Wow! This one has to go viral. There's so much here and so powerful. Rick is a great communicator. Thanks for helping to break my frames yet again. This is like the view from above on another scale. Thanks for everything you're working on. The practices are helping and I haven't even been able to do all of them every day. I'm personally feeling the growth and perspective shifts, bringing clarity on multiple levels.
Has anyone read Dzogchen - From Reductionism to Creativity by Prof. Herbert Guenther? My wife and I had tea and treats with him and his wife Ilse in 1997 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. She played classical music for us on the piano and Prof. Guenther and I had an amazing conversation, he showed me his giant library of Buddhist texts in his basement. That was the first book I read along these lines. Autopoeisis...he used this word often in our conversation. Not a big believer in reincarnation though. A treasured day for me.
For many people, the concept of "free will" doesn’t fit the propositional realm of thinking that many may find themselves stuck in regarding “spiritual” concepts - which generally leads to a dismissive attitude towards consideration of the topic. The problem with free will seems to manifest because it’s stumped by the problem of perception. I think most people would conclude free will does exist if it's positioned in this process of perception; this is similar to what Dr. Peterson discusses - we perceive meaning (through subjective value frameworks) rather than objective reality, so what does this infer about the nature of perception, self, and our agency relative to the nature of reality?
In my experience, meditation and Ayahuasca...we have free will. We are Beings of light and there is a lot more going on than our minds can perceive in "normal" states of consciousness.
The 'raspberry' to the Buddhists reminds me of an online seminar on Hildegard V Bingen from Notre Dame divinity school Someone mentioned Dr. Rev Matthew Fox and the leader of the panel said "Fox is an intellectual lightweight trying to make Hildegard into a radical feminist, in spite of there being nothing historically accurate about his book." The Catholic Raspberry to the excommunicated Dominican Priest.
@@Xtazieyo indeed, that is the next step, thank you! But there is a difference between ego (our conscious misrecognition of the self) and the self. What we think we are and what we are.
27:00 This reminds me a lot of Lewis' argument in his book Miracles. When Lewis uses "Reason" he really bundles in agency, the capacity for telos, and what human beings do is participate in the source of this, which is God. For Lewis this is the way out of "the whole show" which is his image of locked determinism originating from the beginning.
That gets clear in 29:30 "You've made an argument that it's impossible for any finite being to be rational". Lewis would say that the finite beings participate in the gift of Reason from the source of all being.
This was sooo great! Thank you! Now I can't stop myself from imagining how the discussion would have proceeded had there been a Buddhist scholar to respond... Like a three way interaction. Thupten Jinpa came right away to mind (Self, reality and reason in Tibetan philosophy). One of my dreams is a discussion between him and you guys to see how Tsongkhapa's perspective on the middle way lines up with neoplatonism. I think it would be very fruitful in terms of understanding the self and personhood better.
Made me think of Frans de Waal saying that other primates can also discern when actions are voluntary or not. They allow members with a birth defect things that they will not allow anyone else. They know when an agent cannot be held responsible too.
Excellent point. I'd very much appreciate a reference to where de Wall says that. That would show that the Aristotelian criterion of the voluntary as the condition on agential responsibility is primatological, not only human.
John I was wondering if you knew if when your talk with bret Weinstein will be out, or if it happened yet, thanks! Great video by the way, I'll be rewatching this one on slower speeds for sure lol.
First, I love the fact that what you bring up here, including the thinkers mentioned, were actually present in the course on free will and to a large degree also in the main coursebook from Pereboom we used on free will. I also personally concur with the mentioned "there's something true and correct with all the ideas presented" and I look at this in the way that they are at least representatively true. However, I would also argue the wisdom from "the five wise blind men and the elephant (in the room)"; that even with a supertheory combining all of the parts presented (i.e. all the five blind men put together), we are still far far away from even reaching the elephant here. It transcends even the combination supertheory. About the meta theory I also see a likeness here with the epistemological problem of things collapsing into paradoxes, antimony and so on, that even so, there's some kind of interesting tangent here with the three ways of Aquinas, that analogy collapses into positive, the negative collapses into positive and the positive collapses into analogy. So there's something interesting here, still I think even sorting that out "logically" or propositionally (here I agree a lot with John, there are problems with the fundamental framework and there's a kind of ideology blindness about how much can be done either via propositions or logic), we'll still come back to the above statement about the five blind wise men. The foundational paradoxes (which leads us to understand that there's a yin in the yang and vice versa - even necessarily about concepts) is nicely, and annoyingly, presented in Plato's Parmenides. I also draw here from the Buddhism / Indian ideas that tangent logic: cause and effect are different, they are the same, they are both different and same, they are neither. The fifth path is transcendent.
I enjoy these debates very much and could listen to both of you for hours, so thank you. I'm simply curious as to what we should do with the reality that there is always someone behind words and ideas, with a story, traumas, fears, and so forth. Can it ever used to disprove a point - or maybe soften it a bit? What can I do with my gut feeling that, for example, Mr. Repetti's genuine actual intuitions and drive (as a whole organism, not just as a felt sense of self) are expressed in the sentence at 1:02:14? You know, a grin, a chuckle, and then the words "I don't want to think of myself as a ______ (something/anything)" and "I do believe I have the ability to change myself," and so on. I apologise if I'm projecting too much here, but hearing him speak so beautifully about a philosophy (that he defends so passionately) for 1 hour and then present those concluding ideas makes me wonder what he (the whole, even the parts unknown to him) is really trying to "escape" from or express through an unfulfilled self-acceptance (again, it's just me reading between the lines, not a judgement of his persona). Is there really, really, really a problem if you're A or B or C...? At around 54:35, there's also a discussion on praise and blame, which is yet another intuition (formed out of anything but "choices") that may easily be synonym for free will. He uses the train situation as an example to argue that humans have self-regulatory or autonomous powers, which clearly allows for praise and blame. Ohh, that tickles me deeply lol. My own unknown life biases tell me that even the person's behaviour, who "intentionally" pushed him to take the seat, could be explained in many ways: difficult time in their life, history of violence or trauma, bad parenting, fear, neurosis. It could be *anything*, the list is endless - well, almost endless. The only thing missing from that list is a "blank canvas person" who might be going through all of this but yet be disrespectful to others *because he wanted to* (he never said "wanted," but tell me what is implied in blaming others?). That's so interesting because if we remove all the extreme life changing experiences that may or may not clearly drive someone's behaviour, what are we left with? A body that houses an entity, floating parallel to whatever physiological underpinnings exist in the moment and historically in that body. That entity acts like a person, through a body, and you, as the other entity in another body, reacts - you understand and know that all is free and open to blame, since you are free. It amazes me how "the brain" can be used to argue about pretty much everything within the body but when it comes to morals and the human (universal?) potention for violence and destruction, it's no longer applicable. These kinds of arguments make positive deeds appear "irrational": "look, he pushed me, and he is an autonomous entity, so he is responsible." So, are those who aren't hurting you just following the "universal recipe" of being decent like little robots or are they bad but "totally controlling" themselves? Or is it anything else? We're always "deciding" and "self-regulating" about what to be/do and what not to be/do then? Can you precisely tell when you are deciding and not deciding? You might say the line is blurry but how are we to be so sure there's a line at all if all we have is a felt sense of our own existence? So, let's see... Some would argue that this isn't always the case and that I'm being picky about imaginary lines. When "I" am not being self-regulatory, what can "I" do, then? Is there a second-level mindfulness approach that we can use when we aren't being mindful enough? Is there a third (or even deeper) degree of mindfulness if I miss the second level awareness, so "I" can detect all kinds of biases before they form and literally control everything, from cells to neurons, so I can be moral at all times, like a... god? So many words from a system that struggles to comprehend the paradoxical nature of its own creation. It appears to generate the same dualities that it later struggles to eradicate. Is anyone aware of this? Is anyone doing or not doing anything on purpose to change this? Yes, these two men would say, because we are self-regulatory animals who can get the control we seek by going down enough levels. To believe it, I'm still waiting to experience it in my body. Perhaps one day.
Lots of interesting questions, but I hesitate to conclude that we cannot understand agency enough because of them. Many of your questions are addressed in the paper (linked above). You might also want to read Thomas Metzinger's paper that zeroes in on the agential metamental control and touches on its limits, etc., here: www.blogs.uni-mainz.de/fb05philosophie/files/2013/04/Metzinger_M-Autonomy_JCS_2015.pdf
I've been pondering on the free will dilemma for a long time and so far I've come to the conclusion that before one seriously discusses free will, one needs to define precisely who is the ”I” that has free will (the agent). From what I understand (so far), in order to define the agent one needs to affirm dualism or non dualism - this, in my opinion, is the first and fundamental premise that needs to be communicated before the discussion begins. I personally, at this point, lean towards Dan Dennett's approach to the agent which is a large collective unified under the umbrella term ”I”. I think that we are very (unintentionally) confusing when we say ”my free will” because there is no one, identifiable ”I” to whom the free will could belong. Even as a single organism, we're composed of cells, organs and bacteria. I often wonder who is truly in control of my action when I go to grab something to eat - is it my stomach or my brain? They cooperate but that clearly shows the plurality behind the singularity. Again, whose free will are we talking about??
It's a valid concern, but I hesitate to accept the implicit conclusion that there is no self, thus no free will. I think you would appreciate the series John put on with Christopher Mastropietro and Greg Enriquez, "The Elusive I", which addresses your question very comprehensively.
@@riccardorepetti Thank you, I'll watch it because I'm really fascinated with this subject. Recently I've been thinking about “I” as an agent from the psychological perspective and I like the idea of multiple agents, perhaps some people are more integrated and they don't experience themselves as multiple agents whereas others people are less integrated and they experience their choices as being made independently of their own will because they associate ”I” with only one of multiple agents. It's like multiple personalities disorder but not at an extreme level when agents inhabiting one body don't know about each other. None of those agents is absolutely free, they're all the product of biology and culture; what they have are different sets of beliefs and they can even have different temperaments. I'm not sure what's their origin though. Psychologists say that disintegration is a reaction to trauma but I'm curious how those different subpersonalities are created, what are their cores, is it a belief? a narrative? a task?
@@AnnaPrzebudzona I tend to think each of us is ideolectical in our identity structures, so that Galen Strawson is telling the truth when he says he lacks a certain phenomenological feature of self-experience that others possess, perhaps you experience a collection of selves, others are multiple selves, etc. Another interesting book for you is George Ainslie, Breakdown of Will, which discusses selfhood as a sort of competing intrapersonal bargaining elements.
When a person wants to participate in some social form of behavior, and that behavior is recognized as dangerous in the community, and since we don't trust a person's understanding alone, we form a validation process that will judge the person's ability to participate in that social form. One we as a community validate, we know behavior can change, so validation is a repeated process. Now, if a validated person behavior has be identified as negative, then we cannot blame him for his behavior, yet we must find the narratives that made that behavior fail the standard. We in fact need to invalidate the agreement with the person on participation, and demand another process of validation. The damages from the wrong behavior need to be split between every person that is validated on that behavior, and this is done before main individual has it's validation taken.
assumption: 1. everything moves, but not at the same speed. 2. some objects containing behavior rules for thier movement within the space they emerged into. the measure: For how long and how low can an object "slow down" such that it can speed back up and not loose the rules kept in it?
Hey John, finally I’m getting a solid answer to why Buddhism wasn’t intellectually satisfying to you. I’ve been waiting for the No-Self Free Will issues to arise. Tasty tasty tasty. 🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗
Hi. Congrats on the wonderful work you're developing and thank you for your contribution for the Manmind of Mankind. I would like to just pop a question that sometimes revolves my mind and you are the perfect subjects for the most reliable answer... Give me your thoughts on the following... What If, conscienceness is the ultimate goal for free will. Imagine someone has a program that presents itself like the materialization of free will. The program has its rules and it has to go a long way in human time, as the dance of causation and adaptation reach human conscienceness. With this kind of hardware, free will was a way to observe itself through reality and "deliver" the most it's action. All we can do to get it as free as possible is through knowledge as the ones your following. Just proud of you! Kind regards, Marco. Í hope Í made some sense
@@riccardorepetti Thank you for your reply and I will do my best to put out in words my, train of thought. Start from a simples question, how can be proven, the true nature of free will? Is It good or evil? Now, the experiment. With a simple "action", a train of events is set to motion. This events go by a set of natural rules that you can not change, after it starts... Darwin and Mendell working from the pre quantum stage, up to material form and at some point, Humans, that are known to be different for the use of reason, rational beings. The use of reason will guide us to realize that is all about consitions, and this is where Maslow comes in sets the reference for freedom... And when the conditions meet the basic needs, there you have will exoression... Hope to have cleared up the picture and very available to tall about.... Thank you so much and wish you the Best...
Free will, determinism, makes no difference to me. The concept of free will comes naturally from our senses thus easily entertain. Precognition feels like determinism so accepting both is unproblematic.Macht nichts Thank you for your engaging conversation. Looking forward to your next one.
Early part of the discussion when they discussed arguments for and against the existence of God. We're spiritually immature? Or perhaps we face insurmountable problems because of our human limits.
Super juicy indeed. But, oi, I’m not sure that I get how free will and precognition are reconciled. Is Rick saying that we somehow sometimes get glimpses from beyond space-time?
My interest in the question is also not shallow. 😊 My master's thesis (in theology) (many many moons ago) was on Providentia Dei. I was hoping you found what I was looking for 😜.
The takeaway here for me is that all available arguments for and against free will are either incoherent or are not valid, and the best we have are plausibility arguments. Furthermore, it makes sense to act as if free will does exist in some form for psychological pragmatist reasons, even if there were a hypothetical proof that free will is in fact impossible. The compelling plausibility arguments given here seem to be biased towards free will existing for those psychological reasons.
Also, as an audio engineer, I would strongly suggest purchasing a soundcard and microphone, all very cheap now, and wearing headphones. There is simply no reason for a regular podcaster such as yourself not to consider investing in some basic broadcast equipment. For instance: the Audient iD4 MKII soundcard is superb and around 130 usd. The standard podcast mic which will last a lifetime is the Shure SM7b - $399. A cheaper alternative is the RØDE Procaster - $229 Audio-Technica ATH-M20X headphones (closed back) are 40 USD. A microphone stand and 1 XLR cable is all that is needed on top. Alternatively, you could think about a lavalier microphone, which clips onto your shirt, but this has other issues. The setup is very simple and requires next to no prior knowledge. I hope this is not presumptuous, but you have been at this for a while and it just seems a shame to to make the most out of your efforts when affordable high quality equipment is readily available.
A large part of the problem has to do with particular foundational frameworks not properly understood as such, and therefore also framing, but rather taken as unquestionably true and beyond scrutiny (especially in philosophy of mind). That's why I really enjoyed John's discussion with Bernardo Kastrup last summer on the Theories of everything channel. I highly recommend it (2 parts, several hours each). 😀 I think John is a great thinker and wedge out of the twisting of the established framings that so many are unable to do. That's why I enjoy his stuff so much. As far as I've seen myself, there seem to be subtle levels at play that are inaccessible from the pre-skewed point of view, call this properly Platonic if you will, but they seem to be there, but get easily obfuscated from the daily life point of view. I am currently trying to rehabilitate this epistemological and metaphysical dysfunction that has been dominant in our general thought for at least 100-150 years. There may be an overlap in what I'm getting to with some parts of phenomenology, but if it does, it's actually already present in Plato, properly understood. There's also, universally speaking, no true contradiction with Western philosophy and Eastern at all, only seemingly so, if at all. I also personally believe that the spiritual / religious views properly viewed, cannot really be separated from the philosophy.
@@NorthenTasawwuf Hey Andreas, thank-you for this thoughtful take and the suggestions. I followed the TOE discussion with Kastrup closely. I also laughed heartily at Kastrup's dismissal of Joscha-Bach. I happen to find Vervaeke compelling in different ways than it seems that you do. The more he strays from his formal background into what I call the "Ken-Wilber-Verse" I think his project becomes self-defeating. I don't think this is his intention at all, but an atmosphere of cultishness is reflected in some of the comments here which I find very troubling. It reminds me of bad interpretations of Nietsche or Carl Jung, whose more esoteric work is misused as fodder to validate biases rather than question them. John's more formal work (his thinking and reasoning lecture series for instance) is far more spiritually compelling to me personally, because the implications are so much broader and require me to assume so much less. p.s. I want to make it clear that I think John is actively counteracting this tendency, but that it is simply a by-product of what happens when spirituality is discussed publicly outside of a religious organisation. It just seems to attract lost souls. Nor am I accusing you of anything like that, but the statements, words and ideas you wrote are just so vast as to be conveyed so confidently without me becoming a little sceptical. Love from Berlin to wherever you are.
@@GingerDrums Great! I appreciate Vervaeke for him challenging a lot of established thought and also appreciate his 50 video lecture series, but it doesn't challenge it to the degree Kastrup does, which is a breath of fresh air of a different magnitude. Personally, I have a lot of trouble with the development of philosophy for the last hundred or so years both continental and analytic. There's too much baggage in general. I feel it far more engaging in antiquity up to scholastic times. Philosophy needs new life and most of the current big names aren't particularly exciting. There are also many charlatans, who at best re-enact what used to be called sophists. Especially the modern self-proclaimed "sceptics". And the best ones are the positivist / scientism proponents. So I had to start over with Plato. Btw, here's a crazy idea: Aristotle should be read and understood as Plato's best student and his critique toward the academy as pointed not to Plato, but to his former colleagues and students-in-arms under Plato. A lot of trouble in modern times is a result of completely fudging what Plato and Aristotle have said and twisting it into something else. Mainly by having a slightly skewed view here and so much comes down to the inability to properly see one's own ideas and thoughts and working "idealism" from the proper angle. Husserl seemed to sort of almost grasp it with his talk of the phenomenological fundamental view, and Heidegger seems to have seen through the flaws in it, but otherwise there's a great deal of misapprehension on and about the continental side as well. Perhaps Derrida may have seen some of that too, but anyhow, not having grasped it and seen it, as duly noted by Husserl, makes this inner sight of the mental space, first of all, not even within the realm of possibility to even imagine, and second, the people trying to lead like blind leading the blind somewhat blindly.
These things plagued my mind. My spirit suffered. I seem to need to believe in self and freewill to function well. That's kind of an evidence for their existence. It means something is missing.
I realize this is a way old video But The law has already addressed the degrees between responsibility and culpability And it’s level of cognizant intention from aggravated impulse to premeditation as culpable although a death caused unintentionally still has levels including neglect .. But As it is Fault or no If you were involved then it’s questionable and you can’t totally be absolved
56:38 - Distinction between "freedom of action" and "freedom of will" "beings that are capable of identifying their own behavior as negative to a certain situation, are responsible for that behavior" - I feel it's a bit exaggerated Beings that are capable of identifying their own behavior as negative to a certain situation, are responsible for applying behavior change from the point of identification, But are very narrowly responsible for the result of their behavior in the first situation where it was later identified that the behavior was negative, and incrementally more responsible every recurrence of that situation and only in the context of the behavior of all the people in the situation. human responsibility only exist in the context of a group of situations, in which clear lines of capabilities bound the action space. What you can expect from human responsibility is statistical changes over time of behavior within a recurring situation. The result of a situation are always full blame on the narrative group operating over capabilities which run in the physical world and create the situation. That group of narratives is responsible of the retraining of behavior, thus responsible for the ability of people to be responsible within the situation. The existence of that group has an influence of generations, and most of it is hard to modify within a person. So the true meaning of responsibility is keeping up a process of testing narratives and sharing the results in manners that promote agreement over narratives between people. It's hard to judge a person on how good are they in taking responsibility without knowing that person's narratives. that why not knowing the law is not knowing important narratives with a social situation, and all we can do is add those to the person who did not know them and not blame them for not knowing, which opens a door for dishonesty as a tool to avoid blame.
Frankfurt: F of A is ability to enact volitions (horse wants to run left, and does); F of W is ability to want or not want the wants one has (I don't want to want to eat ice cream, and I'm able to not want to want to eat ice cream). The paper linked above says a lot more about these abilities and might respond to your concerns,
38:40 - You MUST separate between LAWs that can be understood/identified by the human mind, and those that are NOT. Because I feel people cannot identify all the LAWs of the universe, but maybe some intelligence born in the future can and will be able to help us understand what people are capable of understand. That inability, is the source of the feeling of freedom with respect to chosen action within people, assuming our choices are always limited by a real situation governed by deterministic LAWS, and people had the ability to understand all the LAWs while still being oriented, there is no options under that orientation because there is only one expectation. so the feeling of freedom to choose will dissipate. In a way those proposed people are not interesting even as characters because meaning in life emerges with people as a result of responsibility over choices, if the choice had an effect it had some measure of meaning. But, since the notion of choice dissipate so does the notion of meaning. Fact is a human mind can identify repeating patterns in nature, so we cannot ignore some emerging language of patterns, and so far they are nothing but having a deterministic behavior the deeper we look, but, a neural net that emerged in living beings is an object from which new patterns emerge based on one string of events, and those patterns have far reaching influence and the math we use to explain causality in very small objects may still be in the pool of rules from which the neural net patterns have emerged yet not identified, so people have a hard time understanding the causaillty behind it all.
I'm not doing empirical work here, e.g., trying to assess the extent to which determinism is actually globally applicable, but conceptual work: what is entailed if it is, and what if it is not? But there is (disputed) evidence that quantum indeterminacy is real, empirically, and that it does impact macro-level phenomena (chaos theory, dynamical systems theory, etc.).
Separate the worldly diagram that people use to identify anything in the world, From the diagram of the creation of the world because the creation diagram cannot be modeled in the human mind. Consider the creation of the world understanding as one understanding with the identifying mechanism. The identifying mechanism is a space divided by care/interest/desire, meaning we start with a set of divisions of that space with regard to the body's interests, then we identify sub sets of data coming from our senses as recurring while pursuing the body interests, then environmental and social context provides the recurring data which gets identified as the connections to people, objects, ideas. So the identifying mechanism diagram is a division of space to interests and cares. The second division with an interest is by situation. The third is for causality within and between the situations. So people can only use causality to identify elements or patterns within a sub-realm of reality seen from a prospective of relevance to a previously identified element. That's out limitation. Yet we are not alone and we share those bits of data with relevance, thus putting them to the test of being identified by a similar but different system, and the sequencing of those understanding allow a group of people to surpass their personal identification system by adding a layer of trusted identifications that exist without experience context. We are tasked with putting a puzzle together, if we want to understand more about the creation of the world. In any case while it becomes clear that the World Creation was deterministic, judging from the puzzle building approach, the realm of people communication is nested in the realm where anything and everything is relative, and if people were not created with the relativity world understanding then they would not have pursued survival, rather be solely viewers of their own effect and demise.
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Wow! This one has to go viral. There's so much here and so powerful. Rick is a great communicator. Thanks for helping to break my frames yet again. This is like the view from above on another scale. Thanks for everything you're working on. The practices are helping and I haven't even been able to do all of them every day. I'm personally feeling the growth and perspective shifts, bringing clarity on multiple levels.
Has anyone read Dzogchen - From Reductionism to Creativity by Prof. Herbert Guenther? My wife and I had tea and treats with him and his wife Ilse in 1997 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. She played classical music for us on the piano and Prof. Guenther and I had an amazing conversation, he showed me his giant library of Buddhist texts in his basement. That was the first book I read along these lines. Autopoeisis...he used this word often in our conversation. Not a big believer in reincarnation though. A treasured day for me.
It's so liberating to listen to you. Thanks.
For many people, the concept of "free will" doesn’t fit the propositional realm of thinking that many may find themselves stuck in regarding “spiritual” concepts - which generally leads to a dismissive attitude towards consideration of the topic. The problem with free will seems to manifest because it’s stumped by the problem of perception. I think most people would conclude free will does exist if it's positioned in this process of perception; this is similar to what Dr. Peterson discusses - we perceive meaning (through subjective value frameworks) rather than objective reality, so what does this infer about the nature of perception, self, and our agency relative to the nature of reality?
Great conversation by the way! Treasured!!
In my experience, meditation and Ayahuasca...we have free will. We are Beings of light and there is a lot more going on than our minds can perceive in "normal" states of consciousness.
Perhaps, in that state, yes we do.
The 'raspberry' to the Buddhists reminds me of an online seminar on Hildegard V Bingen from Notre Dame divinity school Someone mentioned Dr. Rev Matthew Fox and the leader of the panel said "Fox is an intellectual lightweight trying to make Hildegard into a radical feminist, in spite of there being nothing historically accurate about his book." The Catholic Raspberry to the excommunicated Dominican Priest.
My dots have nothing to do with will. I appreciate the Platonic Velcro sealing up the dialogue.
It was determined that I would be here and now to say “Thank you from the bottom of my autonomous heart for confusing me further” or was it?
We don't have a free will, "will of the Self" has us.
The will of the Self doesnt have us - it IS us. One implies dualism, the other does not.
@@Xtazieyo indeed, that is the next step, thank you! But there is a difference between ego (our conscious misrecognition of the self) and the self. What we think we are and what we are.
@@jankan4027 The claims in your thread here are too cryptic, low resolution, to assess. Please say more to spell them out?
@@riccardorepetti ua-cam.com/video/WDdgrQERcLM/v-deo.html
The view on causation is starting to change to viewing it as dispositional (from Aristotle and Aquinas)
What an insightful and equally fun discussion. I loved it.
Thank you
27:00 This reminds me a lot of Lewis' argument in his book Miracles. When Lewis uses "Reason" he really bundles in agency, the capacity for telos, and what human beings do is participate in the source of this, which is God. For Lewis this is the way out of "the whole show" which is his image of locked determinism originating from the beginning.
That gets clear in 29:30 "You've made an argument that it's impossible for any finite being to be rational". Lewis would say that the finite beings participate in the gift of Reason from the source of all being.
This was sooo great! Thank you! Now I can't stop myself from imagining how the discussion would have proceeded had there been a Buddhist scholar to respond... Like a three way interaction. Thupten Jinpa came right away to mind (Self, reality and reason in Tibetan philosophy). One of my dreams is a discussion between him and you guys to see how Tsongkhapa's perspective on the middle way lines up with neoplatonism. I think it would be very fruitful in terms of understanding the self and personhood better.
Thanks Rick and John!
Thanks Lee.
Time doesn't exist without an observer. And limited by our perspective both discovers, or always becomes and has always been...
Made me think of Frans de Waal saying that other primates can also discern when actions are voluntary or not. They allow members with a birth defect things that they will not allow anyone else. They know when an agent cannot be held responsible too.
Excellent point. I'd very much appreciate a reference to where de Wall says that. That would show that the Aristotelian criterion of the voluntary as the condition on agential responsibility is primatological, not only human.
John I was wondering if you knew if when your talk with bret Weinstein will be out, or if it happened yet, thanks! Great video by the way, I'll be rewatching this one on slower speeds for sure lol.
Excellent discussion.This was very, very helpful for me as I got depressed by the no free will argument and this seems like it has helped with it.
First, I love the fact that what you bring up here, including the thinkers mentioned, were actually present in the course on free will and to a large degree also in the main coursebook from Pereboom we used on free will.
I also personally concur with the mentioned "there's something true and correct with all the ideas presented" and I look at this in the way that they are at least representatively true. However, I would also argue the wisdom from "the five wise blind men and the elephant (in the room)"; that even with a supertheory combining all of the parts presented (i.e. all the five blind men put together), we are still far far away from even reaching the elephant here. It transcends even the combination supertheory.
About the meta theory I also see a likeness here with the epistemological problem of things collapsing into paradoxes, antimony and so on, that even so, there's some kind of interesting tangent here with the three ways of Aquinas, that analogy collapses into positive, the negative collapses into positive and the positive collapses into analogy. So there's something interesting here, still I think even sorting that out "logically" or propositionally (here I agree a lot with John, there are problems with the fundamental framework and there's a kind of ideology blindness about how much can be done either via propositions or logic), we'll still come back to the above statement about the five blind wise men.
The foundational paradoxes (which leads us to understand that there's a yin in the yang and vice versa - even necessarily about concepts) is nicely, and annoyingly, presented in Plato's Parmenides.
I also draw here from the Buddhism / Indian ideas that tangent logic: cause and effect are different, they are the same, they are both different and same, they are neither. The fifth path is transcendent.
I enjoy these debates very much and could listen to both of you for hours, so thank you. I'm simply curious as to what we should do with the reality that there is always someone behind words and ideas, with a story, traumas, fears, and so forth. Can it ever used to disprove a point - or maybe soften it a bit?
What can I do with my gut feeling that, for example, Mr. Repetti's genuine actual intuitions and drive (as a whole organism, not just as a felt sense of self) are expressed in the sentence at 1:02:14? You know, a grin, a chuckle, and then the words "I don't want to think of myself as a ______ (something/anything)" and "I do believe I have the ability to change myself," and so on.
I apologise if I'm projecting too much here, but hearing him speak so beautifully about a philosophy (that he defends so passionately) for 1 hour and then present those concluding ideas makes me wonder what he (the whole, even the parts unknown to him) is really trying to "escape" from or express through an unfulfilled self-acceptance (again, it's just me reading between the lines, not a judgement of his persona). Is there really, really, really a problem if you're A or B or C...?
At around 54:35, there's also a discussion on praise and blame, which is yet another intuition (formed out of anything but "choices") that may easily be synonym for free will. He uses the train situation as an example to argue that humans have self-regulatory or autonomous powers, which clearly allows for praise and blame. Ohh, that tickles me deeply lol.
My own unknown life biases tell me that even the person's behaviour, who "intentionally" pushed him to take the seat, could be explained in many ways: difficult time in their life, history of violence or trauma, bad parenting, fear, neurosis. It could be *anything*, the list is endless - well, almost endless. The only thing missing from that list is a "blank canvas person" who might be going through all of this but yet be disrespectful to others *because he wanted to* (he never said "wanted," but tell me what is implied in blaming others?).
That's so interesting because if we remove all the extreme life changing experiences that may or may not clearly drive someone's behaviour, what are we left with? A body that houses an entity, floating parallel to whatever physiological underpinnings exist in the moment and historically in that body. That entity acts like a person, through a body, and you, as the other entity in another body, reacts - you understand and know that all is free and open to blame, since you are free. It amazes me how "the brain" can be used to argue about pretty much everything within the body but when it comes to morals and the human (universal?) potention for violence and destruction, it's no longer applicable.
These kinds of arguments make positive deeds appear "irrational": "look, he pushed me, and he is an autonomous entity, so he is responsible." So, are those who aren't hurting you just following the "universal recipe" of being decent like little robots or are they bad but "totally controlling" themselves? Or is it anything else? We're always "deciding" and "self-regulating" about what to be/do and what not to be/do then? Can you precisely tell when you are deciding and not deciding? You might say the line is blurry but how are we to be so sure there's a line at all if all we have is a felt sense of our own existence?
So, let's see... Some would argue that this isn't always the case and that I'm being picky about imaginary lines. When "I" am not being self-regulatory, what can "I" do, then? Is there a second-level mindfulness approach that we can use when we aren't being mindful enough? Is there a third (or even deeper) degree of mindfulness if I miss the second level awareness, so "I" can detect all kinds of biases before they form and literally control everything, from cells to neurons, so I can be moral at all times, like a... god?
So many words from a system that struggles to comprehend the paradoxical nature of its own creation. It appears to generate the same dualities that it later struggles to eradicate. Is anyone aware of this? Is anyone doing or not doing anything on purpose to change this? Yes, these two men would say, because we are self-regulatory animals who can get the control we seek by going down enough levels. To believe it, I'm still waiting to experience it in my body. Perhaps one day.
Lots of interesting questions, but I hesitate to conclude that we cannot understand agency enough because of them. Many of your questions are addressed in the paper (linked above). You might also want to read Thomas Metzinger's paper that zeroes in on the agential metamental control and touches on its limits, etc., here: www.blogs.uni-mainz.de/fb05philosophie/files/2013/04/Metzinger_M-Autonomy_JCS_2015.pdf
Audio is unbalanced. Guest is 3x's (300%) louder than Host and is on the verge of distorting.
Meanwhile in Yemen...
I've been pondering on the free will dilemma for a long time and so far I've come to the conclusion that before one seriously discusses free will, one needs to define precisely who is the ”I” that has free will (the agent). From what I understand (so far), in order to define the agent one needs to affirm dualism or non dualism - this, in my opinion, is the first and fundamental premise that needs to be communicated before the discussion begins.
I personally, at this point, lean towards Dan Dennett's approach to the agent which is a large collective unified under the umbrella term ”I”. I think that we are very (unintentionally) confusing when we say ”my free will” because there is no one, identifiable ”I” to whom the free will could belong. Even as a single organism, we're composed of cells, organs and bacteria. I often wonder who is truly in control of my action when I go to grab something to eat - is it my stomach or my brain? They cooperate but that clearly shows the plurality behind the singularity. Again, whose free will are we talking about??
It's a valid concern, but I hesitate to accept the implicit conclusion that there is no self, thus no free will. I think you would appreciate the series John put on with Christopher Mastropietro and Greg Enriquez, "The Elusive I", which addresses your question very comprehensively.
@@riccardorepetti Thank you, I'll watch it because I'm really fascinated with this subject. Recently I've been thinking about “I” as an agent from the psychological perspective and I like the idea of multiple agents, perhaps some people are more integrated and they don't experience themselves as multiple agents whereas others people are less integrated and they experience their choices as being made independently of their own will because they associate ”I” with only one of multiple agents. It's like multiple personalities disorder but not at an extreme level when agents inhabiting one body don't know about each other. None of those agents is absolutely free, they're all the product of biology and culture; what they have are different sets of beliefs and they can even have different temperaments.
I'm not sure what's their origin though. Psychologists say that disintegration is a reaction to trauma but I'm curious how those different subpersonalities are created, what are their cores, is it a belief? a narrative? a task?
@@AnnaPrzebudzona I tend to think each of us is ideolectical in our identity structures, so that Galen Strawson is telling the truth when he says he lacks a certain phenomenological feature of self-experience that others possess, perhaps you experience a collection of selves, others are multiple selves, etc. Another interesting book for you is George Ainslie, Breakdown of Will, which discusses selfhood as a sort of competing intrapersonal bargaining elements.
When a person wants to participate in some social form of behavior, and that behavior is recognized as dangerous in the community, and since we don't
trust a person's understanding alone, we form a validation process that will judge the person's ability to participate in that social form. One we as a community validate,
we know behavior can change, so validation is a repeated process.
Now, if a validated person behavior has be identified as negative, then we cannot blame him for his behavior, yet we must find the narratives that made that behavior fail the standard.
We in fact need to invalidate the agreement with the person on participation, and demand another process of validation.
The damages from the wrong behavior need to be split between every person that is validated on that behavior, and this is done before main individual has it's validation taken.
Your reasoning links with Greg Enriquez's reasoning about the human cultural domain as a realm of justification.
I hope to see John V on JRE some day very SOON
That would be so great!
yes!
assumption:
1. everything moves, but not at the same speed.
2. some objects containing behavior rules for thier movement within the space they emerged into.
the measure:
For how long and how low can an object "slow down" such that it can speed back up and not
loose the rules kept in it?
Super crunchy tastiness!
Yum yum yum!
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Hey John, finally I’m getting a solid answer to why Buddhism wasn’t intellectually satisfying to you. I’ve been waiting for the No-Self Free Will issues to arise. Tasty tasty tasty.
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Hi. Congrats on the wonderful work you're developing and thank you for your contribution for the Manmind of Mankind. I would like to just pop a question that sometimes revolves my mind and you are the perfect subjects for the most reliable answer... Give me your thoughts on the following... What If, conscienceness is the ultimate goal for free will. Imagine someone has a program that presents itself like the materialization of free will. The program has its rules and it has to go a long way in human time, as the dance of causation and adaptation reach human conscienceness. With this kind of hardware, free will was a way to observe itself through reality and "deliver" the most it's action. All we can do to get it as free as possible is through knowledge as the ones your following. Just proud of you!
Kind regards, Marco.
Í hope Í made some sense
I'm not sure I understand the thought experiment. Please redescribe?
@@riccardorepetti Thank you for your reply and I will do my best to put out in words my, train of thought. Start from a simples question, how can be proven, the true nature of free will? Is It good or evil? Now, the experiment. With a simple "action", a train of events is set to motion. This events go by a set of natural rules that you can not change, after it starts... Darwin and Mendell working from the pre quantum stage, up to material form and at some point, Humans, that are known to be different for the use of reason, rational beings. The use of reason will guide us to realize that is all about consitions, and this is where Maslow comes in sets the reference for freedom... And when the conditions meet the basic needs, there you have will exoression... Hope to have cleared up the picture and very available to tall about.... Thank you so much and wish you the Best...
So the thing we call "the Self" is the psyche? And that is a process which exists?🙏
Free will, determinism, makes no difference to me. The concept of free will comes naturally from our senses thus easily entertain. Precognition feels like determinism so accepting both is unproblematic.Macht nichts
Thank you for your engaging conversation. Looking forward to your next one.
Early part of the discussion when they discussed arguments for and against the existence of God. We're spiritually immature? Or perhaps we face insurmountable problems because of our human limits.
Super juicy indeed. But, oi, I’m not sure that I get how free will and precognition are reconciled. Is Rick saying that we somehow sometimes get glimpses from beyond space-time?
No easy answer. Sorry. Working on it...for decades.
My interest in the question is also not shallow. 😊 My master's thesis (in theology) (many many moons ago) was on Providentia Dei. I was hoping you found what I was looking for 😜.
💓
Can someone point me towards Greg enriquezes work. I cant find anything online?
The takeaway here for me is that all available arguments for and against free will are either incoherent or are not valid, and the best we have are plausibility arguments. Furthermore, it makes sense to act as if free will does exist in some form for psychological pragmatist reasons, even if there were a hypothetical proof that free will is in fact impossible. The compelling plausibility arguments given here seem to be biased towards free will existing for those psychological reasons.
Also, as an audio engineer, I would strongly suggest purchasing a soundcard and microphone, all very cheap now, and wearing headphones. There is simply no reason for a regular podcaster such as yourself not to consider investing in some basic broadcast equipment.
For instance:
the Audient iD4 MKII soundcard is superb and around 130 usd.
The standard podcast mic which will last a lifetime is the Shure SM7b - $399. A cheaper alternative is the RØDE Procaster - $229
Audio-Technica ATH-M20X headphones (closed back) are 40 USD.
A microphone stand and 1 XLR cable is all that is needed on top.
Alternatively, you could think about a lavalier microphone, which clips onto your shirt, but this has other issues.
The setup is very simple and requires next to no prior knowledge.
I hope this is not presumptuous, but you have been at this for a while and it just seems a shame to to make the most out of your efforts when affordable high quality equipment is readily available.
A large part of the problem has to do with particular foundational frameworks not properly understood as such, and therefore also framing, but rather taken as unquestionably true and beyond scrutiny (especially in philosophy of mind). That's why I really enjoyed John's discussion with Bernardo Kastrup last summer on the Theories of everything channel. I highly recommend it (2 parts, several hours each). 😀
I think John is a great thinker and wedge out of the twisting of the established framings that so many are unable to do. That's why I enjoy his stuff so much. As far as I've seen myself, there seem to be subtle levels at play that are inaccessible from the pre-skewed point of view, call this properly Platonic if you will, but they seem to be there, but get easily obfuscated from the daily life point of view. I am currently trying to rehabilitate this epistemological and metaphysical dysfunction that has been dominant in our general thought for at least 100-150 years. There may be an overlap in what I'm getting to with some parts of phenomenology, but if it does, it's actually already present in Plato, properly understood. There's also, universally speaking, no true contradiction with Western philosophy and Eastern at all, only seemingly so, if at all. I also personally believe that the spiritual / religious views properly viewed, cannot really be separated from the philosophy.
@@GingerDrums was the tech advice for me, John, or both?
@@NorthenTasawwuf Hey Andreas, thank-you for this thoughtful take and the suggestions. I followed the TOE discussion with Kastrup closely. I also laughed heartily at Kastrup's dismissal of Joscha-Bach. I happen to find Vervaeke compelling in different ways than it seems that you do. The more he strays from his formal background into what I call the "Ken-Wilber-Verse" I think his project becomes self-defeating. I don't think this is his intention at all, but an atmosphere of cultishness is reflected in some of the comments here which I find very troubling. It reminds me of bad interpretations of Nietsche or Carl Jung, whose more esoteric work is misused as fodder to validate biases rather than question them. John's more formal work (his thinking and reasoning lecture series for instance) is far more spiritually compelling to me personally, because the implications are so much broader and require me to assume so much less. p.s. I want to make it clear that I think John is actively counteracting this tendency, but that it is simply a by-product of what happens when spirituality is discussed publicly outside of a religious organisation. It just seems to attract lost souls. Nor am I accusing you of anything like that, but the statements, words and ideas you wrote are just so vast as to be conveyed so confidently without me becoming a little sceptical. Love from Berlin to wherever you are.
@@GingerDrums Great! I appreciate Vervaeke for him challenging a lot of established thought and also appreciate his 50 video lecture series, but it doesn't challenge it to the degree Kastrup does, which is a breath of fresh air of a different magnitude. Personally, I have a lot of trouble with the development of philosophy for the last hundred or so years both continental and analytic. There's too much baggage in general. I feel it far more engaging in antiquity up to scholastic times. Philosophy needs new life and most of the current big names aren't particularly exciting. There are also many charlatans, who at best re-enact what used to be called sophists. Especially the modern self-proclaimed "sceptics". And the best ones are the positivist / scientism proponents. So I had to start over with Plato. Btw, here's a crazy idea: Aristotle should be read and understood as Plato's best student and his critique toward the academy as pointed not to Plato, but to his former colleagues and students-in-arms under Plato. A lot of trouble in modern times is a result of completely fudging what Plato and Aristotle have said and twisting it into something else. Mainly by having a slightly skewed view here and so much comes down to the inability to properly see one's own ideas and thoughts and working "idealism" from the proper angle. Husserl seemed to sort of almost grasp it with his talk of the phenomenological fundamental view, and Heidegger seems to have seen through the flaws in it, but otherwise there's a great deal of misapprehension on and about the continental side as well. Perhaps Derrida may have seen some of that too, but anyhow, not having grasped it and seen it, as duly noted by Husserl, makes this inner sight of the mental space, first of all, not even within the realm of possibility to even imagine, and second, the people trying to lead like blind leading the blind somewhat blindly.
These things plagued my mind. My spirit suffered. I seem to need to believe in self and freewill to function well. That's kind of an evidence for their existence. It means something is missing.
I realize this is a way old video
But
The law has already addressed the degrees between responsibility and culpability
And it’s level of cognizant intention from aggravated impulse to premeditation as culpable although a death caused unintentionally still has levels including neglect ..
But
As it is
Fault or no
If you were involved then it’s questionable and you can’t totally be absolved
56:38 - Distinction between "freedom of action" and "freedom of will"
"beings that are capable of identifying their own behavior as negative to a certain situation, are responsible for that behavior" - I feel it's a bit exaggerated
Beings that are capable of identifying their own behavior as negative to a certain situation, are responsible for applying behavior change from the point of identification,
But are very narrowly responsible for the result of their behavior in the first situation where it was later identified that the behavior was negative, and incrementally more responsible every recurrence of that situation and only in the context of the behavior of all the people in the situation.
human responsibility only exist in the context of a group of situations, in which clear lines of capabilities bound the action space.
What you can expect from human responsibility is statistical changes over time of behavior within a recurring situation.
The result of a situation are always full blame on the narrative group operating over capabilities which run in the physical world and create the situation.
That group of narratives is responsible of the retraining of behavior, thus responsible for the ability of people to be responsible within the situation.
The existence of that group has an influence of generations, and most of it is hard to modify within a person.
So the true meaning of responsibility is keeping up a process of testing narratives and sharing the results in manners that promote agreement over narratives between people.
It's hard to judge a person on how good are they in taking responsibility without knowing that person's narratives. that why not knowing the law is not knowing important narratives with
a social situation, and all we can do is add those to the person who did not know them and not blame them for not knowing, which opens a door for dishonesty as a tool to avoid blame.
Frankfurt: F of A is ability to enact volitions (horse wants to run left, and does); F of W is ability to want or not want the wants one has (I don't want to want to eat ice cream, and I'm able to not want to want to eat ice cream). The paper linked above says a lot more about these abilities and might respond to your concerns,
4ECogsci has everything to do with will .
What is it to lose will ?
Catatonia and other pathologies.
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I'll accept free will when you find out from what and where will comes from.
Compare: I’ll accept true beliefs when you find out where belief comes from.
@@riccardorepetti Yea, you said it. Still holds.
The great error is confusing free-will with indeterminism (randomness/chaos).
38:40 - You MUST separate between LAWs that can be understood/identified by the human mind, and those that are NOT.
Because I feel people cannot identify all the LAWs of the universe, but maybe some intelligence born in the future can and will be able to help us understand what people are capable of understand.
That inability, is the source of the feeling of freedom with respect to chosen action within people, assuming our choices are always limited by a real situation governed by deterministic LAWS, and people had the ability to understand all the LAWs while still being oriented, there is no options under that orientation because there is only one expectation. so the feeling of freedom to choose will dissipate. In a way those proposed people are not interesting even as characters because meaning in life emerges with people as a result of responsibility over choices, if the choice had an effect it had some measure of meaning. But, since the notion of choice dissipate so does the notion of meaning.
Fact is a human mind can identify repeating patterns in nature, so we cannot ignore some emerging language of patterns, and so far they are nothing but having a deterministic behavior the deeper we look, but, a neural net that emerged in living beings is an object from which new patterns emerge based on one string of events, and those patterns have far reaching influence and the math we use to explain causality in very small objects may still be in the pool of rules from which the neural net patterns have emerged yet not identified, so people have a hard time understanding the causaillty behind it all.
I'm not doing empirical work here, e.g., trying to assess the extent to which determinism is actually globally applicable, but conceptual work: what is entailed if it is, and what if it is not? But there is (disputed) evidence that quantum indeterminacy is real, empirically, and that it does impact macro-level phenomena (chaos theory, dynamical systems theory, etc.).
Separate the worldly diagram that people use to identify anything in the world,
From the diagram of the creation of the world because the creation diagram cannot be modeled in the human mind.
Consider the creation of the world understanding as one understanding with the identifying mechanism.
The identifying mechanism is a space divided by care/interest/desire, meaning we start with a set of divisions of that space with regard
to the body's interests, then we identify sub sets of data coming from our senses as recurring while pursuing the body interests, then environmental and social context
provides the recurring data which gets identified as the connections to people, objects, ideas.
So the identifying mechanism diagram is a division of space to interests and cares.
The second division with an interest is by situation.
The third is for causality within and between the situations.
So people can only use causality to identify elements or patterns within a sub-realm of reality seen from a prospective of relevance to a previously identified element.
That's out limitation.
Yet we are not alone and we share those bits of data with relevance, thus putting them to the test of being identified by a similar but different system, and the sequencing of
those understanding allow a group of people to surpass their personal identification system by adding a layer of trusted identifications that exist without experience context.
We are tasked with putting a puzzle together, if we want to understand more about the creation of the world.
In any case while it becomes clear that the World Creation was deterministic, judging from the puzzle building approach, the realm of people communication
is nested in the realm where anything and everything is relative, and if people were not created with the relativity world understanding then they would not have pursued survival, rather be
solely viewers of their own effect and demise.
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