Dr. Daniel Dennett - Freedom Evolves: Free Will, Determinism, and Evolution
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 1 พ.ค. 2019
- This lecture was recorded on February 3, 2003 as part of the Distinguished Science Lecture Series hosted by Michael Shermer and presented by The Skeptics Society in California (1992-2015).
Can there be freedom and free will in a deterministic world? Renowned philosopher and public intellectual, Dr. Dennett, drawing on evolutionary biology, cognitive neuroscience, economics and philosophy, demonstrates that free will exists in a deterministic world for humans only, and that this gives us morality, meaning, and moral culpability. Weaving a richly detailed narrative, Dennett explains in a series of strikingly original arguments that far from being an enemy of traditional explorations of freedom, morality, and meaning, the evolutionary perspective can be an indispensable ally. In Freedom Evolves, Dennett seeks to place ethics on the foundation it deserves: a realistic, naturalistic, potentially unified vision of our place in nature.
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Fascinating! Brilliant, elegant and very convincing explanation of how you get multiple choices in a predertemined world.
Nic Danubir
I wonder if the multiple options you believe in really are compatible with determinism.
Let's say I selected option A. Can you explain how it was physically possible for me to select option B??
predertemined?
@@larrycarter3765 "Predermined" not by some divine will, but by having no choice but to strictly comply with physical laws. With humans, it is different: not only do they have freedom of choice (and therefore behavior options, i.e. "free will"), but humans are also capable of creating their own laws and rules whereby they can exercise further freedom of choice aka free will.
I loved Dr. Daniel Dennett, very sad to hear about his passing, I've would have loved to meet him, he was my absolute favorite, an intellectual giant, a legend, true sage, heard he was also very kind gentle person, huge loss to civilization, I will watch tons of his lectures in the next few days/weeks in his memory, I was distraught to know that my favorite philosopher/intellectual passed away, got some consolation that his lectures will be online and I can watch them over and over again 1:25:11
Well said. I came here to say almost the exact same thing.
We’re all made of matter & in a causal chain; that strikes me as obvious and undeniable. There’s enough randomness & complexity to make it unpredictable.
Free Will and Determinism; Endorsement of punishment is not coerced. Born avoiders vs embracers, Thank you very much.
The whole thing about Free Will/Determinism is that it's unfalsifiable: it's impossible to tell whether what we do is predetermined or as a result of free will. Even the suggestion that you could use random number generators to make decisions could be overruled by the possibility that what the random number generators produce is predetermined.
My only problem with a belief in determinism is that many peope will use it as an excuse to do horrible things and claim they had no choice, but those believing that doing something amoral or illegal is not their fault and objecting to being punished for it need to bear in mind that the police, judge and jury that arrest, prosecute, find guilty, and imprison them also had no control over what they do.
I only see positive consequences to me losing my belief in free will. I don't hate myself anymore.
Yet, maybe you should... Go figure!
like you have a choice
You probably won't try to improve yourself either
@@longcastle4863 I try to improve myself all the time. I can't help it! :D
Freedom, the flipside of open access to any information useful for constructive general education.
Good talk. It would be good to also read Brian Greene's book Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe. His explanation of free will is great. And there are more good things from strictly reductionistic perspective.
but he doesnt believe in free willl?
@@cbskwkdnslwhanznamdm2849 Free wil does not exists.
What the hell do people mean by "free will" outside of the normal thought that it means a person is able to decide between any choices without external force being applied to influence it. Clearly we have free will, as do many animals. It's always refutable with humans by simply stating what a choice will be (must be), and then choosing an alternative. I can even choose based on random numbers. Or choose the first option every time...none of these would exist without free will existing.
Damn, 1 mm pixels
No free will. Robert Sapolsky, Jerry Coyne and Sam Harris said it the way that makes sense.
And nothing was gained
39:00 here comes the Utopianism?
If life can evolve from nonliving matter, why can't consciousness and free will evolve from nonliving matter or from the living matter that evolved from nonliving matter? Or are we going to say that life is an illusion? Like some try to claim consciousness and free will is an illusion. When it, pretty obviously really, are things that evolved in living creatures because it gave them an edge in survival.
Is he saying that the universe is determined to be indetermined?
I am a physicist and I will provide solid arguments that prove that consciousness cannot be generated by the brain (in my youtube channel you can find a video with more detailed explanations). Many argue that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain, but it is possible to show that such hypothesis is inconsistent with our scientific knowledges. In fact, it is possible to show that all the examples of emergent properties consists of concepts used to describe how an external object appear to our conscious mind, and not how it is in itself, which means how the object is independently from our observation. In other words, emergent properties are ideas conceived to describe or classify, according to arbitrary criteria and from an arbitrary point of view, certain processes or systems. In summary, emergent properties are intrinsically subjective, since they are based on the arbitrary choice to focus on certain aspects of a system and neglet other aspects, such as microscopic structures and processes; emergent properties consist of ideas through which we describe how the external reality appears to our conscious mind: without a conscious mind, these ideas (= emergent properties) would not exist at all.
Here comes my first argument: arbitrariness, subjectivity, classifications and approximate descriptions, imply the existence of a conscious mind, which can arbitrarily choose a specific point of view and focus on certain aspects while neglecting others. It is obvious that consciousness cannot be considered an emergent property of the physical reality, because consciousenss is a preliminary necessary condition for the existence of any emergent property. We have then a logical contradiction. Nothing which presupposes the existence of consciousness can be used to try to explain the existence of consciousness.
Here comes my second argument: our scientific knowledge shows that brain processes consist of sequences of ordinary elementary physical processes; since consciousness is not a property of ordinary elementary physical processes, then a succession of such processes cannot have cosciousness as a property. In fact we can break down the process and analyze it step by step, and in every step consciousness would be absent, so there would never be any consciousness during the entire sequence of elementary processes. It must be also understood that considering a group of elementary processes together as a whole is an arbitrary choice. In fact, according to the laws of physics, any number of elementary processes is totally equivalent. We could consider a group of one hundred elementary processes or ten thousand elementary processes, or any other number; this choice is arbitrary and not reducible to the laws of physics. However, consciousness is a necessary preliminary condition for the existence of arbitrary choices; therefore consciousness cannot be a property of a sequence of elementary processes as a whole, because such sequence as a whole is only an arbitrary and abstract concept that cannot exist independently of a conscious mind.
Here comes my third argument: It should also be considered that brain processes consist of billions of sequences of elementary processes that take place in different points of the brain; if we attributed to these processes the property of consciousness, we would have to associate with the brain billions of different consciousnesses, that is billions of minds and personalities, each with its own self-awareness and will; this contradicts our direct experience, that is, our awareness of being a single person who is able to control the voluntary movements of his own body with his own will. If cerebral processes are analyzed taking into account the laws of physics, these processes do not identify any unity; this missing unit is the necessarily non-physical element (precisely because it is missing in the brain), the element that interprets the brain processes and generates a unitary conscious state, that is the human mind.
Here comes my forth argument: Consciousness is characterized by the fact that self-awareness is an immediate intuition that cannot be broken down or fragmented into simpler elements. This characteristic of consciousness of presenting itself as a unitary and non-decomposable state, not fragmented into billions of personalities, does not correspond to the quantum description of brain processes, which instead consist of billions of sequences of elementary incoherent quantum processes. When someone claims that consciousness is a property of the brain, they are implicitly considering the brain as a whole, an entity with its own specific properties, other than the properties of the components. From the physical point of view, the brain is not a whole, because its quantum state is not a coherent state, as in the case of entangled systems; the very fact of speaking of "brain" rather than many cells that have different quantum states, is an arbitrary choice. This is an important aspect, because, as I have said, consciousness is a necessary preliminary condition for the existence of arbitrariness. So, if a system can be considered decomposable and considering it as a whole is an arbitrary choice, then it is inconsistent to assume that such a system can have or generate consciousness, since consciousness is a necessary precondition for the existence of any arbitrary choice. In other words, to regard consciousness as a property ofthe brain, we must first define what the brain is, and to do so we must rely only on the laws of physics, without introducing arbitrary notions extraneous to them; if this cannot be done, then it means that every property we attribute to the brain is not reducible to the laws of physics, and therefore such property would be nonphysical. Since the interactions between the quantum particles that make up the brain are ordinary interactions, it is not actually possible to define the brain based solely on the laws of physics. The only way to define the brain is to arbitrarily establish that a certain number of particles belong to it and others do not belong to it, but such arbitrariness is not admissible. In fact, the brain is not physically separated from the other organs of the body, with which it interacts, nor is it physically isolated from the external environment, just as it is not isolated from other brains, since we can communicate with other people, and to do so we use physical means, for example acoustic waves or electromagnetic waves (light). This necessary arbitrariness in defining what the brain is, is sufficient to demonstrate that consciousness is not reducible to the laws of physics. Besides, since the brain is an arbitrary concept, and consciousness is the necessary preliminary condition for the existence of arbitrariness, consciousness cannot be a property of the brain.
Based on these considerations, we can exclude that consciousness is generated by brain processes or is an emergent property of the brain. Marco Biagini
I like the ideas. Organizing these ideas formally in today's society, however, may be quite the task (as I am sure you are aware).
@marcobiagini1878 You may be a physisist, but that isnt of any relevance and shouldnt impress anyone. Much more importantly, your aguments fall flat. And they are even lower in number than you presented them.
For argument 1 (which is actually a mixture of 2 arguments): Claiming that emergent properties are merilly the subjective ideas made up by a surprised, conscious observer of such a system is ridiculusly superficial.
Just buy an assembly kit of any machine and
1. observe, how it doesnt run before having been assembled into a working sytem. Then
2. let it run automatically after assembly without beeing in sensual range and check later, whether it ran.
In other words:
1. Some properties emerge in systems once the parts start working together. Reality is full of examples. These observations were formulated into system theory aka cybernetics - one of the last findings during modernism. The term "emergent properties" is linked to it, so it cannot have fled your attention, has it?
2. If a tree falls flat in a forrest without any conscious observer around, it still grew and stood before and lies afterwards the fall, thus it HAS fallen. And reality gives a sh*t about whether any conscious observer was present.
For argument 2: Basically we have the "There are no properties emerging in a system"-claim again.
A single counter-example should do to prove that claim wrong - how many does one want to ignore? Lets try 3 from biology:
- A colony of ants builds a hive far too complex for any single ant to imagine. Queen ant doesnt have a clue, either.
- A mushroom-body is formed as the reproductive organ of a system of individually living but group organized acting fungus elements.
- Fish, birds, insects form swarms that serve several purposes like fooling of predators etc. None of the individuals have (need to have) any clue of why what they do individually serves a higher function of the group and neither does the preditor have to have.
- ...
And btw. science (medicine, if you need a discipline as a sub category) has long ago proven via experiments, that consciousness is NOT a necessary preliminary condition for (the existence of) arbitrary choices. Consciousness is an evolutionary newer, better, higher order checking system for choices/decisions made by the subconsciousness first, where these choices are brought up to and rehashed, whenever the subconscious part of the mind finds them important enough.
For argument 3: This argument is actually an abstraction into the absurd/rediculus. Nice try but there is not much to say here other that a personality is indeed a constant mixture of different drives trying to gain the upper hand whilst beeing regulated by biological processes. Again, this has been proven sufficiently by experiments (care to read any papers, physisist?) with parts of the brain dampened/deactivated. There is nothing supernatural missing here to explain the functions of the brain and bringing in a supernatural element, maybe even a homungus just complicates the problem into absurdity.
For argument 4: Thats a straw man, consisting of your claim number 3 "Consciousness is characterized by the fact that self-awareness is an immediate intuition that cannot be broken down or fragmented into simpler elements." mixed with a claim allready stated under number 2 "...since consciousness is a necessary precondition for the existence of any arbitrary choice"
Have fun destroying it yourself, again. Whilst youre at it, better not use the words "quantum state" or "entanglement" in relation to brain activity - oh sh*t you did, so dig yourself out of that woo-woo pit. Im done here.
@@petermeyer6873 You wrote:” Just buy an assembly kit of any machine and observe, how it doesnt run before having been assembled into a working sytem.”
Your example confirms exactly my point. In fact movement is a fundamental property of elementary particles and not a new (emergent) property.
All emergent properties, as well as, biological models, are subjective cognitive contructs used to approximately describe underlying physical processes, and these physical processes and properties are directly and more accurately described by the fundamental laws of physics, without any addictional assumptions and without involving any emergent properties. Therefore emergent properties do not correspond to actual mind-independent entities; in fact, an approximate description is only a cognitive construct, and no actual mind-independent entity exists corresponding to that approximate description, simply because an actual entity is exactly what it is and not an approximation of itself. This means that emergent properties do not refer to reality itself but to a subjective abstract concept (the approximate conceptual model of reality). Mental experience, being a precondition for the existence of these approximate conceptual models, cannot itself be an emergent property.
You wrote:” If a tree falls flat in a forrest without any conscious observer around, it still grew and stood before and lies afterwards the fall, thus it HAS fallen. And reality gives a sh*t about whether any conscious observer was present. “
Your example again confirms my point. The fall of the tree is just a classification of movement, and movement is a fundamental property of elementary particles; therefore the fall of the tree does not imply anything that is not directly described by the laws of physics. The point is that mental experience is not described by the laws of physics.
You wrote: “- A colony of ants builds a hive far too complex for any single ant to imagine.”
Your example confirms again my point. In fact, the hive is only an arbitrary classification of a geometrical arrangement of elements. You should consider that all geometric properties are intrinsic properties of space itself and space is a fundamental element in the laws of physics. Therefore no geometric property is emergent as intrinsic to a fundamental element which is an integral part of the laws of physics.
You wrote:” Fish, birds, insects form swarms that serve several purposes like fooling of predators etc. None of the individuals have (need to have) any clue of why what they do individually serves a higher function of the group and neither does the preditor have to have.”
Your example again confirms my point. In fact what you consider “porposes” are just a cognitive construct used to describe approximately the undelying physical processes. The behavior of fish, birds, insects consist of sequences of elemenary physical processes directly described by the laws of physics. In biology we use simplified conceptual models to describe natural phenomena in such a way as to make them appear consistent with our way of reasoning; biological models are in fact very intuitive, unlike quantum physics. However, in biology we only approximately describe the underlying microscopic physical processes, processes that are more accurately described by the laws of quantum physics.
Emergence is nothing more than a cognitive construct that is applied to physical phenomena for taxonomic purposes, and cognition itself can only come from a mind; thus emergence can never explain mental experience as, by itself, it implies mental experience.
You wrote:” And btw. science (medicine, if you need a discipline as a sub category) has long ago proven via experiments, that consciousness is NOT a necessary preliminary condition for (the existence of) arbitrary choices. “
Utter nonsense. A choice is by definition a conscious experience.
You wrote:” Nice try but there is not much to say here other that a personality is indeed a constant mixture of different drives trying to gain the upper hand whilst beeing regulated by biological processes. Again, this has been proven sufficiently by experiments (care to read any papers, physisist?) with parts of the brain dampened/deactivated. “
You totally missed my point. In fact my arguments are not meant to prove that brain processes are not necessary for the existence of our consciousness. My arguments prove that brain processes are not a sufficient condition for the existence of consciousness. The existence of correlations between brain processes and mental experiences is beyond question; however to say that mental experience is generated by the brain is an entirely different claim, an extra-step which is not implied by such correlations. Just saying that consciousness “emerges” is a blind leap and begs the question; correlation does not mean identity.
Best regards.
What happened to my belief in Libertarian Free Will when I discovered at the age of 57 that I am autistic,.. and have been such since conception? I found I could choose my actions but not my desires??!? Whatever Free Will I may have,.. it is far more attenuated that I had believed for most all of my life.
Do we choose to be heterosexual over homosexual?!?
Free will evolves and freedoms are on a continuum. There are prerequisites for free will - you must possess core competencies in order to have free will. You also don’t have the will to control all things.
19:55 this is the point where everything in Dennett's argument breaks down, as far as I can tell.
Inevitable means unavoidable - true
But then he goes on to equivocate on the word unavoidable (I don't assume that it's intentional).
Meaning 1 of unavoidable: An event was bound to occur (or not occur). It couldn't have been any other way. (i.e Inevitable)
Meaning 2: x cannot avoid y. (or the opposite being "x avoids y")
All subsequent discussion on the Evolution of Avoiders rests on this false equivocation.
With respect to the example given later on, if you throw a brick at someone and they avoid it, it was inevitable/unavoidable that they would, under those conditions of the universe, avoid it. If they didn't avoid it, it was inevitable that they didn't.
Unfortunately this did not provide a reasonable account of free will at all. Though I could be wrong or missing something.
(I'm not making an argument against free will, I just don't think this was a good argument for it.)
1:22:50 "Of no interest at all" surely this is not true. Rather it is, on your account, simply false
53:56 No it is not. If Determinism is false it is possible that it is avoidable (could have been avoided), but was not avoided. If Determinism is not true, then you could throw a brick and me. I could have the ability to avoid it, and I could choose to not avoid it.
To be clear this doesn't mean Determinism isn't true, but in a Nondeterministic world this is how it would have to work.
aka "i know free will doesn't exist but i will change some definitions to tell people that it does because they could do bad things otherwise" ?
Pragmatism suggests that to resolve these interminable philosophical debates, we must define our terms in a practical manner, according to what the words mean in operation, rather than some esoteric mumbo-jumbo. Free will and determinism, when correctly defined, are perfectly compatible. See: marvinedwards.me/2019/03/08/free-will-whats-wrong-and-how-to-fix-it/
Well, socially responsible people will do that. Just saying free will exists or not exists without properly defining what they mean is irresponsible in my view, when you know the consequence of what it makes to a person
This isn't a new video. [edit] but great more free content
It's not new in the sense that it was just recorded but it's new as in it's never been released. Has it? I've never seen it before. Also, why are you booing free content? Sulljo Boi Tell me, please.
@@acetate909 hmm good point
@@sulljoh1
Lol...I was just being a jack ass. I didn't expect you to reply. Pretty cool move tho.
@@acetate909 so was I lol. But you were right in your point
You couldn't have done otherwise, therefore no free will.
I understand what Dawkins, Harris, Pinker and usually Krauss, but this was really poorly communicated. Discuss some related terms and show a Life simulation where there can be avoiders. That is the argument for free will?
I'm a fan of DD, but I dont find this argument convincing. He tries a slight of hand by exchanging Inevitable with Unavoidable, and then tries to trade every day avoidance with the Ontological inevitability the free will argument is based on. While watching this, I was thinking, "yes, I can avoid getting hit by cars when crossing the street, but my success or failure in avoidance is baked into the larger cake of the inevitable future. "
What I get out of this argument is that the complexity of the universe is so far beyond my comprehension, that the illusion of free will is easy to maintain.
i seem to be the only idiot disagreeing w him, this is a lot of obvious crap to justify something only after redefining it.
Who agrees Dan Dennet is not a great mind?
U can't judge a person.. Who are u anyway.. He is one of the greatest thinker..
Not on free will
So freaking weak... Unbelievable. Free Will exists, it's easy to show that formally, there is no need to "pretend." And this guy makes money writing about this stuff? Give me a break!
He’s just redefining free will to be more like degrees of freedom, such as the term is used in statistics. Why are you so certain free will exists at all? I don’t know how anyone can claim they stand outside the causal chain effecting all matter around them, as though they’re not entirely matter.
@@chemquests Consciousness is computational (at least in part), and computation is not material (although is is effected using material systems, whether brains cells or silicon-based chips). The evolutionary emergence of rationality has given humans the ability to predict the future, and that is precisely what gives us Free Will.
You believe in Free Will, whether you like it or not. I don't think you would agree that the judicial system should treat a 3 year old child (or, say, a mentally ill person) the same as a rational adult. If you do not believe in Free Wil, you MUST agree they should be treated exactly the same. But obviously that is insane. And the difference in entirely based on ability to predict AND ACT UPON future states of affairs. THAT is what Free Will means.
In fact, it is easy to come up with thought experiments (which could possibly be turned into actual experiments) where is is impossible, even in theory, to predict future outcomes even with 100% perfect knowledge of physical states of the set-up, not even in quantum mechanical (i.e. statistical) terms.
Free Will is real, it requires determinism (Free Will MEANS that WE DETERMINE our own future - of course not all the time, but at least some times), but it invalidates material/physical determinism.
@@KRGruner you assert two concepts I find confusing or perhaps ill-defined: rationality as a basis for free will & non-materialistic determinism. I’ll need more information & time to understand what you mean by that, as it initially strikes me as nonsensical. In the case of the predator chasing prey, they predict future positions & “choose” to pounce to that position anticipating dinner. Would you say the predator does this rationally? Is this a demonstration of free will? I would say it is not rational yet it expresses precisely the type of free will that humans have. Is it your contention that those who are irrational &/or poor at predicting the future should be punished? On determinism, while I quite agree that computation in the abstract is not substrate dependent, the wet hardware through which we compute, the paucity of our information, & the contingencies of our environment determines the boundaries (degrees of freedom) of our solution space. In that sense it seems the material restricts the computational space from the abstract. It is in this way I conclude physical determinism creates free will in the only sense we have it. Are you suggesting we are rational or just that we are only exercising free will when we are being rational? There may be an overestimation of how much rationality factors in the choices of humans; I don’t actually like to use the term choices, given how much heuristics dominate our thinking. Where am I missing your point?
@@chemquests ??? Really? Go back and ACTUALLY read what I wrote. You are literally saying the exact opposite of what I stated, at least a couple of times. Your post reeks of bad faith and/or confirmation bias.
But yes, we are only exercising free will when we are rational. The predator can only "picture" one future outcome, a rational human being can picture multiple future outcomes, and the one future that will come to pass is partly determined by our choice. Most of the things we do every day, do not require or imply free will. But sometimes, they do, and it turns out most of these are situations that will make the most difference in our lives, and for which we will (correctly) be called to account for.
Physical determinism invalidates free will, period. But we are not physically determined, since we are sometimes determined by our future (in addition to our past) and the future is not pre-determined by forces entirely outside of our control.
I might add that this kind of result, due to self-reference within a system, is akin to what Goedel established in mathematics/logic and Turing established for computational systems (the undecidability problem). Once a system contains the syntax and semantics to refer to itself, everything changes. Such is the care for the world of rational human beings.
@@KRGruner your reply tells me I understood you and disagree completely. The reply was a mix of my position and asking about yours. I am willing to entertain an argument & will consider your use of the undecidability problem. However I won’t accept an assertion, period; compatabilism is the position that determinism & free will are compatible. this is debated by many so you haven’t closed the door on it. In fact Dennet and Sam Harris discussed their opposition on the topic. Our mental capacities are on a continuum with other animals and the distinction between predator and humans is just one of degree. The number of futures that can be entertained doesn’t change the problem. I’d like to refer you to the work of Daniel Khaneman who demonstrated how far reaching our irrationally is; I’m skeptical that rationality features prominently in human affairs. You may be completely correct about a logical system, which seems an irrelevant abstraction. Evolution has selected for avoiding death as opposed to reliably representing reality needed for rational decisions; biases & heuristics are the good enough shortcuts to save mental energy. Maybe we’re getting hung up on absolute free will vs the kind we actually have.