People seem sort of confused as to what Dr. Huemer's argument was, or whether it was even intended as an argument in the first place (in the sense of an attempt to justify the claim that free will actually exists) as opposed to a mere charge of hypocrisy. So, without necessarily endorsing them, here is my attempt to summarize what I think Huemer's main points were. Huemer's main line of argument seemed to me to constitute a positive argument (whether it is a successful one or not, I leave you to judge) in favor of the actual, real existence of free will. From what I gather, he was saying: *Premise 1)* Our intuitions support the existence of free will. (Note that Sapolsky didn't even dispute this premise. He agrees that at least by initial appearances it seems like free will exists.) (Eg., it seems like we choose among alternatives by way of self-control at least some of the time, and, at least by initial appearances, it seems like to say one ought to do something implies that one can do otherwise. Arguments are implicit ought statements/normative suggestions in favor of adopting certain beliefs given certain evidences, and punishment is in part justified by the sense that the perpetrator could have and should have done differently than they in fact did.) ((You might wonder, "why think that ought implies can?" Huemer's reason is that it seems intuitive and we lack a reason to doubt it. A) it seems like to say "I know you can't, but you should still anyway magically fly through the air like superman and shoot lasers out of your eyes in order to bring about world peace. You ought to do that, so why haven't you? What the heck is wrong with you, a*****e?" is linguistically counterintuitive.) *Premise 2)* In the absence of a defeater, we are justified in trusting our intuitions. (Huemer argued that ultimately Sapolsky's view commits him to accepting Premise 2 because scientific practice relies on beliefs which *ultimately* rely for their support on as-yet-undefeated appearances, such as certain theory confirmation assumptions like "simpler theories are more likely to be true" or "the laws of logic are reliable" or "the future will sometimes be like the past," or "the external world exists," etc. For example, famously as David Hume pointed out, it's hard to justify induction without circular reasoning if you reject intuitionism. For instance. I.e., why think the future will be like the past? Because it has always been like that? In order for that to be evidence for the claim, we would have to assume that the fact that something has been a certain way in the past is evidence that it will continue to be that way in the future, which is the very question under dispute. Hence, many philosophers have concluded that there is no non-circular justification for induction except a form of foundationalism which says that it seems true and we lack a reason for doubting it, and our seemings afford us with defeasible prima facia justification in the absence of defeaters. Huemer also has a more general argument that we should believe Premise 2 because any alternative principle which we preferred to it would ultimately be justified by the very principle it rejects, namely by the fact that it seems true and we lack a reason for doubting it.) *Premise 3)* There is no ultimately successful defeater against (all of) our intuitions in favor of free will. (Eg., Huemer replied to Sapolsky's inductive generalization argument against free will by saying "it doesn't follow that because our actions are often *influenced* by external events, they must be *entirely determined* by external events.") *Conclusion a)* Therefore, we are justified in trusting our intuitions that free will exists. Huemer also argued that Sapolsky was engaged in a self-defeating line of argument because 1) he appeared to cast blame on people for casting blame on people (i.e., he seemed to say that it's *wrong* to condemn anyone's behavior since no one is responsible for their behavior, but calling a behavior wrong is a form of condemnation), and 2) he advanced a series of arguments for thinking that free will doesn't exist, which if we are inclined to accept the "ought implies can" principle leave Sapolsky's implicit "you should believe this because of the evidence" claim hanging in midair. How can it be that we should do anything if "should" requires the option of doing otherwise and there is no option to do otherwise? (This is just my attempt to explain what I think Huemer's argument was and should not be interpreted as an invitation to "fight me." lol) Email exchange the panelists had after the debate: *Dr. Huemer wrote:* "My wife, Iskra, who does philosophy of psychology, said that the strongest point for Robert's side was that the scope of apparent responsibility has been shrinking over time as scientific knowledge progresses. We keep finding more things that people aren't responsible for. By induction, you might extrapolate to a future time when we will think people aren't responsible for anything. I didn't fully address that, but basically I think that's an overgeneralization; the reasonable conclusion is that humans have less responsibility than it appears, but not none whatsoever. There are many cases in which you get absurd results if you project a trend to the absolute furthest extent possible. E.g., if you project current population growth into the future, you conclude that in 2750 years, the Earth's entire mass will be converted into humans. For a less silly example, for a while, estimates of the age of the Earth kept rising (starting at the Bible-derived estimate of 6,000 years). If you extrapolated maximally, you'd have concluded that the Earth is literally eternal. But that's not right, and not what the evidence supported. Or, suppose you notice that most scientific theories that have ever been held were later shown to be wrong. If you extrapolate maximally, you'd conclude that all possible theories are wrong (including this one?). Iskra also says that freedom comes in degrees. We're never maximally free (if such a thing even makes sense), nor do we have zero freedom. But as we learn more about ourselves, including what previously-hidden motives we might have, we become freer. *This exchange is continued in a reply to this comment below.* ------------------------------------------------ Dr. Robert Sapolsky is the recent author of the magnificent Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will. Dr. Michael Huemer is most recently the author of Understanding Knowledge, a terrific introduction to epistemology. Buy these books now!!! Amazon to Dr. Sapolsky’s book: www.amazon.com/Determined-Science-Life-without-Free/dp/0525560971?nodl=1&dplnkId=c55ef1a2-973e-4a7f-a4e1-dcfc003bf2de Amazon to Dr. Huemer’s book: www.amazon.com/Audible-Understanding-Knowledge/dp/B0C75N3JKR/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=7XCYBE17D213&keywords=understanding+knowledge&qid=1697591002&sprefix=understanding+knowledge+%2Caps%2C195&sr=8-1

@MrQuadcity

7 ай бұрын

Free will is an illusion and here is the argumentation: From the lense of neuroscience: Marcus Du Sautoy (Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford and the Simonyi Professorship for the Public Understanding of Science) participates in an experiment conducted by John-Dylan Haynes (Professor at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin) that attempts to find the neurological basis for decision making. Short summary: The experiment explores the relationship between free will, decision-making, and brain activity. Marcus Du Sautoy participates in an experiment in Berlin where they have to randomly decide to press either a left or right button. Brain scans and computer records track when the decision is made in the brain and when the button is physically pressed. The results reveal that up to six seconds before Marcus Du Sautoy consciously makes a decision, their brain has already made that choice. Specific patterns of brain activity can even predict which button will be pressed. This finding challenges the notion of free will, suggesting that unconscious brain activity significantly shapes our decisions before we become consciously aware of them. The experiment also delves into the nature of consciousness. It argues against dualism-the idea that the mind and brain are separate entities. Instead, it posits that consciousness is an aspect of brain activity. The unconscious brain activity is in harmony with a person's beliefs and desires, so it's not forcing you to do something against your will. Marcus Du Sautoy finds the results shocking, especially the idea that someone else can predict their decision six seconds before they are consciously aware of making it. The experiment raises profound questions about the nature of free will, consciousness, and the deterministic mechanisms that may govern our decisions. From the lense of pysics: In order to question the belief in free will, one can conduct experiments and contemplations. Take an action you are convinced you performed and reverse-engineer it until you realize you had no control over it. This leads to the conclusion that all actions in life are the same, and the notion of claiming ownership falls away, so free will is non-existent. By 'reverse-engineering an action,' I mean tracing back the steps that led you to make a specific decision. Upon close examination, you'll find that your choice was influenced by a series of past events and conditions over which you had no control, and that your choice didn't originate from a single point. One could argue that everything originates from the Big Bang, making us essentially biological robots. This realization may prompt you to reconsider how much 'free will' you actually possess, as your actions are shaped by factors beyond your control, both in the past and likely in the future as well. So you can summarize everything is a happening according to cosmic laws.

@PercyPrior1

7 ай бұрын

The email exchange continued: *Dr. Sapolsky replied:* Thanks for this followup. I totally agree that the history of thinking about these issues (and researching them) shows that the space free will can occupy keeps shrinking, and one might extrapolate that that space will eventually disappear. The issue of how wise it is to run with extrapolation, as I'm obviously heavily doing, is totally valid (like the idea that if it were possible to do computer modeling and urban planning back in the mid-19th century, extrapolation would have shown that cities would become unlivable by the mid-20th century, because of the overwhelming amounts of horse droppings in the streets, from the massive population increases in users of horse-drawn carriages). There's also some interesting studies showing how context-dependent extrapolation can be (for example, in one, they showed subjects a graph showing a straight line of points from a time series [i.e., graphing 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, and then 34]. Subjects would then be asked to put in the next point on the graph, and the question was whether people would view the 34 as just an aberration, and graph something like 40 or 45 as the point, resuming that pattern, or see it as an inflection point, and graph something like 29, 24...after that. And people were very likely to choose one pattern over the other depending on whether the scenario they were given in the story was taking place locally or on the other side of the planet [I've forgotten which direction it goes, and what hand-waving explanation was given, but the point was the really different outcomes depending on that seemingly irrelevant manipulation of what story was told]). So, yes, extrapolation has its dangers, and I'm probably resting too heavily on it when I talk about this. But that's in the context of my lunatic fringe stance that there is NO free will whatsoever -- yes, yes, the science isn't there to prove that yet, but at the rate things are going, come back X number of years from now and it will be irrefutable. And that stance is totally vulnerable to the ways that extrapolating can go off the rails. But that's concerning my very strongly felt but way out in left field stance about no free will. I would settle if what people take away from my song and dance is that we already know that we have vastly less free will than most people think, and that there is so much less so that the only intellectually and morally acceptable thing to do is majorly remake a lot of how things function (as in, say, "If we already know that for every increase in someone's Adverse Childhood Experience score, there is a ~35% increased likelihood of some awful behavior in adulthood [take your pick], we already know enough, we don't need more imagined findings in the future, to conclude that there is something desperately wrong with thinking about that adult behavior from a starting point of free will."). That sort of thing. Does this seem reasonable? All the best, Robert _____ *Dr. Huemer replied:* Hi Robert, Thanks very much for your thoughts. I'm copying Iskra in case she would like to comment on this. Regarding your last paragraph, I can certainly see how the knowledge about the Adverse Childhood Experience score would call into question the degree to which certain criminals are to blame for their actions. However, a) What about criminals who don't have a high ACE score? Surely they are still responsible? b) In the case of criminals who suffered from strong criminogenic influences: I'm not sure how you would propose to revise our practices. Should we not punish them? Perhaps you would propose some kind of psychiatric treatment? But is there in fact any effective treatment? Maybe we would keep punishing them anyway, because that reduces the bad behavior? I suspect that a good deal of the variation in bad behavior is explained by variation in people's experiences -- probably a lot more than people usually assume. I think we tend to over-ascribe evil motives. So I'm not maximally in disagreement with you. Example: I suspect that people who commit violent crimes might just be people who feel a lot more anger a lot more of the time than the rest of us, and the rest of us just don't know what that's like. Factors like this might diminish a person's responsibility, but I doubt that they entirely remove it. I.e., the person might merit a lower degree of blame than someone who doesn't have such influences, but still some blame. Relatedly, I think there are factors that make it difficult for a person to behave benevolently, without making it impossible. Yours, MH _____________________ *Dr. Iskra Fileva replied:* Thank you, everyone, for the stimulating and enjoyable discussion (not least to Jonah for organizing the event). Following up on Robert’s suggestion, I think there are at least two different questions here: (1) Are we generally as free as we think? (2) Do we have free will at all? It seems to me that there is no simple answer to the first question. We overestimate our freedom and that of others in some ways, as Robert argues, as when a person thinks she freely chose to support some cause when in fact, she was just conformist. Or when a child thinks her parents freely chose a style of psychological abuse, when in fact, they absorbed it from their parents unconsciously. On the other hand, sometimes, we deny we have freedom that we do, in fact, have, as when people say that there wasn’t anything else they could do given that an authority figure commanded them to act as they did. But on the whole, we probably make the first type of error more often. Regarding the second question, I think that if some actions are freer than others, then we have (some) freedom. But what would it mean for some actions to be freer than others? Well, I think for agents such as humans, free action basically means forming an intention to act on the basis of reasons you know you have and endorse, and then acting on that intention. The second piece is, I think, clearly in place - we can execute intentions we have. We even have the ability to persist for years in the face of obstacles in order to achieve a goal. That's what it means to have a will. But do we have a free will? This is where we come to the first piece of my formulation. After all, a person may show very strong will in pursuit of a goal, yet the goal itself may not be freely chosen. What I would say is that there is a difference between cases - some are closer, some are farther away from meeting the criteria I mentioned. Why think that? Here is a simple argument: We sometimes become aware of a bias in ourselves, perhaps with the help of other people. Once we do, our freedom increases by a little bit -- we are freer with respect to that particular bias. We may still have many other biases, but we are a little freer with regard to that one. That's all we need for the difference in degrees claim. If freedom sometimes increases, then it exists. So we have (some) freedom. There is, finally, a question about how free any given action would have to be in order for the person to be either morally or legally responsible for it. It could be that we have some freedom but not nearly enough for responsibility. That’s a thornier problem since one has to determine how much freedom is necessary for moral and/or legal responsibility. While I think the threshold is not so high as to be met rarely or never (I discuss this issue in a co-authored article "Will Retributivism Die and Will Neuroscience Kill It?"), I am sympathetic to the idea that we must, in general, guard against overattributing responsibility, especially overattributing it to others for bad behavior though also, perhaps, against underattributing it to ourselves, as when people insist a co-worker started the conflict while it fact, they did. (One may ask here too whether people shifting the blame for starting a conflict are, in turn, responsible for minimizing their own role in it given that there is a strong psychological tendency to absolve oneself of blame. And what I would say is that, going back to my earlier points, that's true, but there is also bad faith + knowing we have such a tendency increases our freedom with regard to it.) Thanks again, everyone. Also, I had not heard about the research on extrapolation Robert mentions. That's very interesting, and I will look up studies. With wishes, Iskra

@armstrongcit

7 ай бұрын

@@PercyPrior1 Outstanding video- you have gotten the heavy hitters here for sure. For me, Dr. Huemer (along with folks like Dr. Richard Foley) has provided a strong defense of moral realism and free will, EVEN THOUGH I find myself more sympathetic to Dr. Sapolsky's materialism (well, I am an engineer). I wonder if Sapolsky wasn't too right when he said (around 39:00), here are two experts in such different fields in danger of talking past each other. My sense is that if you like metaethics, you may be more sympathetic toward free will, and likewise if you like a mechanistic, materialistic view of the world, you are more likely to be a biologist.

@MyContext

7 ай бұрын

P1) Our intuitions support the existence of free will P2) In the absence of a defeater, we are justified in trusting our intuitions. P3) There is no ultimately successful defeater against (all of) our intuitions in favor of free will. C) Therefore, we are justified in trusting our intuitions that free will exists. Let me generalize the argument... P1) Our intuitions support the existence of X. P2) In the absence of a defeater, we are justified in trusting intuitions. P3) There is no ultimately successful defeater against our intuitions in favor of X. C) Therefore, we are justified in trusting our intuitions that X exists. The core issue is in ANY belief in X wherein X has not been shown to be an aspect of reality. Sapolsky made this point in his historical reviews wherein X was something that was believed to be an aspect of reality but was not the case. Thus, P1 is automatically rejectable when it is the case that X hasn't been shown to be an aspect of reality, since, it is the case that in EVERY instance wherein X hasn't been shown to be substantiated in the context of reality, the conclusions drawn on such were fallacious. Thus, we must SHOW that X is an aspect of reality, BEFORE such can be considered a proper target of intuition or anything else for that matter. If this isn't clear, then consider that any claim of X could be an imaginary psychological/sociological construct as opposed to being a reference to an aspect of reality such that we must make a distinction between what we can imagine to be the case versus what is the case. Sapolsky continually made reference to what has been shown whereas Huemer made reference not to reality, but intuitions which are a product of psychological/sociological tapestries as opposed to being facts about reality. Currently, within the context of what we know.... P1: Processes are tethered (NOT FREE). P2: We are processes at every level of review. C: We are not free. --- Huemer made the comment that reason supports free will, but that is a falsehood, since reason entails the use of knowledge to make an evaluation. An evaluation is a process regardless of whether such is a flawed process or not. The fact of reason being a process is why there is the expectation that we will be able to produce super intelligent AI systems (which is special kind of concern for another discussion). --- This video and the associated links would seem to be extremely relevant to the current debate/discussion. kzread.info/dash/bejne/ZGh11dN-j8jRn5M.html (New discoveries about the brain) --- We are never free. However, the scope of our knowledge does determine the quality of our evaluations. --- I really enjoyed the debate/exchange.

@anameyoucantremember

7 ай бұрын

It seemed to me that Dr. Sapolsky was talking about the rapids while Dr. Huemer was talking about the kayaker. If humans were someday able to account for absolutely every single variable (up to the entire universe, down to the subatomic particles within our atoms) around any given event, free will will be shown for what it is: a recreational illusion that emerged from our inability to fully comprehend reality with the purpose of making life interestingly enough to give conscious beings a desire to go through all the hardships and suffering necessary to continue living for no actual reward other than the belief in free will itself. Free will is the promise that we mice have the skills to find cheese in a labyrinth in which cheese doesn't even exist. A Czech man once explained it much, much better in this little fable: "Alas", said the mouse, "the whole world is growing smaller every day. At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and running, and I was glad when I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap that I am running into." "You only need to change your direction," said the cat, and ate it up. --Franz Kafka

I'm a simple man. I see a channel that uploaded a philosophical debate, I subscribe.

Thanks for having Robert Sapolsky in the discussion. He's always great!

“Oh no, the dogs🙄” at 4:33 😂 I love Dr Sapolsky with a passion

@Joe-ym6bw

2 ай бұрын

Nice looking dog

For me, the fundamental basis of determinism is this and this one thing is enough to establish determinism is this - there is no external "you" outside of your brain and experiences and memories and influences and if you till that point a few microseconds from making a decision is just an amalgamation of all that i said, what does it mean by you making a decision in isolation of all of that? There is no "isolated" you that is sitting outside your brain and mind and controlling your brain and mind like a driver. You are your mind and body and that mind and body are results of all things prior..

@zulubeatsprince

6 ай бұрын

Exactly, nuff said. People think there is some magical will outside the universe that can separate itself from the universe to make some free decision.. there simply isn't.

@FightFilms

2 ай бұрын

"there is no external "you" outside of your brain" - strawman of free will "mind and body are results of all things prior.." - strawman of determinism

@Jimmy-iy9pl

Ай бұрын

That's only an argument for determinism on the assumption that substance dualism and idealism are false. Not everyone buys into physicalism.

@Jimmy-iy9pl

Ай бұрын

​@zulubeatsprince The only thing magical here is the idea that the self is an illusion and that the brain is the mind. Physicalism is dumb and doesn't do justice to the qualitative nature of first-person experience.

Always love listening to Dr. Sapolsky. The way he presents the information is very interesting but also relaxing.

@debpoarch3881

7 ай бұрын

Me too.

@intellectualchaos7997

7 ай бұрын

I agree. I loved his Stanford lectures, and read "Behave", and loved it. I knew he was a hard determinist and anti-free-willer, and knew he was planning this book. I am definitely not a determinist and I believe in free will of sorts, but I really wanted to read his take. I still disagree with him but I am quite enjoying the book.

@vegan-rising

5 ай бұрын

except, he lost the debate

@susugam3004

5 ай бұрын

@@vegan-risingthat's absurd lol

@vegan-rising

5 ай бұрын

@@susugam3004 how is that absurd LMAO.

Man the LOTR budget for s2 took a hit

@ericpowell8563

7 ай бұрын

Golden comment.

@grantwithers

7 ай бұрын

lol

There is a physics argument for determinism. And there are biological and sociological arguments for determinism. The biological and sociological arguments, on which Sapolsky is most expert, are about influence not inevitability. Usually the effect size is a percentage below 50. So yes, it’s important to structure society according to the fact that, say, a person formed in a stressed out womb who grows up exposed to lead etc, had much greater disadvantages than others. But that isn’t the whole story.

@cihuacoatl1887

7 ай бұрын

If the universe is deterministic everything is the effect of a cause, how do you get out of that_ you dont. we have the illusion of choice, but there is only one path. its pretty straightforward. the other variable causes are the rest of the story, every thing that you are and that happened to you and that is going to happen to you constitute the 100percent of what you are and will be and will do.

@aaronshure3723

7 ай бұрын

@@cihuacoatl1887 If you want to talk about determinism from the physics perspective, you will have to give up the notion of cause. Most theoretical physicists don't find "cause" to be a useful concept at all. On the other hand Sapolsky spends most of his time talking about bio-social effects. Oddly he talks as though they are 100 but as I've already said, they are at best in the 60%. A psychotropic drug that has a 40% effect is considered a treatment. What doesn't make sense, and I think Sapolsky is being a little lax in this department, is helping yourself to the physics certitude while actually talking about the biology and sociology realm.

@Henry-yh6vv

5 ай бұрын

Yeah it's not clear that biological or sociological arguments mean much at all. What I'm thinking with any physics argument, is that I doubt we understand consciousness, so how can we be sure of whatever rules are applying to consciousness?

@susugam3004

5 ай бұрын

@@cihuacoatl1887 bingo

@FightFilms

2 ай бұрын

"The universe is deterministic". LMAO!

Great work bringing these 2 together. I suggest you use KZread's edit feature to cut the tech trouble bits.

@PercyPrior1

7 ай бұрын

I didn’t realize you could cut footage out after uploading and was worried I’d have to delete the video and start anew. Thanks for pointing this out to me!

@TheologyUnleashed

7 ай бұрын

@@PercyPrior1 It's a pain to use and doesn't give you much control but often it's better than reuploading

"That's reasoning collapse!", "That's science!" - Seems like the beginning of a beautiful friendship :)

Enjoyed this, thank you

Do you choose to understand, or does understand simply occur to you? Do you choose to come up with an idea, or does the idea simply emerge in your consciousness? For me the obvious answer is you don't choose for both questions. Then comes the question for Huemer, where is free will in the process of emergence of ideas or the process of understanding?

@FightFilms

2 ай бұрын

That assumes everybody has the ability to understand everything and that coming up with an idea is somehow a choice, neither of which is true and has nothing to do with will.

@petrufrenc576

2 ай бұрын

​@FightFilms why does it asume that? If i don't understand i can't chose to understand or not.

Crazy to get giants on a small channel like this, massive respect on both ends

@YingGuoRen

4 ай бұрын

I know, right?! How the Hell did he manage to get these guys on? Good for him. Great discussion.

@showponyexpressify

29 күн бұрын

Finally good to have someone question Sapolsky rather than encourage his tired old anecdotes... The tech glitch at the start was hilarious....

Definitely two people talking past each other. I'm sympathetic to Sapolsky's point of view, though I think he's failing to accurately describe the situation. I doubt I could do better. In my view, free will has been disproven already, and humans are simply clinging to a system or systems that have worked well enough since humans came to exist. I can't seem to get anyone to describe a mechanism that makes free will possible. It appears to be the case that what I think or feel at any given moment emerges from the state of the matter of which I am composed. In order to "make a decision", I need to be able to alter that state "willfully", but this creates a paradox. The only answer appears to be a sort of time fudgery whereby some supernatural element of myself can go back in time and set up my material state to produce a desired outcome in the present. Without that, there just isn't a way for anyone to "choose" in the sense that people believe they can. It appears to be the case that I am not a separate thing from the universe, I am the universe. All the behaviors of matter and energy (same thing really) and all the forces at play affect me just as they affect the gases on Jupiter, or photons traveling through the Andromeda galaxy, or some dust at the farthest edges of human observation. I think compatibilism is dodging the question as well. Nothing in compatibilism maps onto the naive belief in free will that most humans seem to hold.

@DavidG2P

28 күн бұрын

Absolutely. Having thought about free will for only a decade, it is beyond me how it even is a thing anymore. Free will really is not even wrong, it's an entirely nonsensical concept.

@theofficialness578

24 күн бұрын

I had an interesting conversation with a co worker who a compatibilist, the conversation led to us taking about someone doing their homework it went like this…. I asked ok why does someone not do their homework He replied, because of the paradigm of their circumstances, the “stuff” that happened to them to create that paradigm. Then I asked, ok why does someone do their homework He replied basically the same thing “because of the paradigm of their circumstances, the “stuff” that happened to them to create that paradigm. “ Finally I asked if that is true and what you think is either individual’s choice to do or not do their homework free? He completely stopped talking… A few moments later he said “if I could just find the words you would say aww I get it.” I tell this story in regard to this part of your statement. “I can't seem to get anyone to describe a mechanism that makes free will possible. It appears to be the case that what I think or feel.” Basically I’m saying I’ve had the utterly same experience.

Excellent discussion/debate! Really enjoyed it. I plan to get Taylor Cyr on my channel in January to discuss each participant’s opening statement😁

@PercyPrior1

7 ай бұрын

(Part 1/2) Hey, I love your channel! If you're going to do that, consider reading some of this email exchange that the speakers had the day after the debate: *Dr. Huemer wrote:* "My wife, Iskra, who does philosophy of psychology, said that the strongest point for Robert's side was that the scope of apparent responsibility has been shrinking over time as scientific knowledge progresses. We keep finding more things that people aren't responsible for. By induction, you might extrapolate to a future time when we will think people aren't responsible for anything. I didn't fully address that, but basically I think that's an overgeneralization; the reasonable conclusion is that humans have less responsibility than it appears, but not none whatsoever. There are many cases in which you get absurd results if you project a trend to the absolute furthest extent possible. E.g., if you project current population growth into the future, you conclude that in 2750 years, the Earth's entire mass will be converted into humans. For a less silly example, for a while, estimates of the age of the Earth kept rising (starting at the Bible-derived estimate of 6,000 years). If you extrapolated maximally, you'd have concluded that the Earth is literally eternal. But that's not right, and not what the evidence supported. Or, suppose you notice that most scientific theories that have ever been held were later shown to be wrong. If you extrapolate maximally, you'd conclude that all possible theories are wrong (including this one?). Iskra also says that freedom comes in degrees. We're never maximally free (if such a thing even makes sense), nor do we have zero freedom. But as we learn more about ourselves, including what previously-hidden motives we might have, we become freer. *Dr. Sapolsky replied:* Thanks for this followup. I totally agree that the history of thinking about these issues (and researching them) shows that the space free will can occupy keeps shrinking, and one might extrapolate that that space will eventually disappear. The issue of how wise it is to run with extrapolation, as I'm obviously heavily doing, is totally valid (like the idea that if it were possible to do computer modeling and urban planning back in the mid-19th century, extrapolation would have shown that cities would become unlivable by the mid-20th century, because of the overwhelming amounts of horse droppings in the streets, from the massive population increases in users of horse-drawn carriages). There's also some interesting studies showing how context-dependent extrapolation can be (for example, in one, they showed subjects a graph showing a straight line of points from a time series [i.e., graphing 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, and then 34]. Subjects would then be asked to put in the next point on the graph, and the question was whether people would view the 34 as just an aberration, and graph something like 40 or 45 as the point, resuming that pattern, or see it as an inflection point, and graph something like 29, 24...after that. And people were very likely to choose one pattern over the other depending on whether the scenario they were given in the story was taking place locally or on the other side of the planet [I've forgotten which direction it goes, and what hand-waving explanation was given, but the point was the really different outcomes depending on that seemingly irrelevant manipulation of what story was told]). So, yes, extrapolation has its dangers, and I'm probably resting too heavily on it when I talk about this. But that's in the context of my lunatic fringe stance that there is NO free will whatsoever -- yes, yes, the science isn't there to prove that yet, but at the rate things are going, come back X number of years from now and it will be irrefutable. And that stance is totally vulnerable to the ways that extrapolating can go off the rails. But that's concerning my very strongly felt but way out in left field stance about no free will. I would settle if what people take away from my song and dance is that we already know that we have vastly less free will than most people think, and that there is so much less so that the only intellectually and morally acceptable thing to do is majorly remake a lot of how things function (as in, say, "If we already know that for every increase in someone's Adverse Childhood Experience score, there is a ~35% increased likelihood of some awful behavior in adulthood [take your pick], we already know enough, we don't need more imagined findings in the future, to conclude that there is something desperately wrong with thinking about that adult behavior from a starting point of free will."). That sort of thing. Does this seem reasonable? All the best, Robert

@PercyPrior1

7 ай бұрын

(Part 2/2) Their exchange continued as follows: *Dr. Huemer replied:* Hi Robert, Thanks very much for your thoughts. I'm copying Iskra in case she would like to comment on this. Regarding your last paragraph, I can certainly see how the knowledge about the Adverse Childhood Experience score would call into question the degree to which certain criminals are to blame for their actions. However, a) What about criminals who don't have a high ACE score? Surely they are still responsible? b) In the case of criminals who suffered from strong criminogenic influences: I'm not sure how you would propose to revise our practices. Should we not punish them? Perhaps you would propose some kind of psychiatric treatment? But is there in fact any effective treatment? Maybe we would keep punishing them anyway, because that reduces the bad behavior? I suspect that a good deal of the variation in bad behavior is explained by variation in people's experiences -- probably a lot more than people usually assume. I think we tend to over-ascribe evil motives. So I'm not maximally in disagreement with you. Example: I suspect that people who commit violent crimes might just be people who feel a lot more anger a lot more of the time than the rest of us, and the rest of us just don't know what that's like. Factors like this might diminish a person's responsibility, but I doubt that they entirely remove it. I.e., the person might merit a lower degree of blame than someone who doesn't have such influences, but still some blame. Relatedly, I think there are factors that make it difficult for a person to behave benevolently, without making it impossible. Yours, MH *Dr. Iskra Fileva replied:* Thank you, everyone, for the stimulating and enjoyable discussion (not least to Jonah for organizing the event). Following up on Robert’s suggestion, I think there are at least two different questions here: (1) Are we generally as free as we think? (2) Do we have free will at all? It seems to me that there is no simple answer to the first question. We overestimate our freedom and that of others in some ways, as Robert argues, as when a person thinks she freely chose to support some cause when in fact, she was just conformist. Or when a child thinks her parents freely chose a style of psychological abuse, when in fact, they absorbed it from their parents unconsciously. On the other hand, sometimes, we deny we have freedom that we do, in fact, have, as when people say that there wasn’t anything else they could do given that an authority figure commanded them to act as they did. But on the whole, we probably make the first type of error more often. Regarding the second question, I think that if some actions are freer than others, then we have (some) freedom. But what would it mean for some actions to be freer than others? Well, I think for agents such as humans, free action basically means forming an intention to act on the basis of reasons you know you have and endorse, and then acting on that intention. The second piece is, I think, clearly in place - we can execute intentions we have. We even have the ability to persist for years in the face of obstacles in order to achieve a goal. That's what it means to have a will. But do we have a free will? This is where we come to the first piece of my formulation. After all, a person may show very strong will in pursuit of a goal, yet the goal itself may not be freely chosen. What I would say is that there is a difference between cases - some are closer, some are farther away from meeting the criteria I mentioned. Why think that? Here is a simple argument: We sometimes become aware of a bias in ourselves, perhaps with the help of other people. Once we do, our freedom increases by a little bit -- we are freer with respect to that particular bias. We may still have many other biases, but we are a little freer with regard to that one. That's all we need for the difference in degrees claim. If freedom sometimes increases, then it exists. So we have (some) freedom. There is, finally, a question about how free any given action would have to be in order for the person to be either morally or legally responsible for it. It could be that we have some freedom but not nearly enough for responsibility. That’s a thornier problem since one has to determine how much freedom is necessary for moral and/or legal responsibility. While I think the threshold is not so high as to be met rarely or never (I discuss this issue in a co-authored article "Will Retributivism Die and Will Neuroscience Kill It?"), I am sympathetic to the idea that we must, in general, guard against overattributing responsibility, especially overattributing it to others for bad behavior though also, perhaps, against underattributing it to ourselves, as when people insist a co-worker started the conflict while it fact, they did. (One may ask here too whether people shifting the blame for starting a conflict are, in turn, responsible for minimizing their own role in it given that there is a strong psychological tendency to absolve oneself of blame. And what I would say is that, going back to my earlier points, that's true, but there is also bad faith + knowing we have such a tendency increases our freedom with regard to it.) Thanks again, everyone. Also, I had not heard about the research on extrapolation Robert mentions. That's very interesting, and I will look up studies. With wishes, Iskra

@jedser

7 ай бұрын

@@PercyPrior1 Did Dr. Sapolsky respond to these?

Listening to anyone trying to argue for free will is like listening to a toddler argue that what they say to Dora affects what happens next in the cartoon.

I think the question should be 'can attribution of moral responsibility be rationally or empirically justified?" while bearing in mind Kant's distinction between pure and practical reason. So, for example, we may not have purely rational justification for attributing moral responsibility, but it might still be argued that we have practical rational justification for attributing moral responsibility.

@dawndid5972

6 ай бұрын

Thank you for your eloquent reply. Salient sapien saturnalia succumbing

@ataraxia7439

6 ай бұрын

I think we should distinguish types of responsibility. If someone has a tumor in the front of their brain and misbehaves as a result but goes back to normal once the tumor is removed, we could say they’re responsible in a certain sense for things they did but I doubt most ppl would consider them responsible in all the same ways someone who exhibited the same behavior but without a tumor. Sapolsky (rightly imo) argues that this distinction doesn’t actually make sense & we should instead treat everyone who does anything bad as unlucky and sick on some level if we take this idea seriously.

@davethewave7248

Ай бұрын

Yes, just to ask these kind of questions is to perform a rationality that presupposes a freedom.. that we can choose between alternate answers. Those hung up on these kinds of metaphysical questions have not understood the limits of pure reason that Kant outlined so forcefully, and the world went on to ignore.

For me the most obvious question would be the most simple one that has been never asked here or elsewhere in dialogues or other videos, namely: if there is freewill than that will is free of what? Free of WHAT? And this is not just about grammar or semantic because if something is free that means it is not “related” anymore or at all to something right? So freewill is free (and when and how was freed?) of for example phisics or biology or chemistry or math or space or tendencies or trajectories or someone or past/present/future or life or language or brain or processes or causality etc etc or what?? Anyway in my opinion the opposite of free is not determined/predetermined but d e p e n d e n t / d e p e n d e d, so the better question is that is there (any) (completely) independent will or there is not? The answer is obvious. 😉

@ahm6006

5 ай бұрын

This question has been asked and answered. The distinction made here is liberty of spontaneity and liberty of indifference, the latter is what you're referring to and has been considered doubtful since it would eliminate causation from the principles and desires of the subject too.

Keep the conversations like this keep coming.A like and subscribe for this and your site.

Excellent presentation man cheers 🍻

Advice from others, alternative decisions, deliberation, argumentation, none of these are free will, all are just factors in what you decide. Responsibility for your actions is determined by moral imperatives not free will, you can be responsible for things you did by accident. The conscious mind does not make decisions, its job is to explain the decision the unconscious mind makes.

@FightFilms

2 ай бұрын

"You decide" implies free will

@martinpedersen2650

2 ай бұрын

@@FightFilms Decision implies you would ever have made any other decision than the one you made, which Sapolsky argues against.

great content! 👏🏻👏🏻

free will : the ability to choose things you would never choose.

@Humanlvl

4 ай бұрын

Everyone would stay married lol

@user-nm4zh9kp5m

3 ай бұрын

😂😂😂

I enjoyed this a lot! Both of these guys have great personalities and made interesting arguments. Thank you so much for hosting. Overall, this confirmed what I already suspected. Sopolsky is a very smart man but doesn’t seem to understand what philosophers mean by “free will,” and appears uninterested in correcting his misunderstanding. Nothing against the guy. Nobody’s perfect after all.

Good discussion, gents. 👍

Free will and 'the illusion of free will' are two totally different things. The illusion free free will is something we use as human beings in the day to day life together with the illusion of self. It is constructed by our brain for practical reasons. Without those illusions we cannot function properly. We would be totally passive or guided only by low level desires. But having the illusion of free will and self does not mean that free will actually exists on the biological level. These are just two totally different things.

@ataraxia7439

6 ай бұрын

I disagree I think (unless you’re defining free will very differently from how I do). I don’t feel like I have free will in normal day to day life but I still feel able to make decisions beyond low level desires.

@dooplisss

5 ай бұрын

Like the other commenter, I fully embrace the idea we have no free will. My day to day decisions are still beyond low level desires because I’m fully aware low level desires don’t give the right outcomes that will allow me to have a happy and fulfilling life. Everything is based on conditions

@johnnkurunziza5012

3 ай бұрын

The illusion of free will would imply that there is no free will?

@johnnkurunziza5012

3 ай бұрын

@@dooplisssyou do have free will your not reacting to stimuli or prompts your not a robot you make decisions on a daily basis that effect you for the long termS

@CarnevalOne

2 ай бұрын

You provided no evidence of This illusion. made no argument.

Sapolsky should have pressed Huemer for his account of free will - does it somehow escape causality of prior events?

@synchronium24

7 ай бұрын

Agreed. I've never heard a convincing defense of contra-causal free will. With compatibilists I can agree that we have the kind of (deterministic!) cognitive capacities they say we have. At that point it's just a matter of whether calling those capacities "free will" makes sense.

@DavidVonR

4 ай бұрын

It doesn't escape causality, rather it is the inception of causality. It creates a new causal chain to come into existence.

@FightFilms

2 ай бұрын

Why would he need to show this? Causality doesn't get you to determinism.

@chadreilly

Ай бұрын

@@FightFilms How doesn't causality get you determinism?

@Luftgitarrenprofi

29 күн бұрын

​@@DavidVonRAint we special, huh? We humans and our magical ability to bend causality to our will. So cool!

16:55 that laugh was great 🤣🤣🤣

mike heumer's laughing while dismissing arguments makes him look like a total jerk.

I start with the idea that everything I think is imaginary until demonstrated otherwise. I think it’s a mistake to assume things are the way we think they are until demonstrated otherwise. Intuition is NOT a reliable path to the truth.

@davidspencer343

Ай бұрын

Tjump always says this. Agreed

@Jimmy-iy9pl

Ай бұрын

There are several different claims being made here. 1. Your starting assumption (attitude?) towards all propositions that your mind entertains is one of positive disbelief. 2. It's positively wrong - as in, violating some sort of epistemic norm, to believe any proposition your mind grasps based on seemings and/or appearances. 3. Even if something appears correct to you, and you have no defeaters for it, it is still positively wrong to believe it. In fact, according to you, you should literally positively disbelieve it. 4. Intuition is not a reliable truth directed process. 5. Implicitly, some form of strong internalist-foundationalist and evidentialist epistemology is being assumed. You're clearly trying to say that in order for a non basic belief to be warranted, there must be reasons given that confer evidential warrant which must also be accessible or known by the person in a direct way. However, Huemer is also a internalist-foundationalist. Huemer's thesis is about basic beliefs and how those are justified, which is called phenomenal conservatism. The major problem with the main objection here is that it's just question begging against phenomenal conservatism. I think, arguably, you're also confused about belief and justification more generally speaking. You're also confused about skepticism - confused in such a way that your epistemic standard is likely self-defeating and incapable of leading to justified belief, much less knowledge.

@nlf-xk6ox

18 күн бұрын

​@@Jimmy-iy9pl very well put, I find myself frustrated with people as the commenter above, to clean up confusion of someone else is often difficult, especially if they are confused about the concept of doubt.

@Jimmy-iy9pl

18 күн бұрын

@@nlf-xk6ox the commenters make a good case for why everyone should have to take an epistemology course in college before graduating.

Awesome exchange. Dr. S has been making his rounds on podcasts without much pushback, so this was refreshing. I think Dr. H straightjacketed Dr S in a logical bind that he could get out of without contradicting himself.

@kp6553

7 ай бұрын

Exactly. He is out of his depth. He is making philosophical arguments without having any philosophical training.

@bebopbountyhead

7 ай бұрын

But... history says people were mean. Wait, I mean to say that history says people were acting on incomplete scientific understandings. Wait, I mean to say that my interpretation... wait, I mean science as an agent... wait... history as an agent... you can... never mind.

@ezbody

7 ай бұрын

When was the last time a philosophical discovery preceded the scientific one? What have the philosophers ever discovered, besides formulating a system of logic and devising the rules of critical reasoning? When it comes to scientific discovery, philosophy doesn't fair much better than religion, and, just like religion, it feels very comfortable running in circles, pretending to be marching forward. 😏

@bebopbountyhead

7 ай бұрын

@@ezbody As opposed to scientists, whose theories can simultaneously explain the same evidence with different mathematical frameworks, philosophers' theories are definitionally exclusive. I can understand why people outside of philosophy feel that it makes no progress, as its scale is so large. However, all rational inquiries begin as applications of philosophy. Now, I don't mean here to defend the corpus of philosophical thought. It follows from my previous statements that most philosophy is fruitless, due to the definitional stringency of philosophical success. However, saying that philosophy discovers nothing is self-refuting, as knowledge is not something that science can claim without an attending epistemic theory. Ultimately, philosophy discovers better ways to argue for claims. If you don't believe that, then you don't believe in better ways to argue for claims, which is, again, self-refuting.

@jedser

7 ай бұрын

@@ezbody Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, Chomsky are philosophers with rich histories of scientific discoveries. You don't know what you're saying. Your position of ignorance would be easily exposed by Socrates. Philosophy always precedes scientific discovery, as it supplies the logical and critical framework for accepting, rejecting, or revising scientific claims. And you don't know science if you think that it's innocent of running in circles and pretending to march forward.

How has a channel with 520 subscribers managed to get these guys on?! Congratulations, fascinating stuff.

@JB.zero.zero.1

4 ай бұрын

Determinism.

@peteplayz-norskgaming5723

3 ай бұрын

@@JB.zero.zero.1😂

Words are to limited to express appreciation.

I would have been better to define the terms being used and agree on them before the 'debate' began. This is all too often a topic where people talk past each other over and over again. Generally, I find that almost everyone will agree that it makes ethical/moral sense to believe we have authorship. The question for me has always been about the possibly of one be wrong over the other and the possible implications of them. I think Sapolsky is a Soft Determinist (as most people are).

@optimisticdeterminist2291

7 ай бұрын

True, but the issue was not free will itself, but intuition. Intuition is a technical term for philosophers, and even when corrected Sapolsky seemed to beg the question by assuming intuition is based on superstition. Sapolsky was the problem here because he kept using a technical term in the wrong way. The same problem would arise if Huemer kept using a technical term within Sapolskys area of expertise in a flawed manner. I agree that terms should be defined, but if you read academic papers, you know that they presuppose knowledge. If they defined all the terms properly, it would be the whole video.

Song and dance. You rocked your opening statement

I wonder if an objection to Huemer's example of the scapegoat convict is that, while scapegoating him would act as a deterrent for the general population, it could actually create an incentive for the true perpetrator, who would know that, not only did he get away with the crime, but everyone has satiated their desire for justice and are, presumably, no longer at pains to find him.

1. Creatio ex nihilo is incoherent: P1: Creatio ex nihilo posits the creation of the universe from absolute nothingness, implying a state of non-existence before creation. P2: Non-existence is not a state but rather the absence of existence. P3: Minds are events, which means they are temporal occurrences or processes. P4: If minds are events, they cannot exist in a state of non-existence before the creation of the universe. P5: Therefore, the notion of a divine mind or creative consciousness existing in a state of non-existence before creation is incoherent since events (minds) cannot exist in a state of non-existence. 2.Christianity makes a category mistake because minds aren't substances, minds are events: P1: The mind is a nominal concept for a specific set of cognitive events. P2: If minds are events, they are grounded in substances. P3: A living being represent a specific separation within a single substance that behaves in a specific way. P4: Minds are grounded in living beings. P5: Therefore, minds do not exist independently of living beings 3. Substance dualism is false because it encounters the interaction problem. There can be no necessary connections between distinct existences (Hume's Dictum). 4. Necessitarianism is true because logical possibilities do not entail metaphysical possibilities, and it cannot be proven that things could have been or happened otherwise, hence, free will is false. 5. Argument for Substance Monism: P1: If substance dualism is false, then substance monism is true. P2: There is only one substance that things are made out of, making it impossible to conceive of another substance, hence, substance dualism is false. P3: Substance Monism is true. P4: If Substance Monism is true, it can be either Physicalism, Neutral Monism, or Idealism. P5: Idealism makes a category mistake, and physicalism attaches an arbitrary label to the substance. P6: Neutral Monism is true. P7: If neutral monism is true, there is only one substance in reality, and it exists as an ontologically independent brute fact. 6. Argument for Existence as a brute fact: P1: Existence is the totality of all that exists. P2: If an explanation or reason is something that exists, it belongs to the totality of all that exists. P3: Explanations or reasons exist. P4: Explanations or reasons belong to the totality of all that exists. P5: Existence has no explanation or reason. 7. Argument from Functionalism and Nominalism: P1: Mental states are events. P2: If P1 is true, then mental states do not exist. P3: Events are not existents but occurrences. P4: Events have beginnings. P5: Existence is made of a single substance that grounds events. P6: Labeling the substance "God" is tautologous and arbitrary. P7: Such a definition conflicts with the Christian definition of God as a personal creator. Defense of p1. If something involves the unfolding of events to be made coherent, then it is itself an event. Concepts are dynamic and require an unfolding of events to be articulated and conceived, hence, platonism is false 8. Argument against Idealism and Physicalism Labels: p1. Idealism assumes that mental states are independent existences. p2. This assumption commits a category mistake, as, under extreme nominalism, mental states are events, not independently existing particulars. p3. Therefore, labeling them as separate existences is erroneous. p4. Idealism, as well as, Physicalism labels the ontologically independent substance as "physical" or "mind" arbitrarily. p5. Such labeling is arbitrary because the substance itself lacks inherent properties categorically defining it as "physical" or "mind". Conclusion: Under extreme nominalism, the substance can be understood as the ontologically independent brute fact without the need for arbitrary labels. By resorting to occasionalism or parallelism to address the interaction problem, substance dualism engages in special pleading. As a nominalist, I reject the existence of emergent properties in favor of aspects. While a theist may post that God (a divine consciousness) was in a state of existence, pre-instantiation of change, this makes a category mistake since minds are mere concepts for a specific set of cognitive events grounded in living beings and it also makes an existential fallacy. Minds can further be defined as specific divisions within a single ongoing event established by arbitrary boundaries.

Insanely fun debate! Thanks for sharing this!

Thank you for bringing 2 great minds together.

@PercyPrior1

7 ай бұрын

Thank you for watching!

@kirstinstrand6292

5 ай бұрын

Well done 🤩 @@PercyPrior1

Anyone else unable to access Dr. H's website? Shall we assume the dour determiners are dossing him?

Thanks bro for the video. See if you can create a conversation between Daniel Denet and Robert Sapolsky

@z-horn7265

6 ай бұрын

Sapolsky is going personal on Denett´s "unluck evens out on time, my ass" in Determined. I loved that spark of emotion in this deeply humanistic and wonderful Professor.

Wow, this is really crazy! Huemer and Sapolsky also debated on a private platform for charity, unfortunately, I never got the chance to sign up to watch the debate and thought I would never see it! Did you get the idea to host this debate from that? Is this a re-broadcast of that original debate? Im utterly mystified and overjoyed! Thank you!

The moderator was terrific 🤙

I really hope at some point Robert interacts with Marshall Rosenbergs work because it is literally all based on the equation of subtracting out praise and blame

Thanks so much for the great conversation. Can u plz tell me how can I contact with Robert Sapolsky to do a podcast with him? An Email or sth?

Around 40:00 what a brilliant point ❤

Good content. Keep it up!

How do I explain personally

1:21:00 It's fascinating that Huemer here makes the argument in favor of doxastic voluntarism that free choices are a part of deliberation. Meanwhile in another video Amy Karofsky seems to instead explain the fact that we make choices between alternatives in terms of deliberation on which epistemically open action for us to take is the actual one. I wonder if free will believers commonly believe that free choices underly or are part of deliberation while free will critics commonly believe that deliberation underlies all choices. To be honest it seems more to me like I'm trying to find out which action I'm actually going to take than like it's ultimately up to me what action I take

I really enjoy listening to Robert Sapolsky

@gledatelj1979

2 ай бұрын

You must be sick or homosexual or both

I'm not sure why Sapolsky is arguing against intuition as evidence when he hasn't demonstrated that he operates on anything more than his intuiton, when concluding the scientific evidence should trump the experiental evidence of free will that MIchael Huemer is giving.

Aporia!

It’s interesting how examples of intuition leading to making bad decisions is analyzed from the perspective of modern time and it’s assumed that even back then everybody knew what was “right” and what was “wrong” and they still did the “wrong” thing.

@serversurfer6169

6 ай бұрын

I like, "Sure, we've disproven most of our basic intuitions over the years, so the all ones we haven't disproven are obviously true!" 🤦‍♂

Excellent! This confused me about my position, which is good. I can't wait to read Sapolsky's book. I generally disagree with Huemer's positions but he had great points here. I think I'm still on the determinist side (I just can't help it ;) )

Everything has a cause or is random. Free will debunked.

It seems to me that they are not really discussing the same thing and are using one word. Why don't you start off with a discussion of what is Will? Or maybe even better what is will power.

I think the concept of free will is useful to say we are free from the control of fate or some mythical higher power. I think it is less useful in the context of saying we are not from from our physical makeup. Our perception of how we make a decision may differ from the actual electro-chemical process by which the decision was reached but the perception itself is as reliant on that process as the decision was.

@cristristam9054

4 ай бұрын

Not really ,that perception is actually a post-facto justification (that seems concurring) ,for an analogy think about your dream-self (unless you are a lucid dreamer) ,it seemingly still makes decisions but there is no perception of making the decisions.

@pcrathke

4 ай бұрын

@@cristristam9054 So do we have free will over the content of the post-facto justification or does that come equally unbidden as the decision itself? Maybe the justification is a clue provided by the same subconscious mechanism.

@cristristam9054

4 ай бұрын

@@pcrathke Actually I agree with your original post the perception is also fully-conditioned. Here is the best argument I heard against free will, it is from "Bernardo Kastrup" : Everyone wants to be happy (by definition) and if we had free will ,we would wish to be in the exact condition we find ourselves in. There would be no suffering if we had free will ,not even physical pain ,because we could just wish to be in said pain.

@johnnkurunziza5012

3 ай бұрын

@@cristristam9054well your conditioned to perceive something one way yet if the same scenario was replayed you might have chosen to do otherwise.

Huemer should say 'Like, I don't know' a little bit less if he wants to make a good impression. No one mentioned phenomenology which is crucial to the question of free will, and that is the so-called awakening of self-awareness. There are wild studies currently being done on psychedelic breakthroughs and deep meditation; it will change how we think about agency.

@BDnevernind

7 ай бұрын

Agreed, the interesting matter that free-will advocates need to address is to identify the actual attribute that is the WE that can make decisions. What is the agent? How can someone be responsible for the agent? Even if we could prove a "soul" existed or some combinations of neurons could fire differently enough to cause a different choice, How do we get to the root of that and take control of it? And still, in this case, what is the self that can do this? It seems to me that no matter what you show about HOW we make decisions, the determinist argument still holds as long as we can't actually pinpoint how someone can alter the part of them that makes decisions.

@SolarxPvP

7 ай бұрын

I disagree; I think he should admit that he doesn't know if he doesn't know so that we can have a more honest discussion.

@reptilejuice

7 ай бұрын

@@SolarxPvP True for a scientific debate but a true philosopher should be able to, like, philosophize, and like, say something constructive :-)

@BDnevernind

7 ай бұрын

@@SolarxPvP Oh I definitely agree with you that he should not make any claims he doesn't believe or have evidence for. I didn't mean to agree with OP that he should make something up instead of admitting he doesn't know. My point is just that we run into an Occam's razor when it comes to postulating something beyond the material world having an impact on decisions, if that's where one is leaning. Since determinism simply argues that everything we actually understand about the world at this time suggests there is only the material, and that a convergence of chemical and physical factors seem to be all that ever makes anything happen, someone positing something extra-material (what OP is calling phenomenology) has an extra burden. I am not at all slagging anyone for believing there must be such an extra element. I totally get that. It's a personal belief. But to make the case for "free will" without having evidence for additional phenomenon is necessarily weaker than the case for determinism, which relies only on what we already observe. And as for a material explanation for free will, this would be very difficult -- it would almost have to be a part of the brain that is somehow fundamentally different than the rest of known physics and biology, providing agency in a way that is not determined by our makeup. Again, this is a postulation that goes beyond what determinism requires. I'm leaving wide open that things might not be as they seem, and there might be extra phenomenon at play. I just don't think it makes sense to believe that or make policy based on it.

@Dlannin05

7 ай бұрын

@@BDnevernind We still don't fully understand our own brains though, let alone brains of many "lesser" beings on our planet. I think that alone leaves room for what you're describing near the end of requiring a part of the brain that's different from what we know. I'm not saying we're like the fiction shows where "we only use 10% of our brain, look what happens when you use 100%!" or anything like that. I think that there doesn't necessarily have to be phenomenon. But you're right though, that as far as we know up to this point in time, we can't really prove anything other than determinism very well. The burden of proof is more on the side of making the case for free will. One thing I always come back to though, which is again getting more into thought and less into the material, is that we often have a bit too much arrogance as humans in my opinion when it comes to ourselves. We just assume that we must know everything or close to everything about ourselves and everything around us, when there could very well still be so much that we don't know. Think of everything throughout the history of humans that we were just so certain about that turned out to be completely wrong.

20:00, where does Epicurus say something like this?

I also believe they are conflating the concepts of instinct, impulse and intuition

Now, that is an important debate. Everyone should be doing it. Sapolsky is excellent as always. Someone needs to cross and glue together the two extremes of this debate, as they're coming from very different disciplines, as Sapolsky himself stated.

@FightFilms

2 ай бұрын

He got crushed, wtf?

The whole physical universe follows the laws of physics and therefore is totally deterministic. What's hard about understanding this basic argument?

@habteflowstate

4 ай бұрын

The thing is, the assertion that "the whole physical universe follows the laws of physics" requires some assumptions. First of all, we don't even know if there are laws of physics that govern *everything*. We have some pretty good guesses that progress day by day but there are usually some peculiar situations that then pop up and deny those seeming "laws" Let's use gravitation as an example Newton showed it to be one thing but then Einstein figured out that at the speed of light the seeming "laws" differ drastically and gravitation becomes this whole other thing. Then quantum mechanics rolls around and for very small particles gravity is also shown to be this completely other thing as well. Maybe the reason why these peculiar situations very usually pop up is that there are no laws, but there are seemingly true generalizations. Even if we can prove that there do exist laws of physics that govern everything, that's under the assumption that none of those laws can be a non-deterministic law. The counter example is that: what if there exists some law that sometimes produces outcome A based on input X and at other times produces outcome B based on input X. In order to show that that's not the case, we (under the assumption that everything is entirely governed by laws that do exist) need to find ALL of those laws because a law that we don't know could have the property that I mentioned above. So that's "what's hard to understand about the basic argument." It's that the assumptions required to make it are true But if all the assumptions required are true then you're absolutely right

@FightFilms

2 ай бұрын

You just assumed materialism like it's gospel. Takes great faith to do so, especially since your mind is not physical.

@shawncrespi4436

2 ай бұрын

@FightFilms You strike me as someone who hasn’t thought very deeply about this subject.

@showponyexpressify

29 күн бұрын

You need to understand Hume and Popper. Causality is not something very solid at all...

@theofficialness578

24 күн бұрын

@@FightFilms Every thing that makes up the “mind” is physical therefore the mind is physical. In my subjective opinion the “mind” is a property of complex matter.

For me the issue is that my intuition is strong that things that begin to exist have a cause. If an agent does A rather than B than there is a causal explanation for why they did A rather than B.

„Does it matter?“ First of all, it‘s a completely different psychological perspective. I can only do what I‘m inclined to do anyway. Takes away a lot of pressure and bad conscience, takes away self-righteousness and arbitrary judgement. Does it hamper ambition? Arguably, not in the slightest, since whether I am ambitious or not is not my choice.

I'm not in Professor Sapolsky's level of intelligence but I do appreciate him

@Joe-ym6bw

2 ай бұрын

Who is

This is a rough sketch as I try to make explicit my understanding of all the information concerning determinism and free will: 1) To communicate the deterministic interior state of one human to another requires language. 2) Interpersonal communication influences the behavior of individual humans 3) If 2 is true, and it is granted from the outset that hard determinism is true, then hard determinism requires interpersonal communication through language. 4) Language utilizes the semantics of action/free will. 5) Free will reigns over concept formation and word choice which determines what gets communicated interpersonally. 6) If 3 and 5 are true, then hard determinism requires free will. (Or hard determinism is less than it is made out to be) Or something to this effect. I expect some premises may need to be polished up/reworded or even replaced whole cloth. Front running one possible objection: Can free will exist outside a semantics of action? In other words, if we change our language to avoid the semantics of action (as proposed by Churchland), does it therefore follow that there is no free will if we can just stop talking in terms of free will? I don't know.

@MyContext

6 ай бұрын

[4) Language utilizes the semantics of action/free will.] Rejected. Language utilizes the semantics of the individual (who are processes - deterministic). The issue being that at every level of review there are cause/effect linkages such that our will is tethered to these factors which precludes such of being free.

@thejimmymeister

3 ай бұрын

I don't understand 5. Does it mean that concept formation and word choice are freely willed processes?

Is dr Huemer confusing determinism as a complex system of causes that lead to a specific event (that Sapolsky alludes to) with predeterminism and linear causation ? he seems to imply that we cannot avoid this or that fatal event because of determinism.. but that is not what Sapolsky's view contends. In simple everyday terms determinism and the non-existence of free will means that in a specific instance we could not have done otherwise because of the complexity of the causes that led up to this specific bevaviour/action.

It would be wondeful to share a blunt with Sapolsky The conversation would be marvelous.

Glad i found material on this topic, altough i am a bit sad that they mostly talked about implications of having or not having free will, instead of talking more about how it is either possible or impossible to actually have free will. Personally i think the implications will be very obvious once the problem at hand itself has been resolved. Sadly (from a discussion pov) i can not find any shred of truth in the arguments for free will, as most of the arguments are based on, what he refers to as intuition, or are trying to argue for the necessity of free will in a social way. Im also curious as to why Dr Huemer thinks the laws of logic are based on intuition? I know there are some debates ongoing to describe what "Logic" in itself actually means, but for them to align it with what we consider intuition seems entirely wrong and not based on anything in my eyes other than for the sake of having an argument. I hope theres something in his reasoning that i am missing, as else it would be very baseless. Thanks for the upload!

@PercyPrior1

7 ай бұрын

Huemer's main line of argument seemed to me to constitute a positive argument in favor of the existence of free will. From what I gather, he was saying: *Premise 1)* Our intuitions support the existence of free will. (Note that Sapolsky didn't even dispute this premise. He agrees that at least by initial appearances it seems like free will exists.) (Eg., it seems like we choose among alternatives by way of self-control at least some of the time, and, at least by initial appearances, it seems like to say one ought to do something implies that one can do otherwise. Arguments are implicit ought statements/normative suggestions in favor of adopting certain beliefs given certain evidences, and punishment is in part justified by the sense that the perpetrator could have and should have done differently than they in fact did.) ((You might wonder, "why think that ought implies can?" Huemer's reason is that it seems intuitive and we lack a reason to doubt it. A) it seems like to say "I know you can't, but you should still anyway magically fly through the air like superman and shoot lasers out of your eyes in order to bring about world peace. You ought to do that, so why haven't you? What the heck is wrong with you, a*****e?" is linguistically counterintuitive.) *Premise 2)* In the absence of a defeater, we are justified in trusting our intuitions. (Huemer argued that ultimately Sapolsky's view commits him to accepting Premise 2 because scientific practice relies on beliefs which *ultimately* rely for their support on as-yet-undefeated appearances, such as certain theory confirmation assumptions like "simpler theories are more likely to be true" or "the laws of logic are reliable" or "the future will sometimes be like the past," or "the external world exists," etc. For example, famously as David Hume pointed out, it's hard to justify induction without circular reasoning if you reject intuitionism. For instance. I.e., why think the future will be like the past? Because it has always been like that? In order for that to be evidence for the claim, we would have to assume that the fact that something has been a certain way in the past is evidence that it will continue to be that way in the future, which is the very question under dispute. Hence, many philosophers have concluded that there is no non-circular justification for induction except a form of foundationalism which says that it seems true and we lack a reason for doubting it. Huemer also has a more general argument that we should believe Premise 2 because any principle which we preferred to it would ultimately be justified by the principle it rejects, namely by the fact that it seems true and we lack a reason for doubting it.) *Premise 3)* There is no ultimately successful defeater against (all of) our intuitions in favor of free will. (Eg., Huemer replied to Sapolsky's inductive generalization argument against free will by saying "it doesn't follow that because our actions are often *influenced* by external events, they must be *entirely determined* by external events.") *Conclusion a)* Therefore, we are justified in trusting our intuitions that free will exists. Huemer also argued that Sapolsky was engaged in a self-defeating line of argument because 1) he appeared to cast blame on people for casting blame on people (i.e., he seemed to say that it's *wrong* to condemn anyone's behavior since no one is responsible for their behavior, but calling a behavior wrong is a form of condemnation), and 2) he advanced a series of arguments for thinking that free will doesn't exist, which if we are inclined to accept the "ought implies can" principle leave Sapolsky's implicit "you should believe this because of the evidence" claim hanging in midair. How can it be that we should do anything if "should" requires the option of doing otherwise and there is no option to do otherwise? (This is just my attempt to explain what I think Huemer's argument was and should not be interpreted as an invitation to "fight me." lol)

@Tony-cj6jy

7 ай бұрын

I wonder if we evolved consciousness you'd think that would have some utility. I don't see a use for consciousness if it is just to observe what already has been decided by our brain. From an evolutionary perspective the ability to be aware and to override certain decisions that are instinctive and to reason trough problems would give us advantages over other animals. I also think the brain scan research doesn't amount as ironclad evidence that there is no free will (yet), different interpretations are still possible. For an absolute statement there is no free will i would expect that more evidence is required as well as debates where there is pushback from others such as in this debate.

@noritreacy3107

7 ай бұрын

Is there any evidence that consciousness emerged during evolution? I would say it's very likely that consciousness preceded it, but I can't prove it and wouldn't want to. Moreover, just because we "have l" consciousness or awareness now, that does not imply that we necessarily use it to override instinct. It could be easily argued that we have instead used advanced reasoning to justify instinctual reactions, and/or that we have simply buried our instinctual reactions within a thicker layer of separation from our parent environment

@noritreacy3107

7 ай бұрын

​@@PercyPrior1 thank you for hosting and for this explanation. Do you have a similar summary of Sapolsky's premises?

@Tony-cj6jy

7 ай бұрын

​@@noritreacy3107 During prehistoric times we started showing behaviors that would be strange from a purely utilitarian view such as burying people with flowers or painting the walls of caves, making flutes with a pentatonic scale. I would say that demonstrates a richer inner experience as well as a desire to shape that inner experience.

There is this short story competition, and the deadline is November 1st. Months ago I decided to submit one of my older stories. Then, about three weeks ago I decided to write completely new one, as a challenge. So who decided that: me, with my free will, or it was meant to be (if so, was it the case that the day before my decision it was already been in the making, and I just had to wait to oblige?)? And, while writing the new story, I wrote several different outcomes. And than decided which is the best fitting. Once again, who decided for me? I wrote several different resolutions, and decided based on plot structure and strong versus weak points. Lots of micro decisions. Or not one of them was my free decision? One final point: I'm writing first thing in the morning for nine straight years - I'll or tired, doesn't matter. Is it my decision to not break the chain, or I am just an automaton?

@spgrk

7 ай бұрын

Your decisions are either determined for various complex reasons or they aren't, they just happen randomly. Libertarians think they just happen randomly, at least sometimes, and that is what they call "free will". Huemer is in this camp. Hard determinists think that decisions are determined by reasons, which means that they necessarily happen given those reasons, which means in their view that they are not free. Sapolsky is in this camp. Most philosophers are compatibilists. They believe that it doesn't damage free will if all decisions happen for reasons, provided that the reasons are of the correct type; for example, that you want to do A rather than B because you prefer A, rather than because someone forces you.

@momiriseni5320

7 ай бұрын

@@spgrk Thanks for sharing your opinion. Of course everything I decide to do is based on everything that came before in my life. But determinism would mean that everything is set in stone without room for deliberation. For instance, if in my workout I decide (based on the awareness that I'm not feeling strongest today) to do three sets of squats instead of the usual five - that is a decision chosen deliberately, based on analysis of current circumstances. Back to the example of my story: I chose one particular outcome out of several, again after deliberate analysis. In the other video here on KZread, Sapolsky stated that,, due to brain neuroplasticity, it is possible for one to alter his or hers prefrontal cortex, if one so decides. But how can one decide anything, if everything is already determined: if it was not my free will to reply to your comment at exactly this time; not my free will to use these words, etc... It all reminds me on philosophers that say there's no time, because time is an illusion. And yet, some of them died, and others are aging. How so, when time, according to them, is not advancing at all?

@spgrk

7 ай бұрын

@@momiriseni5320 You decided to do the number of squats either randomly or for a reason. You decided to change your prefrontal cortex either randomly or for a reason. There isn’t a third option between determined and random: random means undetermined, determined means non-random. I suppose it doesn’t matter if the number of squats is random, but it certainly would matter if you were deciding something more important, such as whether to murder someone. It is a fallacy to be concerned about determinism removing freedom: if your actions were undetermined to a significant extent you would be unable to function at all, let alone function freely.

@momiriseni5320

7 ай бұрын

@@spgrk Exactly: I decided - for a reason. Having known the facts about situations, I chose to do something.

@dionysusnow

7 ай бұрын

Your conscious mind cannot know all the myriad inputs that led up to your decision, it can only craft a story as to why you did it and this is perceived as free will.

A good debate. What I understand by "free", if you ask me, "Free of or from what?", is being free of or from antecedent causal events or factors inside and outside our heads. For me, free will does not exist whether or not determinism is true. If our actions are caused, then our actions are determined and thus no one is free. If our actions are randomly generated, then our actions are not really in our control and thus no one is free. I also take British philosopher Galen Strawson’s ‘Basic argument’ to be correct. Strawson summarizes his argument as follows: “When one acts, one acts in the way one does because of the way one is. So to be truly morally responsible for one’s actions, one would have to be truly responsible for the way one is: one would have to be causa sui, or the cause of oneself, at least in certain crucial mental respects. But nothing can be causa sui - nothing can be the ultimate cause of itself in any respect. So nothing can be truly morally responsible.”

@sndpgr

4 ай бұрын

Well! Cause of the action is the agent who ultimately decides which action to perform. The agent is non reducible. And the prior condition may influence the agent but doesn’t completely determine the agents action

@chicosonidero

4 ай бұрын

​@@sndpgrThere's still no such thing as free will even if the agent themselves are the cause of the action, as the agent themselves are caused and didn't create themselves, including their beliefs and desires, which are the proximal causes of their actions. Only beings without history who created themselves and decided to exist in this world, can be free.

@sndpgr

4 ай бұрын

@@chicosonidero as I said earlier an agent is not determined by its prior conditions(including past behaviors), may be influenced by it but not determined. The agent is not reducible to past behaviors, or its particles . What I am talking is agent causation.

@chicosonidero

4 ай бұрын

@@sndpgrWhat you're saying is there are no other explanation but that agent A caused an event e to occur. There's no causal explanation for why A did what they did. The problem with your view, however, is that there are causal explanations for why agents do what they do.

I believe in free will, but also appreciated Dr. Sapolsky's explanations deeply and didnt particularly like Dr. Huemer's approach. I see no reason why these positions have to be mutually exclusive. As a practical Buddhist, the act of self/universal inquiry into Nature opens up gaps where these philosophies overlap. Or does it just seem to be that way . . . ;)

Jeez. Huemer's arguments were just terrible. Well, if FW didn't exist, ppl wouldn't act the way they do. 🙄Yes, because society acts on the assumption that FW exists. That doesn't mean it isn't an illusion. Several qs I wanted him to be asked: does a person have more or less FW when they're sleepwalking or under the 'influence' of drugs or alcohol or does it depend upon the dose? What is they have a brain tumour? If every choice is entirely free, then why have any mitigation in criminal cases? Where does his FW reside? Does he control his own thoughts? What exactly is 'doing the choosing'? A part of his brain? A disembodied soul? Can he freely choose what he will be thinking in exactly an hour's time? Does he have an answer to Sam Harris' 'capital city' test? How you could you scientifically examine the operation of FW?

@manelsalido

7 ай бұрын

Great questions!👍

@FightFilms

2 ай бұрын

Massive cope.

I feel like those who cling to free will don't understand what's actually being argued. Yes, we all go through the process of weighing our options and concluding what the best belief and/or course of action is. _We just don't control what seems best to us at the end of that process._ It just becomes apparent to us. Perhaps you conclude that you should cut off your nose, just to spite your face. The determinist argues that you can't have concluded otherwise because whatever led you to that conclusion, was true (to the best of your knowledge). To reach a different conclusion would require a different state of affairs, even if the only difference is your perception of the matter, such as your feelings about your face. 🤷‍♂

When Huemer admits that atomic theory etc... are the most intuitive theories once you take into account the evidence, Sapolsky should have hijacked his intuition argument to conclude determinism is true. Huemer's intuition is merely based on personal experience while Sapolsky's intuitions are based on a life time of behavioral biology. As for Huemer's arguments about rationality, Sapolsky already concedes that we may have an insignificant sliver of freewill (he often uses the "flossing the top row of teeth before the bottom row" example) and since Huemer's argument doesnt address degrees of freewill, we can accept his argument as logically proving only this insignificant free will. Although, i personally dont understands how even that makes sense. The self is constituted in some way and that constitution is determined by biology and environment. I cant control my wants nor can i control my thoughts. I only know the things ive learned, i can only imagine things that my experiences and level of creativity permit for. I cant see the sun shining outside and decide to judge that it is night time where i am. If I learn everything about viruses and nothing about religion, i cant sincerely believe that demons cause the flu.

@collin501

7 ай бұрын

Freedom doesn't come without effort or habit forming. Thinking of the idea that virtue is a habit. It's not that we have much (if any) freedom when we're in a particular state of mind. We only gain significant freedom(in my opinion), in choosing to alter our state of mind or feelings. If I'm angry, or frustrated, or annoyed, or irritable, then I'm like an input output machine with determined outcomes. If I see that I'm in that state, and reflect upon it, and decide compare it with a state of peace and happiness that I could choose and with effort, release the grip of frustration I'm feeling, then I know I will be a different input output machine with different outcomes. Think of Sapolsky's example of putting people in a room with good smells vs bad smells, and the outcome that produces in people's agreeableness with one another. Of course that's true! The question is not whether we can choose our inputs. Our inputs are what they are. The question is whether you can change the processing of the inputs. And it seems that people have the ability to work on their state of mind, which seems to be several layers removed from direct input/output processing. Has neuroscience studied this aspect of things? It seems they more usually study direct input/output scenarios.

@dakotacarpenter7702

7 ай бұрын

@collin501 the process of reflecting on and regulating emotions takes place in the prefrontal cortex and the temporal lobes. Reflecting upon your emotions, comparing them with other states, and "choosing" them is just as much a neurological activity as being angry or slightly more homophobic. People with damage to either the PFC or the temporal lobe can't do that as well or as consistently. You're genes and environment shape how strongly those parts of the brain activate. Chronic stress might cause your amygdala to overpower the PFC (which shrinks under chronic stress conditions) and make it harder to regulate your emotions.

@collin501

7 ай бұрын

@dakotacarpenter7702 Yes, that's fine, but the point is whether people can change their emotions, which changes the input output in different situations. Then, we bring in the notion of moral responsibility if people have this power.

@dakotacarpenter7702

7 ай бұрын

@collin501 I mean, yes, we have the power, it's just that our ability to change our emotions is just as determined as the original emotions we're changing. Moral responsibility is a useful concept, and ultimately useful/ optimal concepts are all we can hope for. We can never be completely certain and Kant (plus subsequent discoveries in neurology) basically showed that we have no direct experience of the world as it is, only as our brains represent it.

@collin501

6 ай бұрын

@dakotacarpenter7702 you said the ability to change our emotions is determined. Did you mean to say that the changing of our emotions is determined? Ability implies power to do or not to do. It is very confusing to say we have an ability when it's just part of the input output machine.

Robert Sapolky has only argued that our choices are affected for good or bad by conditions and influences around us but not that we don't make choices at all. He has therefore not shown that we don't have free will.

@FightFilms

2 ай бұрын

I don't think he knows what free will is.

@Aggyoko

2 ай бұрын

I don’t think you’re using the same definition of free will as he is

@Aggyoko

2 ай бұрын

@@FightFilmsor maybe you don’t know what free will is. All he’s saying is that at any point in time, any choice you make is determined

@mathewsamuel1386

2 ай бұрын

@Aggyoko Which is false because: P(1): Not every external influence determines a particular action that a human takes. For example, the cost of a stethoscope can not possibly determine if a human falls in love since the cost of a stethoscope is not causally or explanatorily related to falling in love. P(2): Humans lose memory of events and experiences. P(3): Biological proclivities can be modified and even suppressed by social conditioning in humans. For example, humans are biologically predisposed to being sexually amorous, yet succeed in monogamous sexual relationships. P(4): By P(1), it is not obvious that the external influences at play in a human's life at any given time are the ones causally related to their action at the given time, and so capable of determining those actions. P(5): By P(1) and P(2), it is not obvious that the mental experiences at play in a human's life at any given time are causally related to their action at the given time so as to determine their actions at the material time in question. P(6): By P(3), it is not obvious that actions to which humans are genetically predisposed can not be modified or even suppressed by social conditioning. P(7): By P(6), it is not obvious that an action taken by a human at any given time is genetically determined. P(8): By P(4), P(5) and P(7), it does not follow that any action taken by a human at any given time is determined because external influences, mental experiences and genetics are at play in a human's life. C(1): Therefore there is no prove for material determinism. C(2) Therefore it is more likely than not that humans have free will.

@Aggyoko

2 ай бұрын

@@mathewsamuel1386 I appreciate your breakdown. This video expresses my thoughts: kzread.info/dash/bejne/qHd71s19qqiycaw.htmlsi=F0ufH493PceYgjjX.

Dr Robert Sapolsky has an immense patience and it so brilliant and intellectually superior. Also why Mr Huemer keeps sort of laughing, is he so insecure?

@practice4089

7 ай бұрын

the annoying laughter is not nerves. he does it for the same reason he uses a slide show in a debate, he's a pedant

@ReflectiveJourney

7 ай бұрын

Determinist cultism is something else. Lol illiterate people can't understand a self defeating position. Leave the politeness crap you are not cut out for philosophy

How hard is it to write a masters thesis in philosophy these days? I am just asking out of curiosity because I really dont have a career and therapy always crashes into the big questions which the therapist is not able to give sufficient answers for ... therapy seem to always end up in the same solution of "just get a job", but I am not able to find meaning in material pursuits. I allready have a few degrees and am crazily suicidal. I have been researching another option of moving to a vacant farm with no connection to roads to try and get a connection to the fight for survival. I know someone that bought such a place. Thankful for any kind of response.

@DavidVonR

4 ай бұрын

Why do you feel suicidal?

@VoloBonja

4 ай бұрын

Don’t ask therapist the big questions. It’s like going to a dentist and say “why would I need teeth I die anyway”. Wrong target audience

If nothing else, if EVERYONE consciously practised considering their OWN "moment before"(...as well as minutes, days, months, years, family dynamics/biology over generations BEFORE) we would live in a much more consciously AWARE world. If we ALL simply asked the question "What's going on...right now?"(in my own mind), we would likely make much better choices in our lives. Awareness fosters HUMILITY and that is always a good thing.

I don't know why I always laugh when Zoom meetings are interrupted with technical issues. I always think, if humans have issues with these simple problems, imagine more complex ones? LOL.

This is a disturbing session. Why would you set-up a distinguished guest with an opponent who labels the professor's views as insane, the very first thing? NEVER participate in ANY exchange where you and your ideas are portrayed - dishonestly - as mentally ill. In some legal systems this is considered professional slander. Is this kind of personal attack what is now rewarded in academic philosophy? This and the accompanying comments, except for 1 or 2, show the low level of You Tube knowledge, proprietary and interest in serious discussion.

@ericpowell8563

7 ай бұрын

You seem to have taken Heumer’s point completely wrong at the beginning.

@Agaryunaer

6 ай бұрын

You are completely right. Continuing a debate after a one-person opening that deems his opponent's primary standpoint (hard determinism) insane should be a cause for an immediate stop of the debate. Sapolsky is a far more patient and thickskinned person than 99 % of humanity who would either immediately quit or degrade the debate further with a tone similar to that of his opponent. It is still shameful that it was allowed to continue after Heumer's opening "presentation".

Western philosophy has engage in endless debate over this topics due to incapacity to reconcile simultaneous ones and difference. From one perspective free will exist from an other it does n

Michael didn’t offer counter arguments …he basically said I feel here is free will…my intuitions tell me so…nothing about how we can think and act outside the chain of causality

@FightFilms

2 ай бұрын

He made a ton of arguments. Stop coping.

@jacobmack4772

Ай бұрын

@@FightFilms yeah, Michael did a great job here.

Robert Sapolsky is simply right on this. It's surprising how many smart people seem to not really grasp what obvious truth about causality and how it implies free will doesn't make sense is being communicated here. I would even argue free will doesn't even make sense in a non-causalic system (whatever that would be). I remember a lot of frustrating debates Sam Harris had about this topic about 7-8 years ago. Most of the people he talked to just didn't get it or at best used a totally different definition of free will.

@noritreacy3107

7 ай бұрын

He may or may not be "right", and although I agree with a lot of what he says and even enjoy his delivery (and sense of ethics) much more than Huemer, that doesn't definitely prove absence of free will. One could argue either side to the same effect: either you could say that those who believe in free will are somehow preconditioned to do so, or that those who believe in determinism have chosen to.

@Doppe1ganger

7 ай бұрын

​@@noritreacy3107This is the "proof god doesn't exist" argument. There isn't a theory, explanation, mechanic, that allows for free will.

@noritreacy3107

7 ай бұрын

@@Doppe1ganger Can you elaborate what you mean? I would propose that free will is in fact necessary in order to account for any amount of determinism. We have the faculties of consciousness, whether inherited or emergent, which gives us the ability to extrapolate different frameworks of the environment we live in, as well as our internal experience

@Doppe1ganger

7 ай бұрын

@@noritreacy3107 What i mean is literally what i said, there doesn't exist any method, imagined or real, that allows free will. Your proposal is just word salad, what do you mean that free will is necessary? So the deterministic nature of the universe depends on free will, because, why? Your abilities are determined, you can internalize them all you want, it doesn't change the physics of reality. Explain to me a method in which the concept of free will is even theoretically possible? It's as impossible as a perpetual motion machine. Everything we know about nature and physics is that everything is derivative, no matter how complex or unpredictable. Where does this free will supposedly exist? Within some metaphysical soul? And this soul defines you, yet you are free to shape it? So it's a soul within a soul, that allows you to shape your soul. Etc ad ridiculum. If free will exists, it's easily proven, show me a subject that can will itself to ignore or contradict physics. Free will has no theory, no experiments, because it's a complete fabrication of the human mind.

@noritreacy3107

7 ай бұрын

There exists no absolutism in science, especially in physics. You made the choice to use some negative language so boom, I make the choice that we're done here. BYE@@Doppe1ganger

Excellent, the debaters showed themselves - each in their own way - to be quite competent, clear, productive and even good-humored

@FightFilms

2 ай бұрын

Sapolsky proved to be completely illogical. What debate did you watch?

@FightFilms

2 ай бұрын

He thinks examples of people doing different things given the same external stimuli means we have "absolutely no free will" and he called rudimentary science and superstition "intuition". For starters. He was absolutely painful to listen to.

When you're pleading "Isn't it time to take audience questions? Let go to audience questions!", you're not winning the debate 😄

thats was fun.

I’m surprised that the idea of self awareness was not talked about as a variable into our perception of our own free will. The perception of free will seems highly correlated with one’s own level of self awareness - the why you do what you do. The more you are aware of your behavioral triggers the less you are bound to them in a deterministic fashion. It would also explain the variability of outcomes when the inputs don’t change. For instance, when Sapolsky says “30%” of a groups behavior was predicted based on a set of inputs… what about the other 70%? A huge factor that seems to have been overlooked is self awareness

@loganlowe3731

7 ай бұрын

30 percent was "predicted". It would presumably require great technological advancement and greater neuro-scientific modelling to achieve more accurate results, because of the massive complex of factors/inputs.

@XiagraBalls

7 ай бұрын

Can you control your own thoughts? When you typed the above comment, why you choose one word over another or one way of wording your comment over another? Why did you, for example, start with the words 'I'm surprised' rather that 'It's surprising'? If you didn't consider the latter alternative, why not?

@cb73

7 ай бұрын

@@XiagraBallsI wasn't arguing for free will, at least in principle I do not disagree with Robert all all. But as I mentioned, I am very surprised that the effect that self-awareness has on one's *perception* of free will, isn't talked about at all. For instance, once you become aware that the smell of trash made you feel homophobic, that would no longer be the case the next time you smell trash. The more and more we become aware of our unconscious thoughts and triggers, the less and less that have control over us. I'm not saying that means we have free-will, just that we at least FEEL like we have more agency than we previously had.

@cb73

7 ай бұрын

@@loganlowe3731 there was a TV show about that recently (can't remember the name) it was dystopian, so I am not looking forward to that future lol

@Gruso57

7 ай бұрын

The answer to this great disparity in percent is the subconscious. You can never know what your subconscious knows.

I have been entirely on the fence about this topic for so long and Michael's arguments convinced me of free will. I AM FREE.

The counterfactual argument for freewill by token of dropping a glass or not dropping the glass suggests that unless a counterfactual world is real then freewill is false. However freewill seems true from an observer point to view given the person who holds the glass is in a sense indeterminant given mechanistic forces are unknown. The observer only can predict the glass holder based on character entailing its perfectly intuitive to place freewill on all other rational agents who are out-group members but less so for prototypical in-group members given group mind theory. However the biological self as a rational agent has incorrigible beliefs and so freewill is false given I now my next action base on belief that links (correspondence theory of truth because my belief corresponds to a civilisation, and coherence theory of truth as the belief coheres to bio genetic determinacy) to a biocentric view dating about four billion years. Although vagueness applies as a non personal abstract freewill if approaching the singularity given quantum indeterminacy.

subject to time&logic& to the logical dichotomy that any 'event' must be either: caused-or-not, no one could have done otherwise. when an 'idea' is incoherent (ie square-circle), no need to search for it in the physical world. for any urgent moral issue we don't stop just to argue '7=7 isnt absolute knowledge'

That's not a serious deterrence theory objection. People need to know the process was reliable to be deterred in the first place. Otherwise, it can happen regardless of deterrence, even with retributive theory.

@PercyPrior1

7 ай бұрын

I think Huemer's point was that under isolated circumstances in which framing the innocent man *would* truly maximize utility, we have the intuition that it's wrong to frame him. Ergo, maximizing utility cannot be the only relevant consideration for just punishment.

@Forkroute

7 ай бұрын

@@PercyPrior1 that's a reductum ad absurdum from a sentence with an iffy truth value. Have you done some courses in mathematics? Because outside of it it's generally a bad argument structure - it's just pointing out a contradiction. We all have conflicting moral intuitions, as Sapolsky rightly pointed out, it doesn't falsify detternce theory. The final call is this: why even give a stage to a political Libertarian (Google moral disposition and psycopathology of libertarians; they are the most horrible people, might give a stage to Nazis while you're at it) but worst of all, to a clueless individual on the topic, which only motivation is defending his political views. They need "free will" for their entire political project from "consent" to "just" desert to Ayn Rand like capitalism. I worked with them in my clinic, they tend to be horrible to-the-very-least sub-clinical psychopathic individuals. Do not let them spread their ideas without proper opposition.

@SolarxPvP

7 ай бұрын

​@@Forkroute What are you even talking about? You're saying "It just shows a contradiction" as if it's not a big deal. If by contradiction you mean it contradicts anti-retribution intuitions - yes, yes it does. Saying that thought experiments aren't relevant to philosophy is like saying empirical experiments aren't relevant to science. Math isn't relevant. Jonah is a libertarian and so am I, so I suggest learning serious political psychology before throwing baseless accusations about our psychology. Libertarians are not like Nazis or psychopaths, and there is no evidence for this. We just think the state should be held to the same moral standards as individuals and that the state has no more right to tax than it would be for me to go around and tax people.

@Forkroute

7 ай бұрын

@@SolarxPvP A simple contradiction won't tell you which sentence is false. Empirical research on lack of free will shows people's retributive intuitions become much less stronger (see also, Scandinavian society). Thought experiments are intuition pumps. A review by a peer-reviewed magazine of a Thomas Sowell book, asked again and again why he ignores the literature. Decades of literature. Like you ignoring political philosophy on taxation (see Elizabeth Anderson on taxation). Google it. The Psychological dispositions of Libertarians and the paper In Search of Homo Economicus. I can suggest more empirical research, but all point to the bottom line: except for a small subset of psychopaths, no lives up to your libertarian fantasy. Most people are healthy, pro-social individuals. I treated many like you in the clinic, I suggest you attend therapy if you're a Libertarian. You probably had an absent/abusive parent. PTSD is related to pathologies of lower empathy and social issues. Treatment can help you personally and society at large.

@user-qm4ev6jb7d

7 ай бұрын

@@Forkroute WHOAH, I was about to agree with you until you started slandering libertarians! I don't believe in free will, or objective morality, but I'm politically libertarian, along the lines of David Friedman. I don't believe that people "objectively have rights" to their property, but I'm *subjectively* very much in favor of leaving people alone, not confiscating their stuff, not imposing regulations, etc.

The problem with these arguments against Free Will is the misunderstanding of cause and effect treating the past as creating the future you'll get lost in this . Alan Watts does a great job of explaining this

it matters if u want it to matter, just with like anything else :)

1:00:45 yeah, moral judgements can be said to be based on "intuitions" but that intuition is applied to something that we think is true or not. And that changes with time and because of science as well. To generalise intuition tells us we should feel compassion to someone we perceive as part of your group but science helps to understand that this group is much larger than it seems. of course a lot of moral progress can be called "purely philosophical" but doesn't it still progress because people are trying to create a theory of right and wrong, iterating, creating new, trying to keep it based on the facts known to science? so it's not fair, I think, it's reasonable to say that if intuition is the basis for moral judgement, it should be the basis to answeer the free will question

Neither participant had convincing counterarguments to their opponent's strongest points, imo

@RonponVideos

7 ай бұрын

What were Michael’s strong points?

@steperry4089

7 ай бұрын

@@RonponVideos Well, it does strike me as tricky to give an explanation or phenomenology of deliberative thought in purely deterministic terms

@grantwithers

7 ай бұрын

Most of the discussion was them speaking to separate questions imo. The one guy thinks he can logiclol his way into free will existing, and gives points as to why it needs to exist, and we "feel" like it exists. The other guy isn't even talking about any of that, he's just trying to figure out if it does in fact exist, no logicloling, just evidence. And no caring about what will happen to us or how we feel (at least as regards the initial question of whether it exists or not, can consider the effects on humans afterwards). He probably doesn't even dispute that free will should logically exist, and why we need it to exist and why we feel like it exists. The only problem is that large piles of evidence say clearly that it doesn't exist.

@RonponVideos

7 ай бұрын

@@steperry4089 How so? How is deliberation any different from anything else in terms of its dependence on genes/environment?

@steperry4089

7 ай бұрын

@@RonponVideos Hi, a sketch of an answer- in deliberation, I can take a reflexive stance to what will have determined me if a take a particular course of action. Saying 'I am determined to do X' suggests sufficient self-awareness to be able to do otherwise.

Huemer totally decimated Sapolsky's arguments

@chrisw7347

2 ай бұрын

Let me guess-- you already believed in free will prior to watching this?

A Frederick Nietzche, style multiverse. There is only one choice made at the end and beginning of the infinitely repeating universe. Each revolution is a variation on the last iteration perhaps? Fun thought.

17;00 Michael goes for the jugular! Good humoured, though! At present, I'm on the side of Sapolsky as I just read his book and am convinced by his logic, though I am mourning my loss......

I wish Sapolsky were more familiar with philosophy, as that would have allowed him to formulate much clearer propositions and greatly enhanced his arguments.

@jmike2039

7 ай бұрын

The scientific community as a whole would benefit being more familiar with philosophy.

@maTThu3000

7 ай бұрын

​@@jmike2039lol

@traybae2_

7 ай бұрын

I thought his arguments were clear and based on scientific fact. Philosophy esoterica must take a backseat to science

@ReverendDr.Thomas

7 ай бұрын

philosophy: the love of wisdom, normally encapsulated within a formal academic discipline. Wisdom is the soundness of an action or decision with regard to the application of experience, knowledge, insight, and good judgment. Wisdom may also be described as the body of knowledge and principles that develops within a specified society or period. E.g. “The wisdom of the Tibetan lamas.” Unfortunately, in most cases in which this term is used, particularly outside India, it tacitly or implicitly refers to ideas and ideologies that are quite far-removed from genuine wisdom. For instance, the typical academic philosopher, especially in the Western tradition, is not a lover of actual wisdom, but a believer in, or at least a practitioner of, adharma, which is the ANTITHESIS of genuine wisdom. Many Western academic (so-called) “philosophers” are notorious for using laborious sophistry, abstruse semantics, gobbledygook, and pseudo-intellectual word-play, in an attempt to justify their blatantly-immoral ideologies and practices, and in many cases, fooling the ignorant layman into accepting the most horrendous crimes as not only normal and natural, but holy and righteous! An ideal philosopher, on the other hand, is one who is sufficiently intelligent to understand that morality is, of necessity, based on the law of non-violence (“ahiṃsā”, in Sanskrit), and sufficiently wise to live his or her life in such a harmless manner. Cf. “dharma”. One of the greatest misconceptions of modern times is the belief that philosophers (and psychologists, especially) are, effectively, the substitutes for the priesthood of old. It is perhaps understandable that this misconception has taken place, because the typical priest/monk/rabbi/mullah seems to be an uneducated buffoon compared with those highly-educated gentlemen who have attained doctorates in philosophy, psychology and psychiatry. However, as mentioned in more than a few places in this book, it is imperative to understand that only an infinitesimal percentage of all those who claim to be spiritual teachers are ACTUAL “brāhmaṇa” (as defined in Chapter 20). Therefore, the wisest philosophers of the present age are still those exceptionally rare members of the Holy Priesthood! At the very moment these words of mine are being typed on my laptop computer, there are probably hundreds of essay papers, as well as books and articles, being composed by professional philosophers and theologians, both within and without academia. None of these papers, and almost none of the papers written in the past, will have any noticeable impact on human society, at least not in the realm of morals and ethics, which is obviously the most vital component of civilization. And, as mentioned in a previous paragraph, since such “lovers-of-wisdom” are almost exclusively adharmic (irreligious and corrupt) it is indeed FORTUITOUS that this is the case. The only (so-called) philosophers who seem to have any perceptible influence in the public arena are “pop” or “armchair” philosophers, such as Mrs. Alisa “Alice” O’Connor (known more popularly by her pen name, Ayn Rand), almost definitely due to the fact that they have published well-liked books and/or promulgate their ideas in the mass media, especially on the World Wide Web.

@CharlesB-NGNM

7 ай бұрын

Science > Philosophy