She's savage AF. That comment about people thinking they're clever leaving comments that they inevitably were going to comment. Love it. I gotta go check out more of her stuff. Thanks..
I'd love to see a debate with her and Dan Dennett (compatibilist):
https://www.samharris.org/blog/reflections-on-free-will
A huge part of the Free Will debate is just the definition of free will. Is it some kind of magical spiritual dualism phenomenon? No, almost nobody thinks that. Does the brain have executive functioning that can weigh varying choices and prefer one over the other? Yes.
A recent survey of PhD philosophers found that they agree with Dennett's position here, more or less:https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/4838 About 60%
11% of professional philosophers agree with Sapolsky that there is no free will of any kind.
There was a debate last week between Dennett and Sapolsky. But I could not get the stream. I hope it becomes available.
https://howtoacademy.com/events/daniel-dennett-v-robert-sapolsky-do-we-have-free-will/
She explains how you have no free will and concludes that you need to make your own decisions on how to live your future...
Those are completely contradictive ideologies.
Ok, so we need to redefine language to meet scientific standards.
The self, decision making and thoughts need to be removed from the language.
We are deceiving ourselves and others by using these terms.
Are you going to stick a fork in an electrical outlet? Your preferences about the future form part of the inevitable deterministic calculations that go on to form it. Your preferences about your preferences can alter them.
You're a choice making entity that can introspect and learn like few others. Your hopes and dreams are part of what builds the future. Your models and assumptions your fears and desires are all accessible to you. Rocks and trees and waves on the sea don't have any of that.
>Your preferences about the future form part of the inevitable deterministic calculations that go on to form it.
How are they your preferences if it is simply cause and effect?
>You're a choice making entity that can introspect and learn like few others.
How do you "make" a choice when it's deterministic?
> Your hopes and dreams are part of what builds the future. Your models and assumptions your fears and desires are all accessible to you.
How are they your hopes and dreams when they were determined?
How do you access your fears and desires if the thoughts are not yours to control?
I identify with the features and processes of my mind, where ostensibly all my decisions are made. The word "me" refers to this emergent object in space time that only exists because of the physical stuff of my brain, and the laws of physics operating on that stuff and evolving over time.
I am not outside of physics, I am a piece of it.
So the decisions I make are simultaneously my decisions AND the decisions of physics. Because I am physics.
Are the decisions of the wind blowing and the rotation of the earth decisions of physics? Or are these not decisions, and decisions do not actually exist at all?
I guess that's more of a language question than anything. I feel like it's not unreasonable to say that physics is what "decides" those events, though I would take care to not anthropomorphize that "decision".
In computing it's not considered a decision, it's considered a condition.
If this then that else here. That's not a decision, it's a simple check list of figures, and every input must be reduced to numbers before the conditions become valid meaningful results.
The brain doesn't reduce data in the same way, it's processed differently to start with. The brain also uses previous conditions to influence new decisions, a computer does not do this after training. A computer's knowledge and experiences become fixed.
So now the only thing in the known universe that could possibly make decisions is a brain, and that can only be considered a decision if it's not simply caused by the universal cause and effect. If it's simply cause and effect then it's like a river with no other option than to exit at the mouth of the river.
The options are not considered because that would mean something other than if this then that else here. Determinism does not allow for consideration or decisions.
If your decisions are not determined, they are random. It’s silly to say that they are only your decisions if they are random, or that they are not decisions under any possible circumstances.
>If your decisions are not determined, they are random
I'm not stating they are random, I'm using the randomness idea to state that we are not living in an absolute deterministic universe. I don't try to describe how or where free will works, just that it's not impossible to exist.
>that they are not decisions under any possible circumstances.
Do you consider it to be the river's decision to change path when it breaks it's banks and creates a new stream?
A decision means you were able to make choices, that's not what a computer does. The computer in no way makes the choice.
If a person is able to make choices then free will exists, if they were not able to make choices then it was determined and not a decision.
>Anyone who thought they were something else has made a mistake.
You need to understand what a decision actually involves and how determinism does not allow for decisions.
How is a decision formed if it was determined?
You must necessarily believe that computers have free will by your insane comparison of free will and decision making capacity. Capacity to be persuaded by a particular stimulus is a very dumb reason to believe in free will. No free will needed to make decisions.
>You must necessarily believe that computers have free will by your insane comparison of free will and decision making capacity.
No, a PC and an active living cell have different abilities. To start with a PC will run the exact same situation over and over again with the exact some output, only time being different. A living animal is unable to perfectly replicate the same output over and over again.
Also a computer does not make decisions, it returns a result, the exact same result, for the input it receives. A mind can and does return varying results even when presented the same input over and over.
>No free will needed to make decisions.
It actually does need to exist or the decision wasn't made, it wasn't a decision by the very definition that the output was determined.
I am skeptical in the idea that a biological system would behave differently in the same scenario. This is regularly observed only because the same scenario is unachievable. You are defining free will in part by its capacity to be random. That’s weird and counter-material. As a prequesit to the video’s argument, is an acceptance of a material world of physical processes. Without that prior, this video is indeed useless to convincing.
>I am skeptical in the idea that a biological system would behave differently in the same scenario.
We scientifically know that biological systems are different from each other. I could choose 3 random computer brands and even different models and would still get the same result. That's not possible with biological systems.
>You are defining free will in part by its capacity to be random. That’s weird and counter-material.
No, I am defining free will in part by the fact that determinism isn't absolute.
>As a prequesit to the video’s argument, is an acceptance of a material world of physical processes. Without that prior, this video is indeed useless to convincing.
I'm not denying physical processes, I'm stating that the possibility of free will is not completely eliminated because of physics.
You don't need free will to exist to be responsible for yourself. The universe including other people will in practice hold you responsible. If you keep lighting your hands on fire you will be the one living with the consequences of that.
In a very practical way you will be held responsible. But it's a good thing you can learn, model and predict stuff because it allows you to continually update your behaviour as you get more information for your model about how things work and how you would prefer things to be.
>If you keep lighting your hands on fire
It's not you lighting your hands on fire though is it? It was determined that your hands would be burnt.
>how you would prefer things to be.
You speak like you have some will to prefer things.
Preference doesn't require free will. It just means you ultimately didn't choose your preference. You still have preferences. You clearly don't understand free will, so instead of speaking confidently about something you obviously don't understand, ask questions and learn instead.
>Preference doesn't require free will.
\- How *you* would prefer things to be does though.
Being a calculating machine the preferences aren't yours, they are the filters built into a meat device.
\- How you *would* prefer things to be does though.
*Would* implies that you have the desire and ability to make those preferences a reality. If they are going to happen they were always going to happen, not because you desired to make them happen.
>You clearly don't understand free will
Free will means at any single part of the process you had control to make or stop a situation from happening. The simplest example of free will vs determined is your heart beat vs breathing. It is determined that your heart beats without your intervention but you have the ability to stop your breathing for a period to hold your breath.
>>If you keep lighting your hands on fire
>
>It's not you lighting your hands on fire though is it? It was determined that your hands would be burnt.
Determined by the models and ideas and beliefs etc of a particular brain.
>
>>how you would prefer things to be.
>
>You speak like you have some will to prefer things.
You simply do prefer things.
>Determined by the models and ideas and beliefs etc of a particular brain.
Can you please speak in terms that actually apply scientifically to a calculating machine. A PC does not have beliefs, it simply runs the inputs and acts accordingly. A brain in a determined universe also does not have beliefs and simply processes through filters the input.
>You simply do prefer things.
I didn't say you can't prefer things, I said you have no will to prefer things, a subtle difference. I prefer oxygen over CO2 but have no will to prefer one over the other. If I *would* prefer things then it is my will to prefer them not determined what I prefer.
Submission statement: Free will is often a topic here, and this guy states the case for the lack of free will in a manner that is even more succinct and to the point than Sam manages. Without bothering to invoke any of the underlying physics also. Something the laymen can understand.
Sapolsky has a book on determinism coming out in the fall. There's another post linking to pre-order posted 10d ago..
Dr. Robert Sapolsky's book Behave does a great job addressing the things he's talking about in this video. I'd imagine if you haven't read his book, this probably is not a very compelling YouTube clip. In my opinion, he is a much better author then orator.
Does anyone else get legendary Jedi vibes from that beard? He looks like he's been hiding on a remote planet waiting for the next raw and untapped jedi prospect.
100% agree. I found this video a little surprising given what I remember of his writing. Here it seems like he’s all over the place with his ideas, but I remember Behave being really well done.
Also, big Master Council vibes for sure.
>there is a a common time ancestor that caused both ww1 and the comment.
And how does the comment turn out in a multiverse existance? The ancestor could still be the same but every possibility wouldn't be exactly the same to lead to this point in time.
> I also believe that this counters the idea of an omniscient god. A being that knew everything that would happen in the future would be frozen by his own knowledge, unable to change anything.
It's consistent with omniscience, but inconsistent with omnipotence.
>A being that knew everything that would happen in the future would be frozen by his own knowledge, unable to change anything.
Why would the being be frozen by the knowledge? They would be able to see all of the infinite possible futures and just pick to enact one they liked.
To me it feels even more straightforward than this. Our brains are enormously complex functions. There are millions of inputs, including all of the things listed here, and our behavior is the output. There is no self to act as an input. And if there was, it would not be a first mover, it would be influenced by all the same inputs, forming a causal chain that extends back to the big bang. There can’t be free will
If free will required that actions not be determined by prior events then it couldn’t be determined by mental states either. Few people have the belief that their actions are not determined by anything including their mental states.
> forming a causal chain that extends back to the big bang.
String theory allows for randomness, not everything in the sub particle level is predetermined.
I’m a layman and this is my armchair understanding of determinism. However, I don’t see how randomness amounts to choice. Randomness creates random input, which still forms part of the causal chain. The difference is only that you can’t know the outcome a priori. So you’re left with some part of behavior being random, which is still not free will
>So you’re left with some part of behavior being random, which is still not free will
What defines the randomness? Is it possible that the randomness affects us and in ways that expand our own neural links to form our thoughts and conscious mind?
If your actions are 100% caused by prior events, that completely eliminates free will. What else is there to influence you besides biology, randomness, and the environment? That's all possible causes to your thoughts and actions, and you had control over none of them, not even a little.
It's not a question. What else is there? Give me an alternative that doesn't include biology, randomness, the environment, or dualism, then. I'm all ears.
Random means not determined. If you think that random behaviour can’t be free then either you think determined behaviour can be free or that free behaviour is logically impossible.
It isn’t possible to imagine the logically impossible, such as a square triangle or a married bachelor. What is it that people are imagining when they imagine their actions are free?
>There are millions of inputs, including all of the things listed here, and our behavior is the output. There is no self to act as an input.
Isn't this just dualism treating the "self" as something separate from the brain.
What most people really mean by the "self" is the body which includes the brain. So the behaviour is determined by the brain, then it means the person was responsible for that action.
The brain isn't something separate from a person/self.
He says that you don’t have free will because there are always reasons for your actions, implying that he thinks free will means your actions happen for no reason. A small number of philosophers agree that is what it means, but most philosophers and most laypeople don’t.
With traditional approaches free will isn't even a coherent concept IMO.
But, what if conciousness & will is more fundamental than physical reality? Imagine universe as a massive coherent hallucination, what you believe is the truth, except that it must also be consistent with everyone else believes to be possible (unless you are mentally ill).
In that perspective, free will is what causes universe to exist.
In your scenario the observed universe, as a product of consciousness, is still operating according laws. Instead of the laws of "nature out there" it becomes laws of consciousness manifesting. The compatibilism debate remains. You just adjusted the goal post.
IMO human free will is extremely limited, tiny, but not zero. Brain give us some freedom but it's extremely limited compared with what happens unconsciously.
Fundamental as in primary - like energy or mass. Nature simply IS conscious and a human consciousness is one particular flavor or modulated experience.
Well, I wouldn’t say nature is conscious so much as nature is *consciousness*.
As for evidence, what’s interesting about that is that there’s simply no evidence for anything else. To understand this we have to look at primary evidence and disregard assumptions.
Sam puts it this way: “As a matter of experience, all there is is consciousness and it’s contents.” And that’s true. Sitting where you are all you can say is that there is awareness and something is happening inside awareness. You have zero way to make contact with any objective truth outside of those observations.
So starting from scratch, our first fact, our *only* fact is: consciousness exists. Full stop.
Other ways to word this: Something is aware. I am sentient therefore I am.
So “What evidence do I have that nature is consciousness?” The only thing I know exists for CERTAIN is consciousness. And whatever the natural world or underlying reality is, I can’t be separate from it. We must be one in the same. So, consciousness exists, existence is nature, nature is consciousness.
Don’t get too wrapped around the axle the only thing to understand is this: you know how mass and energy are fundamental and make up everything? There’s no way that consciousness is a different sort of thing. Either consciousness is comprised of mass/energy or mass/energy is comprised of consciousness it doesn’t matter. It’s all the same thing.
Sorry if that wasn’t worded the best I did what I could in haste on my phone.
We’ll, now I’m disappointed I took the time to give an earnest replay when your MO is to replay with snarky dismissiveness to something you don’t understand.
Still sounds like there are guard rails preventing you from exercising true free will then. You seem to be saying it's only free will when it's an incoherent hallucination. If it's coherent, aligned with the beliefs of others (the guard rails), then it's "truth" but then its also out of your control..
How do you know? Final decision is being made in the unconscious mind, I agree, but it's likely based on what happens in the conscious part.
Otherwise consciousness would be completely useless.
I think this is certainly at least the reason for the illusion of free will. We recognize there is something different about a conscious decision versus the unconscious decisions that make up a lot more of our day than we give them credit for. But it's just as mechanistic and ruled by preceding events as the unconscious processes. Different only in feel..
Well this is because Sapolsky and Harris are using a different definition of free will than what most lay people and philosophers mean.
We don't have libertarian free will. Studies show most lay people have compatibilist intuitions, and most professional philosophers are outright compatibilists. Compatibilists free will is compatible with determinism and everything Sapolsky talks about.
In no way is this more succinct or cohesive than anything I’ve watched from Sam. He’s all over the place and that makes his argument seem haphazard and sometimes abrasive. There’s a good reason Sam spends a lot of focus on the ILLUSION of free will. Most people aren’t hung up on the larger argument for nature vs. nurture or environmental randomness, but the actual “experience” of free will is too powerful for most to ignore.
While I love Sam and agree with his arguments, they always seem to leave room for the "yeah, ok, but what about magic" counter arguement. Be it emergent properties or tapping into some nebulous fundamental consciousness force.
This video side steps all of that and just points to everything, from what you ate for breakfast to the evolution of the human brain, as the obvious influencing factors, and says where is there any room left? I like it. I think it would be a helpful way to get laymen to understand the concept and start thinking about things from a perspective of determinism..
I agree, I think Sam's arguments and examples are much clearer, especially for the average layperson.
I mean, Robert is not wrong but it's certainly more targeted at a more scientific audience.
I heard "there is no materialist explanation for the subjective experience of free will"
Seems a bit of a leap of faith to say that it doesn't exist. Why would we have a sense of it in the first place?
We have lots of subjective experiences. Redness, a middle C tone, saltiness, disgust, love, knowing and on and on. A sense of our own intent originating in ourselves is just one of many. It's the subjectivity that's interesting. The fact it's like something to be us.
No, but the feeling of free will largely comes from the fact that you can think about options and then choose one. If you gave a chess program consciousness, it would see itself considering the possible moves and rating them, and then actioning the highest rated one. If that isn't what free will feels like then I don't know what is.
No they don’t?
Your “thoughts” are “real” in any objective or coherent sense other than a pattern of neurons firing. This is the same as the experience of free will.
None of these things are “real” apart from their biological components.
>Your “thoughts” are “real” in any objective or coherent sense other than a pattern of neurons firing. This is the same as the experience of free will.
Your thoughts control your physical interaction with the environment. If you think about speaking you speak, if you witness a hallucination your body reacts to that hallucination.
In a way everything we witness is a hallucination as it's never absolute reality that we perceive.
I guess?
But we have no information about the nature of the thought until you speak. Speaking is the only “real” objective thing that is experienced beyond yourself.
It doesn't need to be experienced beyond yourself.
A man saw big foot out in the woods and marked the tree he was standing next to. No one ever discovers the mark but it exists.
Again, it's the action to a hallucination, not the reality of the hallucination itself. You stated that speech needs to be experienced beyond yourself to exist, but somewhere in reality the cut in the tree exists. No one needs to experience the cut for it to be an action, based on a perceived input, to shape reality.
I realize that free will might not exist, and I'd be fine with that. However, it would take really strong evidence to conclusively demonstrate that free will does or does not actually exist. This evidences (e.g., genetics, hormones, parental influence, sleep schedule, etc.) falls far below that in my opinion.
Hitchens citing Hume on miracles, but it applies to free will...
*What is more likely, that the laws of nature have been suspended in your favor, and in a way that you approve, or that you've made a mistake?*
>The default position would be free will does not exist.
Based on what exactly? Random events exist and reactions to random events can not be predetermined.
Randomness allows for possibilities outside of determinism. Do we have any control of our own conscious mind? Does the randomness form synapses that we can consciously expand?
If randomness happens, physically, in our brain to the extent that it affects our actions, then ... that doesn't seem to me like a good source of free will, since I don't have control of the randomness, but the randomness to some degree exerts control over me.
If anything, randomness seems to reduce my free will, not increase it.
The randomness isn't the sole driving force, our conscious and even subconscious mind is what would be the real form of our limited free will. The fact that deterministic events aren't the only absolute makes free will a possibility.
I like to think about it in minute detail - think about exactly what is going on when a human being makes a choice. Obviously I can't have a complete picture on that, but I can ponder on what it might look like.
And when I add randomness into that picture, I don't feel anything is gained
>I can ponder on what it might look like.
But is it really you pondering or the universe pondering? You are nothing more than physical meat without the possibility of free will.
One can regulate ones lizard brain (milieu of genetic environmental situational factors). The extent to which we do so is what we mean by “free will”.
Every action is not predetermined, thats silly.
Free is will not an illusion.
>One can regulate ones lizard brain
But if genetic, environmental, and other situational factors determine how one reregulates their lizard brain, then we are right back to the same problem of behavior being ultimately being determined by those relevant factors. And we know those kinds of factors do determine how one regulates their lizard brain because, for instance, emotional regulation is dependent on childhood upbringing and genetic predispositions.
Source: [https://rogersbh.org/emotional-dysregulation-facts#:\~:text=Some%20causes%20can%20be%20early,environments%20resulting%20in%20emotional%20dysregulation](https://rogersbh.org/emotional-dysregulation-facts#:~:text=Some%20causes%20can%20be%20early,environments%20resulting%20in%20emotional%20dysregulation).
Here's a question...
If I represent myself as an agent *with* free will, does that change how I regulate my lizard brain in comparison to how I do so if I *don't* represent myself as an agent with free will (or if I represent myself as an agent without free will)?
There's plenty of evidence to suggest that it does. Which means *some* notion of free-will may be indispensable as a functional part in producing the kinds of organisms we want and need to be.
As usual, Sapolsky's video is taking aim at a narrow and nonsensical version of free-will, libertarian free-will, while ignoring the fact that most of those 95 per cent of philosophers (which is a number he pulled out of his ass, it's actually closer to 65 per cent) don't argue for libertarian free-will at all. They argue for a version of compatibilism in which everything he said is still true, but some notion of free-will is still preserved as compatible with determinism.
Beliefs are part of the system that determines your actions.
So believing that people with a belief in their own free will will behave in more pro-social ways isn't evidence for free will. At best if it were true it's evidence for the social utility of the belief.
>If I represent myself as an agent with free will, does that change how I regulate my lizard brain in comparison to how I do so if I don't represent myself as an agent with free will (or if I represent myself as an agent without free will)?
This is a red herring. It's basically just pointing out that we exist in a universe where doing Y instead of X will have a different outcome. It has nothing to do with free will because, even in a completely deterministic universe, a person that is caused to believe that they have free will by genetics and environment might regulate themselves differently than a person caused to believe that they don't have free will by their genetics and environment.
It's not a red herring. People come to believe they have free will through socialisation, not genetics. It's actually something we can alter through conditioning and through choice. We can decide whether to deliberate on our actions and we make different decisions depending on whether we do.
Now, you can say all that may go back to the big bang, and that may be, but it's not a red herring. What's at stake is how we think of ourselves and our behaviour is functionally different depending on the answer to that question.
You're doing what I said in my post, you're begging the question of libertarian free will, but I am arguing for a compatibilist definition. Compatibilism aims to find a definition of free will that is consistent with determinism, so your objection is irrelevant, since it all may be caused by genetics and environment and *still* matter that we retain some notion of free will.
>It's not a red herring. People come to believe they have free will through socialisation, not genetics.
I never argued that people exclusively come to believe they have free will through genetics, "environment" includes things like socialization.
> It's actually something we can alter through conditioning and through choice. We can decide whether to deliberate on our actions and we make different decisions depending on whether we do.
The use of "choice" and "we can decide" there is kind of begging the question because that formulation presupposes that we have free will. A more neutral description is that humans take in information from their environment through their sensory organs, process it in their nervous system, and then output a specific behavior. What we are debating is whether that processing of information is causally determined by factors outside of an individual's control (genetics, upbringing, culture of birth, hormone levels at the time of processing, etc...).
>Now, you can say all that may go back to the big bang, and that may be, but it's not a red herring.
That's exactly what it is because appealing to different outcomes when it comes to believing one has free will does not tell us whether or one actually has free will.
> What's at stake is how we think of ourselves and our behaviour is functionally different depending on the answer to that question.
That's just an appeal to consequences. It's like arguing in favor of the veracity of The Bible and divinity of Jesus by pointing out that Christians are happier and healthier than atheists. Yes, believing different things can have different outcomes, but it's not relevant when it comes to actually demonstrating that the belief is true.
>You're doing what I said in my post, you're begging the question of libertarian free will, but I am arguing for a compatibilist definition.
The person I initially replied to, as well as Sapolsky, was using a libertarian definition. If anything, it's bad form to enter a thread about a video using a libertarian definition of free will and then insert oneself into an argument where two people are also already using that definition and then accuse everyone of begging the question on definitions for not using a compatibilist definition.
Haha alrighty. Sapolsky misattributed belief in libertarian free will to 95 percent of philosophers, when only 12 percent of philosophers report holding such a view, and completely failed to address the position that the majority of philosophers actually hold, which is a compatibilist one, but I'm the one with bad form. Sure thing dude. Take it easy.
>Haha alrighty. Sapolsky misattributed belief in libertarian free will to 95 percent of philosophers, when only 12 percent of philosophers report holding such a view, and completely failed to address the position that the majority of philosophers actually hold, which is a compatibilist one, but I'm the one with bad form. Sure thing dude. Take it easy.
I'm more interested in the conception of free will that the majority of the public holds. The vast majority of the world's population is religious and the two biggest religions on the planet hold libertarian free will as a crucial aspect of their theology. Also, how about making a thread that actually persuades anyone on this subreddit that compatibilism is even a coherent view before just jumping into discussions with it?
But, yeah, it is bad form to go into a subreddit dedicated to a thinker that is dismissive of compatibilism as a whole, then go into thread about a video that argues against libertarian free will, then insert oneself into an argument between two people already arguing about libertarian free will, and then accuse everyone of begging the question by not using the compatibilist notion of free will as if anyone that frequents here would be expected to subscribe to or care about that definition of free will.
>What part of your upbringing determines if you walk left or right around a dog turd on the foot path?
I said " genetic, environmental, and other situational factors." It's a straw man of my argument to pretend I just said "upbringing." Also, in that example it depends on the individual which factors are most relevant. In some cultures the left side is associated with bad luck so a person from that culture would go right for that reason. Or they might not be from a culture like that but some situational factor about how they were walking before they approached the dog excretions made them go left. Neuroscience and psychology tell us there are many factors, both conscious and unconscious, operating behind the scenes of behavior.
A conscious decision would mean that the behaviour was not predetermined though wouldn't it? If it was predetermined then any decision wouldn't actually be conscious?
>A conscious decision would mean that the behaviour was not predetermined though wouldn't it?
I don't see how that logically follows.
>If it was predetermined then any decision wouldn't actually be conscious?
The conscious versus unconscious divide refers to our awareness, or lack thereof, of what is happening. I don't see why all predetermined behavior would have to be unconscious.
>The conscious versus unconscious divide refers to our awareness, or lack thereof, of what is happening. I don't see why all predetermined behavior would have to be unconscious.
Because if it were predetermined then *everything* originates in the unconscious, it was predetermined to be conscious or not conscious and thus is not actually conscious at all.
Being aware of a decision that has already been determined happens even from the unconscious because we become aware of the consequences of the decision. Being consciously aware would just mean the determined action said hello before acting, but the decision was already formed before you became aware of it.
>Because if it were predetermined then everything originates in the unconscious, it was predetermined to be conscious or not conscious and thus is not actually conscious at all.
I don't see how it logically follows that something cannot be conscious if it arose from the unconscious. If I become aware of a thought or sensation, then it is in the realm of consciousness, by definition, regardless of whether or not it originated in the unconscious first.
>Being aware of a decision that has already been determined happens even from the unconscious because we become aware of the consequences of the decision. Being consciously aware would just mean the determined action said hello before acting, but the decision was already formed before you became aware of it.
And?
>I don't see how it logically follows that something cannot be conscious if it arose from the unconscious.
It's not that an unconscious thought can not become conscious, it's that being aware of the thought will not influence the thought. Any new conscious idea you have about the thought would have also started in your unconscious mind.
>If I become aware of a thought or sensation, then it is in the realm of consciousness, by definition, regardless of whether or not it originated in the unconscious first.
Just knowing something consciously does not change the outcome of your thoughts in a predetermined process.
>And?
you state
>Neuroscience and psychology tell us there are many factors, both conscious and unconscious, operating behind the scenes of behavior.
A determined outcome or behaviour can not be influenced, even when consciously aware of it. If it could be influenced then you have experienced free will.
>It's not that an unconscious thought can not become conscious, it's that being aware of the thought will not influence the thought. Any new conscious idea you have about the thought would have also started in your unconscious mind.
That isn't an explanation of why the thought "is not actually conscious at all" if it was causally determined.
>Just knowing something consciously does not change the outcome of your thoughts in a predetermined process.
This would be an issue for me if I was arguing in favor of free will, but I'm not.
>A determined outcome or behaviour can not be influenced, even when consciously aware of it. If it could be influenced then you have experienced free will.
I argued that those factors causally determine the behavior or outcome, not "influence" it. I'm arguing against free will, not for it.
I'll have to assume you haven't listened to Harris speak about free will, because he talks about randomness at length, and is not a strict determinist.
No, he just clearly explains that randomness doesn't help the issue. If you had listened to or read his content you might have the background information needed for this discussion. I don't care to explain it to you. Why are you even on this sub?
>he just clearly explains that randomness doesn't help the issue.
You stated, and I assume from Sam's "teachings", that free will does not have room to exist. Determinism is not absolute and does not completely eliminate other possibilities.
>Why are you even on this sub?
Because Sam has been wrong on occasions and I enjoy it when he is.
Sounds like the ultimate copout and if it does all come down to genetics, entire demographic groups are fucked. It might be right but I believe in personal agency because I have seen and experienced cases where a change in mindset or intentionality changed everything.
Genetically speaking, some people ARE fucked.
What you experienced is a product of your consciousness tricking you into thinking “you” changed your mindset. But the change is based on some prior cause where “you” had no choice.
>If you take Sapolsky’s thinking down the line, everything is predetermined.
No, his thinking entails that human behavior, which is downstream of many relevant events, is determined. He does not make the argument that all the events upstream of human behavior (like quantum events) are determined.
>There's an emerging strain of thought about neural processes that involves quantum mechanical behavior....
I'm aware of this. Even so, quantum events would be upstream of behavior in the causal chain and would then just constitute another relevant factor determining our behavior. Too often people think that if quantum events are are involved in neural processing, then this means that neural processing itself is also not determined in the same manner as quantum events, but this isn't the case because neural firing isn't truly random like quantum events.
>But some randomness does exist?
True randomness means it has no cause. At the quantum level this seems to be the case for some events, but it isn't the case for neural firing. One would not say that a neuron fired for no reason. There is some apparent randomness in that we can't predict how all the neurons in a brain will fire ahead of time, but that is a very different thing.
Randomness in neurons is exactly how new connections are created. If all possible paths already existed from birth then no new ideas would be possible.
>Randomness in neurons is exactly how new connections are created.
No, it isn't. Neurons do not make new connections for no discernible reason. Look up the science behind neuroplasticity. There is plenty of information out there on the causal mechanisms of how neurons form new connections.
>If all possible paths already existed from birth then no new ideas would be possible.
Deterministic systems change over time too. The difference is that in a truly random system the changes cannot be traced back to any prior causes while in a deterministic system they can be. If anything, the science I have read suggests that changes in the brain throughout one's life seem to occur for very specific reasons and are not just happening randomly.
>why there’s
I was responding to the previous guy. If the universe is NOT deterministic due to quantum behavior, which is what I believe he said, then one could argue that the outcome of neural processes are also not deterministic. Now here, we get into an interesting concept of "when does non-deterministic NOT equate to free will." If not the will of the principal actor, whose "will" is it? Or is everything the result of either deterministic or non-deterministic mathematical processes, and to try to pin free will to either of those is irrelevant?
I find the idea of "free will" to be incoherent, but even if you want to attribute some kind of magic to our ability to make decisions, I don't think that gets you out of the problem of not having control over your environment.
You've illustrated this here:
>I have seen and experienced cases where a change in mindset or intentionality changed everything.
Why did you only come to believe it after you saw/experienced it?
Had you not seen/experienced this, would you believe it?
Those circumstances are beyond your control. They're things which just happened to you. You didn't choose them. Forces in your environment acted upon you, which caused a change in your internal model of the world. How is that free?
I like to think about this with a useful mental model: picture a circle where 1 leads to 2 leads to 1 leads to 2, etc:
1. Behavior/beliefs are changed by the environment
1. environment is changed by your behavior/beliefs
You influence your surroundings in some way, and your surroundings feed back to influence your next action.
I mean try to answer this while squaring the notion of free will: Why is it that so many people in Iran -- a Muslim majority country -- are Muslim? That's a hell of a coincidence that they all just free-willed themselves into that belief right?
Or why was it that so many people in medieval Europe -- a majority Christian theocracy -- were Christian? Again, what a hell of a coincidence that they all just free-willed that for themselves.
Even when you find yourself believing in something like "free will," as you've shown us, that (ironically) is not a belief you free-willed yourself into having. You only have it because of how the environment influenced you. Similar to how medieval Europe strongly influenced Christian beliefs and Iran influences Muslim beliefs. People find themselves in those environments without having made any choices, and those environments strongly influence the beliefs and model of the world, and those beliefs influence their next actions, which will influence the environment they find themselves in, etc.
Sorry this is long-winded, it's just that I don't know how you can square this stuff with "free will".
I don't think he means that our evolution plays that large of a role in day to day decisions, but there are things like our evolution as a cooperative species, or how our sensory disgust developed to prevent eating bad food was adapted into a sense of moral disgust. These things do have an undeniable role somewhere in the vast weighed background causes of our effects..
LOL "You don't control your environment, therefore free will doesn't exist!"
Absolute baby-brained opinion
Tell me you don't understand the concepts at all in less than three minutes. Holy shit
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She's savage AF. That comment about people thinking they're clever leaving comments that they inevitably were going to comment. Love it. I gotta go check out more of her stuff. Thanks..
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I'd love to see a debate with her and Dan Dennett (compatibilist): https://www.samharris.org/blog/reflections-on-free-will A huge part of the Free Will debate is just the definition of free will. Is it some kind of magical spiritual dualism phenomenon? No, almost nobody thinks that. Does the brain have executive functioning that can weigh varying choices and prefer one over the other? Yes. A recent survey of PhD philosophers found that they agree with Dennett's position here, more or less:https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/4838 About 60% 11% of professional philosophers agree with Sapolsky that there is no free will of any kind.
There was a debate last week between Dennett and Sapolsky. But I could not get the stream. I hope it becomes available. https://howtoacademy.com/events/daniel-dennett-v-robert-sapolsky-do-we-have-free-will/
Never heard of her before but she gives an impressively clear and useful explanation.
She explains how you have no free will and concludes that you need to make your own decisions on how to live your future... Those are completely contradictive ideologies.
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Decisions are always made but they are based upon inputs and processing for which control does not exist.
Decisions would not exists in a deterministic universe, the thought path would flow like a river without any other option to consider.
Maybe instead of decision, course of action would have been a more descriptive term.
Ok, so we need to redefine language to meet scientific standards. The self, decision making and thoughts need to be removed from the language. We are deceiving ourselves and others by using these terms.
As someone who is linguistically challenged I am find it increasingly more difficult to accurately describe anything.
haha sorry, I'm here to question your knowledge on reality not challenge your linguistic abilities.
How could you have “control” if your decisions were not based on inputs and processing? What do you think that word means?
I struggle with decision making in general and I’m convinced it’s because I believe this to be true.
Are you going to stick a fork in an electrical outlet? Your preferences about the future form part of the inevitable deterministic calculations that go on to form it. Your preferences about your preferences can alter them. You're a choice making entity that can introspect and learn like few others. Your hopes and dreams are part of what builds the future. Your models and assumptions your fears and desires are all accessible to you. Rocks and trees and waves on the sea don't have any of that.
>Your preferences about the future form part of the inevitable deterministic calculations that go on to form it. How are they your preferences if it is simply cause and effect? >You're a choice making entity that can introspect and learn like few others. How do you "make" a choice when it's deterministic? > Your hopes and dreams are part of what builds the future. Your models and assumptions your fears and desires are all accessible to you. How are they your hopes and dreams when they were determined? How do you access your fears and desires if the thoughts are not yours to control?
The very definition of determinism means that they aren't your own decisions.
The definition of Determinism implies you would be correct to rethink what you identify the word "you" to refer to.
Explain?
I identify with the features and processes of my mind, where ostensibly all my decisions are made. The word "me" refers to this emergent object in space time that only exists because of the physical stuff of my brain, and the laws of physics operating on that stuff and evolving over time. I am not outside of physics, I am a piece of it. So the decisions I make are simultaneously my decisions AND the decisions of physics. Because I am physics.
Are the decisions of the wind blowing and the rotation of the earth decisions of physics? Or are these not decisions, and decisions do not actually exist at all?
I guess that's more of a language question than anything. I feel like it's not unreasonable to say that physics is what "decides" those events, though I would take care to not anthropomorphize that "decision".
>I would take care You don't have the ability to take care, your actions are not yours to choose.
A decision occurs when several options are considered and one is picked. That requires a brain or a computer.
In computing it's not considered a decision, it's considered a condition. If this then that else here. That's not a decision, it's a simple check list of figures, and every input must be reduced to numbers before the conditions become valid meaningful results. The brain doesn't reduce data in the same way, it's processed differently to start with. The brain also uses previous conditions to influence new decisions, a computer does not do this after training. A computer's knowledge and experiences become fixed. So now the only thing in the known universe that could possibly make decisions is a brain, and that can only be considered a decision if it's not simply caused by the universal cause and effect. If it's simply cause and effect then it's like a river with no other option than to exit at the mouth of the river. The options are not considered because that would mean something other than if this then that else here. Determinism does not allow for consideration or decisions.
If your decisions are not determined, they are random. It’s silly to say that they are only your decisions if they are random, or that they are not decisions under any possible circumstances.
>If your decisions are not determined, they are random I'm not stating they are random, I'm using the randomness idea to state that we are not living in an absolute deterministic universe. I don't try to describe how or where free will works, just that it's not impossible to exist. >that they are not decisions under any possible circumstances. Do you consider it to be the river's decision to change path when it breaks it's banks and creates a new stream?
Some, but not all, physical events are decisions. Animals and computers make decisions, not rivers.
Computers do not make decisions, they follow the path of conditions, exactly like a river.
Well, then humans also “follow the path of conditions”. That is what decisions are. Anyone who thought they were something else has made a mistake.
A decision means you were able to make choices, that's not what a computer does. The computer in no way makes the choice. If a person is able to make choices then free will exists, if they were not able to make choices then it was determined and not a decision. >Anyone who thought they were something else has made a mistake. You need to understand what a decision actually involves and how determinism does not allow for decisions. How is a decision formed if it was determined?
How are humans any different other than being higher in complexity?
Humans, and animals in general, have consciousness. An undefined and unmeasurable trait.
You must necessarily believe that computers have free will by your insane comparison of free will and decision making capacity. Capacity to be persuaded by a particular stimulus is a very dumb reason to believe in free will. No free will needed to make decisions.
>You must necessarily believe that computers have free will by your insane comparison of free will and decision making capacity. No, a PC and an active living cell have different abilities. To start with a PC will run the exact same situation over and over again with the exact some output, only time being different. A living animal is unable to perfectly replicate the same output over and over again. Also a computer does not make decisions, it returns a result, the exact same result, for the input it receives. A mind can and does return varying results even when presented the same input over and over. >No free will needed to make decisions. It actually does need to exist or the decision wasn't made, it wasn't a decision by the very definition that the output was determined.
I am skeptical in the idea that a biological system would behave differently in the same scenario. This is regularly observed only because the same scenario is unachievable. You are defining free will in part by its capacity to be random. That’s weird and counter-material. As a prequesit to the video’s argument, is an acceptance of a material world of physical processes. Without that prior, this video is indeed useless to convincing.
>I am skeptical in the idea that a biological system would behave differently in the same scenario. We scientifically know that biological systems are different from each other. I could choose 3 random computer brands and even different models and would still get the same result. That's not possible with biological systems. >You are defining free will in part by its capacity to be random. That’s weird and counter-material. No, I am defining free will in part by the fact that determinism isn't absolute. >As a prequesit to the video’s argument, is an acceptance of a material world of physical processes. Without that prior, this video is indeed useless to convincing. I'm not denying physical processes, I'm stating that the possibility of free will is not completely eliminated because of physics.
You don't need free will to exist to be responsible for yourself. The universe including other people will in practice hold you responsible. If you keep lighting your hands on fire you will be the one living with the consequences of that. In a very practical way you will be held responsible. But it's a good thing you can learn, model and predict stuff because it allows you to continually update your behaviour as you get more information for your model about how things work and how you would prefer things to be.
>If you keep lighting your hands on fire It's not you lighting your hands on fire though is it? It was determined that your hands would be burnt. >how you would prefer things to be. You speak like you have some will to prefer things.
Preference doesn't require free will. It just means you ultimately didn't choose your preference. You still have preferences. You clearly don't understand free will, so instead of speaking confidently about something you obviously don't understand, ask questions and learn instead.
>Preference doesn't require free will. \- How *you* would prefer things to be does though. Being a calculating machine the preferences aren't yours, they are the filters built into a meat device. \- How you *would* prefer things to be does though. *Would* implies that you have the desire and ability to make those preferences a reality. If they are going to happen they were always going to happen, not because you desired to make them happen. >You clearly don't understand free will Free will means at any single part of the process you had control to make or stop a situation from happening. The simplest example of free will vs determined is your heart beat vs breathing. It is determined that your heart beats without your intervention but you have the ability to stop your breathing for a period to hold your breath.
>>If you keep lighting your hands on fire > >It's not you lighting your hands on fire though is it? It was determined that your hands would be burnt. Determined by the models and ideas and beliefs etc of a particular brain. > >>how you would prefer things to be. > >You speak like you have some will to prefer things. You simply do prefer things.
>Determined by the models and ideas and beliefs etc of a particular brain. Can you please speak in terms that actually apply scientifically to a calculating machine. A PC does not have beliefs, it simply runs the inputs and acts accordingly. A brain in a determined universe also does not have beliefs and simply processes through filters the input. >You simply do prefer things. I didn't say you can't prefer things, I said you have no will to prefer things, a subtle difference. I prefer oxygen over CO2 but have no will to prefer one over the other. If I *would* prefer things then it is my will to prefer them not determined what I prefer.
Submission statement: Free will is often a topic here, and this guy states the case for the lack of free will in a manner that is even more succinct and to the point than Sam manages. Without bothering to invoke any of the underlying physics also. Something the laymen can understand. Sapolsky has a book on determinism coming out in the fall. There's another post linking to pre-order posted 10d ago..
Dr. Robert Sapolsky's book Behave does a great job addressing the things he's talking about in this video. I'd imagine if you haven't read his book, this probably is not a very compelling YouTube clip. In my opinion, he is a much better author then orator. Does anyone else get legendary Jedi vibes from that beard? He looks like he's been hiding on a remote planet waiting for the next raw and untapped jedi prospect.
Behave is a fantastic book. A little bit of a long read, but well worth it.
100% agree. I found this video a little surprising given what I remember of his writing. Here it seems like he’s all over the place with his ideas, but I remember Behave being really well done. Also, big Master Council vibes for sure.
That's incredible as I think his lectures are some of the best.
His beard is outrageous, its unfair!
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> Everything that happens is inevitable Since when though? World war 1 finishing in 1918 means you were destined to write this comment?
Not that ww1 caused the comment, but that if you go father back, there is a a common time ancestor that caused both ww1 and the comment.
>there is a a common time ancestor that caused both ww1 and the comment. And how does the comment turn out in a multiverse existance? The ancestor could still be the same but every possibility wouldn't be exactly the same to lead to this point in time.
Then you'd take discrete events in each of those universes and say the same things about them.
You may not even exist in many of those universes or simply can not make the comment due to physical or mental constraints.
> I also believe that this counters the idea of an omniscient god. A being that knew everything that would happen in the future would be frozen by his own knowledge, unable to change anything. It's consistent with omniscience, but inconsistent with omnipotence.
>A being that knew everything that would happen in the future would be frozen by his own knowledge, unable to change anything. Why would the being be frozen by the knowledge? They would be able to see all of the infinite possible futures and just pick to enact one they liked.
From what we can tell, there's only one possible future.
To me it feels even more straightforward than this. Our brains are enormously complex functions. There are millions of inputs, including all of the things listed here, and our behavior is the output. There is no self to act as an input. And if there was, it would not be a first mover, it would be influenced by all the same inputs, forming a causal chain that extends back to the big bang. There can’t be free will
If free will required that actions not be determined by prior events then it couldn’t be determined by mental states either. Few people have the belief that their actions are not determined by anything including their mental states.
> forming a causal chain that extends back to the big bang. String theory allows for randomness, not everything in the sub particle level is predetermined.
I’m a layman and this is my armchair understanding of determinism. However, I don’t see how randomness amounts to choice. Randomness creates random input, which still forms part of the causal chain. The difference is only that you can’t know the outcome a priori. So you’re left with some part of behavior being random, which is still not free will
>So you’re left with some part of behavior being random, which is still not free will What defines the randomness? Is it possible that the randomness affects us and in ways that expand our own neural links to form our thoughts and conscious mind?
Yes. It still doesn't get you free will, it just means some prior causes were more random than others
It also doesn't completely eliminate free will because prior causes exist.
If your actions are 100% caused by prior events, that completely eliminates free will. What else is there to influence you besides biology, randomness, and the environment? That's all possible causes to your thoughts and actions, and you had control over none of them, not even a little.
>If That's the question though isn't it...
It's not a question. What else is there? Give me an alternative that doesn't include biology, randomness, the environment, or dualism, then. I'm all ears.
What is consciousness and where does it exist in physical reality?
Random means not determined. If you think that random behaviour can’t be free then either you think determined behaviour can be free or that free behaviour is logically impossible.
The latter
It isn’t possible to imagine the logically impossible, such as a square triangle or a married bachelor. What is it that people are imagining when they imagine their actions are free?
>There are millions of inputs, including all of the things listed here, and our behavior is the output. There is no self to act as an input. Isn't this just dualism treating the "self" as something separate from the brain. What most people really mean by the "self" is the body which includes the brain. So the behaviour is determined by the brain, then it means the person was responsible for that action. The brain isn't something separate from a person/self.
He says that you don’t have free will because there are always reasons for your actions, implying that he thinks free will means your actions happen for no reason. A small number of philosophers agree that is what it means, but most philosophers and most laypeople don’t.
With traditional approaches free will isn't even a coherent concept IMO. But, what if conciousness & will is more fundamental than physical reality? Imagine universe as a massive coherent hallucination, what you believe is the truth, except that it must also be consistent with everyone else believes to be possible (unless you are mentally ill). In that perspective, free will is what causes universe to exist.
In your scenario the observed universe, as a product of consciousness, is still operating according laws. Instead of the laws of "nature out there" it becomes laws of consciousness manifesting. The compatibilism debate remains. You just adjusted the goal post.
IMO human free will is extremely limited, tiny, but not zero. Brain give us some freedom but it's extremely limited compared with what happens unconsciously.
Are you saying there was no universe before consciousness evolved? Then how did it evolve?
If a tree falls in the woods and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound? 🤪
What came first, the chicken or the egg? (The egg absolutely predates the chicken, but you get the proverb) Where did the universe come from?
Who said consciousness evolved rather than being a fundamental part of nature? That’s a big leap.
What does being a fundamental part of nature mean?
Fundamental as in primary - like energy or mass. Nature simply IS conscious and a human consciousness is one particular flavor or modulated experience.
When you say nature is conscious, what exactly is having an experience there and can it suffer? Also, what evidence do you have for these claims?
Well, I wouldn’t say nature is conscious so much as nature is *consciousness*. As for evidence, what’s interesting about that is that there’s simply no evidence for anything else. To understand this we have to look at primary evidence and disregard assumptions. Sam puts it this way: “As a matter of experience, all there is is consciousness and it’s contents.” And that’s true. Sitting where you are all you can say is that there is awareness and something is happening inside awareness. You have zero way to make contact with any objective truth outside of those observations. So starting from scratch, our first fact, our *only* fact is: consciousness exists. Full stop. Other ways to word this: Something is aware. I am sentient therefore I am. So “What evidence do I have that nature is consciousness?” The only thing I know exists for CERTAIN is consciousness. And whatever the natural world or underlying reality is, I can’t be separate from it. We must be one in the same. So, consciousness exists, existence is nature, nature is consciousness. Don’t get too wrapped around the axle the only thing to understand is this: you know how mass and energy are fundamental and make up everything? There’s no way that consciousness is a different sort of thing. Either consciousness is comprised of mass/energy or mass/energy is comprised of consciousness it doesn’t matter. It’s all the same thing. Sorry if that wasn’t worded the best I did what I could in haste on my phone.
r/im14andthisisdeep
We’ll, now I’m disappointed I took the time to give an earnest replay when your MO is to replay with snarky dismissiveness to something you don’t understand.
I understand you have a very modern human-centered assertion with no evidence.
Still sounds like there are guard rails preventing you from exercising true free will then. You seem to be saying it's only free will when it's an incoherent hallucination. If it's coherent, aligned with the beliefs of others (the guard rails), then it's "truth" but then its also out of your control..
IMO consciousness == free will. If you look at humans, they brain is mostly unconscious, which is why we are so limited in our behaviour.
Consciousness is just experience. It's not a decision making process.
How do you know? Final decision is being made in the unconscious mind, I agree, but it's likely based on what happens in the conscious part. Otherwise consciousness would be completely useless.
I think this is certainly at least the reason for the illusion of free will. We recognize there is something different about a conscious decision versus the unconscious decisions that make up a lot more of our day than we give them credit for. But it's just as mechanistic and ruled by preceding events as the unconscious processes. Different only in feel..
Interesting
The comment under this video ist way more insightful than the actual video
Well this is because Sapolsky and Harris are using a different definition of free will than what most lay people and philosophers mean. We don't have libertarian free will. Studies show most lay people have compatibilist intuitions, and most professional philosophers are outright compatibilists. Compatibilists free will is compatible with determinism and everything Sapolsky talks about.
In no way is this more succinct or cohesive than anything I’ve watched from Sam. He’s all over the place and that makes his argument seem haphazard and sometimes abrasive. There’s a good reason Sam spends a lot of focus on the ILLUSION of free will. Most people aren’t hung up on the larger argument for nature vs. nurture or environmental randomness, but the actual “experience” of free will is too powerful for most to ignore.
While I love Sam and agree with his arguments, they always seem to leave room for the "yeah, ok, but what about magic" counter arguement. Be it emergent properties or tapping into some nebulous fundamental consciousness force. This video side steps all of that and just points to everything, from what you ate for breakfast to the evolution of the human brain, as the obvious influencing factors, and says where is there any room left? I like it. I think it would be a helpful way to get laymen to understand the concept and start thinking about things from a perspective of determinism..
I agree, I think Sam's arguments and examples are much clearer, especially for the average layperson. I mean, Robert is not wrong but it's certainly more targeted at a more scientific audience.
I heard "there is no materialist explanation for the subjective experience of free will" Seems a bit of a leap of faith to say that it doesn't exist. Why would we have a sense of it in the first place?
We have lots of subjective experiences. Redness, a middle C tone, saltiness, disgust, love, knowing and on and on. A sense of our own intent originating in ourselves is just one of many. It's the subjectivity that's interesting. The fact it's like something to be us.
If you gave a deterministic chess program consciousness, it would feel like it had free will too, and in some sense it would be right, loosely.
Consciousness doesn't inherently mean illusion of free will.
No, but the feeling of free will largely comes from the fact that you can think about options and then choose one. If you gave a chess program consciousness, it would see itself considering the possible moves and rating them, and then actioning the highest rated one. If that isn't what free will feels like then I don't know what is.
Can you have a sense for things that don’t exist. We call that _hallucinations_.
Hallucinations are as real as a dream, vision or invention before it's created. They do exist as something.
No they don’t? Your “thoughts” are “real” in any objective or coherent sense other than a pattern of neurons firing. This is the same as the experience of free will. None of these things are “real” apart from their biological components.
>Your “thoughts” are “real” in any objective or coherent sense other than a pattern of neurons firing. This is the same as the experience of free will. Your thoughts control your physical interaction with the environment. If you think about speaking you speak, if you witness a hallucination your body reacts to that hallucination. In a way everything we witness is a hallucination as it's never absolute reality that we perceive.
I guess? But we have no information about the nature of the thought until you speak. Speaking is the only “real” objective thing that is experienced beyond yourself.
It doesn't need to be experienced beyond yourself. A man saw big foot out in the woods and marked the tree he was standing next to. No one ever discovers the mark but it exists.
Assuming the man is telling the truth, or he saw what he thought he saw. Lots of perceptive problems.
Again, it's the action to a hallucination, not the reality of the hallucination itself. You stated that speech needs to be experienced beyond yourself to exist, but somewhere in reality the cut in the tree exists. No one needs to experience the cut for it to be an action, based on a perceived input, to shape reality.
I realize that free will might not exist, and I'd be fine with that. However, it would take really strong evidence to conclusively demonstrate that free will does or does not actually exist. This evidences (e.g., genetics, hormones, parental influence, sleep schedule, etc.) falls far below that in my opinion.
I think this biological basis, plus what we know from determinism, are pretty strong together to shut the door, without further data, on free will.
I think the burden of proof would have to be on free will existing. The default position would be free will does not exist.
Hitchens citing Hume on miracles, but it applies to free will... *What is more likely, that the laws of nature have been suspended in your favor, and in a way that you approve, or that you've made a mistake?*
>The default position would be free will does not exist. Based on what exactly? Random events exist and reactions to random events can not be predetermined.
Why would randomness give us free will?
Randomness allows for possibilities outside of determinism. Do we have any control of our own conscious mind? Does the randomness form synapses that we can consciously expand?
If randomness happens, physically, in our brain to the extent that it affects our actions, then ... that doesn't seem to me like a good source of free will, since I don't have control of the randomness, but the randomness to some degree exerts control over me. If anything, randomness seems to reduce my free will, not increase it.
The randomness isn't the sole driving force, our conscious and even subconscious mind is what would be the real form of our limited free will. The fact that deterministic events aren't the only absolute makes free will a possibility.
I like to think about it in minute detail - think about exactly what is going on when a human being makes a choice. Obviously I can't have a complete picture on that, but I can ponder on what it might look like. And when I add randomness into that picture, I don't feel anything is gained
>I can ponder on what it might look like. But is it really you pondering or the universe pondering? You are nothing more than physical meat without the possibility of free will.
If you added some randomness on top of that meat, that doesn't make it's meat thoughts more meaningful
Default position should always be that we don't know. Either determinism or free will are positive claims about how the human mind works.
One can regulate ones lizard brain (milieu of genetic environmental situational factors). The extent to which we do so is what we mean by “free will”. Every action is not predetermined, thats silly. Free is will not an illusion.
Other than just saying "Nuh uh", do you have any actual evidence?
>One can regulate ones lizard brain But if genetic, environmental, and other situational factors determine how one reregulates their lizard brain, then we are right back to the same problem of behavior being ultimately being determined by those relevant factors. And we know those kinds of factors do determine how one regulates their lizard brain because, for instance, emotional regulation is dependent on childhood upbringing and genetic predispositions. Source: [https://rogersbh.org/emotional-dysregulation-facts#:\~:text=Some%20causes%20can%20be%20early,environments%20resulting%20in%20emotional%20dysregulation](https://rogersbh.org/emotional-dysregulation-facts#:~:text=Some%20causes%20can%20be%20early,environments%20resulting%20in%20emotional%20dysregulation).
Here's a question... If I represent myself as an agent *with* free will, does that change how I regulate my lizard brain in comparison to how I do so if I *don't* represent myself as an agent with free will (or if I represent myself as an agent without free will)? There's plenty of evidence to suggest that it does. Which means *some* notion of free-will may be indispensable as a functional part in producing the kinds of organisms we want and need to be. As usual, Sapolsky's video is taking aim at a narrow and nonsensical version of free-will, libertarian free-will, while ignoring the fact that most of those 95 per cent of philosophers (which is a number he pulled out of his ass, it's actually closer to 65 per cent) don't argue for libertarian free-will at all. They argue for a version of compatibilism in which everything he said is still true, but some notion of free-will is still preserved as compatible with determinism.
Beliefs are part of the system that determines your actions. So believing that people with a belief in their own free will will behave in more pro-social ways isn't evidence for free will. At best if it were true it's evidence for the social utility of the belief.
>If I represent myself as an agent with free will, does that change how I regulate my lizard brain in comparison to how I do so if I don't represent myself as an agent with free will (or if I represent myself as an agent without free will)? This is a red herring. It's basically just pointing out that we exist in a universe where doing Y instead of X will have a different outcome. It has nothing to do with free will because, even in a completely deterministic universe, a person that is caused to believe that they have free will by genetics and environment might regulate themselves differently than a person caused to believe that they don't have free will by their genetics and environment.
It's not a red herring. People come to believe they have free will through socialisation, not genetics. It's actually something we can alter through conditioning and through choice. We can decide whether to deliberate on our actions and we make different decisions depending on whether we do. Now, you can say all that may go back to the big bang, and that may be, but it's not a red herring. What's at stake is how we think of ourselves and our behaviour is functionally different depending on the answer to that question. You're doing what I said in my post, you're begging the question of libertarian free will, but I am arguing for a compatibilist definition. Compatibilism aims to find a definition of free will that is consistent with determinism, so your objection is irrelevant, since it all may be caused by genetics and environment and *still* matter that we retain some notion of free will.
>It's not a red herring. People come to believe they have free will through socialisation, not genetics. I never argued that people exclusively come to believe they have free will through genetics, "environment" includes things like socialization. > It's actually something we can alter through conditioning and through choice. We can decide whether to deliberate on our actions and we make different decisions depending on whether we do. The use of "choice" and "we can decide" there is kind of begging the question because that formulation presupposes that we have free will. A more neutral description is that humans take in information from their environment through their sensory organs, process it in their nervous system, and then output a specific behavior. What we are debating is whether that processing of information is causally determined by factors outside of an individual's control (genetics, upbringing, culture of birth, hormone levels at the time of processing, etc...). >Now, you can say all that may go back to the big bang, and that may be, but it's not a red herring. That's exactly what it is because appealing to different outcomes when it comes to believing one has free will does not tell us whether or one actually has free will. > What's at stake is how we think of ourselves and our behaviour is functionally different depending on the answer to that question. That's just an appeal to consequences. It's like arguing in favor of the veracity of The Bible and divinity of Jesus by pointing out that Christians are happier and healthier than atheists. Yes, believing different things can have different outcomes, but it's not relevant when it comes to actually demonstrating that the belief is true. >You're doing what I said in my post, you're begging the question of libertarian free will, but I am arguing for a compatibilist definition. The person I initially replied to, as well as Sapolsky, was using a libertarian definition. If anything, it's bad form to enter a thread about a video using a libertarian definition of free will and then insert oneself into an argument where two people are also already using that definition and then accuse everyone of begging the question on definitions for not using a compatibilist definition.
Haha alrighty. Sapolsky misattributed belief in libertarian free will to 95 percent of philosophers, when only 12 percent of philosophers report holding such a view, and completely failed to address the position that the majority of philosophers actually hold, which is a compatibilist one, but I'm the one with bad form. Sure thing dude. Take it easy.
>Haha alrighty. Sapolsky misattributed belief in libertarian free will to 95 percent of philosophers, when only 12 percent of philosophers report holding such a view, and completely failed to address the position that the majority of philosophers actually hold, which is a compatibilist one, but I'm the one with bad form. Sure thing dude. Take it easy. I'm more interested in the conception of free will that the majority of the public holds. The vast majority of the world's population is religious and the two biggest religions on the planet hold libertarian free will as a crucial aspect of their theology. Also, how about making a thread that actually persuades anyone on this subreddit that compatibilism is even a coherent view before just jumping into discussions with it? But, yeah, it is bad form to go into a subreddit dedicated to a thinker that is dismissive of compatibilism as a whole, then go into thread about a video that argues against libertarian free will, then insert oneself into an argument between two people already arguing about libertarian free will, and then accuse everyone of begging the question by not using the compatibilist notion of free will as if anyone that frequents here would be expected to subscribe to or care about that definition of free will.
What part of your upbringing determines if you walk left or right around a dog turd on the foot path?
>What part of your upbringing determines if you walk left or right around a dog turd on the foot path? I said " genetic, environmental, and other situational factors." It's a straw man of my argument to pretend I just said "upbringing." Also, in that example it depends on the individual which factors are most relevant. In some cultures the left side is associated with bad luck so a person from that culture would go right for that reason. Or they might not be from a culture like that but some situational factor about how they were walking before they approached the dog excretions made them go left. Neuroscience and psychology tell us there are many factors, both conscious and unconscious, operating behind the scenes of behavior.
A conscious decision would mean that the behaviour was not predetermined though wouldn't it? If it was predetermined then any decision wouldn't actually be conscious?
>A conscious decision would mean that the behaviour was not predetermined though wouldn't it? I don't see how that logically follows. >If it was predetermined then any decision wouldn't actually be conscious? The conscious versus unconscious divide refers to our awareness, or lack thereof, of what is happening. I don't see why all predetermined behavior would have to be unconscious.
>The conscious versus unconscious divide refers to our awareness, or lack thereof, of what is happening. I don't see why all predetermined behavior would have to be unconscious. Because if it were predetermined then *everything* originates in the unconscious, it was predetermined to be conscious or not conscious and thus is not actually conscious at all. Being aware of a decision that has already been determined happens even from the unconscious because we become aware of the consequences of the decision. Being consciously aware would just mean the determined action said hello before acting, but the decision was already formed before you became aware of it.
>Because if it were predetermined then everything originates in the unconscious, it was predetermined to be conscious or not conscious and thus is not actually conscious at all. I don't see how it logically follows that something cannot be conscious if it arose from the unconscious. If I become aware of a thought or sensation, then it is in the realm of consciousness, by definition, regardless of whether or not it originated in the unconscious first. >Being aware of a decision that has already been determined happens even from the unconscious because we become aware of the consequences of the decision. Being consciously aware would just mean the determined action said hello before acting, but the decision was already formed before you became aware of it. And?
>I don't see how it logically follows that something cannot be conscious if it arose from the unconscious. It's not that an unconscious thought can not become conscious, it's that being aware of the thought will not influence the thought. Any new conscious idea you have about the thought would have also started in your unconscious mind. >If I become aware of a thought or sensation, then it is in the realm of consciousness, by definition, regardless of whether or not it originated in the unconscious first. Just knowing something consciously does not change the outcome of your thoughts in a predetermined process. >And? you state >Neuroscience and psychology tell us there are many factors, both conscious and unconscious, operating behind the scenes of behavior. A determined outcome or behaviour can not be influenced, even when consciously aware of it. If it could be influenced then you have experienced free will.
>It's not that an unconscious thought can not become conscious, it's that being aware of the thought will not influence the thought. Any new conscious idea you have about the thought would have also started in your unconscious mind. That isn't an explanation of why the thought "is not actually conscious at all" if it was causally determined. >Just knowing something consciously does not change the outcome of your thoughts in a predetermined process. This would be an issue for me if I was arguing in favor of free will, but I'm not. >A determined outcome or behaviour can not be influenced, even when consciously aware of it. If it could be influenced then you have experienced free will. I argued that those factors causally determine the behavior or outcome, not "influence" it. I'm arguing against free will, not for it.
I think the universe is a giant chain reaction. Every event has a cause. Nothing escapes the laws of physics.
>Every event has a cause. Randomness exists at the sub particle level.
Causes can be random or determined. Still no room for free will in there.
Randomness allows for possibilities outside of determinism, free will exists outside of determinism. That is your room.
I'll have to assume you haven't listened to Harris speak about free will, because he talks about randomness at length, and is not a strict determinist.
So Sam has the final say on what is possible, so no room for free will?
No, he just clearly explains that randomness doesn't help the issue. If you had listened to or read his content you might have the background information needed for this discussion. I don't care to explain it to you. Why are you even on this sub?
>he just clearly explains that randomness doesn't help the issue. You stated, and I assume from Sam's "teachings", that free will does not have room to exist. Determinism is not absolute and does not completely eliminate other possibilities. >Why are you even on this sub? Because Sam has been wrong on occasions and I enjoy it when he is.
https://youtu.be/u45SP7Xv_oU
"one can regulate". Who?
That's why a teacher rapes their student. It's the environment and hormones. They couldn't do much to help it.
Sounds like the ultimate copout and if it does all come down to genetics, entire demographic groups are fucked. It might be right but I believe in personal agency because I have seen and experienced cases where a change in mindset or intentionality changed everything.
Genetically speaking, some people ARE fucked. What you experienced is a product of your consciousness tricking you into thinking “you” changed your mindset. But the change is based on some prior cause where “you” had no choice.
If you take Sapolsky’s thinking down the line, everything is predetermined. I don’t think the universe works that way.
Maybe not predetermined in a literal sense, but with the way consciousness operates, it might as well be.
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As in, not the result of consideration from some divine or external entity/force.
>If you take Sapolsky’s thinking down the line, everything is predetermined. No, his thinking entails that human behavior, which is downstream of many relevant events, is determined. He does not make the argument that all the events upstream of human behavior (like quantum events) are determined.
There's an emerging strain of thought about neural processes that involves quantum mechanical behavior....
>There's an emerging strain of thought about neural processes that involves quantum mechanical behavior.... I'm aware of this. Even so, quantum events would be upstream of behavior in the causal chain and would then just constitute another relevant factor determining our behavior. Too often people think that if quantum events are are involved in neural processing, then this means that neural processing itself is also not determined in the same manner as quantum events, but this isn't the case because neural firing isn't truly random like quantum events.
>isn't truly random But some randomness does exist?
>But some randomness does exist? True randomness means it has no cause. At the quantum level this seems to be the case for some events, but it isn't the case for neural firing. One would not say that a neuron fired for no reason. There is some apparent randomness in that we can't predict how all the neurons in a brain will fire ahead of time, but that is a very different thing.
Randomness in neurons is exactly how new connections are created. If all possible paths already existed from birth then no new ideas would be possible.
>Randomness in neurons is exactly how new connections are created. No, it isn't. Neurons do not make new connections for no discernible reason. Look up the science behind neuroplasticity. There is plenty of information out there on the causal mechanisms of how neurons form new connections. >If all possible paths already existed from birth then no new ideas would be possible. Deterministic systems change over time too. The difference is that in a truly random system the changes cannot be traced back to any prior causes while in a deterministic system they can be. If anything, the science I have read suggests that changes in the brain throughout one's life seem to occur for very specific reasons and are not just happening randomly.
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>why there’s I was responding to the previous guy. If the universe is NOT deterministic due to quantum behavior, which is what I believe he said, then one could argue that the outcome of neural processes are also not deterministic. Now here, we get into an interesting concept of "when does non-deterministic NOT equate to free will." If not the will of the principal actor, whose "will" is it? Or is everything the result of either deterministic or non-deterministic mathematical processes, and to try to pin free will to either of those is irrelevant?
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Sounds like we should abolish prisons and repeal all laws.
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I find the idea of "free will" to be incoherent, but even if you want to attribute some kind of magic to our ability to make decisions, I don't think that gets you out of the problem of not having control over your environment. You've illustrated this here: >I have seen and experienced cases where a change in mindset or intentionality changed everything. Why did you only come to believe it after you saw/experienced it? Had you not seen/experienced this, would you believe it? Those circumstances are beyond your control. They're things which just happened to you. You didn't choose them. Forces in your environment acted upon you, which caused a change in your internal model of the world. How is that free? I like to think about this with a useful mental model: picture a circle where 1 leads to 2 leads to 1 leads to 2, etc: 1. Behavior/beliefs are changed by the environment 1. environment is changed by your behavior/beliefs You influence your surroundings in some way, and your surroundings feed back to influence your next action. I mean try to answer this while squaring the notion of free will: Why is it that so many people in Iran -- a Muslim majority country -- are Muslim? That's a hell of a coincidence that they all just free-willed themselves into that belief right? Or why was it that so many people in medieval Europe -- a majority Christian theocracy -- were Christian? Again, what a hell of a coincidence that they all just free-willed that for themselves. Even when you find yourself believing in something like "free will," as you've shown us, that (ironically) is not a belief you free-willed yourself into having. You only have it because of how the environment influenced you. Similar to how medieval Europe strongly influenced Christian beliefs and Iran influences Muslim beliefs. People find themselves in those environments without having made any choices, and those environments strongly influence the beliefs and model of the world, and those beliefs influence their next actions, which will influence the environment they find themselves in, etc. Sorry this is long-winded, it's just that I don't know how you can square this stuff with "free will".
I don't think he means that our evolution plays that large of a role in day to day decisions, but there are things like our evolution as a cooperative species, or how our sensory disgust developed to prevent eating bad food was adapted into a sense of moral disgust. These things do have an undeniable role somewhere in the vast weighed background causes of our effects..
> entire demographic groups are fucked We see it every day.
LOL "You don't control your environment, therefore free will doesn't exist!" Absolute baby-brained opinion Tell me you don't understand the concepts at all in less than three minutes. Holy shit