Why Alex O'Connor Is Wrong About Free Will
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 25 ม.ค. 2024
- In this video I respond to a 2017 video by Alex O'Conner (The Cosmic Skeptic) against free will (link below). I discuss how our moral intuitions point to a universal assumption of free will, and how that universal assumption raises the bar for disproving free will to a point O'Conner can't clear.
O'Connor's Video: • Why Free Will Doesn't ...
Have questions? You can reach me at thomascahillquestions@gmail.com.
I don't get your argument. Most people believe that something is true, and it is "so abundantly obvious", so it had to be true? That's just a lousy argument
ad populum fallacy
1. Control is to influence or restrict, not eliminate entirely. So O'Connor's premise that restriction equates absolute control is simply incorrect
2. Refer to premise 1 being incorrect 👆Paths to freedom still exist. For instance, practices like priming the subconscious and meditation demonstrate that conscious thought influences neural pathways. With practice, we can change our responses to future stimuli. Although the tendency to praise may be seen as a societal incentive, we argue that it is quite the opposite. Good deeds merit praise because we intuitively understand the struggle involved in overcoming impulses to perform them.
@@user-nb8ek9iu1p bro, what are you on about? What is conscious thought made of? Yes, conscious thought can influence neural pathways... but why? Because conscious thought is itself neural activity. Your conscious thought processes are governed by the exact same physical processes and laws which govern the rest of your nervous system... and a rock rolling down a hill
Different wants are always in conflict with each other. For instance someone fighting an addiction. Rewarding the one thing and denouncing the other becomes a necessary function of society to create more incentive of one over the other, but it does not presuppose free will.
I think the first point is a very interesting one and one ive thought quite a bit about. I think that a determinist has a very difficult time punishing people for their actions. However, im not sure that this speaks to the question of whether we have free will, it only applies to our application of it
I also think that alex admits that we intuitively think that we do have free will. But that doesnt mean that we have free will
This argument misses the point entirely. ALL decisions, including those to do with punishment and justice, are deterministic in this world view. Whatever actions people take, whatever the consequences of that, it is ALL determined.
Exactly. It doesn't work as an argument for free will, it asks a different question about what to do in society of we don't have free will.
@dukeian and it is a fair and valid question, it just isnt the one that alex covers in his video
Without free will, punishment and reward are still part of the "wants" that determine our action. If you *don't* want to be punished, you won't do what you got punished for (or you hide it better etc.) meaning a punishment, reward or anything inbetween flows into the decision making process we experience as "free" will.
As much as I'd love to agree, and I truly am searching for a rational argument for a free agency (versus determinism), here are some fundamental issues I see in your argument, in which I'd love to hear your response.
1. Determinism doesn't imply that an action itself cannot be deemed praiseworthy or blameworthy, it simply implies that any individual's choice is a function, where given the same input, the same individual would've made the same choice and had no "choice" to make another.
2. The near universal belief in free will throughout history does not imply its existence, but from a deterministic perspective that could be an evolutionary utility. Most people would not function as well believing they had no choice over their own actions.
3. Your main point is that "free will... is really just a matter of subjecting your irrational wants to your rational wants. The stronger the rational wants over the irrational wants, the more free you are." Determinism *can* accept the "existance of the rational wants," but the problem is that, again, your "intellect" is still just another variable in the function in which you, according to determinism, have no control. For example, one's "willpower" or the extent of their ability to put their "rational wants" above their "irrational wants" is theorized to be based in the Anterior Mid-Cingulate Cortex area of the brain, and grows when they exercise it. All of this simply points to the "illusion" of free will because there are so many moving parts.
To clarify for a better understanding: before someone commits an action, they may believe they can choose either action. Determinism doesn't write that off, they do have the choice presented to them between actions, and the action they pick may seem like the result of free agency. Determinism argues that "free agency" doesn't exist, and the choice they make would have been made the same every time if you hypothetically rewound the clock. Therefore, on the contrary, free will implies that if you could rewind time to a specific choice (without affecting anything in the environment), that person could choose an alternative action to the one they definitively chose.
Exactly, well explained.
I don't believe that we have free will, but regarding your first argument I would think it's certainly reasonable to say that determinism does imply that actions cannot be assigned praise or blame. Of course we can, and do, assign our actions but fundamentally determinism implies that is arbitrary to do.
@@forthehomies7043 I think you should provide some more evidence as to how it is implied that actions cannot be judged with normative statements simply because there was no other possible outcome. According to determinism, Hitler did not have the physical ability to make any other decision than to commit mass genocide, however, even in determinism can it not be said that the Holocaust was a blameworthy series of events?
I have a genuine question. I have read your comment and maybe I just don't understand, but you do a meticulous job of explaining determinism but I don't see how at the end of it, it cannot come to any conclusion except that we have no real control. Therefore, I don't see how we can have morality under this belief. How do you rectify this?
@@isaaccampos2393 I agree with the poster on all the points he outlined and hold a very similar position. My view on morality is that it doesn't exist aside from labels that we put on actions largely based on how we feel about them, in very basic form being "good", "bad" or "neither". The origin of those feelings is most likely an evolutionary outcome and as human beings are very closely related, there are huge overlaps in how we feel about things and we largely agree on what is good, bad or neither. That creates the illusion that morality is somehow an external universal abstract. It's further complicated as humans have conceived ideas that help them navigate the world we've created that goes beyond living in small groups on a savannah to living in huge complex hierarchical societies... hence we have ideas about ethics and failing that, laws to enforce behaviour.
Hence - there is no need to rectify it. Just as you don't freely choose what you do, you neither choose whether you feel that something is good, bad or neither. In addition, you most likely want to be praised by others so you behave accordingly and you don't want to be punished so you avoid other behaviours.
Love the counter! Keep it up :) What is tour view on Sam Harris book on free will and his subsequent conversation with Daniel Dennett and Robert Sopolskys book regarding this question?
I personally have a hard time buying into the intuition argument. I rather like talking about free will as an illusion than saying it doesn’t exist. It is an illusion that has had a purpose.
I also would want to ask you of the beginning of your video, about crediting other people and how that depend on autonomy of our actions. Couldn’t the idea of giving other people positive reinforcement just be something we’ve learned to do because it gives feedback to the other persons system? Like how we do with dogs, we tell them they did something good or when they did something bad because we want to reinforce a surtain behaviour.
Man sorry, this became a long comment, tl;dr. I might be far off, I’m not a philosopher or an academic. These were just questions that popped up in my mind.
Hey man, great and very eloquent video. The youtube algo brought me here, an interesting response to determinism. I would like to make counter argument here, as I think the argument presented is a reframing of Alex and others (like Sam Harris') arguments against free will, rather than a rebuttal.
1. Your rebuttal on the benefit of belief in free will is a bit reductionist here (or a bit of a straw man). While it is true that people would lack a certain level of responsibility for their actions under determinism, this does not mean that anger, or cutting people out of your life, or prison would become unjustified. A mass murderer may not be the ultimate preceding cause of his or her own actions, but that does not mean we should let them continue killing. It does mean that prison reform makes a lot of sense: punitive systems do not cure murderers, but keeping them separate from the rest of humanity is still in all of our best interests. Similarly, a friend punching you in the face may not be an *entirely* conscious act, but that does not mean your anger for having been punched is unwarranted, and you are more than justified in cutting them out of your life for your own well being.
Lack of belief in free will does not mean we must become robots with no autonomy: we do have the ability to do whatever we want, and judge people based on their actions (whether the actions are good or bad). We can also potentially change our wants through environmental changes, social changes, etc. But it takes a certain amount of "want" to do so, which other people may inspire in us. These are benefits to belief in determinism: we can be more compassionate towards our enemies and those that intentionally or unintentionally harm us, but we can still value autonomy.
2. Your point on the rational appetite is interesting here, and I do not want to argue too much on semantics alone, but pay attention to your own phrasing: "you do not want to get out of bed [...] But a *thought pops into your head telling you that you need to get up*". This is a description of how all thoughts appear into consciousness, and is the very description of how we lack free will: some people are lucky enough to have that thought "get up" which overrides the other thoughts, others may need medication or therapy in order to have that voice in their head. I think the issue here is the assumption that we only have 1 primary want at a time... the truth is that humans are very complex and we have many different and sometimes contradictory wants and desires.
Some people choose to eat the candy bar because it tastes good, but then feel shame afterwards. They may continue eating in this way until suddenly... the guilt or shame or self love or some other cause changes their desire and they begin eliminating sugar from their diet. these changes are as mysterious as the choice to eat the candy bar: some people have discipline, others do not. The rational appetite you are describing is not a refutation of determinism; it is a description of it.
3. This is a much larger point... but rationality is much more post hoc than described here. Most studies on human behavior suggests or seems to explicitly reveal that we rationalize behavior to explain why we did what we did, but the rationalization is usually not a carefully considered preliminary exercise (though that can sometimes be the case). regardless, the way we rationalize involves determinism as well: rationalizations are not bulletproof considerations of details, they are processes by which we consider usually limited data, with biases lenses, to come to biases conclusions. Again this is a much larger point so I won't dig too deep here, but I am just noting that we can act perfectly "rationally" and "logically" and still come to incorrect conclusions with bad outcomes. The map is not the terrain, and we are using maps to rationalize with thoughts that pop into our heads but not those of others.
Definitely an interesting video, and I hope I understood it well here. I would be interested to hear your thoughts. If i did misrepresent your argument, it was accidental, and not in my control anyway ;)
2:06
Yes. And that's ok
I think you are correct to look for the hole in O'connor's argument. I feel similar unease about the implications for morality if free is an illusion. However, I don't think that rational reasoning (as oppose to wants) is the answer, since the rational facts are also outside of our control. Hence, if a given action is the result of sound reasoning, the action lands up being pre-determined/deterministic. And if we choose to make the decision based on rationalism over wants, that is a wants-based choice. Thus we still don't have a scenario of true free will. Not so?
I think we can know what a thing is by what it does. In our case, our most distinctive power is reason - this is what we do most uniquely. There is a sense, therefore, in which our reason equals our self. That's not to say that we don't have other powers that make us who we are, but the most central one is reason. In saying "reason controls our wants," therefore, we are saying "we control our wants."
Good vid!! Do you have an email to reach out by any chance? Or any other social media?
Thanks for watching! You can reach me at thomascahillquestions@gmail.com
I think you make a couple of important errors:
- When referring to the general perceived existence of free will as a point in support of its existence, you miss that everything you said could be explained by the simple illusion of free will. There is no need for free will to exist, only for the mass population to believe in its existence, in the same way that for a religion to succeed, it need not be true just believed to be.
- When attempting to separate rational and irrational thoughts, you offer no objective distinction between the two. Rationality is itself something of an illusion. We attempt to behave rationally as humans but we are not, as a rule, rational beings. Any attempt to distinguish a rational thought from an irrational thought is simply arbitrary. The core motivation behind our decisions is always based in a want and despite us attempting to rationalise and choose one want over another, the want - which is uncontrollable - remains the driver of our decision making.
In summary, I don’t think you’ve made a convincing case to refute Alex’s argument or to support the existence of free will.
The denial of the existance of rational and irrational is insane ngl
- People assign blame - therefore - People intuitively believe that free will exists - therefore free will is a (semi/psuedo) self evident truth
- You control your rational wants - Therefore you have free will
You can assign blame within a framework for determinism. Also people are dumb and the intuition of the general population has no impact on the truth in my eyes.
Your rational wants are just as determined as irrational wants.
For blame think of it as making a value judgement about the human system rather than a moral one.
A dog that bites people may bite them due to predetermined reasons however we can still value this dog less than one that doesn't bite.
Same goes for the friend that punches you for trivial reasons and the firefighter that saves children. Despite the deterministic nature of their actions we can still make value judgements towards them.
Therefore poeple intuitively assign responsibility but this doesnt mean they believe in free will or determinism.
For rational wants think of it this way. Every rational thought has a cause, even if you can't observe it, by reasoning about why to get out of bed you are reffering to other wants. As you yourself stated there are a large set of reasons you would want to get out of bed and these outweigh the reasons to stay in bed. If this wasn't the case than you would just stay in bed and this is what some depressed people do.
None of these are the reason I believe in determinism, the only reason I do is because of our scientific observations about the intrinsic nature of reality.
One of the biggest misconceptions about determinism is that you as a human can't make decisions or influence yourself, the world, or the future. However this is absolutly the wrong way to think about it. Inherent to the nature of the human system is it's ability to make value judgements to make an impact on itself and the world based on who they are and what they believe. However you must simply make the connection that who you are and what you believe has been predetermined.
Nice vid 👍
Intuition is an unreliable pathway to truth and you cant control your "want" to follow reason, let alone any of your other wants.
It is the case that we act as though we have free will and praise / punish people for their actions.... also that its intuitive that we have free will. That's not evidence it exists though.
I agree that people are not responsible for their actions, it is a matter of practicality that we praise / punish people for their actions and has an effect on their (and others) ongoing behaviour because people want the praise and want to avoid the punishment.
You do have an element of control once you understand that free will doesn't exist. You can train your brain to be able to make better future decisions by being skeptical, using reason and logic etc.... assuming you "want" to make better decisions that is. You may not be freely making choices but at least you might make better ones!
The great thing is - without free will and looking back on your life, regret is meaningless. You could only have ended up here as you are.
O.K. except how can You 'train your brain'.?
@@larrycarter3765 Well, you have to "want" to for a start as it doesn't happen freely :), I immersed myself in understanding reason and logic, learn cognitive biases (even wiki is a good start on "list of cognitive biases" to get more understanding of how flawed intuition is. While you cannot stop being prone to biases you can become aware of them and you'll notice them all the time in yourself (and your past decisions) and others around you. "Mindfulness" is an area worth exploring. Why I say "train your brain" is to differentiate the source of your emotions and urges from what I perceive as the self, your mind. You can't freely choose your emotions or desires, they just happen to you.
Looking good
Great argument! The audio is terrible though, I was forced to watch this at 1x haha
Check that your mic is actually active, it sounds like you're accidentally using your laptop's built-in mic.
If the microphone is active, position it closer to your mouth. The further your speak from the microphone the more of the room's acoustics it will pick up, especially in an untreated space.
Thanks for the heads-up! Will be fixed for the next video.
I'm just here because president sunday makes good background noise. I am not a philosophy person so my thoughts on this might be kinda dumb but I disagree that almost everyone in almost every culture believes in free will.
Fate is something that people in all kinds of cultures believe in and fate isn't super compatible with free will. Plus even if someone doesn't believe in free will that doesn't mean they won't act like they do. It's inbuilt in us that seeing a friend get punched causes a negative emotional response. Even if we don't believe in free will we might still experience emotions such as anger, sadness, or fear and act in a way we think will prevent these involuntary emotions from happening again
Personally I do believe in free will because my past, genetics, and environment are me and therefore when I make decisions based on those it is me making the decision. There's no me more than me, no me outside of reality feeling sad that I don't have the same will as it. I just am
He's probably wrong about a lot more than that.
So do you take pride/credit for learning to talk? Not every human can talk. Do you give yourself credit for successfully walking across the floor? How about a great musician--do we give them credit for the musical talent they were born with? Why? They didn't "choose" to be talented. No free will involved in their possessing this musical talent--the potential to be a great musician.
But such "unchosen" talent receives praise all the time.
IMO, this is "obviously" wrong. No credit or blame should be given.
He is who he is.
Your ideas are not that ilogical, but you seem to be speaking about different dimension. Alex argument would say that even the rational thoughts are not what makes will free, as it just appeared in our mind then we decide how to act upon it (or do some unconcies act) but all of this is determined still, by the cause and effect, one influencin the other and thus the grand cascade came to be
What if you want to hit someone but you don’t?
Then you wanted to not hit them more than you didn’t. It’s as simple as that
@@Frozo-nt2ky Ahh yeah so you made a choice not to hit them
@@duelz9366 exactly 👍🏻
@@duelz9366yes but it was not a free choice
@@DonutOfNinja what so is he a robot and someone else is making the choice for him?
Typical Cahill W
What intuitive isnt the universal fact.. we are animals at the end of the day and our brain is full of errors. And about the ‘rational appetite’, you still willed to rationalize the matter which led you to make a choice. You couldve just ate the candy but you still thought about it because you willed to do it. you didnt rationalize whether to choose between ‘rationalize whether I should eat the candy or not’ and just eat candy. Oh you did? Then you still didnt rationalize rationalizing rationalizing whether to eat candy or not. It goes on for the infinity.
Credit and blame. You claim Phil should not be blamed for punching Fred because Phil didn't choose to punch Fred; his "wants" did the chosing. Ditto no credit to the fireman. But who is Phil? Isn't he the creature with those particular wants? Isn't he the creature who threw the punch? The fists and the wants are a part of Phil, who he is. Should he get some credit for not setting Fred on fire with his "super-pyro beamed eyes?" He doesn't have such eyes--so no credit for not using what he doesn't have. But why not blame him for using the things he does have i.e. who he is and what he does?
He is who he is.
It doesn't.
Intuitively I want to eat that cookie so bad, in fact the whole package. But that's in no way healthy for me.
Intuitively I blame someone for his misdeeds. It turns out he has schizophrenia.
Yes, for his misbehave towards society, we may impose consequences in order to prevent him of disrupting the society, but nothing justifies me of hating that person, because he did what he did because of an illness.
"Intuition" sometimes is wrong - we are just meat with wants after all. Sometimes it interprets the world so differently from what actually is happening, because our mind tends to fill the gaps of missing information. It has its place, but not as a factual proof.
Here's a simple representation of the regress problem regarding the formulation of Free Will as requiring complete independence from any and all prior causes, in the form of a logical syllogism:
Premise 1: Free Will requires independence from all prior causes.
Premise 2: Our existence is contingent on prior causes, including our birth.
Conclusion: Therefore, if Free Will necessitates independence from all prior causes, we wouldn't exist to have any form of will, free or otherwise.
This syllogism highlights the potential absurdity or self-defeating nature of a definition of Free Will that demands complete independence from all prior causes; ie, this formulation of Free Will results in the commission of a fallacy of proving too much.
first!