I enjoyed every minute of this video, not because it argued convincingly that we have free will but rather, it demonstrated perfectly the distance people would go to convince themselves that they have free will.
This is a summary of the video: • The debate around free will centers on whether our decisions are predetermined by prior causes (determinism) or if there is true agency and ability to make free choices. • Even simple organisms like bacteria exhibit primitive forms of agency by integrating information about their environment and internal states to guide adaptive behaviors. • The evolution of nervous systems allowed more complex integration and decoupling of sensory information from motor responses, enabling learning, planning for the future, and representing abstract concepts. • Human cognition goes beyond just reacting to stimuli - we can ponder our own thoughts (metacognition), reason about our reasons, and collectively coordinate behavior through cultural evolution. • Free will is an evolved biological capacity that gives us degrees of freedom, within constraints of our histories/natures, to intentionally direct our future by integrating information and rationally guiding our behavior.
I read Kevin Mitchell's book and it only swayed me more toward free will skepticism. Ironically, he admits that he finds compatibilism unconvincing. But despite a sincere attempt to think outside the box his arguments are basically compatibilist. I recommend the book Just Deserts by Gregg Caruso and Daniel Dennett. Still have not heard a good argument against Caruso's views. Whether or not we live in a deterministic universe, it seems like everything we are and do really comes down to constitutive luck and present luck. Even how much we are able to counteract luck with our control comes down to how we've been constructed by luck.
I found the neurobiological parts of this lecture fascinating, but the argument for free will was deeply unsatisfactory, and possibly circular -- meaning and agency are assumed and then used to support the concept of free will. There is also an unspoken assumption that "metacognition" and "meaning" are in some way special and do not in themselves arise from the physical state of the brain. The argument boils down to "we make decisions, therefore we have free will" -- of course we make decisions, and these appear to be free will, but these decisions at time t arise from the state of the brain (including meaning and metacognition) at t-1. How can it be otherwise, unless we postulate some kind of extramaterial influence?
I like what you have written. In my opinion it is an unnecessary discussion. I don't care if free will in our species exists or not. We ARE biological machines whether we like it or not. There is NO evidence for how we operate beyond the brain. We are what we are free will or not. It seems to me one of those 1st world debates that is not relevant to people struggling to survive.
Causes in your mind create effects in the real, physical world -- causality. Causes in the physical word effect your mind -- causality. Perceptions, measurements or effects create causes in your mind -- retro-causality! Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant. Your mind is creating causes from your perceptions or observations -- a syntropic process, teleological. Mathematicians create new concepts or ideas all the time from their perceptions -- a syntropic process. Cause is dual to effect -- causality loops (Karl Friston, neuroscientist). "The brain is a prediction machine" -- Karl Friston, neuroscientist. Making predictions to track targets, goals and objectives is a syntropic process, teleological. Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy). Information is dual:- Average information (entropy) is dual to co or mutual information (syntropy). Potential or imaginary information is dual to real or kinetic information. Potential or imaginary energy is dual to real or kinetic energy -- gravitational energy is dual. Sine is dual to cosine or dual sine -- the word co means mutual and implies duality. Vectors (contravariant) are dual to co vectors (covariant) -- dual bases or Riemann geometry is dual. Converting potential information into real information is a syntropic process. Integration (summations, syntropy) is dual to differentiation (differences, entropy). Your mind integrates information to form predictions (syntropy) -- integrated information theory. Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics! "Always two there are" -- Yoda. Integrating information is a syntropic process, teleological -- hence there is a 4th law of thermodynamics.
@@robguyatt9602they're probably not here. They're out surviving. However, when a society has transcended those worries, they, like us, turn to philosophical enquiry.
@@jakebarnes28 Yes, true. But this is one philosophical argument of no value in my opinion. I do like philosophy, don't get me wrong. But some modern philosophy is just intellectual wanking.
Staircase Without thinking answer the following. "There is a staircase. Does it go up or down?" When I asked myself this question with a friend, we both answered. I then wondered that since I have never before answered this question, how did I answer it? Should my answer had been option 3, "I dont know"? Was some unconscious bias or my mood at play? My imagination generating an internal scenario full of my biases and experiences? Yet, the question was posed and in a matter of seconds without knowing how, I uttered an answer "Up". We postulated the following, I heard the question, had no way of answering it, yet my brain without conscious thought assessed the question and from learnt experience picked one of the two options and fed the answer back to me and I spoke the answer out loud. So, this is where we thought it got interesting. Since I didn't consciously answer that question, who did? My brain answered the question by itself? Which leads onto the question, So who is driving this body? Because it certainly wasnt me just then... Which leads to, if the brain can answer without "me" and is doing so purely from prior experience which you could argue is weighted... so in essence, is not random and is effectively just reflecting what it has seen... hmmm. The big question is... where is free will? I wasnt even involved in the answer and the non random weighted brain response suggests that I am only an observer. Ergo, freewill is more like a "post action" observation.
for the world to be deterministic, there's no need for the initial state to encode infinite information. just need to encode the finite initial state and (deterministic) physical laws. these together can generate the seemingly infinite complexity we observe. think of Conway's game of life.
That little room that quantam mechanics is supposed to give still doesn't give a mechanism for the free agent. It is actually the second choice which was non deterministic quantam mechanics leads to random universe. There was hand wavy explanation at best. In an attempt to deny magic of "God", they just gave it to the free agent. They never explained a material mechanism that is responsible for free will other than saying quantam mechanics allows for it? How does it do that? Quantam mechanics is completely random. How does it end up making one choice over the other? Just because a system is complex doesn't mean it is non deterministic. I also saw the use of chaos theory to undermine determinism. Chaos theory literally means "sensitive dependence on initial conditions". Chaotic systems are deterministic. What we don't have usually is enough information to predict their behaviour. I'll even argue that we can never know exactly how much information is needed to completely determine a chaotic system. But that doesn't mean that the opposite is true. I would've loved to bring in some perspectives from Eastern philosophy but it will be taken as hoaky at best and not rigorous.
@@edumazieriYou know what. You were right. I actually saw the entire thing and it is even worse. He started with making an argument on the basis of quantam mechanics and then completely abandoned it. He says that because we have goals and long term planning, that we are free agents without entertaining the idea that our goals and long terms plans are also dependent on the underlying biological mechanism. He himself actually concedes his argument when he said that damage to PFC causes issues with regulating behaviour required for long term planning and goal setting. If he wants to start the argument by saying that a free agent exists then sure anything can be explained. Everything he posits that a free agent can easily be explained by mechanisms. Even a small convolutional neural network can detect different types of letters and numbers but we don't say that it has sentience. Maybe I am misinterpreting his entire argument and would like to know what you saw in his argument that is actually convincing.
@@mayurvashishth1484 at the beginning he talks about how his argument is a third option, neither random indeterminism nor reductionist determinism. To be fair, it ain't a third option, it's merely a slightly different perspective. He makes it clearer at the end, "Free" will? obviously not, clearly there are mechanisms / physical processes. It's just that he considers the emergent quality of the mechanisms to be a sort of agency. I'm not saying I agree, and he's the one making that argument not me. But what I don't get is what are people who are so absolutely certain of their own view on the topic doing here (not talking about you specifically, you're at least engaging with the content)? Whatever mechanism is determining that behavior is clearly not working very well for them.
It's really very simple. Free will exists, that's why evolution had created species with more and more agency. I am not sure why people get caught up in the misconception that you cannot build arbitrary agency on top of simple laws.
@@pinkfloydhomer how do you define "agency". Evolution created more sophisticated input-output systems but those still produce outputs based on the inputs.
@@kuri7154 they do, but that process is agency. It can have arbitrarily great agency, it can take into account a myriad of things, it can even evolve to create a consciousness with logic and feelings and experience and memory and goals and rewards and penalties and even randomness. That process produces the choice, the output, it might even produce a different result if run again, hard to do with a human, easy to do with a computer. I don't know why people falsely assume that choices can't be made on top of rules. It easily can, computers do it all the time while adhering to all laws of physics. It is not magic, it is very well understood.
Our goals are not set by us, they are set by advertising, you play golf because it is projected as a cool sport and you invested time in it and enjoyed it. If you had never been exposed to golf, if golf was not an option, you would not create it. Peer pressure, advertising, social media bots all impact on our freedom. To be free we need to not be influenced by anything other than our own internal thoughts. In reality we are influenced by any input, we have less and less control over what that is, social media ripped up the rule book of publishing truth, now we swim in a swap of misinformation, conspiracy theories, marketing, propaganda and lies.
@@Silent_300 you can read my elaborated replies in these comment threads. Here is one: @kuri7154 they do, but that process is agency. It can have arbitrarily great agency, it can take into account a myriad of things, it can even evolve to create a consciousness with logic and feelings and experience and memory and goals and rewards and penalties and even randomness. That process produces the choice, the output, it might even produce a different result if run again, hard to do with a human, easy to do with a computer. I don't know why people falsely assume that choices can't be made on top of rules. It easily can, computers do it all the time while adhering to all laws of physics. It is not magic, it is very well understood.
Free will is real. How does a computer make choices? It does it because it is designed to test conditions and do one thing or else the other. We understand how it works, even if the computer, by design, is deterministic. It is obvious to me that nature and evolution have done the same. Why has evolution chosen adaptations that react to environments? Because the organism then makes better choices that increases chance for survival and reproduction. Why make something that can react and make choices if those choices could never alter behavior? This whole problem has been convoluted by bad philosophers. There is no contradiction between being a deterministic clockwork that follows the laws of physics and then a emergent entity that can make choices on top of that. Computers do it all the time. Now, I know that we are not totally freewilled, that a lot of things happen subconsciously and before we perceive making a choice and all that. But that's not the same as no free will and just being a deterministic clockwork.
It doesn't matter if an action is a result of a simple reaction or a "holistic" one. Still, every step in that process is governed by the laws of physics. He can make up any arguments he wants, but that does not discount the facts. There is no free will as a thing in itself, that's just another layer of complexity that still obeys the laws of physics. After 20 minutes in, it's clear to me that the rest is not worth watching, because it is founded on faulty reasoning.
When he said something like "but bacteria don't normally make decisions in a lab and they're not just automatic and mechanistic, they also integrate information from the past" like, ok but draw a box around that extra complexity and explain how it's not just another mechanism... Point to the FREE part of its free will.
Freewill (randomness, choice) is dual to tyranny (order, lack of choice). Causes in your mind create effects in the real, physical world -- causality. Causes in the physical word effect your mind -- causality. Perceptions, measurements or effects create causes in your mind -- retro-causality! Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant. Your mind is creating causes from your perceptions or observations -- a syntropic process, teleological. Mathematicians create new concepts or ideas all the time from their perceptions -- a syntropic process. Cause is dual to effect -- causality loops (Karl Friston, neuroscientist). "The brain is a prediction machine" -- Karl Friston, neuroscientist. Making predictions to track targets, goals and objectives is a syntropic process, teleological. Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy). Information is dual:- Average information (entropy) is dual to co or mutual information (syntropy). Potential or imaginary information is dual to real or kinetic information. Potential or imaginary energy is dual to real or kinetic energy -- gravitational energy is dual. Sine is dual to cosine or dual sine -- the word co means mutual and implies duality. Vectors (contravariant) are dual to co vectors (covariant) -- dual bases or Riemann geometry is dual. Converting potential information into real information is a syntropic process. Integration (summations, syntropy) is dual to differentiation (differences, entropy). Your mind integrates information to form predictions (syntropy) -- integrated information theory. Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics! "Always two there are" -- Yoda. Integrating information is a syntropic process, teleological -- hence there is a 4th law of thermodynamics. "Entropy is a measure of randomness" -- Roger Penrose. Syntropy is a measure of order.
@@hyperduality2838 The comment you've provided touches on a wide range of concepts related to causality, duality, prediction, information theory, and thermodynamics. Here's Claude's attempt to explain it: The core idea seems to be that there is a duality or reciprocal relationship between causes and effects, the mind and the physical world, as well as different forms of information and energy. The key points are: 1. Causality works both ways - causes in the mind create effects in the physical world (regular causality), and causes in the physical world affect the mind (retro-causality or perception creating mental causes). 2. The mind engages in a "syntropic" or teleological process of creating causes from perceptions/observations, similar to how mathematicians create new concepts from their perceptions. This is contrasted with entropic processes. 3. Concepts like information, energy, sine/cosine, vectors/covectors exhibit a duality or reciprocal relationship between potential/imaginary and real/kinetic forms. 4. The mind integrates information to form predictions, relating to integrated information theory. 5. This integration or syntropy is seen as the dual of increasing entropy. This syntropic prediction process is proposed as a "4th law of thermodynamics" complementary to the entropic laws. Your comment draws parallels between various dualities in physics, math, and information theory to argue that the mind's predictive capabilities represent a syntropic, teleological process that is the reverse of entropic processes described by conventional thermodynamics. Overall, it presents an interesting philosophical perspective on the predictive nature of cognition and its relationship to causality, duality, and thermodynamics, though some of the connections may be speculative. Do you agree with this explanation of your post?
The existence of free will is a matter of framing. One can frame the question inside a deterministic system and argue against it, or frame it from a humanist philosophical perspective and argue for it. Both things can be true, but only one is useful!
Well, that didn't actually do any work to show we have free will. Our lecturer, Kevin Mitchell, goes through a tedious history of biological control systems, carefully documenting the things most of us already know. But we're still left starving for answers to why _that_ should count as free will. But that isn't to say the pro-free will case is uniquely challenged. We face a similar problem in the other direction with Robert Sapolsky, who tries to give evidence for determinism in his recent book. But why should we consider _that_ to be evidence that we _don't_ have free will? He just kind of feels that's what it means. It's this conceptual question where we need to spend some time, yet both sides are merely assuming their positions.
"Desire (intention or motivation) is the ultimate expression of freewill" -- Lucifer Morningstar. Freewill (randomness, choice) is dual to tyranny (order, lack of choice). Causes in your mind create effects in the real, physical world -- causality. Causes in the physical word effect your mind -- causality. Perceptions, measurements or effects create causes in your mind -- retro-causality! Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant. Your mind is creating causes from your perceptions or observations -- a syntropic process, teleological. Mathematicians create new concepts or ideas all the time from their perceptions -- a syntropic process. Cause is dual to effect -- causality loops (Karl Friston, neuroscientist). "The brain is a prediction machine" -- Karl Friston, neuroscientist. Making predictions to track targets, goals and objectives is a syntropic process, teleological. Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy). Information is dual:- Average information (entropy) is dual to co or mutual information (syntropy). Potential or imaginary information is dual to real or kinetic information. Potential or imaginary energy is dual to real or kinetic energy -- gravitational energy is dual. Sine is dual to cosine or dual sine -- the word co means mutual and implies duality. Vectors (contravariant) are dual to co vectors (covariant) -- dual bases or Riemann geometry is dual. Converting potential information into real information is a syntropic process. Integration (summations, syntropy) is dual to differentiation (differences, entropy). Your mind integrates information to form predictions (syntropy) -- integrated information theory. Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics! "Always two there are" -- Yoda. Integrating information is a syntropic process, teleological -- hence there is a 4th law of thermodynamics. "Entropy is a measure of randomness" -- Roger Penrose. Syntropy is a measure of order.
If you accept the obvious that you can build systems with arbitrary agency on top of deterministic laws (evolution did it, we do it in computers), it is really not that hard to understand.
@@pinkfloydhomer I'm not sure how much you're actually speaking to my concerns, here. First, I do already think free will exists. What I'm critical of is how well this talk zeroes in on where the disagreements are on this topic. Regarding what you think is obvious, I'm not sure how relevant that is. Our lecturer goes out of his way to argue against determinism. He not only cites the randomness of some quantum mechanics interpretations, but even says "classical physics, I would say is not deterministic, despite what you might think." My concern is that _most_ of what he says is common to every view. Consider this claim: "The final element in our evolution, I think really sets us apart and which really justifies the use of the term free will in humans as opposed to just agency is that we have an extra ability. We're not just thinking about stuff in the world. We're not just operating over sets of beliefs and sets of desires and so on. We have an extra level that lets us think about those thoughts, this level of metacognition." But it seems to me that those who reject free will typically accept the existence of this level of metacognition. And this is why I think more attention needs to be paid to the conceptual question of what it takes to count as having free will.
@@not_enough_space I think people are making this harder than it is. It is possible to make a system with arbitrary amounts of agency on top of simple laws. We do it all the time in computers. Evolution did it on earth. Is it magic to you how a piece of software makes all sorts of arbitrarily complex decisions based on arbitrary amounts of input from the environment or domain while still adhering to the laws of physics? I think the most important thing he points out in this talk is that not all causation comes bottom up. Macroscopic and emergent behavior can CONSTRAIN future histories of what can happen, and that is exactly where agency comes from. It's not a coincidence that evolution has favored more and more agency, input, modelling, thoughts, plans, goals, instincts etc. It is because an individual who happens to be better at those things are optimized or constrained to make a better choice and that further constrains what futures can happen, even when following the laws of physics. When you catch a falling apple, you constrain what can happen, if you haven't done it the apple would have hit the ground. A rock doesn't constrain much, at least not by agency. But a simple bacteria that have simple sensors and reactions can move towards nutrition or away from predatory microbes. Thereby restriction possible futures. Why would evolution favor having consciousness, having feelings, thoughts, a model of the environment, eyes etc if its not to make better decisions?
I can’t separate the debate on free will from that of a religious perspective. That’s the only basis for this debate, it has just grown from religious ‘scientists’ discussing it to include quantum mechanics as an explanation for their mythologies. In my eyes, it’s deeply saddening that such a science based channel is debating a religious ideology, and not only that, but also trying to base an innate religious view off of scientific understanding.
The word purpose can be used in different ways: 1. Function - as in "what is the purpose of water in water color painting". The function of dissolving the pigment/paint so that it can be picked up by the brush and applied to the paper with varying degree of opacity. 2. Reason/Intent - as in "what is the purpose of your visit to united states?". For business. 3. Goal - as in "what is the purpose of your life?". To eradicate the poverty. It seems that the these three meanings are mixed up to make the argument. And this makes teleology crowd happy.
I thought his arguments were totally unconvincing and his recounting of most of biology and evolution longwinded and unnecessary for his concluding remarks. I was going to say thanks to RI anyway for providing the presentation, but after consideration, I wish RI would have instead offered a presenter that had more cogent and compelling arguments, or if there are none, then choose a different topic. I do enjoy most of your presentations.
Just because quantum mechanics has a bit of randomness doesn't mean that a human can somehow make physics do something different. What was going to happen will always have happened.
This is an good explanation of how the illusion of free will works biologically. I presume that's what you mean, right? Because you haven't shown that we have actual free will.
Most philosophers agree with compatibilism, the view that free will and determinism are compatible. For anyone who is new to the free will debate, I encourage you to look into the philosophy of free will, not just scientific claims against free will. Science cannot tell you whether you have free will, it can only explain physical mechanisms. Existence of free will is a philosophical question that requires philosophical tools.
Yeah and Daniel dennet Said that if our society suddenly did not believe in free will it would cause a bunch of social problems. So he basically admits that if he preached against free will he would feel that he was contributing to possible future social problems. Seems pretty obvious to me that he knows there is no free will, but doesn't want to say it and feels it's better to find some logic twisting way to have some tiny link to free will.... Compatibilism.
First, it depends on how strict we define free will. Second, we also have to define what 'we' mean by the subject "self". Is it the conscious self only or more. To act upon our will is a will in itself no matter which way you bend it, and that will is never without precedence. Even if it's random, less free is the will
"Desire (intention or motivation) is the ultimate expression of freewill" -- Lucifer Morningstar. Freewill (randomness, choice) is dual to tyranny (order, lack of choice). Causes in your mind create effects in the real, physical world -- causality. Causes in the physical word effect your mind -- causality. Perceptions, measurements or effects create causes in your mind -- retro-causality! Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant. Your mind is creating causes from your perceptions or observations -- a syntropic process, teleological. Mathematicians create new concepts or ideas all the time from their perceptions -- a syntropic process. Cause is dual to effect -- causality loops (Karl Friston, neuroscientist). "The brain is a prediction machine" -- Karl Friston, neuroscientist. Making predictions to track targets, goals and objectives is a syntropic process, teleological. Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy). Information is dual:- Average information (entropy) is dual to co or mutual information (syntropy). Potential or imaginary information is dual to real or kinetic information. Potential or imaginary energy is dual to real or kinetic energy -- gravitational energy is dual. Sine is dual to cosine or dual sine -- the word co means mutual and implies duality. Vectors (contravariant) are dual to co vectors (covariant) -- dual bases or Riemann geometry is dual. Converting potential information into real information is a syntropic process. Integration (summations, syntropy) is dual to differentiation (differences, entropy). Your mind integrates information to form predictions (syntropy) -- integrated information theory. Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics! "Always two there are" -- Yoda. Integrating information is a syntropic process, teleological -- hence there is a 4th law of thermodynamics. "Entropy is a measure of randomness" -- Roger Penrose. Syntropy is a measure of order.
To me, free will exist because " doubt " rides along the stream of free will. You have the freedom to doubt what somebody tells you what they think is true. You can doubt what Robert Sapolsky says and you can doubt what Kevin Mitchell says it is because we have freedom to doubt that we have debates and arguments.
Free will is the illusion created by how we choose to respond to a situation that demands a response, or a motivation to act. That choice is determined by our character as defined by Schopenhauer: "Every human has a unique way of reacting to motives. This is called a character. It is the nature of the individual will. "Our choices are therefore predetermined by this character which is "determined by nature, not by the environment. Two people who have been raised in exactly the same environment will exhibit different characters." And to make it clearer that "will" is just a choice of action, a choice we in the end make always based on our character: "Are two actions possible to a given person under given circumstances? No. Only one action is possible" And finally: "Since a person's character remains unchanged, if the circumstances of his life were unchanged, could his life have been different? No."
@@endrankluvsda4loko172 How can you hate something that does not exist? And, please tell me which of the about 5000+ supposedly existing gods you are referring to.
With recent publication of Robert Sapolsky's book Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will -there has been a major hoopla about weather we have libertarian free will or not? And many of the philosopers and scientists think that we do not have libertarian free will - which I agree with. So far so so good. But then the debate moves to - like what Robert Sapolsky seems to argue that - because individuals do not have libertarian free will - and thus our decisions are determined by our circumstance, they should not be held responsible. I think that is a red herring. Let me explain... I think the connection of holding someone responsible for their decision depending on if they took that decision based on libertarian free will is a mistake. All members of our society have the same handicap that we do not have libertarian free will. We should simply accept that. The issue of holding someone responsible for their action should be based on the following: will the individual after having been found to be responsible for a bad decision or act, and punished for that, will change their behavior to not make the same bad decision or do the same bad act again. and even before being held responsible, does that individual themselves proclaims that they are capable of taking the responsibility for their decisions i.e. they claim to be a normal member of the society - what we call upstanding citizens. And in fact we already partly practice this by way of insanity defense. For example, if a defendant or their advocate is able to prove insanity, they are processed in a different way already in our legal system. BTW the reason we do not have libertarian free will is because we do not have a Laplace Daemon level knowledge of our own decision making process which is intrinsically deterministic. Secondly, while the machinery of the brain is deterministically busy making a decision, and being a single thread of consciousness, cannot also try to do the Laplace daemon like observation of the brain to see that in fact the decision was made deterministically. Also, in many cases we have to make relatively quick decisions in real time and have no time to waste to realize the deterministic nature of our decision making. But actually, if you stop and introspect your own decision making process (mindfulness of decision making) you will actually see the deterministic nature of your decision making was based on your memory, circumstance, desires, capabilities and social context you are in. Of course this is not the atomic level determinism that you will observer, but it will show you how the decision was made and why. Free Will - how to think about it Think of the free will as free-ish will or effective free will, and all issues around free will simply dissolve. If the decision originated inside our body/brain without external coercive influence, that is good enough. The pursuit of the theoretical idea of free will is like people needing the universe to have a purpose so that their life has a purpose. Why does it matter if the universe has a purpose or not for one to make and have a purpose in their own life. That should be good enough. Similarly, the worry about determinism related to free will is only significant, if one is actually a Laplace daemon. But we are clearly not Laplace daemons. Therefore the free will is effectively free and originates in our bodies (when no coercive forces are at play). Thus why worry if free will is not really free if the universe is deterministic or not. For all practical purposes, legal or otherwise what we call free will is effectively free. That is why I suggest to call free will i.e. free-ish will or effective free will or simply Effree will (spread the meme). But anyway that is semantic and we could just continue to use free will - and hold people responsible for their actions as long as we understand its nature as described above. The notion of libertarian freewill is hidden in the gap between what a Laplace daemon may know vs. what is possible for us to know when we make decisions. We make moral decisions because there is an implicit coercive force on our decision making based on our knowledge of what society has taught us what is moral. Of course sociopaths ignore that coercion and moral pioneers think for themselves what is moral and make decisions accordingly (when people first realized that slavery was bad) even when the rest of the society thought it was OK. Heck it was there in holy books even. Lastly, we are always constrained by what is possible. I cannot free will myself to get admitted into Harvard PhD program. I am limited by my abilities, desires, life history, economic status, country I am in and physical laws. BTW we can think of these as implicit coercive forces that constrain our free will anyway. I cannot free will myself to dodge a bullet fired at me at a short range. I think discussions about free will being libertarian or not are much ado about nothing in the end. The real issue is, can we hold a competent person responsible for their action for pragmatic purposes.
I've listened to the lecture. I still don't understand the reasoning. We are complex, the Universe is huge and very complex. So.. where are the actual arguments in favor of free will?
Freewill (randomness, choice) is dual to tyranny (order, lack of choice). Causes in your mind create effects in the real, physical world -- causality. Causes in the physical word effect your mind -- causality. Perceptions, measurements or effects create causes in your mind -- retro-causality! Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant. Your mind is creating causes from your perceptions or observations -- a syntropic process, teleological. Mathematicians create new concepts or ideas all the time from their perceptions -- a syntropic process. Cause is dual to effect -- causality loops (Karl Friston, neuroscientist). "The brain is a prediction machine" -- Karl Friston, neuroscientist. Making predictions to track targets, goals and objectives is a syntropic process, teleological. Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy). Information is dual:- Average information (entropy) is dual to co or mutual information (syntropy). Potential or imaginary information is dual to real or kinetic information. Potential or imaginary energy is dual to real or kinetic energy -- gravitational energy is dual. Sine is dual to cosine or dual sine -- the word co means mutual and implies duality. Vectors (contravariant) are dual to co vectors (covariant) -- dual bases or Riemann geometry is dual. Converting potential information into real information is a syntropic process. Integration (summations, syntropy) is dual to differentiation (differences, entropy). Your mind integrates information to form predictions (syntropy) -- integrated information theory. Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics! "Always two there are" -- Yoda. Integrating information is a syntropic process, teleological -- hence there is a 4th law of thermodynamics. "Entropy is a measure of randomness" -- Roger Penrose. Syntropy is a measure of order.
Robert Sapolsky would slaughter Kevin's argument in minutes. It does not account for why (for example) judges give harsher sentences for the same crime when they are hungry. So much more than what is presented goes into building the brain states discussed.
That’s just context that the conscious mind is probably not aware of. A crucial piece of information hasn’t been properly integrated in the subjective experience of the judge.
All behavior comes from motivation, which originates from processes in the brain. If you lose or damage this part of your brain, you lose the ability to make any decisions or movements. You enter a state of complete paralysis, despite having no dysfunction of motor system. It’s called akinetic mutism.
"Desire (intention or motivation) is the ultimate expression of freewill" -- Lucifer Morningstar. Freewill (randomness, choice) is dual to tyranny (order, lack of choice). Causes in your mind create effects in the real, physical world -- causality. Causes in the physical word effect your mind -- causality. Perceptions, measurements or effects create causes in your mind -- retro-causality! Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant. Your mind is creating causes from your perceptions or observations -- a syntropic process, teleological. Mathematicians create new concepts or ideas all the time from their perceptions -- a syntropic process. Cause is dual to effect -- causality loops (Karl Friston, neuroscientist). "The brain is a prediction machine" -- Karl Friston, neuroscientist. Making predictions to track targets, goals and objectives is a syntropic process, teleological. Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy). Information is dual:- Average information (entropy) is dual to co or mutual information (syntropy). Potential or imaginary information is dual to real or kinetic information. Potential or imaginary energy is dual to real or kinetic energy -- gravitational energy is dual. Sine is dual to cosine or dual sine -- the word co means mutual and implies duality. Vectors (contravariant) are dual to co vectors (covariant) -- dual bases or Riemann geometry is dual. Converting potential information into real information is a syntropic process. Integration (summations, syntropy) is dual to differentiation (differences, entropy). Your mind integrates information to form predictions (syntropy) -- integrated information theory. Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics! "Always two there are" -- Yoda. Integrating information is a syntropic process, teleological -- hence there is a 4th law of thermodynamics. "Entropy is a measure of randomness" -- Roger Penrose. Syntropy is a measure of order.
Dear oh dear, are we still debating this! It is patently obvious we have free will. We exercise it, minute by minute, day by day, week by week and year after year. Can we please put an end to this nonsense.
My psychology teacher at university spoke about how, in a sense, the personality of a child was being established even before the child was conceived. Parents bring in all kinds of baggage into raising a child, into how they decorate the future child's future room, their wants and fears... and it all builds up without even needing a child there in the first place, only to get dumped on the kid once they're born and during the rest of the parents' lives. It goes further than that, of course, because those parents had their own upbringing and they live in a society that also affects them, all influenced by the long histories of time and space. We don't have free will. We're a product of choices made long before us by people who weren't really choosing because the laws of physics dictated the outcomes anyway. We've never _had_ free will; it's an illusion. A convenient one, a necessary one, a useful illusion that lets us build up our society and helps us survive. We act as though we have free will, because we have no choice _but_ to act that way, and we treat each other as though we have free will because doing otherwise would not be beneficial to us, and so circumstances have made us embrace the illusion. I know the common objections simpletons will raise at this point. "So we shouldn't punish anyone for stealing cars, because they don't have a choice!", or worse examples that miss the entire point: we don't have a choice but to punish offenders who commit crimes for the same reason we pretend to have free will: it's USEFUL. When a criminal gets put in jail for committing a crime they didn't use free will to commit, we don't have free will to put them in jail, either. It's all an illusion, but it means that we don't stand by helplessly wringing our hands while the world burns around us. We could, of course; we could choose to let criminals do as they will. We'd all end up dead and the problem would be as obvious as it would then be moot. I find it useful to not live in an imploded dead society because if I did find it useful I wouldn't be around to find it _anything._ If we all die->we wouldn't be around. If we don't all die->we've found a useful way to keep going. It's dead simple, really. "Free will" is just one of those vapid expressions that simpletons like to huddle up to, like those lunatics who fondle crystals for their "healing energy".
The illusion of free will disrupts the flow of life. Anytime you superimpose what you call free will over the movement of life it disrupts the harmony of it. All physical reality is made of the same atoms in various arrangements. If it weren't for our recognition of the space between us as insignificant, we would see that everything is one.
This isn't a presentation, it's a sermon. Not once does he describe the mechanism that would give rise to free will in any meaningful way. The conclusion at the end is an excellent example of circular reasoning: How could we have free will if we don't have free will? Sabine Hossenfelder's take on the subject might be less appealing, but nothing I heard here has convinced me she's wrong. Determinism + random quantum fluctuations ≠ free will.
When everything is deterministic, except for the part that is random, there's no room for free will in physics. That's one of the main arguments against free will which he skipped over. If he's this late to the party, he should at least address what has been said before.
@@Dowskiify I doubt if it can say all is detrministc. Becouse of quantum undeterministic, chaos and ramdomnes of separated processes effect. And there are some separation of the environment and biological object then biological object lives some own live. Second level of independece is mind that interact beatvean environment and inner biology trying to some rule both
@@brimantas "free will is our ability to act or think thoughts regardless of external circumstances or same internal circumstances" I'd agree with the definition, but I've never met someone who could do that.
@@Surefire99 people can do many things, for example many people can walk against the wind or climb a mountain. In the same way, people can suffer and not defecate only when a person wants to, and his mind knows how to control all this to a certain level, and this is a certain degree of freedom.
This felt like an ode to Daniel Dennett and his Elbow Room argument Saying we have free will is like saying "humans can fly" well that's a loaded statement, such a thing requires tools and time and innovation We may not have Free Will but precious "Moments" We may not have Free Will but it can be cheapened
Thoroughly enjoyable, thank you. I remained in the Superpostion of being a passive listening spectator until the end of the presentation....then i chose to put my fingers to the keys and typed "To be or not to be, that is the question".
I think it’s both. And our choices are some times tests. The most important decisions we make are the ones when no one is looking. But I think you need to think of our universe in a multiverse that is branching like the Mandelbrot set and bifurcation events are the tests depending on your choice leads you through a gate that can have many paths to and your choices between the gates are free will and do determine what path you take between the gates or nodes that you must pass through and are given a few options and depending on that choice sets you on different paths and works with entropy by taking chaos back into a kinda reset but all so isn’t. If that makes sense. Guess go look up a 2D and 3D model of a Mandelbrot bifurcation events and you will see what is talking about. And these tests can be small or easy in a way but you know some how the choice is yours no one but you will know do you still do the right thing or not and idk how to explain it. But all so I do believe in law of attraction and they have proven our consciousness does affect physical matter so we do have some control over our reality. Like hypnosis and witchcraft work cause the person believes it works in short. But our energy fields are influenced and interact with every thing and every one else’s energy fields. And as Tesla famously quoted once we think of the universe in terms of frequency and vibration we will have the keys to unlock it. And that’s why we vibe with others or feel off by some one that hasn’t done anything directly or said anything weird but we just feel something off. That’s our energy field interacting and resonating or clashing and interfering with each other.
Ya know The Three Stooges short where they're plumbers, and Curly keeps adding pipes to stop a leak and water keeps flowing out? Mitchell does this with complexity. No matter how much complexity tack on, the root cause is Determinism.
Like the saying goes, it's all semantics, as well as everything's relative. Personally, I don't believe that we do. We're bound to limitations of all kinds. We're "free" within a physical, cultural, economic, legal (etc) system. As a good elder friend once said to me, specifically about marriage, "It's a great institution...if you like institutions." Flies in a web, folks. Wind-up toys.
All that evolution, millions of years of random changes coupled with survival probability, all those complex levels of abstraction and metacognition, just to arrive to an irrefutable belief the Earth is flat.
I think he is wrong. STAGES: 1) Life. 2) Sensors combined with actors. 3) Reactions (gene encoded memories). 4) Short term memory allowing reactions to change. Still gene encoded memories. 5) A physics engine allowing for predictions. Reactions based on assumptions. First simple model of the world. Ability to learn dynamically. 6) A logical system (nothing more than an enhancement of the physics engine) capable of logically deciding. Reactions based on thinking. A complex model of the world. Learning and logical inter-species communication. 7) The logical reasoning part discovers itself in the model of the world it maintains => Consciousness without free will. EXAMPLE: If I have 2 neural system. System A makes complex but reactive decisions. System B can observe System A and interpret its activity. What would system B say? It would say something like: “System A is considering option 1. Now System A is considering option 2. And now System A is weighing what is best for it short therm. System A leans towards A. But the logically reasoning part of System A now overrules that decision because it has determined that option 2 is better long term and finally System A chooses option 2.”. Now put System A and B together in 1 computer. Now System A+B have a common model of the world around it. And when System A+B discovers itself in the model it maintains, it discovers the “I am”. Now System A+B would say: “I am considering option 1. Now I am considering option 2. And now I am weighing what is best for me short therm. I lean towards 1. But logically I think that option 2 is better for me long term and finally I choose option 2.”. Now where is the free will in that? GOLF: He speaks about “I decide to play golf”. What if I would destroy his logical reasoning brain and connect what is left to another logical reasoning brain? It would say “he wants to play golf”. Now I place the new logical brain back into his skull and make sure it is aware that it is 1 organism. Now it says “I want to play golf”. That is what Sam Harris meant.
It is astonishing how many hard determinists in this comment section are hating on a bloke they feel can’t control his actions. Hypocrisy at its finest.
Descartes contended that rational thought was the necessary and sufficient condition of the soul, and that the pineal gland was the seat of rational thought. The pineal gland held this seat because it was thought to be the only midline structure that was single and mobile. He was worng. This is the most unintelligent talk on royal institute.
We have free will. We are like fish, swimming in free will. Some fish just don’t believe in water, and that’s ok. They have fish universities to live in, and be love and accepted just as they are. The special fish. 🐠
This talk is rife with assumptions. To sum up, he assumes that: 1: A system must either contain all information about its infinite future states or not be deterministic. He then uses this assumption to argue that Classical Physics is indeterministic without providing any example of where Classical Physics fails to deterministically predict a classical phenomenon. 2: That small scale behavior in neurons does not affect large scale behavior. This has no bearing on free will, but it seems like he believes its an important point. 3: That there exists something called "Meaning" that governs the behavior of neurons. He does not explain what this "meaning" is physically. He does not provide a mechanism for it to interract with neurons. He claims that this bypasses Descartes' problems with dualism, but does not justify this claim
Paradoxes = duality. Freewill (randomness, choice) is dual to tyranny (order, lack of choice). Causes in your mind create effects in the real, physical world -- causality. Causes in the physical word effect your mind -- causality. Perceptions, measurements or effects create causes in your mind -- retro-causality! Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant. Your mind is creating causes from your perceptions or observations -- a syntropic process, teleological. Mathematicians create new concepts or ideas all the time from their perceptions -- a syntropic process. Cause is dual to effect -- causality loops (Karl Friston, neuroscientist). "The brain is a prediction machine" -- Karl Friston, neuroscientist. Making predictions to track targets, goals and objectives is a syntropic process, teleological. Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy). Information is dual:- Average information (entropy) is dual to co or mutual information (syntropy). Potential or imaginary information is dual to real or kinetic information. Potential or imaginary energy is dual to real or kinetic energy -- gravitational energy is dual. Sine is dual to cosine or dual sine -- the word co means mutual and implies duality. Vectors (contravariant) are dual to co vectors (covariant) -- dual bases or Riemann geometry is dual. Converting potential information into real information is a syntropic process. Integration (summations, syntropy) is dual to differentiation (differences, entropy). Your mind integrates information to form predictions (syntropy) -- integrated information theory. Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics! "Always two there are" -- Yoda. Integrating information is a syntropic process, teleological -- hence there is a 4th law of thermodynamics. "Entropy is a measure of randomness" -- Roger Penrose. Syntropy is a measure of order.
@@ParadoxProblems There are new laws of physics that you may not be aware of:- Real is dual to imaginary -- complex numbers are dual. All numbers fall within the complex plane hence all numbers are dual! The integers are self dual as they are their own conjugates. Syntax is dual to semantics -- language or communication. If mathematics is a language then it is dual. Electro is dual to magnetic -- photons, light or pure energy is dual -- bi-vectors are dual. Vectors (contravariant) are dual to co or dual vectors (covariant) -- dual bases or Riemann geometry is dual. Symmetry (Bosons) is dual to anti-symmetry (Fermions) -- quantum or wave/particle duality. "Always two there are" -- Yoda. Energy is duality, duality is energy. The conservation of duality (energy) will be know as the 5th law of thermodynamics -- Generalized Duality! Energy is dual to mass -- Einstein. Dark energy is dual to dark matter. Synchronic points/lines (positive singularities) are dual to enchronic points/lines (negative singularities). Points are dual to lines -- the principle of duality in geometry. Everything in physics is made out of energy (duality). Time contraction is dual to length dilation -- the twin paradox. Time dilation is dual to length contraction -- Einstein, special relativity. Space is dual to time -- Einstein. Paradoxes are dualities!
@@ParadoxProblems Certainty (predictability, syntropy) is dual to uncertainty (unpredictability, entropy) -- the Heisenberg certainty/uncertainty principle. Information is dual -- syntropy (order) is dual to entropy (randomness)!
By definition free will does not exist because "free will" means, "to act without external influence", which is impossible. Humans can make more or less favorable decisions for society, based on their conditioning. Decisions will always be dictated levels of nutrition, hormones, the immediate environmental conditions, family history over generations. There is no way to act externally to your environment, but better disions can be made with the proper conditioning.
I would say free will not "act without external influence" but can resist to external circumstances. Exemple- can walk against wind , becouse of internal energy it is siples biological level of freedom, will it is to make decision to go there (for meet the need) in prission you canot go to meet some needs (no some freedom). Nutrition, hormones brain and body functionig it is parts of man some little councscious, more things not counscious, but have some freedom to act in environement. It is question af limt that divides me ant not me.
We need to explain the emergence of consciousness first, then we can address free will. This would eliminate the silly headlines on videos I've seen like: "You have no free will at all..." Everyone knows in their heart of hearts that we have free will, so such inane headlines undermine credibility.
It is really not that hard if you think it through: ⦁ You do what you do because of how you are. So, you are responsible for what you do because you are responsible for how you are. (Freewill) ⦁ But, you cannot be responsible for what you do because you are not responsible for how you are. (Determinism) ⦁ Why are you not responsible for what you do? (Challenge Free will) ⦁ Ask the question, “What would it take to be responsible for how we are?” The answer is that you must be able to make yourself the way you are. ⦁ However, you can never make yourself the way you are because that would mean that you already knew beforehand what you want yourself to be. ⦁ In order to know what you want yourself to be, you would have to have some sort of “self” within yourself guiding you to do what you want beforehand. ⦁ Who would be telling yourself what to do before you knew it? Another self? Who told that self? ⦁ You cannot be the cause of yourself, but you must be if you take responsibility for your actions. So, there cannot be free will. ⦁ We cannot help but to believe in freewill, but it must be an illusion.
some scientist say genetics are the cause of our behavior, but what gene gives us inner strength? What gene is the cause of someone succumbing to take drugs and drink alcohol to the extent that their health is seriously affected? Can they prove this or is it just assumption? I think genetics being the cause of our behavior is just assumption.
He seems to be trying to hand-wave agency into the complexity of the system without any justification or evidence. I don't think he really understands information or that the complexity of a given state really can be encoded in some relatively basic behaviors of matter/energy. (Think Conway's Game of Life on a vastly larger scale.) The Unpredictability of certain systems does not somehow produce a magical force which nudges outcomes in one direction or another. (Edited for clarity.)
Freewill (randomness, choice) is dual to tyranny (order, lack of choice). Causes in your mind create effects in the real, physical world -- causality. Causes in the physical word effect your mind -- causality. Perceptions, measurements or effects create causes in your mind -- retro-causality! Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant. Your mind is creating causes from your perceptions or observations -- a syntropic process, teleological. Mathematicians create new concepts or ideas all the time from their perceptions -- a syntropic process. Cause is dual to effect -- causality loops (Karl Friston, neuroscientist). "The brain is a prediction machine" -- Karl Friston, neuroscientist. Making predictions to track targets, goals and objectives is a syntropic process, teleological. Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy). Information is dual:- Average information (entropy) is dual to co or mutual information (syntropy). Potential or imaginary information is dual to real or kinetic information. Potential or imaginary energy is dual to real or kinetic energy -- gravitational energy is dual. Sine is dual to cosine or dual sine -- the word co means mutual and implies duality. Vectors (contravariant) are dual to co vectors (covariant) -- dual bases or Riemann geometry is dual. Converting potential information into real information is a syntropic process. Integration (summations, syntropy) is dual to differentiation (differences, entropy). Your mind integrates information to form predictions (syntropy) -- integrated information theory. Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics! "Always two there are" -- Yoda. Integrating information is a syntropic process, teleological -- hence there is a 4th law of thermodynamics. "Entropy is a measure of randomness" -- Roger Penrose. Syntropy is a measure of order.
Yes this! Completely agree. Adding or identifying extra steps in a biological process, dus not suddenly invoke free will. It just makes it a more complex automatic process. Also randomness or unpredictability does not automatically imply free will. Especially when the unpredictability stems from a lack of information and technology/capacity.
@@AwassenaarXDA Yes, I never understand why people think that randomness (still well defined by insanely accurate probabilities) somehow imparts free will. It would be like biasing the distribution curve of a chaotic physical system to a single outcome by mere force of will. That's not free will, that's telekinesis.
All that we are is the result of what we have thought. It is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. The Buddha. People think and believe within their life's programming. Our agreements, as it were. People don't free think. They float within programmed parameters and think they are exercising free will. Especially Christians. They don't chose. They just accept.
The argument is that there is free will, and the whole lecture tries to explain the mechanics of the physical world in a way that specifically convinces that there is no free will. And also, the explanations, in my opinion, are not precise; for example, the example of the worm that because it lacks a sense of sight, it cannot plan ahead... Planning ahead requires addressing memory and is not related to the sense of sight... A person blind from birth does not plan for the future? In conclusion: the lecture is not particularly good, but I did take a few things to think about from it.
He makes the obvious case that causal determinism is nonsense, but he won't go all the way and just say it out loud. Causation, determinism and reductionism are the triad of mental functions that most people somehow believe are organizing principles of nature.
50:06 That is exactly why I don't play golf. While other people playing golf believe getting the ball into the tiny hole is quite an achievement. Because it is hard to do and because it usually does not really matter who wins, one can spend some time outside with friends. So it shows a palette of already four choices available which do require agency (will decision between pairs) at the background of what worldview and expectation of reward is believed in. Quantum states in evolution including opposites are a way (probability set up) to figure out what reward systems are more or less productive and can also change over time. When a first action is taken this will have its own new result, which could not have been learned before in the world. So it cannot have been predetermined in what next level decisions would be made, when the problem or opportunity did not exist before. The world has no information about.
When I see a dog change from begging from me and go to another. I always wonder how much probability the dog is calculating. I find it hard to believe a cosmic ray caused the action.
Some good points for a discussion, but mostly I find it rather speculative. Definitions are weak or absent, but I guess that is a general issue with most if not all discussions of free will and consciousness.
In the name of God, The Gracious, The merciful, All these you say is not the end of knowledge to conclude a vague claim. First you have not explained what you mean by free will. If you mean you can not choose anything by yourself so what is the meaning of learning then. Actually learning is based on free will and when you learn something, you learn to choose what to do and what not to do.
Free will? That sounds like somethin’ that fancy city folk talk about. But down here, we know that you gotta do what’s right and listen to your mama. Ain’t no need for all that complicated talk when you got your mama tellin’ you what’s good for you. - chatgpt as mama boucher
still confused about the free will argument. how do you have psychology, neuroscience, psychiatry, if our actions/programming are not directly influenced by our upbringing, env, genetics and current chemical brain state? If our actions were truly random and had no cause, how could you ever right a coherent book? it would follow no logic, as all results would be truly free from any prior cause.
@@BenByford it's so hardwired into the natural world, that a recent paper analyses a series of experiments where evolution, natural selection and self-replication emerge without pre-set rules or directives from randomly generated systems after a few millions iterations. Anton Petrov talks about this paper in his most recent video. You can find it in his channel.
He is referring to Peter Ulric Tse's argument about criterial causation. Counterfactual causation is a category in the set of causations which Dr. Mitchel is referring to. I think there is a video which Dr. Tse talk about these categories
Real attempt in direction of understanding the role that free will and agency play in our existence.A refreshing take and departure from the norm of saying free will doesnt exist just because we dont understand it .Thanks for the amazing work youre doing and sharing it with us But why is Sam Harris here.Is he that important?
I'm afraid, Violette, that Sam Harris is still important. He is one of the clearest contemporary thinkers. But he is not into deepties and coddling the audience. Regarding his views on free will, these are evidence-based but I do hope he, Sapolsky and other heavyweight determinists will one day be proven wrong. But data is still on the determinists' side. Hope one day facts may change in favor of free will.
Free will seems to be Freeing the Willing....or, Will a freedom by paying a Fee, through inter Dependence. It's at action level, we have a Flexibility than freedom. That's like a probability of various Actions, within the given limitations. Ability to exercise Randomness??? That sounds like AI. Past & future cannot be determined by us, as it involves various element beyond us. Flexible will???
Those are really interesting points, I'd advise you to watch to the end instead of just the first few minutes then dashing to the comments section and moving on.
You may be asking too much. I haven't made it to he end of the video yet (though I will) but his title makes it hard not to jump right to a conclusion.
It's the same basic mistakes and confusions I've heard repeated so many times by now... How many times do I need to listen to someone not grasping that a chaotic system, although unpredictable, is fully deterministic. Just one example...
@@geertdepuydt2683 I don't know, maybe if you watched a bit further you might have listened to the presenter specifically saying that is not the argument he is making. If you feel like there is nothing more to consider, then you are indeed wasting your time here.
This presentation however, is inconclusive.... And intentionally complex to confuse people. All he did was explain a few concepts, and present few quotes from notable people.
"Desire (intention or motivation) is the ultimate expression of freewill" -- Lucifer Morningstar. Freewill (randomness, choice) is dual to tyranny (order, lack of choice). Causes in your mind create effects in the real, physical world -- causality. Causes in the physical word effect your mind -- causality. Perceptions, measurements or effects create causes in your mind -- retro-causality! Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant. Your mind is creating causes from your perceptions or observations -- a syntropic process, teleological. Mathematicians create new concepts or ideas all the time from their perceptions -- a syntropic process. Cause is dual to effect -- causality loops (Karl Friston, neuroscientist). "The brain is a prediction machine" -- Karl Friston, neuroscientist. Making predictions to track targets, goals and objectives is a syntropic process, teleological. Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy). Information is dual:- Average information (entropy) is dual to co or mutual information (syntropy). Potential or imaginary information is dual to real or kinetic information. Potential or imaginary energy is dual to real or kinetic energy -- gravitational energy is dual. Sine is dual to cosine or dual sine -- the word co means mutual and implies duality. Vectors (contravariant) are dual to co vectors (covariant) -- dual bases or Riemann geometry is dual. Converting potential information into real information is a syntropic process. Integration (summations, syntropy) is dual to differentiation (differences, entropy). Your mind integrates information to form predictions (syntropy) -- integrated information theory. Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics! "Always two there are" -- Yoda. Integrating information is a syntropic process, teleological -- hence there is a 4th law of thermodynamics. "Entropy is a measure of randomness" -- Roger Penrose. Syntropy is a measure of order.
We have free will, but doesn't mean that events don't happen out of our individual control because they do. A choice I make affects you, a choice you make affects me, and if there were no humans on Earth there would be still be plants, animals, organisms, life on other planets that would make individual decisions and actions that would be affecting each other. Life is complicated. The comment section on some of these videos (like the one about the history of Science in Islam) really shows how dogmatic, unaware, and arrogant people can be.
I'm sorry to say, you seem to have understood absolutely nothing about the arguments against free will. You call others dogmatic and arrogant, but you're the one insulting and stating your opinion as fact without bringing any proof.
Funny you should say that, even though there is no free will it still makes sense for me to treat myself like I do have free will but others like they don't. Trying to maximize both compassion and self regulation ( what others would call personal responsibility).
It was an excellent presentation, but I too am not convinced of an existence of free will. I think that to find the answer to this problem, we probably need a higher form of intelligence and a better understanding of the complexity of those connections formed by our neurons. But if it would be deterministic, the questions still persists: Why are we conscious then? Why do we experience? Even if Consciousness would be a filter for all the unnecessary stuff not to concentrate on. Why are we aware of it? This should be useless if we can't take any advantage out of it. And why don't we experience the unconscious stuff like regulating hormone levels or something like that? Or is there maybe more consciousness in us than we assume? Maybe we have a consciousness inside us for every more or less complex process, but those don't communicate and thus we never have gotten to know them? Or maybe consciousness is much more common than we think it is and it doesn't even need life. And we just don't know, because we can't communicate with anything else than other human beings. Whatever it is. I think that we still lack some knowledge here and are limited to only our senses, that can't pick up on this stuff.
I enjoyed every minute of this video, not because it argued convincingly that we have free will but rather, it demonstrated perfectly the distance people would go to convince themselves that they have free will.
exactly
I see it the other way around. Sapolsky and others. They sacrifice they energy to claim we are not free. Endless metaphysical debate though...
This is a summary of the video:
• The debate around free will centers on whether our decisions are predetermined by prior causes (determinism) or if there is true agency and ability to make free choices.
• Even simple organisms like bacteria exhibit primitive forms of agency by integrating information about their environment and internal states to guide adaptive behaviors.
• The evolution of nervous systems allowed more complex integration and decoupling of sensory information from motor responses, enabling learning, planning for the future, and representing abstract concepts.
• Human cognition goes beyond just reacting to stimuli - we can ponder our own thoughts (metacognition), reason about our reasons, and collectively coordinate behavior through cultural evolution.
• Free will is an evolved biological capacity that gives us degrees of freedom, within constraints of our histories/natures, to intentionally direct our future by integrating information and rationally guiding our behavior.
All the latter sounds determined by the former
I read Kevin Mitchell's book and it only swayed me more toward free will skepticism. Ironically, he admits that he finds compatibilism unconvincing. But despite a sincere attempt to think outside the box his arguments are basically compatibilist. I recommend the book Just Deserts by Gregg Caruso and Daniel Dennett. Still have not heard a good argument against Caruso's views. Whether or not we live in a deterministic universe, it seems like everything we are and do really comes down to constitutive luck and present luck. Even how much we are able to counteract luck with our control comes down to how we've been constructed by luck.
I found the neurobiological parts of this lecture fascinating, but the argument for free will was deeply unsatisfactory, and possibly circular -- meaning and agency are assumed and then used to support the concept of free will. There is also an unspoken assumption that "metacognition" and "meaning" are in some way special and do not in themselves arise from the physical state of the brain. The argument boils down to "we make decisions, therefore we have free will" -- of course we make decisions, and these appear to be free will, but these decisions at time t arise from the state of the brain (including meaning and metacognition) at t-1. How can it be otherwise, unless we postulate some kind of extramaterial influence?
Et tu, Descartes?
I like what you have written. In my opinion it is an unnecessary discussion. I don't care if free will in our species exists or not. We ARE biological machines whether we like it or not. There is NO evidence for how we operate beyond the brain. We are what we are free will or not. It seems to me one of those 1st world debates that is not relevant to people struggling to survive.
Causes in your mind create effects in the real, physical world -- causality.
Causes in the physical word effect your mind -- causality.
Perceptions, measurements or effects create causes in your mind -- retro-causality!
Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant.
Your mind is creating causes from your perceptions or observations -- a syntropic process, teleological.
Mathematicians create new concepts or ideas all the time from their perceptions -- a syntropic process.
Cause is dual to effect -- causality loops (Karl Friston, neuroscientist).
"The brain is a prediction machine" -- Karl Friston, neuroscientist.
Making predictions to track targets, goals and objectives is a syntropic process, teleological.
Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy).
Information is dual:-
Average information (entropy) is dual to co or mutual information (syntropy).
Potential or imaginary information is dual to real or kinetic information.
Potential or imaginary energy is dual to real or kinetic energy -- gravitational energy is dual.
Sine is dual to cosine or dual sine -- the word co means mutual and implies duality.
Vectors (contravariant) are dual to co vectors (covariant) -- dual bases or Riemann geometry is dual.
Converting potential information into real information is a syntropic process.
Integration (summations, syntropy) is dual to differentiation (differences, entropy).
Your mind integrates information to form predictions (syntropy) -- integrated information theory.
Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics!
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
Integrating information is a syntropic process, teleological -- hence there is a 4th law of thermodynamics.
@@robguyatt9602they're probably not here. They're out surviving. However, when a society has transcended those worries, they, like us, turn to philosophical enquiry.
@@jakebarnes28 Yes, true. But this is one philosophical argument of no value in my opinion. I do like philosophy, don't get me wrong. But some modern philosophy is just intellectual wanking.
Staircase
Without thinking answer the following.
"There is a staircase. Does it go up or down?"
When I asked myself this question with a friend, we both answered. I then wondered that since I have never before answered this question, how did I answer it? Should my answer had been option 3, "I dont know"? Was some unconscious bias or my mood at play? My imagination generating an internal scenario full of my biases and experiences?
Yet, the question was posed and in a matter of seconds without knowing how, I uttered an answer "Up".
We postulated the following, I heard the question, had no way of answering it, yet my brain without conscious thought assessed the question and from learnt experience picked one of the two options and fed the answer back to me and I spoke the answer out loud.
So, this is where we thought it got interesting. Since I didn't consciously answer that question, who did? My brain answered the question by itself?
Which leads onto the question, So who is driving this body? Because it certainly wasnt me just then...
Which leads to, if the brain can answer without "me" and is doing so purely from prior experience which you could argue is weighted... so in essence, is not random and is effectively just reflecting what it has seen... hmmm.
The big question is... where is free will? I wasnt even involved in the answer and the non random weighted brain response suggests that I am only an observer.
Ergo, freewill is more like a "post action" observation.
There should have been questions by audience. Good talk, bad argument. Great explanation of the premises, conclusion just doesn't follow.
for the world to be deterministic, there's no need for the initial state to encode infinite information. just need to encode the finite initial state and (deterministic) physical laws. these together can generate the seemingly infinite complexity we observe. think of Conway's game of life.
Yeah I didn't agree with that either.
That little room that quantam mechanics is supposed to give still doesn't give a mechanism for the free agent. It is actually the second choice which was non deterministic quantam mechanics leads to random universe. There was hand wavy explanation at best. In an attempt to deny magic of "God", they just gave it to the free agent. They never explained a material mechanism that is responsible for free will other than saying quantam mechanics allows for it? How does it do that? Quantam mechanics is completely random. How does it end up making one choice over the other? Just because a system is complex doesn't mean it is non deterministic. I also saw the use of chaos theory to undermine determinism. Chaos theory literally means "sensitive dependence on initial conditions". Chaotic systems are deterministic. What we don't have usually is enough information to predict their behaviour. I'll even argue that we can never know exactly how much information is needed to completely determine a chaotic system. But that doesn't mean that the opposite is true. I would've loved to bring in some perspectives from Eastern philosophy but it will be taken as hoaky at best and not rigorous.
I mean didn't he specifically say he is not making that argument? Showed a meme about it, even.
@@edumazieriThe argument I am referring to starts at 30:02.
@@mayurvashishth1484 Cool so you're about half way then.
@@edumazieriYou know what. You were right. I actually saw the entire thing and it is even worse. He started with making an argument on the basis of quantam mechanics and then completely abandoned it. He says that because we have goals and long term planning, that we are free agents without entertaining the idea that our goals and long terms plans are also dependent on the underlying biological mechanism. He himself actually concedes his argument when he said that damage to PFC causes issues with regulating behaviour required for long term planning and goal setting. If he wants to start the argument by saying that a free agent exists then sure anything can be explained. Everything he posits that a free agent can easily be explained by mechanisms. Even a small convolutional neural network can detect different types of letters and numbers but we don't say that it has sentience. Maybe I am misinterpreting his entire argument and would like to know what you saw in his argument that is actually convincing.
@@mayurvashishth1484 at the beginning he talks about how his argument is a third option, neither random indeterminism nor reductionist determinism.
To be fair, it ain't a third option, it's merely a slightly different perspective. He makes it clearer at the end, "Free" will? obviously not, clearly there are mechanisms / physical processes. It's just that he considers the emergent quality of the mechanisms to be a sort of agency. I'm not saying I agree, and he's the one making that argument not me.
But what I don't get is what are people who are so absolutely certain of their own view on the topic doing here (not talking about you specifically, you're at least engaging with the content)?
Whatever mechanism is determining that behavior is clearly not working very well for them.
I'm with Robert Sapolsky and Sam Harris on this one.
Those two make good cases for determinism, but I think Kevin Mitchell makes a well thought out convincing case for the evolution of free will.
@@Everyman777 How exactly though. Randomness or unpredictability might undermine determinism but that doesn't give you free will either.
It's really very simple. Free will exists, that's why evolution had created species with more and more agency. I am not sure why people get caught up in the misconception that you cannot build arbitrary agency on top of simple laws.
@@pinkfloydhomer how do you define "agency".
Evolution created more sophisticated input-output systems but those still produce outputs based on the inputs.
@@kuri7154 they do, but that process is agency. It can have arbitrarily great agency, it can take into account a myriad of things, it can even evolve to create a consciousness with logic and feelings and experience and memory and goals and rewards and penalties and even randomness. That process produces the choice, the output, it might even produce a different result if run again, hard to do with a human, easy to do with a computer.
I don't know why people falsely assume that choices can't be made on top of rules. It easily can, computers do it all the time while adhering to all laws of physics. It is not magic, it is very well understood.
We might not have free will but we can always free Willy.
Orcas out for Harambe.
Not if Willy doesn't want to be free ! ! !
Our goals are not set by us, they are set by advertising, you play golf because it is projected as a cool sport and you invested time in it and enjoyed it. If you had never been exposed to golf, if golf was not an option, you would not create it.
Peer pressure, advertising, social media bots all impact on our freedom.
To be free we need to not be influenced by anything other than our own internal thoughts.
In reality we are influenced by any input, we have less and less control over what that is, social media ripped up the rule book of publishing truth, now we swim in a swap of misinformation, conspiracy theories, marketing, propaganda and lies.
The best arguments for the lack of free will I've heard.
Then you have trouble hearing. Free will is obviously and trivially real.
@@pinkfloydhomer Impressive argument right there. Care to enlighten us peasants for whom this is not obvious as of why that it?
@@Silent_300 you can read my elaborated replies in these comment threads. Here is one: @kuri7154 they do, but that process is agency. It can have arbitrarily great agency, it can take into account a myriad of things, it can even evolve to create a consciousness with logic and feelings and experience and memory and goals and rewards and penalties and even randomness. That process produces the choice, the output, it might even produce a different result if run again, hard to do with a human, easy to do with a computer.
I don't know why people falsely assume that choices can't be made on top of rules. It easily can, computers do it all the time while adhering to all laws of physics. It is not magic, it is very well understood.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who got that impression.
Free will is real.
How does a computer make choices? It does it because it is designed to test conditions and do one thing or else the other. We understand how it works, even if the computer, by design, is deterministic. It is obvious to me that nature and evolution have done the same.
Why has evolution chosen adaptations that react to environments? Because the organism then makes better choices that increases chance for survival and reproduction.
Why make something that can react and make choices if those choices could never alter behavior?
This whole problem has been convoluted by bad philosophers. There is no contradiction between being a deterministic clockwork that follows the laws of physics and then a emergent entity that can make choices on top of that. Computers do it all the time.
Now, I know that we are not totally freewilled, that a lot of things happen subconsciously and before we perceive making a choice and all that. But that's not the same as no free will and just being a deterministic clockwork.
It doesn't matter if an action is a result of a simple reaction or a "holistic" one. Still, every step in that process is governed by the laws of physics. He can make up any arguments he wants, but that does not discount the facts. There is no free will as a thing in itself, that's just another layer of complexity that still obeys the laws of physics. After 20 minutes in, it's clear to me that the rest is not worth watching, because it is founded on faulty reasoning.
When he said something like "but bacteria don't normally make decisions in a lab and they're not just automatic and mechanistic, they also integrate information from the past" like, ok but draw a box around that extra complexity and explain how it's not just another mechanism... Point to the FREE part of its free will.
Freewill (randomness, choice) is dual to tyranny (order, lack of choice).
Causes in your mind create effects in the real, physical world -- causality.
Causes in the physical word effect your mind -- causality.
Perceptions, measurements or effects create causes in your mind -- retro-causality!
Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant.
Your mind is creating causes from your perceptions or observations -- a syntropic process, teleological.
Mathematicians create new concepts or ideas all the time from their perceptions -- a syntropic process.
Cause is dual to effect -- causality loops (Karl Friston, neuroscientist).
"The brain is a prediction machine" -- Karl Friston, neuroscientist.
Making predictions to track targets, goals and objectives is a syntropic process, teleological.
Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy).
Information is dual:-
Average information (entropy) is dual to co or mutual information (syntropy).
Potential or imaginary information is dual to real or kinetic information.
Potential or imaginary energy is dual to real or kinetic energy -- gravitational energy is dual.
Sine is dual to cosine or dual sine -- the word co means mutual and implies duality.
Vectors (contravariant) are dual to co vectors (covariant) -- dual bases or Riemann geometry is dual.
Converting potential information into real information is a syntropic process.
Integration (summations, syntropy) is dual to differentiation (differences, entropy).
Your mind integrates information to form predictions (syntropy) -- integrated information theory.
Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics!
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
Integrating information is a syntropic process, teleological -- hence there is a 4th law of thermodynamics.
"Entropy is a measure of randomness" -- Roger Penrose.
Syntropy is a measure of order.
@@hyperduality2838 The comment you've provided touches on a wide range of concepts related to causality, duality, prediction, information theory, and thermodynamics.
Here's Claude's attempt to explain it:
The core idea seems to be that there is a duality or reciprocal relationship between causes and effects, the mind and the physical world, as well as different forms of information and energy.
The key points are:
1. Causality works both ways - causes in the mind create effects in the physical world (regular causality), and causes in the physical world affect the mind (retro-causality or perception creating mental causes).
2. The mind engages in a "syntropic" or teleological process of creating causes from perceptions/observations, similar to how mathematicians create new concepts from their perceptions. This is contrasted with entropic processes.
3. Concepts like information, energy, sine/cosine, vectors/covectors exhibit a duality or reciprocal relationship between potential/imaginary and real/kinetic forms.
4. The mind integrates information to form predictions, relating to integrated information theory. 5. This integration or syntropy is seen as the dual of increasing entropy.
This syntropic prediction process is proposed as a "4th law of thermodynamics" complementary to the entropic laws.
Your comment draws parallels between various dualities in physics, math, and information theory to argue that the mind's predictive capabilities represent a syntropic, teleological process that is the reverse of entropic processes described by conventional thermodynamics.
Overall, it presents an interesting philosophical perspective on the predictive nature of cognition and its relationship to causality, duality, and thermodynamics, though some of the connections may be speculative.
Do you agree with this explanation of your post?
So informative, the best professor!
The existence of free will is a matter of framing. One can frame the question inside a deterministic system and argue against it, or frame it from a humanist philosophical perspective and argue for it. Both things can be true, but only one is useful!
Thanks for sharing this type of valuable content.😍
Well, that didn't actually do any work to show we have free will. Our lecturer, Kevin Mitchell, goes through a tedious history of biological control systems, carefully documenting the things most of us already know. But we're still left starving for answers to why _that_ should count as free will. But that isn't to say the pro-free will case is uniquely challenged. We face a similar problem in the other direction with Robert Sapolsky, who tries to give evidence for determinism in his recent book. But why should we consider _that_ to be evidence that we _don't_ have free will? He just kind of feels that's what it means. It's this conceptual question where we need to spend some time, yet both sides are merely assuming their positions.
"Desire (intention or motivation) is the ultimate expression of freewill" -- Lucifer Morningstar.
Freewill (randomness, choice) is dual to tyranny (order, lack of choice).
Causes in your mind create effects in the real, physical world -- causality.
Causes in the physical word effect your mind -- causality.
Perceptions, measurements or effects create causes in your mind -- retro-causality!
Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant.
Your mind is creating causes from your perceptions or observations -- a syntropic process, teleological.
Mathematicians create new concepts or ideas all the time from their perceptions -- a syntropic process.
Cause is dual to effect -- causality loops (Karl Friston, neuroscientist).
"The brain is a prediction machine" -- Karl Friston, neuroscientist.
Making predictions to track targets, goals and objectives is a syntropic process, teleological.
Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy).
Information is dual:-
Average information (entropy) is dual to co or mutual information (syntropy).
Potential or imaginary information is dual to real or kinetic information.
Potential or imaginary energy is dual to real or kinetic energy -- gravitational energy is dual.
Sine is dual to cosine or dual sine -- the word co means mutual and implies duality.
Vectors (contravariant) are dual to co vectors (covariant) -- dual bases or Riemann geometry is dual.
Converting potential information into real information is a syntropic process.
Integration (summations, syntropy) is dual to differentiation (differences, entropy).
Your mind integrates information to form predictions (syntropy) -- integrated information theory.
Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics!
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
Integrating information is a syntropic process, teleological -- hence there is a 4th law of thermodynamics.
"Entropy is a measure of randomness" -- Roger Penrose.
Syntropy is a measure of order.
If you accept the obvious that you can build systems with arbitrary agency on top of deterministic laws (evolution did it, we do it in computers), it is really not that hard to understand.
@@pinkfloydhomer I'm not sure how much you're actually speaking to my concerns, here. First, I do already think free will exists. What I'm critical of is how well this talk zeroes in on where the disagreements are on this topic.
Regarding what you think is obvious, I'm not sure how relevant that is. Our lecturer goes out of his way to argue against determinism. He not only cites the randomness of some quantum mechanics interpretations, but even says "classical physics, I would say is not deterministic, despite what you might think."
My concern is that _most_ of what he says is common to every view. Consider this claim: "The final element in our evolution, I think really sets us apart and which really justifies the use of the term free will in humans as opposed to just agency is that we have an extra ability. We're not just thinking about stuff in the world. We're not just operating over sets of beliefs and sets of desires and so on. We have an extra level that lets us think about those thoughts, this level of metacognition." But it seems to me that those who reject free will typically accept the existence of this level of metacognition. And this is why I think more attention needs to be paid to the conceptual question of what it takes to count as having free will.
@@not_enough_space I think people are making this harder than it is. It is possible to make a system with arbitrary amounts of agency on top of simple laws. We do it all the time in computers. Evolution did it on earth. Is it magic to you how a piece of software makes all sorts of arbitrarily complex decisions based on arbitrary amounts of input from the environment or domain while still adhering to the laws of physics?
I think the most important thing he points out in this talk is that not all causation comes bottom up. Macroscopic and emergent behavior can CONSTRAIN future histories of what can happen, and that is exactly where agency comes from. It's not a coincidence that evolution has favored more and more agency, input, modelling, thoughts, plans, goals, instincts etc. It is because an individual who happens to be better at those things are optimized or constrained to make a better choice and that further constrains what futures can happen, even when following the laws of physics. When you catch a falling apple, you constrain what can happen, if you haven't done it the apple would have hit the ground.
A rock doesn't constrain much, at least not by agency. But a simple bacteria that have simple sensors and reactions can move towards nutrition or away from predatory microbes. Thereby restriction possible futures.
Why would evolution favor having consciousness, having feelings, thoughts, a model of the environment, eyes etc if its not to make better decisions?
I can’t separate the debate on free will from that of a religious perspective. That’s the only basis for this debate, it has just grown from religious ‘scientists’ discussing it to include quantum mechanics as an explanation for their mythologies. In my eyes, it’s deeply saddening that such a science based channel is debating a religious ideology, and not only that, but also trying to base an innate religious view off of scientific understanding.
The word purpose can be used in different ways:
1. Function - as in "what is the purpose of water in water color painting". The function of dissolving the pigment/paint so that it can be picked up by the brush and applied to the paper with varying degree of opacity.
2. Reason/Intent - as in "what is the purpose of your visit to united states?". For business.
3. Goal - as in "what is the purpose of your life?". To eradicate the poverty.
It seems that the these three meanings are mixed up to make the argument. And this makes teleology crowd happy.
I thought his arguments were totally unconvincing and his recounting of most of biology and evolution longwinded and unnecessary for his concluding remarks. I was going to say thanks to RI anyway for providing the presentation, but after consideration, I wish RI would have instead offered a presenter that had more cogent and compelling arguments, or if there are none, then choose a different topic. I do enjoy most of your presentations.
A very interesting and comprehensive take on the subject.
What does the answer to "do we have free will?" actually do for us?
Excellent presentation. Thanks!
Just because quantum mechanics has a bit of randomness doesn't mean that a human can somehow make physics do something different. What was going to happen will always have happened.
This is an good explanation of how the illusion of free will works biologically. I presume that's what you mean, right? Because you haven't shown that we have actual free will.
Most philosophers agree with compatibilism, the view that free will and determinism are compatible. For anyone who is new to the free will debate, I encourage you to look into the philosophy of free will, not just scientific claims against free will. Science cannot tell you whether you have free will, it can only explain physical mechanisms. Existence of free will is a philosophical question that requires philosophical tools.
Yeah and Daniel dennet Said that if our society suddenly did not believe in free will it would cause a bunch of social problems.
So he basically admits that if he preached against free will he would feel that he was contributing to possible future social problems.
Seems pretty obvious to me that he knows there is no free will, but doesn't want to say it and feels it's better to find some logic twisting way to have some tiny link to free will.... Compatibilism.
@@Zornotfugen That would be intellectually dishonest and I don't think Daniel Dennett or most philosophers in general are intellectually dishonest.
First, it depends on how strict we define free will. Second, we also have to define what 'we' mean by the subject "self". Is it the conscious self only or more. To act upon our will is a will in itself no matter which way you bend it, and that will is never without precedence. Even if it's random, less free is the will
"Desire (intention or motivation) is the ultimate expression of freewill" -- Lucifer Morningstar.
Freewill (randomness, choice) is dual to tyranny (order, lack of choice).
Causes in your mind create effects in the real, physical world -- causality.
Causes in the physical word effect your mind -- causality.
Perceptions, measurements or effects create causes in your mind -- retro-causality!
Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant.
Your mind is creating causes from your perceptions or observations -- a syntropic process, teleological.
Mathematicians create new concepts or ideas all the time from their perceptions -- a syntropic process.
Cause is dual to effect -- causality loops (Karl Friston, neuroscientist).
"The brain is a prediction machine" -- Karl Friston, neuroscientist.
Making predictions to track targets, goals and objectives is a syntropic process, teleological.
Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy).
Information is dual:-
Average information (entropy) is dual to co or mutual information (syntropy).
Potential or imaginary information is dual to real or kinetic information.
Potential or imaginary energy is dual to real or kinetic energy -- gravitational energy is dual.
Sine is dual to cosine or dual sine -- the word co means mutual and implies duality.
Vectors (contravariant) are dual to co vectors (covariant) -- dual bases or Riemann geometry is dual.
Converting potential information into real information is a syntropic process.
Integration (summations, syntropy) is dual to differentiation (differences, entropy).
Your mind integrates information to form predictions (syntropy) -- integrated information theory.
Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics!
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
Integrating information is a syntropic process, teleological -- hence there is a 4th law of thermodynamics.
"Entropy is a measure of randomness" -- Roger Penrose.
Syntropy is a measure of order.
To me, free will exist because " doubt " rides along the stream of free will. You have the freedom to doubt what somebody tells you what they think is true. You can doubt what Robert Sapolsky says and you can doubt what Kevin Mitchell says it is because we have freedom to doubt that we have debates and arguments.
Free will is the illusion created by how we choose to respond to a situation that demands a response, or a motivation to act. That choice is determined by our character as defined by Schopenhauer: "Every human has a unique way of reacting to motives. This is called a character. It is the nature of the individual will. "Our choices are therefore predetermined by this character which is "determined by nature, not by the environment. Two people who have been raised in exactly the same environment will exhibit different characters."
And to make it clearer that "will" is just a choice of action, a choice we in the end make always based on our character:
"Are two actions possible to a given person under given circumstances? No. Only one action is possible"
And finally: "Since a person's character remains unchanged, if the circumstances of his life were unchanged, could his life have been different? No."
A lack of free will is the illusion created by those who hate God to justify why it's okay to do what we know is wrong.
@@endrankluvsda4loko172 How can you hate something that does not exist? And, please tell me which of the about 5000+ supposedly existing gods you are referring to.
With recent publication of Robert Sapolsky's book Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will -there has been a major hoopla about weather we have libertarian free will or not? And many of the philosopers and scientists think that we do not have libertarian free will - which I agree with. So far so so good. But then the debate moves to - like what Robert Sapolsky seems to argue that - because individuals do not have libertarian free will - and thus our decisions are determined by our circumstance, they should not be held responsible. I think that is a red herring. Let me explain... I think the connection of holding someone responsible for their decision depending on if they took that decision based on libertarian free will is a mistake. All members of our society have the same handicap that we do not have libertarian free will. We should simply accept that. The issue of holding someone responsible for their action should be based on the following: will the individual after having been found to be responsible for a bad decision or act, and punished for that, will change their behavior to not make the same bad decision or do the same bad act again. and even before being held responsible, does that individual themselves proclaims that they are capable of taking the responsibility for their decisions i.e. they claim to be a normal member of the society - what we call upstanding citizens. And in fact we already partly practice this by way of insanity defense. For example, if a defendant or their advocate is able to prove insanity, they are processed in a different way already in our legal system. BTW the reason we do not have libertarian free will is because we do not have a Laplace Daemon level knowledge of our own decision making process which is intrinsically deterministic. Secondly, while the machinery of the brain is deterministically busy making a decision, and being a single thread of consciousness, cannot also try to do the Laplace daemon like observation of the brain to see that in fact the decision was made deterministically. Also, in many cases we have to make relatively quick decisions in real time and have no time to waste to realize the deterministic nature of our decision making. But actually, if you stop and introspect your own decision making process (mindfulness of decision making) you will actually see the deterministic nature of your decision making was based on your memory, circumstance, desires, capabilities and social context you are in. Of course this is not the atomic level determinism that you will observer, but it will show you how the decision was made and why. Free Will - how to think about it Think of the free will as free-ish will or effective free will, and all issues around free will simply dissolve. If the decision originated inside our body/brain without external coercive influence, that is good enough. The pursuit of the theoretical idea of free will is like people needing the universe to have a purpose so that their life has a purpose. Why does it matter if the universe has a purpose or not for one to make and have a purpose in their own life. That should be good enough. Similarly, the worry about determinism related to free will is only significant, if one is actually a Laplace daemon. But we are clearly not Laplace daemons. Therefore the free will is effectively free and originates in our bodies (when no coercive forces are at play). Thus why worry if free will is not really free if the universe is deterministic or not. For all practical purposes, legal or otherwise what we call free will is effectively free. That is why I suggest to call free will i.e. free-ish will or effective free will or simply Effree will (spread the meme). But anyway that is semantic and we could just continue to use free will - and hold people responsible for their actions as long as we understand its nature as described above. The notion of libertarian freewill is hidden in the gap between what a Laplace daemon may know vs. what is possible for us to know when we make decisions. We make moral decisions because there is an implicit coercive force on our decision making based on our knowledge of what society has taught us what is moral. Of course sociopaths ignore that coercion and moral pioneers think for themselves what is moral and make decisions accordingly (when people first realized that slavery was bad) even when the rest of the society thought it was OK. Heck it was there in holy books even. Lastly, we are always constrained by what is possible. I cannot free will myself to get admitted into Harvard PhD program. I am limited by my abilities, desires, life history, economic status, country I am in and physical laws. BTW we can think of these as implicit coercive forces that constrain our free will anyway. I cannot free will myself to dodge a bullet fired at me at a short range. I think discussions about free will being libertarian or not are much ado about nothing in the end. The real issue is, can we hold a competent person responsible for their action for pragmatic purposes.
I've listened to the lecture. I still don't understand the reasoning. We are complex, the Universe is huge and very complex. So.. where are the actual arguments in favor of free will?
I might have my own free will......but now my family gets nothing when I die. Should have hired an attorney.
Brilliantly funny!
😂
Freewill (randomness, choice) is dual to tyranny (order, lack of choice).
Causes in your mind create effects in the real, physical world -- causality.
Causes in the physical word effect your mind -- causality.
Perceptions, measurements or effects create causes in your mind -- retro-causality!
Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant.
Your mind is creating causes from your perceptions or observations -- a syntropic process, teleological.
Mathematicians create new concepts or ideas all the time from their perceptions -- a syntropic process.
Cause is dual to effect -- causality loops (Karl Friston, neuroscientist).
"The brain is a prediction machine" -- Karl Friston, neuroscientist.
Making predictions to track targets, goals and objectives is a syntropic process, teleological.
Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy).
Information is dual:-
Average information (entropy) is dual to co or mutual information (syntropy).
Potential or imaginary information is dual to real or kinetic information.
Potential or imaginary energy is dual to real or kinetic energy -- gravitational energy is dual.
Sine is dual to cosine or dual sine -- the word co means mutual and implies duality.
Vectors (contravariant) are dual to co vectors (covariant) -- dual bases or Riemann geometry is dual.
Converting potential information into real information is a syntropic process.
Integration (summations, syntropy) is dual to differentiation (differences, entropy).
Your mind integrates information to form predictions (syntropy) -- integrated information theory.
Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics!
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
Integrating information is a syntropic process, teleological -- hence there is a 4th law of thermodynamics.
"Entropy is a measure of randomness" -- Roger Penrose.
Syntropy is a measure of order.
Robert Sapolsky would slaughter Kevin's argument in minutes. It does not account for why (for example) judges give harsher sentences for the same crime when they are hungry. So much more than what is presented goes into building the brain states discussed.
That’s just context that the conscious mind is probably not aware of. A crucial piece of information hasn’t been properly integrated in the subjective experience of the judge.
The Philosophical Trials channel actually has a debate with Kevin and Sapolsky
All behavior comes from motivation, which originates from processes in the brain. If you lose or damage this part of your brain, you lose the ability to make any decisions or movements. You enter a state of complete paralysis, despite having no dysfunction of motor system. It’s called akinetic mutism.
"Desire (intention or motivation) is the ultimate expression of freewill" -- Lucifer Morningstar.
Freewill (randomness, choice) is dual to tyranny (order, lack of choice).
Causes in your mind create effects in the real, physical world -- causality.
Causes in the physical word effect your mind -- causality.
Perceptions, measurements or effects create causes in your mind -- retro-causality!
Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant.
Your mind is creating causes from your perceptions or observations -- a syntropic process, teleological.
Mathematicians create new concepts or ideas all the time from their perceptions -- a syntropic process.
Cause is dual to effect -- causality loops (Karl Friston, neuroscientist).
"The brain is a prediction machine" -- Karl Friston, neuroscientist.
Making predictions to track targets, goals and objectives is a syntropic process, teleological.
Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy).
Information is dual:-
Average information (entropy) is dual to co or mutual information (syntropy).
Potential or imaginary information is dual to real or kinetic information.
Potential or imaginary energy is dual to real or kinetic energy -- gravitational energy is dual.
Sine is dual to cosine or dual sine -- the word co means mutual and implies duality.
Vectors (contravariant) are dual to co vectors (covariant) -- dual bases or Riemann geometry is dual.
Converting potential information into real information is a syntropic process.
Integration (summations, syntropy) is dual to differentiation (differences, entropy).
Your mind integrates information to form predictions (syntropy) -- integrated information theory.
Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics!
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
Integrating information is a syntropic process, teleological -- hence there is a 4th law of thermodynamics.
"Entropy is a measure of randomness" -- Roger Penrose.
Syntropy is a measure of order.
Dear oh dear, are we still debating this! It is patently obvious we have free will. We exercise it, minute by minute, day by day, week by week and year after year. Can we please put an end to this nonsense.
My psychology teacher at university spoke about how, in a sense, the personality of a child was being established even before the child was conceived. Parents bring in all kinds of baggage into raising a child, into how they decorate the future child's future room, their wants and fears... and it all builds up without even needing a child there in the first place, only to get dumped on the kid once they're born and during the rest of the parents' lives.
It goes further than that, of course, because those parents had their own upbringing and they live in a society that also affects them, all influenced by the long histories of time and space.
We don't have free will. We're a product of choices made long before us by people who weren't really choosing because the laws of physics dictated the outcomes anyway. We've never _had_ free will; it's an illusion. A convenient one, a necessary one, a useful illusion that lets us build up our society and helps us survive. We act as though we have free will, because we have no choice _but_ to act that way, and we treat each other as though we have free will because doing otherwise would not be beneficial to us, and so circumstances have made us embrace the illusion.
I know the common objections simpletons will raise at this point. "So we shouldn't punish anyone for stealing cars, because they don't have a choice!", or worse examples that miss the entire point: we don't have a choice but to punish offenders who commit crimes for the same reason we pretend to have free will: it's USEFUL. When a criminal gets put in jail for committing a crime they didn't use free will to commit, we don't have free will to put them in jail, either. It's all an illusion, but it means that we don't stand by helplessly wringing our hands while the world burns around us.
We could, of course; we could choose to let criminals do as they will. We'd all end up dead and the problem would be as obvious as it would then be moot. I find it useful to not live in an imploded dead society because if I did find it useful I wouldn't be around to find it _anything._ If we all die->we wouldn't be around. If we don't all die->we've found a useful way to keep going.
It's dead simple, really. "Free will" is just one of those vapid expressions that simpletons like to huddle up to, like those lunatics who fondle crystals for their "healing energy".
The illusion of free will disrupts the flow of life. Anytime you superimpose what you call free will over the movement of life it disrupts the harmony of it. All physical reality is made of the same atoms in various arrangements. If it weren't for our recognition of the space between us as insignificant, we would see that everything is one.
This isn't a presentation, it's a sermon. Not once does he describe the mechanism that would give rise to free will in any meaningful way. The conclusion at the end is an excellent example of circular reasoning: How could we have free will if we don't have free will?
Sabine Hossenfelder's take on the subject might be less appealing, but nothing I heard here has convinced me she's wrong. Determinism + random quantum fluctuations ≠ free will.
free will is our ability to act or think thoughts regardless of external circumstances or same internal circumstances.
When everything is deterministic, except for the part that is random, there's no room for free will in physics. That's one of the main arguments against free will which he skipped over. If he's this late to the party, he should at least address what has been said before.
@@Dowskiify I doubt if it can say all is detrministc. Becouse of quantum undeterministic, chaos and ramdomnes of separated processes effect. And there are some separation of the environment and biological object then biological object lives some own live. Second level of independece is mind that interact beatvean environment and inner biology trying to some rule both
@@brimantas "free will is our ability to act or think thoughts regardless of external circumstances or same internal circumstances" I'd agree with the definition, but I've never met someone who could do that.
@@Surefire99 people can do many things, for example many people can walk against the wind or climb a mountain. In the same way, people can suffer and not defecate only when a person wants to, and his mind knows how to control all this to a certain level, and this is a certain degree of freedom.
How do you know the difference.
Trying to find free will in randomness and chaos.. sounds like trying to find a fire in the middle of an iceberg.
This felt like an ode to Daniel Dennett and his Elbow Room argument
Saying we have free will is like saying "humans can fly" well that's a loaded statement, such a thing requires tools and time and innovation
We may not have Free Will but precious "Moments"
We may not have Free Will but it can be cheapened
Thoroughly enjoyable, thank you. I remained in the Superpostion of being a passive listening spectator until the end of the presentation....then i chose to put my fingers to the keys and typed "To be or not to be, that is the question".
"move forwards, move backwards, or mate with something"
heh, wish that was all my life comprised of...
I think it’s both. And our choices are some times tests. The most important decisions we make are the ones when no one is looking. But I think you need to think of our universe in a multiverse that is branching like the Mandelbrot set and bifurcation events are the tests depending on your choice leads you through a gate that can have many paths to and your choices between the gates are free will and do determine what path you take between the gates or nodes that you must pass through and are given a few options and depending on that choice sets you on different paths and works with entropy by taking chaos back into a kinda reset but all so isn’t. If that makes sense. Guess go look up a 2D and 3D model of a Mandelbrot bifurcation events and you will see what is talking about. And these tests can be small or easy in a way but you know some how the choice is yours no one but you will know do you still do the right thing or not and idk how to explain it. But all so I do believe in law of attraction and they have proven our consciousness does affect physical matter so we do have some control over our reality. Like hypnosis and witchcraft work cause the person believes it works in short. But our energy fields are influenced and interact with every thing and every one else’s energy fields. And as Tesla famously quoted once we think of the universe in terms of frequency and vibration we will have the keys to unlock it. And that’s why we vibe with others or feel off by some one that hasn’t done anything directly or said anything weird but we just feel something off. That’s our energy field interacting and resonating or clashing and interfering with each other.
"if you start with the premise of indeterminism, then freedom comes for free" Well that was easy, wrap it up guys!
Ya know The Three Stooges short where they're plumbers, and Curly keeps adding pipes to stop a leak and water keeps flowing out?
Mitchell does this with complexity.
No matter how much complexity tack on, the root cause is Determinism.
Wow, he has explained how AI is learning. Brilliant
Like the saying goes, it's all semantics, as well as everything's relative. Personally, I don't believe that we do. We're bound to limitations of all kinds. We're "free" within a physical, cultural, economic, legal (etc) system. As a good elder friend once said to me, specifically about marriage, "It's a great institution...if you like institutions." Flies in a web, folks. Wind-up toys.
Fascinating talk, why were the questions cut at the end?
The questions are usually partitioned off into a separate video, however access to the Q&A video is now being sold. Kinda scummy imo.
Free will again, let just erase free will from words and it is done. Yes and no always comeback. Change free will to "We never learn"
"we" -you
@@Mastermindyoung14 one men down billion more to go
All that evolution, millions of years of random changes coupled with survival probability, all those complex levels of abstraction and metacognition, just to arrive to an irrefutable belief the Earth is flat.
Of course we have free will, we don't have any other choice.
I learned a lot! I am going to use all his arguments to prove we don’t have free will.
I think he is wrong.
STAGES: 1) Life. 2) Sensors combined with actors. 3) Reactions (gene encoded memories). 4) Short term memory allowing reactions to change. Still gene encoded memories. 5) A physics engine allowing for predictions. Reactions based on assumptions. First simple model of the world. Ability to learn dynamically. 6) A logical system (nothing more than an enhancement of the physics engine) capable of logically deciding. Reactions based on thinking. A complex model of the world. Learning and logical inter-species communication. 7) The logical reasoning part discovers itself in the model of the world it maintains => Consciousness without free will.
EXAMPLE: If I have 2 neural system. System A makes complex but reactive decisions. System B can observe System A and interpret its activity. What would system B say? It would say something like: “System A is considering option 1. Now System A is considering option 2. And now System A is weighing what is best for it short therm. System A leans towards A. But the logically reasoning part of System A now overrules that decision because it has determined that option 2 is better long term and finally System A chooses option 2.”. Now put System A and B together in 1 computer. Now System A+B have a common model of the world around it. And when System A+B discovers itself in the model it maintains, it discovers the “I am”. Now System A+B would say: “I am considering option 1. Now I am considering option 2. And now I am weighing what is best for me short therm. I lean towards 1. But logically I think that option 2 is better for me long term and finally I choose option 2.”. Now where is the free will in that?
GOLF: He speaks about “I decide to play golf”. What if I would destroy his logical reasoning brain and connect what is left to another logical reasoning brain? It would say “he wants to play golf”. Now I place the new logical brain back into his skull and make sure it is aware that it is 1 organism. Now it says “I want to play golf”. That is what Sam Harris meant.
To whomever went to timeline where George Clooney was an academic genius and kidnapped him for our own, you have my thanks.
It is astonishing how many hard determinists in this comment section are hating on a bloke they feel can’t control his actions. Hypocrisy at its finest.
Descartes contended that rational thought was the necessary and sufficient condition of the soul, and that the pineal gland was the seat of rational thought. The pineal gland held this seat because it was thought to be the only midline structure that was single and mobile. He was worng. This is the most unintelligent talk on royal institute.
Please tell me why we use test charge always positive??????????
We have free will. We are like fish, swimming in free will. Some fish just don’t believe in water, and that’s ok. They have fish universities to live in, and be love and accepted just as they are. The special fish. 🐠
This talk is rife with assumptions. To sum up, he assumes that:
1: A system must either contain all information about its infinite future states or not be deterministic.
He then uses this assumption to argue that Classical Physics is indeterministic without providing any example of where Classical Physics fails to deterministically predict a classical phenomenon.
2: That small scale behavior in neurons does not affect large scale behavior.
This has no bearing on free will, but it seems like he believes its an important point.
3: That there exists something called "Meaning" that governs the behavior of neurons.
He does not explain what this "meaning" is physically. He does not provide a mechanism for it to interract with neurons.
He claims that this bypasses Descartes' problems with dualism, but does not justify this claim
Paradoxes = duality.
Freewill (randomness, choice) is dual to tyranny (order, lack of choice).
Causes in your mind create effects in the real, physical world -- causality.
Causes in the physical word effect your mind -- causality.
Perceptions, measurements or effects create causes in your mind -- retro-causality!
Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant.
Your mind is creating causes from your perceptions or observations -- a syntropic process, teleological.
Mathematicians create new concepts or ideas all the time from their perceptions -- a syntropic process.
Cause is dual to effect -- causality loops (Karl Friston, neuroscientist).
"The brain is a prediction machine" -- Karl Friston, neuroscientist.
Making predictions to track targets, goals and objectives is a syntropic process, teleological.
Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy).
Information is dual:-
Average information (entropy) is dual to co or mutual information (syntropy).
Potential or imaginary information is dual to real or kinetic information.
Potential or imaginary energy is dual to real or kinetic energy -- gravitational energy is dual.
Sine is dual to cosine or dual sine -- the word co means mutual and implies duality.
Vectors (contravariant) are dual to co vectors (covariant) -- dual bases or Riemann geometry is dual.
Converting potential information into real information is a syntropic process.
Integration (summations, syntropy) is dual to differentiation (differences, entropy).
Your mind integrates information to form predictions (syntropy) -- integrated information theory.
Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics!
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
Integrating information is a syntropic process, teleological -- hence there is a 4th law of thermodynamics.
"Entropy is a measure of randomness" -- Roger Penrose.
Syntropy is a measure of order.
@@hyperduality2838is this an argument or...
@@ParadoxProblems There are new laws of physics that you may not be aware of:-
Real is dual to imaginary -- complex numbers are dual.
All numbers fall within the complex plane hence all numbers are dual!
The integers are self dual as they are their own conjugates.
Syntax is dual to semantics -- language or communication.
If mathematics is a language then it is dual.
Electro is dual to magnetic -- photons, light or pure energy is dual -- bi-vectors are dual.
Vectors (contravariant) are dual to co or dual vectors (covariant) -- dual bases or Riemann geometry is dual.
Symmetry (Bosons) is dual to anti-symmetry (Fermions) -- quantum or wave/particle duality.
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
Energy is duality, duality is energy.
The conservation of duality (energy) will be know as the 5th law of thermodynamics -- Generalized Duality!
Energy is dual to mass -- Einstein.
Dark energy is dual to dark matter.
Synchronic points/lines (positive singularities) are dual to enchronic points/lines (negative singularities).
Points are dual to lines -- the principle of duality in geometry.
Everything in physics is made out of energy (duality).
Time contraction is dual to length dilation -- the twin paradox.
Time dilation is dual to length contraction -- Einstein, special relativity.
Space is dual to time -- Einstein.
Paradoxes are dualities!
@@ParadoxProblems Certainty (predictability, syntropy) is dual to uncertainty (unpredictability, entropy) -- the Heisenberg certainty/uncertainty principle.
Information is dual -- syntropy (order) is dual to entropy (randomness)!
By definition free will does not exist because "free will" means, "to act without external influence", which is impossible. Humans can make more or less favorable decisions for society, based on their conditioning. Decisions will always be dictated levels of nutrition, hormones, the immediate environmental conditions, family history over generations. There is no way to act externally to your environment, but better disions can be made with the proper conditioning.
I would say free will not "act without external influence" but can resist to external circumstances. Exemple- can walk against wind , becouse of internal energy it is siples biological level of freedom, will it is to make decision to go there (for meet the need) in prission you canot go to meet some needs (no some freedom). Nutrition, hormones brain and body functionig it is parts of man some little councscious, more things not counscious, but have some freedom to act in environement. It is question af limt that divides me ant not me.
Incorrect. There are many definitions of free will.
We need to explain the emergence of consciousness first, then we can address free will. This would eliminate the silly headlines on videos I've seen like: "You have no free will at all..." Everyone knows in their heart of hearts that we have free will, so such inane headlines undermine credibility.
Greetings from North Korea....
09:30 physical pre-determinism doesn't mean there is only one possible future since certain processes are random by nature.
Truly random processes would mean determinism is false.
It is really not that hard if you think it through:
⦁ You do what you do because of how you are. So, you are responsible for what you do because you are responsible for how you are. (Freewill)
⦁ But, you cannot be responsible for what you do because you are not responsible for how you are. (Determinism)
⦁ Why are you not responsible for what you do? (Challenge Free will)
⦁ Ask the question, “What would it take to be responsible for how we are?” The answer is that you must be able to make yourself the way you are.
⦁ However, you can never make yourself the way you are because that would mean that you already knew beforehand what you want yourself to be.
⦁ In order to know what you want yourself to be, you would have to have some sort of “self” within yourself guiding you to do what you want beforehand.
⦁ Who would be telling yourself what to do before you knew it? Another self? Who told that self?
⦁ You cannot be the cause of yourself, but you must be if you take responsibility for your actions. So, there cannot be free will.
⦁ We cannot help but to believe in freewill, but it must be an illusion.
who or what is this 'me' or 'mind' separate from my genetics, brain, chemical brain state, that is pulling the strings?
some scientist say genetics are the cause of our behavior, but what gene gives us inner strength? What gene is the cause of someone succumbing to take drugs and drink alcohol to the extent that their health is seriously affected? Can they prove this or is it just assumption? I think genetics being the cause of our behavior is just assumption.
He seems to be trying to hand-wave agency into the complexity of the system without any justification or evidence. I don't think he really understands information or that the complexity of a given state really can be encoded in some relatively basic behaviors of matter/energy. (Think Conway's Game of Life on a vastly larger scale.) The Unpredictability of certain systems does not somehow produce a magical force which nudges outcomes in one direction or another. (Edited for clarity.)
Freewill (randomness, choice) is dual to tyranny (order, lack of choice).
Causes in your mind create effects in the real, physical world -- causality.
Causes in the physical word effect your mind -- causality.
Perceptions, measurements or effects create causes in your mind -- retro-causality!
Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant.
Your mind is creating causes from your perceptions or observations -- a syntropic process, teleological.
Mathematicians create new concepts or ideas all the time from their perceptions -- a syntropic process.
Cause is dual to effect -- causality loops (Karl Friston, neuroscientist).
"The brain is a prediction machine" -- Karl Friston, neuroscientist.
Making predictions to track targets, goals and objectives is a syntropic process, teleological.
Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy).
Information is dual:-
Average information (entropy) is dual to co or mutual information (syntropy).
Potential or imaginary information is dual to real or kinetic information.
Potential or imaginary energy is dual to real or kinetic energy -- gravitational energy is dual.
Sine is dual to cosine or dual sine -- the word co means mutual and implies duality.
Vectors (contravariant) are dual to co vectors (covariant) -- dual bases or Riemann geometry is dual.
Converting potential information into real information is a syntropic process.
Integration (summations, syntropy) is dual to differentiation (differences, entropy).
Your mind integrates information to form predictions (syntropy) -- integrated information theory.
Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics!
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
Integrating information is a syntropic process, teleological -- hence there is a 4th law of thermodynamics.
"Entropy is a measure of randomness" -- Roger Penrose.
Syntropy is a measure of order.
Yes this! Completely agree. Adding or identifying extra steps in a biological process, dus not suddenly invoke free will. It just makes it a more complex automatic process. Also randomness or unpredictability does not automatically imply free will. Especially when the unpredictability stems from a lack of information and technology/capacity.
@@AwassenaarXDA Yes, I never understand why people think that randomness (still well defined by insanely accurate probabilities) somehow imparts free will. It would be like biasing the distribution curve of a chaotic physical system to a single outcome by mere force of will. That's not free will, that's telekinesis.
All that we are is the result of what we have thought. It is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. The Buddha.
People think and believe within their life's programming. Our agreements, as it were. People don't free think. They float within programmed parameters and think they are exercising free will. Especially Christians. They don't chose. They just accept.
The argument is that there is free will, and the whole lecture tries to explain the mechanics of the physical world in a way that specifically convinces that there is no free will. And also, the explanations, in my opinion, are not precise; for example, the example of the worm that because it lacks a sense of sight, it cannot plan ahead... Planning ahead requires addressing memory and is not related to the sense of sight... A person blind from birth does not plan for the future? In conclusion: the lecture is not particularly good, but I did take a few things to think about from it.
On display is the difference between an actual scientist like Sabine Hossenfelder tackling the question and a dude with a book to sell.
He makes the obvious case that causal determinism is nonsense, but he won't go all the way and just say it out loud. Causation, determinism and reductionism are the triad of mental functions that most people somehow believe are organizing principles of nature.
50:06 That is exactly why I don't play golf. While other people playing golf believe getting the ball into the tiny hole is quite an achievement. Because it is hard to do and because it usually does not really matter who wins, one can spend some time outside with friends.
So it shows a palette of already four choices available which do require agency (will decision between pairs) at the background of what worldview and expectation of reward is believed in.
Quantum states in evolution including opposites are a way (probability set up) to figure out what reward systems are more or less productive and can also change over time.
When a first action is taken this will have its own new result, which could not have been learned before in the world. So it cannot have been predetermined in what next level decisions would be made, when the problem or opportunity did not exist before.
The world has no information about.
You cannot be the cause of yourself.
When I see a dog change from begging from me and go to another. I always wonder how much probability the dog is calculating. I find it hard to believe a cosmic ray caused the action.
Meh, free will isn't required for moral responsibility, WILL is required for moral responsibility.
Lack of free will isn't a problem for biology, will is sufficient
At some moment he says "if A -> X then not A -> not X" which is utterly wrong from logical pov.
Some good points for a discussion, but mostly I find it rather speculative.
Definitions are weak or absent, but I guess that is a general issue with most if not all discussions of free will and consciousness.
In the name of God, The Gracious, The merciful,
All these you say is not the end of knowledge to conclude a vague claim. First you have not explained what you mean by free will. If you mean you can not choose anything by yourself so what is the meaning of learning then. Actually learning is based on free will and when you learn something, you learn to choose what to do and what not to do.
Free will? That sounds like somethin’ that fancy city folk talk about. But down here, we know that you gotta do what’s right and listen to your mama. Ain’t no need for all that complicated talk when you got your mama tellin’ you what’s good for you. - chatgpt as mama boucher
still confused about the free will argument. how do you have psychology, neuroscience, psychiatry, if our actions/programming are not directly influenced by our upbringing, env, genetics and current chemical brain state? If our actions were truly random and had no cause, how could you ever right a coherent book? it would follow no logic, as all results would be truly free from any prior cause.
Could democracy work in a free will society!!!??? Peace be upon you'll out there and assalamualaiqum
Yes, it would look exactly the same.
"Democracy" under a predatory economic system will always be an oligarchy anyway, so no
But why does an organism ‘want’ to persist?
Because it enhances its probability to persist.
Also no explanation for the mechanism for how we think, or how we use our capacity for free will
Enter humans and depression....
@@stefanolacchin4963 so that seems like a hardwired argument?
@@BenByford it's so hardwired into the natural world, that a recent paper analyses a series of experiments where evolution, natural selection and self-replication emerge without pre-set rules or directives from randomly generated systems after a few millions iterations. Anton Petrov talks about this paper in his most recent video. You can find it in his channel.
Nice argument from incredulity at 24:00.
54:22 - logical fallacy. IF A causes X it doesn't necessarily mean that IF NOT A then NOT X. That's just simply wrong.
He is referring to Peter Ulric Tse's argument about criterial causation. Counterfactual causation is a category in the set of causations which Dr. Mitchel is referring to. I think there is a video which Dr. Tse talk about these categories
Real attempt in direction of understanding the role that free will and agency play in our existence.A refreshing take and departure from the norm of saying free will doesnt exist just because we dont understand it .Thanks for the amazing work youre doing and sharing it with us
But why is Sam Harris here.Is he that important?
I'm afraid, Violette, that Sam Harris is still important. He is one of the clearest contemporary thinkers. But he is not into deepties and coddling the audience. Regarding his views on free will, these are evidence-based but I do hope he, Sapolsky and other heavyweight determinists will one day be proven wrong. But data is still on the determinists' side. Hope one day facts may change in favor of free will.
@@histarchuswhy do you hope that free will gets proven? Genuine question
read sapolsky
Furthermore, I don't know if he is implying or inferring.... That Thought produced by Patterns of connected neurones as " Meaning ", it's not proper.
Not while the predators who own everything are still in charge ...
Xi, Putin, Kim, and the mullahs?
Lol I’m not even sure that the speaker believes in free will
Free will seems to be Freeing the Willing....or, Will a freedom by paying a Fee, through inter Dependence. It's at action level, we have a Flexibility than freedom. That's like a probability of various Actions, within the given limitations. Ability to exercise Randomness??? That sounds like AI. Past & future cannot be determined by us, as it involves various element beyond us. Flexible will???
Those are really interesting points, I'd advise you to watch to the end instead of just the first few minutes then dashing to the comments section and moving on.
You may be asking too much. I haven't made it to he end of the video yet (though I will) but his title makes it hard not to jump right to a conclusion.
@@christopherchilton-smith6482 Understandable :P This is why I said what I said, give him time to make his point.
It's the same basic mistakes and confusions I've heard repeated so many times by now... How many times do I need to listen to someone not grasping that a chaotic system, although unpredictable, is fully deterministic. Just one example...
@@geertdepuydt2683 I don't know, maybe if you watched a bit further you might have listened to the presenter specifically saying that is not the argument he is making. If you feel like there is nothing more to consider, then you are indeed wasting your time here.
And it's kind of funny to hear him cite equally confused compadres as an attempt to convince himself and the listener of this faux pas.
While I want him to be right, his arguments are deeply unconvincing. Computers can do everything he says without free will
Have a great day my friend
Thanks for making this video. I learned something today.
This presentation however, is inconclusive.... And intentionally complex to confuse people. All he did was explain a few concepts, and present few quotes from notable people.
There used to be free will. But the corporations bought it all up, and now it's expensive.
"Desire (intention or motivation) is the ultimate expression of freewill" -- Lucifer Morningstar.
Freewill (randomness, choice) is dual to tyranny (order, lack of choice).
Causes in your mind create effects in the real, physical world -- causality.
Causes in the physical word effect your mind -- causality.
Perceptions, measurements or effects create causes in your mind -- retro-causality!
Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant.
Your mind is creating causes from your perceptions or observations -- a syntropic process, teleological.
Mathematicians create new concepts or ideas all the time from their perceptions -- a syntropic process.
Cause is dual to effect -- causality loops (Karl Friston, neuroscientist).
"The brain is a prediction machine" -- Karl Friston, neuroscientist.
Making predictions to track targets, goals and objectives is a syntropic process, teleological.
Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy).
Information is dual:-
Average information (entropy) is dual to co or mutual information (syntropy).
Potential or imaginary information is dual to real or kinetic information.
Potential or imaginary energy is dual to real or kinetic energy -- gravitational energy is dual.
Sine is dual to cosine or dual sine -- the word co means mutual and implies duality.
Vectors (contravariant) are dual to co vectors (covariant) -- dual bases or Riemann geometry is dual.
Converting potential information into real information is a syntropic process.
Integration (summations, syntropy) is dual to differentiation (differences, entropy).
Your mind integrates information to form predictions (syntropy) -- integrated information theory.
Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics!
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
Integrating information is a syntropic process, teleological -- hence there is a 4th law of thermodynamics.
"Entropy is a measure of randomness" -- Roger Penrose.
Syntropy is a measure of order.
We have free will, but doesn't mean that events don't happen out of our individual control because they do. A choice I make affects you, a choice you make affects me, and if there were no humans on Earth there would be still be plants, animals, organisms, life on other planets that would make individual decisions and actions that would be affecting each other. Life is complicated. The comment section on some of these videos (like the one about the history of Science in Islam) really shows how dogmatic, unaware, and arrogant people can be.
I'm sorry to say, you seem to have understood absolutely nothing about the arguments against free will. You call others dogmatic and arrogant, but you're the one insulting and stating your opinion as fact without bringing any proof.
You don't but I do
Funny you should say that, even though there is no free will it still makes sense for me to treat myself like I do have free will but others like they don't. Trying to maximize both compassion and self regulation ( what others would call personal responsibility).
@@christopherchilton-smith6482 ignorance is not a disease until you believe you are not infected with it
By definition yes. We have free will. What free will actually is is a very different question.
by definition we have free will....depending on how you define it..??
One of the few down votes for RI
It was an excellent presentation, but I too am not convinced of an existence of free will.
I think that to find the answer to this problem, we probably need a higher form of intelligence and a better understanding of the complexity of those connections formed by our neurons.
But if it would be deterministic, the questions still persists: Why are we conscious then? Why do we experience? Even if Consciousness would be a filter for all the unnecessary stuff not to concentrate on. Why are we aware of it? This should be useless if we can't take any advantage out of it. And why don't we experience the unconscious stuff like regulating hormone levels or something like that?
Or is there maybe more consciousness in us than we assume? Maybe we have a consciousness inside us for every more or less complex process, but those don't communicate and thus we never have gotten to know them?
Or maybe consciousness is much more common than we think it is and it doesn't even need life. And we just don't know, because we can't communicate with anything else than other human beings.
Whatever it is. I think that we still lack some knowledge here and are limited to only our senses, that can't pick up on this stuff.