Tim Bayne - Free Will: Essence and Nature
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- Опубліковано 24 лют 2024
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Why is free will one of the hardest problems in philosophy? What are the core issues of free will and why do they seem to defy resolution? Most philosophers are pretty sure they have the answer-but their answers all differ! Some privilege external facts of the physical world; some privilege inner feelings of conscious choice. No one has a knock-down argument.
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Tim Bayne is Professor of Philosophy at Monash University, Australia. He is a Senior Fellow in the CIFAR Brain, Mind, and Consciousness program.
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Closer To Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.
The questions Dr. Kuhn asks to bring out the ideas so that Utube watchers can get a better understanding...I'm so impressed by the breadth Dr. Kuhn's insight.
Your channel has quickly become one of my favorites. Your energy and enthusiasm are unmatched!
I’m enjoying these conversations, it’s important to note that some of the topics, especially this one is from Bhagavatgita and vedic principles. Look it up if you’re interested
all of these discources, which I enjoy btw, assume 1 type of consciousness, to me it is more like a ight bulb that can be darker or brighter....and that the difference can be manipulted through intention/inspiration/intuition and that the mastery of ones state can be managed, an I behind the i so to speak
Yes you have touched on something essential to topic , an observation ,of a lack of uniformity!
Great discussion. Interesting topic. Huge ramifications depending on the outcomes of this research in terms of specifying accountability.
I live inside this body
My mind experiences and recognizes consciously, unconsciously, and subconsciously
Internally, externally, and intrinsically
On several occasions, I could not feel my body
I could see my body from a distance above
I could hear what was going on inside, and outside, and around my body and below
I could hear myself asking questions
I knew something was going on that I had never experienced before
I was not familiar with it and found it stimulating, perplexing, and in an unknown realm
Since then, I have not had that experience again.
If all actions are made unconsciously, there’s no reason for consciousness to exist or have evolved
Correct. Evolution does not act reasonably. It's actions are directionless and inevitable.
Hi Stellar Wind, can you tell me exactly where in the manual it states there must always be a reason?. This distinct from systemic mechanistic causation where things occur as a natural consequence of other functions.
I put this question in these terms because I think it quite possible, even probable, that various attributes of cognitive behaviour have evolved by chance coincidence and those that do not directly compromise survival will persist regardless of intrinsic merit.
Cheers, Richard.
"the more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless" - steven Weinberg
It's pointless to look for reasons in the universe that's operating without any reason
Nothing evolves for a particular reason
He said he doesn't want to tackle the control aspect of free will but since to me free will is about you being free to use your will power he is not tackling the most important aspect of free will.
Elements
I freely choose to stay in bed on Sunday morning
That one beard hair had a will of its own
We humans administer the language that characterizes us without knowing its true power, and without knowing the “traps” of language. We fall into a “language trap” when we refer to “something”, such as Free Will, without previously agreeing what we will understand by Free Will. Such a “language trap” leads to living in an authentic “Tower of Babel”; The history of Philosophy is full of examples that demonstrate the importance of being careful in the use of language. By the way, the cultists of the “soft sciences” are characterized by being regular inhabitants of the Tower of Babel.
IMO Consciousness is an action even if it's just an imagined action. Free will is not an action. We have freedom to choose, which is not the same as free will. With free will there is no choice because there's nothing to choose between because there is no hierarchy of needs. If there's nothing to choose between then you don't have millions of choices to make over your lifetime, either subconsciously or consciously. Free will is a radical state of equality. The question is can you have both consciousness and free will. That would be extremely difficult if not impossible.
@@realitycheck1231 I believe that the confusion of “the specialists” arises as a consequence of not having a “consistent framework of reference.” Thus, for example, when discussing the topic of Free Will, no distinction is made in who is “the one who chooses”; In practice, there are two entities, “the monkey that we are”, whose actions are those that we usually call “unconscious actions”, and the Being that we are, whose actions we usually call “conscious actions”.
Based on the information they capture with their senses, living beings with brains manage a utilitarian mental representation of the conditions that currently take place in their relevant material environment. This Mental Correlate is a kind of “photograph” of what is happening in the Present in the relevant material environment of the Individual, a Mental Correlate that we will call “Reality of the Individual”.
Life experience, stored in the brain, allows us to give meaning to what is perceived. At the same time, as Pavlov demonstrated, life experience allows us to project eventual future states of the individual's relevant environment, generating expectations of action.
Information from the Past, the Present and an eventual Future is managed by the brain. It is evident that the brain makes a utilitarian distinction between the Past, the Present and the projection of an eventual future.
Human language allows us to incorporate into the mental correlate events and entities that are not necessarily part of what happens in the world of matter, which gives an unprecedented “malleability” to the Reality of the Individual. For the unconscious, everything is happening in the Present. When a child, whom I will call Pedrito, listens to the story of Little Red Riding Hood, said entity is integrated into the Reality of the Individual. In turn, for the child, this entity is “very real”; he does not need his eyes to see it to incorporate it into his mental correlate of the relevant environment. Thanks to our particular language, authentic “immaterial and timeless worlds” have a place in the Mental Correlate of the relevant environment.
In the first four years of life, the child is immersed in an ocean of words, a cascade of sounds and meanings. At this stage, a child hears between seven thousand and twenty-five thousand words a day, a barrage of information. Many of these words speak of events that occur in the present, in the material world, but others cross the boundaries of time and space. There is no impediment so that, when the words do not find their echo in what is happening at that moment in Pedrito's material environment, these words become threads that weave a segment of the tapestry of the Reality of the Individual.
Just as the child's brain grants existence to the young Little Red Riding Hood when the story unfolds before him, similarly, when the voices around him talk about tomorrow and a beach with Pedro, as happens for example when his mother tells him says: -“Pedrito, tomorrow we will go for a walk to the beach”- the child's mind, still in the process of deciphering the mysteries of time, instantly conjures the entity Pedrito, with his feet on the golden sand, in the eternal present of childhood.
Although over time a strong association between the entity Pedrito and his body is established in the child's brain, a total fusion between said entity and the child's body can never take place, since for the Unconscious the bodily actions of Pedrito They only take place in the Present, while the entity Pedrito is able to carry out actions in authentic timeless and immaterial worlds. The entity Pedrito is what we call the Being, and we know its action as Conscious Action.
Nice video
So i have free will...
Thads why i can stop my random thoughts by willing.
Oh i also know what my next thought is....coz i use my will to manipulate my thoughts
So ya....i have free will
😆.
The Life-Desire, is Motor,
of the Eternal Life,
in Direct extension We have
Will, (Life-Side) and Gravity, (Stuff-Side)
Life re-new it Self through Developing-Circuits,
in the beginning of a Developing-Circuit,
Will is at its minimum-performance,
and in the end, at its maximum-performance.
So, the idea of 'free Will', is just confusion.
I had a vision of life after death.
I had no body, so I couldn't see, hear or feel anything.
And of course, there was nothing to do. No jobs !
I live inside this body
My mind experiences and recognizes consciously, unconsciously, and subconsciously
Internally, externally, and intrinsically
On several occasions, I could not feel my body
I could see my body from a distance above
I could hear what was going on inside, and outside, and around my body and below
I could hear myself asking questions
I knew something was going on that I had never experienced before
I was not familiar with it and found it stimulating, perplexing, and in an unknown realm
Since then, I have not had that experience again.
@@myrtarivera4244
You started out as a single cell inside your mother.
At that time, did you live inside the cell ?
Note: you didn't have a brain, no memory cells !
Pretty sure the jury’s in regarding “free will” 👍
Free will or not is an interesting concept but it doesn’t matter either way.
Free will - yes, but not more the law of nature allow.
2:18 ... 4:13 ... so that's the nexus between consciousness and free will (exactly).
The Universe works on probability, far as I know. Isn't Quantum theory all about probabilities? Believing in having no free will, doesn't it mean you believe in a universe where you can theoretically calculate all the odds, so things become predictable? It seems to be the binary choice itself is foolish. The binary choice of either free will or no free will is foolish, if Q theory is correct.
My guess is, free will is a probability equation. What are the probability you can change an outcome?
Yes quantum theory says low level quantum processes follow random distributions, but those distributions can be calculated. There isn't an equal chance of every possible outcome, certain outcomes are far more likely than others. That's how we can engineer a transistor, which relies on billions of low level quantum outcomes that are individually random, but still have it produce extremely reliable macroscopic behaviour.
So while I'm sure quantum randomness probably does affect the outcomes of human decisions in some cases, it's not necessarily a big enough effect to make all human decisions inherently random in the way that individual quantum events are random.
@@simonhibbs887 Good answer. In human behavior the more I know about what makes me tick, the more it seems that the way things turn out, the more it was "in the cards". Meaning not really full choice, but not random either.
I once read a book on marriage, by Dr. John Gottman. He claimed based on decades of work on thousands of couples, he could predict if the marriage would work, with 90% accuracy, based on spending an hour with a couple, looking for a few clues.
Anyhow my guess is life is, 90% of everything that happens, you have no choice, the odds are too much against a person, it's "in the cards". But maybe 10% of things that happen are based on actual free choice.
It seems odd to me that individual quantum randomness you described, seems to bear such surface resemblance to free will choice in humans. My intuition about reality is that things have a unifying thread in common, no matter the level of analysis. Consilience I think is the word. Perhaps humans are, in the bigger picture, just individual quantum bits of life, similar to your description of atoms:
"There isn't an equal chance of every possible outcome, certain outcomes are far more likely than others...low level quantum outcomes that are individually random, but still have it produce extremely reliable macroscopic behavior."
My non-scientific guess is still the same: we have free will, but very little of it...because even our free will choices work within larger equations of probability. And my guess is, our free will while real in individual humans, produces extremely reliable macroscopic behavior at the human group level....similar to your description of atoms.
I have no idea if this is nonsense, it sounds that way to me, but this leads me to believe that in some way I don't understand, that free will and individual randomness must be in some way related.
In this economy and inflationary environment, my Free Will isn't even Free anymore. In fact it's so expensive now, I can't even afford it. 😂😂😂
I had to the free will to come to this video and the free will to fast forward through the boring parts and the free will to quit because it was boring and full of diatribe nonsense..
That's exactly what a meat robot would say. You have a belief in free will, and emotions make you throw insults. It's all part of your program.
@@1GTX1 and you are a programmed unit that will post up the same old gibberish that you are expected to.
Free will is incoherent and incompatible under any definition.
Thoughts are either determined by prior causes (principle of sufficient reason/ cause and effect) in which you do not control them, or they are random (quantum indeterminacy)/ a mixture of both, in either case you do not control them.
Every particle (further divisible to the wave function or possibly strings) in the universe, obeys the laws of physics, and your brain which constitutes of matter is no different; following the 4 fundamental forces, in which you do not control that was set off at a brute fact (the big bang) or infinite regression.
Libertarian free will proponents insist that their choices are made for reasons, but also that those reasons do not determine their choices. Or that those reasons are not themselves determined, but also not a matter of chance, this is a contradiction.
If it’s a false trichotomy, then what are the other options? Agent causation (of the soul)? But again, does something cause the agent to act, or does the agent act for no reason?
Even if you have an immaterial soul, it only makes sense to say that soul is making decisions if its actions are causally determined by prior soul-states. Otherwise, its actions are uncaused, and uncaused events are, by definition, random. If you are acting randomly, that’s not really decision making. It’s only if your actions are done for reasons which cause those actions that you’re really making decisions. You’re not making decisions if you’re just doing things for no reason.
A mixture of chance and determinism? Part of the decision-making process involves causal influences, and the rest has no prior cause. This doesn't solve it. Free will, described by its advocates imply a person has control over their decisions. If my decisions are predetermined; how do I have control over them? If my decisions have no cause, and occur for no reason, then how can I control them?
What does it mean to say that “we are free and in control of what facts and ideas the mind focuses on”? When I choose to focus on an idea, does something cause me to choose to focus on that idea? If the answer is yes, then I'm not really in control of that act of focusing. If the answer is no, and there is nothing that determines what I will choose to focus on, the act of focusing on anything is no different from a chance event, which by definition are not controlled by anything.
So, does something cause a person to focus and think, or does the person’s choice to think and focus happen for no reason? Or is it partly causally influenced and partly chance? I don’t see how responsibility or control fits into any of these options, and I don’t see what other options there are.
I can choose 'x' or 'y', however, everything that makes up that choice is caused by both internal and external variables in which you did not pick. E.g., genetics, brain electricity and chemistry, physics of your own atoms and that around you, parents/ who raised you, where you were raised, what you were taught.
These make up your beliefs, thoughts, impulses, emotions, knowledge, memory.
True free will would be walking off a building and willing your atoms to defy gravity. In the same way your body cannot defy that fundamental force, your brain cannot defy the other 3 forces which makes up your thoughts. You are just matter and energy reacting to the laws of physics.
You can do whatever you want, but you cannot choose what you want. It’s a fact that you cannot change. Try this with any scenario.
E.g., I give you 2 ice cream flavours to pick from: your favourite (x) and unknown (y). You will choose what you want more. If you pick your favourite x, it’s because you want it presumably for whatever reason it’s your favourite (taste/ texture, nostalgia, safe choice etc.) If you pick y, maybe it’s because you want to try something new in case it’s your new favourite, and this want becomes higher than the want of having your favourite ice cream, which you never chose to want more. Perhaps despite preferring x, you choose y in an effort to regain control of free will and nothing else. You still fall into the same problem; In order to do that, you'd need to "want" to regain your free will, as you see it.
Why is your desire to prove a point like this stronger than the desire to have the ice cream you prefer? It just is, and if it happened not to be, you'd have chosen the ice cream that you do prefer. The key takeaway is this: you cannot determine your wants. Think of something you want. Try to not want it. Think of something you don't want and try to want it. It's not possible. And even if it were, in order to change a don't want into a want, you'd need to want to want it. And vice versa. To change want into a don't want, you'd need to want to not want it. You simply can't control what you want.
So being forced to do something isn't free will, and wanting to do something isn't free will.
But being forced or wanting to do something are the only reasons why you do anything.
You never lined up all the flavours; a,b,c…x,y,z… and said “I’m choosing for x to be my favourite”, rather it is innate to you, based on internal and external variables that you did not choose.
Why did you choose x? Because I like the way it tastes, or maybe it’s nostalgic because my nan used to give to me as a boy. But again, why? Because it’s how my gustatory system is wired (in which you didn’t choose), or because that’s what my nan was raised to eat as well. I can ask why, ad Infinitum.
But why did that resonate with you and not something else? You keep digging existentially deeper, you’re left with bio/chemical/physical mechanics and processes that you have no control of that creates the whole illusion of the experience of you. You did not pick your taste buds, or brain sensory input/ output systems or to be in that environment for that nan to provide you with those experiences. Why will have an infinite regression to a point you cannot explain. “It just is”.
Why, will always have a why question following it into an infinite regression.
When you include an omni god, it gets worse.
The Problem of Evil: God is omniscient, meaning he knows every detail and outcome of every possible scenario.
E.g., He knew everything about Satan and what that specific arrangement of particles (it doesn't matter he's nonmaterial, but whatever he is) called "Satan" would do before he created him, and still decided to make Satan the specific way he was which resulted in him doing exactly what he did. You cannot blame a car for being faulty, if an engineer beforehand purposely created a faulty car, knowing he could have done otherwise. Therefore, God knew and purposely designed Satan to rebel, everything is Gods fault, including evil. God could have altered him so he wouldn't rebel. He's omnipotent so he could have, and omnibenevolent so would have. But he didn't, therefore God wanted Satan to rebel. Therefore, God is responsible for all suffering and is malevolent. And if every variant of Satan was “freely” evil regardless of how you designed him, then God shouldn't have created Satan to begin with. There were angels like Michael Demiurges that knew and did not rebel that he could have replaced him with or just leave blank.
Divine foreknowledge and creation both preclude "free will". He's omnipotent, which means he could create a world all good, without suffering, without inflicting on the free will of others.
It seems like God created the problem and takes credit for fixing it, even though it would never have occurred if he didn't allow or want it to.
E.g., Get any time God committed or commanded genocide (Noah’s flood, Canaanites etc.)/ infanticide, an atrocity (like sending 2 bears to maul 42 kids to death) or a violent action (anyone else who did this, theist would think they were worse than Hitler). Besides him creating and orchestrating a world so that specific event would occur in the first place.
It also means he was unable to convince someone peacefully without resorting to violence.
If he was all knowing he would have known, without infringing on someone's free will how to persuade them to do the right thing. And he's all powerful so he could have achieved it. And he's all good so would have.
Divine Foreknowledge: The argument is not that God predetermined what he knows ahead of time, it is that in order to infallibly know what will happen in the future, what will happen in the future has to be written in stone. Even if it’s not written in stone by God, it still has to be written in stone in order for God to know it infallibly. Knowing something will happen, even infallibly doesn't deterministically cause it to happen. The point is that in order to infallibly know that an event will happen, that event has to be predetermined. It doesn't have to be predetermined by the knowledge you have, but in order to have that knowledge infallibly, the event cannot be free to not occur. To say that an event is free to occur or not occur is to say whether it will occur or not cannot be infallibly known. There is no coherent scenario, not even hypothetically in which these events do not occur.
Even if God is outside time, and our future actions are retroactively causing God to know about them infallibly in the present, then they also lock us into committing them inescapably, otherwise we could defy God's foreknowledge. This would mean that I am predetermined to take every action I will ever take. If we aren't free to act differently, in the future, from how he, presently know we will act, because from his perspective it's already happened, then we have no more freedom to change the future, that we have to change the past.
Theists claim he has hypothetical, or middle knowledge, and everything he knows, is innately; it’s simply his nature to know all truths. This contradicts the assertion that our free decisions cause God to know about them. Which is it? Do our free decisions cause God to know about them (even before we make such decisions) or does God know them innately, without anything causing him to know about them? If God’s foreknowledge tracks your choice like an infallible barometer. The barometer doesn’t determine the weather even though chronologically the reading of the barometer may be first. So, does God’s foreknowledge “track” your decisions, or does it know them innately? It can’t do both because these are contradictory assertions. Barometers react to barometric pressure. They don’t know the pressure innately. Barometric pressure causes the barometers to give the readings they do. If our choices cause God to know about them, then he does not know about them innately.
Why are thoughts caused or random, when the universe is neither caused or random.
@@1GTX1 you're making a reverse composition fallacy. The universe itself may be a brute fact, with no beginning. But, everything in the universe obeys the laws of physics, with no exception. Otherwise, we'd have evidence of the supernatural, in which there's no empirical evidence.
Do you know, you mind anf6 body have every knowledge and the dont listen & never concern your understanding in running the show inside and outside, it dont tell you, as you will try to over rule it, so where is your free will, the day anyone know, how mind system works he start ruling it and mind also work fearlessly with synconcity that the owner is awake, and give you the power of free will, thw same way you also dont give charge to drice your ignorant child, you are also the ignorant child infront of your mind & consciousness, unless & untill you woke with lroper guidance
All discussions and imprecise experiments about Free Will ultimately are word salads, because Free Will is a manmade idea that doesn’t necessarily reflect actual reality.
God Sri Krishna says we are souls, conciousness emarges from soul and free will is symtom of our souls.
I don't believe I've heard anyone discuss intellect at CTT. If you inquire about free will, that's the place to go.
What is the essence of intellect: that light unfolded from the intelligible by the Divine, 2nd to 'the one'.
"Free Will: Essence and Nature"
Our WILL originated from the WILL of the Holy Spirit.... Our WILL is now free after the Holy Spirit split Himself into free souls just to have a free family to love and to be loved freely... this means that our WILL is no longer God's WILL... so, we are free to believe anything for any reason and free to pursue that belief...
... and because the WILL is part of the essence of God, the whole knowledge of the WILL is forbidden, otherwise satan may win in his ultimate goal of knowing the whole essence of God so to be like God...
..now, with regards to NATURE driven by God's designed natural laws, our free will is not part of nature... In other words, our free will can not be defined by how nature displays itself... So, asking what is the nature of free will is incoherent because the question assumes that free will is material or part of nature.
did God see that coming?
@@aiya5777 God knows now what you have freely chosen to believe because it is an available info inside your mind...
.... but because your WILL is now free from God's WILL, God does not know what you will freely choose to believe next, or whether you will change your current belief with another, because it is not available info yet.... This is what God sactificed just to have a FREE Family to love and to be loved freely...
@@evaadam3635 before my will is separated from God, did he see that coming?
before any separation is happening from the first place, did God see that coming?
then when exactly did I make a choice?
everything is just the inevitable byproduct of God's eternal knowledge seeing everything before it's even happening
If God knows what's coming to drive His WILL, then God's WILL can not be free....
No Freewill.
Causes and Consequences....
Do you believe all human thoughts, feelings, and actions were pre-determined before the earth existed?
Because that's absurd if you do.
@@ianwaltham1854
By Psychology, ... Conscious mind... SubConscious mind... Unconscious mind... All are under Influence of psychological factors.
...
It sound absurd because you just don't well understand and you just don't want to believe it's. You may have some concepts in your mind and you just don't want to break through that.
@@ianwaltham1854
From beginning of BigBang to the end of the universe.
From beginning of Blackhole to the end of Hawking Radiation.
Are.... Implications of.... Nature..... Reality.
Quantum Information and Quantum Entanglement are Fundamental.
Quantum Mind emerge.. Collection, Pattern of QuInfo and QuEntang.
Quantum Body emerge.. Std.Model emerge, DNA, Protein synthesis.
Mind and Body entanglement.. Consciousness emerge.
Spacetime emerge.. Mass.. Energy.. Wave fn. Decoherence.
Mathematics Emerge.. Intrinsic in the fabric of the emergence.
Holographic Principle..Information Conservation, Energy Conservation.
@@boonraypipatchol7295 Those psychological factors were shaped by our free will choices and those of others.
Determinism is a very convenient belief for those who don't want to admit responsibility for their own actions.
@@ianwaltham1854 different issues,
Psychology is to find what is the true nature of mind.
Sociology is ethic of social about Responsibility or Accountability.
Don't mix up.