Sam Harris and Sean Carroll talking about free will
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- Опубліковано 20 вер 2024
- Very interesting conversation about free will. Sean introduces the idea of "different levels" when talking about human beings, determinism, free will and compatibilism.
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I curate content (edit little snippets of wisdom from the original material) and by giving it an original take and a coherent narrative, it adds value to the original content, plus makes it know to new people.
Man can do as he wills, but he cannot will what he wills. ~ Schopenhauer
Kieren Moore freewill debunk before Sam Harris
Free will is when someone decides for themselves what they will do, free of coercion or other undue influence. It is literally a freely chosen "I will".
@Peter Nguyen This is just the usual confusion that people fall into when thinking about this - In order to summon this powerful will (assuming that phrase actually means anything) you need to have the will to do it. If you were a rock, you wouldn't have the will to avoid getting shot in the first place. You can't pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, you can't "summon" a will that isn't a part of your character in the first place. That is what Schopenhauer is getting at.
@@marvinedwards737
People are generally deluded about free will because they think we have access to options that we don't. So when somebody does something wrong they think the person could have done what they should have done.
@@stephenlawrence4903 The notion of what we "could have done" is used to prepare us for future behavior. The past is unchangeable, but if we learn from our past mistakes we can do better next time. When you correct a child, for example, you talk about what happened and why they did what they did. You suggest alternatives and what would have happened if they had done something different. So, when someone says that, due to determinism, the person "could not have done anything differently", it cripples the process of correction. Also, that same argument that they had no control over what they did in the past logically implies that they will have no control over their future behavior. And that undermines any attempt at rehabilitation.
Wow these 2 never let each other off the hook. Excellent talk.
This was brilliant. A lot of times in such discussions people tend to talk past each other but here, both of them managed to dive deep, unpack nearly everything and reach the core of the disagreement.
Not quite.. even half way through the conversation sam was still insisting ok so we agree on determinism, which was clear much earlier in the conversation. Each one took SO LONG to make a point that they couldn't really hold each other's views to the coal. And sometimes when one of them had a winning point, the other just ignored it. Like Sam had a winning point re the puppet and teh strings. And Sean had a winning point re Sam illegitimately mixing the vocabulary of "you" and no choices.
@@boliusabol822 I also think those two arguments were key.
In regard to the puppet and the strings, I think Sean replied to Sam that if we could look at the strings then we would have to "be" Laplace's demon. And in the end of the talk Sean approves that if we could "see" the strings, i.e., if we could find a new way of understanding how physical determinism expands out to humans making choices then eventually the free will spell would be broken, he's open to that.
Being Sean a quantum physicist I think his argument that Sam or we shouldn't mix ways of thinking or labels in the particle and human levels makes sense. I would have to give it more thought but I think Sean convinced me that even though the whole timeline of history "could be" determined with the right data, laws and Laplace's demon's computational power , still it isn't written and we could be writing. Nevertheless, as Sean said towards the end, I'm open to change my mind given new discoveries or understandings.
@@Armando_Lara Regarding Sean's winning point, we perhaps agree, about not mixing the two vocabularies.
Regarding Sam's winning point, we perhaps don't seem to agree.. Sam replied to Sean and said "So the the puppet is free so long as it can't see its strings". That is what is implied by Sean's worldview and it doesn't make sense.
If a person could "see their strings" then their consciousness would be completely different.. it's hard to even speak of such a situation.. maybe they'd then only feel some sense of freedom in their consciousness, in a very random unpredicatable environment where they'd think "ooh that was interesting".
And sometimes we know what we are going to do given particular circumstsances.. whether that's at the neurlogical level doesn't matter re freedom.
The idea that knowing something more, would mean we lose freedom, makes no sense.
So Sam really did make a winning point there Sean had no sensible response to it. Agreement to that is agreeing to something absurd. Sam's point "the puppet is free so long as it can't see its strings???!!!" is pretty much a rhetorical question that picks up on an implication of sean's worldview!
"... You're saying that the lack of information that carves out a space for free will?"
---"Yeah, absolutely."
"Is it that a puppet is free as long as it can't see its strings?"
Nailed it.
This is by far the best free will discussion I have heard.
Kim bye: Read Kant. He has the best explanation on free will.
look up denis loubet on free will, he was on "the non prophets"
Sean is painful to listen to guy is so confused.
@@wochfps4386 “Ha, you understand English and can’t choose not to so no free will”. How did these people get an audience?
Free will is hilarious. Everyone debates it, but no one can define it in a coherent way.
Which is why it's an illusion.
I beilive it’s because as they’ve said it’s a mixing of levels which should not be done in discussion and so with out current knowledge it’s impossible to define it
We are inside a system. We have predictions and science to invalidate. So far , the natural world is all that was have (or at least have access to). Free will where agents have freedom in choosing, is incompatible with determinism. Our current understanding leads to determinism being the most probable. It's like discussing God, ghost, or demons. Some people feel those things exists, but we have no way to makes sense of that with our current tools.
It’s because free will is someone’s personalized thoughts that can’t be measured. A scientific hypothesis is free will, because personal observation is a part of the process.
The ability to do otherwise in any given situation
Sam "I only came to this show because I have no free will" Harris.
#originalcomment
William Scanlan how so
@@FootyFrenzyHD no, Sean's logic is delusional, like religious folk, all delusional.
@@skepticsinister a practicing physicists view is flawed?
@@FootyFrenzyHD wow that's pretty dumb analysis of Sam's position on free will 😂
Sam Harris was wrong. People can definitely ignore his words, because they do it all of the fucking time
Sean Carroll is one of my favorite people to watch . I enjoy his lectures and debates. I also watch Sam harris constantly , his adherence to logic makes him consistant .
Dont agree with these guys on everything that is healthy.
On the free will argument, Sam Harris just provides a reasonable sound explanation I am at a loss to understand the flaw in his case . You can test this yourself easily. Thoughts just pop into your mind There is no ' preview' to this process. You are searching for something, or something randomly appears in your mind . You dont consciously author it . It is presented to you out of the blue . If you get a contrarian thought , it also appears out of nowhere.
I dont understand why this is confusing or undesirable.
Understanding free will this way is liberating to me. Your compassion for other people's actions goes up .
I dont take the lack of free will as a get out of jail card for all my actions. It does down play the need for guilt or regret
@@joshrees3413 not consciously Josh , I mean try it , thoughts just appear there is no process of creating them
@@joshrees3413 well Josh we should except reality that we are given. Yes we live pragmatically as if free will is operational , but excepting the fact that we are not the conscious authors of our thoughts to me is humbling. Guilt, regret and pride are useless what value do they have ? If acts in the past now seem undesirable , then let the lessons sink in , it might provide you with different options. Humans are open systems that can be changed . Not knowing how certain situations will impact our actions moving forward are comforting too me .
When dealing with difficult people your anger or disdain is based on your presupposition that a person is acting out of choice they were free to do otherwise. I have found a little more patience for folks that drove me around the bend . It has increased my compassion.
I believe in determinism, that doesnt free me to act immorally or to fail to suffer consequences for my actions
@@joshrees3413 We are unfortunate beings to have developed intelligence to the level to analyse such matters. Animals don't feel the emotions you speak about because they are not conscious at the same level - they have no self reflection. If we reflect ourselves we compare ourselves to others and to our past self. We think about how we might have done something well, differently, at all or not at all. Some of us start to think about why we acted the way we did. Some of us think that we couldn't have done it any differently.
In the end we can only do what we do, we are no different to the animals. There is no reason to feel pride - I am good at certain things, and have spend more time working on those things because it is naturally easier. Should I feel pride that I am quite good with a guitar while someone else doesn't even know what a chord is? If I hadn't been exposed to music at home and school I would be that person.
If I do something that hurts someone else, and I didn't intend it then should I be punished? If I did intend it? Why? If its the same outcome, the same harm and suffering??
a good way to conceptualize carroll's stance is to think about heat. we used to think of it as a substance that flows. now we understand it as the avg kinetic energy of molecules. it doesn't mean that heat is an illusion, it just means that we understand it better and on a different level. he's saying that the best model we have right now for human behavior is to include human agents making choices (heat). if we knew more about it (avg kinetic energy of molecules) then he's perfectly happy to talk about that level. but we just don't know yet how we get from quantum states to things like colors, reasons, people, baseballs, smells, pain and love so it's ok to talk about humans as agents making choices. the one thing you can't do it say something about free will not being real while also including the subject "I" because it free will isn't real then that whole level isn't real, including you and tables, chairs, colors, etc.
Where did the thought pop into consciousness from? The answer is a deeper part of the brain. The full brain and body are part of the unit human with free will.
First, define "will" in terms of degrees of freedom.
Second, define "freedom" in terms of what it is free of.
A person’s "will" is their specific intent for the immediate or distant future. A person usually chooses what they will do. This choice sets their intent, and their intent then motivates and directs their actions.
Free will is when this choice is made free of coercion or other undue influence.
Coercion can be a literal “gun to the head”, or any other threat of harm sufficient to compel one person to subordinate their will to the will of another.
Undue influence is any extraordinary condition that effectively removes a person’s control of their choice. Certain mental illnesses may distort one’s perception of reality by causing hallucinations or delusions, or the illness may directly impair their ability to reason, or it may subject them to an irresistible compulsion. Hypnosis would also be an undue influence. Another type would be authoritative command, as exercised by a parent over a child, an officer over a soldier, or a doctor over a patient.
Responsibility for the benefit or harm of an action is assigned to the most meaningful and relevant causes. Holding responsible refers to the practical steps we take to correct these causes in order to prevent future harm.
The nature of the cause determines the appropriate means of correction: (a) If the person is forced at gunpoint to commit a crime, then all that is needed to correct his or her behavior is to remove that threat. (b) If a person’s choice is unduly influenced by mental illness, then correction will require psychiatric treatment. (c) If a person is of sound mind and deliberately chooses to commit the act for their own profit, then correction requires changing how they think about such choices in the future.
In all these cases, society’s interest is to prevent future harm. And it is the harm that justifies taking appropriate action. Until the offender’s behavior is corrected, society protects itself from further injury by securing the offender, usually in a prison or mental institution, as appropriate.
So, the role of free will, in questions of moral and legal responsibility, is to distinguish between deliberate acts versus acts caused by coercion or undue influence. This distinction guides our approach to correction and prevention.
Free will makes the empirical distinction between a person autonomously choosing for themselves versus a choice imposed upon them by someone or something else.
@shashanka Mg I believe I have the correct answer to the riddle. I feel somewhat obliged to share it.
@shashanka Mg Yes. And I have no respect for Sam Harris's position of free will. I've been through his book twice in Richard Carrier's on-line course on Free Will, and Harris does not get better with age.
@@marvinedwards737 Sean doesn't seem to understand what's Sam is saying; Sam pointed out to him that even at the human level our thoughts seem to pop up out of nowhere, so regardless of at what level (human or atomic) you wanna talk about free will it doesn't seem to exist.
@@dolekanteel2178 Besides being wrong about free will, Sam seems to have a mystical view of the brain (a bit odd for a guy with a PhD in Neuroscience). Thoughts don't just pop into our head out of nowhere. They normally follow patterns of association. When Sam asks people to think of a city, the city that comes to mind will either be the most familiar or the most recent city you've thought of. These will have the strongest neural pathways. And, conscious intention plays an active role. When asked to think of a city, you set your intent upon recalling a city. And what happens when you study overnight for an exam tomorrow? You deliberately review the textbook and the lecture notes, strengthening the neural paths needed to recall the facts when you see the question on tomorrow's test. So, we can, by conscious intent, change our own brains.
The summary of this whole argument is that , the system i.e whole universe is deterministic but its individual parts i.e us (human beings ) have choices to make , in other words we have free will. For ex- a free horse can go anywhere but
when it is added to a cart , its will depends on the owner of the cart.
Humans as individuals are free but as a system we are bound. And , since human brain works more as individual than as a system it is more practicle to say that we are free than determined.
Like if you agree👍 , comment if you disagree
These two aren't really disagreeing here. Sam is arguing for determinism, and Sean is saying "yeah, there's determinism, but we still need ways of talking about emergent phenomena, and 'free will' does that just fine for choice-making agents." This is what Sean was getting at with his "chair" analogy. A "chair" is a mental concept, a way of thinking about a particular arrangement of atoms in space. On the purely physical level, there's just atoms in space, there is no "chair," yet we talk about chairs (and baseball, and love, and movies, and temperature) because these are emergent phenomena we experience on a macro level. Just as it makes no sense to describe a baseball game by trying to map out every atom of every player, base, bat, ball, etc. in a stadium, it makes no sense to talk about human choices in deterministic physics; in part because we don't KNOW the physics that determine each choice (even if we know they exist). Free will can have validity in this emergent "macro" space to talk about how agents make choices, and that's all Sean (and other compatabilists like Daniel Dennett) are saying.
So free will is being cited, because we dont know the physics of how choices are made.
Sam's right , so obvious
@Rick Henderson yes exactly
Right, he is redefining the term free will to mean something that does not involve your consciousness being some force that selects from possible futures, which by necessity would mean influencing the outcome of set physical processes that detmine the behavior of particles and their interactions. Particles behave according to strict laws, they do not change their path because your consciousness wills them to. And you and your brain are made of... particles.
I think the difference is that free will typically entails ultimate responsibility. That is to say that if we have free will, then we have ultimate responsibility. Ultimate responsibility can't exist; therefore, free will can't exist.
It's true that the will and choice-making are emergent phenomenon. Our choices are based on our will, but our will isn't free since it is constructed based on purely physical processes. So we have the freedom to do what we will, but we don't have free will.
Sure, but I think you're stopping at Sean. If you'd go back to Sam, he'd be saying "yeah yeah yeah, of course there's value to being able to use that language at a macro level, but the truth of the situation is important and has significant implications for certain aspects of life -- I'm not arguing that you should always be thinking about a lack of free will in every interaction in every aspect of your life. Whether that would have positive or negative consequences for a person's life is a separate (albeit interesting) debate. But we need to be able to acknowledge and discuss, in the correct contexts, the ramifications of the fact there is truly no free will at the core."
just finished watching Alex Garland's "Devs" and decided to learn more about free will/determinism
... or did I?
omg sean carroll and sam harris in the same location, hell yeah!
Yeaaaah❤
7:27 "We need to IMAGINE that human beings make choices." This seems to be the great weakness of compatibilism. Notions of accountability, punishment and retribution are just added on to the concept of determinism only because it makes the conversation easier. However, people can still be put away in prison, for example, without giving these retributive notions the credibility that compatibilists think they deserve. And to take it a step further, the compatibilist view also makes the more compassionate view of rehabilitation and redemption far more difficult to achieve for those who may actually deserve a 'second chance'.
It's fine, we're just locking up particles that did "bad" things, just that sometimes we call that emsemble "people"
Compatibilists are so far off the mark it's disappointing. Meditating shows the simplicity in restarting again in every moment, so the idea of responsibility is nonsense. Of course you hold someone accountable, but to believe they were the true authors of their actions is nonsense, it's all a snowball effect, but compatibilists like to trim that down to some true author that exists in every single one of us. I sense that in the near future it will be a common understanding that compatibilism is nonsense and determinism leaves no room for any amount of free will.
Where does your own conscious experience end, and your subconscious experience begin? These things aren't clear. Who are you? Are you just your prefrontal cortex? Your entire body? Your body and your immediate experience interacting with the environment? Saying that you don't have free will because your brain makes decisions for you doesn't seem very intelligent to me... What am I missing?
...everything.
As a matter of your own experience, you are downstream from all thoughts, intentions, and choices. They arise to be known by you. They are not authored by you. Here I am using “you” to mean consciousness, which I would argue is more “you” than things like your thoughts.
How can Sam be so correct on free will but SO wrong on the IS-OUGHT...
I don't think he doesn't understand it i think he does but he still wants it to be true. he is being a little too dishonest about it. kinda like when jordan peterson talks about religion.
Disappointed. I was waiting for Sam to pick up his chair, smash it over Sean's head, and say "I did that because I had to," or for Sean to pick up his, smash it on Sam, and say, "I did that because I wanted to." 🤪
He didn't do it because he HAD to not do it, and he HAD to not want to do it, which are the same thing.
one of my favourite books is "games people play" by eric berne, in which he poses that we are three ego states, adult, child and parent, and not only is each state going about it's business, but we interact with other people's ego states too, if the states get crossed they usually end in conflict. i walk around holding conversations, with myself, with my friends (in my imagination) and with people like sam and sean, again, imaginary. to talk about "you" really needs to be explored because the "you" of your brain is many things, i don't know if any of you out there think like i do, but there are many "yous" (that is many me's) inside my head doing things. (i have had therapy already i hasten to point out).
Free will is not about the choice we make (predestination), but about the choise we have. It's not about behavior or physics, it's a philosophical question. It doesn't matter wether we know what will happen or even wether we are aware of all the options to choose from.
What does matter is a possible inhibition of applying free will: A mentally disturbed person can have an irrepressible urge that inhibits free choice. That person is at least partly incompetent mentally and therefore hasn't got a completely free will at all times and in all circumstances. It's also possible that someone is somehow physically forced to do or not to do something, in which case the inhibition of free will is more obvious.
SEAN: Some day Neuroscience will reveal a coherent definition for words like "choice", compatible with experience. SAM: Any definition that seeks to evade determinism is inevitably wrong.
I Agree with both! Maybe they should phrase the definition for "free will" in terms of information processing and degrees of freedom!
Sean is more correct on that. Sean is not using any definition that evades determinism. Sam had some good point about the puppet and the strings that I don't think Sean addressed.. Also Sam's experience seems to be to be not compatible with his own idea because he admits to post hoc stories for his "decisions" and saying that's why. So he has to admit to making choices.
@@boliusabol822 That's more of an issue with semantics. There's nothing in Harris's argument that denies that people make choices. For example, I chose what time to wake up when I set my alarm last night, then I chose to get out of bed 30 minutes after my alarm went off, etc. However, there's no meaningful way to talk about those choices being a product of free will. All of those choices emerged from a series of previous states, which I fundamentally had no authorship over. The only way you can point to free will being a thing is by diluting the concept of the 'entity' in question (ie. the entity or person that is supposed to have free will) to the point where it's no longer recognisable with respect to any one person's conscious experience.
@@DenizenCain Sam Harris often says that you didn't choose this/that. That's part of his argument. Sean Carrol then says hey if you want to say that you don't choose then don't say "you". Sean is in favour of two layers of thinking. One of choise and free will and "you", and the other atomic. Sean is more correct than Sam. I agree with you that it's all down to previous states.
@@boliusabol822 That's just changing or diluting the definition of free will. If the base level is deterministic, then there is no way any emergent objects on a higher level is "free" on any level. That's all Sam is saying. You can call that "you" or "group of atoms" or whatever you want. But it's still not free.
Sean Carroll is the only match for Sam Harris. Great talk
It was a horibble talk sean is very confused
Sam Harris' presupposition on freewill is temporally erroneous (his argument begs the question) and is based on the misconception that Libet's experiments indicate a non-conscious cause and effect cycle. There is also the problem of freewill absolutism, which asserts that if you do not have complete freewill then you have NO freewill. Clearly that problem is semantic and suffers from being defined by philosophers who were ignorant or both genetics and evolution.
Firstly, to say "you could not have done differently" is temporally erroneous unless you can time travel. Since time travel is not on the table, argument is non-sensical. In fact, it is akin to saying you don't have free will because you can't change history. The question that accurately reflects the iterative nature of the human mind and our capacity for freewill is surely "Now that you know the outcome of your past actions, will you do differently?" This seems to be the practical reality of freewill.
Secondly, Libet's experiments that reveal a 300 or so millisecond "pre-cognition" is taken by Harris to indicate non-consciousness, so therefore no free will. Well, again Harris does this in error as he takes the decision cycle as existing only as one iteration that commences at the unconscious moment of activity detected by Libet. The mind's ability to react to sensory input cannot be realistically taken as a snapshot, as it fails to consider the currently existing state of the mind and the information, either genetic or learned and the state of consciousness that the mind is in. The last moment was conscious, a conscious decision has been made and this evaluation or memory is added to the mind, which in turn feeds in and pre-primes the seemingly unconscious, pre-cognitive activity that Libet has measured and Harris has used to boot strap his theory on free will. So the mind is in a constant state of pre-primed conscious decision making, subsconsious processing that incorporates conscious and unconscious signals from other parts of the brain and body.
Libet's assertion also fail to accurately take into account measurement error and experimental error - the person is told that at some point they are going to move a finger or flex a wrist according to some arbitrary experimental request - so it seems very clear, as Eccles suggests, has become conscious of the intention to act before the onset of the measured unconscious readiness potential that Libet and Harris take to indicate some from of pre-cognitive unconsciousness.
Thirdly, the absolute assertion that without complete free will there is no free will, is a semantic problem of definition and essentially a convenient argumentative anchor point that bases the definition in classical philosophy, not in a more modern definition that strives to include our genetic limitation of species. It is obvious that a human has a genetic makeup that differs from that of a bird, so for us to consciously decide to fly without mechanical assistance is a limitation on our freewill. However, it perfectly highlights the obvious; after we have determined that we cannot fly, we then choose to invent a mechanical device, through conscious decision making and iterative cycles of research and prototyping and testing, where the actor is engaged in cycles of thought, that may very well involve unconscious inputs. To suggest we have no freewill because we are unconscious of certain inputs is not logical and there seems to be no reason for Sam Harris to tie free will to consciousness.
Harris's hard deterministic stance is not validated by his arguments.
I agree with much you say but calling "you could not have done differently" temporally erroneous is too extreme. Science 'time travels' all the time. This is one of the main features of science... that one can logically look into the past (like the big bang) and logically predict the future (like how two chemicals will interact).
Well said.
Deception #10 - Misinterpreting Neuroscience
Experiments by Benjamin Libet and others reveal that there is unconscious brain activity that precedes one’s awareness of choosing in some very simple decisions, such as deciding when to push a button. The fact that the choice is being made prior to conscious awareness is used to suggest that our unconscious mind is in the driver’s seat, and that our conscious mind is just along for the ride.
Those making such claims seem to forget that, prior to that unconscious activity, the experimenter had to explain to the subject what to do and the subject had to interpret and internalize these instructions before they could perform the task. Both the explaining and the interpreting required conscious awareness.
After that, it didn’t really matter whether the conscious or unconscious areas of the subject’s brain were determining when to push the button. Both parts were serving the same person and the same conscious purpose.
Neuroscience helps us to understand how the mind operates as a physical process running upon the infrastructure of the central nervous system. It helps to explain what we are and how we work. But it cannot suggest that something other than us, other than our own brain, our own memories, our own thoughts, and our own feelings is controlling what we do and what we choose. The hardware, the software, and the running process are us.
Word salad at its finest...you will get plenty of support from theist.
Very informative comment ! Also Benjamin libets experiment's have been debunked by Aaron Schurger. Sam Harris's argument seems to be fully realiant on libets experiment's which show that he is isn't up to date with the latest research and wants to hold onto this idea of free will being an illusion to fit his world view and belief systems.
We do have the experience of making unconstrained, uncoerced choices, based on our 'will', i.e. our desires, wants, preferences, etc. So we have _experiential_ free will. However, our desires, wants, preferences, etc., are the products of deterministic events, and the mechanisms we use to apply them in our evaluations are also deterministic. IOW, we are deterministic systems performing deterministic evaluations, and it feels 'free' because _we_ are the systems performing the evaluations using our own internal criteria, and we don't know what the results will be until our evaluations are complete.
When people say their choices are free because they could make different choices in the same circumstances, they implicitly allow that their internal criteria would be different, i.e. they could choose differently _if_ they felt differently. It's clear that people generally don't include their internal mindstate when talking about the 'same circumstances'.
I suspect Sean's emergentist view is compatible with Isaac Bashevis Singer's paradoxical aphorism, that - at the level of human behaviour - "We must believe in free will - we have no choice"
If you can't tell the difference between free will and the 'illusion' of free will, the whole argument is pointless.
I think the illusion of free will has caused sean to misunderstand the free will idea.
When you go to a restaurant to order something, the ordering is not your choice, its ultimately from the interaction of atoms at the quantum level as well as other particles and fields etc etc.
As a physicist you would think he would grasp it.
How do you tell the difference between free will and the 'illusion' of free will?
@@aaron2709 Well I don't think free will exists, but the illusion of it does.
Although, if you examine it closely, the illusion of free will is an illusion and you can see your thoughts and intents etc just flowing naturally by themselves
@@colinjava8447 free will is an illusion and that illusion itself an illusion? are you serious? how do you live with this kind of thoughts? so if you're a materialist and a determinist then everything you're believing is true is in fact an illusion because you predetermined to believe in it, in other words you're own reason doesn't aim at truth but at what the laws of the universe are pushing you to, don't bother giving an argument why i'm wrong because i will be determined to say no lol
@@jeff_costello ok I won't bother then if that's what you want.
can't believe I never heard this up to this point, these two are fantastic. good stuff
i really can't get enough of both these brains
I am completely agnostic honestly. Both points are convincing. Which is the right way to look at us: with the "human" layer (there could be a layer for free will) or just with atoms. I think we need a more complete model of consciousness to answer those questions honestly.
Isn't it impossible even in theory to know the velocity of every particle in the universe?
This comes from the Heisenberg uncertainty principle:
articulated (1927) by the German physicist Werner Heisenberg, that the position and the velocity of an object cannot both be measured exactly, at the same time, even in theory.
So the universe cannot be deterministic, according to our current knowledge. This does not prove that free will exists, but it invalidates most of Harris's premise. There could be complete randomness at some point during the decision process or there could be some (bounded) free will.
we cannot determine position and velocity is our limitation and it’s irrelevant to free will. Universe will still behave as per its laws, quantum or not.
LaPlace's demon cannot exist in a universe resting on quantum mechanics. So, you're right.
The physical state of a quantum system is represented mathematically by wave functions, and those evolve deterministically by the Schrödinger equation. One of the things the Heisenberg uncertainty principle claims is that it is not possible to prepare the quantum state of a particle to have, simultaneously, definite values for both its position and momentum. If we prepare a wave function with a definite value in position space, its momentum state description will be described by a superposition of all the possible momentum values.
But as Sean Carroll usually puts, positions and momentum are just values we can measure. What really exists are Quantum states.
If we don’t have free will, it would be more important to protect society from criminals.
Someone please answer this, how can i access to the video recording of these debates ?
I only can follow Sean Carroll. To see my decisions as something magic like Harris proposes is too close to an alternative religion to me.
Harris clearly meant "magic" metaphorically as in mysterious but I think he's right and Mr Carroll is too but Carroll is just using the wrong word. What he describes is "agency". If Carroll used "agency" instead of "free will" they'd be in complete agreement.
It`s interesting that everything that Sean Carroll explains in his lectures describes how we don`t have free will and he admits that he does not believe in libertarian free will, which is what `free` implies. Yet he insist`s on misusing the term free will, when what he`s really referring to is consciousness. The behavior of the conscious mind, which we ignorantly call `choice`, is merely an effect of sub-conscious causality and a response to environmental stimuli.
what reductionist nonsense
It seems that what they are both saying (without saying it) is that we have different *models* of human beings as entities in the universe.
They agree on which models exist and describe reality in a valuable way. But they disagree on which models allow for a conception of individual identity, subjective experience, etc. And Sean Carroll’s point about “different levels” attempts to address this in an informal way.
One analogy might be to look at all the particles of water in Earth’s atmosphere.
One model of this system would account for every atom and possibly make claims about global fluid dynamics or the way it affects Earth’s thermal properties.
Another model might name all the oceans, lakes, and river systems, distinguishing those entities from clouds, rainfall, airborne vapor; or sub-structures like tsunamis, hurricanes, or even waves.
To make the connection to the discussion, we might say that Sam Harris argues that, once we have enough information about all the water molecules on Earth, then the idea of an individual tsunami ceases to make sense. We can see what we call a “tsunami” is actually just a small segment of a much larger and more accurate model of water on Earth.
But Carroll is suggesting that it’s okay for us to talk about those emergent structures at the individual level. It’s okay to think about a tsunami in isolation, mostly because it carries some important predictive power. The model of a tsunami is valuable and “real” in that sense.
Carroll suggests that Harris is inappropriately using the first model (where the state of all water molecules is known and used for prediction) and attempting to retrofit concepts from the second model (where less information is known, and where emergent sub-structures are identified and used for prediction).
And when Harris bring those concepts into the more holistic model, they lose their predictive power, and thus it makes no sense to consider them.
Carroll considers this dilemma to be a tautology, because of *of course* those concepts fail to hold their weight. They are being shoehorned into a model which doesn’t need them for any predictive purposes.
Lack of information is not same as indeterminacy in an absolute sense.
It is. You need to research statistical mechanics (late 1800s). It's the entire reason we understand thermodynamics and macroscopic variables in a system, such as pressure and temperature, which derive from microscopic variables, such as the position and speed of particles.
I know people are confused by this. but that's the precise problem. Indeterminacy in the sense of not following lawful behavior is different than not being able to measure and predict.
Interesting comments to stumble upon. I agree with H C Agarwal, here's why.
If you wish to observe small particles, you must deal with the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, so the act of measurement causes the uncertainty.
Take Maxwell's demon as another example. The act of the demon's information processing is how the total amount of entropy increased in the system.
In both cases we cannot determine or change the states without having an effect but that doesn't mean that the molecules don't obey the laws of classical mechanics.
So even though we can never directly observe all the nuances in the causes of our actions (without changing them) which happen on a macro level (the neurons and synapses in our brains are too large to be significantly effected by means of quantum fluctuations) we are nevertheless, entirely deterministic biological robots.
@@AstroFerko is Heisenberg uncertainty necessary to observe particles like molecules or atoms? Maxwell's demon wasn't a thought experiment in response to trying to measure the position of an electron (that came much after)
I know the 2 don't follow, they aren't directly related. They were just 2 examples I could think of off the top of my head that both had a similar principle of indeterminism at play, and no you don't need Heisenberg for measuring molecules, it was just an example. My point was just to say that the brain is entirely deterministic based off of the observed laws that govern its macro states (the states are macro relative to the quantum world that is).
That particular argument against free will is just vacuous. It makes me cringe. 6:00
"Use your free will not to hear these words?" Does anyone, anyone at all think that there is power behind this suggestion? There's nothing special about hearing, right? It's just one sense. Let's try the others.
"If you have free will, use your free will to go blind, or to have perfect eye-sight."
"If you have free will, make your body feel like it is experiencing pure ecstasy."
"If you have free will, drink gasoline and make it taste like a delicious milkshake."
"If you have free will, smell the cologne I am wearing from the back of the room."
But why stop at the senses if you have that level of control over involuntary biological processes?
"If you have free will, think up with the unified field theory right now."
"If you have free will, then grow your muscles and become the fastest person in the world."
"If you have free will, understand any language spoken to you."
If you don't like all of my examples above, that's fine, all I need is one.
Sam misses the mark because he was just claiming, he said it twice, that he was concerned with denying "the free will that people [typically] think they have."
People don't typically believe that they have the ability to choose the perception of whatever stimuli are bombarding their senses at any moment and call that their belief in "free will." This is not the most common perception of free will that people have.
Sam accepts that there are different definitional layers but allows interaction between these in the context of a discussion about morality. Sean doesn't seem to accept this.
What I don't agree with is that the neuroscience and subconscious is part of a separate layer when we're thinking about who we are. The shuttling back and forth between conscious and subconscious activities are part of the same conversation. So I think Sam is perfectly correct to discuss the moral implications of the one determining the other.
I'm convinced this changes the game when it comes to moral accountability. We might wish people behave in certain ways but if they do not. ..it won't be their fault.
Edu16 Underrated comment
Two really educated and emotionally mature intellectuals.
Fee will, decision making in either direction cannot be proven. Each side from a logical standpoint runs into self destruction. Both are true at different times in different ways. In essence, it’s like breathing. You breath without thought and at times you breath through or with thought! An in depth look at most everything, if not everything, in the universe works on a similar continuum.
Yin and Yang runs deep. Every thing contains it's contradiction
Listening to two people that are smarter than myself.
You are smarter than Sam harris that's for certain.
I think Sean Carroll explains it very well but Sam is being a little too stubborn. They could have used some metaphors to make it more clear.
In programming, we use 'random' method to get random numbers. Even though we know that they are not really random, calling them random is useful on a higher level. Sam Harris likes to think very fundamentally but talking in such way is just not useful most of the time.
Also, I wonder why he does anything if he thinks there is no free will. He apparently believes that we are nothing but observers who has no effect on the mind they are attached to. I think he needs to explain what he aims in life more.
I thought Carroll did an excellent job explaining emergence and how higher level descriptions are can be far more useful than fundamental ones. Just like programing languages are way more useful than writing out millions of ones and zeroes even if at the end of the day a computer is reading in ones and zero.
So yeah, in most sciences (and especially the social sciences) you can't work off of fundamental descriptions and do anything useful. Trying to derive an economic theory from Schrodinger's equation would be silly even if at some fundamental level all of economics is just a function of particle physics. So, you have to use idea's like people are agents which make choices (i.e. have free will). And if these higher level descriptions are still predictive, they are definitely "true" in a meaningful way.
@@Sphere723 if you haven’t seen, I’d suggest you to check Wolfram’s theory of everything. He mentions computational irreducibility, and also some pockets where we can use without going lower levels. It’s somehow connected this topic but couldn’t make the exact connection right now. I believe you’d find it interesting though.
From the puppet analogy:
The puppet is free to move in any way that is not prohibited by the constraints placed upon the system. Constraints in this case could be the maximum amount of tension the strings can withstand (snapped strings won’t move the puppet), the range of motion of the limbs as they’re attached to the body (can they move freely like a humans shoulder joint or is t restricted to planar rotation), where the strings are connected (a puppet cannot move a part of it that is fixed; if the head and body were one solid piece, it could not move its head independently of its body). So on and so forth.
By analogy, humans have different types of constraints; a schizophrenic cannot consciously decide to stop having an episode; an epileptic has no choice about having a seizure. These are physical constraints on the way our body can function. But within this scaffolding of constraints, it still remains possible for a choice to exist. The simplest example of what I’m trying to describe would probably be the random walk (statistical mechanics), and a very common example most people should be familiar with is the game Plinko. You have several levels of pegs evenly spaced inside a slot; the spacing is just large enough for a ball to pass through if dropped into the slot. As the ball falls down each of the levels, it’s path will be blocked such that it must either move left or right to be able to continue moving down. Now clearly a ball does not choose which way to go at every peg(it’s a chaotic system), but the point is that there is room for two possibilities (its possible to conceive of systems with more than 2 possibilities at every step). Furthermore, there’s no reason that the probability of each possibility is equal. I don’t claim to have any idea of what biological mechanism could be proposed which shows that a “choice” can be made between different possibilities that exist within the bounds set by the various constraints, but I see no reason to rule out that different “choices” (or world lines; I’m not equivocating choice with a conscious decision. It’s more appropriate to think of a fork in the road...) could be statistically relevant. Maybe the people that showed up there COULD have had a different choice...set up the world (using Maxwell’s demon) and run it over and over, and we may find that - as Carroll stated - what we see is not a discrete outcome, but a probability distribution. In fact, you could argue that IF there’s any other possibility, no matter how remote, than for them all to make the same choice, it would be the most unlikely outcome for ALL of them to make the same choice more than once; you’d expect some to make the same choice, and others may not (depending on what each probability is). This problem only becomes more prevalent on larger scales.
I feel like they're never disagreeing here, just talking about slightly different but related issues. Carroll is talking about the usefulness of thinking in terms of humans being decision-making agents and doesn't mind calling that "free will," and Harris is talking about people being profoundly wrong when they imagine what that "free will" is, that it isn't some kind of non-deterministic, non-physical thing that we are controlling. It's clear they don't disagree on the latter, but I feel like Harris didn't really address the more pragmatic element that Carroll was talking about. I also feel like Harris glossed over Carroll's point about levels. Carroll has made this point better, IMO, in his article titled "free will is as real as baseball." It seems that if we're going to get rid of talking about "free will" because we're all just deterministic puppets on a physical level, then we would also have to get rid of baseball or even temperature because those things also don't exist on a fundamental physical level. It's a good point to point out that there's other useful ways of talking about reality other than the fundamental physical level even if everything ultimately reduces to that level.
I don't think Sean's point about levels of description (different "ways of talking" in his poetic naturalism) stands up, and Sam didn't quite manage to get to the bottom of it. Sam was right to press on the ethical implications of either using the description of agents with free will, or eschewing the concept as an illusion.
Sean sets up a false choice. He says we can either use the appropriate vocabulary of agents making choices, or we can use an inappropriate Laplace's demon description of atoms obeying the laws of physics, and that the apparent paradox of free will is just a result of mixing up these levels. I don't think this is right. Here's two ways I can talk about doing a PhD:
1) I deliberated on what I wanted to do with in my career and eventually decided that doing a PhD was the right next step for me
2) Events occurred in the world which resulted in me enrolling on a PhD
These are both descriptions at the level of emergent phenomena, no one is mixing levels, but they rest on completely different understandings of free will. 1) says that the deliberation really is the *cause* of doing the PhD while 2) says that the deliberation was incidental (epiphenomenal in fact), the conscious experience of choosing had no causal power.
Sam sees the difference between these two approaches and is right to press Sean on the ethical implications. Sean wants to have his cake and eat it. He knows that his conscious choices have no causal power and events just play out deterministically, but he also wants to believe in the illusion of free will and accept the ethical implications of actions being worthy of blame or praise. This seems inconsistent to me. Either bite the bullet and admit that free will and moral responsibility are illusory, or come up with a story that gives conscious choices causal power. This compatibilism is a euphemistic term for epiphenomenalism (consciousness plays no causal role), but won't grasp the nettle of admitting that without libertarian (supernatural) free will, you can't take credit for your choices and dish out blame to others.
@@jonstewart464 Thanks for the thoughtful reply, Jon. Personally, I do think Sean’s “levels of descriptions” stands up and everything really just hinges on our conception of what the emergent level reduces to. To take your example, people take for granted what a combination of pronoun/verb like “I deliberated” actually means. “I deliberated” can just as easily mean-and I assume both Carroll and Harris would agree with this-that the laws of physics moved particles around in the brain of the agent called “I” and those particles eventually settled on a state where this “I” experienced the feeling/intuition that getting a PhD was good in reference to its goals/ambitions.” Within the laws of physics moving particles in the brain of the agent called “I” we can also include all the various external physical phenomena that helps to affect the way those particles move, which on an emergent level we could call “the environment,” “family,” “friends,” etc. The main difference in most conceptions of free will is precisely what both those terms reduce to. Carroll is essentially saying we can make sense of the terminology within the realm of deterministic physics, and I agree with him. Neither freedom nor will must be limited in meaning to the kind of libertarian free will that most theists think of the term as meaning.
I also don’t see how this view is incompatible with the points Sam makes about ethical implications. Sean is still agreeing that “we” are ultimately the product of deterministic physics, and this would mean that even sociopaths, pedophiles, or (insert bad people here) are ultimately the products of their biology, brains, environments etc. and that we should be more compassionate and look for cures rather than simple condemnation on the mistaken basis that “they chose” (in a libertarian sense) to be that way. On the other hand, just because “I” am controlled by physics doesn’t mean it still isn’t me doing the things I do. To think otherwise is simply to misunderstand what “I” am defined as. I fundamentally disagree that conscious choices have no causal power. Our brains/selves are, indeed, part of the causal physical chain. Our consciousness very much has a role to play in that causal chain, it’s merely that it’s not above/beyond the causal chain itself. Eliezer Yudkowsky has a good article on this subject called “Thou Art Physics” if you care to read it.
@@jonathanhenderson9422 Fascinating stuff. I'm really trying to make Sean's "levels of description" make sense for conscious agents making decisions, but I just can't. Poetic naturalism works perfectly for everything else in the world, and it would be great if it worked to explain ourselves as well, but it just can't do that - at least if we hold on to the idea of mental causation. When determinists like Sam say that free will isn't real, and reject the compatibilists watered down version, we're not saying that free will has no place in the fundamental theory. We're saying that the actions of conscious agents are precisely as free as the rest of the physical world: as free as the earth is to orbit the sun. So you can describe us as agents making conscious decisions, but it's a *bad* description.
So why would we want to cling on to a bad description? Because it feels to us, from the inside, that we are free to make decisions, not because it is a pragmatically useful description as Sean argues. It's a bad way to describe the actions of people, because it encourages us to believe that a person who had no chance in life because they were neglected and abused and ends up a violent criminal is truly blameworthy; while a person born into privilege and given every opportunity and ends up wealthy and admired is responsible for their success. This isn't correct - it's just moral luck. The best, most useful, most pragmatic description at the emergent level is to see people as "meat machines" whose conscious decisions are just a result of events playing out that they had no control over.
We can talk at the emergent level about gases, and rocks, and machines, and this works fine. But once we start talking about conscious agents making decisions, our emergent description starts to depart from the underlying theory, rather than coarse-graining it. This is the problem that Sean ignores. Microscopic physics results in, and explains, the behaviour of gases, and rocks, and machines. But no underlying theory explains how conscious decisions work. In fact it's worse than that: the more we understand about the brain, the more it appears to be a mechanism that can explain - without reference to consciousness - our behaviour. Sean's position is perfectly consistent if his view of consciousness is eliminative physicalism, but he claims to be a realist about consciousness (although he makes lots of eliminativist noises). Or he can be a realist but not attribute mental causation (epiphenomenalism).
You said: "I also don’t see how this view is incompatible with the points Sam makes about ethical implications".
Sean picks and chooses the ethical implications he'd like to take on board. He agrees that without libertarian free will, we're wrong to blame the criminal who was neglected and abused...and then he wants to take credit for his choice to do a PhD! Well, which is it? When do we bear moral responsibility and when is what we do simply events playing out?
You said: "Our consciousness very much has a role to play in that causal chain, it’s merely that it’s not above/beyond the causal chain itself. Eliezer Yudkowsky has a good article on this subject called “Thou Art Physics” if you care to read it."
Thanks, I think I will. At the moment, consciousness in the causal chain sounds to me like something that's going to overdetermine events and break the laws of physics by some kind of spooky downward causation. Maybe Yudkowsky can make it work for me!
@@jonstewart464 I think Sean’s article “Free Will is As Real as Baseball” is a good read on the subject too. The basic idea is that concepts like “baseball” (and temperature) don’t exist on any fundamental level of physics; they exist as mind-created concepts. Free will fits into that same category. I don’t think compatibilism is a “watered down version,” I think it just recognizes that it’s still useful to have a term to describe conscious agent decision making, even if the mechanisms behind that decision making boil down to deterministic physics. “Freedom” doesn’t have to be limited in definition to “freedom from physical determinism,” and that’s certainly not the only way we use freedom in everyday speech. I dare say that if someone were to say you “Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves,” you wouldn’t correct them by saying “actually, the slaves were no freer after Lincoln than before them because of deterministic physics.” I also don’t think it’s a bad description, it merely comes down to what you think the mechanism is behind the process.
I’d say it only “encourages us” to believe that if we don’t understand the mechanism/process to begin with, which of course most people do not. I don’t think the answer is to get rid of the term free will, I think it’s far more useful to discuss what the term means in the context of conscious agents acting within/under the rule of deterministic physics. Also, there’s no such thing as “no chance in life” as plenty of people have come from the most horrid of circumstances and made it out. Of course, we know that circumstances are a hugely influential factor on how people’s lives turn out, but they aren’t the only factor.
I’m not sure why you’re separating “conscious decisions” from the brain being a mechanism that explains our behavior. Consciousness is just our experience of being a brain (ruled by deterministic physics). As far as what label to put on it, like I said if you’re willing to say that baseball and temperature and, hell, even movies are “real” then you might as well say the same thing about consciousness. If you want to say they aren’t real because they’re mental constructs then you’re going to be throwing a veritable poop-ton of our language and terminology out the window.
I don’t recall the details of Sean saying we shouldn’t “blame criminals” or should “be praised for getting a PhD.” In both cases what I’d say is that it is, indeed, the conscious agent that does it. It’s perfectly fine to praise conscious agents for their good choices just as it’s sensible to blame them for their bad ones. “Physics made me do it” is about as bad as “the devil made me do it” as far as an excuse. Refer back to my last post, but “I decided to do X” is no different than saying “deterministic physics moved particles around in my brain resulting in a state in which it did X.” (In fact I hate saying the phrase “my brain:” we ARE brains, and saying “my brain” makes it sound like something we own rather than what we are). Punishment and praise are, themselves, tools designed to influence the causal mechanisms of OTHER brains, the former designed to deter certain behavior and the latter designed to encourage it. It undeniably works. Do you think a society without punishment would be better or worse according to your (or most people’s) subjective ideals? The main difference is that we should view both things (punishment and praise) under that light. We especially shouldn’t think of punishment as a retributive act but as a preventative measure. I also think this is what Sam is typically getting at: he wants us to understand that there are underlying physical mechanisms behind behaviors so we can focus on changing the mechanisms rather than JUST blaming people. However, until we CAN fix those mechanisms (Sam’s previously used the concept of a pill that can cure sociopathy) we still need to protect ourselves/society from such people, regardless of whether they were blameless for their mental/brain-state that makes them dangerous.
No “spooky downward causation” in Yudkowsky. It’s particle-turtles all the way down. Let me know what you think about the article.
@@jonathanhenderson9422 I read the baseball article before my last reply and I wasn't sold. Here's why:
Baseball is an objectively observable phenomenon, which is why it is described well by physics at one level, and in terms of people and rules, stadiums, bats and balls at the emergent macroscopic level. I'm with Sean all the way here, emergent phenomena are real, whether they're a constellation of social interactions (like baseball) or just physical objects like planets or chairs. But I won't take the leap to say that free will is in the same category and is therefore real too. Free will isn't an objectively observable phenomenon, it is a feature purely of consciousness. Free will is the internal, subjective perception of being free to do otherwise, and the compatibilists should back me up here. If I'm in the grip of some powerful compulsion due to mental illness or drug addiction then I don't have free will, by any sensible definition; but without such a compulsion, if I *feel like* I'm free to do otherwise, then that's the compatibilist's version of free will. That's not an observable phenomenon, that's a feature of my consciousness which only I have access to.
To illustrate, rather than baseball, let's ask if worker ants' aggressive behaviour defending their colony is real. Sure it is. Does the concept of a colony or nest have to feature in the fundamental theory of reality to make it real? Nope. Does calling up the underlying theories of the ants being made of atoms, being constructed according to a genetic code, having evolved by natural selection, throw any doubt on whether their behaviour is real? Nope. The same could all be true if the ants (which for the purpose of this argument we can assume aren't conscious and don't have free willl) were playing baseball - the example doesn't illuminate anything about free will.
So Sean's "different levels of description" works great if all we're worried about is accounting for objectively observable phenomena. It has nothing to say about the internal subjective qualities of consciousness, and free will is in this category. Sean's philosophy would all hang together beautifully if he admitted that he doesn't really take consciousness seriously - what he cares about is explaining the observable behaviour of things which *appear to be* conscious from the outside. When he asks David Chalmers "how do I know I'm not a zombie?" (Mindscape podcast) this tells us what we need to know: Sean is actually defending eliminative physicalism on the sly. If consciousness is nothing but observable behaviour, that's great for making your physicalist world view make sense, but it's patently wrong because we all know we're conscious - even Sean?
You said: "I’m not sure why you’re separating “conscious decisions” from the brain being a mechanism that explains our behavior. Consciousness is just our experience of being a brain (ruled by deterministic physics)"
I agree (but not with the word "just"!). I think consciousness is real, not because it's an emergent phenomenon like temperature or baseball, but because I experience it from the first person perspective. I'm arguing that free will isn't real - libertarian free will is nonsense, and that there's nothing free about compatibilists' watered down version; but consciousness is the only thing I'm certain is real.
You said: "Punishment and praise are, themselves, tools designed to influence the causal mechanisms of OTHER brains, the former designed to deter certain behavior and the latter designed to encourage it."
I absolutely agree. This is consistent with unbelief in free will and moral responsibility. I think that matching up this view of blame and punishment with belief in moral responsibility is a fudge - the implication of free will and moral responsibility is that we are truly praise worthy or blame worthy in the sense that we could have done otherwise, without reference to pragmatic actions that will influence our future behaviour. This shows how the compatibilist's view of free will is so watered down that if we take its implications seriously, they're identical to unbelief in free will.
I liked Yudkowsky's blog and he think he's absolutely right that me and my thoughts and intentions are all parts of physics. However, I think Sam Harris and I would disagree with Yudkowsky about whether "I" am real. I think "I" am just a bunch of sensations within the consciousness created by my brain. This "I" isn't a thing that can have control of the actions of my body, it's a trick played by the brain to make it seem like there's a central controller in my head - a neat trick which evolution came up with as an efficient way to control the behaviour of social beings. So emergent phenomena are real, consciousness is real, but "I" and free will are not real - they're illusions in consciousness.
Technically you can never have free will in sense of not motivated by the outer world. Matter of fact your thoughts are not yours, they are provided by the world.
I was at the ice cream parlor and ordered vanilla, but then I changed my mind and decided on chocolate. Then, just to prove that it wasn't a fluke, I did the opposite and chose vanilla again, then suddenly stopped, thought about it, and ordered strawberry. The manager was getting upset and asked what I was doing. I said I was just exercising my free will. So he said he was exercising his free will and kicked me out of the store.
Explain to the folks at home what an ice cream parlor is
You did what you did in response… get it (?) through no will of your own, to prove that you could decide , were compelled to vacillate, to be indecisive. The owner, a short tempered man, as his father was, had no choice but to throw you out.
Its pretty weird how they don't really cover the concept of recognizing and denying impulses.
Its pretty wierd how you dont reconize that the denying or reconizing of inpulses is just another layer of mystery
Yea denying impulses is only caused by an impulse and where did that impulse come from? Who knows
Sean's voice is a dead ringer for Alan Alda. =)
This may be this single truest comment in all of UA-cams!!!!!!!!
Neil Young's song Helpless.
"I experience a fundamental mystery in each moment around just what becomes effective..."
Would any Sam Harris fan please explain what that means?
"I dunno what I'm thinking man
Thoughts just arise, from your point of view they came out of nowhere
If someone were to tell like “say the name of any country” just pay attention to the moment after the question is asked and pay attention to when the thought of a country will occur to you you have no idea what it is going to be until it just pops up in your head
If our decisions aren’t determined by anything, they are random, and thus not free. If they are determined by something (whatever that may be), then they are also not free.
Fully agree with Sean. It is how I would see things (I'm a physicist too). Sam always mixes two levels of description, commiting what is called a categorical error lol.
Sam said if you drill down to the bare causes there is no free choices. However, if you do that, the very concept of an individual, closed, macroscopic agent also no longer make sense.
In the last part, Sam asked if there will ever be tension between these two levels of description. They never will, simply because one level comes/emerges out of another. They are logically compatible.
Daniel TTY just curious, if you feel I’m attacking you that’s not my intention please forgive me but I’m just wondering, are you also an Atheist like Sam & Sean? Again, just curiosity.
You're actually agreeing with Sam...
The "agent", in other words I or you, are illusions.
We use we and you and I, but it's just out of practicality and a product of evolution.
At no point did we *really* exist, so we don't have free will, period.
Conciousness is real, but being conscious doesn't give you the remote.
The hard problem of consciousness might never be resolved, but that doesn't we should assume that there is no connection between the physical world and the entity one perceives themselves to be.
Torste0908 it’s a philosophical question, not a scientific one.
Sean agrees with sam, but is so wrapped in his own knowledge that he thinks determinism is in compatible with "free will."
Also, quantum physicists take a lot of liberty to assume quantum properties effects the macro world the way they want it to... they still can't fully agree on what QED, etc even is.
Torste0908 “At no point did we really exist, so we don’t have free will, period.” What do you mean by that?
The key moment for me in this discussion is where Carrol says that the Sam should not use the term “you” when speaking at the deterministic level of description. It seems that he is making a valid point that while Sam is correct that the more accurate conceptual framework is deterministic with no free will. At that level there is also no ego, or self separate from our brains physical activity. This is below are normal level of perception, in which there appears to be both a self and free will. The logical extension of understanding that our minds create an illusion of the personhood or ego separate from our physical brains is that there is no free will. The concepts of self and free will are tied together.
So you are just an illusion of yourself? That's kind of a sad existence, isn't it? ;-)
Free will is an illusion just like the self is an illusion. Within the system of reality that our brain contructs that provides the self and the other as tools for survival and understanding, we have free will.
I wouldn't call it an "illusion" though. The brain organizes sensory data into a model of reality consisting of objects and events. When this model is accurate enough to be useful, as when we navigate our bodies through a doorway, then we call this model "reality", because it is our only access to reality. When this model is inaccurate enough to cause a problem, as when we walk into a glass door thinking it was open, then we call that an "illusion".
@@marvinedwards737 its all just semantics. I would prefer this distinction: we dont have 'Absolute Libertarian Free Will". All we have is "Practical Free Will" i.e. our experience of having free will (as human being, as given to us by evolution).
@@zorashoes6482 Sure. As a Pragmatist, I use the term "operational free will" for the definition that everyone outside of philosophy understands and correctly applies: free will is a choice we make for ourselves that is free of coercion and other forms of undue influence (mental illness, etc.).
The philosophical definition I call "paradoxical free will". It suggests that the choice must be free of causal necessity to be truly free. But without reliable cause and effect, we could never reliably cause any effect, and would have no freedom to do anything at all. So, the philosophical definition is an oxymoron and should be discarded.
The illusion of free will is a mistake over the meaning of could have done otherwise I.E what it is to have options and the sense in which we could select those that we don't.
So quite different.
@@stephenlawrence4903 Real possibilities exist in just one place, the imagination. That's where we use our model of reality to create potential alternative scenarios of the future, evaluate them, and choose the one we think will turn out best. And each possibility will occur to us, in a fixed sequence, that was causally inevitable from any prior point in eternity. Basically, determinism doesn't change anything at all. (Causation never causes anything and determinism never determines anything. Both concepts are descriptive. Neither concept is causative).
We shouldn't punish criminals because they obeyed the laws of physics
6:30 I’ve actually done this before spontaneously, turning off the language center momentarily to hear the words exactly as they are without any meaning attached to them. It was pretty trippy.
Did you choose to do so?
@@lysergidedaydream5970 my brain did, I didn’t
That sounds fascinating,, how do you do this?
@@lysergidedaydream5970 I did not
@@samdoyle3945 I’m not sure. It was after I had an ego death recently and it just spontaneously happen through introspection.
I'm sure someone said it earlier, but couldn't you lose the sound graphic? I find it a distraction...
Sam Harris has a consistent blip. He assumes that everyone has the same concept of self that he does. But this is untrue. People have varying ways of perceiving their basic essence.
Sam Harris seems to lean toward the mystical, which is an odd position for a supposed scientist.
No he doesn’t. He says the mythical is subconscious influence, which is mythical because he can’t explain it.
@@marvinedwards737 Spot on. I'm glad I'm not the only one is picking this up.
Compatibalists seem to be muddying the water by saying something like, "Obviously the way people think of free will doesn't make sense, so let's change the meaning". I can understand a philosopher like Daniel Dennett doing this, but I can't understand a physics teacher doing it.
I never realized that Ben Stiller was so deep. He seems so shallow normally.
Harris already makes jokes about his resemblance to Stiller
Well...the person speaking is actually Sam Harris. Ben Stiller is only the person in the photo that the video maker put up...(lol)
Sam Harris has a free will to decide to be Ben Stiller.
Mark Alden - One day quantum physics will reveal a way to tell them apart.
Sean Carroll debating Sam Harris is like Erwin Schrodinger debating Kid Rock.
Which one is which
Sean Carroll is spot on in this discussion.
Not at all, Sam nailed it
@@davedavids2231 yes, Sean's type of thinking will eventually die and everyone's thought pattern will gradually gravitate towards Sam's. It's simply inevitable as AI makes it the case that we're not the true author of our actions.
Our will has the freedom to do all that it desires and is able to do.
If our desire is to be greedy, it is impossible to do good.
If our desire is to be generous, it is impossible to do evil.
For the intelligent upper-half of society has always hoarded all the land and wealth.
People always have a problem realizing they dont have free will. The reason... humans are egocentric thru evolution for survivalgene
Programmed not to realize they don’t have free will.
I recommend these videos on the subject
- UA-cam, The University of Chicago, Do we really have free will? with Robert Sapolsky
- UA-cam, Sabine Hossenfelder, You don’t have free will but don’t worry.
- UA-cam, Cosmic Skeptic, Why free will doesn’t exist.
a person's behaviour is difficult to predict (to calculate) whereas the evolution of life on Earth as a single living system is deterministic and can be described theoretically within a physical model.
just because its difficult doesnt mean its not deterministic.
@@wochfps4386 yes, but deterministic behavior does not mean that it can be accurately calculated and unambiguously predict the fate of an individual, while gaining meaningful knowledge about the future of humanity as a whole, what will be much more valuable for all of us as humans)
but it would@@sergeynovikov9424
I don't think I am free in what I desire. I desire something and that's that. If I'm not in control of what I desire, how can I say I was the author of that decision?
Now I can act in favor of that desire or against, but that too is not in my control. It's cascaded down from all the experiences that I had and didn't have. At least in my personal experience, it's akin to flipping a coin. For example, say someone cuts me off while I'm driving. My initial desire is to express anger in form of curse words or maybe I step on the pedal and overtake the driver. Or, maybe I had good night of sleep or something good happened like small lottery or something, maybe I won't even get angry in the first place. So to say that I CHOSE to do this or that, seems incomplete.
Concepts like "free will" and "evil" are useful - that's why they evolved. It's probably dangerous for society to mess with them. Whether people do or not is, of course, inevitable. [The fact that different things "could have happened" says nothing whatever in favour of "free will".]
All one is saying by "different things could have happened" is that if the state of the universe (including any quantum effects) had been different, a different outcome would have happened. This doesn't make the idea of a "decision" resulting from "free will" any less of an illusion.
The points you've made contradict each other, and neither has anything to do with free will, which is what I was talking about.
I understand that you did not originate the points, you still stated them, and they contradict each other. _My_ point is that what Carroll said from 2:09 about what "could have happened" does not give any support to the concept of (some form of..) "free will" that Carroll seems to be espousing. The points you made/quoted also lend no support to the concept and in that sense have "nothing to do with" it.
Why did they straw man libertarian free will? I’m not sure I have heard the notion before that it would imply an agent to be able to defy the laws of physics.
Where do the laws of physics state that one can't have agency? ("Free will" is a bullshit term coined by philosophers that has no useful meaning).
I feel like free will is real but i can’t even construct in my mind a universe or set of laws in which it possibly could be true.
That’s coz it’s not ;) but is a useful deception...
@@sigigle my original comment was from when i was deconstructing from Christianity. I now strongly disbelieve in free will
@@spectrepar2458 icic :)
me2..
At 7:00 - the best possible way to describe the way people behave is to say people react. People constantly react to stimulus from the outside world, and they can only ever react according to their DNA profiled desires as influenced by their own specific environment. No free will. Like ever.
Lets say you have 100 human like robots: on day 1 all the robots are fighting each other and stealing battery juice as they compute that this is the best way to survive. Day 2 you introduce a social aspect to the robots, if a robot steals or acts in a negative way toward other robots, then the society outcasts that robot and that robot isnt included in the battery juice parties, we then see a lower % of robots stealing from each other and and doing so in a more secretive way. Day 3 we introduce a rule that if you steal you get locked into a cage, then we see an even lower % of robots stealing and they are even more careful of not being caught.
The point is, even if you see humans as not having free will, you still have to organize life as if they do have free will. Decision making is an emergent property, even if you argue "you" arn't making the decisions, well something is computing the factors and finally making a decision. Feeling bad for someone who does a bad thing would be going against our evolutionary properties that are meant to make societies work.
I think one can feel bad about that person and still believe they should be locked up until you can find a way to “cure” them or in other words, to make sure they won’t harm others in the future. The two aren’t exclusive.
I don't see why I need to feel bad about Drug Dealers that any day can kill your family. They are conscious of their acts, and they do it voluntarily.
When Sam Harris says "malfunctioning robot" and "pill that can cure evil", I don't see the difference to say "corrupted or evil soul" and "magical wizard-doctor that can mind/soul-control to cure you". He's asserting an extremely hypothetical object to make such example.
Sean Carroll doesn't care about freewill. He only cares about physics. He describes free will as a boring topic to think about. I agree.
His argument about it being a different way to describe human behavior is OK but he's using the wrong word. What he describes is agency not free will. He should have delved deeper into the morass of definitions.
Sam's message is not understood here. What he says is very profound. Decisions get made BEFORE they arise to a conscious level. Therefore there is no free will. This is a simple yet shocking truth.
Nikan RT
not really this is just retarded
Exactly.
Agreed. Sean has a point in that it makes sense to speak of people as agents making choices, but it only does in a superficial way. The deeper truth is that those agents are not making those choices freely by their own will, which is the whole point of the term *free* will. The truth of reality takes precedence over how "useful" it feels to speak of things in a certain way when the context is precisely determining what is true or not.
Sean's argument is akin to saying: "Well it's useful to speak of a guided missile as a projectile with the intent to hit a specific target, therefore we can say the missile really is an entity having intentions." It can be useful to speak about it this way, but it doesn't follow to say that it therefore *is* that way.
Max Thank you! You hit the nail on the head. Now please explain this to the vast majority of people on this planet (including the majority of philosophers).
Max everything can be said to follow from the initial conditions of the universe and the evolution of the system according to the laws of physics. However this simply isn’t the right level of analysis. What do you mean by “will?” Certainly something that operates on a very high level of analysis. It’s incompatible with the implicit claim that “free will doesn’t exist because the laws of physics governs the fundamental particles that humans are composed of.”
If determinism is true than what is the purpose of our life and our reality.
This "no free will" thing is weird. I get that our conscious actions are determined at a moment prior to conscious awareness. However, what's not to say that this prior choice is not also made by a subconscious part of our own Being? Responses welcome.
Infinite Blessings
Sub - conscious
You just answered your qn. No freewill without consciousness.
A decision made without consciousness is a mechanism, not a decision.
in the discussion of free will, it appears that each speaker does not immediately accept the opinions of others, because he does not understand or he has his own reasons according to his life experience. Telepathic neural transmitters also do the same principle, the truth is absorbed and then processed and spread back through the neural transmitter, then looping and returning again, then each individual can and also may accept or reject any recent information.
THE ILLUSION OF SO-CALLED "FREE-WILL" IS SO GOOD, IT IS IN FACT THE THIRD-BEST ILLUSION IN THE ENTIRE (KNOWN) UNIVERSE
We make decisions, not choices. Choice implies we are truly free to choose.
That’s ridiculous
Who thumbs upped this nonsense?
@@Drew15000 I did. Even though for most people, throughout most of history, "decision" and "choice" have meant the same thing, I think it's useful to make a distinction between the words - although maybe it's arbitrary which meaning we assign to which word. To clarify what Mr69elco meant, I'll use both words in a sentence: "A computer can make decisions, but it has no free will, so it can't make choices."
@@ilikethisnamebetter decisions implies you are free to decide just as much as choice implies you are free to choose.
@@Drew15000 So if computers don't make decisions (that is, give outputs based on their current state and their inputs), how do they work?
Until we can tell the future, we have free will.
it at least it'll feel that way.
@@timmyg44 That's all that matters.
Seems like a lot of people in the comments are missing Sean Carroll's point. An intrinsic property of a photon is its polarization state. This state is *completely* undetermined until it interacts with matter. Physicists say that it is in a superimposed state. Electrons have a similar property called spin. We are humans, made of muscle fibers, made of proteins, made of molecules, made of atoms, made of electrons, protons and neutrons. Underneath that level we are made of quarks. The theory of quantum physics, which is the most accurate scientific theory in existence, is *not* deterministic. We have free will because we change the state of matter every time we interact with it.
Sean Carroll makes the point using Laplace's demon, and although it's a good one I think it's lost on people. It's not possible to know the trajectory of every molecule of oxygen in a room. These things are not deterministic. They are probabilistic, the entire field of statistical mechanics is based on this.
I see no real argument in physics that suggests concretely that free will does not exist.
Sean Carroll himself would disagree with you about quantum physics not being deterministic given that he's a proponent of many-worlds, which is a deterministic interpretation.
@@rickhenderson2970 can you precisely explain to me how many world's is determinstic? My understanding is that it's fundamentally probabilistic.
The Shrodinger Wave Equation (SWE) is deterministic. What's indeterministic in QM is the act of measurement (The Born rule tells us how to find the probability of a measurement outcome; The Uncertainty Principles tells us how close we can get on momentum/position). How a deterministic equation leads to indeterministic measurements is a bit difficult to explain in laymen's terms, but here's the analogy I like to make: Imagine you have a line of gun powder (the particle) that splits in three different directions that's set on fire. You are the fire/observer, the fork is the measurement. The SWE tells us that the gun powder and fire will go in all three directions 100% of the time (deterministic), but if you ask "what is the probability I will find myself on the left-hand path after the measurement?" Then the answer is 33%.
With measurements, what's happening is that we're asking a question that can have two different, but consistent answers: the probabilistic one is about our experience post-measurement; the deterministic one is about the entire overall system. Many-World adherents say that the deterministic part (the SWE) is the part that's actually true, and that probabilistic measurement is an illusion created by restricting our attention to one state of wavefunction. To the "you" that went left it will seem like you only had a 33% chance of going left, even though from the "objective" perspective some version of "you" was 100% guaranteed to go left, right, and middle. The illusion is thinking that the "you" before the measurement and the "you" that went left was the only "you" in the process, rather than understanding that you (just like the particle) were in multiple states before the measurement, and your multiple states got entangled with the multiple states of the particle during the measurement.
There are plenty of sources online that explain this cogently, including one from Sean Carroll: www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2014/06/30/why-the-many-worlds-formulation-of-quantum-mechanics-is-probably-correct/ and here: www.askamathematician.com/2010/10/q-copenhagen-or-many-worlds/
@@rickhenderson2970 Thanks for the detailed response, although the laymen's terms are unnecessary. The square of the wave function is the probability that you might find a particle at some place at some time. Correct? So I find it hard to argue that this is determinstic- not in the same way that Newton's laws predict trajectories of particles. Also Bell's theorem- it's extremely simple to apply his work to polarizing filters. The classic three filters with two at right angles and one at 45 degrees in between; how could the polarization state of the photon be characterised by a deterministic equation if it is altered by the act of measuring it with the 45 degree angle filter? I am pretty sure this is a cogent thought that is accepted in the study of Bell's work.
Yes. The square of the wave function (The Born Rule) is where you get the probabilistic, predictive power of QM. The only proper objection to MWI is, in fact, that it's not clear how you can derive the Born Rule under that interpretation, while under Copenhagen it's just stated as an extra postulate. This is certainly an extant problem in QM, and Carroll himself has co-authored a paper (that he links to and discusses here: www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2014/07/24/why-probability-in-quantum-mechanics-is-given-by-the-wave-function-squared/) about how to derive it. AFAIK, there's no generally accepted solution; but all of the other interpretations introduce far more problems that are, in some cases, seemingly impossible to solve.
However, MWI is still a deterministic interpretation, because MWI relies solely on the SWE and the SWE is deterministic; it's just not clear why the probabilities of getting a certain measurement (The Born Rule) are what they are. If I go back to my gunpowder analogy, instead of each branch being equally probable (33/33/33), they might instead be something like 67/16.5/16.5, and we don't know why. But since all possibilities still happen in some world, it's still deterministic.
I'm not quite sure what you're stating/asking regarding Bell and polarizing filters. The importance of Bell in QM is in showing that you can't get any local hidden variables that can make all the predictions of QM. This leaves two options: either there are no hidden variables, or there are hidden variables and they are non-local (thus particles can affect each other at great distances faster than light speed, contradicting General Relativity).
Sean Carrol's opinion on free will is rather confusing. I read the book "The Big Picture" and that is confusing too. I don't understand what kind of free will he's talking about: it seems just a fictional way, in a higher layer, to describe something that doesn't exist. How can the lack of information create free will? It should rather create the illusion of free will. In my opinion free will can simply not exist. I totally agree with Sam Harris on this.
Can you define what the "illusion of free will" is supposed to be to a person who is merely an illusion? See, this is why philosophy has been bullshit since 500BC. ;-)
@@lepidoptera9337 scientists say that free will does not exist, not philosophers. Free will and consciousness are two different things.
@@MrClaudioAgostini Scientists aren't saying anything about the free will bullshit. You won't find a single physics book that even mentions this kind of thing. It's not science and never will be.
@@lepidoptera9337 Einstein didn't believe in free will, and so the majority of scientists today. Scientists don't study free will because there is no evidence that free will even exists.
@@lepidoptera9337 we are just made of particles obeying the laws of physics. Where do you get the belief that free will (the ability to not obey to these rules) is real?
Sam Harris came out on top here, but amazing discussion!
Brain activity is Deterministic at a given moment, but is contingent on previous circumstances to that activity…there would be no way to ‘predict’ the entire transcript of the show backstage with proper brain scans before the show begins as each utterance is a reaction, contingent upon, the previous ‘random’ external or internal stimulus- therefore unpredictable. The feeling of Free Will arises from the spontaneous choice at that moment contingent on unforeseen stimuli aforehand.
Educated men in awe of conciousness and existence always leads to long conversations about who knows more about nothing.
The issue is confusing the lack of freedom of ones will to the decision to act upon that will. Sure, my brain may know before my consciousness of what I will do, but it does not know for certainty that I will do it until I am actually doing it. The freedom of will is the choice to act, not what that action will be.
This is a debate between Sam Harris making valid points and someone who is just smart enough to put smart sounding sentences together but not smart enough to realize he’s only talking because he likes the sound of this own voice. His conclusions have as much basis in truth as would a 3rd graders.
Makes no sense to say that will is bound by causality because will is made of causality. It would be like saying a chair is bound by wood.
Will isn't made of just causality. For something to be an act of will, there needs to be an intention behind it. If you think that will is merely causality, then a sentence like "this car has a will of its own" would be literally true. Your analysis is too simplistic.
Is “the pill” a cure, or mind control?
its a cure. You cn only forgive people and lift your hate of you assume that they acted out of good resons, and not becasue of their free will. Free will creates the system of fault.
It depends, if a government doesn't like that you make something in specific, can make you consume that pill to behave as they will.
Sam Harris claim is nonsense, that pill is EXTREMELY speculative, change "psychopath" with "evil soul'' and "Pill that cures evil" with "Spell that eliminate soul-corruption", and you have the same thing.
Why not both?
Actually they can’t choose to get up and leave, unless they do, in which case, that’s what they were going to do anyways.
He over thinks free will.
Free will isnt being to control the environment at will.
“I feel like I’m making a decision so I must be even though I can’t tell you how” is all the argument ever boils down to. It’s truly absolute nonsense dressed up as intellectualism
Once again, self described scientists trying to talk like philosophers who end up dueling with sophistry. How can human beings with an inherently limited nature exercise a "free" or independent will? While decisions are obviously deliberative, subsequent apparent choices are always contingent upon inward and outward processes. In other words, our choices are always limited to our available options.
sean carroll is an eminent physicist at one of the top research universities in a world, so I think considering him nothing more than a "self described" scientist might be a bit disingenuous.
what I have learnt so far in life:
-Free Will is an illusion
-Self is an illusion
-Time is an illusion
-Open Future is an illusion (future is already fixed)
-External World is an illusion (we only perceive the phenomena and don't have access to the noumena)
-God is a delusion
Twinkies are delicious?
I forgot who said it, but it remains true: "If everything is an illusion, then nothing is".
Assume human and conscious could be fully explained as a trained neural network. Everyone would make decisions based on his experience encoded in the neural network. As observer of our own neural network behavior we would see that as free will, but in the end the n.n. decides. I think that is not so incompatible with our personal experience.
Sorry I’m sure these guys are deep thinkers but debunking free will with our physical world is so stupid. Just because you can’t change your center of mass or can’t stop sound waves doesn’t prove anything about free will. Also just because you must have memories to make a decision doesn’t prove anything. We have little understanding about our conscious but completely ignore it when discussion free will.
Sean "I made a dicision"
Sam "no, at the level of the brain, you don't exist."
Sean: At the level of the brain, you are the brain.
Not that he actually said that, but I'm guessing he'd agree with it. One problem with this "debate" is that people have difficulty imagining themselves as a brain. They have have difficulty imagining themselves as agents who act within physics rather that outside of it.
@@rickhenderson2970 why do you identify with your brain, and not more or less than that?
@@EisenkeilerSturmhart Well, I really identify with my mind, which, according to the best scientific evidence, is produced by the brain, and is likely just what we call the subjective experience of being a brain. What more is there to identify with?
@@rickhenderson2970 your mind is only defined by its content which is everything it ever perceived. A mind without content could be anyones mind, why should you identify with that?
Whatever theory about the human mind you have, you cannot opt out of applying to your own mind. Harris fails the test of applying his theory to himself. If his mind is determined (as he believes) by all antecedent factors, the he is determined to think whatever he thinks, and that includes his theory on free will. This leaves no room for the statement "I looked at the evidence, and DECIDED that free will is an illusion", because what does it mean for a determined mind to use reason? I could just as easily say that Harris is determined by all past events to believe what he does, but so am I, and I think something totally different. How can we decide what is true in this case? We can't - unless human minds can actually choose to "think or not", which is a type of free will (Objectivism) that you will never hear Sam Harris talk about. In fact, it is possible to say that the concept of truth is meaningless without the foundation of human volition. Harris always stays on surface-level arguments about selecting films or buying a computer, which are not the types of choices the free will advocates say we have any choice over.
His definition of "cause and effect" is also wrong, which is why he thinks as he does about free will.
Damn it almost sounds like people DONT want there to be free will. Haha oh well, more free will for me.
Correct. Ego = That which wants to keep us from realizing our true Self by trying to convince us that we are mindless robots and that we should be spending our life producing mindless stuff in order to be able to buy mindless stuff.
They are afraid to take responsibility they think it gives them an out.
@@Drew15000 Man, you two are fucking dumb as well (assuming OP is joking, here)
Lol you sound like such a brainwashed sheep
Well if people on mass are deluded about free will that's very likely to be harmful, which is why it matters.
Hi. I have a question for Mr Sam Harris or those who understands his theory on illusion of the free will.
Recently I tried to watch Sam Harris on The Delusion of Free Will, however, I found that I do not have a patience to listen to it all, as a first couple of minutes Mr. Harris had been stating bluntly that there could not be any ground for the concept of the free will, while not giving any coherent support to his statements.
However, I would like to ask Mr. Harris or those who know and understand his theory on free will, to explain from the “No free will” point of view the following:
I was a heavy smoker between 13 and 23 years of age, often smoking up to two packs (40 cigarettes) a day. I wanted and tried to quit three times, but longest I could stay without a smoke was 3 month. Then, one day I saw a guy who was doing 7 days strict fast (nothing but water for a week) for religious reasons and I thought: ‘Hell, if he could live without a food for a week, sure I could live without a smoke!’ And I vent cold turkey the very same day, never to touch a cigarette again. Now question: why I wasn’t able to quit smoking before, even when I felt that it was affecting my health (I’m slightly asthmatic), but was able to quit at that particular day.
And another thing. For those who never smoked, or was lucky to not allow it to grow into the habit, I would like to explain one thing about quitting the habit after many years. Some may thing that the process of quitting will be: 1. You stop smoking. 2. You suffer for some period of time, while your body cleans out all the drugs. 3. You are happy, smoke free chappy! However, that is very far from truth. I kicked the habit 22 years ago, but there wasn’t a day when my lungs haven’t “felt longing” for the smoke. It isn’t the decision you make once and live happily ever after, it is the decision you have to make every single day. From what I read about drug-addicts it is even harder in their case to stop. How this could be explained from “there are no such thing as a free will” perspective.
Very interesting! I don't know what happened but it seems like you couldn't control yourself when you tried so many years and you could by seeing a single incindent! I believe that real power comes when your brain chemicaly is strong by for example motivation (which makes you feel less pain and makes things easy and enjoyable). If you aren't chemicaly strong then you are addicted, I know, I was addicted to food. It breaks my hurt that I a person literally is impossible to control his actions. That to me is a sign there is no free will. But I am not sure.
Simple. Up until that day, your desire to smoke outweighed your desire to quit. On that day, your desires changed, and why it did is a complete mystery. It's all cause and effect.
Stay tuned next week folks when Sam Harris further "proves" there's no free will by showcasing that he couldn't freely will himself into flying a unicorn at the speed of light :)
If we knew everything about the deterministic base level we could just deviate from it by doing something else and therefore have free will. I think we either have free will or we can never know all the information at the base level to know all future outcomes
The deviation would be predicted and determined as well.
u cant see the flaw in this reasoning? of course if you add another variable the outcome will change.