Noam Chomsky on Science's Blind Spot: Free Will
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- Опубліковано 5 лют 2025
- Full Episode: • Noam Chomsky: Do We Ha...
Title: "Noam Chomsky: Do We Have Free Will? Moral Responsibility & The Meaning Of Life"
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#NoamChomsky #FreeWill #Science #Morality
Most people seem to miss the huge difference between choosing out of compulsion and choosing because it feels meaningful, right and good.
E.g. the forced COVID Jabs, which BS Chomsky supported.
Thank you, Noam, for your analysis of 'free will', because up until now I have never understood how we couldn't have free will unless we are in a simulation and someone else dreamed each one of us up. By pointing out that the people who say we don't have free will, but act like they have free will, you have broken the spell I have been in and freed my mind from trying to understand something that is so obvious. We have free will or nothing makes sense and this is what I have always thought.
The "secret" is in the construct of the autonomous "self". Man is hard-wired to believe in the illusion of a self-preserving, independent, accountable "self" or "I".
The revered professor was never too keen on hard philosophy, being bent on linguistics first and then politics, where his contribution remains incontestable.
@elmastoras1
Yep. I agree.
You missed his point entirely. Prove any of what you say. You can't. And you know it. It's all a big guess. And even if true, (hard determinism), the point is worthless and non-predictive. Soooo, live the dream. Seems sensible. And I would also aver that your certitude is misplaced.
Man is not hard-wired to anything he understands. See Dirac and Penrose on transcendental function of understanding. Human thought is not a computation.
Professor Robert Sapolsky's brilliant books, "Behave, Human Behavior at Our Best and Worst" and "Determined, Life Without Free Will" are very interesting because he looks at the question with scientific rational reality rather than philosophical gobbledegook. There is no neuron for free will. It's "turtles all the way down". We can find, identity and determine how and why we did whatever we did but we can only discover probabilities of future action by previous reasons for past behavior, all of which is unconscious anyway because the amygdala has already performed the behavior before the prefrontal cortex even gets its idea to reach for its pants.
Calling something Chomsky said "philosophical gobbledygook" is very sad.
@duxnihilo philosophy is full of outdated outmoded incorrect factual evidence going back thousands years. It's not all incorrect, obviously, but neuroscience is the cutting edge of human knowledge as 20 new discoveries are made every day. Chomsky is brilliant but he has no expertise or knowledge experience of the most complicated thing in the universe/multiverse/cosmos: the brain. He hasn't any experience with fMRI, for example. The mistakes, confusion, and just bad thinking of current philosophical understanding is outdated and ignorant. I use the word "gobbledegook" as a general catch-all for the debunked nonsense that ignorant philosophers practice in their deflection obfuscation bliviation and fantasy like dreaming. It's never "sad" when progress is being made. The world kakistocracy today is filled with 100% stupid idiots and worse! Sapiens is busy committing suicide as extinction continues. The only solution Chomsky has is his hope and faith in the young, hardly an intelligent thought-out solutiin. It's easy to criticise but Chomsky offers nothing of an answer to the "sad" failure of our failed species. Enjoy the ride!
Freewill is initiated in the amygdala.
@@Unfrozencarpenter@Unfrozencarpenter That's obviously not true. Free will requires conscious decision-making. That only occurs in the prefrontal cortex. The amygdala is unconscious and automatic, no will involved whatsoever. The amygdala is activated long before the prefrontal cortex even activates. Many thousands of fMRI scans prove that conclusively without question or doubt. Free Will is a delusion a myth like the Easter Bunny. There is no neuron for free will.
The idea that we would become demotivated if we stopped believing in "free will" (whatever that means) is absurd. I don't believe in uncaused effects, why does that mean I suddenly become an apathetic loser who doesn't want to get out of bed? Where is this "why do anything" mentality coming from?
Excellent! I get out of bed because for 86 years I have been full of questions that needed answering, full of answers that needed exploring, and rich with an inner conversation with my deepest essence. I thought my deepest essence was the Ultimate Other, but now I believe it is the deep rooted vine of which I am a fruitful branch. My fruit? At 86, every dream proven too small, I am given texting, UA-cam, you all! The world at my fingertips! Heaven in earth ain’t too shabby, especially when love is still the peak power. That’s my reality choice. If it’s mere programming, hurray for every gate in the code!!
@@nancyanderson5310 That's awesome, totally agree with these sentiments. I just live in the mystery. As the fire of human discovery expands, it reveals more and more darkness that will become uncovered, it's a fascinating time to be alive.
Chomsky's argument is that if we don't have freewill then our beliefs are determined in the same way as the path of rocks going down a mountainside -- by physics. There is no point in making arguments and trying to be rational about our beliefs. And yet, people who say they don't believe in freewill continue to try to persuade us rationally to agree with them, as if we were responsive to rational persuasion, which is possible only for free and rational creatures. So there's a contradiction in the behavior of determinists. That's his argument. A free wil denier here might decide to adopt what's called "compatibilism" to solve this problem. The interviewer brings this up but Chomsky dismisses it without much argument. I agree with him that compatibilism is wrong, but it deserves more discussion than he gives it.
@@rafterssynergy2866 That's nonsense though. Why would we need to be exempt from the deterministic laws of physics to be responsive to reason? How does that follow?
@@whoaitstiger Here's one way to look at it. In olden times people thought that when there was an avalanche, the explanation had to be because someone thought it was a good idea -- like some god or other. Nowadays we don't say that -- we say we have a good physical explanation for why avalanches happen, and its not because anyone thought it was a good idea, it's just because of this and that physical law. No intentions needed, just laws. Well, now suppose I ask you who is the best candidate for President, and suppose you say X. Determinists think that if we want to explain why you said X, that appealing to "reasons why you thought it was a good idea" to is just as spooky here as it was in the case of the avalanche. Your speech is a physical event just like the avalanche. We want an explanation that does not appeal to "reasons why it was a good idea for this to happen." So -- that's why they come into conflict. If we want to think we believe things for good reasons, then we are saying the explanation for why we believe things does not appeal to physical law, but rather to rationality. You can believe in gods or physics, not both, to put it colorfully. (Compatibilists want to say you can believe in both, but whether we can actually make sense of that, is a hard question. On the other hand it's not as though other positions in this area make a lot more sense, either.)
His is a rather facile perspective: since we act as though we have free will, we believe we have free will, and since we believe we have free will, we must have free will. If we did not know this was NAOM CHOMSKY! we would have zero confidence in his arguments.
I still have zero confidence in his argument. It's sophism and circular reasoning. Just ignoring the fact he assumes to know how everybody acts, we don't know we have free will and can't prove it with a scientific experiment. I use contra-causal free will as the only meaningful idea of it. We don't know we have that so we don't know how we would act if we did have that or how we would if we didn't have it. He's making vague assertions that aren't even defined well.
He never defines free will. To use a meaningless definition like the feeling that we cause our actions, that doesn't say anything about reality. Maybe God made us feel that way but our actions are all wholly determined by the universe. I don't believe in causality like A causes B, but the universe or God determines everything as a whole.
"Nothing can happen unless the entire universe makes it happen."
(Nisargadatta Maharaj - I Am That.)
Holistic causality.
idk how he got his reputation anyway, all this guy has is a nice voice and lots of words at his disposal. taking for hours with an information density of zero and an occasional weird opinion sprinkled in.
If people act as if they have free will, perhaps it is only because they are not free to act otherwise.
People act as if they have free will because they recognise and identify themselves as separate from their environments, with which they interact for normal day to day living. They are aware of making choices via their conscious thoughts. It appears independent. It should not be a surprise that they appear to themselves to have free will. However, when they view themselves more closely and see themselves as not separate from their environments, and see the deterministic aspects, and the reliability of science, that free will becomes increasingly questionable.
I disagree with Chomsky's assumption that people act as if they have free will. People act as if they are following their programming. Many so much so as to actually be predictable.
@@sjoerd1239 Hard disagree. All thought is nil then, under your snow globe explanation. I give the universe more credit. Einstein, Spinoza, Nietszche are on your side. They are wrong as well.
Exactly!!! There is no free will to claim you had no free will to choose.
We can't choose not to choose. No free will.
Well said
It is my assertion that Professor Chomsky and his generation of bright youngsters present real promise for great future progress in multiple scientific and other academic fields - very well done indeed.
The separate self is an illusion,there isn’t anyone to either have or not have free will?
This is it right here. Without comprehending the illusory nature of the ego-self then this will forever remain a confusing language game.
@ Reality ALONE is aware of itself and what it appears as.So if you are aware of this sentence,then you ALONE are the totality of reality.And what you are aware of right now is all that exists.
there's always one Buddhist in every philosophy comments section...
@@5hydroxyT Well you don't have to be a Buddhist to look for the self and fail to find it. You can be a secular atheist and come up with nothing if you meditate.
Ok, you are an illusion. Shut up then.
The question: Does the environment shape us, or do we have multiverses isolated here on Earth, to exert free will and yield different choices? These multiverses, are replicas of similar environments, that yield similar but not identical results. If there is no chaos, there is no free will. On the contrary, if there is free will, no matter how much you throw a ball straight on the street, it will go to different sides each time it is thrown because of pebbles, rubble, and rocks. Freedom of will is even possible for bacteria. Chosing from two or more choices also unveils the evolutionary theory for Biologists. And even in Psychology, the archetypes of Jung, can demonstrate these multiverses.
It is true that a human chooses an option from those presented to them. This choice is the result of the process carried out by their nervous system, which uses the conceptual frameworks that their brain possesses at that moment and the sensations produced by their physiological system in response to the alternatives.
However, free will is the possibility of choosing without any conditioning. One chooses something regardless of the factors. Given the same factors, the same human could decide on any of them whimsically. This is neither true nor possible.
Either the chooser selects according to the factors, or the chooser selects randomly. That is not free will.
Psychological phenomena are not exempt from causality.
"free will is the possibility of choosing without any conditioning."
It depends on what you take as the meaning of "free will". I think there are essentially two options. You could take how people naively conceptualise it to work as the meaning, or you could take what people identify in the world as instances of it to be the meaning.
And I think, in general, where there is a disconnect, we usually take the latter. e.g. Historically, and even to this day, some people naively conceptualise down as a single universal direction. Fly them to the opposite side of the world, though, and they will be able to point down perfectly well. We don't, in this case, take the naive conceptualisation to be the true meaning, we take identification of instances to be the true meaning.
@@jamesc3505 Free will is a concept derived from Idealism. Only within that framework could it be assumed.
The two main illusions that support the idea of free will are identity (as a set of characteristics that remains constant, unchanged, and forms the core and particularity of a person) and the idea of responsibility for our actions before the rest of society.
Society acts as if free will were a reality and operates under the assumption that each person could have acted differently than they actually did.
@@EduardoRodriguez-du2vd: "Free will is a concept derived from Idealism."
I'd have to see a reference for that. But even if true, I'm not really sure it would be relevant. The meaning of words sometimes change. e.g. I think I heard "meat" used to refer to food in general, rather than animal flesh specifically. But I don't think that's really relevant to its current meaning. And I don't think I've ever heard anyone else refer to Idealism as the source of meaning for "free will", so I don't think that would really be relevant now.
@@jamesc3505 All the circumstances of reality are the result of their factors. In this causal chain, there is no room for choices that do not depend on their antecedents.
Your choice of red results from the biological configuration of your nervous system and the information it contains. Both factors are the result of other preceding factors.
The idea of free will proposes an agent that can bypass the causal chain. It assumes that the agent is not included in that chain.
The possibility offered by the idealist interpretation is that the agent exists on a plane distinct from the natural one and is therefore not subject to natural causality.
However, that interpretation does not resolve the issue. The spirit must choose for some reason, and this can only be the result of factors or be a random choice.
There is no way out.
LOL! Noam's wry humor is great to hear again, especially given his illness which has robbed the world of his spoken words. Such a treat to hear Noam speak, as always. His thoughts on free will are perfect. I agreee with him, which is one reason I don't spend any cycles worrying about free will. There are so many other philosophical topics worth exploreing!
I'm sorry Noam, but your opening point is completely wrong.
People are determined to want to present arguments because they are determined to think they are important and convincing, and whether or not they actually are is down to whether other parties are determined to find such arguments important and convincing.
It's all entirely mechanical, you don't need to be "free" to choose either way, you are simply predisposed to either accept new information and process it as you are predisposed to process it, or you're predisposed to reject it and continue as before.
Unfree doesn't mean unchangeable, quite the opposite: we are condemned to adapt to changes in stimuli to the extent we are predisposed to do so.
Destiny created consciousness such that consciousness could create its own destiny.
A quote from the philosopher G. D. McFetridge
Free will is the imaginations greatest asset, extracting from the mind, both conscious and sub-conscious. Mans will is weak, and free will even weaker, and at the mercy of infinity.
"I don't have an explanation; therefore, there must not be one."
No, this is NOT good science.
And even worse sciences, we don’t know what it is and it does not have any explanation, but we are sure it does exist
My dog just died 3 days ago of a heart attack right in front of me. I'm still hurting today... My legs, my eyes, my arms, my kidneys, my cortex, my hair, my butt... none of it gives a crap about the fact that I lost my best friend. You could take any part of my body and none of it gives a **** about my dog what does that say about free will? If i am my body, why am i kept out of the loop when it comes to its inner working? My body doesn't tell me anything but it knows everything about me. Maggie was her name. My best friend.
1. I thought Noam wasn't able to speak anymore. ?
It's always great to hear from him.
If he 'ends' before I do, one of my regret in life is that I'll never have had a chance at a conversation with him.
2. As someone who understands that libertarian free will is impossible (and thus, we cannot have it),
there is still very much a point to sharing this understanding with others.
Every society's common-yet-mistaken belief in the magic of "Free Will" is a major contributing factor to unjust "justice", religious fundamentalism, and unrealistic approaches to societal reform.
As meaty automatons, being STUCK into this existence (until we end),
I despise injustice, suffering, and tragedies of every sort.
As such, it behooves me to compulsively spread my knowledge to others, so that our societal conditions improve.
You could still write him a letter and a ask a few questions. He wrote back to me in 2002
@@RodrigoFernandez-k2i I dont think he has the capacity to answer.
This is a clip from an older interview recorded before the stroke
I think free will exists on the same level as love, joy, peace, family, community, consciousness, etc. I can tell you I have art, music, poetry, literature, etc all on my computer, and someone else can say I don't because on another level, it is all ones and zeros.
Very good analogy. 👍
This is a message in retrospect both of your age and image:
"There is no free will but definitely a freedom FROM will."
Thanks for finally a mental sanity prof Chomsky. All those clips and blogs against free will are to me (as a former student of philosophy) very sad commercial manipulations.
free will is an idea, you can philosophize about it but it doesn’t mean it is exists outside of our world of ideas
In fact, most of the things are essential for our lives like hate and jealousy and love exist only in our world of ideas. Yes, they can have very material consequences that’s obvious.
I think the problem is in understanding the concept of existence what do we mean when we say that something exists or does not exist?
Once that’s properly answered, it may not be that complicated to decide whether free will exists
If there’s no free will what’s the point in presenting arguments against free will?
If there’s no free will then there’s no choice in which, if any, arguments we present.
Whether or not we have free will, we do have subjective experience. We respond to incentives. We typically use our ability to reason to manufacture justifications for pursuing our wants and needs. But we can also use reason to try to understand our environment objectively. We typically believe that by increasing our understanding of something we improve our ability to make beneficial choices regarding that thing. We are also curious about abstracts, trivialities, hypotheticals and the unknowable.
Even when we understand that free will is an illusion we still understand that there are things that increase our comfort and things that increase our discomfort. Why would we stop pursuing our interests just because we recognize that for a specific set of circumstances we will only respond one way? The only way to change that response is to change the circumstances or our understanding. We do not require free will to process information and respond. Nor do we require free will to process information about the concept of free will and respond with rhetoric, inquiry and criticism. Recognizing the deterministic nature of our being does little to cheapen the experience of our being. This is more obvious when we realize it has always been this way and all value is an emergent property of subjective experience.
We are motivated by subjective experience and by valuing informed decision. Free will is not needed to motivate inquisitiveness. Consciously and verbosely rejecting free will is not logically inconsistent.
'Will' the word is a illusion😢😢😢😢😢
The comments section is embarrassing.
as a youtube comment section....... it's fine, don't worry about it
@Carl-nj1op Embarrassment reveals the existance of morality. Morality requires the existence of conscious free will.
Indeed.
Not only do you not have free will… there is no “you” to have free will or not! Major assumption made by the question here! 😁
Our sense of self, the ego, is a necessary construct for the body and mind to rapidly respond to environmental threats for self-preservation.
@ you’re not wrong. It’s a very important tool for navigating the physical world! A great servant but a bad master, or whatever the quote is.
That music at the end scared the shit out of me.
Very interesting, thanks very much. Comment left very much of my own free will. I think.
Thank you! Reply left very much of my own free will, too... I think.
Wish you could discuss this with Sam Harris. It’s the only convincing claim on free will I’ve heard in recent memory, although I’m not entirely convinced.
Doing good makes you healthy and you create a better world, doing bad makes you unhealthy, and the world disastrous, so let us do good in order to save humanity.
Nietzsche conjured the most persuasive arguments against free will that I have encountered. Chomskys treatment of the issue here is glib and wholly unconvincing
Nietzsche comes across as being quiet absolutist, he's very convinced of himself which is a weakness and that's why he was wrong about so many things.
@@romanbrandle319 What was he wrong about? Are you absolutely sure?
@@JW-bs7xp He was probably wrong about resilience, recent studies have shown that some people are resilient and others not. Hardship doesn't create resilience, he didn't do scientific studies on the subject, he used reason and logic.
@@romanbrandle319 What is the reasoning against hardship not creating resilience?
Yes
Looking forward we think we have "free will"; however, when I look back, I see very little in my life.
I see FW every time I make a goal and decide my actions to achieve that goal. It's not a trick or riddle
@@djrychlak4443 Every intentional act of focusing is an expression of free will
I finally feel validated for my love of the old Rush song ;D
Please do not criticize any of the commenters.
They had no choice in choosing to write what they wrote.
.
I'VE OWNED GOLDFISH SMARTER THAN THOSE PEOPLE
What I believe is that we absorb sensory data through our senses in the form of short-term memories which may become long term memories depending on how they are received. When we respond to stimuli it is through impulses conditioned by the neural structures that have been shaped by our long-term memories. We only have a limited understanding of our conscious control over these impulses which probably only exists after the fact.
We have the ability to make a choice concerning the information presented to us yet we have no control over the information that is presented to us. IE, We do not control the sequence of our own thoughts. Also our emotions have a major impact on our decision making. Religion, politics and advertising making maximum use of this fact. Also if we had free will (in the sense we make the most rational decisions from the information to hand) addictions would not exist. We also do not choose our innate likes and dislikes which play a significant part in our daily choices. So yes we can make choices but there are many factors which influences those choices which we have little or no control over. As far as freewill to raise our finger, we do it for 1. Because we were asked to do it. 2. The thought just randomly popped into our heads 3. we are in a discussion about freewill 4. We needed to perform some other action that required it. Free will implies we are in total control of all our choices which, just by looking at the world, we evidently are not.
@@rikkafe6050 I agree with all but one area. Addictions. If I was addicted to heroin, or sugar. Wouldn't that Addiction override, interfere, or sway any free will I thought I had? Or am I misunderstanding what you are saying?
@@Burtifly Your thoughts are inline with mine I just did not express it as well as you.
@@rikkafe6050 ok, thanks.👍
Free will? How can you choose to do something that you would not choose to do? We follow extremely complex programming that gives the illusion of free will. Just like modern AI gives the illusion of thought. But it is just following it's programming.
But (to quote Popeye) "I am what I am." My programming began at my birth and has created what I am. I know no other way of existence. And I am fine with that. I am programmed to fill this way.
If we are programmed to be moral we will be morel. We are programmed to get pleasure from following our programming.
Greed is a destructive force that can have a negative impact on individuals, communities, and societies. It can lead to unethical behaviour, exploitation, and social injustice. While greed can be found in any society, it is important to be aware of its potential consequences and to strive for a more equitable and just world.
Nice score getting Chomsky on
People have no choice, they have to believe they have free will.
If they have no choice, then they have no free will.
Chomsky is evading the issue.
There is no free will, and we'd be better off to admit it, and understand the implications.
the question of free will/no free will...all that is in the realm of conceptuality. It is a purported place where there are separate entities, such as tables and chairs and Platonic Eternalities, etc., All of which are supposed to be recognizably themselves from moment to moment. It has nothing to do with the real world where we actually live, i.e., where nothing is anything long enough to grab and to hang a name on, the "floating world" where nothing is separate, all just part of a constantly simmering stew ..."Should I fight or run?" that's what we have time for here, not "Do I have free choice or not?"
Seems that science thinks free will and freedom are interchangable words when they have nothing at all to do with each others. One can have free will is be a slave. It is dealing directly with cause and effect. When one interacts with another human being they have free will to chose how to act towards that person at that moment. They are free to be polite and be in conflict with that person. That is all free will is, a choice made at the momement of interaction that can create conflict or peace. It is the choice of each individual each time they encounter someone else.
Holistic Free Will illustrates free will and morality
Define free will. Free from what?
When a thought arises, have you thought about whether to think it? No, it just came to be. And then we identify with our own thoughts.
I think free is a vague term, everything and being is connected in a web of life, with relations and conditions. So nothing is like completely free.
Is everything determined then? That is a different question. Then you probably want to ask who or what has determined it and can we know it? If no, then it makes no difference. Nonetheless Every Action has consequences and we can learn from it, so let’s enjoy this learning in our uncertain paths
It seems to me that I have free will. If I'm wrong, how would my life be different if I truly had free will? If there would be no experiential difference, Free Will = No Free Will, then what are we talking about?
Differences coming from the poisiton you are in. Different position different experience...
People act as if they believe in free will because they have no choice to act otherwise. How would their behaviour differ?
In my experience, the thing that we’re missing here is that consciousness is everything, therefore thoughts can, theoretically, come from anywhere. This is why thoughts seem to just appear out of nowhere… You are IMO watching the coming into being of “nothing into something”, and then if you wait and don’t immediately go to the next thought, you’ll see “something return to nothing”. That “nothing” is the awareness, without which the world could not exist. What we usually call the mind is verifiably not conscious in the way we think it is. We have confused consciousness with its contents, and thus we have the hard problem. Thoughts do not think. Consciousness is the medium within which reality arises, and it isn’t therefore limited to your skull. We’re like fish swimming in an ocean of consciousness, everywhere you look there is only that.
I know what I’m saying is hard to swallow. It goes against everything we are taught. I also resisted it every step of the way. After 5 years of daily research, however, it is now an unavoidable reality to me.
I’ve learned a lot about history from Chomsky, but mostly side with Sapolsky on this one. Tho I agree that it mostly doesn’t matter. Things still change.
The illusion of free will is based on our ignorance of things. Our minds seem vast, but relatively minute at the same time. They are not fractals, so we don't know the properties of each individual neuron in our brain and how they're affected by our body, our environment and each other. Our minds are algorithms that we apply without knowing precisely what they are, and that uncertainty is what gives the subjective randomness.
We "act like we have free will" because our algorithms have purpose and utility/reward functions all interconnected in convoluted Rube Goldbergs, and we have causal results we're compelled to try and bring about. We aren't going to just stop doing things just because we're presented with information about predeterminism and fate, otherwise the mere existence of that information would have prevented the Big Bang. Time goes on, and the universe's matter goes along with it.
Gobbledegook.
If we don't precisely define free will, then all points are moot.
Definitions of free will are dependent upon definitions of consciousness and whether consciousness is emergent or a fundamental property. Free will and morality can only exist if consciousness is a fundamental property in this universe.
If we don't precisely, completely and altogether define this being that apparently either Has or doesn't have free will, then all points are moot
@@stephengee4182 Free will and morality are not in any way connected. Morality is just something that is needed for all social animals, any group to work.
@@vaccaphd My guess is that mysterious nature of quantum mechanics arises precisely so as to allow consciousness and free will to exist within this universe. Thus my hypothesis is that consciousness resides within the quantum field and resides mathematically within the mathematical realm of imaginary numbers where infinite imaginary superimposed thoughts can and do reside. Thus, free will emerges out of the wave to particle transition, where a particular choices in our dependant physical universe can be given.
@@Nobody-Nowhere Morality arises out of how self consciously chooses its actions so as to protect all within the boundary sphere which self nurtures as its own (be it family, species, home, castle, nation state or spiritual, philosophical or scientific self identity). Vermin or other are those which intrude upon the boundary environment of biological and conceptual self. Woo woo is a moral statement given to vermin states of perceptual boundary ingress.
I wonder if Mr. Chomsky has ever had a happy thought. He must be a laugh riot to hang out with.
It's obvious that we have free will, but science can't explain it. Yet. There we have it!
If we didn't have free will, our actions and thoughts would be chaotic! Like spasms.
@@staffankarlsson1428No. In fact our actions would be systematic with goals, like an automaton.
What causes you to make the decisions that you do?
If ANYTHING "causes" it, then is it really "free"?
Pure Science -> Pure Atheism -> No Free Will. 'Everyone acts as if they have free will..' better to say 'Everyone FEELS that they have free will' (and even that is a doubtful assertion)
Nietzsche did not deny free will in the sense of autonomy. He also rejected determinism as Spinozan BS.
💙 Thanks 💙
Magnificent
Noam Chomsky
👉 What a great
Coincidence ⁉️
I See on utube
That finally we can customize
The Play back
Speed...⁉️👀.
I have been sending feedback
2 utube over 2.500 years but
Tonight 🌙 2024
Noam Chomsky
Did it again
Perfect 💙💙💙.
Wishing you all
Health & Vitality
And better politicians.🧞🧞.
If one doesn’t understand something he should just admit the truth. He doesn’t know how to define right behaviour from wrong behaviour. If we don't begin to be honest with ourselves about this we will never evolve beyond these dark ages of violence & war. Shame on you "Professor".
I need approval
I think there are contextual definitions as to what Free Will looks like. Is Free Will not more readily exercised in relative isolation --inside one's own home or alone in an island --than in a social setting where there might be consequences for any act?
Is Free Will a feeling or belief?
There's a reason we call the sensation of free will an illusion, because we accept that a lack of free will suggests universal delusion. I think, for something so ingrained in our perception and experience, its only natural that it is an impossible illusion to escape.
I think that saying belief is demonstrated by how you act can only apply where you have the capability to do as you believe, especially if the obstacle is built into us.
"We have no free will, but we must behave as if we do. We have no choice"
Our belief in free will must be an evolutionary adaptation. Perhaps as we developed a sense of self, and realised that we were each of us going to die, we needed to believe we had some control over our fate or we'd just give up altogether. Now we know better, for better or worse!
@yousef2508what you are is never born and never dies. You’re talking about the mind/body/persona.
why would having free will or not change my behavior? he lost me in the first minute, I can argue about not having free will because that's what I was predestined to do...
In my opinion, if free will didn't exist, our perception of it would be exactly the same as if it did. There's no way to distinguish one condition from the other if you use only perception . Mere common sense is not a solid tool to investigate reality.
As an analogy, in the past people used to believe that the Sun rotates around the Earth because that's how it appears when you observe it. That was common sense. But how did they think the world would have been different if it had seemed to them that the Earth was rotating around the Sun?
You can study your entire life about something we don't understand. By the end of all of our human life we won't be any closer. You can listen to a 2 hours lecture but then what? You go home and then what? Life goes on and nothing is resolved. It has been this way ever since we first ask the question. Define free. Define will. Everything i do is by will. Well almost. What is freedom? To be part of a group, you have to give some of your freedom. Freedom can be seen from different level. As for my mind, when I play my guitar, there is time that i can just list to the flow of the music that i hear in my head. I hear music in my head as it plays while it feeds back in my ears. What is that? Does free will matter or even be explain in art form? All I basically do is will things and feel things with the parameters that i have access to. Those are the basic properties of my consciousness as I see it. This is how i experience everything. To finish, free will is a joke. I'm 66 years old and there are times where if i don't make the bathroom in time...... there is a possible risk. Free will my ass (joke). I wish you all a nice day!
I act as though I have a will. I do not act like it's free. I have to occasionally remind myself, though, that it's not free to counter the effects of the indoctrination that society and culture imposed on me before I realized there is no free will 30 years ago.
We clearly make choices, which is using our will - the faculty that enables us to choose from all known options the one we most want. To have a free will we would have to be able to override our own strongest desire at the moment of choice and choose something we don't actually want most at that moment. This never happens and cannot.
To demonstrate, I ask people to choose to believe as I believe for 30 minutes so they can understand this point of view and its consequences. But since no one can make themselves believe what they don't believe, they always refuse to prove their own thesis to themselves. To believe is to accept as true that which lacks proof.
If someone does not want to accept that it is true that the will is not free, they cannot. This is why they always refuse: they recognize they are unable to do so. And to attempt to do so would only prove to themselves that they cannot. But if they had free will, they could. Free will requires the ability to cause oneself to want or not want - believe or not believe - at will.
Only then could we truly choose freely because we could choose what we don't want as easily as what we do want. No one is free to choose what they don't want, believe, or know about. And no one can cause themselves to want, believe, or know about things at will. We discover within ourselves what we want, believe, or know and then choose based on those givens. Of course, those things may change in time as we grow and learn. But they are not subject to our conscious control.
And finally, to claim that you have chosen or can choose something you don't want most, you merely fail to acknowledge that what you wanted most at such a moment of choice was what you did in fact choose. Or, alternately, that what you wanted most was to prove a point and not what you would otherwise have wanted most - which then became what you wanted second most.
Free will falls in the same category as Gilgamesh's divine aspiration, with a difference. Man cannot create anything, but possesses the capacity to create. Like wise, in spite of the mechanical universe, we have free will.
We have choices in do and don't ....not in all things...
Everyone misunderstands what freewill is.
Consider this:
1) Place a cup on a table about two meters from you sitting on a comfortable chair.
2) Relax, place your attention on the cup.
3) When you are relaxed, attempt to Will the cup to move.
Tell me what the result was.
🙏🙏🙏
The result is that you don't grasp the contours of 'free will'. I can't levitate either. But I can spit on the ground. Get it?
@@djrychlak4443 I have an experiential grasp of freewill. I have experienced a transcendental state called nirvikalpa samadhi, in Buddhism it is referred to as the 4th Jhana. In this state the ego has gone, the mind has gone, you discover what you are not, you see literally the body going about doing stuff without “you”, you literally stop experiencing through the body. There is more to it but will leave the direct experience there, and after the direct experience knowledge comes, this knowledge is referred to as clear seeing, this is because people who have not experienced this have a mind full of worldly experiences, opinions and judgements , all of these muddies the water and prevent clear seeing, going beyond the mind enables clear seeing.
My grasp of anything is going to be greater than most others, not because I’m special, just because I went beyond the mind, this is available to everyone.
@@djrychlak4443 You didn't try my experiment did you, you don't have an answer to what the result was, if you had I could help you understand, instead due to your mind being full of opinions it was closed to new knowledge, this is normal behaviour, but try to at least understand this much, and be mindful in future as you go about your day, as you learn to observe yourself intentionally you will develop .
@@djrychlak4443 sorry, I can't reply properly, the channel is afraid of the truth so keep deleting my reply, I wonder if this remains
@@djrychlak4443 I will try and reply in steps, might workout the element they don't want me saying.
Free will, it’s just 2 words we are led to believe we have a choice just like Disney owns everything to sisters and subsidiary companies. Everything they make us think we have a choice, but everything is owned by the same entity. Like verizon Sprint, T-Mobile, AT&T, they’re all owned by Disney.
Down in 30 ' ' by N. Chomsky. Free will, fact or figment, is a human operating convention. Questioning it, practically generates moot themes of no avail.
My add: lest there is an unattached system of reference that "wills" for humans, in which case human free will, albeit still free, is subordinated to an unbeknownst, maybe autocratic one.
This is why the notion of the alleged absence, or illusion of free will, is either a misnomer, or a furtive, pseudo-scientific novelty, rooted in either ignorance or intent.
It’s not science’s blind spot. It’s Noam Chomsky’s blind spot.
Apparently, it's yours. Free will deniers and flat earthers have a lot in common.
Free will is a non-issue. Do we have it? Probably not. Can I prove that? No. 'Emergent properties of organized matter... and then free will happens' = panautonomism, for which all I know is correct. (Probably not, though.) But would anything be different if it were?
The real difficult question is qualia - experience of being conscious. Like free will we can't explain it. Unlike free will, we know we have it.
ps. Darren Brown has made a career of showing that people often don’t have free will.
If life were a game, those who took the game most seriously would be more likely to survive.
a devout su·prem·a·cistnoam chomslky will be remember ed 4 his persistence towards nihilisatic death and diseases❣
Monday morning. I have to go to work. I can choose to walk, jog, run, cycle, drive, uber, bus, taxi, rollerblade or skateboard there. I cannot choose to fly there. Not everyone could choose all the choices above. Maybe they don't have a skateboard. Maybe they can't afford a car. I could choose to roll there, I suppose, but that wouldn't be a practical or efficient choice. I also am very limited in choosing not to go to work, but that's another story.
Your conditioned as children rewards punishers subtle or otherwise to live through an unquestioned responsibility a 5 to 10 year old has for their own speech and action. We narrate what our subconscious, super computer, has already decided.
I disagree with Chomsky here that 100% of persons act as if they have free will at all times. I think basically all persons act as if they have will. There are many persons who think of it in that way as will that’s not free. In other words your will is shaped by near infinite things out of your control so yes we all act as if we have will and yes most humans who don’t think deeply about these things may just assume it’s free but this distinction between free will and will is very important.
Free Will is absolutely fundamental in our consciousness and in the universe. We use it in every choice we make. Quantum probabilities in your brain make determinism impossible. Free will decisions that you make, are made in an infinite number of ways, but they all come down to just two things, logic and emotion, with an infinite number of ways that they are weighted and combined to reach a decision.
Think of emotion as being more of an animalistic drive for what you want, and logic as being what you determine through examination to be the best choice for you, either morally or physically. There are an infinite number of combinations that will lead you to a decision. The idea that you could predict that or that it could be predetermined is ridiculous!
Some decisions will be beneficial for you and some will not. If you tend to give in to emotion, it makes you much more likely to develop addictions to what gives you pleasure or makes you feel good. On the other hand, always following logic makes you more methodical and less animalistic.
Both are needed in infinitely varying degrees to make you wholly human, but the more you understand them, the easier it is to recognize attempts at manipulation, and avoid having your consent modified and manufactured by it, in different forms of advertising and persuasion thrust upon you by others and by media, either social or mainstream.
Here is your free will - You can choose to think about something other than what you are currently thinking about at any time. You can change the subject to anything you want, not just follow some mind/body machine program. You can actively suppress thoughts and memories at will and choose to follow a different mental path whenever you want, to as far to any end as you want and make it your new free will reality.
I’m not sure determinism means pre-determined. How can you argue that that what emerges is not determined? But yes the illusion of free will is definitely there.
@@kevincharles1 Do you believe that we have free will to make choices or do you believe that every aspect of your life and every decision you make is already determined, predetermined or super-determined?
Wait till you try to do something that goes against your moral code then see how much free will you have.
What about the baby who is born without a fore brain? Do they have free will. There are people born who can not leave their home. Do they have free will. Or spina bifida babies, do they have it. Did you have free will to choose your parents or the economic environment you were born into. There is free will within the abilities they have based on their genetics and nurture received in their formative years.
Has Noam Chomsky ever had a conversation or debated with Robert Sapolsky? I ask, because Sapolsky, I've seen videos with the subject of him arguing that there is not free will, and I have finally gotten to the point of being able to more robustly attend to the minute details of what Noam Chomsky says, in this video, instead of putting on a political topic video and tuning out - It might be an undesired conditioned response to when a friend lent me a copy of anarcho syndicalism, in high school, and at the time, I really couldn't be motivated enough to focus, to make much progress in reading it, despite wanting to, without a fictional narrative; and, the academic terminology, like the word "hegemony" kind of made me feel inadequate even though I did have a general sense of its meaning. Would have made so now that I've been regarding quite a bit of supposed keys work after having ride by zebras. Don't get ulcers after stealing it for my high school library. They had multiple copies in 2002 and reading it in 2007. In that some ways the type of determinism I would say it's fair to think is at least included Chomsky talks about the mechanical movement of whether one can consciously move a finger and how that's separate but not completely distinct in type from whether it's possible to make moral decisions.
What a guy. He knows 100% of the actions and beliefs of 100% of the people on the planet. Very impressive.
Your impudence is embarrassing for you.
Well, I can say with confidence that Sapolsky and Harris act like they have free will and probably could not get through a day without making a value judgement.
"...act as if they don't believe it...", therefore there no point in exploring the question. But this is not a meaningful objection.
We all act as if we believe in classical (Newtonian) physics. But both Relativity and Quantum understandings show that Newton is wrong. But acting as if he is right does not negate either. But when making daily, human-level decisions, applying Newton's laws is much more workable.
Chomsky minimises the question as a mere dinner party curiosity. But it is so much more than that.
The existence or not of free will is fundamental to questions of morality, ethics and religious belief, to name a few. Punitive punishment in particular would take on a wholly different character if the non-existence of free will became widely accepted.
The way I see it is we have free will in 3 dimensions but not in 4. 3-dimensional free will is just the conventional understanding of what we mean by it, but once you incorporate time i.e. incorporating the 4th dimension, imagine going back in time to any choice you made in the past. You are the same person as you were then, the Universe is identical in every aspect, will you choose the same option? The answer has to be yes, because your reasons for choosing what you chose the first time around are identical. There is no room for anything else to happen outside of what actually happens, regardless of whatever you choose to do. All our choices are just part of the causal chain of thoughts and events. Everything that happens was always going to happen. Time is a wave pulsing through a static 4-dimensional medium called spacetime
I am a physicist and I explain why current physics leaves not room for the possibility that brain processes can be a sufficient condition for the existence of consciousness. The hypothesis that consciousness emerges from, or can be identified with physical, chemical or biological processes is incompatible with current physics.
It is a scientifically established fact that a mental experience is associated with numerous distinct microscopic physical processes that occur at different points; there is no physical entity that connects all these distinct microscopic processes, therefore the existence of mental experience requires an element of connection that is not described by current physics. This missing element of connection can be identified with what we traditionally refer to as the soul (in my youtube channel you can find a video with more detailed explanations).
Emergent properties are often thought of as arising from complex systems (like the brain). However, I argue that these properties are subjective cognitive constructs that depend on the level of abstraction we choose to analyze and describe the system. Since these descriptions are mind-dependent, consciousness, being implied by these cognitive contructs, cannot itself be an emergent property.
Preliminary considerations: the concept of set refers to something that has an intrinsically conceptual and subjective nature and implies the arbitrary choice of determining which elements are to be included in the set; what can exist objectively are only the individual elements. Defining a set is like drawing an imaginary line to separate some elements from others. This line doesn't exist physically; it’s a mental construct. The same applies to sequences of processes-they are abstract concepts created by our minds.
Mental experiences are necessary for the existence of subjectivity/arbitrariness and cognitive constructs; Therefore, mental experience itself cannot be just a cognitive construct.
Obviously we can conceive the concept of consciousness, but the concept of consciousness is not actual consciousness; We can talk about consciousness or about pain, but merely talking about it isn’t the same as experiencing it. (With the word consciousness I do not refer to self-awareness, but to the property of being conscious= having a mental experiences such as sensations, emotions, thoughts, memories and even dreams)
From the above considerations it follows that only indivisible elements may exist objectively and independently of consciousness, and consequently the only logically coherent and significant statement is that consciousness exists as a property of an indivisible element. Furthermore, this indivisible entity must interact globally with brain processes because there is a well-known correlation between brain processes and consciousness. However, this indivisible entity cannot be physical, since according to the laws of physics, there is no physical entity with such properties. The soul is the missing element that interprets globally the distinct elementary physical processes occurring at separate points in the brain as a unified mental experience.
Clarifications
The brain itself doesn't exist objectively as a mind-independent entity. The concept of the brain is based on separating a group of quantum particles from everything else, which is a subjective process, not dictated purely by the laws of physics. Actually there is a continuous exchange of molecules with the blood and when and how such molecules start and stop being part of the brain is decided arbitrarily. An example may clarify this point: the concept of nation. Nation is not a physical entity and does not refer to a mind-independent entity because it is just a set of arbitrarily chosen people. The same goes for the brain.
Brain processes consist of many parallel sequences of ordinary elementary physical processes occurring at separate points. There is no direct connection between the separate points in the brain and such connections are just a subjective abstractions used to approximately describe sequences of many distinct physical processes. Indeed, considering consciousness as a property of an entire sequence of elementary processes implies the arbitrary definition of the entire sequence; the entire sequence as a whole (and therefore every function/property/capacity attributed to the brain) is a subjective abstraction that does not refer to any mind-independendent reality.
Physicalism/naturalism is based on the belief that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain. However, an emergent property is defined as a property that is possessed by a set of elements that its individual components do not possess; my arguments prove that this definition implies that emergent properties are only subjective cognitive constructs and therefore, consciousness cannot be an emergent property. Actually, emergent properties are just simplified and approximate descriptions or subjective classifications of underlying physical processes or properties, which are described directly by the fundamental laws of physics alone, without involving any emergent properties (arbitrariness/subjectivity is involved when more than one option/description is possible). An approximate description is only an abstract idea, and no actual entity exists per se corresponding to that approximate description, simply because an actual entity is exactly what it is and not an approximation of itself. What physically exists are the underlying physical processes. Emergence is nothing more than a cognitive construct that is applied to physical phenomena, and cognition itself can only come from a mind; thus emergence can never explain mental experience as, by itself, it implies mental experience.
Conclusions
My approach is based on scientific knowledge of the brain's physical processes. My arguments show that physicalism is incompatible with the very foundations of scientific knowledge because current scientific understanding of molecular processes excludes the possibility that brain processes alone can account for the existence of consciousness.
An indivisible non-physical element must exist as a necessary condition for the existence of consciousness because mental experiences are linked to many distinct physical processes occurring at different points; it is therefore necessary for all these distinct processes to be interpreted collectively by a mind-independent element, and a mind-independent element can only be intrinsically indivisible because it cannot depend on subjectivity. This indivisible element cannot be physical because the laws of physics do not describe any physical entity with the required properties.
Marco Biagini
Excellent Marco. In one word "nonlocality". So why is it always Italians who see the issues more clearly???
My guess is that consciousness resides in the quantum field. This may be why isotopes of xenon with different nuclear spin have such different anesthetic effects upon consciousness.
@stephengee4182 Wow. I never realized that. Are you an anaesthetist?
@@stephengee4182 You are wrong for many reasons. For example, the quantum field refers to the entire universe and NOT to the brain. The point is that my mental experiences are associated only with some physical processes that happen in my brain and not with any physical process that happens in the universe.
@@lebenstraum666 no.
This guy acts like he has the answer to why other guys act like they know the answer to something they can't choose to act upon. Then Noam spends 10 minutes explaining why there is no point in explaining what he is explaining. Then he ... wait a minute ... I couldn't help myself, the devil made me do it.
There is an area of science that accepts that we have no free will. It's called Superdeterminism.
@@PhilMoskowitz Determinism is an illusion superceded by the uncertainty principle and quantum mechanics whereby the infinite uncertainty in a variable occurs when its conjugate variable is precisely known. Thus, the precise future state of an entangled variable, shows up as infinite random probability in its conjugate variable's past history.
@@PhilMoskowitz Determinism is an illusion superceded by the uncertainty principle and quantum mechanics whereby the infinite uncertainty in a variable occurs when its conjugate variable is precisely known. Thus, the precise future state of an entangled variable, shows up as infinite random probability in its conjugate variable's past history.
Nothing is predetermined but everything is determined. To be predetermined posits a pre-determiner such as a creator god who is all knowing. It is a fallacy (I think) to create such a 'being' to explain human behavior. We are born genetically determined and our behavior is modified by the action of epigenetics over a lifetime. Rather than assume blame for behavior, we would do better by the acceptance of our own and others' thoughts and actions.
I don't see how we DO act as though we have free will. It seems that many ppl don't
Professor Chomsky, who says no free will is mechanical? It's not mechanical. It's organic. Does a flower have free will? Does the wind? Does an animal? You say we all believe we have free will, but observation trumps belief. You can observe the automaticity of thoughts and movement if you just take the time to slow down and pay attention to attention itself instead of the contents of attention.
"Anti-religiosity" dressed up as "scientific" naturalism is the problem. Materialism was by far the biggest mistake we adopted in science. It's why the institutional sciences are increasingly an irrelevant joke. Except in QM, which isn't materialist at all.
Did you get your widdle fee-wings hurt
when scientists made fun of your imaginaweeee fwend?
@@TheTerminator-1 Bwahahaha. Taunting like a 12 year old is not an argument. Let us know when you have one.
@@firstsentientai
What makes you think I would waste my time trying to reason with a ghost worshipper? There is nothing that I, nor anyone else can do, to help people like you, who are being threatened by a murderous invisible ghost.
Look how @@TheTerminator-1 has nothing but snotty unsupported assertions. Evidence? He has none. A snotty little internet bully is all he is. His life is so sad.
@@firstsentientai
Not surprised you switched sock puppets since I beat the holy snot out of your first one. NICE TRY !!!!!!!
I act like I have free will. What other choice do I have?
To act unconsciously, like large parts of you. You don't need to consciously think about walking for example. Nor you need to think about your heart for it to beat.
Thats the thing, if you don't have free will then why there is a need to have parts of you conscious and parts unconscious. Why would there be any need for consciousness at all.
@@petervancaeseele9832 realize that God is the only “doer” and that all you can “do” is be what you are 🤷♂️
@@danielverdel7502 Does a God with perfect knowledge of the future have free will? He knows how he will react in every situation therefore could not do anything different. He could never be surprised or get angry since those emotions stem from the unexpected. What would even inspire him to "do" anything?
@@Nobody-Nowhere Do you think that your "unconscious" has agency? We have multiple centers of consciousness according to brain research. When I ride a bike I don't have to concentrate on balance as some part of my brain has learned to take care of that task so I can focus on "more important" things, alerting me when it needs help.
@@petervancaeseele9832 thats the whole reason God splits into separate beings in the first place (…or at least appears to!!)
Free will is an illusion. A somewhat necessary illusion imo
May be one day neuro science will answer perhaps some day in future.
Great Man Noam Chomsky. God bless him with good health.
It doesn't work that way. It theoretically cannot be absolutely proved that something does not exist. Having said that, the more neuroscience is understood, the more the evidence accumulates for determinism. Science depends on determinism with an allowance for random events. We live in a deterministic universe. There is no free will. To believe in free will is to trust intuition over the evidence for determinism. Intuition is notoriously unreliable.
The future is a fuzzy subject. Just be here now
It would be good if you leave UNPROVEN mysticism like "god" and "religion" out of this.
If somebody uses a wheelchair then there deterministic in that wheelchair. Free will is a delusion of the privileged.
The will of the ever-changing "self": A brain state is too complex to analyze (or specify). Trama at a past time in life makes one different at a future date than they otherwise would have been. The "self" can't specify what it wants to be at a future date anyway. Conclusion: the self doesn't control what it will be in the future, although it can lift an arm right now. So there is little to care about in the study of free-will.
There is no future, there is only now😂
@@vincentkeller4725 The state of the universe changes continuously, no reason to bring time into the description. State variables are not a functions of time. They just change and consume time since an effect follows it's cause by an interval quantified by the invention of standardized time units. Variables which are quantities must have a unit, in the case of time a quantity of it is measured in seconds.
@@vincentkeller4725 states of the universe that occur after the present state are called "future" states.
If metaphysical dualism is normal science no wonder West declining.
Free will is an illusion.
Ok, if free will did exist, how would you describe or define it? You can’t, because it would be defined exactly the same way. You “choose” to look past, and say you had no choice.