Age implicates wisdom. But it's by no means a reliable implication. Like a young man who has a beard that may appear older - until you start to talk to him.
He's not arguing that free will exists here. He does that elsewhere, but that's not the point of the video. He's specifically claiming that regardless of whether or not free will exists, it would be bad to convince people that it doesn't exist.
There is a problem with the first analogy. Convincing someone you are in control of them (which means you have freewill and they do not), is completely different than convincing someone that NO ONE has freewill.
No not really because they both are basically control of information, and ways to control someone, and result in the same outcome, one is to control one person, one is to control a population
@@igora50 because convincing someone they have no free will gives the ones convincing the upper hand, it gives them the ability to control you, there is no difference in convincing one person vs convincing millions just the number of convinced, you are still restricting people's ability to chose, either as a cruel joke or so you can make the choices for them, all a system of control
Nope, he;s saying that people are being told a lie (there is no free will) and that is morally wrong. And, sure, if people did find out the truth (that there is Compatiblist free will), that would do more good than harm.
@@Locrian1 what are you talking about? dennet believes there is no free will, the difference is that he believes our legal system and morality require us to believe that it does. thus the need for both justifies the belief of free will, instead of the reverse, which is what conventional and traditional views are.
I think you hit it right on the nose, i've considered this point often. It is exceedingly obvious that free will is an illusion of feeling, that whether the universe is deterministic or indeterministic the idea of free will is absurd. In one case all is determined from initial conditions, and in the other case things can not be determined at any point, resulting in no free will either way. These are the only two options, there is no third option. Everything Dennett describes in these experiments is explainable by cause and effect (no mystery in that respect). The scientists are influencing (causing) an effect in the patient or subject. Depending on what is done or said to the subject (cause), the subject will react to it (effect, not free will). The problem i believe that some of the smarter philosophers have discovered is that the illusion of free will is necessary to maintain in the public mind (cause) in order to in turn maintain a healthier society (effect). This is not the case with everyone because some people realize that it does not matter if one believes or not, they simply keep on acting as they were (AS IF they had free will), but some people get confused and think they need to act in some arbitrary accordance with not believing in free will (this is an effect). So many philosopher i think that have discovered this fact of life make an effort to foster the belief in free will in the masses even though they themselves do not believe it (a white lie, perfectly reasonable in context with the big picture of society). I guess you can call it a "philosophical conspiracy" (cause) to maintain order (effect), lol. Oh well, let it be then.
@@Locrian1 : There is no reason we should behave any worse if we understand we don't have free will. As Sabine Hossenfelder points out; If you do things to harm others they will take measures to stop you.
Yes, but did not all 4 horsemen in their round table discussion agree that there were circumstances where such a path would be morally right? It's not like he's changed stance on the matter...
...but at a certain point strict adherence to logical reasoning is of little concern. If I have a truth - or merely suspect a possible truth, as is the current status of free will - that will cause great enough damage, it is well worth considering not revealing it. Even more so if we are not certain. I'm sure you can imagine scenarios where the truth will be more damaging to society than ignorance.
I can imagine no situation where revealing the truth would be more damaging than suppressing it, especially when your "concerns" are as convoluted and so obviously just a way to try and suppress a view you disagree with but can't legitimately argue against as Dennett is doing here
I don't care about free will too much because I generally try to trust my body to allow me to make sound enough decisions to get by and stay alive, that's what it's programmed to do, and any extra energy leftover from that task can be channeled into what I perceive as my free will which seems good enough. most people use their free will or willpower reserves to pursue pleasures or achieve personal goals, and Yeah, a lot of time those goals are shaped by a person's environment, past experiences and current mental state. I think we should try to educate ourselves as much as possible though, so our bounds of possibility and perception are expanded, so our perception of free will is bigger than the free will of someone who knows less than us about the world. you're only as free as the experiences or knowledge you've accumulated, but at least you do have the freedom to choose to learn, when you have the energy for it, so use that amount of free will at the very least.
I agree. The major flaw for me is the argument that if an individual knows he has no free will then he is going to behave immorally. It is just as valid to not have free will and behave morally. A second problem is that if there is indeed no free will (as the neurosurgeon made the patient believe), he is proposing the neurosurgeon should keep the patient in ignorance to protect him from getting in trouble from misbehaving. If there is no free will, the patient has a right to know it unless he explicitly says he prefers to live in ignorance of the truth. Finally, if the neurosurgeon does not truly know if there is free will or not, then he would be lying to the patient, and that would be wrong whether the patient misbehaves or not. The bottom line is that this analogy is crap and there is no such thing as libertarian free will, be serious!
This analogy is merely begging the question. It assumes telling people they don't have free will is bad, in order to make the case that telling people they don't have free will is bad.
@@MichaelFairhurst The point of the analogy isn't to make an empirical claim about what will happen if people are told that free will doesn't exist. You're right that thought experiments can't generally show that; empirical evidence is needed, which, incidentally, he gives in the video. Maybe you didn't watch that far. In any case, the point of the analogy was to show that *if* something like that happened, then the people in the clinic telling the patient that he doesn't have free will did something bad.
Somebody told me the other day that I didn't have freewill and I believed him but I didn't go out and commit a crime...sounds like this person's OCD wasn't cured.
So basically he's saying "don't tell idiots that free will doesn't exist because they will take you literally. I know it doesn't exist, but just don't tell the idiots that"
I love Matt Dillahunty's view in general: "I want to know as much true things as possible". That would be my position also. If free will turns out to be an illusion, I want to know.
@@PeteMD your brain must be much bigger. I can tell because you spend so much time growing it by writing "har har Dennett = dum" all over this comment section.
There are true things you don't want to know. Like how it feels to starve to death. Also, the illusion of free will clearly has an important evolutionary purpose.
"Free will does exist" --> Still can't control inner impulses. "Freee will doesn't exist" --> Still has to make decisions. Free Will = TOTALLY IRRELEVANT.
@@themacocko6311 All you can do is witness the choices you make. The choices you make are done a few milliseconds before you can even witness them. Every choice you ever made, every realization you made, every opinion you have, every certainty you have, every belief you have are all 100% involuntary. You have choice and free will: if you chose the parents you have, your skin color, your hair color, the schools you went to when you were growing up, your teachers, and what they would teach you, and every encounter you ever had with anyone (good or bad).
@@themacocko6311 : You CAN do the exact opposite of your impulse, your WANT, but only for a more compelling WANT like to avoid trouble or be contrarian. You can do what you want but you can't choose what you want.
The lack of free will makes it even more important to beware of your influence on others. In the exact same way as you are careful of your conduct around impressionable children.
If free will means the ability to make our own decisions, then yes we do have free will. But our decisions are made based on our environment, previous experiences and knowledge. Our brain computes based on those factors and an outcome is made. That is as free as it gets. Does that mean that it is deterministic? Probably. Does that mean we are not responsible for our actions? No.
Indeed. For some reason, people equate "I have no free will" with "I'm not responsible for my actions." If we built a robot, gave it programming to make it self learning, let it live it's life, and it ended up being a murderer, would we let it off the hook because, "It didn't have any free will." No, because the punishments for crimes are one of the many pieces of data that get factored by the brain to determine if a crime is worth doing or not. We program humans to not do bad stuff by making punishments for bad actions. And if a human does bad actions anyway, we treat them like a defective robot. (either try to fix its programming, put it in a place where it won't cause harm to the other meatbags, or scrap it) Lamenting over not having free will is about as silly as lamenting over the fact that there's no Santa. Your life is exactly the same. You'll still get presents on Xmas, but now you understand how they actually get there. I don't think that's a depressing thing.
Conscious decisions? then no we don't have free will. Those 3 things yes, but mainly it's about our will.. what do we will the most in a given situation. That is determined by what we "want" the most, and what we are "forced" to do. That's it. What it means, is that you couldn't of done anything differently. If you do something bad, it's an unfortunate thing that happened because that thing that happened was forced on you because it was what you happened to will the most, which was also forced on you. Similiar to how we don't think to wanna throw an earthquake in jail.. per se. We just try to prevent it from happening again. Though yes jail can be used for humans as a preventative measure. But retribution is pointless and not okay beause they couldn't of done anything differently. With the robots, it's.. would we want retribution and kick it's ass? no.. it's a robot.. it's just an unfortunate thing that happened with it's programming. Do we still use jail? yes of course. That's deterance and also keeping them away from the public. But the prison system obviously needs to become essentially the Scandinavian prison model (already exists). With a plus side that it actually works. Even if you're not responsible on a conscious level, and are just along for the ride.. you still have to go along for the ride if your ride becomes a problem.. that's just how it is. I don't at all see it as a depressing thing either, and my behaviour does remains the same. But it does mean certain other things need to change.. mainly the prison system. Also some things get easier.. like if you're the victim of something bad that happened.. it's easier to accept it I think.... perhaps.
Your last two points are contradictory. If the universe is deterministic then we are not responsible for our actions because they are simply the consequence of a colossal cause and effect chain. Furthermore, we can’t make our own decisions if they have already been predetermined by our genetics and environment. We do have the subjective illusion of making decisions, but every factor that goes into the final decision you rest on is completely out of your control and the vast majority of those factors are also out of your conscious awareness. Even the verbalisation of your decision would have already been determined before you even consciously decided to say it.
@@stewartfraser5357 "If the universe is deterministic then we are not responsible for our actions because they are simply the consequence of a colossal cause and effect chain." You are responsible for your actions to the degree that other people will hold you responsible for them. "Furthermore, we can’t make our own decisions if they have already been predetermined by our genetics and environment. We do have the subjective illusion of making decisions," Sure we can make our own decisions! Of course they are part of the causal evolution of the universe but it IS you who are making the decisions. That is in no way an illusion!
@@kosmos6467 Well said. The same people who argue that determinism absolves criminals of responsibility, want to hold responsible those who would hold the criminals responsible. Having free will in a deterministic universe changes nothing about the heuristics we actually live our lives by, and the conflation should be recognized and abandoned.
For me personally, I don't mind much whether free will is real or not. I don't have any problems rejecting free will in its entirety and simultaneously continue to act in such a way which is considered to contain good character. In other words, the notion of not having free will in my head doesn't cause me to do bad things. And for all the bad things I do in life, I could equally argue that I chose to do them. Regardless of the concept of free will, take responsibility for your actions.
Doesn't matter what you "mind" or "have problems with" or how you "act". Because you don't do any of those things, it's all determined, right? You aren't taking responsibility, because it's determined that you will say that, it doesn't mean anything. You're a physical vessel of causes and effects, so you don't really exist.
@@sguraya7223 Predetermination means that the way you are, the choices you made and make all come as a result of conditions in your life that you did not choose. All you can do is witness your choices, reactions & realizations; but you don't get to choose them anymore than you get to choose what foods you like and what foods make you nauseous. All your opinions, certainties and beliefs are absolutely involuntary; unless you know you could choose to believe right now something that you already know is false; or choose to disbelieve something you already know with 100% certainty is true: such as 2 + 2 = 4 or any other belief you strongly hold.
"I do not believe in free will. Schopenhauer's words: 'Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills,' accompany me in all situations throughout my life and reconcile me with the actions of others, even if they are rather painful to me. This awareness of the lack of free will keeps me from taking myself and my fellow men too seriously as acting and deciding individuals, and from losing my temper." - Einstein. "My Credo" 1932
That's a great way to view people, as empty vessels of physical phenomena. Your fellow men should not be taken seriously because theyre silly non-acting/deciding individuals. Einstein was clearly morally bankrupt.
I disagree with Dennett on this, though he makes a good point. His argument is essentially a standard argument for the benefit of Religion. The idea is that a person is more likely to behave properly if he believes that he will be punished by an all-seeing God, if he misbehaves. Thus, it is better for society if people believe something which cannot be proved, and which is likely false, as long as it reduces crime. Most people will behave appropriately, even if they don't believe in Free Will, because of the penalties imposed by Government and Society for unacceptable behavior. If we start making laws and policies based on an untrue premise, this will only encourage superstitious beliefs and encourage more policies based on irrational thinking.
The doctors didn't turn his free will off. They turned his illusion of free will off. This is the first Dennett I've been exposed to, and it's not a good start.
+Rodrigo Gallinari Knowing that decisions MATTER doesn't mean we have free will. It is possible to be wildly successful while not believing in free will.
EndtheRessentiment: IMO Dan S's second and third statement are true. Dan is an excellent philosopher, but his *HUGE* shot at Sam Harris in this video are petty and amateurish... his "intuition pump" (Jesus Dan, it's just called a thought experiment.) really has very little to do with whether or not neuroscience has anything, or the final thing, to say about free will. Dennet doesn't think there is free will either, but he finds "room" for it, claims to be a compatibilist (determinist with extra shit). Even I think the universe, the way *WE* interact with the universe is completely deterministic. Dan's greatest fear is that the "common man" will be exposed to this thought and freak the fuck out, hence his desire to put something *plus* determinism as the real answer. Matt D. thinks he can convince Sam Harris (or at least give it a good try) that he, as well, is a compatibilist. I don't think Sam will fall for any of it. The determined laws of mathematics, physics and biology all add up to determinism. Our minds are simply a product of our brains that can now be measured to have thoughts that happened before they were thought. Sounds very much like an AI program to me (but no, I'm not nuts, I'm not going all connspiracy on you!). The way our individual lives run is determined by our physical makeup (even to a subatomic level) and minds are determined by the way evolution has shaped them over 4 billion years and how they interact with our unique set of physiology. I have a massive hypothetic outline of this idea, but I'm mostly convinced that this is probably how the free will prolem works.
He merely argues for the case that telling people they don't have free will has negative implications. He did not make a case that we do in fact have free will. So, should we deliberately not tell people what science has deduced in order to prevent these negative implications? Should we tell 'white lies'? It's up to you to decide, but I'll leave this quote because it illustrates my view. "The effort to strive for truth has to precede all other efforts." -Albert Einstein, 1931
If anyone tells you that you don't have free will and you actually believe them, perhaps there is something wrong in your head. It takes about one second to actually test that. Not to say there is total free will either, just not power of suggestion.
Damian Louden I didn't engage in his argument because I accepted his argument! He argued that telling people free will doesn't exist can have negative implications. I accept that. Please tell me at which point he argues whether or not free will exists.
Wastingsometimehere It depends on your definition of free will. If being able to make a choice constitutes free will, then technically, computers have free will. If decisions being predetermined was a clause mutually exclusive to free will, then recent advancements in neuroscience would suggest we do not have free will.
Jaynohuz Free will can be effected by everything from genetics to parasites and viruses. We are still machines and machines don't have perfect programming. That said internal free will is a lie, but having others control you externally is highly unlikely and very easy to defy.
I realized that free will is a nonsensical concept some years ago when I was a teenager. I don't go around and harm anyone - quite the contrary: I find it a very relaxing thought. The more I bear it in mind, the more tolerant, easy and placid I become. I get less and less judgemental and don't think of people as "evil" anymore if they are not of the same opinion as I am or if they did a bad thing. I see them like they are: (more or less) intelligent but fallible apes that sometimes believe in or do stupid things, because their brain is wired like it is. Does that mean we should allow everybody to do anything? No. A murderer without free will is still a murderer, we still should put him in jail. But we shouldn't do it thinking "he is an evil person and needs to be punished because we want him to suffer", but instead we should see him like we would see every other animal in that situation (or maybe even a computer with a bug) and think „you did something very stupid and we don't want people going arround killing other people, so we're going to put you away from society untill you(r brain) learned not to do so so that we can put you free again without having to worry". And also every individual has still reason not to misbehave: I don't want to go to jail and I don't want to live in a society were I have to be afraid of being murdered all the time, so I better behave not to contribute to that. That little piece of game theory may not convince everybody to be nice - but on the other hand the notion of free will hasn't done so either. And I think, who's intelligent enough to understand neuroscientific arguments against free will is also very likely to be intelligent enough to consider simple gametheory and some determinism-compatible ethics. I dont think that any of these or any of his points make a valid argument for believing or not believing in free will - it's first of all a matter of truth... but I just wanted to express that I don't agree with the "thought experiment".
You make a good point that, free will or not, we must deal with the problem of the person who goes around harming others. Praise and blame, punishment and reward, are deterministic tools for behavior modification. With or without free will, we must still use the tools that work. So, the notion that discarding free will makes us less likely to punish or reward someone is not valid. It's value is mostly a placebo effect, where it does for you what you have been told to believe it will do for you. In fact, if we use the notion of determinism to excuse the thief who stole your wallet, then it equally excuses the judge who cuts off his hand. So, this is not very clear thinking on our part. Ironically, Christianity, which is made up of people who generally believe in free will, also teaches forgiveness and rehabilitation through principle and stories, like the Prodigal Son. So, compassion is not vested in the absence of free will. It is vested in our view of other things, like our notions of fair play.
@@simil-kung5610 Well, surely if you had no free will, you would have to give up your chance of realising anything or making any kind of conclusion. In other words, what part of you makes decisions - albeit influenced but finally independent from all kinds of outside stimulation, information etc -, if not your free will? At some point you have to speak and act independently. You are not an automaton.
@@teebeedahbow I don't think that follows. Just because the state of my brain is determined by the laws of physics and not by some ominous thing that people call "free will" (and fail to adequately define), that doesn't mean that my brain needs to be static. Obviously, it isn't static but you don't need "free" will to explain that fact. A computer can make conclusions based on given information, it's basically the same thing, but I guess you wouldn't say that computers have free will. And also I think that many people who believe in free will wouldn't agree with your statement because you're basically implying that people can freely choose what they believe in.
This points to our lack of free will (subjects’ behavior being influenced like that without their having any idea) but also points out the necessity to continue with this cultural notion of free-will.
@@fdnlu It's really not though. You see it all the time because it is the end of the argument. There is nothing more/better to be said about the mystery of free will.
Just by the notion of Hitchens stating "we have no choice", (is) the free will decision to abdicate personal responsibility for your decision to think you have no choice and by extension no consequence.
You obviously didn't understand the point of the video then. He's not saying that's a reason to believe in free will. He's written multiple books detailing those arguments.
If just by telling a person that he/she doesn't have free will, their free will can switched off( as u said in ur fictitious experiment) then does that person really has free will to begin with. A person doesn't have free will may mean that whatever the circumstances we find in life , we may not have full control on them, but no matter bcoz thats how life is supposed to be , so u can still enjoy them
In your example as you demonstrated so brilliantly, you showed to the world we donnot have any free will. Logically, in your example, people having no free will will act negligently and will end up being judged and punished. So why do we have laws, jails, judges, etc... the only one who are morally incompetents are the individuals who believe that the punition is more damageable than the risk. Only a few rare individuals will not act as a moral incompetent person not because they have free will, simply because acting symmetrically to these morally incompetent individual is the force of things to balance the society and have laws. We have no free will but we have the possibility to think, and to think we have free will. Philosophically, a criminal and its victims are a necessity who are sacrificing themselves for the prosperity of the community. Are they aware of that? no they are not, only an external actor can be. QED we have no free will as this example can be adapted to everything we are doing in the society. We have no more free will than the bull grazing and the wold hunting, we are simply fulfilling our natural destiny - and we are doomed to believe otherwise.
This dude is so close to realising that people's circumstances, upbringing, and in this case narratives they have been fed do in fact determine how they how they act, he's honestly just proving determinism with this. Example with this case: it would be further determinable if we had more background knowledge of the guy in question but also we already know (from many experiments and also just plain observation) that people trust the words of authority figures and are also more than happy to do bad things if they can absolve themselves of responsibility for it, the whole "I was just following orders" thing, so this just further proves determinism
Although I lean towards not having true free will in the illusory perceptions of our daily lives, I propose that it doesn't matter whether we do or not, but that we should live our lives to the fullest regardless of meaning and purpose.
You say that here, but are saying that like a phrase that a person with free will could do. It proves it is possible to say one thing and do another, or to always be doing that anyway, even without ever saying it (or anything in between living a happy life and living a selfish, myopic life). When someone asks "what is the meaning of life?" or "what is my purpose in life?", they are asking a *pseudo* question. Meaning and purpose in life is nothing more than a feeling, much like free will.
@@sguraya7223 take causality. There is no intelligible way to explain the appearance of the universe. Either it emerged out of nowhere, which is absurd, or it has always existed, which is absurd too, or it was pushed into being by God which nature would be equally absurd. We have only 3 options and every one of them entails an insoluble paradox (for all I know). We are just very limited in our perception of the world. Therefore I consider paradoxes to be natural.
@@alexmonza2823 What is absurd about any of those? And what's paradoxical about them? If it's a matter of our perception, then there's no reason to believe that it's a paradox.
People in the comments dislike the video because they think that Dennett was arguing for free will and then presented that thought experiment. In reality, Dennett was only arguing that we should stop telling people that they don't have free will. There's a difference. He made no claim about the existence of free will.
I noticed this too. He is not arguing for free will, however he is literally arguing for ignorance, which is one of the most blasphemous things a philosopher could say.
I don't mind not having free will. In fact, I usually choose to ignore it. The way I deal with this is I tell myself that regardless of how predetermined my choices are, they are still mine to make and I'd better make some good ones.
I'm late in the game here, but you're on point. You are clearly a decision maker, whether your decisions were free or not. But this is what compatablists argue is free will. It's not so much the free [to] will, all that we care about in regard to moral responsibility is more in the freedom [of] will to act. If we rewound the clock could you make a different decision from the one you made? I would say no, but only because it wasn't your will to. If you had willed differently, you would have chose differently. If that's not appropriately called free will, what would you call it?
@@DiegoRamirez-sf3su Not necessarily. If I were to relive my life, I might always come to the conclusions that I have. I do not know of a mechanism by which free will could realistically operate. As long as the starting variables are known, then the outcome is fixed, and if the outcome is fixed then there's no room for us to alter anything. That doesn't mean we don't play a role in our own futures. I can make decisions based on the information available to me, and calculate optimal courses of action, because that's what my brain is built to do, but whether my actions are free is completely different.
@@isaakvandaalen3899 we gotta be careful with what we read listen to who we sorround our selfs with cus they do have and influence on our choices also in order to have free will we most have a strong will
If I have free will, then believing I have free will is the correct choice. If I don't have free will, then, it doesn't matter which choice is correct. I am not free to believe or not believe it. What I will believe is already predetermined, regardless of whether it is true or false. Given the above, I think I'm gonna believe that I have free will anyway. The worst that could happen is not that I choose falsely, but that I do not choose at all.
1. Something being untrue, and something being true but irresponsible to tell people are two different things. It may be irresponsible (and immoral) of me to tell a thief when my neighbour is on holiday, but the information that my neighbour is on holiday is not untrue. 2. Neither side seems to have defined free will to my satisfaction. I do not believe they are talking about the same thing, so it may be possible that both sides are correct using their assumed definitions and the contradiction is illusory. 3. If we take the nihilistic standpoint that since no-one has free will, no-one can take moral responsibility, then it makes no sense to question whether a punishment for a crime is just or unjust, since we do not have any moral responsibility to hand out justice. If there is no free will, then we should view our justice system as being internal to, and unaffected by, this system.
+Asha2820 Yes, there is a huge problem about definitions of free will, because there are so many of them. From classical to modern philosophy. However, it is changing the subject, in my opinion at least, to talk about free will as something different than the possibility and capacity of consciousness to act and make decisions without being determined by any other causal powers. Free will has to exist in consciousness and in a place outside the causality determinism. Even if we include quantum mechanics and recognize that to be evidence for intrinsic probabistic determinism (that is, reality is not determined in the traditional determinnistisc sense, where you can predict everything perfectly, if you have the sufficient knowledge. Rather it is determined by probability, which is roughly like rolling dice), everything would still be determined by probability distribution, or rolling dice, if you will. You can change the subject, as I would say, when you define free will as simple the capacity to choose without being forced to do it by someone or something outside your brain. That would simply to be excluding the brain from the subject, and say that neuroscience is irrelevant to the question of free will, because we simply define free will as freee from being forced to do it, where forced are ment to refer to causality outside the brain and outside the individual person. Such an approach would be to assume a priori that we have free will, when we are not forced to by "outside" forces. If you take such an approach to the question of free will, then you are basicly resting everything on tautology. Furthermore, you would be subscribing to the illusion of free will, because you simply assume a priori in your definition of free will that we do have free will, when we are not forced by external forces. This is the intuitive sense and feeling everyone have. However, it is an illusion.
+Asha2820 Take some time and think about what free will really means, it's implications and how to define it. That's all it takes to figure out why it doesn't exist. Technically the way I think of it, the free will as people generally conceive of it may exist, but if it does, that doesn't have any of the implications they think it has. Free will does exist, and we have no control over it. I can't direct my own agency any more than I can alter who I am, as my agency is determined by who I am.
I define it just about the same as everyone else. From wikipedia: "Free will is the ability to choose between different possible courses of action." More specifically it's probably worth distinguishing between will and free will. That might be a better definition of will. I think the idea of free will has to take into account whether the ability to choose between options isn't under the control or coercion of an external entity.
***** No, that is not what Dennett is saying. Wegner did a lot of psychological scientific research about how and why our human psychological mind create the subjective experience of free will (read that instead of listening to Dennett's bullshit). Dennett is saying that we do have free will even though we can predict people's choices up to 12 seconds before they are conscious. And Dennett got no scientific argument for his postulation.
Danel Dennett's position here is truly extraordinary. He in fact agrees with neuroscientists who deny free will but tells them they are being irresponsible in saying so. In other words, we know we don't have free will but let's not tell anyone in case they start behaving badly. We must all, it seems, play a huge game in which we all pretend to have free will, knowing full well we don't! I find this beyond absurd.
I dont get whats free will. So we cant choose what to do with our lives? We dont have choice in being who we are? How do people choose to take certain jobs amd work out even when they dont want to or choose to overcome addiction...genuine question not saying it does or doesnt exist im just confused of what it is now 😫 makes me feel like now I cant be who I want and change for the better and overcome my fears because i have no choice :(
This is a concept that I came to believe intuitively, as a reaction to the Cognitive Dissonance I experienced when trying to accept the notion that, in fact, we do not have free will. That Believing it Necessarily Altered the Outcome of your reasoning. And that Knowing that you Don't have Free Will leads to poorer decision making than would be the case of Thinking you have Free Will, but really didn't. Believing in Free Will makes you Act As If you Really Did Have Free Will. It compels you to Think more Rigorously and Thoroughly than you would if you were Certain that you Didn't have Free Will. And it also compels you to Take Responsibility for your decisions, even if you chose Badly.
Agreed - that has been my experience too, at least. The term "free will" seems to imply that one can make choices 'for free,' which seems to be empirically untrue.
Will power / motivation is important. Thinking we don’t have fee will usually erroneously leads people through cognitive processes to want to sit on their asses and be lazy. I think that covers it.
@@patinho5589 I love the song "Free Will " by Rush. The chorus between verses is "You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice. If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. You can choose from phantom fears or kindness that can kill. I will choose a path that's clear. I will choose free will. "
Well I stopped believing in free will some time ago and didn't suddenly start behaving in a aggressive, self indulgent or become a morally incompetent person. My understanding that I have no free will is on an *intellectual* level - but it still *feels* like I have free will and this is all that matters day to day. If I was aware of my future fate in advance and was unable to change things that would be a problem but this is unlikely to ever be possible. Believing there is no free will inevitably makes you a more compassionate person because you must give up notions of evil, punishment or retribution. I cannot judge others because I recognize *but by the grace of God go I* (God in Einsteinian sense).
It's the same thing when Religious people say that if you don't believe in God that you will suddenly become a thief, rapist or murderer because you no longer have a reason not to do those things without the threat of Hell!! That is a very simple and ignorant viewpoint and it totally underestimates the inherent Decency of many people!!
I was thinking exactly the same thing. There is a certain irony in a well known Atheist, who has no doubt argued against that very argument in the case of religion, using it himself to justify free will. The other thing Dennett doesn't seem to get is that there is a massive difference between a health care professional, who has a duty of care to their patient, intentionally manipulating them for their own entertainment versus a researcher in neuroscience releasing their actual findings. Moreover, does Dennett seriously advocate that a neuroscientist who uncovers an inconvenient fact should hide (or falsify) their research to avoid upsetting the public - extraordinary! By this line of reasoning if it were discovered that a belief in God provides psychological comfort to people and there also be discovered incontrovertible proof that God nonetheless does not exist, then we should conceal the evidence that God does not exist. This is the ostrich approach to life.
Quite a lot actually. I can feel compassion for those people that you would call evil, and thereby presumably have no compassion for, as well as everyone else, for whom you would presumably feel compassion. For example, I can feel compassion for Udey Hussein as well all of his victims. The notion of evil is primarily a way of limiting compassion. It is a way of labeling those for whom you feel no compassion, or even have a desire to feel compassion for. Giving up on evil (and free will) forces you to consider that, but for circumstance, you might well be the one doing the horrible things. Viewed from that perspective ideas such as retribution or punishment (by the intentional infliction of pain, suffering or discomfort), as opposed to rehabilitation or simple confinement, seem truly barbaric.
***** how do you know which person I would call evil and, for that matter, I think evil as a character a person can have? do you have compassion for just about everyone? then how is that meaningful? if you love everyone, that only means you love no one. Indifference is not compassion. I occasionally contemplate the thing I do and the morality of them. However, for that to work, I actually need the notion of evil. If I deny such thing as evil to exist, how could I fathom the possibility of myself being the perpetrator or accomplice of evil? Punishment is an idea following retribution, and retribution is an idea following justice. What justice is there if we don't exact retribution from criminals? do you think justice exist? do you care about it?
*Even if one makes the argument that it’s irresponsible to share this data because it could be interpreted incorrectly and cause social harm, it’s still a moral imperative to share the information found* as transparency and replication are cornerstones of what it means to engage in science. I can understand if someone does not like the conclusion, but that does not mean we shouldn’t share the data with the public 🤔😕
If there is no free will then the opinions about whether to share or not are irrelevant since no one has any free will to share or not share that info.
@@davidstem1557 we don’t yet know if we have free will, the mathematics and the experiments that we do in physics tends to show that we don’t have free will, but we don’t know that definitively yet. If we did, we would understand quantum non-locality right?
@@djvelocity if we don’t know if we have free will then people like Sam Harris telling people that they don’t have free will is a disservice of the highest order and a huge moral failing. It’s the utmost in arrogance.
@@futuredave2 We don’t know definitively, but it looks to be that way. Personally, I believe free will may be an illusion (at least that’s what neuroscience and quantum physics demonstrates) but until somebody comes up with an experiment that proves this beyond and to the exclusion of reasonable doubt, we need to keep an open mind as scientists
@@futuredave2 If we don't know if god exists then people like atheists telling people that there is no god is a disservice of the highest order and a huge moral failing. It's the utmost in arrogance.
At no point did he give reason to show free will isn’t an illusion. He just tried to show that people who believe it is are immoral; using a completely flawed argument. Free will IS an illusion, but a useful one.
I think it just shows how incoherent the whole discussion is. A real scenario might be a collar that literally controls your voluntary muscles like a marionette. So you see your arms and legs moving around in a robotic fashion while you apologize to everyone for what your body is doing by someone else's control. This seems to be what determinists believe actually happens, but in their schema, the conscious mind takes ownership of the movements and considers them free.
Ignoring for a moment the validity of the claim "There is no free will", Dennett suggests that to assert this is dangerous. I for one, think that no matter how terrible a truth is, we should not shy away from it. Even if there's no "Free Will" that doesn't absolve anyone of consequences for action. It merely suggests that our choices are constrained by our biology, no more no less. An earlier commenter put it nicely: "1. Dennett is not arguing against determinism or in favor of (libertarian) free will. 2. Dennett is not arguing against telling people that the universe is deterministic. 3. Dennett is arguing that people conflate free will with moral responsibility. The takeaway message is that it is irresponsible to declare free will is illusory without decoupling the notion of free will from moral responsibility."
So basically what he's saying is: People don't have free will, so you shouldn't tell them they don't have free will, because they will necessarily start doing more terrible things, because they are machines that are controlled from outside themselves
That's what it seemed like to me also!! Those in science and academia often lose touch with the rest of Humanity and so they no longer understand other people!! Their narrow perspective is one reason why scientists are notorious for having Social Anxiety and lacking Social Skills because they've focused so much on one area that they've lost touch with other areas!!
Guard Passer It's misleading in the sense that it used his name which lead me to think it'd be his normal self yet showed a Daniel Dennett that seems different than that. xP I expected him to be against separating people from the truth and only be saying "Don't tell people ___" if he thought ___ was false.
Just because you don't have free will doesn't mean you can't make decisions. Free will exists, but it depends on the effects the surrounding world has on you. By telling you, you don't have free will, the state of your mind is influenced to either decide that your choices matter, or don't and that you're either responsible or not. That still doesn't change anything, you still need to make decisions and face the consequences.
You don't but because you know the consequences, your own will has been altered by a predetermined condition. The universe has given you no freedom but the knowledge to understand your own actions.
1. His thought experiment doesn't hold up, as it doesn't even support his claim. Believing you have no free will and believing your will is controlled by an external authority are two seperate issues. 2. Withholding information and truth because there may or may not be harmful consequences stifles much needed progress. Look around you: Religious fundamentalism and war are rampant. Any insight into how things like consciousness and (free) will actually work will be a necessary step towards building a morally healthy global society.
Arnold Crom the Magnificent I totally agree. I had an argument with a couple of friends because they bought up how letting people know of determinism could harm society like this guy. I find it funny that the neuroscientists who are letting it out were determined to do so anyway... LOL
I agree this can be risky for relatively stupid or dogmatic people to be taught. Especially if they aren't also taught reasons why things still matter to their own lives. But I came to this concept on my own in my early 20s, then later found the scientific validations for it, and yet I STILL operate as though I am responsible for my actions, rather than becoming obsessed with the idea of the predetermined chain reactions of subatomic particles of my neurons which only can interact in accordance with the consistent laws of nature, as though that is an "excuse" to indulge in chaotic destructive behavior. I still Live moment to moment like a biological human, not a malfunctioning robot that has been fed a conceptual input too paradoxical to process. a flexible brain may adapt this info to suit it's survival, or else find ways to deny or forget it, as humans do with most info which doesn't suit us. Most healthy humans don't kill ourselves once we learn that it is in our power to do so. I think it's our biological instincts to act in ways that tend to contribute to the survival of our bodies. Of course this falls apart on larger scales which our species didn't evolve to handle, like interacting with virtual reality through screens, or collaborating outside of our tribes on a global scale... But in general, I think most human minds are resilient enough to react to this epiphany of no Ultimate freewill in a way that will allow for the continuation of self-serving behavior. The survival instinct is strong. if it wasn't, I'd probably wouldn't have resisted an impulse I had an hour ago when I was locked out of my apartment to try jumping from my 3rd floor doorway to my window ledge to get in... The thought happened in my head, and I have conceived of the idea before that my life is just a temporary experience and not any more inherently "meaningful" than the trillions of other sentient human lives throughout time, etc. I even am frequently aware of the breakdown of our "freewill" at material and metaphysical levels, (since I actually have OCD and it's given me many causes to contemplate this stuff). But yet, my brain resisted the inclination to jump. I assume because despite whatever abstract concepts I may play around with in my head, when it comes to physical moment of my actions, my biology is hardwired to survive. When it isn't for some people, that is a disfunction which can be fatal. But sure, I wouldn't care to undermine the social construct of freewill at this fragile point in human development. Can't rely on any of the unbalanced narcissists and other assholes and idiots of the world who may "choose" to interpret that idea in all kinds of destructive ways. Not that we're particularly Non-destructive as a species With the freewill concept in tact anyway...
Isn't this comment kind of hypocritical? How do you live as if you have free will while holding that it doesn't exist, or even conceive of an 'I' at all?
@@quandaledingle968 Hi! (without rereading my long old comment...) I'd say it's not hypocrisy, and not even paradoxical as it may seem, simply because without an omniscient ability to KNOW how I'll react next there's effectively no difference for me whether my will to act is supernaturally free from causality or not. If we have no access to a truth, e.g. what we necessarily do next, then it can have no barring on our thought process. To laugh or not to laugh; to call a doctor or not to call; to trip or not to trip -- I can know that by tomorrow there will be one specific action I will have done, but without knowing already which it will be, I get to experience the thought process that inevitably leads me to that single act. So, operating with my limited human foresight, I must act AS IF all the other possibilities I can guess at are actual options for me to consider. And it still is useful to ethically judge and reward or punish the actions people do if they are caused by mental states known as intentions, because our enforcement of justice is a major factor that influences our intentions to act. Let me know if this makes more sense or if I should try to explain better.
@@quandaledingle968 And the experience of identity is independent from freedom. I could be entirely paralyzed and puppeteered by robots and still be aware of my senses. All sensory inputs, but no awareness of intentional thoughts before the output of actions.
@@anthonypc1 I think I understand. But in your example, are there not other options? Is the fact you chose to go to the doctor inevitable simply because it happened, that is to say if by the uncertainty principle some particles wound up elsewhere and this led to you making a different decision, would it have been inevitable too? I don't believe in a will completely free from the material world either but I think we have some semblance of agency (btw I didn't realize your comment was from 5 years ago so, sorry for the random mention!)
@@quandaledingle968 Haha no worries! it was a good mention. I think there can be multiple options that we can reasonably anticipate, even describing our confidence in our expectations with probability math. But the fact of which one possibility will actually be caused is predetermined by natural mechanics. Like passengers on a train observing only what passes their window and with each moment refining their guesses about which way the track will turn next. Even IF the uncertainty principle meant that there is some true randomness at a subatomic level, that would still be so far beyond our ordinary neurological functions, I don't imagine it would be enough to make the difference between one whole thought or another. And EVEN IF there was true randomness on an atomic level, or a molecular level, that wouldn't mean more freedom to control our will. It'd just mean our will is random! Even less predictable. In a universe based on randomness physics, there wouldn't even be any use in trying to regulate our behavior because people's brain chemistry would just randomly twitch them into unplanned actions all the time. (or more realistically no organisms would even evolve from matter in total chaos. but whatever) Quantum mechanics get pretty unfathomable for humans currently, so let's not conflate scientists' uncertainty about the position of unmeasurably small particles with an actual absence of fact. As far as I understand -- which is not that far -- superpositions are just probability placeholders for the exact positions that we can't observe. Anyway, I do enjoy this experience of agency free from certain knowledge of which choice my brain is set up to necessarily make next.
I studied a course on the mind and one of the points made was that humans frontal lobe enables us to think, process and make conscious decisions therefore we really have free won't - I won't walk off that cliff, I won't kill that person etc. Personally that line resonated with me.
yea but these are not elements of free will, person from 6 years ago. you've lived all your life and acquired all your beliefs despite having no free will, despite being basically a reactive machine.
I think people are missing his point. What he explaining is that their are negative consequences to telling people they have no free will. That people should rethink telling others that they have no free will, so to avoid the negative consequences.
Knowing that all of our thoughts and decisions are products of causality instead of products of choice does not absolve anyone from personal responsibility and won't change how anyone feels or reacts to world around them. Nothing changes. You will still have the same feelings (which you did not choose). And make decisions based on feelings wants and desires (which you didn't choose) and feel the consequences of your actions (which are not controlled by you). Knowing that you did not choose your feelings and thoughts doesn't change your feelings and thoughts.
Notwithstanding structural issues with his argument, he is correct: the more we believe we have no free will, the less responsive we tend to behave. The more we believe are are fully responsive for our actions, generally the less wrekless we behave. I think determinism is often used as a cop-out: I'm not free so why even try to control my behaviour? Believing that we are fully free and this responsible is indeed a sobering thought - no room for scapegoats.
On the contrary, this is exactly what has better helped me understand myself. Instead of thinking I was simply a flawed person, I realized the things that were causing me to feel and act the way I did, I realized it was understandable that these circumstances would cause my current state, and this realization gave me the peace and understanding I needed to break out of these flaws where I can, and accept them where I can't.
kd1s I see to directions, God and the Bible says that we have free will, so it improves society or on the opposite site, God will forgive everyone if he want, so it has the same effect like saying: "free will does not exist". I hope my English isnt too bad, but I usually dont use this language.
The experiment not only demonstrated that people are negatively effected by telling them they don't have free will, it demonstrated that people indeed don't have free will as a paragraph of text altered their behaviour unconsciously. I don't think that we shouldn't tell people they don't have free will, but to properly explain what that actually means and the implications associated with it.
It took me approximately 40 years to encounter a person whose opinions and statements I would never agree with... then I came across Mr. Dennett. Anyone with me?
Since I love my guy Dennet (RIP) I must state that he does not argue for the existence of free will, he only says “let’s not shout it out loud that it is not real”
Noticing the truth behind your own mind is actually a good thing. Once you realize that you are not the product of your own choices, and that the choices that you do take are not actually yours at a fundamental level, you can actually do something positive with your life. Also, it can create more compassion between people since it is easier to apologize. If you accept the notion that we do not have free will, there is no more place for hate.
I love this fact about it. Thank you. Free will really is nothing more than a feeling of agency. When you realize that the belligerent person before you had no control over all the events that up to the point they are angry before you, you cannot help but feel compassion, or completely neutral; but there is no way you can hate them for it.
@@shanebrownlee69 This feeling of free will only gives rise to needless violence and hatred toward others. No good thing comes from that illusion and *feeling* of free will. It pretends that every human has all the same choices before them, when they do not. If you have free will, you would've chosen to be wise and to only allow evidence to create your beliefs. You didn't choose your parents, or their parents, or their parents. You didn't choose the culture in which you were raised. If you were raised in a Muslim culture; you didn't choose it. If you were raised in a Christian culture; you didn't choose that either (and neither did all those in that culture choose their raising either). You can't even choose the foods you like or dislike, or the kinds of movies you like or dislike; because if you had free will you could change on a dime (your tastes in foods, or your tastes in movies). Did you choose the language you speak, or languages you had to learn to get along in the world? Did you choose the various philosophies that were presented to you? If you didn't understand certain maths in school, such as calculus or algebra II or differential trigonometry? Did you choose for those concepts to be too slowly absorbed into your brain? Did students that "got it" and aced it choose their brains? No, they didn't and you didn't choose yours either. You have about as much free will over your thoughts as you have free will over what I will say next; and that is absolute fact. *Your opinions, your beliefs, your certainties, even the way you react to someone saying something is absolutely, 100% involuntary*
@@troy3456789 most of what you're saying doesn't make any sense and I've heard the same claims from socialists a lot lately. It's flawed logic at best and deceitful at worst. The argument eventually goes down the path of, "since you don't have free will, we should have a core of tenets that tells you what to do because we know what's best for you." Just no. Sure, we have many qualities that are completely involuntary, but that doesn't mean that everything we do isn't a choice in free will. I love pizza involuntarily, but I choose to not eat it for every meal so that I don't get type 2 diabetes and potentially die of heart disease. I involuntarily love smoking cigarettes, but through free will I choose to not smoke(4 years strong) so that maybe I won't develop lung or throat cancer some day. I involuntarily love fast cars, but I choose to not do 150 mph every chance I get because of the potential consequences. All of the above examples that I've named are things that some people choose to continue doing, yes, via free will, regardless of said consequences. The "no free will" argument is used as a weapon against individualism, property ownership, and capitalistic ideas and it's flat out wrong. The argument you're making will never succeed in controlling the masses and I'd bet my life on it. Edit: You argument also implies that people are not accountable for their actions and that's a terrible thing to say, especially to impressionable people in the world.
I have a few things to respond to this with: 1. This is an immature understanding of the implications and mature expression of integrating the reality of no-doer/no-free will etc. A healthy integration of this notion is that one recognizes that in an ultimate sense, they have no control over anything/no free will, but in a relative sense, they take up a sense of responsibility and accountability for their lives nonetheless. The thought experiment Mr. Dennett put forth here demonstrates that most individuals operate their morality from a sense of guilt/shame - i.e. that they do things the "right" way not because it feels right but because they either don't want to receive repercussions or don't want to live with the guilt of having done something they "shouldn't" have. A mature expression of morality is grounded in a why that transcends this sense of guilt/shame. Acting in a way that feels true is better than acting in a way that we "should". That's just an idea. And most people will find, if they really connect deeply with what's "true" inside them, that there is an inherent sense of morality in them, defined as a propensity and desire to act with positive regard for the world. People who are in touch with that intrinsic positive regard are far more powerful (with respect to agency/free will) than those who act "morally" because of their conditioning. So, effectively Mr. Dennett is keeping individuals less free (in a relative sense), bound to social conditioning all while hiding the truth from them at the same time. I cannot see a win there ---- In my own experience, realization of no free will has been both profoundly healing and a mere stepping stone to deeper agency. It's been a cornerstone of my ability to forgive myself and others for mistakes and transgressions, it's a vehicle for compassion. It also has helped me at times to get over regrets, recognizing that in an ultimate sense, things couldn't have been any other way. It's important to consider that while we have no ultimate control over ourselves and neither do others, that it's not in our best interest to shift our locus of control completely to the external. The reality is, that if we respond from a place of no agency, it has the ability to harms us, but instead i encourage us all to engage from a place that is authentic and honest, rooted in our personal (not societal) values. We can move in a way that takes responsibility for our lives without pretending we have free will - it's not fully integrated if your response to realizing no free will is to abdicate your responsibility for your life. It's actually paradoxically true that we have no free will, no control, but that the way we show up still matters, that how we choose to respond to each moment still matters/has an effect (in the absolute sense, no free will, in the relative sense, the experience of making choices still exists and is important)
Benjamin Allman thank you, I think yours is the most important comment on this video so far. Dennett's argument is based on the premise of consequentialism, and all the negative responses to this video clearly show that consequentialism is not in line with most people's moral intuition. furthermore, I see a crucial discrepancy in Dennett's analogy: with that chip he describes, other people(!) would get in control over me, which is vastly different from everything being natural processes over which "I" don't have transcendental powers.
Speaking as a vaguely consequentialist, I disagree. I entirely condemn this gentleman's assertion that we should not debunk free will just because of how it influences people. The reason for this is because telling the truth on scientific issues is the morally better option. Not only would lying bring the entire scientific community into disrepute; lying about such an important issue means that people will continue to live their lives based on a factually flawed paradigm, wondering all the while why it doesn't work out. Telling the world the truth about free will, or the absence thereof, may result in some teething problems, but it would likely pay dividends in the long run. Therefore it is, from a consequentialist viewpoint, a moral imperative.
yeah cause they just listened to a philosopher postulate an analogy that it is so unbelievably flawed that even the dumbest of us can pick it apart...if you never saw a football game before, but then met tom brady and thew the ball around with him and he couldn't even throw a spiral, you might think you had a knack for the NFL too...that's how you do analogies ;)
@Kelvin Klopper ikr, these comments is an appeal to authority fallacy, which is particularly mystifying why they get so smug about it when the authority isn't even their own.
It would seem when people are told they don’t have free will they give less energy to their though process and follow their instincts more. This is bad, balance is important here.
Behaving as if I have no freewill makes me feel bad. If I behave as if I am in control then I feel I am doing better.........but i do believe in determinism. However doesnt make any difference in my life apart from gives me an atmosphere of deep trust towards Life.
The very existence of a "free will problem" is a strong indication that we have, or can achieve, free will. I totally agree with Daniel Dennett's words. We must improve human responsibility (RESPONSIBILITY = RESPONSE ABILITY), not deny it and give an excuse to do any evil irresponsible action.
I see a lot of people in the comments confusing influence with free will. They'll say something like, "Carrot! See I bet you're now thinking about a carrot, you can't help it so that means there's no free will." Or is it simply that I'm using my power of observation? There's nothing in that argument about free will. Or another one would be "My dad loved baseball and talked to me about baseball growing up and now I like baseball, so that means there's no free will." But what you're describing is simply influence, which can effect you sure, but it doesn't mean you don't have free will. If a fish in the sea is pushed or tugged by a current it can influence the movement of the fish, but that doesn't mean you now say that proves the fish has no motor functions. If I can change someone's opinion about something, that doesn't mean they don't have their own opinions. Influence is real, but it doesn't get you to saying there's no free will just because will can be influenced. That would be like saying that the holy spirit is real just because some people are influenced by religious arguments. Minds can be affected by outside stimuli and influence, so what? That doesn't mean that we're all puppets on strings. Some people aren't influenced by the same arguments that others are influenced by, not all influence is absolute. And even if it was it wouldn't prove that free will doesn't exist. It would only prove that free will is handicapped in the face of overpowering influences. But you take away the influences and put a person in a quiet environment and watch them make all sorts of interesting choices that you couldn't have always predicted. And even if you could predict them, that wouldn't mean there's no free will either. That would simply mean you're very good at predicting human behavior. If I thought there was no free will I would have a hard time quitting smoking and eating junk food and begin exercising, because it takes a tremendous amount of will power to make those choices. And more than that, it requires that I criticize myself and my actions when I don't make the right choice. I must take responsibility, I don't get to let myself off the hook or I would just continue down the path of least resistance. This idea that we aren't responsible for our actions seems like some sort of lazy way of making excuses for flaws and weakness in order to justify our standing in society or something. It has that weak SJW sort of feel to it. I don't want to take responsibility for my failures so I'll just say I couldn't help being the way I was. Or, I don't want that awful member of society to have their feelings hurt so I'll just say it's not their fault because they were influenced by outside factors and have no free will. It's some kind of lame ass ideology about everyone being helpless victims in which there should be equality regardless of achievement or actions because we need to strip away the accomplishments of the "privileged" and ignore the failures of the oppressed, and just make excuses for weakness because it makes us feel better. At least that's what it sounds like to me.
I kinda see where you're coming from, but I'm pretty convinced we have no free will. If you break down why people perform the actions they do, you can generally trace it back to previous experiences in the past. That which is untouched by previous experiences is most likely influenced by genetics. The way I see it, your sense of "free will" is only the amalgamation of different psychological influences - some conscious, some unconscious
To reply to a small part of what you said, the reason why not everyone is swayed by the same arguments is most likely because there are other factors beside logical reasoning that influences whether someone accepts an argument or not. Genetics and and environmental factors influence the weight people put on different arguments. For instance, a person who is generally more emotional and empathetic due to genetic factors, and who has additionally known someone who is homeless, is more likely to donate to charities aimed to helping the homeless - compared to someone who is less likely to be empathetic and is more selfish due to genetics, and has no connection to homeless people. This of course is a highly simplified example. A vast array of factors will influence people's decisions, in addition to some element of randomness due to quantum events. But generally if you take the time to break down why people do what they do and feel the way they do, free will doesn't really add up. It's more so like our brain gives us a sense of control, but in reality we are not actually in control
Furthermore, there have been many studies that have seriously thrown down upon the idea of free will. Many studies hint to an idea that a decision is made by the brain even before a person becomes conscious of the decision
'How can we be “free” as conscious agents if everything that we consciously intend is caused by events in our brain that we do not intend and of which we are entirely unaware?' - Sam Harris. With a conscious intent to be aware of our future thoughts and intents. At that future point, we make a choice. It should make no difference that we gained our 'freedom' unaware of our initial intent.
DD makes an important point here. No society could run properly if we all proceeded from the standpoint that whatever bad thing we chose to do was not our fault and no law could hold us responsible for our actions. If people wish to spend the rest of their lives believing they have no agency over their own lives, then fine. I prefer to get on and continue making my own decisions.
If this imaginary individual was told that he/she did not have free will, and believed it to be true; therefore comitting a crime. That just show that cause and effect reigns supreme.
Aka: Tell people a comforting lie, instead of telling them the truth, because sometimes people deliver the truth in a harsh way, which makes people feel bad. How about instead we focus on explaining the truth to people in a way that makes them realize that it's not the horrible thing they're under the impression that it is? In other words, "You don't have free will, and that's just fine."
@@sguraya7223 Because I think that it's better for people to learn the truth and accept it, rather than fear the truth and comfort themselves with a lie. And so what if whether or not his focus is on truth is predetermined? My action to try to get people to focus more on the truth is also predetermined. What does that matter for the sake of whether or not we should try to get people to accept the truth? Are our arguments somehow stronger if they're not predetermined? No, they're exactly the same. What point are you trying to make?
@@CatacombD You don't "think" anything. That would imply you had any choice in the matter. But it's deterministic... Right? Yes, your action to get people to focus on truth is pre-determined, so why do it? To try to get people to accept the truth is like trying to do anything. Impossible, everything is pre-determined, you can't try to manifest a potential future, because there is only one, and it is coming regardless. You are trying to do that solely because you are a machine programmed to mindlessly pursue that, with zero agency. You aren't trying anything. The point I'm trying to make is that your claims contradict themselves, and the fact that you are making claims, itself contradicts the claims you have made. Like if I said "this sentence is a lie", that sentence is fundamentally nonsensical. As is: "I (who does not exist, except as a machine with no agency) am trying (no, I'm not, that would imply agency, that I am even capable of the act of 'trying') am focusing on truth/claiming cuz/think something". Everything you say contradicts determinism, even the sentences you use to advocate for it.
@@sguraya7223 Nothing he says contradicts himself. We've no words. Steve's attempts aren't futile in determinism, but the contrary. If we perceive free will as a cause effect thing in determinism then Steve is a cause to an effect. Like how the hostile tone of your comment to Steve motivated me to reply and all the events prior to it along with my personality and genetics which made it possible. btw. Sincerely, you understand shit, stfu.
@@ina7084 That you read my comments as hostile is entirely on you, that was not my intention (although I guess intention isn't real...) "Steve's attempts" don't exist. He can't attempt, or try, anything, because that implies he could do otherwise. But it's deterministic, right? "If we perceive free will as a cause effect thing in determinism, then Steve is a cause to an effect". You're talking about my opinion and Streves argument like they exist in a vacuum. Let's go by that "cause effect thing" thing: The initial conditions of the universe are a cause to the effect of everything that occurs afterwards, so what my opinion is, is determined anyway, there's no point trying to do anything, including convince me, because what will happen, will happen. But wait, there is no try, or attempt, because that would imply the option of that not happening, but it's all determined. Yet you continue to use words like "attempt", despite the fact that there is no such thing. There is only that which "occurs" because other things "occurred" because other things "existed". There is no room for "trying" in this, as we have no control over it.
"Free will is an emergent property that is consistent with the microscopic dynamics." - Sean Carroll “I am very comfortable with the idea that we can override biology with free will.” - Richard Dawkins “I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.” - Stephen Hawking “Free will is to mind what chance is to matter.” - Charles Darwin
Never claimed to be. They are he ones who think they have authority on all things philosophical and biological and scientific because they are good in one area of it. Not true
+Michael Weintraub I have been provocative because you said that theirs are all "bullshit" without bringing any counter argument, which I would listen to with the same interest of scientists' ones (if not more interest), because we all are human beings that can speak about free will on the basis of our personal experiences and ideas.
Sean Carroll has said repeatedly he does not believe in libertarian free will. He has said that, even accounting for quantum mechanics, libertarian free will is impossible, predictability or no predictability. Richard Dawkins has argued against retribution on the grounds that free will does not exist in the sense required for traditional moral responsibility. "Strawson is right. I do not establish the kind of ultimate free will or moral responsibility that most people want to believe in and do believe in. That can't be done, and I know it." - Daniel Dennett
I believe that anyone saying free will exists is unconsciously fearing death, or their ego needs to believe they have power over their life. Let's start admitting our fears, and admit there's no free will. It takes guts, but let's just say it.
@@lukevitek436 : Free will is a powerful illusion. Particles are deterministic and we are made of articles. You can do what you want but you can't choose what you want.
Guys Putin is innocent. He has no freewill, no one has, and therefore no responsibility whatsoever. Everything he "decides" were set in motion by the interaction of atoms from the beginning of time. Putin did nothing wrong. Putin did nothing at all!
that is just not true, man from 7 years ago. the truth is that the implication of no free will is so severe that frankly, it can't be believed. regardless of it being true or not, the exorcism of free will entails that none of us exist. we are automatons, dialetic machines stumbling through the material world. everything that can be thought and discovered will be done so not because of creativity or intent, because these don't exist. what can be discovered, created and thought of will because some people do the effort, and some don't, deterministically. which one of these two are you? you can't decide shit because YOU don't exist. how is this merely a fear of death. it murders YOU, throws YOU away. there is no ME and YOU, there is nothing, whatever i'll do tomorrow is whatever i'll do tomorrow, there is no intention whatsoever, or desire, or anything.
I am a physicist and I will provide solid arguments that prove that consciousness cannot be generated by the brain (in my youtube channel you can find a video with more detailed explanations). Many argue that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain, but it is possible to show that such hypothesis is inconsistent with our scientific knowledges. In fact, it is possible to show that all the examples of emergent properties consists of concepts used to describe how an external object appear to our conscious mind, and not how it is in itself, which means how the object is independently from our observation. In other words, emergent properties are ideas conceived to describe or classify, according to arbitrary criteria and from an arbitrary point of view, certain processes or systems. In summary, emergent properties are intrinsically subjective, since they are based on the arbitrary choice to focus on certain aspects of a system and neglet other aspects, such as microscopic structures and processes; emergent properties consist of ideas through which we describe how the external reality appears to our conscious mind: without a conscious mind, these ideas (= emergent properties) would not exist at all. Here comes my first argument: arbitrariness, subjectivity, classifications and approximate descriptions, imply the existence of a conscious mind, which can arbitrarily choose a specific point of view and focus on certain aspects while neglecting others. It is obvious that consciousness cannot be considered an emergent property of the physical reality, because consciousenss is a preliminary necessary condition for the existence of any emergent property. We have then a logical contradiction. Nothing which presupposes the existence of consciousness can be used to try to explain the existence of consciousness. Here comes my second argument: our scientific knowledge shows that brain processes consist of sequences of ordinary elementary physical processes; since consciousness is not a property of ordinary elementary physical processes, then a succession of such processes cannot have cosciousness as a property. In fact we can break down the process and analyze it step by step, and in every step consciousness would be absent, so there would never be any consciousness during the entire sequence of elementary processes. It must be also understood that considering a group of elementary processes together as a whole is an arbitrary choice. In fact, according to the laws of physics, any number of elementary processes is totally equivalent. We could consider a group of one hundred elementary processes or ten thousand elementary processes, or any other number; this choice is arbitrary and not reducible to the laws of physics. However, consciousness is a necessary preliminary condition for the existence of arbitrary choices; therefore consciousness cannot be a property of a sequence of elementary processes as a whole, because such sequence as a whole is only an arbitrary and abstract concept that cannot exist independently of a conscious mind. Here comes my third argument: It should also be considered that brain processes consist of billions of sequences of elementary processes that take place in different points of the brain; if we attributed to these processes the property of consciousness, we would have to associate with the brain billions of different consciousnesses, that is billions of minds and personalities, each with its own self-awareness and will; this contradicts our direct experience, that is, our awareness of being a single person who is able to control the voluntary movements of his own body with his own will. If cerebral processes are analyzed taking into account the laws of physics, these processes do not identify any unity; this missing unit is the necessarily non-physical element (precisely because it is missing in the brain), the element that interprets the brain processes and generates a unitary conscious state, that is the human mind. Here comes my forth argument: Consciousness is characterized by the fact that self-awareness is an immediate intuition that cannot be broken down or fragmented into simpler elements. This characteristic of consciousness of presenting itself as a unitary and non-decomposable state, not fragmented into billions of personalities, does not correspond to the quantum description of brain processes, which instead consist of billions of sequences of elementary incoherent quantum processes. When someone claims that consciousness is a property of the brain, they are implicitly considering the brain as a whole, an entity with its own specific properties, other than the properties of the components. From the physical point of view, the brain is not a whole, because its quantum state is not a coherent state, as in the case of entangled systems; the very fact of speaking of "brain" rather than many cells that have different quantum states, is an arbitrary choice. This is an important aspect, because, as I have said, consciousness is a necessary preliminary condition for the existence of arbitrariness. So, if a system can be considered decomposable and considering it as a whole is an arbitrary choice, then it is inconsistent to assume that such a system can have or generate consciousness, since consciousness is a necessary precondition for the existence of any arbitrary choice. In other words, to regard consciousness as a property ofthe brain, we must first define what the brain is, and to do so we must rely only on the laws of physics, without introducing arbitrary notions extraneous to them; if this cannot be done, then it means that every property we attribute to the brain is not reducible to the laws of physics, and therefore such property would be nonphysical. Since the interactions between the quantum particles that make up the brain are ordinary interactions, it is not actually possible to define the brain based solely on the laws of physics. The only way to define the brain is to arbitrarily establish that a certain number of particles belong to it and others do not belong to it, but such arbitrariness is not admissible. In fact, the brain is not physically separated from the other organs of the body, with which it interacts, nor is it physically isolated from the external environment, just as it is not isolated from other brains, since we can communicate with other people, and to do so we use physical means, for example acoustic waves or electromagnetic waves (light). This necessary arbitrariness in defining what the brain is, is sufficient to demonstrate that consciousness is not reducible to the laws of physics. Besides, since the brain is an arbitrary concept, and consciousness is the necessary preliminary condition for the existence of arbitrariness, consciousness cannot be a property of the brain. Based on these considerations, we can exclude that consciousness is generated by brain processes or is an emergent property of the brain. Marco Biagini
The last experiment with the students just confirms even more how we are product of causality stimuli-response mechanisms. the knowledge of the illusion of free will turned those students less responsibles twards the task. i think that when discussing and specially teaching the subject of free will we must not only show the neuroscience evidence but also what Dennett is saying here.
He isn't saying we should lie. He is asking neuroscience to be a bit more responsible when explaining our lack of free will. Many just assume when they hear that "WELL, THAT MEANS I DONT CHOOSE ANYTHING MYSELF HUH?" When what it really means is that while me and you decided what we wore today, it technically could have been predicted by an extremely complicated mathematical equation. When you explain it like that, the fact that we don't have free will... really means nothing at all in relation to our every day activities.
This experiment shows, that people have free will in the sence I define it - not an absolute will, but a will with a certain amount of freedom allowing as to act accordingly to what we have heard or read (which means: what we believe). Not always, but sometimes. Not completely, but to some extent. It shows also that if some people claim they don't believe in free will because of reading Harris or Sampolsky, some of the guilt for their wrongdoings goes to the writer mentioned above.
Oh, exactly!! To a Hammer all the world looks like nails!! That's why I tell unhappy people that they can completely change their outlook on life. The world is like a screen we Project our beliefs upon!! To a soldier, Life and their decisions will be made through the filter of War & Conflict..... To a cop, Everyone is a potential criminal.....to a salesman, everyone is a potential customer.... To a musician, all the world is alive with music.... To a banker or businessman, every event in life is a potential opportunity to make more money etc etc etc!!!
What people? What do they think? If it's all determined, then it is all simply physical phenomena occuring, why consider them as people, and not as pawns?
I've been convinced that my will is not free from causality , and I've yet to feel like I am free of consequence, this is a childish point of view, all this realization does for anyone is you feel less judgmental and you don't take yourself too seriously , a man can will what he wants he can't will what he wills. Pretty simple
I roughly agree with you!! And I don't even need you to give me reasons or proof because I already understand your point of view and why you say that.....at least in a general sense!! Even in times when I was fairly certain that Free Will is an illusion, i Nsver Ever felt "Free" of consequences....I agree with you that it's a childish and simplistic take on Determinism!! When people say, "So, I can just do whatever I want, even commit terrible crimes, and it's not my fault?", I always say to them, "sure, you will do whatever you were already always gonna do but, just as it is Determined that you will commit a crime, it is also Determined that others will throw you in jail".... They don't see that it really doesn't change a single thing about our lives but it can be a useful way to look at things, like when you say it made you be "less judgmental"!!
Think of it like this: if you had exponentially more Intelligence and Information about the Universe, you could predict Everything that will Ever happen....but, in reality, *WE* lack the ability!! Imagine playing a game of poker or blackjack with a group of people....if YOU had ALL the necessary Information about All of the cards and their locations, as well as knowing HOW the others would choose to play the cards they get, you could easily predict Every single card and playing of the cards that would Ever happen before it happened..... BUT... We don't have the ability to gain that Knowledge or the brain power to process it all and in those cases we refer to things like *Luck* and *Chance*!! But Luck and Chance are just ways of saying that we are unable to process all the needed Info to predict every event..... It is in this way that our "Free Will" exists!! We woefully lack the necessary Knowledge and brain power to compute it all so, lacking the ability to predict the resulting *Causal Chain*, we refer to "Free Will" because, from OUR perspective, it Seems like We choose things at random or for whatever reasons. Just like "Luck", Free Will does Not exist but it Does exist from Our very limited perspective....Free Will is an Illusion but it is a *Functional Illusion*!! It's all about Knowledge and Subjective Point of View!!
Ethan Wimsett I don't think hiding philosophical truths or scientific observations/principles/theories from people because of fear of reactions is good overall. Nor proves the assertion any valid. Secondly, I can counter this rather dumb presumption of people thinking no free will means no personal accountability. For one it's about accepting OTHERS have responsibility as well in how they influence the actions of other people in society. A shared blame of sorts(though not accountability). Also an acknowledgement of another person's conditions= empathy. One can be more empathetic when they don't prescribe the world to be 100% free will, because knowing that allows you to conclude WHY a person does what they do and leads to those situations. It gets moral people to think about their actions more and the effects. Free will believing people just tend to blindly condemn others and shrug off ANY responsibility for either their influence, actions or complacency. I don't think lack of free will as defined means having a predetermined fate or destiny. Just as I don't account for randomness or deviations at the molecular level (that become like ripple effects) as free will.
This man is surprisingly dissonant to this issue, and embarrassingly obtuse to the reality of the hypothetical cases he refers to. A very poor addressing of the free will issue, daniel, and well below what you should be capable of :/
Consider that he's addressing the trend of neuroscientists to come out with sensationalist videos describing free will as something we do not have, without properly conceptualizing it. Not everyone understands free will, or the difference between it and agency. In Harris's videos, he deliberately (refer to Mr. Dennett's comments on their mischief) makes it seem as if humans have no control over their fate and if we all just stopped trying and making decisions tomorrow, life would carry on. Anyone who knows better, of course, knows that they in fact have agency and what Harris is describing is not that the decision themselves, but rather where the decision comes from, is predetermined. It is a crucial distinction that is absent only to boost arguments and views by making the argument seem far more controversial than it is. Dennett seems to agree with the argument that those neuroscientists are making about free will, he just disagrees about the way it is being presented lately.
I always thought the free will debate was rather pointless. When we talk about free will everyone agrees that even if it was somehow proven that we don't have free will, it still FEELS like we do have it. So what it comes down to is we either have the illusion of free will, or true free will, and if you really think about it, there isn't much difference between those two options.
InMaTeofDeath-actually, sam Harris addresses this point quite well. The subjective experience of free will is an illusion as well. You should look it up.
Well it feels like the earth is flat. So who cares if we believe in that right? No knowledge of free will may lead to some more scientific discoveries in the future. Maybe we will one day learn to predict human behavior and therefore stop crimes before they happen?
We have free will when we choose to apply our consciousness to it instead of just cruising on autopilot. The body acts instinctively in a biologically programmed fashion but when we are observing that process closely, we can take the wheel instead of just being a passenger. And we can even reprogram the body's responses to stimuli by conscious awareness and effort. And those who claim it cannot be done should get the hell out of the way of those who are doing it.
your consciousness is a product of your brain which is an organ in your body which is composed of cells which are composed of molecules which work deterministically by the rules of chemistry and physics so in a sense it's simply a phenomenon(like lightning or clouds albeit a much more complex one). You're talking as if your consciousness is something different than your body which it is NOT. A part of you(neocortex) can override another part of you but that in itself is also deterministic.
"[Galen] Strawson is right. I do not establish the kind of ultimate free will or moral responsibility that most people want to believe in and do believe in. That can't be done, and I know it." - Daniel Dennett
Intellectual honesty should not be discarded just because it might have ill effects. That's the argument for religion. How far you've fallen Mr Horseman.
jreitano2: when the four of them were talking around the kitchen table in one video years ago, it could be seen then that he disagreed with Harris. Probably on this very issue. I doubt his anecdote is true. I can see he likes it, but a doctor could be sued over such nonsense, and would likely have been less asinine.
We all know Neuroscientist is just a codeword for Sam Harris :D
Mr. King Kong bet you love your daddy Jordan Peterson.
Mr. King Kong your attempts to troll me are pathetic lmao. Just stop embarrassing yourself, for your own sake.
Mr. King Kong I have now lost interest in this conversation.
What is this? A Big Think or a Big Imagination???
@Mr. King Kong
Just wanted to ping you to remind you that 4 months ago you embarrassed yourself in this thread. You suck at life. Carry on.
We need to study the correlation between beard length and wisdom.
NICK ALIMONOS lol
Judging by this video, it will be a negative correlation.
Age implicates wisdom. But it's by no means a reliable implication. Like a young man who has a beard that may appear older - until you start to talk to him.
😂 of course
@@Arcaryon The problem with these kind of videos is people will make comments like yours thinking they sound intelligent.
“Free will exists because if you tell people it doesn’t you’re a bad boy”
Beg the question and it will bend to you.
Think friend. We’re not using our brains today.
That’s not at all what he said. Wow. Never though I’d defend him of all people.
He's not arguing that free will exists here. He does that elsewhere, but that's not the point of the video. He's specifically claiming that regardless of whether or not free will exists, it would be bad to convince people that it doesn't exist.
@@JP-sd7di y its weird to u
There is a problem with the first analogy.
Convincing someone you are in control of them (which means you have freewill and they do not), is completely different than convincing someone that NO ONE has freewill.
i dont see a problem, in both cases personal liability is lost.
I don't remember the video, but yeah I agree. Personal liability doesn't make sense
No not really because they both are basically control of information, and ways to control someone, and result in the same outcome, one is to control one person, one is to control a population
@@tepisrain335 How does convincing someone that no one has freewill control the population? I'm not following
@@igora50 because convincing someone they have no free will gives the ones convincing the upper hand, it gives them the ability to control you, there is no difference in convincing one person vs convincing millions just the number of convinced, you are still restricting people's ability to chose, either as a cruel joke or so you can make the choices for them, all a system of control
“If people find out the truth, they might turn bad.” “Let’s keep it from them.”
Nope, he;s saying that people are being told a lie (there is no free will) and that is morally wrong. And, sure, if people did find out the truth (that there is Compatiblist free will), that would do more good than harm.
@@Locrian1 what are you talking about? dennet believes there is no free will, the difference is that he believes our legal system and morality require us to believe that it does. thus the need for both justifies the belief of free will, instead of the reverse, which is what conventional and traditional views are.
I think you hit it right on the nose, i've considered this point often. It is exceedingly obvious that free will is an illusion of feeling, that whether the universe is deterministic or indeterministic the idea of free will is absurd. In one case all is determined from initial conditions, and in the other case things can not be determined at any point, resulting in no free will either way. These are the only two options, there is no third option. Everything Dennett describes in these experiments is explainable by cause and effect (no mystery in that respect). The scientists are influencing (causing) an effect in the patient or subject. Depending on what is done or said to the subject (cause), the subject will react to it (effect, not free will).
The problem i believe that some of the smarter philosophers have discovered is that the illusion of free will is necessary to maintain in the public mind (cause) in order to in turn maintain a healthier society (effect). This is not the case with everyone because some people realize that it does not matter if one believes or not, they simply keep on acting as they were (AS IF they had free will), but some people get confused and think they need to act in some arbitrary accordance with not believing in free will (this is an effect). So many philosopher i think that have discovered this fact of life make an effort to foster the belief in free will in the masses even though they themselves do not believe it (a white lie, perfectly reasonable in context with the big picture of society). I guess you can call it a "philosophical conspiracy" (cause) to maintain order (effect), lol. Oh well, let it be then.
Free will is cringe
@@Locrian1 : There is no reason we should behave any worse if we understand we don't have free will. As Sabine Hossenfelder points out; If you do things to harm others they will take measures to stop you.
Is it just me or has a professional philosopher just made an appeal to consequences?
It's not just you.
Yes, but did not all 4 horsemen in their round table discussion agree that there were circumstances where such a path would be morally right? It's not like he's changed stance on the matter...
spinycrayfish he's still using a fallacy as his main argument though...
...but at a certain point strict adherence to logical reasoning is of little concern. If I have a truth - or merely suspect a possible truth, as is the current status of free will - that will cause great enough damage, it is well worth considering not revealing it. Even more so if we are not certain.
I'm sure you can imagine scenarios where the truth will be more damaging to society than ignorance.
I can imagine no situation where revealing the truth would be more damaging than suppressing it, especially when your "concerns" are as convoluted and so obviously just a way to try and suppress a view you disagree with but can't legitimately argue against as Dennett is doing here
"We have free will because telling people we don't have free will is irresponsible."
Sorry, that doesn't really cut it.
Mr. King Kong Shoo shoo dog, get lost shoo shoo
It perfectly obvious you dont have free will, because your choices are made before you are of them lol
nothing cuts it... thats the problem. nothing. its a belief
I won't listen to you because you don't have free will.
Mr. King Kong you give off the dangerous impression that you haven’t read any of the counter arguments to your beliefs.
I don't care about free will too much because I generally try to trust my body to allow me to make sound enough decisions to get by and stay alive, that's what it's programmed to do, and any extra energy leftover from that task can be channeled into what I perceive as my free will which seems good enough. most people use their free will or willpower reserves to pursue pleasures or achieve personal goals, and Yeah, a lot of time those goals are shaped by a person's environment, past experiences and current mental state. I think we should try to educate ourselves as much as possible though, so our bounds of possibility and perception are expanded, so our perception of free will is bigger than the free will of someone who knows less than us about the world. you're only as free as the experiences or knowledge you've accumulated, but at least you do have the freedom to choose to learn, when you have the energy for it, so use that amount of free will at the very least.
That thought experiment as an analogy is so flawed...
I agree. The major flaw for me is the argument that if an individual knows he has no free will then he is going to behave immorally. It is just as valid to not have free will and behave morally. A second problem is that if there is indeed no free will (as the neurosurgeon made the patient believe), he is proposing the neurosurgeon should keep the patient in ignorance to protect him from getting in trouble from misbehaving. If there is no free will, the patient has a right to know it unless he explicitly says he prefers to live in ignorance of the truth. Finally, if the neurosurgeon does not truly know if there is free will or not, then he would be lying to the patient, and that would be wrong whether the patient misbehaves or not. The bottom line is that this analogy is crap and there is no such thing as libertarian free will, be serious!
It's flat out pathetic
This analogy is merely begging the question.
It assumes telling people they don't have free will is bad, in order to make the case that telling people they don't have free will is bad.
@@EdwinDalorzo Dennett is not a libertarian when it comes to free will. He is a compatibilist.
@@MichaelFairhurst The point of the analogy isn't to make an empirical claim about what will happen if people are told that free will doesn't exist. You're right that thought experiments can't generally show that; empirical evidence is needed, which, incidentally, he gives in the video. Maybe you didn't watch that far. In any case, the point of the analogy was to show that *if* something like that happened, then the people in the clinic telling the patient that he doesn't have free will did something bad.
Somebody told me the other day that I didn't have freewill and I believed him but I didn't go out and commit a crime...sounds like this person's OCD wasn't cured.
Exactly! Something else is going on with the patient for his brain to lead him to that conclusion.
So basically he's saying "don't tell idiots that free will doesn't exist because they will take you literally. I know it doesn't exist, but just don't tell the idiots that"
I love Matt Dillahunty's view in general:
"I want to know as much true things as possible". That would be my position also.
If free will turns out to be an illusion,
I want to know.
I don't.
@@PeteMD your brain must be much bigger. I can tell because you spend so much time growing it by writing "har har Dennett = dum" all over this comment section.
There are true things you don't want to know. Like how it feels to starve to death. Also, the illusion of free will clearly has an important evolutionary purpose.
"Free will does exist" --> Still can't control inner impulses.
"Freee will doesn't exist" --> Still has to make decisions.
Free Will = TOTALLY IRRELEVANT.
He's only right in the sense we're only reacting to stimuli. But this brilliant man just gave a textbook rendition of a slippery slope.
Bingo. You nailed it. I hadn't thought about that, but that is true.
You're both wrong. Probably is NOT a lack of free will. The option to do the exact opposite of your impulse is 100% available.
@@themacocko6311 All you can do is witness the choices you make. The choices you make are done a few milliseconds before you can even witness them. Every choice you ever made, every realization you made, every opinion you have, every certainty you have, every belief you have are all 100% involuntary.
You have choice and free will: if you chose the parents you have, your skin color, your hair color, the schools you went to when you were growing up, your teachers, and what they would teach you, and every encounter you ever had with anyone (good or bad).
@@themacocko6311 Free will is an illusion. There is zero scientific proof of it. None.
@@themacocko6311 : You CAN do the exact opposite of your impulse, your WANT, but only for a more compelling WANT like to avoid trouble or be contrarian. You can do what you want but you can't choose what you want.
The lack of free will makes it even more important to beware of your influence on others. In the exact same way as you are careful of your conduct around impressionable children.
Lol that's free will right there but yea we are what we eat what we listen and the ideas with feed
If free will means the ability to make our own decisions, then yes we do have free will. But our decisions are made based on our environment, previous experiences and knowledge. Our brain computes based on those factors and an outcome is made. That is as free as it gets. Does that mean that it is deterministic? Probably. Does that mean we are not responsible for our actions? No.
Indeed. For some reason, people equate "I have no free will" with "I'm not responsible for my actions." If we built a robot, gave it programming to make it self learning, let it live it's life, and it ended up being a murderer, would we let it off the hook because, "It didn't have any free will." No, because the punishments for crimes are one of the many pieces of data that get factored by the brain to determine if a crime is worth doing or not.
We program humans to not do bad stuff by making punishments for bad actions. And if a human does bad actions anyway, we treat them like a defective robot. (either try to fix its programming, put it in a place where it won't cause harm to the other meatbags, or scrap it)
Lamenting over not having free will is about as silly as lamenting over the fact that there's no Santa. Your life is exactly the same. You'll still get presents on Xmas, but now you understand how they actually get there. I don't think that's a depressing thing.
Conscious decisions? then no we don't have free will.
Those 3 things yes, but mainly it's about our will.. what do we will the most in a given situation. That is determined by what we "want" the most, and what we are "forced" to do. That's it.
What it means, is that you couldn't of done anything differently.
If you do something bad, it's an unfortunate thing that happened because that thing that happened was forced on you because it was what you happened to will the most, which was also forced on you.
Similiar to how we don't think to wanna throw an earthquake in jail.. per se. We just try to prevent it from happening again. Though yes jail can be used for humans as a preventative measure. But retribution is pointless and not okay beause they couldn't of done anything differently.
With the robots, it's.. would we want retribution and kick it's ass? no.. it's a robot.. it's just an unfortunate thing that happened with it's programming.
Do we still use jail? yes of course. That's deterance and also keeping them away from the public. But the prison system obviously needs to become essentially the Scandinavian prison model (already exists). With a plus side that it actually works.
Even if you're not responsible on a conscious level, and are just along for the ride.. you still have to go along for the ride if your ride becomes a problem.. that's just how it is.
I don't at all see it as a depressing thing either, and my behaviour does remains the same. But it does mean certain other things need to change.. mainly the prison system. Also some things get easier.. like if you're the victim of something bad that happened.. it's easier to accept it I think.... perhaps.
Your last two points are contradictory. If the universe is deterministic then we are not responsible for our actions because they are simply the consequence of a colossal cause and effect chain.
Furthermore, we can’t make our own decisions if they have already been predetermined by our genetics and environment. We do have the subjective illusion of making decisions, but every factor that goes into the final decision you rest on is completely out of your control and the vast majority of those factors are also out of your conscious awareness.
Even the verbalisation of your decision would have already been determined before you even consciously decided to say it.
@@stewartfraser5357 "If the universe is deterministic then we are not responsible for our actions because they are simply the consequence of a colossal cause and effect chain." You are responsible for your actions to the degree that other people will hold you responsible for them.
"Furthermore, we can’t make our own decisions if they have already been predetermined by our genetics and environment. We do have the subjective illusion of making decisions," Sure we can make our own decisions! Of course they are part of the causal evolution of the universe but it IS you who are making the decisions. That is in no way an illusion!
@@kosmos6467 Well said. The same people who argue that determinism absolves criminals of responsibility, want to hold responsible those who would hold the criminals responsible.
Having free will in a deterministic universe changes nothing about the heuristics we actually live our lives by, and the conflation should be recognized and abandoned.
For me personally, I don't mind much whether free will is real or not. I don't have any problems rejecting free will in its entirety and simultaneously continue to act in such a way which is considered to contain good character. In other words, the notion of not having free will in my head doesn't cause me to do bad things. And for all the bad things I do in life, I could equally argue that I chose to do them. Regardless of the concept of free will, take responsibility for your actions.
Doesn't matter what you "mind" or "have problems with" or how you "act". Because you don't do any of those things, it's all determined, right?
You aren't taking responsibility, because it's determined that you will say that, it doesn't mean anything. You're a physical vessel of causes and effects, so you don't really exist.
@@sguraya7223 bro my comment is 6 years old lol. You're basically replying to a guy who doesn't exist anymore. But I feel you
@@Matthewkyle12 Me replying 6 years later was determined anyway, was it not? So why point it out to me? It was bound to happen.
@@sguraya7223 j
@@sguraya7223 Predetermination means that the way you are, the choices you made and make all come as a result of conditions in your life that you did not choose. All you can do is witness your choices, reactions & realizations; but you don't get to choose them anymore than you get to choose what foods you like and what foods make you nauseous.
All your opinions, certainties and beliefs are absolutely involuntary; unless you know you could choose to believe right now something that you already know is false; or choose to disbelieve something you already know with 100% certainty is true: such as 2 + 2 = 4 or any other belief you strongly hold.
"I do not believe in free will. Schopenhauer's words: 'Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills,' accompany me in all situations throughout my life and reconcile me with the actions of others, even if they are rather painful to me. This awareness of the lack of free will keeps me from taking myself and my fellow men too seriously as acting and deciding individuals, and from losing my temper." - Einstein. "My Credo" 1932
That's a great way to view people, as empty vessels of physical phenomena. Your fellow men should not be taken seriously because theyre silly non-acting/deciding individuals.
Einstein was clearly morally bankrupt.
@@sguraya7223 "from taking *myself* and my fellow men *too* seriously. Big difference
@@tinand69420 Nope, saying it about yourself doesn't make it better.
@@tinand69420 yea, it doesn't make it any better.
einstein ended up believeing in free will actually in his late years he argued aganist determinism so.. yeah
I disagree with Dennett on this, though he makes a good point. His argument is essentially a standard argument for the benefit of Religion. The idea is that a person is more likely to behave properly if he believes that he will be punished by an all-seeing God, if he misbehaves. Thus, it is better for society if people believe something which cannot be proved, and which is likely false, as long as it reduces crime. Most people will behave appropriately, even if they don't believe in Free Will, because of the penalties imposed by Government and Society for unacceptable behavior. If we start making laws and policies based on an untrue premise, this will only encourage superstitious beliefs and encourage more policies based on irrational thinking.
The doctors didn't turn his free will off. They turned his illusion of free will off. This is the first Dennett I've been exposed to, and it's not a good start.
+Rodrigo Gallinari
Knowing that decisions MATTER doesn't mean we have free will. It is possible to be wildly successful while not believing in free will.
EndtheRessentiment: IMO Dan S's second and third statement are true. Dan is an excellent philosopher, but his *HUGE* shot at Sam Harris in this video are petty and amateurish... his "intuition pump" (Jesus Dan, it's just called a thought experiment.) really has very little to do with whether or not neuroscience has anything, or the final thing, to say about free will. Dennet doesn't think there is free will either, but he finds "room" for it, claims to be a compatibilist (determinist with extra shit). Even I think the universe, the way *WE* interact with the universe is completely deterministic. Dan's greatest fear is that the "common man" will be exposed to this thought and freak the fuck out, hence his desire to put something *plus* determinism as the real answer. Matt D. thinks he can convince Sam Harris (or at least give it a good try) that he, as well, is a compatibilist. I don't think Sam will fall for any of it. The determined laws of mathematics, physics and biology all add up to determinism. Our minds are simply a product of our brains that can now be measured to have thoughts that happened before they were thought. Sounds very much like an AI program to me (but no, I'm not nuts, I'm not going all connspiracy on you!). The way our individual lives run is determined by our physical makeup (even to a subatomic level) and minds are determined by the way evolution has shaped them over 4 billion years and how they interact with our unique set of physiology. I have a massive hypothetic outline of this idea, but I'm mostly convinced that this is probably how the free will prolem works.
Biased Lemmings - Definitely check out "Rationality Rules" video where he had a conversation with Matt Dillahunty on this.
Same here
He merely argues for the case that telling people they don't have free will has negative implications. He did not make a case that we do in fact have free will. So, should we deliberately not tell people what science has deduced in order to prevent these negative implications? Should we tell 'white lies'? It's up to you to decide, but I'll leave this quote because it illustrates my view.
"The effort to strive for truth has to precede all other efforts." -Albert Einstein, 1931
If anyone tells you that you don't have free will and you actually believe them, perhaps there is something wrong in your head. It takes about one second to actually test that. Not to say there is total free will either, just not power of suggestion.
Damian Louden I didn't engage in his argument because I accepted his argument! He argued that telling people free will doesn't exist can have negative implications. I accept that. Please tell me at which point he argues whether or not free will exists.
Wastingsometimehere It depends on your definition of free will. If being able to make a choice constitutes free will, then technically, computers have free will. If decisions being predetermined was a clause mutually exclusive to free will, then recent advancements in neuroscience would suggest we do not have free will.
Jaynohuz
Free will can be effected by everything from genetics to parasites and viruses. We are still machines and machines don't have perfect programming.
That said internal free will is a lie, but having others control you externally is highly unlikely and very easy to defy.
We know there's no free will. Just don't tell anybody...
I realized that free will is a nonsensical concept some years ago when I was a teenager. I don't go around and harm anyone - quite the contrary: I find it a very relaxing thought. The more I bear it in mind, the more tolerant, easy and placid I become. I get less and less judgemental and don't think of people as "evil" anymore if they are not of the same opinion as I am or if they did a bad thing. I see them like they are: (more or less) intelligent but fallible apes that sometimes believe in or do stupid things, because their brain is wired like it is. Does that mean we should allow everybody to do anything? No. A murderer without free will is still a murderer, we still should put him in jail. But we shouldn't do it thinking "he is an evil person and needs to be punished because we want him to suffer", but instead we should see him like we would see every other animal in that situation (or maybe even a computer with a bug) and think „you did something very stupid and we don't want people going arround killing other people, so we're going to put you away from society untill you(r brain) learned not to do so so that we can put you free again without having to worry". And also every individual has still reason not to misbehave: I don't want to go to jail and I don't want to live in a society were I have to be afraid of being murdered all the time, so I better behave not to contribute to that. That little piece of game theory may not convince everybody to be nice - but on the other hand the notion of free will hasn't done so either. And I think, who's intelligent enough to understand neuroscientific arguments against free will is also very likely to be intelligent enough to consider simple gametheory and some determinism-compatible ethics.
I dont think that any of these or any of his points make a valid argument for believing or not believing in free will - it's first of all a matter of truth... but I just wanted to express that I don't agree with the "thought experiment".
You make a good point that, free will or not, we must deal with the problem of the person who goes around harming others. Praise and blame, punishment and reward, are deterministic tools for behavior modification. With or without free will, we must still use the tools that work. So, the notion that discarding free will makes us less likely to punish or reward someone is not valid. It's value is mostly a placebo effect, where it does for you what you have been told to believe it will do for you. In fact, if we use the notion of determinism to excuse the thief who stole your wallet, then it equally excuses the judge who cuts off his hand. So, this is not very clear thinking on our part.
Ironically, Christianity, which is made up of people who generally believe in free will, also teaches forgiveness and rehabilitation through principle and stories, like the Prodigal Son. So, compassion is not vested in the absence of free will. It is vested in our view of other things, like our notions of fair play.
'I realized that free will Is a nonsensical concept', seems to me to be an inherently contradictory statement.
@@teebeedahbow Why is that?
@@simil-kung5610 Well, surely if you had no free will, you would have to give up your chance of realising anything or making any kind of conclusion. In other words, what part of you makes decisions - albeit influenced but finally independent from all kinds of outside stimulation, information etc -, if not your free will? At some point you have to speak and act independently. You are not an automaton.
@@teebeedahbow I don't think that follows. Just because the state of my brain is determined by the laws of physics and not by some ominous thing that people call "free will" (and fail to adequately define), that doesn't mean that my brain needs to be static. Obviously, it isn't static but you don't need "free" will to explain that fact. A computer can make conclusions based on given information, it's basically the same thing, but I guess you wouldn't say that computers have free will.
And also I think that many people who believe in free will wouldn't agree with your statement because you're basically implying that people can freely choose what they believe in.
This points to our lack of free will (subjects’ behavior being influenced like that without their having any idea) but also points out the necessity to continue with this cultural notion of free-will.
"Of course we have free will, we have no choice." -Christopher Hitchens
Great quote 👍
@@fdnlu It's really not though. You see it all the time because it is the end of the argument. There is nothing more/better to be said about the mystery of free will.
Just by the notion of Hitchens stating "we have no choice", (is) the free will decision to abdicate personal responsibility for your decision to think you have no choice and by extension no consequence.
It pains me to see such an intelligent guy resort to appealing to consequences.
You obviously didn't understand the point of the video then. He's not saying that's a reason to believe in free will. He's written multiple books detailing those arguments.
Exactly!!
Is free will a matter of truth or consequences
We can choose to do what we like but we can't choose what we like
This is the exact argument theists use to argue that we need God as a source of moral authority.
Not much as source as justification for moral
Its a pretty strong argument.
@@Tshego2000 Yet it has NOTHING to do with truth
@@technomage6736 It is true, it's a metaphysical truth.
@@Tshego2000 nice mental gymnastics there
If just by telling a person that he/she doesn't have free will, their free will can switched off( as u said in ur fictitious experiment) then does that person really has free will to begin with.
A person doesn't have free will may mean that whatever the circumstances we find in life , we may not have full control on them, but no matter bcoz thats how life is supposed to be , so u can still enjoy them
In your example as you demonstrated so brilliantly, you showed to the world we donnot have any free will. Logically, in your example, people having no free will will act negligently and will end up being judged and punished. So why do we have laws, jails, judges, etc... the only one who are morally incompetents are the individuals who believe that the punition is more damageable than the risk. Only a few rare individuals will not act as a moral incompetent person not because they have free will, simply because acting symmetrically to these morally incompetent individual is the force of things to balance the society and have laws. We have no free will but we have the possibility to think, and to think we have free will.
Philosophically, a criminal and its victims are a necessity who are sacrificing themselves for the prosperity of the community. Are they aware of that? no they are not, only an external actor can be. QED we have no free will as this example can be adapted to everything we are doing in the society. We have no more free will than the bull grazing and the wold hunting, we are simply fulfilling our natural destiny - and we are doomed to believe otherwise.
This dude is so close to realising that people's circumstances, upbringing, and in this case narratives they have been fed do in fact determine how they how they act, he's honestly just proving determinism with this. Example with this case: it would be further determinable if we had more background knowledge of the guy in question but also we already know (from many experiments and also just plain observation) that people trust the words of authority figures and are also more than happy to do bad things if they can absolve themselves of responsibility for it, the whole "I was just following orders" thing, so this just further proves determinism
Although I lean towards not having true free will in the illusory perceptions of our daily lives, I propose that it doesn't matter whether we do or not, but that we should live our lives to the fullest regardless of meaning and purpose.
You say that here, but are saying that like a phrase that a person with free will could do. It proves it is possible to say one thing and do another, or to always be doing that anyway, even without ever saying it (or anything in between living a happy life and living a selfish, myopic life). When someone asks "what is the meaning of life?" or "what is my purpose in life?", they are asking a *pseudo* question. Meaning and purpose in life is nothing more than a feeling, much like free will.
Why is everyone quoting out of books on the subject
I don’t think I was quoting out of a book, I probably would’ve put it in quotes.
Truth isn't thrwarted by how it makes people feel.
You don't believe in determinism.
@@sguraya7223 paradoxes are only natural
@@alexmonza2823 How so?
@@sguraya7223 take causality. There is no intelligible way to explain the appearance of the universe. Either it emerged out of nowhere, which is absurd, or it has always existed, which is absurd too, or it was pushed into being by God which nature would be equally absurd. We have only 3 options and every one of them entails an insoluble paradox (for all I know). We are just very limited in our perception of the world. Therefore I consider paradoxes to be natural.
@@alexmonza2823 What is absurd about any of those? And what's paradoxical about them?
If it's a matter of our perception, then there's no reason to believe that it's a paradox.
Can we start believing in father Christmas again too because it makes us happier.
Humans need society. Not having free will doesn't exempt you from the consequences your actions merit in your society.
People in the comments dislike the video because they think that Dennett was arguing for free will and then presented that thought experiment. In reality, Dennett was only arguing that we should stop telling people that they don't have free will. There's a difference. He made no claim about the existence of free will.
I noticed this too. He is not arguing for free will, however he is literally arguing for ignorance, which is one of the most blasphemous things a philosopher could say.
I don't mind not having free will.
In fact, I usually choose to ignore it.
The way I deal with this is I tell myself that regardless of how predetermined my choices are, they are still mine to make and I'd better make some good ones.
I'm late in the game here, but you're on point. You are clearly a decision maker, whether your decisions were free or not. But this is what compatablists argue is free will. It's not so much the free [to] will, all that we care about in regard to moral responsibility is more in the freedom [of] will to act. If we rewound the clock could you make a different decision from the one you made?
I would say no, but only because it wasn't your will to. If you had willed differently, you would have chose differently. If that's not appropriately called free will, what would you call it?
That's free will right there
@@DiegoRamirez-sf3su Not necessarily. If I were to relive my life, I might always come to the conclusions that I have.
I do not know of a mechanism by which free will could realistically operate. As long as the starting variables are known, then the outcome is fixed, and if the outcome is fixed then there's no room for us to alter anything.
That doesn't mean we don't play a role in our own futures. I can make decisions based on the information available to me, and calculate optimal courses of action, because that's what my brain is built to do, but whether my actions are free is completely different.
@@isaakvandaalen3899 self awareness =free will
@@isaakvandaalen3899 we gotta be careful with what we read listen to who we sorround our selfs with cus they do have and influence on our choices also in order to have free will we most have a strong will
If I have free will, then believing I have free will is the correct choice. If I don't have free will, then, it doesn't matter which choice is correct. I am not free to believe or not believe it. What I will believe is already predetermined, regardless of whether it is true or false.
Given the above, I think I'm gonna believe that I have free will anyway. The worst that could happen is not that I choose falsely, but that I do not choose at all.
no, it means you search to find the truth because truth is power and thats what your genes want. you had no choice in this decision at all
@ZeroOne337 As a libertarian free will impossibilist... I agree.
1. Something being untrue, and something being true but irresponsible to tell people are two different things. It may be irresponsible (and immoral) of me to tell a thief when my neighbour is on holiday, but the information that my neighbour is on holiday is not untrue.
2. Neither side seems to have defined free will to my satisfaction. I do not believe they are talking about the same thing, so it may be possible that both sides are correct using their assumed definitions and the contradiction is illusory.
3. If we take the nihilistic standpoint that since no-one has free will, no-one can take moral responsibility, then it makes no sense to question whether a punishment for a crime is just or unjust, since we do not have any moral responsibility to hand out justice. If there is no free will, then we should view our justice system as being internal to, and unaffected by, this system.
+Asha2820 Yes, there is a huge problem about definitions of free will, because there are so many of them. From classical to modern philosophy. However, it is changing the subject, in my opinion at least, to talk about free will as something different than the possibility and capacity of consciousness to act and make decisions without being determined by any other causal powers. Free will has to exist in consciousness and in a place outside the causality determinism. Even if we include quantum mechanics and recognize that to be evidence for intrinsic probabistic determinism (that is, reality is not determined in the traditional determinnistisc sense, where you can predict everything perfectly, if you have the sufficient knowledge. Rather it is determined by probability, which is roughly like rolling dice), everything would still be determined by probability distribution, or rolling dice, if you will. You can change the subject, as I would say, when you define free will as simple the capacity to choose without being forced to do it by someone or something outside your brain. That would simply to be excluding the brain from the subject, and say that neuroscience is irrelevant to the question of free will, because we simply define free will as freee from being forced to do it, where forced are ment to refer to causality outside the brain and outside the individual person. Such an approach would be to assume a priori that we have free will, when we are not forced to by "outside" forces. If you take such an approach to the question of free will, then you are basicly resting everything on tautology. Furthermore, you would be subscribing to the illusion of free will, because you simply assume a priori in your definition of free will that we do have free will, when we are not forced by external forces. This is the intuitive sense and feeling everyone have. However, it is an illusion.
+Asha2820 Take some time and think about what free will really means, it's implications and how to define it. That's all it takes to figure out why it doesn't exist. Technically the way I think of it, the free will as people generally conceive of it may exist, but if it does, that doesn't have any of the implications they think it has. Free will does exist, and we have no control over it. I can't direct my own agency any more than I can alter who I am, as my agency is determined by who I am.
Forrest Phillips "...[W]hat free will means"? It means what we define it as. How do you define it?
I define it just about the same as everyone else. From wikipedia: "Free will is the ability to choose between different possible courses of action." More specifically it's probably worth distinguishing between will and free will. That might be a better definition of will. I think the idea of free will has to take into account whether the ability to choose between options isn't under the control or coercion of an external entity.
***** No, that is not what Dennett is saying. Wegner did a lot of psychological scientific research about how and why our human psychological mind create the subjective experience of free will (read that instead of listening to Dennett's bullshit). Dennett is saying that we do have free will even though we can predict people's choices up to 12 seconds before they are conscious. And Dennett got no scientific argument for his postulation.
Danel Dennett's position here is truly extraordinary. He in fact agrees with neuroscientists who deny free will but tells them they are being irresponsible in saying so. In other words, we know we don't have free will but let's not tell anyone in case they start behaving badly. We must all, it seems, play a huge game in which we all pretend to have free will, knowing full well we don't! I find this beyond absurd.
I dont get whats free will. So we cant choose what to do with our lives? We dont have choice in being who we are? How do people choose to take certain jobs amd work out even when they dont want to or choose to overcome addiction...genuine question not saying it does or doesnt exist im just confused of what it is now 😫 makes me feel like now I cant be who I want and change for the better and overcome my fears because i have no choice :(
This is a concept that I came to believe intuitively, as a reaction to the Cognitive Dissonance I experienced when trying to accept the notion that, in fact, we do not have free will. That Believing it Necessarily Altered the Outcome of your reasoning. And that Knowing that you Don't have Free Will leads to poorer decision making than would be the case of Thinking you have Free Will, but really didn't. Believing in Free Will makes you Act As If you Really Did Have Free Will. It compels you to Think more Rigorously and Thoroughly than you would if you were Certain that you Didn't have Free Will. And it also compels you to Take Responsibility for your decisions, even if you chose Badly.
Agreed - that has been my experience too, at least. The term "free will" seems to imply that one can make choices 'for free,' which seems to be empirically untrue.
Will power / motivation is important.
Thinking we don’t have fee will usually erroneously leads people through cognitive processes to want to sit on their asses and be lazy.
I think that covers it.
@@patinho5589
I love the song "Free Will " by Rush. The chorus between verses is
"You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice.
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
You can choose from phantom fears or kindness that can kill.
I will choose a path that's clear. I will choose free will. "
Well I stopped believing in free will some time ago and didn't suddenly start behaving in a aggressive, self indulgent or become a morally incompetent person. My understanding that I have no free will is on an *intellectual* level - but it still *feels* like I have free will and this is all that matters day to day. If I was aware of my future fate in advance and was unable to change things that would be a problem but this is unlikely to ever be possible. Believing there is no free will inevitably makes you a more compassionate person because you must give up notions of evil, punishment or retribution. I cannot judge others because I recognize *but by the grace of God go I* (God in Einsteinian sense).
It's the same thing when Religious people say that if you don't believe in God that you will suddenly become a thief, rapist or murderer because you no longer have a reason not to do those things without the threat of Hell!! That is a very simple and ignorant viewpoint and it totally underestimates the inherent Decency of many people!!
I was thinking exactly the same thing. There is a certain irony in a well known Atheist, who has no doubt argued against that very argument in the case of religion, using it himself to justify free will.
The other thing Dennett doesn't seem to get is that there is a massive difference between a health care professional, who has a duty of care to their patient, intentionally manipulating them for their own entertainment versus a researcher in neuroscience releasing their actual findings.
Moreover, does Dennett seriously advocate that a neuroscientist who uncovers an inconvenient fact should hide (or falsify) their research to avoid upsetting the public - extraordinary! By this line of reasoning if it were discovered that a belief in God provides psychological comfort to people and there also be discovered incontrovertible proof that God nonetheless does not exist, then we should conceal the evidence that God does not exist. This is the ostrich approach to life.
what is there to be compassionate about when you give up the notion of evil?
Quite a lot actually. I can feel compassion for those people that you would call evil, and thereby presumably have no compassion for, as well as everyone else, for whom you would presumably feel compassion. For example, I can feel compassion for Udey Hussein as well all of his victims.
The notion of evil is primarily a way of limiting compassion. It is a way of labeling those for whom you feel no compassion, or even have a desire to feel compassion for.
Giving up on evil (and free will) forces you to consider that, but for circumstance, you might well be the one doing the horrible things. Viewed from that perspective ideas such as retribution or punishment (by the intentional infliction of pain, suffering or discomfort), as opposed to rehabilitation or simple confinement, seem truly barbaric.
***** how do you know which person I would call evil and, for that matter, I think evil as a character a person can have?
do you have compassion for just about everyone? then how is that meaningful? if you love everyone, that only means you love no one. Indifference is not compassion.
I occasionally contemplate the thing I do and the morality of them. However, for that to work, I actually need the notion of evil. If I deny such thing as evil to exist, how could I fathom the possibility of myself being the perpetrator or accomplice of evil?
Punishment is an idea following retribution, and retribution is an idea following justice. What justice is there if we don't exact retribution from criminals? do you think justice exist? do you care about it?
*Even if one makes the argument that it’s irresponsible to share this data because it could be interpreted incorrectly and cause social harm, it’s still a moral imperative to share the information found* as transparency and replication are cornerstones of what it means to engage in science. I can understand if someone does not like the conclusion, but that does not mean we shouldn’t share the data with the public 🤔😕
If there is no free will then the opinions about whether to share or not are irrelevant since no one has any free will to share or not share that info.
@@davidstem1557 we don’t yet know if we have free will, the mathematics and the experiments that we do in physics tends to show that we don’t have free will, but we don’t know that definitively yet. If we did, we would understand quantum non-locality right?
@@djvelocity if we don’t know if we have free will then people like Sam Harris telling people that they don’t have free will is a disservice of the highest order and a huge moral failing. It’s the utmost in arrogance.
@@futuredave2 We don’t know definitively, but it looks to be that way. Personally, I believe free will may be an illusion (at least that’s what neuroscience and quantum physics demonstrates) but until somebody comes up with an experiment that proves this beyond and to the exclusion of reasonable doubt, we need to keep an open mind as scientists
@@futuredave2 If we don't know if god exists then people like atheists telling people that there is no god is a disservice of the highest order and a huge moral failing. It's the utmost in arrogance.
Under that scenario, people should be told they have free will even though they don’t. This will result in people behaving better.
At no point did he give reason to show free will isn’t an illusion. He just tried to show that people who believe it is are immoral; using a completely flawed argument.
Free will IS an illusion, but a useful one.
I think it just shows how incoherent the whole discussion is. A real scenario might be a collar that literally controls your voluntary muscles like a marionette. So you see your arms and legs moving around in a robotic fashion while you apologize to everyone for what your body is doing by someone else's control. This seems to be what determinists believe actually happens, but in their schema, the conscious mind takes ownership of the movements and considers them free.
Ignoring for a moment the validity of the claim "There is no free will", Dennett suggests that to assert this is dangerous. I for one, think that no matter how terrible a truth is, we should not shy away from it. Even if there's no "Free Will" that doesn't absolve anyone of consequences for action. It merely suggests that our choices are constrained by our biology, no more no less.
An earlier commenter put it nicely:
"1. Dennett is not arguing against determinism or in favor of (libertarian) free will.
2. Dennett is not arguing against telling people that the universe is deterministic.
3. Dennett is arguing that people conflate free will with moral responsibility.
The takeaway message is that it is irresponsible to declare free will is illusory without decoupling the notion of free will from moral responsibility."
So basically what he's saying is: People don't have free will, so you shouldn't tell them they don't have free will, because they will necessarily start doing more terrible things, because they are machines that are controlled from outside themselves
control from outside and inside
but we have free choice, which is also very limited
but free will no
we have no free will
You gave no argument against the idea that free will doesn't exist...you just tried to say we shouldn't tell people because they suck...FailFish.
That's what it seemed like to me also!! Those in science and academia often lose touch with the rest of Humanity and so they no longer understand other people!! Their narrow perspective is one reason why scientists are notorious for having Social Anxiety and lacking Social Skills because they've focused so much on one area that they've lost touch with other areas!!
well. The title of the cideo wasnt "Free will is NOT an illusion/"
the title is "Stop telling people it IS an illusion"
so technically not misleading
Guard Passer It's misleading in the sense that it used his name which lead me to think it'd be his normal self yet showed a Daniel Dennett that seems different than that. xP
I expected him to be against separating people from the truth and only be saying "Don't tell people ___" if he thought ___ was false.
Just because you don't have free will doesn't mean you can't make decisions.
Free will exists, but it depends on the effects the surrounding world has on you. By telling you, you don't have free will, the state of your mind is influenced to either decide that your choices matter, or don't and that you're either responsible or not. That still doesn't change anything, you still need to make decisions and face the consequences.
Aeonized wrong. time isn't linear, so our "fates" are already predetermined
3:31 science doesn’t seek to make “responsible” claims but rather true claims. The truth will always set you free
I would love to stop myself from telling people they don’t have free will but I don’t have free will.
You don't but because you know the consequences, your own will has been altered by a predetermined condition. The universe has given you no freedom but the knowledge to understand your own actions.
1. His thought experiment doesn't hold up, as it doesn't even support his claim. Believing you have no free will and believing your will is controlled by an external authority are two seperate issues.
2. Withholding information and truth because there may or may not be harmful consequences stifles much needed progress. Look around you: Religious fundamentalism and war are rampant. Any insight into how things like consciousness and (free) will actually work will be a necessary step towards building a morally healthy global society.
Arnold Crom the Magnificent I totally agree. I had an argument with a couple of friends because they bought up how letting people know of determinism could harm society like this guy. I find it funny that the neuroscientists who are letting it out were determined to do so anyway... LOL
Yes. Thank you. I agree 100%
I agree this can be risky for relatively stupid or dogmatic people to be taught. Especially if they aren't also taught reasons why things still matter to their own lives.
But I came to this concept on my own in my early 20s, then later found the scientific validations for it, and yet I STILL operate as though I am responsible for my actions, rather than becoming obsessed with the idea of the predetermined chain reactions of subatomic particles of my neurons which only can interact in accordance with the consistent laws of nature, as though that is an "excuse" to indulge in chaotic destructive behavior. I still Live moment to moment like a biological human, not a malfunctioning robot that has been fed a conceptual input too paradoxical to process. a flexible brain may adapt this info to suit it's survival, or else find ways to deny or forget it, as humans do with most info which doesn't suit us.
Most healthy humans don't kill ourselves once we learn that it is in our power to do so. I think it's our biological instincts to act in ways that tend to contribute to the survival of our bodies. Of course this falls apart on larger scales which our species didn't evolve to handle, like interacting with virtual reality through screens, or collaborating outside of our tribes on a global scale...
But in general, I think most human minds are resilient enough to react to this epiphany of no Ultimate freewill in a way that will allow for the continuation of self-serving behavior. The survival instinct is strong. if it wasn't, I'd probably wouldn't have resisted an impulse I had an hour ago when I was locked out of my apartment to try jumping from my 3rd floor doorway to my window ledge to get in... The thought happened in my head, and I have conceived of the idea before that my life is just a temporary experience and not any more inherently "meaningful" than the trillions of other sentient human lives throughout time, etc. I even am frequently aware of the breakdown of our "freewill" at material and metaphysical levels, (since I actually have OCD and it's given me many causes to contemplate this stuff).
But yet, my brain resisted the inclination to jump. I assume because despite whatever abstract concepts I may play around with in my head, when it comes to physical moment of my actions, my biology is hardwired to survive.
When it isn't for some people, that is a disfunction which can be fatal.
But sure, I wouldn't care to undermine the social construct of freewill at this fragile point in human development. Can't rely on any of the unbalanced narcissists and other assholes and idiots of the world who may "choose" to interpret that idea in all kinds of destructive ways. Not that we're particularly Non-destructive as a species With the freewill concept in tact anyway...
Isn't this comment kind of hypocritical? How do you live as if you have free will while holding that it doesn't exist, or even conceive of an 'I' at all?
@@quandaledingle968 Hi! (without rereading my long old comment...) I'd say it's not hypocrisy, and not even paradoxical as it may seem, simply because without an omniscient ability to KNOW how I'll react next there's effectively no difference for me whether my will to act is supernaturally free from causality or not.
If we have no access to a truth, e.g. what we necessarily do next, then it can have no barring on our thought process.
To laugh or not to laugh; to call a doctor or not to call; to trip or not to trip -- I can know that by tomorrow there will be one specific action I will have done, but without knowing already which it will be, I get to experience the thought process that inevitably leads me to that single act.
So, operating with my limited human foresight, I must act AS IF all the other possibilities I can guess at are actual options for me to consider.
And it still is useful to ethically judge and reward or punish the actions people do if they are caused by mental states known as intentions, because our enforcement of justice is a major factor that influences our intentions to act.
Let me know if this makes more sense or if I should try to explain better.
@@quandaledingle968 And the experience of identity is independent from freedom.
I could be entirely paralyzed and puppeteered by robots and still be aware of my senses.
All sensory inputs, but no awareness of intentional thoughts before the output of actions.
@@anthonypc1 I think I understand. But in your example, are there not other options? Is the fact you chose to go to the doctor inevitable simply because it happened, that is to say if by the uncertainty principle some particles wound up elsewhere and this led to you making a different decision, would it have been inevitable too? I don't believe in a will completely free from the material world either but I think we have some semblance of agency
(btw I didn't realize your comment was from 5 years ago so, sorry for the random mention!)
@@quandaledingle968 Haha no worries! it was a good mention.
I think there can be multiple options that we can reasonably anticipate, even describing our confidence in our expectations with probability math.
But the fact of which one possibility will actually be caused is predetermined by natural mechanics.
Like passengers on a train observing only what passes their window and with each moment refining their guesses about which way the track will turn next.
Even IF the uncertainty principle meant that there is some true randomness at a subatomic level, that would still be so far beyond our ordinary neurological functions, I don't imagine it would be enough to make the difference between one whole thought or another.
And EVEN IF there was true randomness on an atomic level, or a molecular level, that wouldn't mean more freedom to control our will. It'd just mean our will is random! Even less predictable. In a universe based on randomness physics, there wouldn't even be any use in trying to regulate our behavior because people's brain chemistry would just randomly twitch them into unplanned actions all the time.
(or more realistically no organisms would even evolve from matter in total chaos. but whatever)
Quantum mechanics get pretty unfathomable for humans currently, so let's not conflate scientists' uncertainty about the position of unmeasurably small particles with an actual absence of fact. As far as I understand -- which is not that far -- superpositions are just probability placeholders for the exact positions that we can't observe.
Anyway, I do enjoy this experience of agency free from certain knowledge of which choice my brain is set up to necessarily make next.
I studied a course on the mind and one of the points made was that humans frontal lobe enables us to think, process and make conscious decisions therefore we really have free won't - I won't walk off that cliff, I won't kill that person etc. Personally that line resonated with me.
Nice
yea but these are not elements of free will, person from 6 years ago. you've lived all your life and acquired all your beliefs despite having no free will, despite being basically a reactive machine.
I think people are missing his point. What he explaining is that their are negative consequences to telling people they have no free will. That people should rethink telling others that they have no free will, so to avoid the negative consequences.
Frustrated people say "There's no free will"
So his argument is basically "They are not wrong, but people can't handle the truth". At least that's what I'm understanding out of this.
Even if I agreed with you on everything else..the thought experiment wasn't even remotely close to accurate...
'a man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wants'
Knowing that all of our thoughts and decisions are products of causality instead of products of choice does not absolve anyone from personal responsibility and won't change how anyone feels or reacts to world around them.
Nothing changes.
You will still have the same feelings (which you did not choose). And make decisions based on feelings wants and desires (which you didn't choose) and feel the consequences of your actions (which are not controlled by you).
Knowing that you did not choose your feelings and thoughts doesn't change your feelings and thoughts.
Notwithstanding structural issues with his argument, he is correct: the more we believe we have no free will, the less responsive we tend to behave. The more we believe are are fully responsive for our actions, generally the less wrekless we behave. I think determinism is often used as a cop-out: I'm not free so why even try to control my behaviour? Believing that we are fully free and this responsible is indeed a sobering thought - no room for scapegoats.
On the contrary, this is exactly what has better helped me understand myself. Instead of thinking I was simply a flawed person, I realized the things that were causing me to feel and act the way I did, I realized it was understandable that these circumstances would cause my current state, and this realization gave me the peace and understanding I needed to break out of these flaws where I can, and accept them where I can't.
Nice appeal to consequences. The always valid argument.
@Hickory Jim Famously invalid? Isn't it quite valid, as a rule of inference for contrapositive having the same logical value of the statement?
@xj58074 this is sarcasm
You're actually correct
Now extend that concept to belief in God and the Bible. You see where I'm going here.
be careful about educating the public, it might have some negative implications...
best. argument. ever.
kd1s I see to directions, God and the Bible says that we have free will, so it improves society or on the opposite site, God will forgive everyone if he want, so it has the same effect like saying: "free will does not exist". I hope my English isnt too bad, but I usually dont use this language.
Dieze TA Where did he make an argument?
Fuck Bible
You right most people act better
The experiment not only demonstrated that people are negatively effected by telling them they don't have free will, it demonstrated that people indeed don't have free will as a paragraph of text altered their behaviour unconsciously. I don't think that we shouldn't tell people they don't have free will, but to properly explain what that actually means and the implications associated with it.
It took me approximately 40 years to encounter a person whose opinions and statements I would never agree with... then I came across Mr. Dennett. Anyone with me?
Totally.
@@NeilMalthus Great!!! I'm not alone!
Since I love my guy Dennet (RIP) I must state that he does not argue for the existence of free will, he only says “let’s not shout it out loud that it is not real”
Noticing the truth behind your own mind is actually a good thing. Once you realize that you are not the product of your own choices, and that the choices that you do take are not actually yours at a fundamental level, you can actually do something positive with your life. Also, it can create more compassion between people since it is easier to apologize. If you accept the notion that we do not have free will, there is no more place for hate.
If your compassion stems from regarding others as not having agency, it is not compassion, it is arrogance.
So basically, saying that you have no free will is an excuse to not be accountable for your actions? How convenient.
I love this fact about it. Thank you. Free will really is nothing more than a feeling of agency. When you realize that the belligerent person before you had no control over all the events that up to the point they are angry before you, you cannot help but feel compassion, or completely neutral; but there is no way you can hate them for it.
@@shanebrownlee69 This feeling of free will only gives rise to needless violence and hatred toward others. No good thing comes from that illusion and *feeling* of free will. It pretends that every human has all the same choices before them, when they do not. If you have free will, you would've chosen to be wise and to only allow evidence to create your beliefs. You didn't choose your parents, or their parents, or their parents. You didn't choose the culture in which you were raised. If you were raised in a Muslim culture; you didn't choose it. If you were raised in a Christian culture; you didn't choose that either (and neither did all those in that culture choose their raising either). You can't even choose the foods you like or dislike, or the kinds of movies you like or dislike; because if you had free will you could change on a dime (your tastes in foods, or your tastes in movies). Did you choose the language you speak, or languages you had to learn to get along in the world? Did you choose the various philosophies that were presented to you? If you didn't understand certain maths in school, such as calculus or algebra II or differential trigonometry? Did you choose for those concepts to be too slowly absorbed into your brain? Did students that "got it" and aced it choose their brains? No, they didn't and you didn't choose yours either. You have about as much free will over your thoughts as you have free will over what I will say next; and that is absolute fact.
*Your opinions, your beliefs, your certainties, even the way you react to someone saying something is absolutely, 100% involuntary*
@@troy3456789 most of what you're saying doesn't make any sense and I've heard the same claims from socialists a lot lately. It's flawed logic at best and deceitful at worst. The argument eventually goes down the path of, "since you don't have free will, we should have a core of tenets that tells you what to do because we know what's best for you." Just no.
Sure, we have many qualities that are completely involuntary, but that doesn't mean that everything we do isn't a choice in free will. I love pizza involuntarily, but I choose to not eat it for every meal so that I don't get type 2 diabetes and potentially die of heart disease. I involuntarily love smoking cigarettes, but through free will I choose to not smoke(4 years strong) so that maybe I won't develop lung or throat cancer some day. I involuntarily love fast cars, but I choose to not do 150 mph every chance I get because of the potential consequences.
All of the above examples that I've named are things that some people choose to continue doing, yes, via free will, regardless of said consequences.
The "no free will" argument is used as a weapon against individualism, property ownership, and capitalistic ideas and it's flat out wrong. The argument you're making will never succeed in controlling the masses and I'd bet my life on it.
Edit: You argument also implies that people are not accountable for their actions and that's a terrible thing to say, especially to impressionable people in the world.
sam harris: friendship over
Lol, exactly what I thought. How sad Mr. Horseman given up to feelings.
"stop telling people they don't have free will... Even though they don't"
the perspective he looks at free will is rather a moral view than that of a scientific.
I have a few things to respond to this with:
1. This is an immature understanding of the implications and mature expression of integrating the reality of no-doer/no-free will etc. A healthy integration of this notion is that one recognizes that in an ultimate sense, they have no control over anything/no free will, but in a relative sense, they take up a sense of responsibility and accountability for their lives nonetheless.
The thought experiment Mr. Dennett put forth here demonstrates that most individuals operate their morality from a sense of guilt/shame - i.e. that they do things the "right" way not because it feels right but because they either don't want to receive repercussions or don't want to live with the guilt of having done something they "shouldn't" have.
A mature expression of morality is grounded in a why that transcends this sense of guilt/shame. Acting in a way that feels true is better than acting in a way that we "should". That's just an idea. And most people will find, if they really connect deeply with what's "true" inside them, that there is an inherent sense of morality in them, defined as a propensity and desire to act with positive regard for the world.
People who are in touch with that intrinsic positive regard are far more powerful (with respect to agency/free will) than those who act "morally" because of their conditioning. So, effectively Mr. Dennett is keeping individuals less free (in a relative sense), bound to social conditioning all while hiding the truth from them at the same time. I cannot see a win there
----
In my own experience, realization of no free will has been both profoundly healing and a mere stepping stone to deeper agency. It's been a cornerstone of my ability to forgive myself and others for mistakes and transgressions, it's a vehicle for compassion. It also has helped me at times to get over regrets, recognizing that in an ultimate sense, things couldn't have been any other way.
It's important to consider that while we have no ultimate control over ourselves and neither do others, that it's not in our best interest to shift our locus of control completely to the external. The reality is, that if we respond from a place of no agency, it has the ability to harms us, but instead i encourage us all to engage from a place that is authentic and honest, rooted in our personal (not societal) values.
We can move in a way that takes responsibility for our lives without pretending we have free will - it's not fully integrated if your response to realizing no free will is to abdicate your responsibility for your life. It's actually paradoxically true that we have no free will, no control, but that the way we show up still matters, that how we choose to respond to each moment still matters/has an effect (in the absolute sense, no free will, in the relative sense, the experience of making choices still exists and is important)
What he's trying to say is: It is best to maintain to the illusion of free will. Not that people have free will.
Only a consequentialist would say we should not show what is true because it might influence others.
He isn't advocating for lying.
Benjamin Allman thank you, I think yours is the most important comment on this video so far. Dennett's argument is based on the premise of consequentialism, and all the negative responses to this video clearly show that consequentialism is not in line with most people's moral intuition.
furthermore, I see a crucial discrepancy in Dennett's analogy: with that chip he describes, other people(!) would get in control over me, which is vastly different from everything being natural processes over which "I" don't have transcendental powers.
Speaking as a vaguely consequentialist, I disagree. I entirely condemn this gentleman's assertion that we should not debunk free will just because of how it influences people.
The reason for this is because telling the truth on scientific issues is the morally better option. Not only would lying bring the entire scientific community into disrepute; lying about such an important issue means that people will continue to live their lives based on a factually flawed paradigm, wondering all the while why it doesn't work out.
Telling the world the truth about free will, or the absence thereof, may result in some teething problems, but it would likely pay dividends in the long run. Therefore it is, from a consequentialist viewpoint, a moral imperative.
Just advocating for hiding the truth from people (just as bad)
Yes! People deserve the truth even if it is hard to digest. The Earth DOES revolve around the sun now, doesn't it.
and suddenly ever1 in the comment section is an Phd in Free Will and Determinism.
yeah cause they just listened to a philosopher postulate an analogy that it is so unbelievably flawed that even the dumbest of us can pick it apart...if you never saw a football game before, but then met tom brady and thew the ball around with him and he couldn't even throw a spiral, you might think you had a knack for the NFL too...that's how you do analogies ;)
Is there such thing as having a PhD in those subjects?
@Kelvin Klopper ikr, these comments is an appeal to authority fallacy, which is particularly mystifying why they get so smug about it when the authority isn't even their own.
"Free" is an idea. Nothing is free, all is connected and dependent on each other, our consciousness is no different.
WISE ARCADIAN good point! The idea “free” is relative and subjective. So is our “will” (which is also just an idea) can not be absolutely free
It would seem when people are told they don’t have free will they give less energy to their though process and follow their instincts more. This is bad, balance is important here.
Behaving as if I have no freewill makes me feel bad. If I behave as if I am in control then I feel I am doing better.........but i do believe in determinism. However doesnt make any difference in my life apart from gives me an atmosphere of deep trust towards Life.
The very existence of a "free will problem" is a strong indication that we have, or can achieve, free will.
I totally agree with Daniel Dennett's words. We must improve human responsibility (RESPONSIBILITY = RESPONSE ABILITY), not deny it and give an excuse to do any evil irresponsible action.
I see a lot of people in the comments confusing influence with free will. They'll say something like,
"Carrot! See I bet you're now thinking about a carrot, you can't help it so that means there's no free will."
Or is it simply that I'm using my power of observation? There's nothing in that argument about free will. Or another one would be
"My dad loved baseball and talked to me about baseball growing up and now I like baseball, so that means there's no free will."
But what you're describing is simply influence, which can effect you sure, but it doesn't mean you don't have free will. If a fish in the sea is pushed or tugged by a current it can influence the movement of the fish, but that doesn't mean you now say that proves the fish has no motor functions. If I can change someone's opinion about something, that doesn't mean they don't have their own opinions.
Influence is real, but it doesn't get you to saying there's no free will just because will can be influenced. That would be like saying that the holy spirit is real just because some people are influenced by religious arguments. Minds can be affected by outside stimuli and influence, so what? That doesn't mean that we're all puppets on strings. Some people aren't influenced by the same arguments that others are influenced by, not all influence is absolute. And even if it was it wouldn't prove that free will doesn't exist. It would only prove that free will is handicapped in the face of overpowering influences. But you take away the influences and put a person in a quiet environment and watch them make all sorts of interesting choices that you couldn't have always predicted. And even if you could predict them, that wouldn't mean there's no free will either. That would simply mean you're very good at predicting human behavior.
If I thought there was no free will I would have a hard time quitting smoking and eating junk food and begin exercising, because it takes a tremendous amount of will power to make those choices. And more than that, it requires that I criticize myself and my actions when I don't make the right choice. I must take responsibility, I don't get to let myself off the hook or I would just continue down the path of least resistance. This idea that we aren't responsible for our actions seems like some sort of lazy way of making excuses for flaws and weakness in order to justify our standing in society or something. It has that weak SJW sort of feel to it. I don't want to take responsibility for my failures so I'll just say I couldn't help being the way I was. Or, I don't want that awful member of society to have their feelings hurt so I'll just say it's not their fault because they were influenced by outside factors and have no free will. It's some kind of lame ass ideology about everyone being helpless victims in which there should be equality regardless of achievement or actions because we need to strip away the accomplishments of the "privileged" and ignore the failures of the oppressed, and just make excuses for weakness because it makes us feel better. At least that's what it sounds like to me.
Derek Moore thank you Derek, that was an awesome counterpoint. I was thinking the same thing but I am not good with words.
I kinda see where you're coming from, but I'm pretty convinced we have no free will. If you break down why people perform the actions they do, you can generally trace it back to previous experiences in the past. That which is untouched by previous experiences is most likely influenced by genetics. The way I see it, your sense of "free will" is only the amalgamation of different psychological influences - some conscious, some unconscious
To reply to a small part of what you said, the reason why not everyone is swayed by the same arguments is most likely because there are other factors beside logical reasoning that influences whether someone accepts an argument or not. Genetics and and environmental factors influence the weight people put on different arguments. For instance, a person who is generally more emotional and empathetic due to genetic factors, and who has additionally known someone who is homeless, is more likely to donate to charities aimed to helping the homeless - compared to someone who is less likely to be empathetic and is more selfish due to genetics, and has no connection to homeless people. This of course is a highly simplified example. A vast array of factors will influence people's decisions, in addition to some element of randomness due to quantum events. But generally if you take the time to break down why people do what they do and feel the way they do, free will doesn't really add up. It's more so like our brain gives us a sense of control, but in reality we are not actually in control
Furthermore, there have been many studies that have seriously thrown down upon the idea of free will. Many studies hint to an idea that a decision is made by the brain even before a person becomes conscious of the decision
Other studies show changes in personality and the types of choices people make in response to changes to the brain
'How can we be “free” as conscious agents if everything that we consciously intend is caused by events in our brain that we do not intend and of which we are entirely unaware?' - Sam Harris.
With a conscious intent to be aware of our future thoughts and intents. At that future point, we make a choice. It should make no difference that we gained our 'freedom' unaware of our initial intent.
DD makes an important point here. No society could run properly if we all proceeded from the standpoint that whatever bad thing we chose to do was not our fault and no law could hold us responsible for our actions. If people wish to spend the rest of their lives believing they have no agency over their own lives, then fine. I prefer to get on and continue making my own decisions.
If this imaginary individual was told that he/she did not have free will, and believed it to be true; therefore comitting a crime. That just show that cause and effect reigns supreme.
Aka: Tell people a comforting lie, instead of telling them the truth, because sometimes people deliver the truth in a harsh way, which makes people feel bad.
How about instead we focus on explaining the truth to people in a way that makes them realize that it's not the horrible thing they're under the impression that it is? In other words, "You don't have free will, and that's just fine."
Why are you suggesting that we focus on truth? Whether he focuses on truth is pre-determined, no?
@@sguraya7223 Because I think that it's better for people to learn the truth and accept it, rather than fear the truth and comfort themselves with a lie.
And so what if whether or not his focus is on truth is predetermined? My action to try to get people to focus more on the truth is also predetermined. What does that matter for the sake of whether or not we should try to get people to accept the truth? Are our arguments somehow stronger if they're not predetermined? No, they're exactly the same. What point are you trying to make?
@@CatacombD You don't "think" anything. That would imply you had any choice in the matter. But it's deterministic... Right?
Yes, your action to get people to focus on truth is pre-determined, so why do it? To try to get people to accept the truth is like trying to do anything. Impossible, everything is pre-determined, you can't try to manifest a potential future, because there is only one, and it is coming regardless. You are trying to do that solely because you are a machine programmed to mindlessly pursue that, with zero agency. You aren't trying anything.
The point I'm trying to make is that your claims contradict themselves, and the fact that you are making claims, itself contradicts the claims you have made. Like if I said "this sentence is a lie", that sentence is fundamentally nonsensical.
As is: "I (who does not exist, except as a machine with no agency) am trying (no, I'm not, that would imply agency, that I am even capable of the act of 'trying') am focusing on truth/claiming cuz/think something".
Everything you say contradicts determinism, even the sentences you use to advocate for it.
@@sguraya7223
Nothing he says contradicts himself.
We've no words.
Steve's attempts aren't futile in determinism, but the contrary.
If we perceive free will as a cause effect thing in determinism then Steve is a cause to an effect.
Like how the hostile tone of your comment to Steve motivated me to reply and all the events prior to it along with my personality and genetics which made it possible.
btw. Sincerely, you understand shit, stfu.
@@ina7084 That you read my comments as hostile is entirely on you, that was not my intention (although I guess intention isn't real...)
"Steve's attempts" don't exist. He can't attempt, or try, anything, because that implies he could do otherwise. But it's deterministic, right?
"If we perceive free will as a cause effect thing in determinism, then Steve is a cause to an effect". You're talking about my opinion and Streves argument like they exist in a vacuum. Let's go by that "cause effect thing" thing: The initial conditions of the universe are a cause to the effect of everything that occurs afterwards, so what my opinion is, is determined anyway, there's no point trying to do anything, including convince me, because what will happen, will happen. But wait, there is no try, or attempt, because that would imply the option of that not happening, but it's all determined. Yet you continue to use words like "attempt", despite the fact that there is no such thing. There is only that which "occurs" because other things "occurred" because other things "existed". There is no room for "trying" in this, as we have no control over it.
"Free will is an emergent property that is consistent with the microscopic dynamics." - Sean Carroll
“I am very comfortable with the idea that we can override biology with free will.” - Richard Dawkins
“I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.” - Stephen Hawking
“Free will is to mind what chance is to matter.” - Charles Darwin
all bullshit all not true. these guys are good at specific areas of science, free will clearly not one of them.
+Michael Weintraub
While you are the ultimate free will authority...
Never claimed to be. They are he ones who think they have authority on all things philosophical and biological and scientific because they are good in one area of it. Not true
+Michael Weintraub
I have been provocative because you said that theirs are all "bullshit" without bringing any counter argument, which I would listen to with the same interest of scientists' ones (if not more interest), because we all are human beings that can speak about free will on the basis of our personal experiences and ideas.
Sean Carroll has said repeatedly he does not believe in libertarian free will. He has said that, even accounting for quantum mechanics, libertarian free will is impossible, predictability or no predictability.
Richard Dawkins has argued against retribution on the grounds that free will does not exist in the sense required for traditional moral responsibility.
"Strawson is right. I do not establish the kind of ultimate free will or moral responsibility that most people want to believe in and do believe in. That can't be done, and I know it." - Daniel Dennett
I believe that anyone saying free will exists is unconsciously fearing death, or their ego needs to believe they have power over their life. Let's start admitting our fears, and admit there's no free will. It takes guts, but let's just say it.
Have fun having 0 control over your life robit
@@lukevitek436 : Free will is a powerful illusion. Particles are deterministic and we are made of articles. You can do what you want but you can't choose what you want.
Guys Putin is innocent. He has no freewill, no one has, and therefore no responsibility whatsoever. Everything he "decides" were set in motion by the interaction of atoms from the beginning of time. Putin did nothing wrong. Putin did nothing at all!
that is just not true, man from 7 years ago. the truth is that the implication of no free will is so severe that frankly, it can't be believed. regardless of it being true or not, the exorcism of free will entails that none of us exist. we are automatons, dialetic machines stumbling through the material world. everything that can be thought and discovered will be done so not because of creativity or intent, because these don't exist. what can be discovered, created and thought of will because some people do the effort, and some don't, deterministically. which one of these two are you? you can't decide shit because YOU don't exist. how is this merely a fear of death. it murders YOU, throws YOU away. there is no ME and YOU, there is nothing, whatever i'll do tomorrow is whatever i'll do tomorrow, there is no intention whatsoever, or desire, or anything.
bro acting smart here like we actually know
what about meta desires? conflicting desires and thoughts which one is gonna be picked?@@lrvogt1257
I am a physicist and I will provide solid arguments that prove that consciousness cannot be generated by the brain (in my youtube channel you can find a video with more detailed explanations). Many argue that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain, but it is possible to show that such hypothesis is inconsistent with our scientific knowledges. In fact, it is possible to show that all the examples of emergent properties consists of concepts used to describe how an external object appear to our conscious mind, and not how it is in itself, which means how the object is independently from our observation. In other words, emergent properties are ideas conceived to describe or classify, according to arbitrary criteria and from an arbitrary point of view, certain processes or systems. In summary, emergent properties are intrinsically subjective, since they are based on the arbitrary choice to focus on certain aspects of a system and neglet other aspects, such as microscopic structures and processes; emergent properties consist of ideas through which we describe how the external reality appears to our conscious mind: without a conscious mind, these ideas (= emergent properties) would not exist at all.
Here comes my first argument: arbitrariness, subjectivity, classifications and approximate descriptions, imply the existence of a conscious mind, which can arbitrarily choose a specific point of view and focus on certain aspects while neglecting others. It is obvious that consciousness cannot be considered an emergent property of the physical reality, because consciousenss is a preliminary necessary condition for the existence of any emergent property. We have then a logical contradiction. Nothing which presupposes the existence of consciousness can be used to try to explain the existence of consciousness.
Here comes my second argument: our scientific knowledge shows that brain processes consist of sequences of ordinary elementary physical processes; since consciousness is not a property of ordinary elementary physical processes, then a succession of such processes cannot have cosciousness as a property. In fact we can break down the process and analyze it step by step, and in every step consciousness would be absent, so there would never be any consciousness during the entire sequence of elementary processes. It must be also understood that considering a group of elementary processes together as a whole is an arbitrary choice. In fact, according to the laws of physics, any number of elementary processes is totally equivalent. We could consider a group of one hundred elementary processes or ten thousand elementary processes, or any other number; this choice is arbitrary and not reducible to the laws of physics. However, consciousness is a necessary preliminary condition for the existence of arbitrary choices; therefore consciousness cannot be a property of a sequence of elementary processes as a whole, because such sequence as a whole is only an arbitrary and abstract concept that cannot exist independently of a conscious mind.
Here comes my third argument: It should also be considered that brain processes consist of billions of sequences of elementary processes that take place in different points of the brain; if we attributed to these processes the property of consciousness, we would have to associate with the brain billions of different consciousnesses, that is billions of minds and personalities, each with its own self-awareness and will; this contradicts our direct experience, that is, our awareness of being a single person who is able to control the voluntary movements of his own body with his own will. If cerebral processes are analyzed taking into account the laws of physics, these processes do not identify any unity; this missing unit is the necessarily non-physical element (precisely because it is missing in the brain), the element that interprets the brain processes and generates a unitary conscious state, that is the human mind.
Here comes my forth argument: Consciousness is characterized by the fact that self-awareness is an immediate intuition that cannot be broken down or fragmented into simpler elements. This characteristic of consciousness of presenting itself as a unitary and non-decomposable state, not fragmented into billions of personalities, does not correspond to the quantum description of brain processes, which instead consist of billions of sequences of elementary incoherent quantum processes. When someone claims that consciousness is a property of the brain, they are implicitly considering the brain as a whole, an entity with its own specific properties, other than the properties of the components. From the physical point of view, the brain is not a whole, because its quantum state is not a coherent state, as in the case of entangled systems; the very fact of speaking of "brain" rather than many cells that have different quantum states, is an arbitrary choice. This is an important aspect, because, as I have said, consciousness is a necessary preliminary condition for the existence of arbitrariness. So, if a system can be considered decomposable and considering it as a whole is an arbitrary choice, then it is inconsistent to assume that such a system can have or generate consciousness, since consciousness is a necessary precondition for the existence of any arbitrary choice. In other words, to regard consciousness as a property ofthe brain, we must first define what the brain is, and to do so we must rely only on the laws of physics, without introducing arbitrary notions extraneous to them; if this cannot be done, then it means that every property we attribute to the brain is not reducible to the laws of physics, and therefore such property would be nonphysical. Since the interactions between the quantum particles that make up the brain are ordinary interactions, it is not actually possible to define the brain based solely on the laws of physics. The only way to define the brain is to arbitrarily establish that a certain number of particles belong to it and others do not belong to it, but such arbitrariness is not admissible. In fact, the brain is not physically separated from the other organs of the body, with which it interacts, nor is it physically isolated from the external environment, just as it is not isolated from other brains, since we can communicate with other people, and to do so we use physical means, for example acoustic waves or electromagnetic waves (light). This necessary arbitrariness in defining what the brain is, is sufficient to demonstrate that consciousness is not reducible to the laws of physics. Besides, since the brain is an arbitrary concept, and consciousness is the necessary preliminary condition for the existence of arbitrariness, consciousness cannot be a property of the brain.
Based on these considerations, we can exclude that consciousness is generated by brain processes or is an emergent property of the brain. Marco Biagini
It is liberating in an ironic way to come to understand that one likely has little to no free will.
The last experiment with the students just confirms even more how we are product of causality stimuli-response mechanisms. the knowledge of the illusion of free will turned those students less responsibles twards the task. i think that when discussing and specially teaching the subject of free will we must not only show the neuroscience evidence but also what Dennett is saying here.
So sometimes its dangerous to tell the truth? Should we start telling comforting lies? Sounds oddly familiar.
He isn't saying we should lie. He is asking neuroscience to be a bit more responsible when explaining our lack of free will. Many just assume when they hear that "WELL, THAT MEANS I DONT CHOOSE ANYTHING MYSELF HUH?"
When what it really means is that while me and you decided what we wore today, it technically could have been predicted by an extremely complicated mathematical equation. When you explain it like that, the fact that we don't have free will... really means nothing at all in relation to our every day activities.
No its not familiar.
But on an unrelated not you need to accept jesus as your magical sky daddy. It will comfort you.
The consequences of an idea don't prove/ disprove the idea
This experiment shows, that people have free will in the sence I define it - not an absolute will, but a will with a certain amount of freedom allowing as to act accordingly to what we have heard or read (which means: what we believe). Not always, but sometimes. Not completely, but to some extent.
It shows also that if some people claim they don't believe in free will because of reading Harris or Sampolsky, some of the guilt for their wrongdoings goes to the writer mentioned above.
Isn't it interesting that the way people think about a certain topic affects the way in which they live. Hm.
Oh, exactly!! To a Hammer all the world looks like nails!! That's why I tell unhappy people that they can completely change their outlook on life. The world is like a screen we Project our beliefs upon!! To a soldier, Life and their decisions will be made through the filter of War & Conflict..... To a cop, Everyone is a potential criminal.....to a salesman, everyone is a potential customer.... To a musician, all the world is alive with music.... To a banker or businessman, every event in life is a potential opportunity to make more money etc etc etc!!!
What people?
What do they think?
If it's all determined, then it is all simply physical phenomena occuring, why consider them as people, and not as pawns?
I've been convinced that my will is not free from causality , and I've yet to feel like I am free of consequence, this is a childish point of view, all this realization does for anyone is you feel less judgmental and you don't take yourself too seriously , a man can will what he wants he can't will what he wills. Pretty simple
that doesn't sound simple at all friend, you're not realllly explaining how you decided this and how know you for sure
I roughly agree with you!! And I don't even need you to give me reasons or proof because I already understand your point of view and why you say that.....at least in a general sense!! Even in times when I was fairly certain that Free Will is an illusion, i Nsver Ever felt "Free" of consequences....I agree with you that it's a childish and simplistic take on Determinism!! When people say, "So, I can just do whatever I want, even commit terrible crimes, and it's not my fault?", I always say to them, "sure, you will do whatever you were already always gonna do but, just as it is Determined that you will commit a crime, it is also Determined that others will throw you in jail".... They don't see that it really doesn't change a single thing about our lives but it can be a useful way to look at things, like when you say it made you be "less judgmental"!!
Think of it like this: if you had exponentially more Intelligence and Information about the Universe, you could predict Everything that will Ever happen....but, in reality, *WE* lack the ability!! Imagine playing a game of poker or blackjack with a group of people....if YOU had ALL the necessary Information about All of the cards and their locations, as well as knowing HOW the others would choose to play the cards they get, you could easily predict Every single card and playing of the cards that would Ever happen before it happened..... BUT... We don't have the ability to gain that Knowledge or the brain power to process it all and in those cases we refer to things like *Luck* and *Chance*!! But Luck and Chance are just ways of saying that we are unable to process all the needed Info to predict every event..... It is in this way that our "Free Will" exists!! We woefully lack the necessary Knowledge and brain power to compute it all so, lacking the ability to predict the resulting *Causal Chain*, we refer to "Free Will" because, from OUR perspective, it Seems like We choose things at random or for whatever reasons. Just like "Luck", Free Will does Not exist but it Does exist from Our very limited perspective....Free Will is an Illusion but it is a *Functional Illusion*!! It's all about Knowledge and Subjective Point of View!!
Ultimately, the truth, can't hurt us .
Then I suppose the neuroscientists aren't telling the truth.
So you could handle seeing the future without screwing your life up?
Paradoxarn Au contraire...
***** I don't know about you but I don't think of neuroscientists as authorities on philosophy.
Ethan Wimsett I don't think hiding philosophical truths or scientific observations/principles/theories from people because of fear of reactions is good overall. Nor proves the assertion any valid.
Secondly, I can counter this rather dumb presumption of people thinking no free will means no personal accountability. For one it's about accepting OTHERS have responsibility as well in how they influence the actions of other people in society. A shared blame of sorts(though not accountability). Also an acknowledgement of another person's conditions= empathy.
One can be more empathetic when they don't prescribe the world to be 100% free will, because knowing that allows you to conclude WHY a person does what they do and leads to those situations. It gets moral people to think about their actions more and the effects.
Free will believing people just tend to blindly condemn others and shrug off ANY responsibility for either their influence, actions or complacency. I don't think lack of free will as defined means having a predetermined fate or destiny. Just as I don't account for randomness or deviations at the molecular level (that become like ripple effects) as free will.
Not that his argument was satisfying, but I like how people here suddenly think they know more than this dude.
What makes you so sure they don't?
If we do not have free will, how can we question if we have free will?
I believe in free will and even I recognize that that's a stupid argument.
This man is surprisingly dissonant to this issue, and embarrassingly obtuse to the reality of the hypothetical cases he refers to. A very poor addressing of the free will issue, daniel, and well below what you should be capable of :/
He needs to back off the subject of freewill....while he still has cred
***** Predestined for sure,hahaha
Wow you really think that his views have virtually no value because they are different from yours?
Don't be too hard on him, he couldn't help it.....this was All Determined at the moment of the Big Bang!!
Consider that he's addressing the trend of neuroscientists to come out with sensationalist videos describing free will as something we do not have, without properly conceptualizing it. Not everyone understands free will, or the difference between it and agency. In Harris's videos, he deliberately (refer to Mr. Dennett's comments on their mischief) makes it seem as if humans have no control over their fate and if we all just stopped trying and making decisions tomorrow, life would carry on. Anyone who knows better, of course, knows that they in fact have agency and what Harris is describing is not that the decision themselves, but rather where the decision comes from, is predetermined. It is a crucial distinction that is absent only to boost arguments and views by making the argument seem far more controversial than it is. Dennett seems to agree with the argument that those neuroscientists are making about free will, he just disagrees about the way it is being presented lately.
I always thought the free will debate was rather pointless. When we talk about free will everyone agrees that even if it was somehow proven that we don't have free will, it still FEELS like we do have it. So what it comes down to is we either have the illusion of free will, or true free will, and if you really think about it, there isn't much difference between those two options.
InMaTeofDeath-actually, sam Harris addresses this point quite well. The subjective experience of free will is an illusion as well. You should look it up.
Well it feels like the earth is flat. So who cares if we believe in that right? No knowledge of free will may lead to some more scientific discoveries in the future. Maybe we will one day learn to predict human behavior and therefore stop crimes before they happen?
We have free will when we choose to apply our consciousness to it instead of just cruising on autopilot. The body acts instinctively in a biologically programmed fashion but when we are observing that process closely, we can take the wheel instead of just being a passenger. And we can even reprogram the body's responses to stimuli by conscious awareness and effort. And those who claim it cannot be done should get the hell out of the way of those who are doing it.
your consciousness is a product of your brain which is an organ in your body which is composed of cells which are composed of molecules which work deterministically by the rules of chemistry and physics so in a sense it's simply a phenomenon(like lightning or clouds albeit a much more complex one). You're talking as if your consciousness is something different than your body which it is NOT. A part of you(neocortex) can override another part of you but that in itself is also deterministic.
Keep ya knickers on sunshine
Saying there is no free will is the same as saying we might not exist. "Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools."
"[Galen] Strawson is right. I do not establish the kind of ultimate free will or moral responsibility that most people want to believe in and do believe in. That can't be done, and I know it." - Daniel Dennett
Intellectual honesty should not be discarded just because it might have ill effects. That's the argument for religion. How far you've fallen Mr Horseman.
jreitano2: when the four of them were talking around the kitchen table in one video years ago, it could be seen then that he disagreed with Harris. Probably on this very issue. I doubt his anecdote is true. I can see he likes it, but a doctor could be sued over such nonsense, and would likely have been less asinine.
He didn’t freely fall tho.