He all but admits that he choose to believe in free will, as that makes most sense as a theist. Major respect to him for acknowledging, he could be wrong. Alex you are an intellectual powerhouse and you are so in a very humble way. I think you are a very influential thinker. Thank you for upholding the banner of reason, curiosity and inquiry. And at such a young age too.
I'm not very scholarly in my abilities to understand free will but I agree with your comments. I'm a Christian believer and I also support the "banner of reason, curiosity and inquiry". Respectfully...
> Major respect to him for acknowledging, he could be wrong. Except for where, right at the end, as soon as Alex even suggested the hypothetical situation of "being able to demonstrate that animals feel 'as much' pain as we do" he *immediately* started backtracking and flinging out excuses as to why he'd never believe that anyway. He's as indoctrinated as anyone.
@@johnnypopstar well let's face it, to believe in God ultimately requires some level faith not based in rational thought - but we can still respect people who have analysed and rationalised there beliefs to a very far extent at least, and are very considerate of counter arguments.
@@jim-bob87 can we? Should we? They did all the rationalising work that *should* have led them away from believing, yet still didn't. In many ways they're even *less* deserving of respect than folk who never even bother questioning why they believe what they believe at all. It's a great example of the Trump-Boris problem. Is Trump worse because he just can't help himself and is wired to be a self-serving fuck 24/7, or is Boris worse because he's actually educated and rationalises that being awful actually works in his favour? It's Boris. He's *capable* of being decent yet chooses not to. That's the worse position.
Not sure that "free will makes the most sense as a theist". You could just as well argue from the perspective of total predetermination which leaves no room for free will. Just as one could make the biblically based argument there is no immortal, immaterial soul. Neither position makes more or less sense for a theist and not even for a Christian theist. In fact the whole idea of an immortal soul that flutters away into heaven like a butterfly in the moment of death is taken from pagan beliefs that have been incorporated into the Christian worldview.
How? 😅 by bringing on this apologist buffoon? He can’t even understand that human decision/agent causation doesn’t end at the agent. This is frankly embarrassing for Alex
Wow. I don't think I've experienced an interview that was so succinct and to the point in both asking and answering that I was actually disappointed it finished so soon. We often get a lot of pointless "meandering" but there wasn't even the slightest trace of it here. Utterly brilliant and spellbinding. Thank you. Subscribed.
Very interesting episode. I wonder whether the whole idea of "me" is akin to the idea of a "table". We assign a name to something which, if you're a materialist, doesn't actually have a name from the "universe's perspective". I.E., a table is just a collection of atoms in a shape that is close enough to the shape and kind of something we call, with our flawed language, a "table". I think the same applies to the concept of "self" or "me". Materialists would believe we are just a bunch of atoms and, while this is a rather crass and unhelpful answer to give to a neuro-transplant patient, it seems to capture the truth of the situation quite well.
You're talking about mereological nihilism here, and most philosophers reject the idea that there are no such things as "things", not just because of intuition, but truly because if "things" are just a pattern of matter, then all emergent properties would be incompatible with reality. There are lots of objections to mereological nihilism, this is just one example, but even quantum physics nowadays tell us that emergent properties are, at least, possible.
“Just a bunch of atoms” is not what most modern materialists think we are. The atoms are transferable it doesn’t matter what atoms are in you because they mostly aren’t the Same ones as were in you a year ago, even the carbon atoms in your brain only hang around for a decade or so. Your neurons themselves last much longer than that but according to most materialist neuroscientists you are the patterns of neurons, neurochemistry, genetics, epigenetic factors etc that are in you, some of those slowly change but there is continuity between the states. It was very interesting to hear someone try to explain the concept of the material self without talking about StarTrek style transporters etc. or cutting the corpus collosum between the hemispheres which is another rare surgical procedure which seems to produce two different personalities which experience the world from slightly different perspectives
The very question though is who or what is the one naming everything though? And is it merely molecules in motion or something independent of the laws of physics or not?
@@GianFerreyraBouillon If the ship of theseus is just a label applied to an organization of wood and cloth, how can emergent properties not happen? How do emergent properties conflict with mereological nihilism?
Swinburn's "soul" just seems to be a placeholder for our lack of understanding about the details of emergent properties of the physical brain. How is this not just a god of the gaps argument?
premise 1: You have free will premise 2: Physical answer cannot account free will existence premise 3: Unmaterial soul can account the free will existence Conclusion: Soul existence is more plausable than physical answer That is not even God of the gaps,
Alex knows we will never know what goes on in the minds of animals yet posits the old "Science will work it out one day!" Materialists do this all the time. Is this called "future science of the gaps?"
I think this was truly a historic interview. Well done Alex for, as ever, asking brilliant questions. It was a joy to see you interact so positively with what is surely one of the most brilliant minds of our time! (I mean the person who is Richard Swinburne of course! ;) )
Only halfway through and already writing to agree with most top commenters: The podcast keeps getting better and is one of the most enjoyable podcasts out there. Also, thanks for inviting only non-fringe christians so far ;)
Prof. Swinburne will never make it in stand-up comedy but he sure is smart, collected and eloquent. Food for thought here, even for the most obdurate of atheists like me.
The problem with mr Swinburne’s statement that hemispherectomies don’t affect personality or memory is that it is a gross oversimplification, verging on negligence or deception. There are so many factors involved in the effects of a hemispherectomy. From which hemisphere is being removed (dominant or non dominant), age (as it is often done on children which are still hugely neuroplastic), previous condition (if your memory is already impaired due to epilepsy, the fact that it doesn’t worsen after surgery doesn’t mean that you have a normal memory). So using this claim as a sweeping justification for something which is beyond the brain is disingenuous. Plus, structures such as the hippocampus or amygdala are not removed during a hemispherectomy, and these structures have a large function in episodic and emotional memory, while the neocortex, which is removed, is more involved in the general knowledge function. Obviously this is an oversimplification of how memory and personality works, but it still shows how faulty the reasoning is.
Swinburne is simply incorrect about the brain’s atoms not being replaced. I believe he is confusing the lack of birth of new brain cells (and even this is incorrect, adult neurogenesis has been demonstrated in the olfactory bulb and hippocampus) with there not being things replaced in the brain. Cells still take in nutrients and excrete waste and use those new atoms to build new molecules and to repair their membranes and such.
I'm still not sure if it even makes a difference either way whether or not the brain parts are replaced or not. Does it even matter? What relevance does it have for the dualist? So what if the brain isn't entirely replaced, how does that imply anything about a soul?
@@123unknownsoldier126 my comment was more in light of Swinburne making the point about brain matter not being replaced - I don't see how that helps him prove the existence of the soul
Alex has long held the position that we always do what we most desire in that moment. When I first saw him talk about it, it made a lot of sense to me. Even when we choose to do the moral thing over the most self-beneficial thing, it's because that's what we most want to do at that moment in time. For example, a soldier who dives on top of a live grenade to save the lives of his fellow soldiers even though he knows he's going to die is choosing to sacrifice himself because in that moment, his desire to save his comrade's lives is greater than his desire to keep on living. A more prosaic example would be abstaining from your favorite calorie-laden dessert because at that moment in time, your desire to lose weight and become healthier is greater than the desire for instant gratification.
@@EnglishMike I agree and I don't really know how Swinburne can get out of this. As I point out to people in conversations at times, we can choose what we want, but we cannot choose to want something else. I think every choice has a sufficient cause in brain structure, experience, and circumstances. When deconverting from Christianity, I would often ask "what is the *difference* between someone who accepts the religion's message and rejects it and how can a person be held responsible for that difference"?
@@Sveccha93 exactly this. We always do what we desire most and secondly, our "consciousness, self, whatever u wanna call it" are not the author of our desires. For example: I did not choose to like chocolate better than vanilla, brunettes over blondes, etc. Furthermore, even in things we become convinced of are not by choice. I can't choose to not believe Australia actually exists. However, inputting data in my brain can alter what I believe. My "self" just simply becomes aware of that belief.
@@EnglishMike "For example, a soldier who dives on top of a live grenade to save the lives of his fellow soldiers even though he knows he's going to die is choosing to sacrifice himself because in that moment, his desire to save his comrade's lives is greater than his desire to keep on living" The atheist's trick with this argument is to create a tautology (hypothesis that is true no matter what data is found). I don't know how people fall into that. No matter what happens you will always say that there was a greater desire and that was the cause of your decision making your hypothesis come true in any scenario.
@@nemrodx2185 It's not a trick. Even most philosophers admit that there's no way to know whether true free will exists, so without empirical data, everyone has to come up with their own explanation for the observed behavior of others. What plausible argument is there for or against free will that is falsifiable? Appealing to any form or religious imperative certainly doesn't cut it.
When Alex gave the example of choosing between two flavors of ice cream, he said, "You don't choose which to like." But there's a difference between choosing to desire an option and choosing to act on your desires. Maybe you have a choice over whether you act on your preferences even if you don't always choose your preferences?
Ok, let’s say I’m choosing whether to buy my favourite ice cream flavour or a different one. Despite it being my favourite, I choose a different one to demonstrate that I have free will. And why did I do that? Because my desire to demonstrate that I had free will was stronger than my desire to eat my favourite ice cream. Why? Because it just was. If I had been a slightly different person (I.e different genetics and/or upbringing) then it might not be. Whatever decision you make, it is always predicated on things that you didn’t choose, so we’re you really free to make those decisions?
@@willhasnofriends Swinburne's e.g. was choosing what is right over what is comfortable for me. Phenomenologically the self-determination of ultimate desire can come before the desire. Decision before wanting. My experience is that it can be "up to me" what I do, not simply desire-driven. That's why we hold people responsible.
@@fr.hughmackenzie5900 Usually when people do things against there apparent desire, there is an easy explanation why they did that. That explanation often has a clear causal chain of itsself. For example I desire to eat icecream, but I know that it will make me fat. I don't want to be fat so that 'desire' of not wanting to be fat drives my choice towards not eating the desired ice cream. In common language I could even say 'I ought not eat' the ice cream almost as if it is a moral decision.
@Richard Bloemenkamp But your examples are still centred upon bodily good of the subject. Swinburne is talking about moral, responsible generosity. The preference for others over self is certainly experienced as a reason but it’s simultaneously experienced as Swinburne’s “ self-determination”. I make myself to be the type of person who has such preferences freely, responsibly. Swinburne did allow that this phenomenology be empirically shown to be a delusion - notwithstanding that we all assume it in each other and it is at the heart of civilisation. But, he clearly implied, it must be taken at face value whatever its final metaphysical interpretation. I would say that the empirical evidence confirms it: our moral and creative preferences are not the physical, ecological-niche-oriented-desires/reasons-for-action of all viable physical things. Humans are the only species to transcend physically adapted limits. We have our own reasons.
On the idea that the best example of free will is in moral decisions, a rebutal I would have loved to hear would be that the morals of an individual are always conditioned by their socialization, experience, and in general by things out of their control. The place we are born in, the people we meet, the books we've read, are all out of our direct control. Therefore moral decisions are biased and cannot be considered free in my opinion. If anyone has a rebuttal to that I would be interested.
Yep, the evolution of our brain structure, present levels of certain hormones and neurotransmitters all mostly a result of the dna we were born with also contribute to determining our moral preferences and decisions. Not much room for a soul, or what many of us would consider truly 'free' will.
@@ceceroxy2227 Your ability to disagree is informed by other events out of your control as well. Such as your education, and the values you were transmitted. And then the internal interpretation of your experiences is as well influenced by events you have no control over. What I mean is that the free choices we seem to make always can be understood as being caused by something outside of ourselves.
@@ceceroxy2227 The physical state of our brains will influence our decision though. For example, someone who is afflicted by Schizophrenia will choose differently from someone who suffered intense childhood abuse, who will also be influenced to respond differently from someone of optimal mental health, etc.
"Heaven is not so much a reward for being good but as a place where good people would be happy. It's a natural home for them." What a profound statement that should equally affect and perhaps change the minds of both theists and non-theists in their understanding of the Christian afterlife!
the biblical description of heaven (the only one that should count i think most christians will agree) is clear. heaven is a place where souls that are "saved" get to sing god praises, in a choir, for eternity. thats it. nothing else. so like north korea now, except in north korea at least you can die and escape that hellish life... heaven is for eternity! sounds like hell to me...
@@atee876 respectfully, you have a very wrong notion of what Christians believe. The orthodox position of all Christianity regarding eternity is not of heaven but rather of a new earth in which we will dwell in our resurrected bodies. The idea that we will form a choir and merely sing songs all day is also a caricature of the Christian position. I hope you will take the time to seek out these things further as I would hate for you to continue on with such jaded and false ideas of the Christian afterlife.
@@bilbobaggins9893 what "christians" believe and what is written in their book is rather different... thanks to centuries of catholic, and then more recently protestant, conmen/priests making stuff up about how it will be a lovely eternal garden party. that is not what is written. what is written ios what i wrote. an eternity of singing god praises mindlessly. and i do mean a real eternity, no breaks, no chatting, no drinks or fancy food. singing about how good god is. for ever. .... like i said. hell!
@@atee876 again, with all due respect you are just demonstrably wrong and you don’t seem to have a spirit of truth seeking. The Bible clearly teaches the fact that we will exist forever in a new created earth with new resurrected bodies. It does NOT say we will form a choir and sing for all of eternity. That’s just false. If you want to continue making that claim, please show me where the Bible says that. Look man, it’s one thing not to believe and idk your story but at least deal with the religion you claim to reject fairly. Creating caricatures and straw-man arguments isn’t helpful for anyone. Take care and hopefully one day you might change your mind!
This conversation really made me question my view on free will. He almost convinced me with the point that free will only matters when its a choice of doing the right thing or what you want, but surely that implies we are all born or raised with an equal, inherent understanding of right and wrong, which to me is a view shrouded in privilege.
Human beings have “morals” as we call them because that’s how we evolved to survive. We are a social species for a reason. When a child’s emotional developmental needs are not met, those brain circuits for empathy do not properly develop. There is nothing free about any of the reasons why someone “chooses” to do the “right” thing or the “wrong” thing. Humans will always choose to do the most pleasurable thing for survival. Every single time. You can observe this of yourself. Even that time you decided to eat healthy when you wanted ice cream was based on a circumstantial calculation that the pleasure of being healthy in the future outweighed instant gratification. You are never doing anything freely. It just feels like you are because you always do the thing that is in line and in sync with your programming and because you are you.
It seems that to come to his view on free will, I would have to see an example of a moral decision in which someone "forces" themselves to do something. To me it seems like the phenomenology is that someone would put effort into performing a moral action only if they wanted to do the moral thing both more than they want to do the immoral thing and more than they don't want to put in the effort.
That's insane. People have chosen horrific torture and death rather than betray family or friends. Your belief is that this is entirely unpraiseworthy or worthy of our admiration because in the end they simply did the thing they most wanted to do! No. They chose to endure the very last thing they wanted to face because they loved their family and friends. If we lived in a world where people truly believed there is no free will it would be a terrible place in which to exist.
@@markmooroolbark252 you said it perfectly. Their desire to be loyal to people they love was stronger than their desire to be tortured. Just think, if the betrayal was against someone else that they had less desire to betray than be tortured, they would have chosen to betray. Now you're getting it. ;)
"If we lived in a world where people truly believed there is no free will, it would be a terrible place in which to exist." Well, yes. No disagreements here. Just one addition, to make. "If we lived in a world where people truly had free will, it would be a terrible place in which to exist." both arguments can just be considered true if we just say the world, the universe, the "super universe" (if you know, you know) are in fact a terrible place in which to exist. @@markmooroolbark252
ultimately one can make the strong argument that no one is responsible for anything they do due to externalities. That none of us have any agency, and that none of us deserve any credit or blame for anything we do. And, as well, that our consciousness is not something in control or directing anything, but rather serves only to narrate or explain our actions and other events to ourselves. We think our brain is deciding, vut in fact it is just pretending to us that it is. Also, that if we win a Nobel Prize or commit an atrocity, we deserve neither credit nor blame. It also means we should not reward talent, good choices, altruism nor punish anyone, even for rape, genocide, you name it. Also that our desire that there be something called personal responsibility is a delusion, and part of a mechanism that allows us to create a fiction.
Free will and morality are Intimately related, yes, but still different. Lack of free will doesn’t suggest we don’t hold people accountable, but instead emphasizes rehabilitation. If a person cannot be rehabilitated there is still the argument that they still need be separated from society so they cannot cause harm but should still not be “punished” in any way additionally to that. Altruism should still be rewarded as it increases the greater good. It’s really just conditioning, rewarding altruism increases the chances of the behavior continuing. Credit for winning a noble prize can still be given as you’re acknowledging the existence of an important event. You can still marvel at beauty of a mind without agency just as you marvel at the night sky without any will of its own. Even though the story of a film is predetermined, it doesn’t prevent you from feeling real emotions towards the characters and events. You can derive meaning from the viewing experience. Life is simply the same way.
@@123unknownsoldier126 NO. In a determinist model as well as physics, tell us these are just events unfolding. Rewarding altruism won't increase altruism one iota under the models. how does altruism increase the greater good when its occurrence or non occurrence is already pre-determined? As far as Nobel prize, why would you give it to an individual? There are just causal factors that already did, or did not occur, very long ago in a chain of events that created past events and create all future events.
People are still causally responsible for their actions, even if we no longer think of them as morally responsible. And if we know that certain influences just objectively cause humans to be more altruistic,then obviously those of us who value altruism would be inclined to promote those influences.
The hypothetical I use is, ok, if someone makes a decision, then you go back in time, would they make a different decision? If they'd always make the same decision, where's the free will, but if they make a different decision, why? What mechanism is there to allow them to make a different decision if everything is exactly the same?
Actually, you would want to use the possible worlds of modal logic. What you're actually asking is "Is there a possible world where ◇p or ¬p?" "Possible worlds" can be understood also as possible states, or dimensions, or alternate histories, etc.
If all possible outcomes exist, is that free will? Unless we're also applying some interpretation of quantum immortality such that, by your free will, you choose which timeline you exist in through your choices at any given moment. That is, I, ME, that which I consider to be the self, the "soul", consciousness.. whatever you wanna call it... must be capable of it's own free will, to choose. Without the ability to "jump timelines" then I am still fixed on my timeline, which has a fixed set of events - almost by definition of the possible worlds hypothesis - as are all other versions of me, that are not me. Unless we're just saying that all possible worlds "are possible" and our choices determine which of these worlds we will create, but that doesn't solve the causality problem. How do we choose something other than that which we most desire to choose? How do we choose what we choose?@@angusmcculloch6653
Thank you for the, as always, intellectually stimulating podcast! I have to say though, after all that talk about souls, free will, "good and bad" people, I need to listen to some Robert Sapolsky lectures for an evidence-based mental cleanse.
@@johnbrzykcy3076not trying to put too fine a point on it, I think they were saying much of the stuff was speculative at best, so they're going to watch some more evidenced based videos to stay grounded.
St. Luke Saint of the Day St. Luke the Evangelist (1st c.) was a well-educated Greek physician and a native of Antioch in Syria. He was a follower of St. Paul the Apostle and spent most of his life evangelizing with him in Asia Minor up until the time of Paul’s martyrdom in Rome. Luke wrote a canonical account of his apostolic journeys with Paul (the Book of Acts) as well as a biography on the life of Christ (the Gospel of Luke). The two books of Luke’s Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles were originally a single work. The intimate accounts contained in Luke’s gospel of the early years of Christ’s life (the Visitation, the Nativity, the Presentation, etc.) lead many scholars to believe that one of the eyewitnesses he interviewed was the Blessed Virgin Mary herself. According to tradition he was also a skilled artist and painted the first icons of Our Lady with the Child Jesus. Several of these icons are still venerated today, the most famous of which hangs in the Church of St. Mary Major in Rome. St. Luke is the patron saint of many trades including artists, painters, doctors, surgeons, and bachelors. His feast day is October 18th.
"they don't have brains like ours, so therefore [ lower animals? ] don't have consciousness" ??? To hold that position with any level of confidence is absolutely absurd. Maybe he means to say the conscious states between different animals are not equal? This world boggles my mind 🤦
CS, Alex, I think it great that his wisdom is kept around! Though, sure, he's understandably behind on our biological knowledge of animals, but given his age and how the fact that he's probably forgotten more than most know, lol. I'm glad you didn't push him. Great convo!!👍💙💖🥰✌
Seems like Richard is familiar with the common arguments and has learned to dodge the questions, calling simple examples that demonstrate the logical inconsistency between physical reality and free will somehow not 'real decisions'. He posits magic (souls, god) to explain that he does have free will, while having no way to refute the physical evidence of causality and resorting to semantics (choosing ice cream not being a 'real' free choice is similar to saying 'no true scotsman'). Well-spoken and clearly experienced, I don't find his argument convincing - he doesn't really provide good examples of how free will would operate either (not even trivial ones). Just saying "I decide" and that the chain of causality ends at "you" doesn't really prove anything, especially since you don't (and can't) demonstrate this 'soul' to exist.
None of the proponents of determinism ever behave in a manner which suggests they actually believe it. None. What should we make of such audacious hypocrisy?
The free will argument has always fascinated me! I don’t understand how and why though, the argument doesn’t begin and end with the evidence or proof (or lack there of), of an atomized, individual “agent” residing somewhere within the body or brain, acting upon and controlling “ourselves”. This is what free will would be and mean. There is not a shred of proof for such a thing!! We have been traveling in the direction of a lack of free will for years now (scientifically/evidentially), but the collective and individual myth of free will is just too deterministically intertwined in our very beings (without us having any choice in the matter!!). The very act/experience of making a choice is a deterministic outcome of brain, body and environment being deeply interconnected and interdependent. The brain isn’t choosing to be a brain! The heart isn’t choosing to pump blood, ie the subject experience of self isn’t choosing to make choices, to ponder, to reason, to attempt logic, or for that matter to be completely stupid and inane!! The myth of self is literally intertwined into the deeply evolved natural function of biological/social hierarchy construction found in all of nature (especially mammals)!! This is deeply unsettling because no one really deserves their place at the top or the bottom. The very notion that individuals choose their intelligence, physical qualities, strengths and weaknesses relative to the culture, time and place they find themselves in is absurd!! So, be who “you” are in whatever sense that can be considered and pondered…..because you ain’t got any choice in the matter!!
@@angusmcculloch6653 well I certainly don’t insist there is objective morality!! The irony of not having free will, is we can “choose” to structure societies, communities, families, and individuals towards greater potentials and “efficiencies”. What’s troubling is whether we can pull this off. I don’t think we can, but the potential is there. For individuals to swallow the ultimate pill of humility, compassion, and understanding is a fantasy, unfortunately. Morality itself emanates from our deeply evolved mammalian past. it would seem that’s why we have so many objective moralities proposed through our history largely based off some “ultimate God/creator”!! The fact no culture or individual truly agree on this and literally kill for God/Country/culture/communities/family, is because there is no objective morality!! Morality isn’t completely arbitrary, though!! Millions of years of biological psychology, environmental and cultural evolution have slowly narrowed what we morally focus on and argue about-which normally involves our ability to adhere to said morality or social customs and rules, that also acts as mean to place us within social hierarchies (like I just mentioned in the previous statement!!!). I hope coming to this realization would lead us to consider building moralities and general social etiquettes that emanate from some underlying logic/reason we find from scientific facts and understanding of reality and nature….at this point my confidence is not tooooo high!! How bout yours??
@@angusmcculloch6653 yes sir it is nice!!! I wish we had more conclusions on how we could use this idea for humanity’s sake, but the realization that tangible and intangible aspects of hierarchies are in-effect, “illusions”, to a certain extent, would collapse the very foundations of all that we have built and live for…..
Richard, said “god gave us free will and it is a gift” should mention I’m paraphrasing. A question I’ve always had is if there is a god, what gives him the right to create? The question stems from my belief that there is a gray area of bad and that is where good exists.
This is one reason I would caution any academic against engaging a popular audience outside of writing books, but even then I would tell them to be wary. There's just no upside for the academic. The popular audience doesn't have the baseline knowledge to engage with the sheer technicalities of the actual work. As you try to use language that the popular audience understands, the language necessarily becomes imprecise, because you're losing the technical aspects of the work. For instance, to technically illustrate the problem you have here, I would write: "□Pa ≡ □(Pb ∧ Pc) in all worlds Hnat ∈ wn" The problem is, this means nothing to you. Even in this format, some technicality is lost because I can't do superscripts and subscripts here, and so the proposition doesn't look how it should look. The other problem is you don't have the necessary baseline knowledge for me to even describe this to you in easily technical terms. So now, I have to start using imprecise language. So I might say "Square Pa" means "Necessarily Pa"--but that's not actually precise. Square is a "modal operator" and to try to help people understand it's helpful to think of it as "necessarily", but Square doesn't mean, literally, "necessarily". So, as you can see, me even being able to describe that sentence to you has taken us out of the precision that such symbolic logic allows me to achieve. The problem is that, as I describe this to you in imprecise language, you think you're hearing the actual argument and are trying to hold my popularizing (understood as describing it in words that a popular audience will understand) the formula as a literal and verbatim translation of the formula--which is incorrect. You then attack me as imprecise, but then yourself fall victim to imprecise language. And that's why I warn academics against engaging popular audiences. The audience doesn't understand that, popular language--especially in things like modal logic--is necessarily imprecise, and that behind the popular language are super technical, super precise equations that they can't understand anyway. So what's the point, I ask them.
Really interesting guest and great hosting on your part. You are like what those kind of hosting used to be in the mainstream before they became sensationalistic. I am not too sure about his mind as a substance. There are spiritual substances though, that much is pretty clear. We can even control them to some degree. Just think about talking. It's not the movement of the air that makes you understand what someone else is saying, the air is just a medium to propagate some information. It can degrade an be interfered with by another spiritual substance as well, so now you just hear noise, like if someone is talking to you near a construction site. This is all spiritual, there is no mechanics involved and it's why there can be interference in the first place. Whether the human soul is like that is unclear, but not impossible. It could be like that. Maybe one day we will be able to transfer consciousness into a new body, and that would prove it, but quality control might be difficult to do. Otherwise though, the question of free will is interesting, but free will itself is a choice, it's something you choose to have or not, so it's a matter of faith. That there can be free will is quite undeniable, the only question remains is if someone will choose to have it. There are lots of games possible. If you go to a Steam store, there are plenty of games in display and the game you choose will define whether you do have free will or not. Like there are idle games where you don't get to choose anything, or almost nothing, so that might be the atheist game where all you can do is say "yes" to whatever happens. You still have free will, you can say "no" and be miserable. Now, there are other games which fit some religions we have. Like the Hindus are playing rogue games, where you restart at the beginning all the time with a new character. The Buddhist plays idle game but hope to stop playing altogether. The Buddha sticks into the chatroom to tell others to stop playing, that it's not worth it, just an illusion. So he is playing the meta game. The Jews are playing platformers or those games with a clear path and mission and the goal is to finish with some lives left and they have saving points throughout. The Muslims are playing war games where you have to conquer the world or win in some ways. Christians are playing RPGs and where you get autosaves every Sunday but can make manual saves at any time, just in case you die. You can interact with NPCs and they are the ones giving the missions and depending on whether you like the game or not, you may treat them well or not, so that's the problem of evil. Animals are part of the environment, you can't interact with them, but they create stories obviously, you might want to save them to help their suffering. Or you can ignore them and just do the missions and some might involve saving them, so it's not incompatible. If you die, you go to heaven and can reload your character, which implies a spiritual substance. It's stored somewhere in God, he remembers your stats and progress and can instantiate you at any time with a new body with the same character. I don't think Swinburne believes that though, he seems to think you go the heaven and become part of the game, so you become an NPC ultimately. There is no resurrection of the body. It's like in a D&D game where someone stops playing, so now the character is controlled by the GameMaster. Which leaves the question of another game, the builders game. I think Science is playing that type of game, it researches techs and build cities, civilizations. It's a bit of a God complex I suppose, but then again, we are made in his image. It's a social game though in reality, not an individual one like on a computer. I think it's the way to approach it, more than trying to figure out which game is real or not. They are all real, just different, and free will in each will be different, from none if you don't play , or minimal in an idle game, or the maximum possible like in a mass multiplayer RPG. Now, it impossible to be in the former without knowing you are not in the latter, but you could be in the latter and just don't actually play the game and go away from the keyboard, so for your character, it's pretty much an idle game I guess. He might get killed by a passing PC, more than likely depending on the game. Maybe you dislike the game because there is blood and suffering, but in a way, it would be boring if those things were not there, especially the latter. You can't grow without some suffering, without playing. You need it to have meaningful missions. If the world's perfect, nobody would want to play the game, it would just be maintenance and when a game is like that, people quit. It becomes a grind.
Swinburne uses the thought experiment of Alexandrea/Alex/Andrea and argues that since one can interchange parts and at what point does that person lose their identity, and therefore the identity must be the soul. But this also applies to a modified Ship of Theseus thought experiment. Say Theseus has two ships of identical design, both are a launched and they travel together and thus suffer from similar wear and tear. Say the ships pull into port for repairs, but the workmen lose track of exactly which board came from which ship when putting them back together and replacing rotted boards entirely. At the end of the day one has to arbitrarily attach one nameplate to one ship and another nameplate to the other ship. But are they really the same ships as before? Aha, the identity must be due to an immaterial ship soul, because clearly the identity isn't intrinsic to the ship. Similarly, the Mississippi River is a depression in the earth that wends it way to the Gulf of Mexico. The water is always changing, and in fact the course of the river, where not engineered by man, changes its path over the course of years/decades/centuries, yet we always call it the Mississippi River. Surely then, since the identity isn't established by the exact water molecules, nor the always shifting path, the identity must exist in a river soul. Yes, these are poor reasoning ... just like Swinburne's.
Occam's Razor requires the removal of the 'Soul' as everything can be explained more simply without it. Swinburne's example of 2 halves of Alexandra's brain being placed in 2 different bodies perfectly demonstrates the Circularity of his thinking: he has already decided that they can't both be Vision.... sorry, Alexandra, so there must be a Soul to determine who is Really Alexandra. But that way of thinking presupposes a Soul. I would say, if they both Remember being Alexandra, then they CAN both be Alexandra. If you don't believe in an Essential Essence or Soul and you simply think Identity is created by Memories then you can potentially create 2 people who share an Identity. Of course the 2 would then diverge over time.
Good ol' prof tries to soothe himself with his "animals don't feel as much as we do". I am certain animals experience pain as much as we do, pain has the task to make you avoid it. That is a valid survival strategy for us AND for animals. Aniimals are probably not as good in memory, in evaluating complex situations, in pre-planning, and in anticipating the future, imagining what horrors MIGHT there be, that what, when it gets too intensive, drives us into a paranoia. like the 84-year old so afraid of a black teenager ringing at his door that he shoots him through the door. Please note that I sad "not as good" and not "incapable of".
I think animals, at least the higher ones, probably feel just as much pain as humans, rather they just don’t understand pain in a philosophical sense that, “it hurts, dog, it hurts real bad.” My dog has seizures and arthritis, and he screams in pain.
Throughly looking forward to this. Richard Swinburne is terrible in debates, as are most academics. Similar to his writing, he frontloads with definitions and asterisks before making a point. You want a good debater, get Donald Trump. Alex seems to understand this and gets the best out of him.
One more comment, in regards to animal pain. Swinburne is correct that is a path leading to the brain, and a path leading from the brain. It's pretty obvious that these are at the very least "almost" mutually inclusive. Pathway 1 (Poked Finger to Brain) "Something has pushed on this nerve." Pathway 2 (Brain to Poked Finger) "Pull away from it then." IF a creature existed that had only the one pathway, this is how the conversation would go. Pathway 1 (Poked Finger to Brain) "Something has pushed on this nerve." Brain, not having a pathway to respond, thinks to itself "Tough luck, dumbass." Given that creatures react to pain, they must therefore have the second pathway. A "better" (still bad) argument "for animals not feeling pain" (from someone who vehemently hates this idea) would be the complexity of the nerves, and the range of experiences that they could experience and the degree to which they experience them. It's imaginable that the complexity of the nerve, per each individual organism, could result in a wider or shorter range of experiences. As far as I can tell, ultimately, there is only one "bad" sensation (not emotion) - pain. "good" sensations, on the other hand, are vastly more complex though. Ultimately, these sensations "Good" or "Bad" determine whether we repeat an action. Our neurons may be "incorrectly" wired, from an evolutionary standpoint, such that we experience "Bad" sensation(s?) - Pain - as pleasure, but given the lack of physical masochists (Separate from mental masochists, of which there are plenty myself included) it seems likely an aberration, an anomaly. A genetic mutation "gone wrong" as it would increase the likelihood of death, especially in the wild (or "nature" as some humans arrogantly name it, as though they are separate). "Good" sensations include a far wider range, and it's far beyond us as a species currently to understand the boundaries of pleasurable experiences. Could your pet dog experience pleasures that you, a human, cannot? Maybe. Maybe not. Humans, at least from my experience, seem to have a range of "good" sensations. Being tickled is a different sensation, and imbues a different response, than a hug, and that, or a handshake, none of which can be considered a "bad" sensation. It is clearly a spectrum, however, and not binary or singular. "Bad" sensation(s?) - pain - has a singular reaction outside of masochists, to recoil. To stop experiencing that pain. This is not to say that it is enough to convince the organism entirely to stop whatever action it has taken to experience that pain - such as in the case of exercise amongst humans, or a dog scraping it's way under the fence, etc - as there is a balance to be made against "good" or "bad" sensations. Some "bad" sensations are, or at least seem to be from the organisms perspective, "worth the pain". Like a dog, scratching itself. If they experience pain, this must cause at least "some" pain and yet, the pleasure outweighs it, and so the dog scratches itself. Don't judge, so do you (probably). The complexity of the nerve of the organism, relative to the complexity of other types of organisms (species) could be used as a scale from which to measure the degree to which an organism feels pain. It might be wrong, but it would seem appropriate. It's hard to imagine the simplest of life forms that could feel pain (It would seem more logical that it evolved over time, than that it was ever present as if passed down from The Common Ancestor, though it's not impossible) whereas if you step on a dog's tail, it has a very visceral reaction. It can even leave psychological scarring, but that's a whole other discussion and this is already long and complex enough. We could validify certain parts of this hypothesis / theory - and possibly already have - such as it relates to determining the "value" assigned to an action, by measuring pleasure and pain, side by side, in varying degrees amongst various animals. I hate that I'm arguing FOR animal testing, so I'll clarify I am not suggesting this be done, as I feel it a moot point, just saying what could be done. Take an organism, say a rat, and train it up so that it's familiar with a maze, giving it a reward system for completing it. Necessary to "Pavlov's Dogs" the rat. From here, add forced painful experiences if the rat eats the cheese. Start off small, incredibly small. How do you apply this pain? I don't know, and as I stated I'm against it so I have no interest in knowing, but science probably does. The first time the rat eats the cheese, it may be confused. "That's new". If there is no reaction, increase the pain. Once you have a reaction, maintain that threshold for several test cases, and if the rat continues to eat the cheese, raise the pain threshold. Repeat until the rat refuses to eat the cheese. At this point, you'll have proven a number of things. One, other animals - at least in some sense - experience pain Two they have a threshold at which pain is no longer worth the pleasure (or perceived pleasure). Three, that you've acted as a monster, hopefully. If the rat does NOT stop eating the cheese, regardless of the level of pain, potentially to the point of fatality this does not prove they don't feel pain, as a perfectly rational counter argument is that the pleasure of consuming the cheese is simply too much. As such, I AM in favour of conducting a variant of this test on humans, but for entirely different reasons. Moving on, we can control for this problem. Begin the experiment again, leaving the either dead or deeply traumatized and abused rat and find yourself another one. Killing two things isn't a sign of a pattern... yet. Now find another meal that rats enjoy, but enjoy less than cheese. I'm fairly certain this has been done, but it's much the same thing. Very swiftly, Get them used to food 1, stop food 1, get them used to food 2, start food 1, so they have both options. If they move into one, stop the other. The one they moved into is their preferred food. Unfortunately, in the desire for the least variables possible, we must conduct this experiment first on our second rat in order to "rank" foods they eat. Did I say conduct this experiment? I meant repeatedly. Eventually, we'd have a list. Now we take their least preferred food, and run the original test (done on Rat1, or "Raitchel" as I imagine the hypothetical rat to call herself.) on Rat 2. If rat 2 still prefers death over the loss of pleasure, it's far more likely they experience less pain than humans. Either that, or they enjoy eating more than they enjoy life - a view I'm sure some foodies might (even subconsciously) hold. If this is the case, and we've murdered a second rat and are still no closer to the answer (as any "positive" result - the rat giving up the food - would have given us the room to move on, conversationally) we could apply the test to a "more complex" creature. Again, any humans wanna volunteer? Not that this would answer the question of other animal pain, but it'd be quite informative. No, probably not, so something else like a deer. You little serial killer, you. Started with rats, now we're killing deer. Why? Because you had to question if it felt pain. And, admittedly, because deer is the first thing that came to my mind. Now we conduct the same tests, the same experiments, and if it still leads to no result, we test another animal, such as an elephant or dog. A jaguar, a cheetah, or a leopard. It doesn't necessarily have to be food, either. Take a dog. It very much SEEMS to enjoy being patted. It rarely recoils from it, particularly from a known, friendly individual, and seemingly demands it. Anyone who hasn't had their dog "ask for pats" doesn't treat their dog well. As such, we can assume that dogs find that pleasurable. A "good" sensation of some kind. Similarly, when standing on the tail of a dog, they recoil. I suspect the people who treat their dogs the worst, deep down in their heart of hearts, know this the most. They respond to what we experience as pain in the same way we do, if someone - or some 'thing' - lands on our foot, or hand. We recoil. They nurse their wounds. They whimper. And, as mentioned earlier, they grow less trusting and even scared of the individual. For those who do their best, but still accidentally step on their dogs tail, I recommend immediately hugging them. Seems to work for me, and seems to work for the dog. So now, back to the test, let's get on with the hypothetical dog torture, for sciences sake! And some dumbasses that assert animals don't feel pain. Give the dog pats (or food, but that's of higher value), and apply pressure to their tail. Continuous pats, continuous increase in pressure (without pinning the creature, so perhaps some sort of shrinking ring applied to the tail) until the dog cares more about the pressure - the pain, the "bad" sensation - until the dog's desire to avoid the pain exceeds it's desire to gain the pleasure. This point will occur. If not, then go on you monster. Already killed rats and deer and dogs. Or maybe we skipped the deer, no worries, I'm sure you'll get there. At least in the mind. Might as well take the full leap. More dogs! Lesser pleasure!
So....does anything that exist for any period of time have a soul because we still, for instance, say that my house 15 years ago is still my house today even though it's had a new coat of paint and the upstairs redone? Because it seems like Richard just uses an object's identity through spacetime as his definition of soul but only applies it humans because...reasons? And his idea of free will and causation is incoherent; no the chain of causation does not end at humans because we also cause events, he's forgetting about the rest of reality causing other events to occur, how does he miss such basic and obvious forms of philosophy? He seems genuinely incapable of understanding that the thoughts we have are themselves caused by external physical forces. Everything from Alex's example of putting on the kettle to "choosing" flavor of ice cream. Where is the line drawn for Richard between subject and event causation? Deeply embarrassing.
This video is the ultimate proof that intelligent people are not always right. His view is very obviously wrong, and severely outdated, and yet he states it with complete, unquestioning (and borderline condesending) certainty.
This is what happens when you live in your cultural/academic bubble and refuse to let scientific knowledge get it. His unquestioning certainty elicits in me a mixture of annoyance and pity.
I don't think he's particularly intelligent either. He's well educated that's all. If he were more intelligent, he'd be able to better rationalize his delusions
The Alexandra brain experiment is not convincing to me. I think the brain is a bit like a computer, where the left and right cortex parts can be seen as a dual core CPU and RAM, and the rest of the brain as the harddisk. If the memories on the harddisk make the person, than you could replace one of the CPU cores and take out the other, but the memory/the person remains. That person would most likely suffer, from running on just one 'core', but still would remain the same person. However, when we wipe the memory from the harddisk/the rest of the brain, the person would cease to exist. It would result in a new person, who, after learning to speak, would say that they are 'me', but that would be a different 'me' than the 'me' from before the brain wipe.
The mind, which is an immaterial substance, interacts with the brain, which is a material substance, in the same way that life interacts with the body by giving it life. God, angels and the soul are immaterial, spiritual entities, and they are alive. In the same way, we have an immaterial spirit that keeps us alive.
As for the separation of mind and body, is it not the same as hardware and software? Software has no physical properties, no mass, etc. In my mind it is a very related concept. The brain is the hardware, the soul is the software, and it can be downloaded and loaded onto another compatible platform ( resurrection body etc).
08:00 - what is a "person"? My mother once told me (out of the blue and apropos of nothing) that a person is anything that has rights. I don't know where she got that definition but it has always stuck with me and it's hard to find a better one.
I don't think anybody is using that definition. I personally don't think there is a good definition, which is why its almost always just used to mean human
@@MrDzoni955 In fiction, we have no problem considering science fiction aliens, fantasy races like elves & dwarves, or "spirits" that can talk to us, to be "people". Humans are just the only *demonstrable* individuals in that category.
Alex, you're the epitome of what an atheist should be: always searching, always learning, and always willing to listen to the other side. Keep up the good work!
Anyone seriously looking for the truth won't find it anywhere but the illuminati, they've written 20 million words in over 200 books do describe the truth of existence.
@Please enter a name I think Matt is great when in a public debate. He is sharp as a tack and also respectful. He is less respectful in the call-in programmes, but so are many of his interlocutors.
@@Fotomadsen thank you for your reply but I’m sorry I completely disagree with that, I think in terms of a debater he’s completely embarrassing and intellectually dishonest at least nowadays, in some of his older debates he was definitely at least willing to have a good faith conversation, He goes into debates with have absolutely no justification for his for really any of his positions at all, he doesn’t even attempt to and just throws out claims most of the time. And constantly dodges and is incredibly incoherent at least in recent debates and in every recent debate I’ve seen with him. I think he’s mostly and predominantly just doing these debates for publicity into inflate his ego, and please his audience. I have heard many Christians and some atheists tell me and also complain that they think the warranty is a bully, I definitely wouldn’t say that I think he’s pretty respectful for the most part. For the most part because I really just don’t think he cares about the topics that he debates, and that’s pretty difficult to say because he’s basically spent his entire career on many of the topics but he knows little to no information about the topics, it’s pretty comparable to Kent Hovid’s understanding an experience with Evolution by natural selection. He really has no excuse he was literally a Southern Baptist for 25 years. And also I know this is kind of irrelevant but his audience is unbearable I’m not talking about you you’re probably a member of his audience, and if you are I’m not judging you or saying you’re a terrible person or anything like that, or that you’re dishonest I’m just talking about in general, and I think he’s everything wrong with the modern atheist movement and anti-theism in general for the most part. With some of his callers I can understand some of them can be pretty unbearable, but at the same time though he’s just nasty to some of them and it’s pretty frustrating to watch.
That was really a great discussion, everything put very well and I think your moderation style is just perfect for this kind of discussions/podcast. Consistently something to look forward to :)
I can’t believe he is 88 years old. So inspiring, his mind is still quite sharp! I’m halfway through the interview and enjoying a lot. Thanks again for this kind of content, Alex!
@@badgerlife9541 why specificly biden? trump and biden can be both idiots, even if you approve some of their decisions. i think both of them are laughable. don't you?
He appeals to classical or orthodox views a bit too often. That being said, he definitely has a deep understanding of his own views. That’s quite admirable.
It's only an appeal to tradition if his reasons for his beliefs are "it's always been that way", which his reasons appear to be much deeper than that. No need to discount something because it's always been that way.
Surely a moral choice is also dependent on the actions that caused the person to consider something being moral or immoral. I’m not quite sure a moral choice makes any difference. I realise this person has an enormous amount more qualifications than me on this subject, but I find a lot of what he is saying isn’t logically consistent.
It is incredible the clarity and ease that Swinburne has to respond even a such advanced age. A bit slow already but in very good shape. Excellent dialogue!
This is brilliant! The CosmicSkeptic, Alex, is getting such eminent philosophers and scientists on. If higher animals have conscious free choice, do they also have moral responsibility for their actions?
I love the conversation. I love the respect. I love the tradition that Swinburne ably represents. I just don't find Swinburne's arguments convincing. I don't feel like he's *really* engaging with the objections offered.
It's quite remarkable seeing such a distinguished and supposedly sophisticated philosopher resort to question begging in exactly the same way the lowest hanging fruit apologists do, as soon as a concrete question about the mechanics of the mind-body dualism is raised. Question: How exactly do mind/soul and brain interact and where's the line dividing the two? "Answer": All I need to do is assert that they DO interact. I'm paraphrasing but only slightly.
I was thinking about commenting something to this effect, but wasn't sure if maybe it's me not getting something. The bit about Alex/Sandra was also interesting as well. Why would you assume that (if such a situation is possible), there is such a necessity to say that one of them is the original person. I find that only if you already presume the soul there is such a necessity. It cannot be the reason for supposing that soul exists "pfff, because otherwise it doesn't make sense".. It does to me.
I'm not sure what's supposed to be problematic about this answer. Presumably everyone believes that the nature of causal interaction will be irreducible at some point, right? We can break down causes into mechanisms to a point, but when we get down to the fundamental level of particle interaction we don't really have much informative to say about how they interact. We could maybe appeal to laws (which are not explanations, but descriptions), or just say that it's just a basic fact that they do.
``All I need to do is assert that they DO interact. I'm paraphrasing but only slightly.`` But you are not only paraphrasing, you're also question-begging yourself. You are saying: ``as soon as a concrete question about the *mechanics* of the mind-body dualism is raised.`` The mechanics? What mechanics? This is begging the question: you assume that the mental constituent, the mind itself, is precisely as accountable as the body, presumably through the workings of the brain. In other words, you want an account of the mind, as many physicalists/materialists *think* they have about the brain and its function supposedly culminating to consciousness, subjective experience. Essentially, you want a materialist explanation of the mind-body interaction. And that is question begging. By the way, do you think neuroscience has explained consciousness? We know exactly what the liver does in the human body. Or, we know exactly what the kidneys or the lungs do, the link between the presence of these organs in the human body and all about their function. Similarly, do we know exactly what is the link between brain & consciousness?
@@ktheodor3968 I'm not question begging anything. Posing something as a question isn't question begging. He on the other hand is double question begging by positing there is a soul in the first place with no evidence to support it and then again by positing this soul interacts physically with a brain - has to be physically because the brain is physical. The third level of his sloppy thinking is asserting the connection between a "soul" and the brain because he feels pain. The feeling of pain can literally be induced by manipulating certain regions of brain, either electrically or by mechanically sticking needles in there. His "soul" is nowhere to be found. It's literally a mere assertion influenced by his religiosity and nothing rational...which is perfectly fine in the realm of religion. Philosophy however is a rational endeavor.
Personal Id is a pretty easy thing to explain and I can prove that it has nothing to do with soul. People who has the personality disorder such as Bipolarism or Schizophrenia has different characters , personalities created in their heads for them because of debatable reasons . Either protection of the brain itself for not to overdrive it or protecting the main identity. All debatable stuff. So all these personalities behave and think in a different way and most of the people have no memories of those moments when the other personalities take over . Very famous one portrayed on the movie Sybil had 16 different personalities. If you ask those personalities they are sure of their existence. And in the definition of "soul" there can only be one per body or brain lets say. So it is debunked. And this also proves that our experiences and behaviours define our personal id. The way you experience things the way you feel (amount of hormone production) creates your identity. Without experience you wouldn't be able to become you. If that was the case that we were born with souls then we wouldn't have changing personalities throughout our lives. Even in our life span our brains evolve. And we are able to change the way we feel or behave . Souls do not evolve according to the people who say they exist...
His response to Nozick's experience machine is interesting, given its parallels with the description of an infinitely blissful afterlife; most people disregard the latter on the same grounds he dismisses the former. His response to Free Will in heaven is also interesting. "There will be Free Will to choose among alternative 'good' states". The problem is that "Free Will" is used to describe the existence of "not good" states in this current life; bad things happen as a consequence of the freedom to choose to do bad things. This is obviously circular. If in heaven, there simply aren't any "bad" choices to select from, it begs the question why there are "bad" choices to select from here. The Christian will cite the Fall of Man, but that merely pushes the problem back, and the question still remains: "why were the bad choices available" These arguments are always asymmetric in favor of the theistic position. It is typically said that the logical problem of evil is answered by the free will defense: it is not logically incoherent for a tri-Omni-god to exist while evil, pain, or suffering exists. People can do this by their own volition. I think this does alleviate the issue to an extent but doesn’t do away with the evidential problem. Nevertheless, it implies something very peculiar. If God does not want to interfere with our free will, and hence does not have to answer to evil , he equally cannot answer for miraculous benefits or positive outcomes, by the same logic of free will. It’s stated that some people are blessed, or that god does great things for people. Many times, these things are done by the free will of others for countless reasons, the possibility of a positive outcome exists for a variety of reasons (economical, knowledge advancement, access to education etc). Is it not equivalent to say that, god does not answer for these "good" things precisely in the same way he does not answer for evil: on behalf of our free will and ability to manipulate the environment for our gain and the gain of others? It seems we relegate gods existence to that of deism; rarely involved and much of the moral good or bad we experience can be accounted for purely on human terms.
Thank you! I was literally screaming when he said that I'm part because of what you pointed out! I mean the least disrespect possible to the man, but at 48 minutes it seems "because Christianity is true to me" is the genesis of his thoughts which leads to increasingly unsatisfying conclusions. Heck, he basically said being neurodivergent and incapable of avoiding immoral impulses is grounds to not be in heaven.
When someone has the hemispheres of their brain severed, it can often be the case that they act independently and in "willful" contrast of one another. It can then be reasoned that there may be two autonomous agents acting within the same body, thus perhaps up to two egos (what Richard refers to as a soul) within a single material being. I'm not so sure this is so different from the myriad of cases of conjoined twins.
David the severed hemisphere outcomes always solidify how deterministic and unfree the self truly is!! The fact that you would have an outright atheist corresponding to one hemisphere and religious believer on the other is anything but freedom!! How in the hell do see freedom in that? Your brain isn’t choosing to be a brain. Your heart is choosing to pump blood! The act of making a choice is a deterministic process being fulfilled by the totality of internal and external factors that don’t have anything to do with the subjective experience of self (which is in and of itself the outcome of deeply deterministic functions and factors). I found nothing this fine gentleman said to in anyway make me think we have free will. It is the greatest myth we live with individually/collectively!!
I am rather cautious of making any deductions from this divided brain idea. It seems to me that you can disprove a few hypotheses here but no matter how many hypotheses you can rule out there will still be any number of alternative explanations. Personally I have no problem with a divided brain developing into two identities, both believing they are the whole identity, but ultimately both different from each other and the whole.
@@milesgrooms7343 My view on it is that free will proponents are ideological proponents. Like Christian apologists argue that we chose to go to Hell. A just God wouldn't condemn somebody to an eternity in Hell if they were determined to end up there, would he? Thus we must have free will. I'm not a legal expert, but believe the legal system is at least partly based on free will. Libertarians, in turn, would have a hard time justifying their ideology without free will. In addition to that, we all lead our lives as we have it. Free will just feels right.
I found Richard Swinburne's reasons to support free will very unconvincing. He had to hedge his bets and find an exception every time that AO'C suggested a problem. He further explains that free will is a gift on the pure assumption that there's a giver.
A gift could also just be a "good" thing like a gifted artist 🎨 The "gift" is the talent that we can use our free will to use or not. No one has to give it, it's not like a christmas present..... But yes, I know that he probably meant so.
Giving humans free will but not other mammals just means he's basing the entire argument for free will on his religion and the rest of the stuff he mentions is just nonsense to back that up
I'll prove "Free will" in 3 shotened seconds: The natural order of things would be to agree with me, an accredited academic. Yet somehow you have chosen to disagree with this comment 😔
It is always a delight to hear Richard Swindburne .. as with Anthony Kenny, Peter Vardy, Alan Carter, Richard Price (and the late Roger Scruton, Gerard J Hughes SJ, Benedicta Ward SLG, and going way back Frederick Coppleston SJ etc); there are not enough British scholars offered a place on YT (et al) to thin out the far too heavy larding of US socio-political contextualization of moral, philosophical, theological, and metaphysical issues. Thanks for sharing this little treasure. One can learn a lot in discussion with someone one does not tend to agree with, if only by 'understanding' their understanding .. and critiquing it. Sadly, there seem to be relatively few academics of Swindburne's stature and capacity to 'debate' with .. in gently attentive conversation on religiousy topics; I itched to tease out more from his necessarily truncated responses .. but that's me (I wasn't terribly fond of Swindburne's take of Aquinas, e.g. his 'Faith and reason' 1981, Oxford : Clarendon Press - snotty-nosed undergrad oik that I was). Great stuff. Keep the Faith; tell the truth, shame the devil, and let the demons shriek. God bless. ;o)
The same way materialists or physicists assert the existance of physical things . When the mind is the substance we can be most confident too existance
@@matswessling6600 You believe your pencil is real..the paper ..the computer ..the software hardware maths symbols the telescopes . The rockets . The rovers Etc
Enjoyed this conversation! Regarding animals being able to speak - what about the apes who have learned to sign? They might not be able to have deep philosophical discussions, but they can certainly tell us when they're afraid or hurting, as well as when they are happy. You don't even need words to do that. Anyone who has owned a dog knows they have the ability to suffer, or miss their owners, and form deep connections with other beings.
Interesting, if somewhat frightening, to hear Swinburne's view of what would make a person be the same person if their brain were separated into two functioning brains. He says that it would be the entity that has a soul. This is frightening because it implies that there could be a human entity that is able to think but has no soul. In my view, both entities are the same person as the original one. If I believed in souls, I suppose that would mean that it remains a single soul in two parts that would rejoin in the afterlife. Of course, it would be a conundrum if one of the entities were to accept God and do good deeds while the other rejects God and does evil deeds. But that's all idle speculation since there is no God.
What if they accepted God, and did evil actions - like an innumerable amount of humans in history have as a result of religious beliefs - but the other rejected God and did good actions - As with the "cheating" test in which out of theists, agnostics and atheists... atheists were the only ones to not cheat when given the option to.
"Phenomenologically correct", a curious deployment by Swinburne. If I feel a sting in my arm and there see a bee, I would conclude the bee caused the sting. But what exactly is the correct phenomenology? That the sting caused the bee: first I experience the sting and then the bee. We then invert experience to conform to reason (bee sting, not sting bee). Nietzsche joked that's how morality works: a rationalization after the fact, and we confuse consequences as causes.
@@nonononononono8532 Thank you, nono. The host Alex O'Connor referred to a phenomena: feeling thirsty. We do not seem to be conscious of the motive force for that phenomena, only that it emerges as a feeling. Explanation of the cause comes after the feeling; hence if stretched the argument can apply to moral reasoning: if I act for a reason and mull over the rightness or wrongness of an action before acting, that scenario implies a reverse causation: that I act for reasons. However, it seems that action comes first and rationalizations after (sting bee or bee sting). Of course there is great utility in reasoning "feeling thirsty" but that is a separate issue from the problem of consciousness. We can anticipate and predict certain outcomes based on reason, but that too is an emerged feeling, e.g., to prefer a benefit, or a desire to "know" etc. Is free will another reversed phenomena, i.e., of our ignorance of the future causing us to rationalize an actor who can make moral choices?
As an epileptic person i used ny degree to research individual interpretation in relation to human vibration and visuals. Was so interesting i ended up going into neurology, biochemistry and even consciousness . I could research my own epilepsy and wanted to make a 3d print of my MRI brain scan but wasnt able to rent it in time. A month later a proffesional from another uni did this and had good results. I studied art but was told i should of studied sciences . This conversation was so good enjoying a cupa n listening to discussions is totally my guilty pleasure.
I understand that Alex wasn't in a position to argue with his guest during the interview, so It might be a good idea if Alex makes a video to respond and comment on the answers given by his guest.
I love that you pointed out that his assertion that animals feel pain less than humans is not falsifiable and just terribly convenient for him. Your questions throughout pointed directly to the flaws in his many arguments. Excellent interview and I appreciate that you don't just let him get away with saying whatever
I doubt it's not falsifiable. Hook up a monkey to some electrodes, see which brain areas are active to which degree when he feels pain (highly unethical experiment though). I think that should be a pretty good foundation for assessing whether animals feel pain as strongly as we do.
I saw swinburne speak live in debate with a.c. grayling. He used the Occams razor argument to defend the existence of God, and I was incredibly unimpressed and unconconvinced. Grayling on the other hand was fascinating and enlightening, and is a major reason why I am going to study philosophy at university
Funny- I watched a Grayling lecture just this week in which he claimed he could prove God does not exist. It was the biggest load of waffle I have heard. Oh well, whatever floats your boat.
I would have to hear the actual debate to pass fair judgement, but Occam's Razor seems like it would completely fall apart as a concept in the face of the supernatural. At that point the simplest explanation for why anything happens is always "it just did". Why did your car break down? It just did. Yeah but why? Maybe the batte- Nope, that's an unnecessary assumption, it just did.
I went to the comments to see if anyone else had noticed this. The professor is really good at defining things in such a way that makes him right by default. You can define what a soul is all you like, that doesn’t mean it actually exists outside the world of philosphy.
@@You_do_not_exist_Jack I see what you are saying, but what do we have outside of that? Are you saying that he does it more than others or his arguments are qualitatively different? I just can't see how any argument is different to what he is doing however I do see what you are saying. Even in the hard sciences I feel as if you face the same problem, in the cases such as strong under determinism with two theories of identical mathematical structure.
I kid you not. Yesterday I was thinking, "what if Alex gets Richard Swinburne onto his podcast?" Did not think it would happen, but here we are. One of my all time favorite philosophers, someone who has significantly shaped my thinking on a lot of philosophical issues. Looking forward to watch this!
He has his wits about him, and I admire his intellect. That being said, his philosophical views are logically flawed. There is no evidence for consciousness or mindfulness without a functioning brain. From studies of pathology, neurobiology, psychology, etc. we know processes such as memory, emotions, and sensibility are tied to the physical body. We know which region of the cerebrum Is responsible for each function and process. If a region of the brain is damaged or injured, one can lose part or all of the function associated with it. This includes cognition and memory. It's also known that anyone can see or hear nonexistent things. Therefore, when the body and brain expire, what is left of the "soul"? What would this "soul" carry on to the afterlife? What is a soul, if we know it can not carry memories or emotions? You can not see without eyes and a brain to process the information. You can not feel without physical touch and nerve endings (consider local anesthesia). You can not hear, taste, or smell without the necessary physical components, including the central nervous system. Therefore what is the afterlife without any of these things? If you claim our consciousness is our soul, you will have to prove you can still have consciousness without a central nervous system.
@@andrewc1205 The christian idea of the afterlife is that our bodies get resurrected, your misunderstanding of christian afterlife is in no way an objection to the idea of a soul. "If you claim our consciousness is our soul, you will have to prove you can still have consciousness without a central nervous system." What he claims is that we're both soul and body, it's substance dualism. What I would say is that we are the consciousness, because consciousness is that which is aware and we are the ones who are aware so the person and the consciousness are basically synonymous, and us/our consciousness depending on the body does not in anyway prove that we're not also simultaneously something beyond the body, so no, not really, you don't have to prove you can have consciousness without a central nervous system in order to prove the soul. The dependence upon one thing does not show lack of distinction or function, just because the mind is dependent on the body that doesn't mean it is the body. Cars need wheels to move, they're dependent on wheels to move, but even with no wheels, the car is still there, it's its own distinct thing with its own engine, and without that engine the wheels would be pointless and so on and so on. "one of the definining elements of cars are their function to move, and they cannot move without wheels therefore cars don't exist! You have to prove that cars can still move without wheels in order to prove cars exist" no that's not how it works.
@@CristianChirita2234 I'm well aware of Christian dogma. There are two conflicting views of "resurrection" in the bible. Some interpret it as physical, others interpret it as spiritual. Which idea do you adhere to? A spiritual resurrection means no body, and therefore, no sensibility, vision, or memory. A physical resurrection means bringing a decomposing body back to life. Both are equally illogical. Your analogy of body and mind is flawed. A vehicle and it's wheels are two material components. You are comparing those with a material and a non-material (theoretical concept) component. A car is still a car without it's wheels - it's just not going to move. We know both components are interchangeable. The idea of the body being separate from the mind is preposterous. But there is no sense arguing about something that cannot be proved or disproved. We'll all find out one day! Unfortunately, if I'm correct you won't know about it and none of this will matter.
@@andrewc1205 Not the point. If Swinburne adopts the view that I mentioned, then your objection just doesn't apply, and you actually have no idea which view he adopts (correct me if I am wrong) and the whole comment is you explaining why his reasoning is wrong. I wouldn't say my analogy is flawed, I am not seeking to make a perfect one, and also no I am not comparing the fundamenetals of material and non material, what I was comparing WAS dependability, that was the whole point of the analogy, you have an entire explanation of the analogy prior to the analogy, right above it. I was making an argument about dependability, and I made an analogy for the argument, that's all it is, the ideas of materialism or idealism or substance dualism have nothing to do with my argument because I made no argument for the soul, I was only objecting to what you said about your problems with the supposed interractions between them. "A car is still a car without it's wheels" Yes? that is the point of my analogy, indeed, how did you figure it out? My point was that let's say the mind couldn't function without the brain, that does not in any way prove that the mind is the brain. It can be dependent on the brain and also be its own seperate thing. Can you RE READ the analogy? I swear all of this is very heavily implied and I shouldn't have to explain it. "The idea of the body being separate from the mind is preposterous." That's not an argument. " spiritual resurrection means no body, and therefore, no sensibility, vision, or memory. A physical resurrection means bringing a decomposing body back to life. Both are equally illogical. " First one is a logical reach, but still logically possible, in the sense of that God could just add memory and everything that we have on substance dualism to the soul, it's not that hard, and second is logically possible and no there's nothing illogical about that, unless you assume materialism which is just fallacious. The first one, yes, again, it's a logical reach, but it's not full on non-sense, it is still logically possible. You present your argument with an implied hypothetical premise of the soul being true so your argument goes something like this: "Ok well let's say you are right and there's an afterlife, and there is a God, and consciousness is a consequence of the soul, my problem with that hypothetically being true is the idea of the body being resurrected, that's the thing that makes no sense to me in that hypothetical scenario." Really? That's your objection? In the hypothetical case where the soul and God exist, your problem is ignoring God's qualities in the entire hypothetical scenario? Not a very good argument. Point is, your objection doesn't make sense because of the totality of the hypothetical implied by your objection. The only alternative is that you're just assuming materialism. EIther way, it doesn't make sense.
@Cristian Chirita way to strawman the argument. Do you live your life in total dishonesty? I'm not even going to waste my time with your petty arguments. Have fun playing make-believe. Good luck.
This was a great interview, I found a lot of holes in the arguments presented by the interviewee but you pointed those out almost all the times even if it wasn't fully answered by the interviewee afterward. It might be because it comes from a point of view very different from his own
Swinburne's reasoning around the split brain surgery is patent nonsense. His argument includes at least two obviously unjustified premises. First, that the sense of personal continuity implies a complete absence of change in whatever constitutes the self. Second, that the question of whether a person remains the same over time is a binary - they are either completely the same person or not the same person at all. But we can easily demonstrate that the structure and physiology of the brain and affective system changes with age and experience, and that this results in cognitive and affective change throughout life - without jeopardising our sense of a continuous self. Likewise, we can see in many "persons" (most obviously in those with brain injuries and dementia) that the sense of identity and selfhood can be fragmented or partial as a result of changes in anatomy and physiology.
It's interesting how some philosophers can argue backwards from a conclusion. Premise 1: There must be something that makes me "me." But why though??? It reminds of the moral argument for the existence of God. Premise 1: There must be somewhere that we get our moral laws from. But why are we starting by assuming those are real?
Was Swinburne informed of the topics to be covered beforehand, animal suffering including? Even if one disagrees with his views, his coherence and ability to think on the spot is impressive, especially considering he is 88 years old. I guess this is one of the benefits of having been a professional analytical philosopher for over 65 years.
Yeah. A lot of people are complaining that he didn’t get flushed out answers, for a lot of his views; and it sounded like he was just making a bunch of assertions. I think what they need to keep in mind is that he has already explained his positions thoroughly in his work, and also this is more of just a friendly discussion. He’s not attempting in any way to give the most philosophically or logically incoherent defense for any of his positions.
Zzzz.. hardly believe i made it all the way through expecting him to make an argument that he himself doesnt unravel within his own sentence. How can he conjure a thought experiment to remove the portion of the brain that wouldn't affect memories/personality, and then demand that as long as the rest of the brain is intact this proves his point? Is he on crack? Dont get me started on his morality on animal welfare... its amazing one can spend their entire life thinking and come to all the wrong conclusions. Maybe its just god-given dementia though.
Swinburne, like so many other theists, appears uncomfortable when explaining why he thinks animals don't feel as much pain as we do. Why? Because he is clearly out of depth; he is a philosopher not a neuroscientist or a biologist.
next time ask him to give a very specific and detailed example of a human making a free will choice and then simply counter it with: it's either random or there are events that caused the choice, meaning it was determined, or a mix between random/determined, none of which allows a free will.
Yes, yes, yes. Of course! Cause and effect. Our decisions, like deliberative hand-waving gestures, follow physical processes of neurons firing in the brain some milliseconds prior to our being conscious of having made the decision to do so. Cause and effect! It governs everything in our universe. Except for, of course, the creation of our universe and the origin of life. In this regard, we believe it comes out of thin air. This is where cause and effect goes to die 😂 this makes perfect sense.
I have just paused the video midway to express my immense gratitude for this gem you're producing and sharing in your channel
He all but admits that he choose to believe in free will, as that makes most sense as a theist. Major respect to him for acknowledging, he could be wrong. Alex you are an intellectual powerhouse and you are so in a very humble way. I think you are a very influential thinker. Thank you for upholding the banner of reason, curiosity and inquiry. And at such a young age too.
I'm not very scholarly in my abilities to understand free will but I agree with your comments. I'm a Christian believer and I also support the "banner of reason, curiosity and inquiry".
Respectfully...
> Major respect to him for acknowledging, he could be wrong.
Except for where, right at the end, as soon as Alex even suggested the hypothetical situation of "being able to demonstrate that animals feel 'as much' pain as we do" he *immediately* started backtracking and flinging out excuses as to why he'd never believe that anyway. He's as indoctrinated as anyone.
@@johnnypopstar well let's face it, to believe in God ultimately requires some level faith not based in rational thought - but we can still respect people who have analysed and rationalised there beliefs to a very far extent at least, and are very considerate of counter arguments.
@@jim-bob87 can we? Should we? They did all the rationalising work that *should* have led them away from believing, yet still didn't. In many ways they're even *less* deserving of respect than folk who never even bother questioning why they believe what they believe at all.
It's a great example of the Trump-Boris problem. Is Trump worse because he just can't help himself and is wired to be a self-serving fuck 24/7, or is Boris worse because he's actually educated and rationalises that being awful actually works in his favour?
It's Boris. He's *capable* of being decent yet chooses not to. That's the worse position.
Not sure that "free will makes the most sense as a theist". You could just as well argue from the perspective of total predetermination which leaves no room for free will. Just as one could make the biblically based argument there is no immortal, immaterial soul. Neither position makes more or less sense for a theist and not even for a Christian theist.
In fact the whole idea of an immortal soul that flutters away into heaven like a butterfly in the moment of death is taken from pagan beliefs that have been incorporated into the Christian worldview.
I swear the podcast is only getting better and better keep it up
How? 😅 by bringing on this apologist buffoon? He can’t even understand that human decision/agent causation doesn’t end at the agent. This is frankly embarrassing for Alex
I read this almost like a threat. It’s Getting better. You better keep it up!!!😂
@@christopherwaters8822 You never know who will be next
Wow. I don't think I've experienced an interview that was so succinct and to the point in both asking and answering that I was actually disappointed it finished so soon. We often get a lot of pointless "meandering" but there wasn't even the slightest trace of it here. Utterly brilliant and spellbinding. Thank you. Subscribed.
Very interesting episode. I wonder whether the whole idea of "me" is akin to the idea of a "table". We assign a name to something which, if you're a materialist, doesn't actually have a name from the "universe's perspective". I.E., a table is just a collection of atoms in a shape that is close enough to the shape and kind of something we call, with our flawed language, a "table". I think the same applies to the concept of "self" or "me".
Materialists would believe we are just a bunch of atoms and, while this is a rather crass and unhelpful answer to give to a neuro-transplant patient, it seems to capture the truth of the situation quite well.
You're talking about mereological nihilism here, and most philosophers reject the idea that there are no such things as "things", not just because of intuition, but truly because if "things" are just a pattern of matter, then all emergent properties would be incompatible with reality. There are lots of objections to mereological nihilism, this is just one example, but even quantum physics nowadays tell us that emergent properties are, at least, possible.
“Just a bunch of atoms” is not what most modern materialists think we are. The atoms are transferable it doesn’t matter what atoms are in you because they mostly aren’t the Same ones as were in you a year ago, even the carbon atoms in your brain only hang around for a decade or so.
Your neurons themselves last much longer than that but according to most materialist neuroscientists you are the patterns of neurons, neurochemistry, genetics, epigenetic factors etc that are in you, some of those slowly change but there is continuity between the states.
It was very interesting to hear someone try to explain the concept of the material self without talking about StarTrek style transporters etc. or cutting the corpus collosum between the hemispheres which is another rare surgical procedure which seems to produce two different personalities which experience the world from slightly different perspectives
The very question though is who or what is the one naming everything though? And is it merely molecules in motion or something independent of the laws of physics or not?
@@GianFerreyraBouillon If the ship of theseus is just a label applied to an organization of wood and cloth, how can emergent properties not happen? How do emergent properties conflict with mereological nihilism?
Swinburn's "soul" just seems to be a placeholder for our lack of understanding about the details of emergent properties of the physical brain.
How is this not just a god of the gaps argument?
It very much is, I think.
premise 1: You have free will
premise 2: Physical answer cannot account free will existence
premise 3: Unmaterial soul can account the free will existence
Conclusion: Soul existence is more plausable than physical answer
That is not even God of the gaps,
@@deczen47 I don't accept premise 2; it seems like you're just asserting a conclusion.
@@shassett79 How can you have free will if your mind is determined by unguided and blinded laws of nature?
Alex knows we will never know what goes on in the minds of animals yet posits the old "Science will work it out one day!" Materialists do this all the time. Is this called "future science of the gaps?"
Posted 25 sec ago. Great podcast loved every minute.
100x playback speed
@@gradientO 😁😁😁😂😂😂😂👀
I live in reverse time (antimatter realm) and am quite confused - what language are they talking? What does "live fo melborp" mean? 🤔
I think this was truly a historic interview. Well done Alex for, as ever, asking brilliant questions. It was a joy to see you interact so positively with what is surely one of the most brilliant minds of our time! (I mean the person who is Richard Swinburne of course! ;) )
Only halfway through and already writing to agree with most top commenters: The podcast keeps getting better and is one of the most enjoyable podcasts out there. Also, thanks for inviting only non-fringe christians so far ;)
Thanks to you both! Excellent interview and discussion. 🙂
Prof. Swinburne will never make it in stand-up comedy but he sure is smart, collected and eloquent. Food for thought here, even for the most obdurate of atheists like me.
It was a mind shattering conversation. Amazing work Alex
Free will is not an answer to the problem of evil. Plenty of suffering happens to every creature on the planet even when no one willed it.
On the subject of free will, Christopher Hitchens suggested we have no choice but to have free will.
Yes, but that hardly settled the matter.
I farted.
The problem with mr Swinburne’s statement that hemispherectomies don’t affect personality or memory is that it is a gross oversimplification, verging on negligence or deception. There are so many factors involved in the effects of a hemispherectomy. From which hemisphere is being removed (dominant or non dominant), age (as it is often done on children which are still hugely neuroplastic), previous condition (if your memory is already impaired due to epilepsy, the fact that it doesn’t worsen after surgery doesn’t mean that you have a normal memory). So using this claim as a sweeping justification for something which is beyond the brain is disingenuous.
Plus, structures such as the hippocampus or amygdala are not removed during a hemispherectomy, and these structures have a large function in episodic and emotional memory, while the neocortex, which is removed, is more involved in the general knowledge function. Obviously this is an oversimplification of how memory and personality works, but it still shows how faulty the reasoning is.
Swinburne is simply incorrect about the brain’s atoms not being replaced. I believe he is confusing the lack of birth of new brain cells (and even this is incorrect, adult neurogenesis has been demonstrated in the olfactory bulb and hippocampus) with there not being things replaced in the brain. Cells still take in nutrients and excrete waste and use those new atoms to build new molecules and to repair their membranes and such.
Yeah, that threw me off and made me think some new research had emerged
I'm still not sure if it even makes a difference either way whether or not the brain parts are replaced or not. Does it even matter? What relevance does it have for the dualist? So what if the brain isn't entirely replaced, how does that imply anything about a soul?
jDuncs I don’t think it necessarily has any relevance, but I wasn’t necessarily using it as an argument. I was just pointing out a factual inaccuracy
@@123unknownsoldier126 my comment was more in light of Swinburne making the point about brain matter not being replaced - I don't see how that helps him prove the existence of the soul
You got Swinburne! On your show!
I've never heard the "some intentional actions aren't necessarily free" defense before. Very interesting.
Alex has long held the position that we always do what we most desire in that moment. When I first saw him talk about it, it made a lot of sense to me. Even when we choose to do the moral thing over the most self-beneficial thing, it's because that's what we most want to do at that moment in time.
For example, a soldier who dives on top of a live grenade to save the lives of his fellow soldiers even though he knows he's going to die is choosing to sacrifice himself because in that moment, his desire to save his comrade's lives is greater than his desire to keep on living. A more prosaic example would be abstaining from your favorite calorie-laden dessert because at that moment in time, your desire to lose weight and become healthier is greater than the desire for instant gratification.
@@EnglishMike I agree and I don't really know how Swinburne can get out of this.
As I point out to people in conversations at times, we can choose what we want, but we cannot choose to want something else. I think every choice has a sufficient cause in brain structure, experience, and circumstances.
When deconverting from Christianity, I would often ask "what is the *difference* between someone who accepts the religion's message and rejects it and how can a person be held responsible for that difference"?
@@Sveccha93 exactly this. We always do what we desire most and secondly, our "consciousness, self, whatever u wanna call it" are not the author of our desires. For example: I did not choose to like chocolate better than vanilla, brunettes over blondes, etc. Furthermore, even in things we become convinced of are not by choice. I can't choose to not believe Australia actually exists. However, inputting data in my brain can alter what I believe. My "self" just simply becomes aware of that belief.
@@EnglishMike "For example, a soldier who dives on top of a live grenade to save the lives of his fellow soldiers even though he knows he's going to die is choosing to sacrifice himself because in that moment, his desire to save his comrade's lives is greater than his desire to keep on living"
The atheist's trick with this argument is to create a tautology (hypothesis that is true no matter what data is found). I don't know how people fall into that.
No matter what happens you will always say that there was a greater desire and that was the cause of your decision making your hypothesis come true in any scenario.
@@nemrodx2185 It's not a trick. Even most philosophers admit that there's no way to know whether true free will exists, so without empirical data, everyone has to come up with their own explanation for the observed behavior of others.
What plausible argument is there for or against free will that is falsifiable? Appealing to any form or religious imperative certainly doesn't cut it.
When Alex gave the example of choosing between two flavors of ice cream, he said, "You don't choose which to like." But there's a difference between choosing to desire an option and choosing to act on your desires. Maybe you have a choice over whether you act on your preferences even if you don't always choose your preferences?
Ok, let’s say I’m choosing whether to buy my favourite ice cream flavour or a different one. Despite it being my favourite, I choose a different one to demonstrate that I have free will. And why did I do that? Because my desire to demonstrate that I had free will was stronger than my desire to eat my favourite ice cream. Why? Because it just was. If I had been a slightly different person (I.e different genetics and/or upbringing) then it might not be. Whatever decision you make, it is always predicated on things that you didn’t choose, so we’re you really free to make those decisions?
*were
not we’re, it won’t let me edit
@@willhasnofriends Swinburne's e.g. was choosing what is right over what is comfortable for me. Phenomenologically the self-determination of ultimate desire can come before the desire. Decision before wanting. My experience is that it can be "up to me" what I do, not simply desire-driven. That's why we hold people responsible.
@@fr.hughmackenzie5900 Usually when people do things against there apparent desire, there is an easy explanation why they did that. That explanation often has a clear causal chain of itsself. For example I desire to eat icecream, but I know that it will make me fat. I don't want to be fat so that 'desire' of not wanting to be fat drives my choice towards not eating the desired ice cream. In common language I could even say 'I ought not eat' the ice cream almost as if it is a moral decision.
@Richard Bloemenkamp But your examples are still centred upon bodily good of the subject. Swinburne is talking about moral, responsible generosity. The preference for others over self is certainly experienced as a reason but it’s simultaneously experienced as Swinburne’s “ self-determination”. I make myself to be the type of person who has such preferences freely, responsibly.
Swinburne did allow that this phenomenology be empirically shown to be a delusion - notwithstanding that we all assume it in each other and it is at the heart of civilisation. But, he clearly implied, it must be taken at face value whatever its final metaphysical interpretation.
I would say that the empirical evidence confirms it: our moral and creative preferences are not the physical, ecological-niche-oriented-desires/reasons-for-action of all viable physical things. Humans are the only species to transcend physically adapted limits. We have our own reasons.
On the idea that the best example of free will is in moral decisions, a rebutal I would have loved to hear would be that the morals of an individual are always conditioned by their socialization, experience, and in general by things out of their control. The place we are born in, the people we meet, the books we've read, are all out of our direct control. Therefore moral decisions are biased and cannot be considered free in my opinion. If anyone has a rebuttal to that I would be interested.
Yep, the evolution of our brain structure, present levels of certain hormones and neurotransmitters all mostly a result of the dna we were born with also contribute to determining our moral preferences and decisions. Not much room for a soul, or what many of us would consider truly 'free' will.
Well the belief you chose your body covers that .
You can be socialized in way different ways but can always make your own decisions to agree or not agree.
@@ceceroxy2227 Your ability to disagree is informed by other events out of your control as well. Such as your education, and the values you were transmitted. And then the internal interpretation of your experiences is as well influenced by events you have no control over. What I mean is that the free choices we seem to make always can be understood as being caused by something outside of ourselves.
@@ceceroxy2227 The physical state of our brains will influence our decision though. For example, someone who is afflicted by Schizophrenia will choose differently from someone who suffered intense childhood abuse, who will also be influenced to respond differently from someone of optimal mental health, etc.
"Heaven is not so much a reward for being good but as a place where good people would be happy. It's a natural home for them." What a profound statement that should equally affect and perhaps change the minds of both theists and non-theists in their understanding of the Christian afterlife!
Well said!
the biblical description of heaven (the only one that should count i think most christians will agree) is clear.
heaven is a place where souls that are "saved" get to sing god praises, in a choir, for eternity.
thats it.
nothing else.
so like north korea now, except in north korea at least you can die and escape that hellish life... heaven is for eternity!
sounds like hell to me...
@@atee876 respectfully, you have a very wrong notion of what Christians believe. The orthodox position of all Christianity regarding eternity is not of heaven but rather of a new earth in which we will dwell in our resurrected bodies. The idea that we will form a choir and merely sing songs all day is also a caricature of the Christian position. I hope you will take the time to seek out these things further as I would hate for you to continue on with such jaded and false ideas of the Christian afterlife.
@@bilbobaggins9893 what "christians" believe and what is written in their book is rather different... thanks to centuries of catholic, and then more recently protestant, conmen/priests making stuff up about how it will be a lovely eternal garden party.
that is not what is written. what is written ios what i wrote.
an eternity of singing god praises mindlessly.
and i do mean a real eternity, no breaks, no chatting, no drinks or fancy food.
singing about how good god is.
for ever.
....
like i said.
hell!
@@atee876 again, with all due respect you are just demonstrably wrong and you don’t seem to have a spirit of truth seeking.
The Bible clearly teaches the fact that we will exist forever in a new created earth with new resurrected bodies. It does NOT say we will form a choir and sing for all of eternity. That’s just false. If you want to continue making that claim, please show me where the Bible says that.
Look man, it’s one thing not to believe and idk your story but at least deal with the religion you claim to reject fairly. Creating caricatures and straw-man arguments isn’t helpful for anyone. Take care and hopefully one day you might change your mind!
So annoyed, as I saw you at St ebbs in Oxford tonight and didn't get a chance to talk!
This conversation really made me question my view on free will. He almost convinced me with the point that free will only matters when its a choice of doing the right thing or what you want, but surely that implies we are all born or raised with an equal, inherent understanding of right and wrong, which to me is a view shrouded in privilege.
Yes. He has a great mind but, like all intelligent religious people he has to try really hard to make his belief fit with reality.
Human beings have “morals” as we call them because that’s how we evolved to survive. We are a social species for a reason. When a child’s emotional developmental needs are not met, those brain circuits for empathy do not properly develop. There is nothing free about any of the reasons why someone “chooses” to do the “right” thing or the “wrong” thing.
Humans will always choose to do the most pleasurable thing for survival. Every single time. You can observe this of yourself. Even that time you decided to eat healthy when you wanted ice cream was based on a circumstantial calculation that the pleasure of being healthy in the future outweighed instant gratification. You are never doing anything freely. It just feels like you are because you always do the thing that is in line and in sync with your programming and because you are you.
@@daviddeida Huh?
@@nakkadu I dont know,they deleted my comment..smh
@@daviddeida I read it....just didn't understand it 😆
It seems that to come to his view on free will, I would have to see an example of a moral decision in which someone "forces" themselves to do something.
To me it seems like the phenomenology is that someone would put effort into performing a moral action only if they wanted to do the moral thing both more than they want to do the immoral thing and more than they don't want to put in the effort.
That's insane. People have chosen horrific torture and death rather than betray family or friends. Your belief is that this is entirely unpraiseworthy or worthy of our admiration because in the end they simply did the thing they most wanted to do!
No. They chose to endure the very last thing they wanted to face because they loved their family and friends. If we lived in a world where people truly believed there is no free will it would be a terrible place in which to exist.
@@markmooroolbark252 you said it perfectly. Their desire to be loyal to people they love was stronger than their desire to be tortured. Just think, if the betrayal was against someone else that they had less desire to betray than be tortured, they would have chosen to betray. Now you're getting it. ;)
"If we lived in a world where people truly believed there is no free will, it would be a terrible place in which to exist." Well, yes. No disagreements here. Just one addition, to make. "If we lived in a world where people truly had free will, it would be a terrible place in which to exist." both arguments can just be considered true if we just say the world, the universe, the "super universe" (if you know, you know) are in fact a terrible place in which to exist. @@markmooroolbark252
This was such a wealth of information. It feels like stealing for this to be freely available
ultimately one can make the strong argument that no one is responsible for anything they do due to externalities. That none of us have any agency, and that none of us deserve any credit or blame for anything we do. And, as well, that our consciousness is not something in control or directing anything, but rather serves only to narrate or explain our actions and other events to ourselves. We think our brain is deciding, vut in fact it is just pretending to us that it is. Also, that if we win a Nobel Prize or commit an atrocity, we deserve neither credit nor blame. It also means we should not reward talent, good choices, altruism nor punish anyone, even for rape, genocide, you name it.
Also that our desire that there be something called personal responsibility is a delusion, and part of a mechanism that allows us to create a fiction.
Free will and morality are Intimately related, yes, but still different. Lack of free will doesn’t suggest we don’t hold people accountable, but instead emphasizes rehabilitation. If a person cannot be rehabilitated there is still the argument that they still need be separated from society so they cannot cause harm but should still not be “punished” in any way additionally to that. Altruism should still be rewarded as it increases the greater good. It’s really just conditioning, rewarding altruism increases the chances of the behavior continuing. Credit for winning a noble prize can still be given as you’re acknowledging the existence of an important event. You can still marvel at beauty of a mind without agency just as you marvel at the night sky without any will of its own.
Even though the story of a film is predetermined, it doesn’t prevent you from feeling real emotions towards the characters and events. You can derive meaning from the viewing experience. Life is simply the same way.
@@123unknownsoldier126 NO. In a determinist model as well as physics, tell us these are just events unfolding. Rewarding altruism won't increase altruism one iota under the models. how does altruism increase the greater good when its occurrence or non occurrence is already pre-determined? As far as Nobel prize, why would you give it to an individual?
There are just causal factors that already did, or did not occur, very long ago in a chain of events that created past events and create all future events.
People are still causally responsible for their actions, even if we no longer think of them as morally responsible.
And if we know that certain influences just objectively cause humans to be more altruistic,then obviously those of us who value altruism would be inclined to promote those influences.
The hypothetical I use is, ok, if someone makes a decision, then you go back in time, would they make a different decision?
If they'd always make the same decision, where's the free will, but if they make a different decision, why? What mechanism is there to allow them to make a different decision if everything is exactly the same?
Actually, you would want to use the possible worlds of modal logic. What you're actually asking is "Is there a possible world where ◇p or ¬p?"
"Possible worlds" can be understood also as possible states, or dimensions, or alternate histories, etc.
If all possible outcomes exist, is that free will? Unless we're also applying some interpretation of quantum immortality such that, by your free will, you choose which timeline you exist in through your choices at any given moment. That is, I, ME, that which I consider to be the self, the "soul", consciousness.. whatever you wanna call it... must be capable of it's own free will, to choose. Without the ability to "jump timelines" then I am still fixed on my timeline, which has a fixed set of events - almost by definition of the possible worlds hypothesis - as are all other versions of me, that are not me. Unless we're just saying that all possible worlds "are possible" and our choices determine which of these worlds we will create, but that doesn't solve the causality problem. How do we choose something other than that which we most desire to choose? How do we choose what we choose?@@angusmcculloch6653
Thank you for the, as always, intellectually stimulating podcast! I have to say though, after all that talk about souls, free will, "good and bad" people, I need to listen to some Robert Sapolsky lectures for an evidence-based mental cleanse.
What is a "evidence - based mental cleanse"? I never heard of that concept. Thanks
@@johnbrzykcy3076not trying to put too fine a point on it, I think they were saying much of the stuff was speculative at best, so they're going to watch some more evidenced based videos to stay grounded.
St. Luke
Saint of the Day
St. Luke the Evangelist (1st c.) was a well-educated Greek physician and a native of Antioch in Syria. He was a follower of St. Paul the Apostle and spent most of his life evangelizing with him in Asia Minor up until the time of Paul’s martyrdom in Rome. Luke wrote a canonical account of his apostolic journeys with Paul (the Book of Acts) as well as a biography on the life of Christ (the Gospel of Luke). The two books of Luke’s Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles were originally a single work. The intimate accounts contained in Luke’s gospel of the early years of Christ’s life (the Visitation, the Nativity, the Presentation, etc.) lead many scholars to believe that one of the eyewitnesses he interviewed was the Blessed Virgin Mary herself. According to tradition he was also a skilled artist and painted the first icons of Our Lady with the Child Jesus. Several of these icons are still venerated today, the most famous of which hangs in the Church of St. Mary Major in Rome. St. Luke is the patron saint of many trades including artists, painters, doctors, surgeons, and bachelors. His feast day is October 18th.
"they don't have brains like ours, so therefore [ lower animals? ] don't have consciousness" ???
To hold that position with any level of confidence is absolutely absurd.
Maybe he means to say the conscious states between different animals are not equal?
This world boggles my mind 🤦
excellent conversation!
Such a bright interviewer you are, Alex!
CS, Alex, I think it great that his wisdom is kept around! Though, sure, he's understandably behind on our biological knowledge of animals, but given his age and how the fact that he's probably forgotten more than most know, lol. I'm glad you didn't push him. Great convo!!👍💙💖🥰✌
Same
Seems like Richard is familiar with the common arguments and has learned to dodge the questions, calling simple examples that demonstrate the logical inconsistency between physical reality and free will somehow not 'real decisions'. He posits magic (souls, god) to explain that he does have free will, while having no way to refute the physical evidence of causality and resorting to semantics (choosing ice cream not being a 'real' free choice is similar to saying 'no true scotsman'). Well-spoken and clearly experienced, I don't find his argument convincing - he doesn't really provide good examples of how free will would operate either (not even trivial ones). Just saying "I decide" and that the chain of causality ends at "you" doesn't really prove anything, especially since you don't (and can't) demonstrate this 'soul' to exist.
None of the proponents of determinism ever behave in a manner which suggests they actually believe it. None. What should we make of such audacious hypocrisy?
@@markmooroolbark252 oh? Prove it
Each human body is not the same body after 7 years, every cell is new replacing the old, but the witness inside the body is the same.
The free will argument has always fascinated me! I don’t understand how and why though, the argument doesn’t begin and end with the evidence or proof (or lack there of), of an atomized, individual “agent” residing somewhere within the body or brain, acting upon and controlling “ourselves”. This is what free will would be and mean.
There is not a shred of proof for such a thing!! We have been traveling in the direction of a lack of free will for years now (scientifically/evidentially), but the collective and individual myth of free will is just too deterministically intertwined in our very beings (without us having any choice in the matter!!).
The very act/experience of making a choice is a deterministic outcome of brain, body and environment being deeply interconnected and interdependent. The brain isn’t choosing to be a brain! The heart isn’t choosing to pump blood, ie the subject experience of self isn’t choosing to make choices, to ponder, to reason, to attempt logic, or for that matter to be completely stupid and inane!!
The myth of self is literally intertwined into the deeply evolved natural function of biological/social hierarchy construction found in all of nature (especially mammals)!! This is deeply unsettling because no one really deserves their place at the top or the bottom. The very notion that individuals choose their intelligence, physical qualities, strengths and weaknesses relative to the culture, time and place they find themselves in is absurd!! So, be who “you” are in whatever sense that can be considered and pondered…..because you ain’t got any choice in the matter!!
You do see the disconnect between this and the insistence that there can be an objective morality, correct?
@@angusmcculloch6653 well I certainly don’t insist there is objective morality!! The irony of not having free will, is we can “choose” to structure societies, communities, families, and individuals towards greater potentials and “efficiencies”. What’s troubling is whether we can pull this off. I don’t think we can, but the potential is there. For individuals to swallow the ultimate pill of humility, compassion, and understanding is a fantasy, unfortunately.
Morality itself emanates from our deeply evolved mammalian past. it would seem that’s why we have so many objective moralities proposed through our history largely based off some “ultimate God/creator”!! The fact no culture or individual truly agree on this and literally kill for God/Country/culture/communities/family, is because there is no objective morality!! Morality isn’t completely arbitrary, though!! Millions of years of biological psychology, environmental and cultural evolution have slowly narrowed what we morally focus on and argue about-which normally involves our ability to adhere to said morality or social customs and rules, that also acts as mean to place us within social hierarchies (like I just mentioned in the previous statement!!!).
I hope coming to this realization would lead us to consider building moralities and general social etiquettes that emanate from some underlying logic/reason we find from scientific facts and understanding of reality and nature….at this point my confidence is not tooooo high!!
How bout yours??
@@milesgrooms7343 It's nice to run into one your kind that doesn't insist on objective morality!
@@angusmcculloch6653 yes sir it is nice!!! I wish we had more conclusions on how we could use this idea for humanity’s sake, but the realization that tangible and intangible aspects of hierarchies are in-effect, “illusions”, to a certain extent, would collapse the very foundations of all that we have built and live for…..
Richard, said “god gave us free will and it is a gift” should mention I’m paraphrasing. A question I’ve always had is if there is a god, what gives him the right to create? The question stems from my belief that there is a gray area of bad and that is where good exists.
Who want's free will? I actually dont think we have it but why would I want it? So I can mess up and be blamed?
hey Alex, could you update the oxford reading list section
It always baffles me to see an intellectual powerhouse turn into a babbling fool whenever the subject of free will is bought up.
This is one reason I would caution any academic against engaging a popular audience outside of writing books, but even then I would tell them to be wary. There's just no upside for the academic. The popular audience doesn't have the baseline knowledge to engage with the sheer technicalities of the actual work.
As you try to use language that the popular audience understands, the language necessarily becomes imprecise, because you're losing the technical aspects of the work.
For instance, to technically illustrate the problem you have here, I would write:
"□Pa ≡ □(Pb ∧ Pc) in all worlds Hnat ∈ wn"
The problem is, this means nothing to you. Even in this format, some technicality is lost because I can't do superscripts and subscripts here, and so the proposition doesn't look how it should look.
The other problem is you don't have the necessary baseline knowledge for me to even describe this to you in easily technical terms. So now, I have to start using imprecise language. So I might say "Square Pa" means "Necessarily Pa"--but that's not actually precise. Square is a "modal operator" and to try to help people understand it's helpful to think of it as "necessarily", but Square doesn't mean, literally, "necessarily".
So, as you can see, me even being able to describe that sentence to you has taken us out of the precision that such symbolic logic allows me to achieve.
The problem is that, as I describe this to you in imprecise language, you think you're hearing the actual argument and are trying to hold my popularizing (understood as describing it in words that a popular audience will understand) the formula as a literal and verbatim translation of the formula--which is incorrect.
You then attack me as imprecise, but then yourself fall victim to imprecise language.
And that's why I warn academics against engaging popular audiences. The audience doesn't understand that, popular language--especially in things like modal logic--is necessarily imprecise, and that behind the popular language are super technical, super precise equations that they can't understand anyway.
So what's the point, I ask them.
@@angusmcculloch6653 “If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.”
@@MrJamesdryable Not only are you hiding behind a catechism, but your catechism doesn't even address the point of what I wrote.
Richard "well, I could be wrong, but let's just presume I am not" Swinburne
It kind of shocks me how many people there are who still think free will doesn't exist.
I'd love to see a conversation between Swinburne and Dawkins. They are both in Oxford 😊
Awesome! Engaging with Brilliant minds!
Really interesting guest and great hosting on your part. You are like what those kind of hosting used to be in the mainstream before they became sensationalistic.
I am not too sure about his mind as a substance. There are spiritual substances though, that much is pretty clear. We can even control them to some degree. Just think about talking. It's not the movement of the air that makes you understand what someone else is saying, the air is just a medium to propagate some information. It can degrade an be interfered with by another spiritual substance as well, so now you just hear noise, like if someone is talking to you near a construction site. This is all spiritual, there is no mechanics involved and it's why there can be interference in the first place. Whether the human soul is like that is unclear, but not impossible. It could be like that. Maybe one day we will be able to transfer consciousness into a new body, and that would prove it, but quality control might be difficult to do.
Otherwise though, the question of free will is interesting, but free will itself is a choice, it's something you choose to have or not, so it's a matter of faith. That there can be free will is quite undeniable, the only question remains is if someone will choose to have it.
There are lots of games possible. If you go to a Steam store, there are plenty of games in display and the game you choose will define whether you do have free will or not. Like there are idle games where you don't get to choose anything, or almost nothing, so that might be the atheist game where all you can do is say "yes" to whatever happens. You still have free will, you can say "no" and be miserable.
Now, there are other games which fit some religions we have. Like the Hindus are playing rogue games, where you restart at the beginning all the time with a new character. The Buddhist plays idle game but hope to stop playing altogether. The Buddha sticks into the chatroom to tell others to stop playing, that it's not worth it, just an illusion. So he is playing the meta game. The Jews are playing platformers or those games with a clear path and mission and the goal is to finish with some lives left and they have saving points throughout. The Muslims are playing war games where you have to conquer the world or win in some ways.
Christians are playing RPGs and where you get autosaves every Sunday but can make manual saves at any time, just in case you die. You can interact with NPCs and they are the ones giving the missions and depending on whether you like the game or not, you may treat them well or not, so that's the problem of evil. Animals are part of the environment, you can't interact with them, but they create stories obviously, you might want to save them to help their suffering. Or you can ignore them and just do the missions and some might involve saving them, so it's not incompatible. If you die, you go to heaven and can reload your character, which implies a spiritual substance. It's stored somewhere in God, he remembers your stats and progress and can instantiate you at any time with a new body with the same character.
I don't think Swinburne believes that though, he seems to think you go the heaven and become part of the game, so you become an NPC ultimately. There is no resurrection of the body. It's like in a D&D game where someone stops playing, so now the character is controlled by the GameMaster.
Which leaves the question of another game, the builders game. I think Science is playing that type of game, it researches techs and build cities, civilizations. It's a bit of a God complex I suppose, but then again, we are made in his image. It's a social game though in reality, not an individual one like on a computer.
I think it's the way to approach it, more than trying to figure out which game is real or not. They are all real, just different, and free will in each will be different, from none if you don't play , or minimal in an idle game, or the maximum possible like in a mass multiplayer RPG. Now, it impossible to be in the former without knowing you are not in the latter, but you could be in the latter and just don't actually play the game and go away from the keyboard, so for your character, it's pretty much an idle game I guess. He might get killed by a passing PC, more than likely depending on the game. Maybe you dislike the game because there is blood and suffering, but in a way, it would be boring if those things were not there, especially the latter. You can't grow without some suffering, without playing. You need it to have meaningful missions. If the world's perfect, nobody would want to play the game, it would just be maintenance and when a game is like that, people quit. It becomes a grind.
Swinburne uses the thought experiment of Alexandrea/Alex/Andrea and argues that since one can interchange parts and at what point does that person lose their identity, and therefore the identity must be the soul.
But this also applies to a modified Ship of Theseus thought experiment. Say Theseus has two ships of identical design, both are a launched and they travel together and thus suffer from similar wear and tear. Say the ships pull into port for repairs, but the workmen lose track of exactly which board came from which ship when putting them back together and replacing rotted boards entirely. At the end of the day one has to arbitrarily attach one nameplate to one ship and another nameplate to the other ship. But are they really the same ships as before? Aha, the identity must be due to an immaterial ship soul, because clearly the identity isn't intrinsic to the ship.
Similarly, the Mississippi River is a depression in the earth that wends it way to the Gulf of Mexico. The water is always changing, and in fact the course of the river, where not engineered by man, changes its path over the course of years/decades/centuries, yet we always call it the Mississippi River. Surely then, since the identity isn't established by the exact water molecules, nor the always shifting path, the identity must exist in a river soul.
Yes, these are poor reasoning ... just like Swinburne's.
Occam's Razor requires the removal of the 'Soul' as everything can be explained more simply without it.
Swinburne's example of 2 halves of Alexandra's brain being placed in 2 different bodies perfectly demonstrates the Circularity of his thinking: he has already decided that they can't both be Vision.... sorry, Alexandra, so there must be a Soul to determine who is Really Alexandra. But that way of thinking presupposes a Soul. I would say, if they both Remember being Alexandra, then they CAN both be Alexandra. If you don't believe in an Essential Essence or Soul and you simply think Identity is created by Memories then you can potentially create 2 people who share an Identity. Of course the 2 would then diverge over time.
Good ol' prof tries to soothe himself with his "animals don't feel as much as we do".
I am certain animals experience pain as much as we do, pain has the task to make you avoid it. That is a valid survival strategy for us AND for animals.
Aniimals are probably not as good in memory, in evaluating complex situations, in pre-planning, and in anticipating the future, imagining what horrors MIGHT there be, that what, when it gets too intensive, drives us into a paranoia. like the 84-year old so afraid of a black teenager ringing at his door that he shoots him through the door.
Please note that I sad "not as good" and not "incapable of".
I think animals, at least the higher ones, probably feel just as much pain as humans, rather they just don’t understand pain in a philosophical sense that, “it hurts, dog, it hurts real bad.” My dog has seizures and arthritis, and he screams in pain.
Throughly looking forward to this. Richard Swinburne is terrible in debates, as are most academics. Similar to his writing, he frontloads with definitions and asterisks before making a point. You want a good debater, get Donald Trump. Alex seems to understand this and gets the best out of him.
This wasn't a debate
@@abdullahabubakar8344 I agree
Trump?
One more comment, in regards to animal pain. Swinburne is correct that is a path leading to the brain, and a path leading from the brain. It's pretty obvious that these are at the very least "almost" mutually inclusive. Pathway 1 (Poked Finger to Brain) "Something has pushed on this nerve." Pathway 2 (Brain to Poked Finger) "Pull away from it then."
IF a creature existed that had only the one pathway, this is how the conversation would go. Pathway 1 (Poked Finger to Brain) "Something has pushed on this nerve." Brain, not having a pathway to respond, thinks to itself "Tough luck, dumbass." Given that creatures react to pain, they must therefore have the second pathway.
A "better" (still bad) argument "for animals not feeling pain" (from someone who vehemently hates this idea) would be the complexity of the nerves, and the range of experiences that they could experience and the degree to which they experience them. It's imaginable that the complexity of the nerve, per each individual organism, could result in a wider or shorter range of experiences. As far as I can tell, ultimately, there is only one "bad" sensation (not emotion) - pain. "good" sensations, on the other hand, are vastly more complex though. Ultimately, these sensations "Good" or "Bad" determine whether we repeat an action. Our neurons may be "incorrectly" wired, from an evolutionary standpoint, such that we experience "Bad" sensation(s?) - Pain - as pleasure, but given the lack of physical masochists (Separate from mental masochists, of which there are plenty myself included) it seems likely an aberration, an anomaly. A genetic mutation "gone wrong" as it would increase the likelihood of death, especially in the wild (or "nature" as some humans arrogantly name it, as though they are separate).
"Good" sensations include a far wider range, and it's far beyond us as a species currently to understand the boundaries of pleasurable experiences. Could your pet dog experience pleasures that you, a human, cannot? Maybe. Maybe not. Humans, at least from my experience, seem to have a range of "good" sensations. Being tickled is a different sensation, and imbues a different response, than a hug, and that, or a handshake, none of which can be considered a "bad" sensation. It is clearly a spectrum, however, and not binary or singular.
"Bad" sensation(s?) - pain - has a singular reaction outside of masochists, to recoil. To stop experiencing that pain. This is not to say that it is enough to convince the organism entirely to stop whatever action it has taken to experience that pain - such as in the case of exercise amongst humans, or a dog scraping it's way under the fence, etc - as there is a balance to be made against "good" or "bad" sensations. Some "bad" sensations are, or at least seem to be from the organisms perspective, "worth the pain". Like a dog, scratching itself. If they experience pain, this must cause at least "some" pain and yet, the pleasure outweighs it, and so the dog scratches itself. Don't judge, so do you (probably).
The complexity of the nerve of the organism, relative to the complexity of other types of organisms (species) could be used as a scale from which to measure the degree to which an organism feels pain. It might be wrong, but it would seem appropriate. It's hard to imagine the simplest of life forms that could feel pain (It would seem more logical that it evolved over time, than that it was ever present as if passed down from The Common Ancestor, though it's not impossible) whereas if you step on a dog's tail, it has a very visceral reaction. It can even leave psychological scarring, but that's a whole other discussion and this is already long and complex enough.
We could validify certain parts of this hypothesis / theory - and possibly already have - such as it relates to determining the "value" assigned to an action, by measuring pleasure and pain, side by side, in varying degrees amongst various animals. I hate that I'm arguing FOR animal testing, so I'll clarify I am not suggesting this be done, as I feel it a moot point, just saying what could be done. Take an organism, say a rat, and train it up so that it's familiar with a maze, giving it a reward system for completing it. Necessary to "Pavlov's Dogs" the rat. From here, add forced painful experiences if the rat eats the cheese. Start off small, incredibly small. How do you apply this pain? I don't know, and as I stated I'm against it so I have no interest in knowing, but science probably does. The first time the rat eats the cheese, it may be confused. "That's new". If there is no reaction, increase the pain. Once you have a reaction, maintain that threshold for several test cases, and if the rat continues to eat the cheese, raise the pain threshold. Repeat until the rat refuses to eat the cheese. At this point, you'll have proven a number of things. One, other animals - at least in some sense - experience pain Two they have a threshold at which pain is no longer worth the pleasure (or perceived pleasure). Three, that you've acted as a monster, hopefully.
If the rat does NOT stop eating the cheese, regardless of the level of pain, potentially to the point of fatality this does not prove they don't feel pain, as a perfectly rational counter argument is that the pleasure of consuming the cheese is simply too much. As such, I AM in favour of conducting a variant of this test on humans, but for entirely different reasons. Moving on, we can control for this problem. Begin the experiment again, leaving the either dead or deeply traumatized and abused rat and find yourself another one. Killing two things isn't a sign of a pattern... yet. Now find another meal that rats enjoy, but enjoy less than cheese. I'm fairly certain this has been done, but it's much the same thing. Very swiftly, Get them used to food 1, stop food 1, get them used to food 2, start food 1, so they have both options. If they move into one, stop the other. The one they moved into is their preferred food. Unfortunately, in the desire for the least variables possible, we must conduct this experiment first on our second rat in order to "rank" foods they eat. Did I say conduct this experiment? I meant repeatedly. Eventually, we'd have a list. Now we take their least preferred food, and run the original test (done on Rat1, or "Raitchel" as I imagine the hypothetical rat to call herself.) on Rat 2. If rat 2 still prefers death over the loss of pleasure, it's far more likely they experience less pain than humans. Either that, or they enjoy eating more than they enjoy life - a view I'm sure some foodies might (even subconsciously) hold.
If this is the case, and we've murdered a second rat and are still no closer to the answer (as any "positive" result - the rat giving up the food - would have given us the room to move on, conversationally) we could apply the test to a "more complex" creature. Again, any humans wanna volunteer? Not that this would answer the question of other animal pain, but it'd be quite informative. No, probably not, so something else like a deer. You little serial killer, you. Started with rats, now we're killing deer. Why? Because you had to question if it felt pain. And, admittedly, because deer is the first thing that came to my mind. Now we conduct the same tests, the same experiments, and if it still leads to no result, we test another animal, such as an elephant or dog. A jaguar, a cheetah, or a leopard. It doesn't necessarily have to be food, either. Take a dog. It very much SEEMS to enjoy being patted. It rarely recoils from it, particularly from a known, friendly individual, and seemingly demands it. Anyone who hasn't had their dog "ask for pats" doesn't treat their dog well. As such, we can assume that dogs find that pleasurable. A "good" sensation of some kind. Similarly, when standing on the tail of a dog, they recoil. I suspect the people who treat their dogs the worst, deep down in their heart of hearts, know this the most. They respond to what we experience as pain in the same way we do, if someone - or some 'thing' - lands on our foot, or hand. We recoil. They nurse their wounds. They whimper. And, as mentioned earlier, they grow less trusting and even scared of the individual. For those who do their best, but still accidentally step on their dogs tail, I recommend immediately hugging them. Seems to work for me, and seems to work for the dog. So now, back to the test, let's get on with the hypothetical dog torture, for sciences sake! And some dumbasses that assert animals don't feel pain. Give the dog pats (or food, but that's of higher value), and apply pressure to their tail. Continuous pats, continuous increase in pressure (without pinning the creature, so perhaps some sort of shrinking ring applied to the tail) until the dog cares more about the pressure - the pain, the "bad" sensation - until the dog's desire to avoid the pain exceeds it's desire to gain the pleasure. This point will occur. If not, then go on you monster. Already killed rats and deer and dogs. Or maybe we skipped the deer, no worries, I'm sure you'll get there. At least in the mind. Might as well take the full leap. More dogs! Lesser pleasure!
So....does anything that exist for any period of time have a soul because we still, for instance, say that my house 15 years ago is still my house today even though it's had a new coat of paint and the upstairs redone? Because it seems like Richard just uses an object's identity through spacetime as his definition of soul but only applies it humans because...reasons? And his idea of free will and causation is incoherent; no the chain of causation does not end at humans because we also cause events, he's forgetting about the rest of reality causing other events to occur, how does he miss such basic and obvious forms of philosophy? He seems genuinely incapable of understanding that the thoughts we have are themselves caused by external physical forces. Everything from Alex's example of putting on the kettle to "choosing" flavor of ice cream. Where is the line drawn for Richard between subject and event causation? Deeply embarrassing.
Bring on David Bentley Hart or Pat Flynn from Philosophy for the People
This shows that philosophy on its own can only go so far. Philosophy needs to root itself in science, physics,
biology, psychology, etc.
In reality yes
Agreed
But science (and the aforementioned disciplines of science) is rooted in philosophy. No science can be done without it
This video is the ultimate proof that intelligent people are not always right. His view is very obviously wrong, and severely outdated, and yet he states it with complete, unquestioning (and borderline condesending) certainty.
Well, I am looking forward to watching this!
Sadly, "philosophy" doesn't "advance", it just changes as proponents of old ideas die out.
How ironic, I think this comment is ultimate proof that intelligent people are not always right.
This is what happens when you live in your cultural/academic bubble and refuse to let scientific knowledge get it. His unquestioning certainty elicits in me a mixture of annoyance and pity.
I don't think he's particularly intelligent either. He's well educated that's all.
If he were more intelligent, he'd be able to better rationalize his delusions
Nice job Alex, that was really interesting
The Alexandra brain experiment is not convincing to me. I think the brain is a bit like a computer, where the left and right cortex parts can be seen as a dual core CPU and RAM, and the rest of the brain as the harddisk. If the memories on the harddisk make the person, than you could replace one of the CPU cores and take out the other, but the memory/the person remains. That person would most likely suffer, from running on just one 'core', but still would remain the same person. However, when we wipe the memory from the harddisk/the rest of the brain, the person would cease to exist. It would result in a new person, who, after learning to speak, would say that they are 'me', but that would be a different 'me' than the 'me' from before the brain wipe.
The mind, which is an immaterial substance, interacts with the brain, which is a material substance, in the same way that life interacts with the body by giving it life.
God, angels and the soul are immaterial, spiritual entities, and they are alive. In the same way, we have an immaterial spirit that keeps us alive.
As for the separation of mind and body, is it not the same as hardware and software? Software has no physical properties, no mass, etc. In my mind it is a very related concept. The brain is the hardware, the soul is the software, and it can be downloaded and loaded onto another compatible platform ( resurrection body etc).
08:00 - what is a "person"?
My mother once told me (out of the blue and apropos of nothing) that a person is anything that has rights. I don't know where she got that definition but it has always stuck with me and it's hard to find a better one.
To me, anyone who has a personality is a person.
I don't think anybody is using that definition. I personally don't think there is a good definition, which is why its almost always just used to mean human
So when the slaves had no rights, they weren't people?
@@MrDzoni955 In fiction, we have no problem considering science fiction aliens, fantasy races like elves & dwarves, or "spirits" that can talk to us, to be "people". Humans are just the only *demonstrable* individuals in that category.
It's a purely legalistic definition. Is your mom perhaps a lawyer?
Thanks for this video, Alex, I enjoyed listening to it very much.
Alex, you're the epitome of what an atheist should be: always searching, always learning, and always willing to listen to the other side. Keep up the good work!
I would love for him to condemn and denounce a lot of the fundamentalist atheist dogma of today, from people like Matt Dillahunty or Aron Ra.
Anyone seriously looking for the truth won't find it anywhere but the illuminati, they've written 20 million words in over 200 books do describe the truth of existence.
Alex is proactively NOT smug and seems most concerned with consistency over everything else which I appreciate as a rational theist.
@Please enter a name I think Matt is great when in a public debate. He is sharp as a tack and also respectful. He is less respectful in the call-in programmes, but so are many of his interlocutors.
@@Fotomadsen thank you for your reply but I’m sorry I completely disagree with that, I think in terms of a debater he’s completely embarrassing and intellectually dishonest at least nowadays, in some of his older debates he was definitely at least willing to have a good faith conversation, He goes into debates with have absolutely no justification for his for really any of his positions at all, he doesn’t even attempt to and just throws out claims most of the time. And constantly dodges and is incredibly incoherent at least in recent debates and in every recent debate I’ve seen with him. I think he’s mostly and predominantly just doing these debates for publicity into inflate his ego, and please his audience. I have heard many Christians and some atheists tell me and also complain that they think the warranty is a bully, I definitely wouldn’t say that I think he’s pretty respectful for the most part. For the most part because I really just don’t think he cares about the topics that he debates, and that’s pretty difficult to say because he’s basically spent his entire career on many of the topics but he knows little to no information about the topics, it’s pretty comparable to Kent Hovid’s understanding an experience with Evolution by natural selection. He really has no excuse he was literally a Southern Baptist for 25 years. And also I know this is kind of irrelevant but his audience is unbearable I’m not talking about you you’re probably a member of his audience, and if you are I’m not judging you or saying you’re a terrible person or anything like that, or that you’re dishonest I’m just talking about in general, and I think he’s everything wrong with the modern atheist movement and anti-theism in general for the most part. With some of his callers I can understand some of them can be pretty unbearable, but at the same time though he’s just nasty to some of them and it’s pretty frustrating to watch.
That was really a great discussion, everything put very well and I think your moderation style is just perfect for this kind of discussions/podcast.
Consistently something to look forward to :)
Just have to say I have been loving these interviews, and this is my new favorite podcast right now
One of my favorite episodes. Hope you bring on more philosophers like this.
I can’t believe he is 88 years old. So inspiring, his mind is still quite sharp! I’m halfway through the interview and enjoying a lot. Thanks again for this kind of content, Alex!
I know! Impressive, right! And then compare that to poor, confused president Biden.
@@badgerlife9541 why specificly biden? trump and biden can be both idiots, even if you approve some of their decisions. i think both of them are laughable. don't you?
@@badgerlife9541 Wouldn't be talking considering you seem to have a terminal case of hyperpolitical brain rot.
And yet, he's older than the senile Joe Biden.
And yet, he's older than the senile Joe Biden.
He appeals to classical or orthodox views a bit too often. That being said, he definitely has a deep understanding of his own views. That’s quite admirable.
Except his own views seemed deeply flawed. Especially when talking about such concepts as heaven, free will and animal suffering
It's only an appeal to tradition if his reasons for his beliefs are "it's always been that way", which his reasons appear to be much deeper than that. No need to discount something because it's always been that way.
@@alansmith4748 Sure, I definitely disagree with him
Let’s not get carried away 😂
imagine having a deep understanding of astrology
Surely a moral choice is also dependent on the actions that caused the person to consider something being moral or immoral. I’m not quite sure a moral choice makes any difference. I realise this person has an enormous amount more qualifications than me on this subject, but I find a lot of what he is saying isn’t logically consistent.
It is incredible the clarity and ease that Swinburne has to respond even a such advanced age. A bit slow already but in very good shape. Excellent dialogue!
This is brilliant! The CosmicSkeptic, Alex, is getting such eminent philosophers and scientists on. If higher animals have conscious free choice, do they also have moral responsibility for their actions?
I love the conversation. I love the respect. I love the tradition that Swinburne ably represents.
I just don't find Swinburne's arguments convincing. I don't feel like he's *really* engaging with the objections offered.
It's quite remarkable seeing such a distinguished and supposedly sophisticated philosopher resort to question begging in exactly the same way the lowest hanging fruit apologists do, as soon as a concrete question about the mechanics of the mind-body dualism is raised.
Question: How exactly do mind/soul and brain interact and where's the line dividing the two?
"Answer": All I need to do is assert that they DO interact.
I'm paraphrasing but only slightly.
Baffled by this as well.
I was thinking about commenting something to this effect, but wasn't sure if maybe it's me not getting something. The bit about Alex/Sandra was also interesting as well. Why would you assume that (if such a situation is possible), there is such a necessity to say that one of them is the original person. I find that only if you already presume the soul there is such a necessity. It cannot be the reason for supposing that soul exists "pfff, because otherwise it doesn't make sense".. It does to me.
I'm not sure what's supposed to be problematic about this answer. Presumably everyone believes that the nature of causal interaction will be irreducible at some point, right? We can break down causes into mechanisms to a point, but when we get down to the fundamental level of particle interaction we don't really have much informative to say about how they interact. We could maybe appeal to laws (which are not explanations, but descriptions), or just say that it's just a basic fact that they do.
``All I need to do is assert that they DO interact.
I'm paraphrasing but only slightly.``
But you are not only paraphrasing, you're also question-begging yourself. You are saying:
``as soon as a concrete question about the *mechanics* of the mind-body dualism is raised.``
The mechanics? What mechanics? This is begging the question: you assume that the mental constituent, the mind itself, is precisely as accountable as the body, presumably through the workings of the brain. In other words, you want an account of the mind, as many physicalists/materialists *think* they have about the brain and its function supposedly culminating to consciousness, subjective experience. Essentially, you want a materialist explanation of the mind-body interaction. And that is question begging.
By the way, do you think neuroscience has explained consciousness? We know exactly what the liver does in the human body. Or, we know exactly what the kidneys or the lungs do, the link between the presence of these organs in the human body and all about their function. Similarly, do we know exactly what is the link between brain & consciousness?
@@ktheodor3968 I'm not question begging anything. Posing something as a question isn't question begging.
He on the other hand is double question begging by positing there is a soul in the first place with no evidence to support it and then again by positing this soul interacts physically with a brain - has to be physically because the brain is physical.
The third level of his sloppy thinking is asserting the connection between a "soul" and the brain because he feels pain. The feeling of pain can literally be induced by manipulating certain regions of brain, either electrically or by mechanically sticking needles in there.
His "soul" is nowhere to be found. It's literally a mere assertion influenced by his religiosity and nothing rational...which is perfectly fine in the realm of religion. Philosophy however is a rational endeavor.
Personal Id is a pretty easy thing to explain and I can prove that it has nothing to do with soul. People who has the personality disorder such as Bipolarism or Schizophrenia has different characters , personalities created in their heads for them because of debatable reasons . Either protection of the brain itself for not to overdrive it or protecting the main identity. All debatable stuff. So all these personalities behave and think in a different way and most of the people have no memories of those moments when the other personalities take over . Very famous one portrayed on the movie Sybil had 16 different personalities. If you ask those personalities they are sure of their existence. And in the definition of "soul" there can only be one per body or brain lets say. So it is debunked. And this also proves that our experiences and behaviours define our personal id. The way you experience things the way you feel (amount of hormone production) creates your identity. Without experience you wouldn't be able to become you. If that was the case that we were born with souls then we wouldn't have changing personalities throughout our lives. Even in our life span our brains evolve. And we are able to change the way we feel or behave . Souls do not evolve according to the people who say they exist...
His response to Nozick's experience machine is interesting, given its parallels with the description of an infinitely blissful afterlife; most people disregard the latter on the same grounds he dismisses the former.
His response to Free Will in heaven is also interesting. "There will be Free Will to choose among alternative 'good' states". The problem is that "Free Will" is used to describe the existence of "not good" states in this current life; bad things happen as a consequence of the freedom to choose to do bad things. This is obviously circular. If in heaven, there simply aren't any "bad" choices to select from, it begs the question why there are "bad" choices to select from here. The Christian will cite the Fall of Man, but that merely pushes the problem back, and the question still remains: "why were the bad choices available"
These arguments are always asymmetric in favor of the theistic position.
It is typically said that the logical problem of evil is answered by the free will defense: it is not logically incoherent for a tri-Omni-god to exist while evil, pain, or suffering exists. People can do this by their own volition. I think this does alleviate the issue to an extent but doesn’t do away with the evidential problem. Nevertheless, it implies something very peculiar. If God does not want to interfere with our free will, and hence does not have to answer to evil , he equally cannot answer for miraculous benefits or positive outcomes, by the same logic of free will. It’s stated that some people are blessed, or that god does great things for people. Many times, these things are done by the free will of others for countless reasons, the possibility of a positive outcome exists for a variety of reasons (economical, knowledge advancement, access to education etc). Is it not equivalent to say that, god does not answer for these "good" things precisely in the same way he does not answer for evil: on behalf of our free will and ability to manipulate the environment for our gain and the gain of others? It seems we relegate gods existence to that of deism; rarely involved and much of the moral good or bad we experience can be accounted for purely on human terms.
Thank you! I was literally screaming when he said that I'm part because of what you pointed out!
I mean the least disrespect possible to the man, but at 48 minutes it seems "because Christianity is true to me" is the genesis of his thoughts which leads to increasingly unsatisfying conclusions.
Heck, he basically said being neurodivergent and incapable of avoiding immoral impulses is grounds to not be in heaven.
When someone has the hemispheres of their brain severed, it can often be the case that they act independently and in "willful" contrast of one another. It can then be reasoned that there may be two autonomous agents acting within the same body, thus perhaps up to two egos (what Richard refers to as a soul) within a single material being. I'm not so sure this is so different from the myriad of cases of conjoined twins.
Conjoined twins have two complete brains, which would entail 4 egos.
David the severed hemisphere outcomes always solidify how deterministic and unfree the self truly is!! The fact that you would have an outright atheist corresponding to one hemisphere and religious believer on the other is anything but freedom!!
How in the hell do see freedom in that? Your brain isn’t choosing to be a brain. Your heart is choosing to pump blood! The act of making a choice is a deterministic process being fulfilled by the totality of internal and external factors that don’t have anything to do with the subjective experience of self (which is in and of itself the outcome of deeply deterministic functions and factors).
I found nothing this fine gentleman said to in anyway make me think we have free will. It is the greatest myth we live with individually/collectively!!
Or at least that is what you are forced to believe...
I am rather cautious of making any deductions from this divided brain idea. It seems to me that you can disprove a few hypotheses here but no matter how many hypotheses you can rule out there will still be any number of alternative explanations. Personally I have no problem with a divided brain developing into two identities, both believing they are the whole identity, but ultimately both different from each other and the whole.
@@milesgrooms7343 My view on it is that free will proponents are ideological proponents. Like Christian apologists argue that we chose to go to Hell. A just God wouldn't condemn somebody to an eternity in Hell if they were determined to end up there, would he? Thus we must have free will. I'm not a legal expert, but believe the legal system is at least partly based on free will. Libertarians, in turn, would have a hard time justifying their ideology without free will. In addition to that, we all lead our lives as we have it.
Free will just feels right.
I found Richard Swinburne's reasons to support free will very unconvincing. He had to hedge his bets and find an exception every time that AO'C suggested a problem. He further explains that free will is a gift on the pure assumption that there's a giver.
A gift could also just be a "good" thing like a gifted artist 🎨
The "gift" is the talent that we can use our free will to use or not.
No one has to give it, it's not like a christmas present.....
But yes, I know that he probably meant so.
Like all theists, Swinburne's ability to formulate unbiased propositions is noticeably contaminated by his inherent predilictions.
also didnt find his arguments on anything convincing.
Have you ever read Swinburne's actual work?
@@ZambeziKid Have you ever read Swinburne's actual work?
Giving humans free will but not other mammals just means he's basing the entire argument for free will on his religion and the rest of the stuff he mentions is just nonsense to back that up
I love your content! Hearing terms like the "problem of interaction" gives me loads of memories of my undergraduate studies in philosophy. Good times!
I'll prove "Free will" in 3 shotened seconds:
The natural order of things would be to agree with me, an accredited academic. Yet somehow you have chosen to disagree with this comment 😔
It is always a delight to hear Richard Swindburne .. as with Anthony Kenny, Peter Vardy, Alan Carter, Richard Price (and the late Roger Scruton, Gerard J Hughes SJ, Benedicta Ward SLG, and going way back Frederick Coppleston SJ etc); there are not enough British scholars offered a place on YT (et al) to thin out the far too heavy larding of US socio-political contextualization of moral, philosophical, theological, and metaphysical issues. Thanks for sharing this little treasure.
One can learn a lot in discussion with someone one does not tend to agree with, if only by 'understanding' their understanding .. and critiquing it. Sadly, there seem to be relatively few academics of Swindburne's stature and capacity to 'debate' with .. in gently attentive conversation on religiousy topics; I itched to tease out more from his necessarily truncated responses .. but that's me (I wasn't terribly fond of Swindburne's take of Aquinas, e.g. his 'Faith and reason' 1981, Oxford : Clarendon Press - snotty-nosed undergrad oik that I was).
Great stuff.
Keep the Faith; tell the truth, shame the devil, and let the demons shriek.
God bless. ;o)
This podcast is so amazing. Phenomenal work.
Swinburne's arguments in favour of a God seem utterly hollow, he clearly approaches the questions in the grip of a pre conceived belief system
I'm not familiar with Swinburn but, whatever his credentials are, I'm not terribly impressed by the way he seems to just assert his way to dualism.
If only I could separate my mind from my body maybe I wouldn’t be so irritable when I’m hungry or tired.
The same way materialists or physicists assert the existance of physical things .
When the mind is the substance we can be most confident too existance
@@ramadadiver8112 BS. Science measures results. it doesnt assumes matter.
@@matswessling6600 the very tools you use to do science are assumed to be real physical matter
@@matswessling6600
You believe your pencil is real..the paper ..the computer ..the software hardware maths symbols the telescopes . The rockets . The rovers
Etc
Enjoyed this conversation! Regarding animals being able to speak - what about the apes who have learned to sign? They might not be able to have deep philosophical discussions, but they can certainly tell us when they're afraid or hurting, as well as when they are happy. You don't even need words to do that. Anyone who has owned a dog knows they have the ability to suffer, or miss their owners, and form deep connections with other beings.
I appreciate your comments and I agree with your observations.
Interesting, if somewhat frightening, to hear Swinburne's view of what would make a person be the same person if their brain were separated into two functioning brains. He says that it would be the entity that has a soul. This is frightening because it implies that there could be a human entity that is able to think but has no soul. In my view, both entities are the same person as the original one. If I believed in souls, I suppose that would mean that it remains a single soul in two parts that would rejoin in the afterlife. Of course, it would be a conundrum if one of the entities were to accept God and do good deeds while the other rejects God and does evil deeds. But that's all idle speculation since there is no God.
What if they accepted God, and did evil actions - like an innumerable amount of humans in history have as a result of religious beliefs - but the other rejected God and did good actions - As with the "cheating" test in which out of theists, agnostics and atheists... atheists were the only ones to not cheat when given the option to.
"Phenomenologically correct", a curious deployment by Swinburne. If I feel a sting in my arm and there see a bee, I would conclude the bee caused the sting. But what exactly is the correct phenomenology? That the sting caused the bee: first I experience the sting and then the bee. We then invert experience to conform to reason (bee sting, not sting bee). Nietzsche joked that's how morality works: a rationalization after the fact, and we confuse consequences as causes.
Wow that’s a pretty simple but insightful perspective I’ve never thought about before. Cheers bro 🙏🏻.
@@nonononononono8532 Thank you, nono. The host Alex O'Connor referred to a phenomena: feeling thirsty. We do not seem to be conscious of the motive force for that phenomena, only that it emerges as a feeling. Explanation of the cause comes after the feeling; hence if stretched the argument can apply to moral reasoning: if I act for a reason and mull over the rightness or wrongness of an action before acting, that scenario implies a reverse causation: that I act for reasons. However, it seems that action comes first and rationalizations after (sting bee or bee sting). Of course there is great utility in reasoning "feeling thirsty" but that is a separate issue from the problem of consciousness. We can anticipate and predict certain outcomes based on reason, but that too is an emerged feeling, e.g., to prefer a benefit, or a desire to "know" etc. Is free will another reversed phenomena, i.e., of our ignorance of the future causing us to rationalize an actor who can make moral choices?
As an epileptic person i used ny degree to research individual interpretation in relation to human vibration and visuals. Was so interesting i ended up going into neurology, biochemistry and even consciousness . I could research my own epilepsy and wanted to make a 3d print of my MRI brain scan but wasnt able to rent it in time. A month later a proffesional from another uni did this and had good results. I studied art but was told i should of studied sciences . This conversation was so good enjoying a cupa n listening to discussions is totally my guilty pleasure.
I understand that Alex wasn't in a position to argue with his guest during the interview, so It might be a good idea if Alex makes a video to respond and comment on the answers given by his guest.
I love that you pointed out that his assertion that animals feel pain less than humans is not falsifiable and just terribly convenient for him. Your questions throughout pointed directly to the flaws in his many arguments. Excellent interview and I appreciate that you don't just let him get away with saying whatever
I doubt it's not falsifiable. Hook up a monkey to some electrodes, see which brain areas are active to which degree when he feels pain (highly unethical experiment though). I think that should be a pretty good foundation for assessing whether animals feel pain as strongly as we do.
Some do. Naked mole-rat for example.
Some do. Naked mole-rat for example.
Some do. Naked mole-rat for example.
Some do. Naked mole-rat for example.
I saw swinburne speak live in debate with a.c. grayling. He used the Occams razor argument to defend the existence of God, and I was incredibly unimpressed and unconconvinced. Grayling on the other hand was fascinating and enlightening, and is a major reason why I am going to study philosophy at university
Swinburne's books are better than his debating style. Well worth picking up
Funny- I watched a Grayling lecture just this week in which he claimed he could prove God does not exist. It was the biggest load of waffle I have heard. Oh well, whatever floats your boat.
I have seen grayling and remain unconvinced that atheism is a tenable position to hold. Swinburne convinced me God exists.
I would have to hear the actual debate to pass fair judgement, but Occam's Razor seems like it would completely fall apart as a concept in the face of the supernatural. At that point the simplest explanation for why anything happens is always "it just did". Why did your car break down? It just did. Yeah but why? Maybe the batte- Nope, that's an unnecessary assumption, it just did.
Interesting that the professor started his career being critical of language and here at the end he's fully entangled by it.
I went to the comments to see if anyone else had noticed this. The professor is really good at defining things in such a way that makes him right by default. You can define what a soul is all you like, that doesn’t mean it actually exists outside the world of philosphy.
@@You_do_not_exist_Jack I see what you are saying, but what do we have outside of that? Are you saying that he does it more than others or his arguments are qualitatively different? I just can't see how any argument is different to what he is doing however I do see what you are saying. Even in the hard sciences I feel as if you face the same problem, in the cases such as strong under determinism with two theories of identical mathematical structure.
I keep hearing Joe Schmid's impression of Swinburne whenever he says 'That is to saayyy...'
I kid you not. Yesterday I was thinking, "what if Alex gets Richard Swinburne onto his podcast?" Did not think it would happen, but here we are. One of my all time favorite philosophers, someone who has significantly shaped my thinking on a lot of philosophical issues. Looking forward to watch this!
He has his wits about him, and I admire his intellect. That being said, his philosophical views are logically flawed.
There is no evidence for consciousness or mindfulness without a functioning brain.
From studies of pathology, neurobiology, psychology, etc. we know processes such as memory, emotions, and sensibility are tied to the physical body. We know which region of the cerebrum Is responsible for each function and process. If a region of the brain is damaged or injured, one can lose part or all of the function associated with it. This includes cognition and memory.
It's also known that anyone can see or hear nonexistent things.
Therefore, when the body and brain expire, what is left of the "soul"?
What would this "soul" carry on to the afterlife?
What is a soul, if we know it can not carry memories or emotions? You can not see without eyes and a brain to process the information. You can not feel without physical touch and nerve endings (consider local anesthesia). You can not hear, taste, or smell without the necessary physical components, including the central nervous system.
Therefore what is the afterlife without any of these things? If you claim our consciousness is our soul, you will have to prove you can still have consciousness without a central nervous system.
@@andrewc1205 The christian idea of the afterlife is that our bodies get resurrected, your misunderstanding of christian afterlife is in no way an objection to the idea of a soul.
"If you claim our consciousness is our soul, you will have to prove you can still have consciousness without a central nervous system."
What he claims is that we're both soul and body, it's substance dualism. What I would say is that we are the consciousness, because consciousness is that which is aware and we are the ones who are aware so the person and the consciousness are basically synonymous, and us/our consciousness depending on the body does not in anyway prove that we're not also simultaneously something beyond the body, so no, not really, you don't have to prove you can have consciousness without a central nervous system in order to prove the soul.
The dependence upon one thing does not show lack of distinction or function, just because the mind is dependent on the body that doesn't mean it is the body. Cars need wheels to move, they're dependent on wheels to move, but even with no wheels, the car is still there, it's its own distinct thing with its own engine, and without that engine the wheels would be pointless and so on and so on.
"one of the definining elements of cars are their function to move, and they cannot move without wheels therefore cars don't exist! You have to prove that cars can still move without wheels in order to prove cars exist" no that's not how it works.
@@CristianChirita2234 I'm well aware of Christian dogma. There are two conflicting views of "resurrection" in the bible. Some interpret it as physical, others interpret it as spiritual. Which idea do you adhere to?
A spiritual resurrection means no body, and therefore, no sensibility, vision, or memory. A physical resurrection means bringing a decomposing body back to life. Both are equally illogical.
Your analogy of body and mind is flawed. A vehicle and it's wheels are two material components. You are comparing those with a material and a non-material (theoretical concept) component.
A car is still a car without it's wheels - it's just not going to move. We know both components are interchangeable.
The idea of the body being separate from the mind is preposterous. But there is no sense arguing about something that cannot be proved or disproved. We'll all find out one day! Unfortunately, if I'm correct you won't know about it and none of this will matter.
@@andrewc1205
Not the point. If Swinburne adopts the view that I mentioned, then your objection just doesn't apply, and you actually have no idea which view he adopts (correct me if I am wrong) and the whole comment is you explaining why his reasoning is wrong.
I wouldn't say my analogy is flawed, I am not seeking to make a perfect one, and also no I am not comparing the fundamenetals of material and non material, what I was comparing WAS dependability, that was the whole point of the analogy, you have an entire explanation of the analogy prior to the analogy, right above it. I was making an argument about dependability, and I made an analogy for the argument, that's all it is, the ideas of materialism or idealism or substance dualism have nothing to do with my argument because I made no argument for the soul, I was only objecting to what you said about your problems with the supposed interractions between them.
"A car is still a car without it's wheels" Yes? that is the point of my analogy, indeed, how did you figure it out? My point was that let's say the mind couldn't function without the brain, that does not in any way prove that the mind is the brain. It can be dependent on the brain and also be its own seperate thing. Can you RE READ the analogy? I swear all of this is very heavily implied and I shouldn't have to explain it.
"The idea of the body being separate from the mind is preposterous."
That's not an argument.
" spiritual resurrection means no body, and therefore, no sensibility, vision, or memory. A physical resurrection means bringing a decomposing body back to life. Both are equally illogical. "
First one is a logical reach, but still logically possible, in the sense of that God could just add memory and everything that we have on substance dualism to the soul, it's not that hard, and second is logically possible and no there's nothing illogical about that, unless you assume materialism which is just fallacious.
The first one, yes, again, it's a logical reach, but it's not full on non-sense, it is still logically possible.
You present your argument with an implied hypothetical premise of the soul being true so your argument goes something like this:
"Ok well let's say you are right and there's an afterlife, and there is a God, and consciousness is a consequence of the soul, my problem with that hypothetically being true is the idea of the body being resurrected, that's the thing that makes no sense to me in that hypothetical scenario." Really? That's your objection? In the hypothetical case where the soul and God exist, your problem is ignoring God's qualities in the entire hypothetical scenario? Not a very good argument.
Point is, your objection doesn't make sense because of the totality of the hypothetical implied by your objection. The only alternative is that you're just assuming materialism.
EIther way, it doesn't make sense.
@Cristian Chirita way to strawman the argument. Do you live your life in total dishonesty?
I'm not even going to waste my time with your petty arguments. Have fun playing make-believe.
Good luck.
Hmmmm , how come that even I a layman see flaws in Swinburne logics?
This was a great interview, I found a lot of holes in the arguments presented by the interviewee but you pointed those out almost all the times even if it wasn't fully answered by the interviewee afterward. It might be because it comes from a point of view very different from his own
Swinburne's reasoning around the split brain surgery is patent nonsense. His argument includes at least two obviously unjustified premises. First, that the sense of personal continuity implies a complete absence of change in whatever constitutes the self. Second, that the question of whether a person remains the same over time is a binary - they are either completely the same person or not the same person at all. But we can easily demonstrate that the structure and physiology of the brain and affective system changes with age and experience, and that this results in cognitive and affective change throughout life - without jeopardising our sense of a continuous self. Likewise, we can see in many "persons" (most obviously in those with brain injuries and dementia) that the sense of identity and selfhood can be fragmented or partial as a result of changes in anatomy and physiology.
It's interesting how some philosophers can argue backwards from a conclusion.
Premise 1: There must be something that makes me "me."
But why though???
It reminds of the moral argument for the existence of God.
Premise 1: There must be somewhere that we get our moral laws from.
But why are we starting by assuming those are real?
Was Swinburne informed of the topics to be covered beforehand, animal suffering including? Even if one disagrees with his views, his coherence and ability to think on the spot is impressive, especially considering he is 88 years old. I guess this is one of the benefits of having been a professional analytical philosopher for over 65 years.
Was thinking exactly the same thing.
Yeah. A lot of people are complaining that he didn’t get flushed out answers, for a lot of his views; and it sounded like he was just making a bunch of assertions. I think what they need to keep in mind is that he has already explained his positions thoroughly in his work, and also this is more of just a friendly discussion. He’s not attempting in any way to give the most philosophically or logically incoherent defense for any of his positions.
Zzzz.. hardly believe i made it all the way through expecting him to make an argument that he himself doesnt unravel within his own sentence. How can he conjure a thought experiment to remove the portion of the brain that wouldn't affect memories/personality, and then demand that as long as the rest of the brain is intact this proves his point? Is he on crack?
Dont get me started on his morality on animal welfare... its amazing one can spend their entire life thinking and come to all the wrong conclusions. Maybe its just god-given dementia though.
Swinburne, like so many other theists, appears uncomfortable when explaining why he thinks animals don't feel as much pain as we do. Why? Because he is clearly out of depth; he is a philosopher not a neuroscientist or a biologist.
next time ask him to give a very specific and detailed example of a human making a free will choice and then simply counter it with: it's either random or there are events that caused the choice, meaning it was determined, or a mix between random/determined, none of which allows a free will.
Yes, yes, yes. Of course! Cause and effect. Our decisions, like deliberative hand-waving gestures, follow physical processes of neurons firing in the brain some milliseconds prior to our being conscious of having made the decision to do so. Cause and effect! It governs everything in our universe. Except for, of course, the creation of our universe and the origin of life. In this regard, we believe it comes out of thin air. This is where cause and effect goes to die 😂 this makes perfect sense.