Warren Brown - How Can Free Will Work?
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- Опубліковано 30 вер 2024
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Assume that free will is real, not an illusion, and that the only reality is physical. How then could the will possibly be free? By what mechanism could human choice transcend the strong determinism of a closed physical world? One can try diminishing one side or the other: reducing free will or softening determinism, but each has its own difficulties.
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Warren S. Brown is founder and previous director of the Lee Edward Travis Research Institute at the Fuller Theological Seminary and Professor of Psychology in the Graduate School of Psychology.
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Closer To Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.
If I understand him right, Brown's argument seems to be that if a system is sufficiently complex and dynamic, 'something' happens which means that physical processes stop being governed by physics, and can become governed by processing and evaluating information. (AKA minds making choices).
My problem with this is that information isn't a 'thing in itself' which neurons do something with, rather information is a a type od description of actual, ontological things in themselves. So you can describe neural processes in terms of information processing, but there isn't some extra thing which is information.
In which case, the argument that information processing somehow escapes the physical system of neural activity doesn't make sense. Because information processing is simply a way of describing that physical neural activity. The other option would be that information is more than this, which Brown would need to describe and make an argument for its existence.
Yep, the dude is somewhat confused. We evolve agent systems these days from random evolutionary processes, so we know agency and intentional behaviour emerges from purely physical processes. He just has an imagination gap that's messing him up.
@@simonhibbs887a better way to look at free will vs determinism is to consider agency and intentionality.
How much choice or intentionality exerted upon an action is dependent upon the system’s ability to represent and evaluate ideas and information in mind about potential future outcomes of its own actions.
For instance, generally speaking - a reptile or bird has far less forethought occurring than a mammal when making choices about actions.
What is important is that agency is related not only to the ability to choose, but also the amount of options one can generate and how well one can evaluate those options.
Lastly, determinism is not about things being pre-determined in a prophetic sort of way, and free-will is not even really entirely about agency.
A much better topic to for discussion is what features allow or limit a system’s (organism’s) level of agency.
I have no free will. But I’m responsible for what this organism does so I gotta keep an eye on this guy and give it the most up to date information out there. Hopefully Mr know it all does the right things
I agree with what he is saying. But when you break it down its still Casual Determinism.
Lesson one: Logic! ( the old greeks knew how to begin science...
The cope of this emergence argument is fascinating. "You can't reduce a neuron to the physics that underlies it"... yes you can :). I don't think there's any hope for progress in the philosophy of agency and freedom if we permit sloppy reasoning like this.
If free will means responding to the needs of the moment, based upon the experiences of the past and the actual capability of action, then there is no free will. Except. I can choose to stop this video and throw my iPad out the window. Except, it works and I can’t afford a new one. But I could if I really wanted to prove a point. Now, where does free will fit into a block-universe concept? In the moment, my decisions feel to me like they are entirely of my choosing. Because I remember the past, am experiencing the present and can only predict the future, my decisions feel spontaneous. Perhaps in fact, they only seem that way because of our observational restrictions. Perhaps I always did and always will make one decision rather than another. I have a multitude of options at every choice-moment, but only do one and not any of the others. Always did, always do and always will.
Complexity is not an argument for free will. It’s complex to a human mind, but not to nature. Just because your mind is a mystery to you doesn’t mean you get to assert a non-deterministic fairy dust into that mystery box.
after all the years I've been watching the show, I can say; this is the best delivered interview
I agree wholeheartedly! I've recently been contemplating on the feedback loop that is life as being the wellspring of consciousness and free will. This was quit the synchronicity for me.
So do we have free will?...
@@elliot7205 thanks for the question. I think yes. consciousness, as a brain processing phenomena, gets many inputs. some can be reduced to molecules acting. certain behaviors on the extremes; malevolent, or benevolent suggests agency, beyond physical current state
@@explore-n but aren't those choices made because of prior events?
@@elliot7205 prior events are part of the 'inputs', as much as levels of sodium, potassium, etc. i might be wrong, but the fact that we debate the concept validates it. after all we don't debate things we completely figured out. what do you think?
I love Aristotle's statement about this from his Ethics. Regarding human action he says... 'The origin of action is choice ... and [the origin] of choice is desire and reasoning with a view to an end ... Hence, choice is either disiderative reason or ratiocinative desire, and such an origin of action is a man'. Of course, it goes without saying that we can only choose an option when we can think of it. We aren't free to do everything... only the options that present themselves in whatever time we have for contemplation. The reductive question of whether my choice is made by my neurons, and perhaps their choices by some quantum wave flux amplified in the molecules of those neurons (as Freeman Dyson speculated), doesn't come up in Aristotle, of course, but you have to wonder if he would be a reductionist in science or an emergence advocate. Perhaps the reasoning and desiring being that emerges in a brain takes on a 'life of its own', and makes choices devoid of motivation 'from behind', but rather, purely, by motivation of the appeal of the considered objects. That seems to be Anselm's idea of freedom... when choosing morally, humans consider the objective appeal of the considered options, and aren't tilted one way or another toward them by anything prior. (Btw, Aquinas disagrees, and says we are both able to see the good with its inherent appeal, but are also inclined by God towards it... so that we are doubly guilty if we choose evil.)
Just make him answer the question "If you were born in another persons place, physically the same as that person and raised the same, would you make any different choices?" Unless he believes in a soul, obviously that person would not have been able to make different choices, because it would be the same person it is now.
All you seem to be asking, it seems to me, is if a person is able to make different choices than the ones they made. Which brings us right back to the question: do people have the ability to make choices in their lives? Which I would answer, yes. Because sometimes they will choose the second piece of cake to satisfy their taste buds and another time they will decline it in favor of looking good in the swimsuit they bought for their coming summer vacation. How does your hypothetical add anything new to the question? Sincerely.
@@longcastle4863 It's a simple way for people to realize that all the choices you ever make only depend on who you are physically and your environment. Yes it's a simple concept. But it's still hard for people to internalize. You think you're a good person but if "you" were born instead of Hitler, you would be Hitler, and you would have made all the choices he did. Obviously it wouldn't "be" you unless you are a transferable soul, but it shows you don't actually have absolute free will.
Basically your choices depend absolutely on your physical body and past experience, yes you are constantly making choices, but those choices are built in and determinant, most people believe they are more than that and can make good choices where other people would make bad choices. If people understood the reality we would focus more on rehabilitation than punishment and society would focus more on equality than meritocracy. Because if we have a good life it's really just luck.
@@AndreasMiller1 I honestly don’t care about “absolute free will” and I’m not even sure what it means. All I care about (in the case of the topic we’re discussing here) is that what I do in my life and what I am and become is not completely determined. That I have the ability to make choices in my life from amongst the options available to to me. And that is free will enough for me: having the ability to make choices about the things I do and directions I want my life to take. Yes, I know, chance and luck and circumstances and events I have no control over also come into play and so I may not always achieve my goals and dreams. But that’s life. Still there’s a reason people hang in there, duking it out amongst the storm of variables and stimuli that surround and impinge upon them every day. It’s because they recognize have some efficacy and autonomy and some say in what they do and try to become in life.
@@longcastle4863 I would disagree. Just because you decide to pass on the second piece of cake does not mean you’re denying your preferences. It means your criteria of preferences has shifted from ‘taste’ to whatever made you decide to pass on the second piece..”health.” Your preference for health benefits overruled your preference for tasting cake. In any case, you chose your real preference because you decided! Whatever you decided, that’s your “real” preference. I can deny myself junk food all day, and tell myself I like it better, but in reality my real preference was healthy diet. We have preferences of our preferences, and on and on.
Think of preferences like parallel circuits versus series. There’s a hierarchy of preferences and each level has individual preferences that are decided on as needed. Advanced minds can see the big picture and pass on immediate goals, whereas, monkeys cannot and choose without much foresight. In all cases. You must ask yourself one question.
Can you choose what thoughts you have? For example…If you’re driving and see a familiar face, can you choose “not” to remember a familiar face?
If you answered no, then freewill is determined.
This was some very messy thinking. Determined to insist free will exists in a purely physical world despite the obvious logical contradictions in this position.
"I don't like the term closed system" (2 minutes later) "physics is by definition a closed system". Yes. You don't like the term because it destroys your argument. Unfortunately we don't get to just avoid facts if we want to be taken seriously.
Also, arguing that complex systems are not derived from base-level physics because they're complex and change over time... What? What is this 'magical' thing that is generated on the level of the neuron that isn't derived from the base level physics of all the atoms involved? Just because it's too complex for us to calculate doesn't mean it's not theoretically calculable.
He basically avoids the question constantly, very clearly trying any mental gymnastics he can to maintain a belief rather than assess the question logically. This is magical thinking, not an intellectual contribution to the discussion.
My God, how did you pick this guy to.interview? Brown contradicts himself in every other sentence. Regardless whether we're dynamical systems or the result of emergent properties, if you're a physicalist, these are irrelevant to argue against determinism. You should have torn this guy's arguments to pieces! Whether the system is closed or open is also irrelevant unless you posit something dualistic.
I truly can't believe Dr. Kuhn is still talking about "libertarian free will" after doing this show for so long. The conceptions of free will he talks about are so trivially incoherent that I can hardly believe he honestly entertains them.
Let's Get Physical!!! Olivia Newton John was also a Physicalist. 😂😂
Brutal word salad
What a clown. A physicalist can't explain how it's possible to imagine or experience anything whatsoever, but he thinks there can't be free will because there are limits to what he can imagine. Our imaginations are limited by our prior poor choices.
Is allowing one’s self to become lost in a religious echo chamber that ridicules and dismisses all opponent positions with fully considering or understanding them a good or poor prior choice?
Free-will exists in principle through the wiggle room of necessary relationships. How many word problems can you make in which the solution is the number 1?
😂🎉❤
Keep a dream journal, and rewrite each dream with a minimal amount of tweeks such that it forms a word problem whose solution is the number 1.
This will bridge the gap over time between the two parties involved in what Cormac McCarthy called 'The Kekulé’ Problem'.
Hi Closer to Truth, I do love these videos!, we always get such stimulating ideas from the speakers. I am deeply fascinated by the detail and depth to which people can reach to sustain ideas that they have simply imagined!. The whole concept of 'free will' comes from that fanciful side of the human mind that transcends reality that does not require any physical evidence to support it.
I do think that in this case we need to start with some stricter definitions, the question put in the video caption, 'can free will work' requires that work be defined. This could simply be that the idea can be incorporated into all sort of ideas and cognitive delusions without any material effect and without needing to conform to any of the natural laws of science where the coherent sequence of cause and effect must be clear and repeatable. All the parameters that I would apply to the concept of work, but that would deny the 'reality' of concepts, thoughts and ideas altogether.
It might also be necessary to establish a strict definition of 'free', again does that imply absence of any restriction or external influence?.
All that aside I assume that within that realm of fantasy where most people spend most of their conscious time, the environment of warped observation, desire, intention and design, where individuals would like to establish some credibility for their imaginary concepts that freedom of thought is absolutely essential! as soon as anyone starts to insist that such behaviour must be in any way regulated, restricted or shackled is anathema!, the whole point of cognitive delusion is that it is immune to any criticism, challenge or amendment.
Cheers, Richard.
Finally! Someone addresses the free will question in a sensible way. Emergence of the mind and and the resultant possibility of top-down causality supersedes determinism.
It's frustrating that I don't have the free will to pay more attention to the content of all the videos, instead reading comments which are mostly mediocre at best in their rationality. Imo of course.
I think no one sums it all up better than Sam Harris and Robert Sapolsky
too bad you didn't have the willpower to explain what Sam Harris and Robert Sapolsky summed up, exactly. I'm sure they summed up a lot of things. Talk about mediocre comments....
@@dr_shrinker I wasn't trying to personally insult anyone, nor explain what Sam and Robert have gone in depth about.
People here often already know their basic arguments and can look up more for themselves if wanted. Did you mean will power or freewill? I had neither anyway for either meaning haha. also just to make it clear, I was referring to the mediocre logic and rationality of many of the comments. Have a good day!
@@Sylar-451 , I don’t know of Sam and Robert, so it would have been nice to know what you meant. Free will and will power - It takes will power to operate freewill. However, I just typed the wrong phrase. I meant will power because I assumed that’s what you wrote. I should have said freewill. I never bothered to re-read your comment when I made mine. I misquoted you.
@@dr_shrinker no worries, i thought that may have been the case. hmmm my reply and links are disappearing, maybe I cant share links on here. but if you search their names and free will there's plenty of content that I think is valuable.
@@Sylar-451 yeah. UA-cam hates links. I learned that too. Thanks. I’ll look them up
You always choose your preferences. Freewill is the illusion that your choice was not a preference - when in reality it was your true preference and our preferences are beyond our control.
Can a person choose the things they love or despise? Can a person control thoughts that come to mind? Can a person “get that song out of their head?” Can a person “just cheer up” after the loss of a loved one?
No. Freewill is a mirage.
Your entire life is a Mirage. 😂
truisms and assertions. I prefer lobster, but due to their higher price, I'm eating crab this New Year's celebration. You will say I truly preferred crab because they were affordable. And as evidence you will point to my choice. I will laugh at your simplistic understanding and insist that no, I still prefer lobster. Then I will point out that you're just labeling everything I choose as everything I prefer. But given a list of general preferences for anyone, you will still be hit and miss with regard to predicting their specific actions throughout a day.
@@santacruzman Because we as humans are fallible and finite, our knowledge and ability to predict human behavior will always be incomplete.
@@santacruzman laughing doesn’t make you right. It makes you appear unhinged. Don’t do that.
Preference depends on the nature of the choice. Are we talking about taste preference or buying preferences? Those are two different things. If I ask what you think tastes better, then your answer is based on taste. If I ask you what you can afford, then you choose based on price -- both of which are preferences of a different nature. Another choice of a different nature would be If I ask what is more important, taste or price? Then you'd have to choose what to base your decision on...taste or price? -- preferences of preferences of preferences.
This is s very nuanced topic, try looking at a situation in its entirety. To think taste is the only consideration used to decide your preference is like being a monkey whose hand is caught in a monkey trap; short sighted. I would think you’re much smarter than that.
@@dr_shrinker . . . like I said
Excellent
Every action has TWO REACTIONS...an EQUAL reaction AND an OPPOSITE reaction.
The electron calls the proton evil and the proton calls the electron evil, and the nuetron laughs at both of them.
Why talk about “really deep free will”? Having the ability to choose and make decisions from among the options available to us (i.e., from the options one’s environment presents to one) seems, if not free will enough, at least the only free will we as animals living on this planet, in this reality, are ever going to have. It doesn’t mean life is fair or that we all have equally fair options available to us, but that’s a whole other issue. In the best of cases (which I do realize is not the case with everyone in every situation) it does mean, however, that we can find pathways to push forward in, in the hopes of bettering our lives. But , of course, luck and chance will have a role to play here was well.
"..from among the options available to us" from Nature?
Does Nature "offer" choice? Or is choice, and therefore freedom, a matter beyond the the physical body? The brain and senses and body of man are provided by Nature. Is language therefore a necessary outcome of Nature?
The question of necessity hangs on the difference between command and communication in language. Ants and bees and apes all "communicate" with each other, but do ants and bees have the option of disobeying those communications? Apes on the other hand have gestures and sounds, is their behavior controlled and governed by these sounds and gestures? To some extent yes, but the true answer is not wholly. It may well be the same with ants and bees I would not know.
How if Nature "offers" choice does Nature deter choosing?
@@kallianpublico7517From what I understand, scout honey bees return to the hive and make complicated “dances” that inform the rest of the hive where new sources of nectar have been discovered. And many animals fine tune their communication calls to differentiate between things like “threat from the air” or “threat from the ground”. All fascinating, but how does it pertain to whether we and other animals have free will or not-which I define as the ability to choose between the different options available to us?
@@longcastle4863 do you get to chose between feeling happy or sad?
@@dr_shrinker According to the Greek philosophers Emotion was involuntary: It was provoked. Somewhat like the knee reflex. To the extent desire was "invoked" by the thing one desired, it too might be involuntary. "Do I love you because you're beautiful, or are you beautiful because I love you?"
To the Hindu swamis and Buddhists one CAN choose to be happy or sad or detached. I assume the choice is always there. Is it therefore a matter of ...practice, like throwing a curveball?
@@longcastle4863 My contention is this: there is no choice without meaning.
Does a computer have a choice in what it does? Does Siri or Google or Alexa understand you when you speak, or are they dumb bees 🐝 merely responding to a given prompt or stimulus? Do computers have "Instinct" without survival, or is it just programming?
To the extent creatures have "language" the have a wider variety of meaning. Cries for help or signaling for danger are meaningful, and indicative of a susceptibility to meaning; but meaning given by language has a wideness and scope one wonders what "mechanism", if any, is it from? Nature or something else? Is survival, and therefore evolution, natural? Is survival and evolution at odds with Nature?
Well done. Love the back and forth. Robert is so good at bringing to the surface the key differences in perspectives. These interviews are never “a walk in the park” even if the interviewee thinks they have it all figured out.
To FREE OR NOT TO FREE, THAT IS THE QUESTION. Good discussage. Whether tis nobler . . . etc etc.
I was thinking of Prof or Dr Brown, Warren Brown. He mentioned something I haven't fully evaluated, but have always wanted to say out, plus do.
So many here mistake science for their own emphatic belief. We must maintain humility in what science knows, vs what is yet unproven. When we create dogma our mind closes. 'No free will' is still just a position, still very much debated. We don't even comprehend consciousness, emergence is a developing concept, etc, so a bit early to conclude emphatically there is no free will.
Is there not an issue relying on our past experiences when considering a choice? I say this because as far as I am aware we have no control over what our mind serves up as its next thought. A simple example would be selecting a DVD from a collection of DVD's, why did you choose the one you did? What factors are actually at play in the decision?
0:50 no, you can have more freedom if you take the pieces of patterns and connect them inside. You don’t have to experience everything, look at movies and how we see creatures that never existed. It’s so simple but we missed it lmao. The body is a reflection of earth, an environment for changes and we absorb the details but conscious allows the guidance of reflection instead of just reflecting the patterns now the patterns can flow into different states and connections because it exists as one inside us and so we can manipulate it to different forms. That’s also why we can throw free will out the window and just follow something or someone and let it control us. Like did a guy research cancer under his own will or did the grief or excitement push them? What pushes you? Your goals, understandings, everything? It’s not the patterns but how we grow in connection.
Free will… well first you have to have a will, then understand what freedom of will is. To have a will one must become many. To do this you must absorb things, doesn’t have to be a full planet but the connection of the word planet to the image to the sounds to the other things like atmospheres and stuff so that we can reflect it. If someone else teaches the word and we absorb then we reflect. Gaining more can allow connections and those connections are the guides. We use the guides to have choices so a little more freedom and then connect more, absorb more, evolve and that’s how thoughts are here today but also that’s how the physical combos are here. And it’s not just freedom of will but the reason why so much can be made different. There is the break down which isn’t really “breaking down” but connection to limited pieces such as how sound is limited to being heard by ears or how good is limited on ways through the body’s processes. Free will is grown through understanding and that’s why conscious decision making isn’t 1 thing but it depends on what’s in your consciousness. What have you attached to and understood to reflect. I mean we do it naturally with emotions and other things. That’s why we get told to think before we speak, consciously think on something before responding or your will is just a reflection with no direction besides basic reactions so it’s not that free, a slave to emotions and repetition. Think before moving or you can walk into a river and drown. It’s obvious but so big it’s hard to connect all the dots and see it. Like potential, everyone is potentially everything in connection but we chose to be this by our reflection or evolution. If i think about things and make new connections it’s like laying a road down or a word to reform a sentence. Humans are no different but a little more complex and the machine that made us is pretty hard to control so we gotta look at the patterns like alleles and biology and chemistry. Mapping the connections so that we can understand and see more. Expanding in all directions and forms.
8:49 the penny drops: 'free will can exist due to my strongly emergent brain states. And these weren't causally determined because they were determined by causes in my... oh, ummm. Ok'
If you see free will as options and consequences. How much free will does a slave have ?
Hmmm ! Free will seems very situational under that definition.
There is a moment where freewill stops working completely! When you're in an airplane which is going to crash in another 5 minutes ...
evolution 'created' brains to generate novel adaptive behaviors. Agency is hard wired into the brain. Will has its causes, but it also has its effects.
We know we can make decisions. The conditions vary.
Very often we have good reasons for making a particular decision.
We sometimes make arbitrary decisions by tossing a coin.
...are we the responsible agent....agent responsible...responsibility with...
If any of us had Mozart's genes and environment, we would be Mozart. To deny this is to postulate the absurdity that identical circumstances do not necessarily produce identical results.
Interesting -- this guy uses the turn in physics to information - a sort of information fundamentalism - to counter physical determinism, but oddly suggests it wasn’t physicists who invented this
There are a great many things that are entirely not physical.
As we all know, humans have invented many concepts.
A good example is "goodness".
there are total 21+ 6 Fundament laws which rule the connectivity between minds & consciousness all around
much of our clockwork determinism that seems so intuitive feels uneasy at the failure of cause and effect at the quantum level.
Not with bad humanity. Man's past and his destiny are written, however free will is in the individual. It's the impression,the imprisoned min d , the influenced son , what do you think the apple 🍎 means! Ametafore hello,Now Our Answer is Here? NOAH. What do you want to know.
Wow that was truly fascinating thanks- again!
Since free will does not exist, it is logical that we insert factors that modify the behavior of others according to our convenience. Responsibility exists in the sense that we make the target of our manipulation those who can harm us.
Reality shows very evidently that each effect resulted from a multiplicity of causes converging on what we call the effect. The causes simultaneously affect what is affected.
No. Every human decision results from causes contemporaneous with the decision. Those factors are not saved in a buffer. They act on the selector in real time. They are not prior.
Your free will consist of acting or not acting on the thoughts and feelings which arise within you; thoughts and feelings which you didn’t choose to have.
Cognitive Therapy is all about choosing how you think about things.
In 2002 a human brain- Mark McCutcheon- discovered the CAUSE of gravity. “The Final Theory: Rethinking Our Scientific Legacy “, Mark McCutcheon for proper physics. QM classicalized in 2010: Forgotten Physics website. The “creative nothing”, Max Stirner,1844/2017 Landstreicher translation. Stone Age physics here: move on.
No soul needed.
The potential of zero point energy shows in my opinion.
That our material reality is an emergent property of a deeper more complex system that we can’t measure.
Robert introduces Warren Brown as a physicalist. At 6:21 Brown leads into discussion on agency & information - "... at every level in biology its becoming increasingly apparent that there are non-reductive properties." There's a *lot* to unpack - in the interests of brevity, I'll just say that free will is best understood when we assume association (CS Peirce) & meaning as fundamental for all agents throughout all levels. That is, every agent makes choices by associating meanings. Every agent has to "know how to be" & free will is integral to its ability to learn, by making associations. Free will applies to *all* living agents, not just humans, & case for physicalism becomes very weak, once we factor in association as fundamental.
So he chooses (free will) by precedent, but says nothing at all about inspiration, that comes from without that precedent.
This is no different to those that think 'outside of the box'.
How can you think 'outside of the box' if 'outside of the box' is 'beyond your comprehension', because it has 'never been comprehended' ?
As nature certainly doesn't indicate any purpose, we must assume what is most beneficiary to us as possible to be realized and proceed attempting it.
If we assume this is not possible (= nature permits anything, but this single possibility), then there is no point whatsoever in searching for knowledge.
What is most beneficiary to sustain evil (predation, disasters, diseases ~ which include all violence ~ and death) free life function is, if the laws of nature we must discover for PREVENTION of evil are finite and deterministic, while those necessary to perpetuate life function without evil are infinite and probabilistic, so that free will exists only for positive (in the common usage sense: good, right,...) sequence of infinite functions. while negative sequences are finite and deterministically preventable.
This implies negative and positive in physics and mathematics must first be made compatible with the common usage of the terms (which at present is not the case), for then we can particle physically specify and identify the events inside (or outside) the earth that could cause harm to life function before they occur and rearrange them positively before they reach the surface of the earth to harm any being.
If anybody is interested in knowing the mathematical model for this purpose I'll gladly forward it here.
The idea that free will is supplemental to the human mind, Dr Brown uses the word "efficacious", that free will can replace whatever is in 'mind', started as a reaction to the idea that there are hallucinatory objects, in particular Edwin Holt's New Realism. There was a publication in 1920 called "Essays in Critical Realism" that began with the premise of supplemental or "efficacious" mind. Critical Realism includes a diverse group ranging from George Santayana to Roy Sellars to Alfred Lovejoy and Durant Drake.
2:21 ... physics is both reductionist and determinist and as soon as you begin to think about dynamical systems you now have emergent properties that are causal and high level like uh evaluating a scennario about future action that is also a cause in the world that is has causal impact it's efficacious my thinking is efficacious even though I'm a physical system so closed it the terminology bothers me but 3:01 are all of the dicisions that you make determined by prior physical actions in the world 3:08 I am a complex enough agent to evaluate and have enough in my memories and imagination to think about a number of possibilities for the future and I also have a whole lot of things of various kinds that I've learned on which I can evaluate those and I can use those evaluative possibilites to evaluate those actions one way or another in the future so I think I legitimately choose in a way that's not determined it emerges out of things that I've learned but it's not totally determined 3:52 that would counter what many physicists say that the world is a deterministic world even if you factor into it at the most fundamental level the probabilities of quantum mechanics because as the all uh decohere or work together that the system of the world may be may have some fuzz because of the quantum mechanics but the every previous uh action will cause a subsequaent action and so the history of the world is determined in that sense so even though you think you are making decision that you're totally in charge of in reality you're not 4:28
Can a thought be a living thing in and of itself seperate from the thinker that uses the thinker as a living being uses its environment to consume resources and reproduce? Could a thought itself create rhe reproductive necessity of communicating itself to reproduce and evolve?
Thanks!
Lose the capacity for speech and thus relation
More intelligent predators can still game your actions at that
Overpopulation incentivises competition over cooperation..
so that would be the means of maintaining the animal impulse of freewill in humans
Quantum phyysics after 100 years of successful experiments proves once and for all how a scientist thinks can change the course of a experiement study the results yourself ? .
You are mixing up the physics of the quantum system with classical mechanics. Because of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, there is no such action as backward causation. In the classical universe, we cannot change the course of an experiment after it happens. Consciousness is part of the classical world. Because classical rules break down at the quantum level gives no reason to support or deny Free Will.
physical brain awareness of quantum consciousness and free will?
Huh?
This man said nothing.
Said the man with no ears
Hearing and listening 🎧🎶🎶🎶, are two 🕑 different things? The beginning of time and the end of time has to be simultaneous. I'm going to answer every impossible question ⁉️ Man has, how is this, how can someone know the truth?
@@longcastle4863 hello I am him, you know the 2nd coming, I know all. What is it, you know? Nothing !
Free will (or the ability to make choices given the options and pathways available to us) did not emerge and evolve in living creatures as a result of moral concerns, but because of adaptation and survival needs. Only later, especially as we Homo sapiens began living in larger and larger communities, did it become evident to us that our ability to make conscious choices and decisions was relevant to moral issues as well..
You needn't add "later" as society and culture are also a part of the typical human being's environment.
@@santacruzman Sorry, I was editing down and shortening my comment to make it more to the point, while you were making your response. Just wanted to let you know in case that changes how you would have responded. But I think you’re correct to some degree, if I understand you correctly. Because I’m sure when we lived mostly in small hunting and gathering communities that there was some level of understanding that fellow group members chose to behave in either good or bad ways relative to the group. There is a peer review paper (somewhere) that documents a troop of monkeys beating up a fellow monkey and ostracized him for a period, after he made a fake predator call so he could have sole access to sone newly discovered fresh berries. So I may be overstating my argument a little.
@@longcastle4863 Thanks, longcastle. Really, my point is more about the nature of human environments - they contain other people and their artifacts (I think the scope of morality will typically extend beyond just the interpersonal and the cultural). The evolutionary benefit of a moral sense is just another name for our bringing cognitive resources to bear on the ongoing negotiation of our environments. Although morality evolves with "the times," I believe it was, practically speaking, always there. Actual environments are too complex to ever be encoded in DNA (e.g., the location of things like escape routes, or safe hiding places, i.e., the _right_ place to be when those surprise circumstances present themselves).
The universe is NOT deterministic! If any event is truly random then free will absolutely exists, and quantum physics is probabilistic, NOT predetermined!
Random chaos is not freewill. It’s a process that is outside of control and therefore cannot be decided by a persons will.
@@dr_shrinker By definition, any random event that can't be predicted validates free will because each random event has a "butterfly effect" that will affect all other events from that point in time forward.
@@michaelbartlett6864 how can you have a say in a decision that is not made by you, but by chance? That doesn't even make sense. That's like saying the defendant has freewill when a jury decides his fate. Umm. No.
@@dr_shrinker Peoples lives and events that occur in them are determined more by our conscious decisions that are made in basically three different ways. Many are made emotionally, while some are made logically, and many are an infinitely mixed weighted combination of both. The timelines of our lives generally follow the path that we lay out for them from the time we become sentient and throughout our lives.
If you want to see the difference that your conscious decisions make on your reality timeline, try this experiment. Make a conscious choice to let any significant decisions you make for a set amount of time be determined by a coin toss or cutting a deck of cards, a purely random act of chance. I assure you that the events of your life's expected time line will change drastically!
@@michaelbartlett6864 I don’t think you understand the point. Random chance is not free will. It is no will at all actually. This is commonly understood.
Your experiment will not prove a thing. How am I supposed to know what differences a coin toss would make in my life, if I can’t live the life “without” a coin toss to compare the two?
An intelligent logical materialist ….imagine that . Though I’m not and would never ever be a materialist, I enjoyed listening to this smart logical man 👍.
Intelligent scientists are a surprise to you? As compared to what or whom, the intelligence and generosity of spirit of a Ken Ham? One of the loudest and most well known Christians in America, Canada and Australia today, who recently declared to all Christians that they should not worry about things like climate change or the health of the planet because God will create a new Earth for them after they die.
Never be a materialist.... regardless of any possible conceivable evidence? That's called a delusional.
@@TurinTuramber Keep dreaming Sparky . As if there ever will be sufficient evidence for materialism …🙄 Speaking of “ delusional” smh.
@@natashatomlinson4548 The material universe is on shown for all, that's a great starting point. You just let your wishes and emotions form supernatural conclusions which are not in evidence.
I consider myself a materialist but will welcome anything extra or supernatural if they ever come into evidence. This is the rational position.
@@TurinTuramber Silly , the “ rational position” is not putting words in the mouths of strangers on the internet who, for some very odd reason, you thought stepped on your wittle toes with his simple comment that wasn’t even directed toward you ( or anybody.)
And that’s just for starters smh . Secondly, the material universe is on “ shown” for all…and? Tell us something we don’t know Sparky .
Run along , dude- I don’t have time for illogical desperation .
Seriously ….
I disagree about the emergent properties not being determined.
You can have a collection of memories, but there should still be a physical reason why you would act on those memories one way and not another.
The idea that emergent properties do not entail reducibility seems a bit like magical thinking to me. Of course decisions in the brain do depend on programmable information flows, but that information is encoded in matter, and still obeys the laws of physics. Ultimately true free will does imply some kind informational input that is not random. If that does not occur, the system is indeed deterministic.
@@thephilvz But if there was an information input, then ones thoughts or actions would be partly determined by that instead.
The notion of free will just makes no sense unless you define free will loosely enough.
Although I've heard stuff about backwards time causation that may make free will possible but I don't know enough about it.
Once you realize it's the future(not the past) that determines the decisions of the present, and the past is simply memories to learn from, then it becomes obvious we have free will.
Im a compatibilist and like most things it depends on how one defines Free Will. For me Free Will is a unique capacity of the fact that we are a unique species with a developed brain and nervous system. This doesn't preclude that Determinism which states that every event in the Universe has a prior cause is true as well. Human beings have Free Will and are responsible for their actions in varying degrees.
Metaphysics doesn't preclude physics; physicists preclude the metaphysical(principles).
Imagine acknowledging illumination while denying Light. Imagine: there's persons who comment stating metaphysics and physics are completely different.
Those who acknowledge God do not preclude phenomena or things physical; the physicalists preclude God, principles, substratum, Primordial Cause.
No physicalist ever explains what the postulate "everything is physical" entails. They treat this as if it were a Principle.
Wisdom, Reason, Truth, recollection isn't popular today.
"Everything is quantum", "information is fundamental".
God was the only option available to thinkers for a long long time; sometimes because it was just so soundly entrenched in the culture, sometimes because to think differently could result in imprisonment, torture or death-because the religious were in power. Nevertheless, the religious had millenniums in which they were the whole game and were given free reign and, yet, they were never able put God in any equation or arrive at any scientifically verifiable replicable truths based on God.
>"Metaphysics doesn't preclude physics; physicists preclude the metaphysical(principles)."
I actually don't think it does. We know now that evolutionary physical models not only produce emergent learning systems, but also intentional behaviour, even altruistic behaviour. In principle there doesn't seem to be any practical limit to the behaviours that can emerge from evolutionary processes.
>"No physicalist ever explains what the postulate "everything is physical" entails. They treat this as if it were a Principle. "
This comes down to empiricism, which says that the only knowledge we have is our observational experiences. We give names to those observations, and the label 'physical' is what we give to causal phenomena. So far the only form of causation we have been able to observe and characterise is associated with those physical phenomena.
So in a sense you are correct, from a physicalist perspective everything that is causal is considered physical. On the other hand our sense of the physical expands as we observe and characterise new causal phenomena. From everyday 'objects' and 'fields' in Newton's time, to space and time, or quantum fields, our understanding of the physical has expanded and changed. That is because empiricism always follows the evidence of our senses. That's all we have, so that's what we rely on.
In this view the concept of a non-physical but causal phenomena is a non-sequitur. Empirically it's a nonsense statement. But what does -non-physical' even actually mean? It's a statement about what something is not. Similarly with 'supernatural'. Again it's a statement of what something isn't.
Maybe everything isn't quantum. Gravity, space and time seem to resist quantisation. Maybe information isn't fundamental, but no phenomenon we have yet observed is not informational. After all if we had no information about it, how would we even know?
Ultimately we observe and record and try to figure things out, but under empiricism there is no certainty. No absolute truth. There can't be, because there are always new observations. We can only ever accumulate more observations and increase our level of confidence in what we have figured out.
Not all physicalists see it this way, because not all of them have this view of empiricism. However it is my view.
(0:27) *RLK: **_"How do you get real deep free will in a purely physical system."_* ... Short answer: _You can't!_ There is no "Libertarian Free Will" nor is there any "Hard Determinism." Instead, it's a necessary mixture of *deterministic circumstances* (obstacles) and *free-willed responses* (navigation of obstacles).
... This is the default scenario that reality presents to us!
When you choose between chocolate and vanilla ice cream, your decision was not predetermined based on causal events stretching all the way back to the T=0 point of Big Bang, ... nor can you _personally choose_ to be ice cream.
The time wasted on these "Free Will vs Determinism" debates could be much better spent on other areas of "Existence."
If you went to the surface of Saturn, you would see clouds of gas moving round in extremely complex, but ultimately deterministic ways. But you are saying that here on the surface of Earth, your free will can make a spoon suddenly divert from its predetermined path towards the vanilla ice cream and go towards the chocolate instead, with no physical cause for its change of direction. That would be breaking the laws of physics on a macroscopic level, all based on a thought?
That might be what actually happens, but it surely demands some kind of explanation?
@@graphicmaths7677 *"If you went to the surface of Saturn, you would see clouds of gas moving round in extremely complex, but ultimately deterministic ways. But you are saying that here on the surface of Earth, your free will can make a spoon suddenly divert from its predetermined path towards the vanilla ice cream and go towards the chocolate instead, with no physical cause for its change of direction."*
... WOW! That was a loooong sentence.
If I stick my spoon in ice cream, it's because I *chose* to do so. Are you suggesting the clouds of gasses on Saturn can make independent decisions and are on equal par with self-aware humans? Particles have no other option than to do what they do. Self-aware humans have options. .... Easy-peasy.
*"That would be breaking the laws of physics on a macroscopic level, all based on a thought?"*
... Believing that choosing to stick my spoon in ice cream is violating the laws of physics is no different than a theist claiming that I cannot do anything without the supervision of an almighty God. So, are you "choosing" to think like a theist, or do you "have no choice" because the _Laws of physics_ are forcing you to think that way?