of the universe and let's say Alice opens her box and finds a black ball, she would know that Bob has a white ball. Quantum version of this would have to do with a quantum color, but it's not interaction at a distance.
Where does Chomsky see the room for free will?
How does he even define it?
The common notion of free will is simply self-contradictory nonsense; we've figured this out a long time ago. It has nothing to do with physics or neurology - even an immortal soul or a deity could not have free will. It's purely a question of terminology, logic.
+Taxtro Indeed, the common notion that decisions can be made devoid of desires or situation is absurd. People can make decisions of their own accord, but it's only according to desires and passions.
+Taxtro When you think about it or study about it, you don't have free will. Because your freedom to choose always happens NOW. This is most often talked about by philosophers like Alan Watts. We live in world of symbols which is good to classify, identify and think about the world. But we often confuse this world of symbols with reality. just like you can't bath in the word 'water', you can't define what free will is. Because it happens now and by the time I said now the NOW is already gone. But still it is always NOW and there is no such things as past and future. Ideas like past and future are all created in the present and there is only the present.
Eh I wouldn't go that far. Time is a continuum, but this is just one part of it, the present. The past and future exist
Charcoal635 Present, past and future exist within NOW. They are ideas which emerges from NOW.
Now is the present, the past determines the present which determines the future. It's one continuum.
Free Will is caused by Devine intervention. It is coincidental with self consciousness, which is Grace. "To be or not to be." That's the question.
What’s with all his hemming and hawing? It’s painfully obvious there is no free will.
lol
Matt, If there is no free will, then what is it that we are discussing? When you see your body move in a way that leads to you getting what you want, what do you think is happening? If I tell you that there is a tiger behind the door to the right, so you go left, what is making this decision and compelling this action? Are these just spastic reflexes of a mindless lump of flesh, or are you talking about something different than the rest of us?
@@caricue Sure you are "choosing" something, but that choice comes from your wants and desires. Did you pick your wants and desires before you were born? No, no one can do that. What makes you like the color red instead of the color blue or vice versa? Maybe you say well I like blue because that was a socially appropriate color choice being a male, and that you liked it because it is not too bright but not too dark. But the social aspect you had zero control over, and your preference for a certain light intensity is unknown, you could simply ask further...well why do I prefer a more medium brightness? Well because it seems calm. But why do I prefer calm instead of aggressive or flamboyant. Thus you can go endlessly down this line until you realize there is no way that you are the ultimate author of your desires and choices.
You also have no choice over how your environment shapes your actions. Your example about the tiger proves free will does not exist. Your brain makes the decision to avoid the tiger so quickly that you could not have possibly been the author of the action. Those are instincts. When you are driving down the road and a deer jumps in front of your car and you quickly try to avoid it, there is no chance to even think about it.
Honestly having no free will is not bad, it has important ethical implications and our felt experience is that we do have some level of control so it is not so bad.
@@Matt-ph8yq Ok Matt, that's a million times more than I ever get from determinists here in the comments. I'll take it. Most determinists say you aren't even making choices, just following the laws of physics or something. Other people say there is no self, so there's no one to make a choice, and no choice either, just for good measure! I mean, basically you are saying that my choices are made by me because of who I am as a person, no problem there. You are saying that my choices are based on what is happening in the environment, which is what choices are there for, so it all sounds good to me. As far as some value judgement about being "free", you are free to feel that "making choices from the available options based on local conditions" doesn't constitute "free will", but your opinion or mine doesn't constrain reality in any way, so we are left with the experience, and I'm perfectly happy with that. Thanks for sharing though.
Believing in determinism will make you fee as though you don't have to take any responsibility for your actions so you'll act much more recklessly. Don't fall for it.
I understand that determinism denies the _self_ altogether.
Sorry Chomsky, got it wrong this time.
He's wrong that we don't know what the true nature of free will is? Sorry, but you're the one who's got it wrong.
We know that there is no such thing as free will, period. We are physical entities, and we follow the rules of physics. You have no option. You have free will as much as a tree growing on a hill.
+semih oguzcan No, you are not smarter than eminent philosophers, you are nobody. Nobody is arguing that we DON'T follow the rules of physics - but of course you're too obtuse to see that, and are just foaming at the mouth to exclaim your victory over nothing. We are not sure that there is no free will - it could exist in terms of physical laws but we just don't know how it works yet. Perhaps there is something besides determinism and randomness. You have as much intelligence as a tree growing on a hill.
You don't know shit.
Educate yourself about the Free Will Theorem and the Strong Free Will Theorem. Thank me later. ;-)
Wrong again Chumpsky. You said you believe in the scientific method as the only valid method for acquiring knowledge. In a rational universe cause and effect is the only acceptable explanation for events. Freedom of will is an illusion that contradicts your emotional attachment to it. From the moment of the big bang, everything that ever happened or ever will happen was already determined and there is nothing you or anyone can do about it except pretend it isn't true or that you can't ever know because you don't like it. The only 2 alternatives are irrational. They are the existence of God who can change the universe at will making it pointless to try to understand it or existentialism which says I think, therefore you are.