Thank you for another great video! For me personally, as a Thelemite, I'm deep in this conversation on free will. (and i have to think of "true will " in context of the conversation ) I appreciate this channel for opening up this subject for discussion.
I have been thinking about this problem a lot and I have a few ideas. There are ways to make free will work in both deterministic universes and probabilistic universes. For a deterministic universe, free will is possible if the laws of physics are humean or anti-humean. That is, if the laws of physics say what "will happen" vs what "must happen". It's a very subtle difference - the first allows for free will but the second doesn't. For probabilistic universes, like what quantum mechanics proposes, you can have free will that is compatible with the laws of physics if there is something (say, a soul-like entity) that has access to all the branches of the universe and chooses one of them (collapses the wave function on that branch). Of course, this is very roughly speaking. In that case, your decisions would be compatible with the laws of nature (since you're choosing one of the available branches), but you'd have to come up with something that does the choosing and a way for the choosing to occur. I propose something better: something that is completely natural, is based on the current laws of physics and it's... "somewhat free". It is also compatible with personal identity. My proposal is this: Suppose I am hungry. I walk down the street and I see some guy eating a croissant. I think "I'm hungry, let me kill this guy and get his croissant to satisfy my hunger". What does this mean, neurologically? Well, visual information entered my eyes, was transformed into electrochemical impulses, reached my visual cortex, was interpreted, was transformed into the qualia of seeing, then into the conscious awareness of "some guy with a croissant next to me". Then, based on my somatic markers (to use one of Antonio Damasio's terms), meaning, the way I am "feeling" (hungry, in this case, which is a neurological state of some neurons excited and other neurons silent), my neural network came up with a useful idea: kill the guy to get his croissant and solve the problem of hunger that I'm facing. Of course, this is only one idea: another idea is to steal his croissant, another is to ask him nicely to give me half of it, another idea is to completely ignore him and buy a croissant myself and so on and so forth. But, somehow, this idea raised to the surface. So what happens next? Well, the "idea" (meaning, a certain neural pattern) stimulates the frontal cortex which (hopefully) overrides it. The frontal cortex is saying (through its own neural patterns) "This is completely crazy! No way I'm doing that! I will go a buy a croissant myself, instead". And you take the decision to ignore your previous "crazy idea" (according to the frontal cortex) and go and buy the croissant. Now why would that be? Did you choose "freely" to not kill the guy but buy a croissant, instead? Well... yes. Yes, you did. Of course, this "choice" was "just neural firing patterns" that felt like thinking "This is completely crazy! No way I'm doing that! I will go buy a croissant myself, instead." - the patterns where such that it stimulated your auditory cortex in such a way to "hear these inner words in your head". But what about the freedom to act like that? Your brain's structure, genetic make-up and accumulated experience were the factors that determined this action - the causal factor are these things, that's what it means to be "you". There is no contradiction or paradox.
...and then one dies, and realizes they're still conscious, thinking and feeling, and that it was not their brain or body who was creating their consciousness.
When someone asserts that free will exists, that also assumes that the self also exists, because there is an "I" making decisions. Why do we assume that the self exists? Is it possible to have an experience of not having a self (psychedelics & meditation) ? What is this feeling of "I"? If there is no "I" making decisions, then does that mean they're happening by themself?
What’s interesting is every single time we make a choice it’s based on judgement, aguments or instincts which means it depends on the past. But if we want to choose between two numbers 1 and 2 there is no reason why you would pick 1 over the other. In this case you simply pick it randomly so you don’t know where the choice is comming from as if you didn’t even made a choice. Then if you choose between instinct and logic it’s almost like the same thing you don’t know why you did it 😝
@@rezzafer Some people's brain chemistry and environment leads them to working, and some to robbing. Some people do both at a basic level. A lot of people work their way to the top and start robbing people with sophisticated economic and political systems.
"Free will" is all about choices we make, but if the universe splits to parallel universes all the time everywhere, then we are constantly making all the possible choices that do not violate the laws of nature and logic, without being aware of that. I need to choose if to walk right or left in the crossroad, in the universe I went right I feel I choose right freely according to the best of my judgment, and in the universe I went left I feel I choose left freely according to the best of my judgment. If free will was true than what we do was more related to what we think we should do.
It is amazing to me how our subconscious brain is able to interpret and react at times before we, our conscious brain, is even aware of what's happening. I was sitting earlier watching TH-cam and I dosed off just barely- not really all the way asleep but totally unconscious of what was happening around me. All the sudden I wake myself up hollering "Hey, cut it out!" and then I realize- just as I finish saying this- why I'm saying it- my cats are underneath my chair fighting. Now I had no idea they were even in the house when I dozed off- so my brain had to have heard what was happening and reacted appropriately- totally on auto pilot. The same thing happened when my mother who has congestive heart failure lost the ability to breathe- at 4 am. I was asleep- of course- and somehow, I heard her- she was unable to speak and could only whisper very weakly- all the way from the other end of the house- 30-40 feet away through 3 walls- and I reacted by getting up, getting half dressed, and going to her room- while asleep. I woke up standing in her room, trying to figure out what was wrong with her. Then I realize she can't breathe- call an ambulance- and she turned out to be ok. Thats how we found out she had congestive heart failure- we had no idea before this. So not only am I shocked I heard anything- but I'm also shocked it registered to me that it was that important, that I was able to get up and get dressed, navigate a dark house, etc.- all while unconscious. I remember being totally shocked after it was over and wondering how I ended up in there, what she had said or done- I couldn't remember anything but just waking up standing at her bedside. Makes you wonder how many things your brain does this with, and you only notice when something goes wrong, and your attention is called to it. I think that's the brain being like "Wait- there's a new variable here- we don't know what to with this... " and so now it has to involve you- it makes a request for you to be present and conscious- and that's when you become aware.
It's simple, you have will power, and you are free to use that will power, hence you have free will. Free will is just something that rides along the stream of consciousness.
Your will is caused by causes outside of yourself at a full spectrum deterministic level and quantum mechanics does not add anything but a bit of randomness to the determinism which still leave no space for free will
@@williamburts5495 it’s not your fault your not persuaded, it will just be that in your life to date you have heard things or been taught beliefs (environmental determinism) that have led to you making a decision. As with all decisions they lead inevitably from preceding causes that are not within anyones control. Free will is a strong illusion but in the end it’s all neurobiological action that is caused by environmental determinism and biological determinism together forming you life and it’s outcome’s many of your traits are epigenetic meaning you have no choice or control over the traits that you have the rest is formed by environment which your not responsible for or able to control. I’d recommend you read the science of fate by Hannah Critchlow and behave by Robert Saplosky and free will by Sam Harris to gain an understanding of the truth and determinism
@@luamfernandez6031 Ok, so if that's the definition, "free will" is just a perfectly random effect. The only such events that I'm aware of are quantum effects. But, that's not how humans (or anything with a brain) make decisions. I dont think "what should I eat for lunch" and sometimes think "I'll eat a chair!". Never happens. Why? Because humans dont think based on purely random events in the brain, or elsewhere. So... free will in that case does not exist. Glad we settled that.
Quien decide no es el Ser, sino el mono que nos habita. Las neurociencias lo demostraron. La acción del Ser es la acción Consciente. Instantes antes de usar una palabra no tenemos consciencia de ella; el mono que nos habita selecciona las palabras que empleamos.
It's an illusion inside an illusion. When you play a 1 video game its seems you have free to drive a car, change clothes, choose a weapon, enter a room, pick up an item. It is free will but only within the limits of the program. If there was only 1 game you would never know what you were missing! Another game might have trains and shipping logistics. Tour options for freewill are just focused on different choices. Each game could be a universe unaware of each others physics. I would say we are in only 1 possible game/universe so we can't not tell. We have free will within the limits the wave function. The catch is we can't go back so its always guiding and limiting our possible choices. If someone is attacked by a bear a loses an arm. The next day your free will options would be different. The options appearing in your subconscious would change. You would have knowledgeof a bear attack and approach the differently. Also the lack of an arm would prevent your free will from working. Somethings you could not do anymore. This would just change your choice options in the program. Eventually your freewill free would drift towards things that were options. If everyone one only had 1 arm than you wouldn't know what you were missing. That would be a normal game. LOL I always comment an each time I can explain 0003% of what I actually think! Freewill is another one that's connected in a weird way :0
i like the way sam harris explain it . Quantum indeterminacy introduces an idea of randmness so it is like if your decision was based in the flip of a coin if it is one face of the coin you perform one action if it is the other you perform another action. IT hipotetically introduces alternate possiblities but i isn´t free will because it would´t be you choosing one or the other like i said is like rolling a dice or flipping a coin, you didn´t choose to get a 6 the outcome was not in your control.
Robert Kuhn muddles up all the good work he does with this series by bringing in "God" into the name of the series as well as conversations of the series. A clear indication of somebody confused with himself while being an apologist for religious hocus pocus that we've made up with the poorer part of our imagination and the weaker part of our emotions.
@@ddandrews6472 I am really interested in how you 'know' that God doesn't exist. I KNOW that God DOES exist because of the miracles He has performed through me with WITNESSES and many more without witnesses.I have also interacted with Him/Her/It EVERYDAY for the last 14 years. You non-believers are ignorant. You don't know what you don't know - the knowing of which would change EVERYTHING. It's OK though. Thanks to God's Perfect System not one of His children will be left behind. Of this you have no choice - but He will NEVER force you. It's just that there's a faster way - if you wish. God Loves you, and I love you - of this you have no choice. I don't have to like you but it is necessary that I love you. Hint : what's slowing you up is Fear. This Fear is totally coming from Ego. The soul is fearless. Have a good journey. We are ALL heading to the same place. I'll see you there eventually.
@@garychartrand7378 One more religious lunatic watching "Closer to Truth". There is no shortage of you people here. This is supposed to be for people who employs critical thinking or at least some form it, yet this program attracts loonies like you. That's why I don't watch some programs of this religious apologist anymore. This is religion disguised as science.
Allow me to summarize this debate: "There is no scientific or philosophical path to free will. All of our current understanding of the world points clearly to there being no such thing as free will. Moreover, the concept itself is unintelligible." "Yeah but I really _feeeeel_ like I have it! And psychological feelings are obviously on par with everything we know about the universe somehow. It's not like our feelings are wrong all the time or anything."
Well put. And if we look at the societal impacts of us assuming we have free will, it becomes clear why people have so much trouble giving the idea up. Imagine a world where our judicial system, our meritocracy etc. are based on a false premise of free will. A society based on science that says there is no free will would look totally different. Yes we would still put murderers away so that they don't hurt others, but our understanding would be that they are not to blame, only their luck of getting a certain kind of brain chemistry and cultural/physical environment and history for their lives. On the other hand why should we give a superior position to people who have had good luck with their brain chemistry to be more intelligent or more hard working? Yes of course we want to be able to enjoy as much as we can of a "virtuoso" pianist, but we have to admit that it is not their own choice that brought them there but a predetermined set of conditions. Hurrah!
Free will is a contradiction, impossible in principle, not because of determinism in itself, but because of identity, i.e. consistency of personality. In other words, will has to be determined, it is what defines a person, or otherwise, if not uniquely determined, it is equivalent to multiple personality disorder.
Joseph I agree with you..it does end up the way it does but still our brains act and think like they were orchestrated to, like our bodies, and we can think good or bad, be intelligent or less intelligent, remember or not remember, and respond physically or not because the brain commands muscles to do so. ..so it is what we have coined free will and we use what we have been given in that brain to do the job..but I said given!!!! So we think it is free will, we have to...! But really deep down it was a gift, given to us to use, not all gifts being equal. I did not make my brain or body. Not guilty ever!
Information emerges from physical brain, that mean there's more information that what's in the system's state variables. Can the emergent concept affect future brain physical states? This concept is at the end of the video.
What would be the actual problem if we abandoned the idea of Free Will? The only practical problem I see, is how then to assign responsibility to certain actions. The reason we need to assign responsibility to actions is to determine how behavior can be influenced by sanctions. Punishing or rewarding someone for something he/she isn't responsible for seems unfair, as the sanction is ultimatively in vein. Which offers a perfect workaround for the Free Will problem: If we assign responsibility to those, who can be most reliably influenced by sanctions, so that the outcome of a decision to act changes, we can restore the validity of sanctions even in a completely deterministic universe.
We don’t need to be very complicated on the subject. Individuals and societies have the right to protect themselves. So without freewill, we can still hold you responsible, “because you are” just not in the freewill sense, but moralizing and revenge etc, become stupid uncalled for responses. Either you function well, as society requires or you don’t. Some people can respond to actions against them and learn, some can’t.
"Do human brains have free will?" The very question itself stem from the assumption of the exercise of a free will. It is not a machine that asks the question. Read John Eccles.
Yes, there is free will up to some extent which will help in deciding one's future . First of all we have to accept & understand that we are conscious beings or one can say immortal souls. So soul operates the body through mind .when we are going to do something good or bad our soul or conscious tells us by giving good or bad feeling that we are doing something bad, our soul or conscious will try to stop us but its our choice weather we listen to our soul or not. we knowingly do what we want to do, we are not innocents we ignore our conscious which tried to stop us to do wrong, this is the point at which we have free will & when we do something good our soul or conscious is very happy & we all know through that satisfaction level we feel. So i think our soul or conscious tells us before doing it that we are doing something good or bad, it means that we have free will up to some extent.
The brain uses energy to process spike trains that activate synapses between neurons, of which there are 86 billion. If there is a freestanding soul, how is the information thansferred back and forth between the brain and the soul? An invisible bluetooth connection? And from where does the soul get the energy to process the information? The soul is just an impossible concept, unless it's defined as a part of the brain.
This is a good question. _Who_ is free? The consciousness? But is it fundamental or emergent? From what is it _free_ ? From the laws of physics? But then it's unphysical...
the underlying theme to this debate and many other conflicting theories of dimensional mechanisms is paradox, it already binds and gives relevance to free will and determinsim....Paradox is what actually matters, it already exists without doubt...
I think the problem of free will is deeper than anywhere discussed in this video. Even if there is some mysterious form of mental causation, it is clear that we cannot freely choose the circumstances that underlie our existence: to give some examples, we cannot choose our parents (and therefore we cannot choose our heredity), the place of our birth which for most people remains there place of citizenship, where history will unfold about them in a local sense, and have many causative impacts on them, the economic opportunity we do or do not have as children, or basic level of hereditary intelligence, (already mentioned but a specific element of heredity that is very determination, as for example, whether we would 'choose' to vote for Donald Trump or not), if there is other intelligent life in the Universe, what planet we exist on, or similarly, what universe we may exist in. These kinds of things, and infinitely many others, such as the state of our internal molecular biology at any given movement, form up the background of our existence, not just at the moment of our conception, birth, or early childhood, but throughout our lives, until the moment of of death, which we do not usually have control over either. It is inconceivable that we can have a broader sort of 'free will' if such basic aspects of our existence so clearly do not come about as a result of free choices. So even if there is some agency located within ourselves, that agency's primary characteristics form completely outside of itself... and are not choices made by the agent. I have of course made up my own definition of free will, but it seems to me that it is the only meaningful form of free will. Free will must truly be free, unconditioned, or at least not so significantly conditioned as it is by the background factors of our existence. This should be so clear as to not require explanation, but we seem to have a deep psychological need to believe we have something like free will; this need is almost certainly related to human biological evolution (of the sense of self)...
I am wondering if on determinism we should rename evolution to progressive deterministic development since there is no randomness and no survival of the fittest (who will be a prey and who will be a predator, their speed, their capacity to make "free choices" isn't really there etc.) but we could calculate all of those if we would know initial conditions and all the laws of the physics.
The only place where free will may exist, is in our inner life, where imagination creates new situations and ideas. We are gestating entities where our imagination and desires glimpse new possibilities: we need reincarnation where both our present life's distilled experiences and our inner dreams are reconciled. Free will has to be hidden for a new dawn of present experiences to emerge from the past. Philosophers have long warned us to live as if death is always present in order to create a better future: the future is now. Free will hides in the meaning of Time itself.
Brain not, brain is me! I can be free, depends on who I am, but freedom is never "in abstracto", you can not see freedom, you can only "be in" or "have" freedom, empiricly we can only recognize determined things, science can in principle only recognize determined things, nobody has ever seen freedom! Like Kant explained, freedom is proven in that moment I can think it!
I don’t understand why the randomness of quantum mechanics is such an anathema to free will. Isn’t this what we would expect from a fully independent being with free will? If not, what is the answer we are looking for to help us define (or constitutes) free will?
@@A3Kr0n Sure, here's a concrete example: imagine you are playing Texas Holdem with two other players (call them A and B) and get dealt pocket aces (i.e. two aces). Also suppose you accidentally drop one of your cards (face-up) on the floor and player A sees it while player B doesn't..... Now note that the probability of you having pocket aces is different from each player's relative points of view (including your own).
@@A3Kr0n Here's a bonus example for you: Imagine that a true free will being personally chooses one card of out of a deck and then displays it to some naive physicist who wants to predict the outcome. Now note that from the naive physicist's perspective, the outcome seems random, and the best he can ever do is give a probabilistic prediction. Hence for the physicist to then declare that the being displaying the card does not have free will due to "randomness" is not only naive, but just flat out wrong.
@@Nayr747 TERRIBLE coin example :) ... The exact internal processes by which quantum mechanical observations manifest is unknown. In other words, all physicists can observe in a quantum mechanical "coin flip" is the outcome (head's or tail's), and not the actual "flip". Therefore, extrapolating "no free will" on a quantum "flip" you basically know nothing about is fallacious and downright stupid.
To everyone that knows I didn't know the concept of a multi departments resulted in the dryer baby concept, thanks for the reminder, l would never had dreamed it unless she'd told me and the originals I'm sorry I didn't ask anything from you
“You can do what you decide to do, but you cannot decide what you will decide to do” -Sam Harris You don’t need to think that much further past this quote to realize that you’re a slave to your neurons. As Homo sapiens, we only need to comprehend as far as our specie’s demands are satisfied so there’s no way we can compute all the traces of our urges which thus results in this illusion of free will. We’re just observing a movie at the end of the day.
Sam Harris can talk for hours, but his shpeel comes down to this. You can't choose "who you are" or "what you want" so you have no free will. How crazy would that be if you had to decide every morning who you were going to be that day, and even sillier that you would have to decide what to want. Free will is there so you can "get what you want." Harris's version of free will is pure sophistry and childish BS.
@@madmax2976 free will is an incoherent idea with no scientific evidence to support it. Just like god. How is it that humans possess this magical ability to initiate events partially free from prior causal chains?
Brain and mind are different entities. Brain is just a seat for mind. Memories can reside in heart also. Few heart transplant surgeries have proven it. Mind is it's own realm and it's closer to our true self. But, mind has the tendency to believe in physical. If we turn our mind to inner reality, we realize the eternal truth.
A hard determinist will tell you that you are totally controlled and powered by whatever state immediately precedes the choice you are making, but then, will tell you that you still have to do the mental work, come up with a plan and make it happen by your own initiative, or nothing will happen. Pretty useless determinism if you ask me.
so at 21:10 he says determinism is not free he also says randomness is not free but we are looking for the answer to the 'free' question is 'what is free will' I think we can narrow the question to "what is free" so what is it ? any ideas ? no examples please ideas what is it exactly ?
The " gap " is the hard problem of consciousness and consciousness being an emergent property of the brain will always remain a mystery for science because awareness could not observe awareness as an objective object since that would be an experience within consciousness. Awareness could not observe awareness any more than fire could burn itself or water could moisten itself. Nor could any machine reveal to you your subjective existence because that existence is what gives you the knowing that you exist which is unique only to you. So, seeing consciousness as an emergent property of the brain is unfeasible. Since free will flows along the stream of consciousness it will also always remain just a mystery that we can't see to be reducible to physic stuff. Do we have some freedom? I believe so, a native Indian saying says, " within a person are two wolves, one good, the other evil, and whatever wolf we feed the most we become. A human being is a lump of impulses and when we learn to control those impulses we can make our life peaceful for life. Do past experiences affect us? Answer: Yes, because they condition our psyche as the saying goes violence begets violence but that is related to experience and not biology. So, as I see it, biology doesn't make you the person that you are, so it doesn't determine the type of person you are because people can change and cultivate themselves through spiritual practices.
Consider this. Our thought and behavior result from hierarchical neural networks. Lower level (deterministic) neuronal activity produces higher-level "emergent" activity that has additional characteristic than those of what produced it - the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. That is "self", "consciousness," and "free will." You can study each and never discover what produced it. These emergent phenomena do not strictly depend on antecedent events; they become new entities that can produce thought, behavior, and self-control, and decision-making. In this way, humans have free will (subject to genetics, early childhood development, life experiences, and any forces extant at the time of a decision that would bias the decision). Thus, humans have constrained free will; they have choice, and in most cases, humans are responsible for their words, behavior, and actions.
That’s a story. But there is no evidence. And we should be able to trace cause and effect within this emergent reality as we can with other emergent phenomenon.
@@ihatespam2 There is plenty of evidence. Complex, non-linear dynamical systems, emergence. Causation that goes up and down heirarchically such that causation is not linear and due to randomness, the past cannot be constructed from the present, not can the future.
@@georgegrubbs2966 you seem to have a very loose definition of evidence. Things that make you wonder, or allow you to connect dots with ideas are not evidence. Emergence is in no way contradictory to natural science, and is common. If you have free will, prove it to yourself. Pick something you are not convinced of, then decide to be convinced of it. No pretending, be actually convinced. Use your magical free will to decide Zeus is real or whatever you want. But you can’t. No matter how hard you try. Just like every decision you’ve made, unless the conditions are different you will always make the same decision.
Along with John Searle, I agree that free will is nonsense but putting free will aside for a moment, I disagree with John's comment made at 6:15 where he said "Is there any part of the universe that we know is indeterministic and the only part we know FOR SURE is quantum mechanics.". I disagree with the "FOR SURE" part of his comment. This comment supports the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics which is fine but it's not fact and is still only a theory. Just because a human is unable to know the outcome of a quantum event doesn't prove that indeterminism or randomness exists. If the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics was fact, then no one would be talking about and supporting other theories of quantum mechanics such as Bohmian mechanics (a.k.a. pilot wave theory) or the many-worlds interpretation where both of these interpretations are deterministic and not random.
Quantum Mechanics is the answer to free will. The observer modifies what he observes. When a person, driven by its desires or lack of something, makes the decision of visualizing what he wants in the future, for example, a trip or making a youtube channel to answer questions, by the same visualization that person materializes what he or she disired to become true. He or she out of infinite possibilities makes something become a material reality by observing it in advance.
So I watched that whole thing to learn that the answer is we do not know? Oh well, it was still interesting. I love the mystery of it all. If we knew everything life would be boring.
I think that the idea of the physical, the biological, is linked with determinism. I don't know if this is something that can be changed. The consciousness within the body however, seems to be linked with free will, as in actually being able to make different things at any given time
davidson had a good idea with free will in anomalous monism. there are mental events and physical events. mental events are propositional dispositions. physical events are non mental events. physical events are strictly deterministic and mental events are not. in that case, there is an asymmetrical supervenience relationship between the mental and physical. to illustrate: we can be angry long after the physical events that caused us to be angry have dissipated, and, that anger has physical effects, but, we were never guaranteed to become angry in the first place. how would that work? in a heuristic system where every event is unique and temporary, a functional system (say, vision for recognizing kinds of objects) must represent through interpretation. there is no guarantee of how such a system will type inputs or that it will faithfully do so. having billions of such 'microrealizers' (shoemaker) under the same constraints where these interact and instantiate other mental events, that's a heck of a lot of deterministic activity going on but only where outcomes are probablistic. so, when we further have functional systems that evaluate what to do with that kind of information via feelings first (propositional dispositions; belief, fear, hope, anger, anxiety, etc.), the causal nexus has to be seen in those terms. such systems are themselves fully explainable in physical terms, but what those physical states of affairs realize are probablistic mental events that are not governed by the same laws as those of purely physical states of affairs. in this way, yes, mental events are ultimately physical events but mental events are not strictly discrete physical events. free will and determinism are compatible.
This subject is way over my understanding but to me, it seems; determinism provides parameters, quantum mechanics presents options, free will allows choice. Throw in nature/nurture, then free will outcomes reduce to opportunity/character/morality.
I think understanding Free Will only affects our ability to sanction behavior. Punishing someone, who was not free in his decision would be futile and cruel.
@@stefanb6539 No you are still responsible for your actions. The punishment and fear of punishment hopefully become causes in the chain that hopefully encourage the right effect.
for me it makes a huge difference, for someone else it might not. there are many implications of that (just one) truth and each hears their own benefits or just dismisses it
@@praviplavokutnik That's an interesting reply. I have a question about what you said if you don't mind. In what way does thinking you have free will/or not/ cause you to change the way you live your life?
@@danielpaulson8838 It keeps me humble. I know that people's behavior is influenced by something that would effect me in the same way so I try to understand them. I also don't bath in shame and guilt all the time if I do something wrong, instead I learn and go forward. There's much more peace if you stop wasting energy of judging someone else's apparent decisions, which were never their own. And also, ego is much less in control of you if you don't consider yourself the doer of your actions. Instead, seeing life as a movie you are witnessing makes you traveling light.
What strikes me is if you take someone that is born into a cut off world from religion , technology and advances and was never brought up into Christianity. How is this person judged by God if they act upon their response to free Will. Do we have free will or act spontaneously on the environment in which we are grown into. For instance every second that we encounter we react based on that second We encounter free will or just survival. “The shows are the best. ‘
There is a difference between expectation and anticipation. If I anticipate an act I can choose a response beforehand. But if I am not aware that the action is going to occur my response might be different. I'm more independent now than I was at the age of five, and I was more independent at the age of five than I was as an infant. Here, independence means that I can control my responses and modulate when they will occur. Finally, we are all going to hit the brick wall, but we get to decide how fast or slowly we approach it, more or less. Our nature (awareness) responds to what occurs to it and generates will in a way that is partly heritable and partly determined by our choices.
Using quantum physics to explain free will sounds a lot like the god of the gaps. Finding the area we dont understand and attribute that to god or in this case free will. Acceptance is the answer! We dont have free will!
The universe is probabilistic not deterministic. The observer itself is an act of will as a natural consequence of conscious separation from the observed. Thought invents the duality between observer and observed. Thus the observer becomes a player in the inform ation it relates with.
Free will is absolutely impossible, even for a God. Our will is mostly subconscious, that's the strike one against it being free. Strike two: to have a complete control of your will, you must have an awareness of every minute action you can possibly take at any micro-moment, and understanding of every possible implication of that action. Since there is practically unlimited number of options, one's brain would be immediately overwhelmed and shut down. Instead, our will is randomly predetermined by a combination of many things: the state of our brain's chemistry at the moment, what we had for breakfast, did we get enough sleep, did we argue or make love, the weather outside, the political climate, cosmic rays causing damage to a particular part of our brain etc, etc, etc. The combination itself is practically unlimited. That's why some people believe in a Flat Earth, and others don't, some people put on a mask, while others refuse, some people take medication, others won't; that's why 30 years ago the current insanity in the White House would be prevented or fixed immediately, but today we can't/won't do anything about it, that's why some people study and understand Science, while others don't, that's why, while collectively we know exactly what causes a lot of problems in our life, and, collectively, we have all the information needed to fix many problems right now, we still won't do it, we can't even be certain when, how or if ever we will get to doing it.
Everyone just assumes, as an unargued philosophical bias, that, whenever we speak of ‘free will’, we all intuitively seem to know what we’re talking about… If physicalism were true, then how is it possible for the physicalist to change his mind, explain the ‘problem of other minds’, avoid becoming a solipsist, engaging in intelligent discourse… For the physicalist (like John Searle), it really IS a problem, not so much because it leads him to the absurd conclusion of a Boltzmann brain, but because the alternative, determinism, ineluctably and unavoidably leads him into the realm of the metaphysical where ‘consciousness’ could be synonymous with ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’, all of which raises the question of… God! But… rather hold to the absurd than even considering the possibility of God having breathed life into the creature to give them their ‘elan vital’!
Neither determinism or randomness (by themselves) leads to free will. But they may be aspects of it. Randomness has an element of "play" and "exploration" over a strict deterministic algorithm. In reinforcement learning (e.g. an AI algorithm such as AlphaGo), there is something known as a "exploration vs. exploitation" tradeoff. Say 10% of the time you try something random, try something different, to learn something new, some new options, on the chance that it maybe even better. It's basically a form of "random sampling" the solution space. The other 90% of the time is "exploitation", following a well worn path that maximizes some utility. This is how the AI algorithm becomes "creative", finds "novel solutions", given an optimization objective. The randomness breaks the stranglehold of some previously deterministic habit, which maybe a local minimum, and allows for the possibility of new and surprising solutions. How does this relate to free will? I tend to agree with Roger Walsh, in that the issue really belongs in the psychological realm. (Physics is just too low level, for the discussion to have meaning.). We have freedom to choose amongst a finite set of options, based on some higher, more abstract goals, such as happiness, a sense of control. These common objectives seem largely invariant for human beings. Maslow's hierarchy describes some of these common factors. Free will is freedom over a lower layer of neurons, that maybe more simply animalistic (and instinctual). The human being is capable of a wider range of responses. The exploration vs. exploitation algorithm still applies when exploring one's options. It illustrates the point that it's not simplistically deterministic, rigidly robotic. There is also a societal dimension. This leads to the libertarian notion of free will. As one guy said "my neurons vs. the other guy's neurons". Also, there are issues with split brain, mental illness, child abuse, there are also societal determinations of what consists of sufficient executive function to warrant determination of moral responsibility. So the whole notion of "free will" is not an abstract notion of what it feels like to make a choice, but embedded in a whole psychological and social context for it to have any real meaning.
Free Will is the capability of a system to modify its behavior in anticipation of sanctions. Actual lifecritical problems with "Free Will" only occur in institutions aimed at educating or modifying behaviors. Only an effective sanction can ever be a just sanction.
The brain is part of the body, so the question should actually be: Does the human body have a will? He has that, and he lets it be felt permanently in all basic needs.
the idea that quantum mechanics would not effect the brain is crazy (24:42) that is if they think that quantum mechanics can not work in the large world of wet brains, because we are learning that alot of our biological processes ARE effected by quantum mechanics.
It’s crazier to think you know how it would or be able to provide evidence for it. In fact the activities at the quantum level are averaged out and have virtually no effect at our scale. If it did it would be pure randomness which would not provide any connection to free will, because freewill is not randomness. It’s the opposite.
Who decides is not the Being, but the monkey that inhabits us. The neurosciences proved it. The action of the Being is the Conscious action. Moments before using a word we are not aware of it; the monkey that inhabits us selects the words we use.
Bell's experiment has now been done many times, and the answer is unequivocal: determinism at the quantum level is not true. Nature is not deterministic. The experiments showed that every quantum process entails some degree of “indeterminism”; that is, there are predictable probabilities but there is never certainty.
I am conscious of the fact that my brain is selfserving. Altruism and love are subordinate to evolutionary necessity. Which is survival and the urge to spread my genes.
A piece from a new autobiography titled: Saved by the Light of the Buddha Within... Myoho-Renge-Kyo represents the identity of what some scientists are now referring to as the unified field of consciousnesses. In other words, it’s the essence of all existence and non-existence - the ultimate creative force behind planets, stars, nebulae, people, animals, trees, fish, birds, and all phenomena, manifest or latent. All matter and intelligence are simply waves or ripples manifesting to and from this core source. Consciousness (enlightenment) is itself the actual creator of everything that exists now, ever existed in the past, or will exist in the future - right down to the minutest particles of dust - each being an individual ripple or wave. The big difference between chanting Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo and most other conventional prayers is that instead of depending on a ‘middleman’ to connect us to our state of inner enlightenment, we’re able to do it ourselves. That’s because chanting Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo allows us to tap directly into our enlightened state by way of this self-produced sound vibration. ‘Who or What Is God?’ If we compare the concept of God being a separate entity that is forever watching down on us, to the teachings of Nichiren, it makes more sense to me that the true omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence of what most people perceive to be God, is the fantastic state of enlightenment that exists within each of us. Some say that God is an entity that’s beyond physical matter - I think that the vast amount of information continuously being conveyed via electromagnetic waves in today’s world gives us proof of how an invisible state of God could indeed exist. For example, it’s now widely known that specific data relayed by way of electromagnetic waves has the potential to help bring about extraordinary and powerful effects - including an instant global awareness of something or a mass emotional reaction. It’s also common knowledge that these invisible waves can easily be used to detonate a bomb or to enable NASA to control the movements of a robot as far away as the Moon or Mars - none of which is possible without a receiver to decode the information that’s being transmitted. Without the receiver, the data would remain impotent. In a very similar way, we need to have our own ‘receiver’ switched on so that we can activate a clear and precise understanding of our own life, all other life and what everything else in existence is. Chanting Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo each day helps us to achieve this because it allows us to reach the core of our enlightenment and keep it switched on. That’s because Myoho-Renge-Kyo represents the identity of what scientists now refer to as the unified field of consciousnesses. To break it down - Myoho represents the Law of manifestation and latency (Nature) and consists of two alternating states. For example, the state of Myo is where everything in life that’s not obvious to us exists - including our stored memories when we’re not thinking about them - our hidden potential and inner emotions whenever they’re dormant - our desires, our fears, our wisdom, happiness, karma - and more importantly, our enlightenment. The other state, ho, is where everything in Life exists whenever it becomes evident to us, such as when a thought pops up from within our memory - whenever we experience or express our emotions - or whenever a good or bad cause manifests as an effect from our karma. When anything becomes apparent, it merely means that it’s come out of the state of Myo (dormancy/latency) and into a state of ho (manifestation). It’s the difference between consciousness and unconsciousness, being awake or asleep, or knowing and not knowing. The second law - Renge - Ren meaning cause and ge meaning effect, governs and controls the functions of Myoho - these two laws of Myoho and Renge, not only function together simultaneously but also underlie all spiritual and physical existence. The final and third part of the tri-combination - Kyo, is the Law which allows Myoho to integrate with Renge - or vice versa. It’s the great, invisible thread of energy that fuses and connects all Life and matter - as well as the past, present and future. It’s also sometimes termed the Universal Law of Communication - perhaps it could even be compared with the string theory that many scientists now suspect exists. Just as the cells in our body, our thoughts, feelings and everything else is continually fluctuating within us - all that exists in the world around us and beyond is also in a constant state of flux - constantly controlled by these three fundamental laws. In fact, more things are going back and forth between the two states of Myo and ho in a single moment of time than it would ever be possible to calculate or describe. And it doesn’t matter how big or small, famous or trivial anything or anyone may appear to be, everything that’s ever existed in the past, exists now or will exist in the future, exists only because of the workings of the Laws ‘Myoho-Renge-Kyo’ - the basis of the four fundamental forces, and if they didn’t function, neither we nor anything else could go on existing. That’s because all forms of existence, including the seasons, day, night, birth, death and so on, are moving forward in an ongoing flow of continuation - rhythmically reverting back and forth between the two fundamental states of Myo and ho in absolute accordance with Renge - and by way of Kyo. Even stars are dying and being reborn under the workings of what the combination ‘Myoho-Renge-Kyo’ represents. Nam, or Namu - which mean the same thing, are vibrational passwords or keys that allow us to reach deep into our life and fuse with or become one with ‘Myoho-Renge-Kyo’. On a more personal level, nothing ever happens by chance or coincidence, it’s the causes that we’ve made in our past, or are presently making, that determine how these laws function uniquely in each of our lives - as well as the environment from moment to moment. By facing east, in harmony with the direction that the Earth is spinning, and chanting Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo for a minimum of, let’s say, ten minutes daily to start with, any of us can experience actual proof of its positive effects in our lives - even if it only makes us feel good on the inside, there will be a definite positive effect. That’s because we’re able to pierce through the thickest layers of our karma and activate our inherent Buddha Nature (our enlightened state). By so doing, we’re then able to bring forth the wisdom and good fortune that we need to challenge, overcome and change our adverse circumstances - turn them into positive ones - or manifest and gain even greater fulfilment in our daily lives from our accumulated good karma. This also allows us to bring forth the wisdom that can free us from the ignorance and stupidity that’s preventing us from accepting and being proud of the person that we indeed are - regardless of our race, colour, gender or sexuality. We’re also able to see and understand our circumstances and the environment far more clearly, as well as attract and connect with any needed external beneficial forces and situations. As I’ve already mentioned, everything is subject to the law of Cause and Effect - the ‘actual-proof-strength’ resulting from chanting Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo always depends on our determination, sincerity and dedication. For example, the levels of difference could be compared to making a sound on a piano, creating a melody, or producing a great song, and so on. Something else that’s very important to always to respect and acknowledge is that the Law (or if you prefer God) is in everyone and everything. NB: There are frightening and disturbing sounds, and there are tranquil and relaxing sounds. It’s the emotional result from any noise or sound that can trigger off a mood or even instantly change one. When chanting Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo each day, we are producing a sound vibration that’s the password to our true inner-self - this soon becomes apparent when you start reassessing your views on various things - such as your fears and desires etc. The best way to get the desired result when chanting is not to view things in a conventional way - rather than reaching out to an external source, we need to reach into our own lives and bring our needs and desires to fruition from within - including the good fortune and strength to achieve any help that we may need. Chanting Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo also reaches out externally and draws us towards, or draws towards us, what we need to make us happy from our environment. For example, it helps us to be in the right place at the right time - to make better choices and decisions and so forth. We need to think of it as a seed within us that we’re watering and bringing sunshine to for it to grow, blossom and bring forth fruit or flowers. It’s also important to understand that everything we need in life - including the answer to every question and the potential to achieve every dream - already exists within us. PS2: For anyone who would like to know more about NAM-MYOHO-RENGE-KYO, I sincerely recommend that you read Tina Turner's brand-new book: HAPPINESS BECOMES YOU Let go, and let God - Olivia Newton-John Nam Myoho Renge Kyo Let go, and let God - Olivia Newton-John Nam Myoho Renge Kyo www.youtube.com
Could we understand a car if we were born inside the cabin and never allowed out of it. Sure we could do all sorts of things and come to some sort of understanding how it functions but to know everything I believe that only comes from seeing the car from outside. Same problem with the universe and this problem of free will.
We do have free will as we think about it by using our brain but how it works and who made the brain work as it does in various ways is what I espouse! I didn't make my brain or body or free Will!
Free Will is not an illusion, it is real and has immense practical applications in our lives. It is something very profound than we think. The origin of free will is so primitive that it seems to precede creation.
So you say. If you have free will, take something you are very very sure of, something you really believe. Now decide not to believe it. If you are scared, right yourself a note to open later, so you can decide to start believing it again. Then see if you can actually decide with your free will what you believe or whether it’s impossible and all you can do is pretend because you do not really have free will.
Have read all comments.. not that I think I am smarter than anyone else...lease understand what I have, I think, learned in 89 yrs of living,and I have rethought it all on over and over. All thoughts and replies are intelligent but they don't go much deeper. Think deep...that brain and so called free will is only as good as what you were blessed with. You cud have been born insane, bipolar, depressive only, low memory and learning ability ( remember school and the pupils, some at the top and some fairlures.) They only had what the inheritrp ed
Imagine I have a card deck an lay the card on the table so that we can see all the card. You get the task to choose the 4 kings, so that it shall be a history of 4 kings, one after the other. First you can choose among four, then among 3, then 2 and at last 1. How many histories can you choose? It will be 4*3*2*1 = 24, it will be 24 histories. You can freely choose the 4 kings in 24 ways. This is mathematics. So then you have a free will, sure like mathematics. No problem. If they say something that is not in accordance with this mathematics, then it is wrong. So if anyone says I don’t have a free will, it is wrong. So why do they discuss it, what’s the problem? My choice is I result of causality in my brain. Well, this is me, my body is me and so is my brain. I think with my own brain, I don’t try to think with another brain. Isn’t that OK???!!! There might be another problem, for example that you chose to do something, but you are not able to do it. You want something but can`t get it. Maybe you are not strong enough, not wise enough, you lac information, you are not rich enough to pay for it. If I shuffle the card deck and let you choose from four cards from it without let you see what card you choose and you still want to choose the 4 kings in the same order, you must be very lucky to succeed. The chance will be 1/(52*51*50*49) = 0,00000015. Despite humans free will, God does just as he wants, he is mighty enough to implement it. In the Bible it was prophesied that should invade Juda (the rest of Israel) and bring them as slaves to Babylonia, but later the king of Persia, Kyros, would let them go home. While they were in Babylonia, God told Daniel that after Babylonia there would come tree great kingdoms, Media, Persia and the Greek-empire. It is told that Alexander the Great’s kingdom should be divided in four, one of them was the Greek-Syrian kingdom. Here should come a dictator, Antiochus 4. Epiphanes, that pursued the Jews. How could he know? Why did he let it happen, why did he let his own people suffer that much? He had a plan. He surely saw something valuable in the Greek culture and Alexander spread it with his empire. But there also was something bad. When Isac Newton was old he wrote a book about Daniels Book and the revelation in the New Testament. The Revelation seems to be a continuation of Daniels book.
Let me help. In the simulated reality that we believe we exist in we absolutely do not have free will as is evidenced by the sensed deterministic nature of our sensed reality within the realm of what is only believed to be physical . The problem then becomes what of this simulation is true. Since nothing in the sensed reality is actual physical it therefore can not be deterministic at all. In fact, our true and only reality is not sensed or physical at all and therefore everything is delivered by a Conscious Agent who is totally independent of this simulated reality and is absolutely free to manipulate its simulated reality through consciously creating the simulated reality of its choosing .
Sir your voice is overwhelming!
Thank you for another great video!
For me personally, as a Thelemite,
I'm deep in this conversation on free will.
(and i have to think of "true will " in context of the conversation )
I appreciate this channel for opening up this subject for discussion.
These videos really get you thinking in a new way. I love it!
I have been thinking about this problem a lot and I have a few ideas.
There are ways to make free will work in both deterministic universes and probabilistic universes.
For a deterministic universe, free will is possible if the laws of physics are humean or anti-humean. That is, if the laws of physics say what "will happen" vs what "must happen". It's a very subtle difference - the first allows for free will but the second doesn't.
For probabilistic universes, like what quantum mechanics proposes, you can have free will that is compatible with the laws of physics if there is something (say, a soul-like entity) that has access to all the branches of the universe and chooses one of them (collapses the wave function on that branch). Of course, this is very roughly speaking. In that case, your decisions would be compatible with the laws of nature (since you're choosing one of the available branches), but you'd have to come up with something that does the choosing and a way for the choosing to occur.
I propose something better: something that is completely natural, is based on the current laws of physics and it's... "somewhat free". It is also compatible with personal identity.
My proposal is this:
Suppose I am hungry. I walk down the street and I see some guy eating a croissant. I think "I'm hungry, let me kill this guy and get his croissant to satisfy my hunger". What does this mean, neurologically? Well, visual information entered my eyes, was transformed into electrochemical impulses, reached my visual cortex, was interpreted, was transformed into the qualia of seeing, then into the conscious awareness of "some guy with a croissant next to me".
Then, based on my somatic markers (to use one of Antonio Damasio's terms), meaning, the way I am "feeling" (hungry, in this case, which is a neurological state of some neurons excited and other neurons silent), my neural network came up with a useful idea: kill the guy to get his croissant and solve the problem of hunger that I'm facing. Of course, this is only one idea: another idea is to steal his croissant, another is to ask him nicely to give me half of it, another idea is to completely ignore him and buy a croissant myself and so on and so forth.
But, somehow, this idea raised to the surface. So what happens next? Well, the "idea" (meaning, a certain neural pattern) stimulates the frontal cortex which (hopefully) overrides it. The frontal cortex is saying (through its own neural patterns) "This is completely crazy! No way I'm doing that! I will go a buy a croissant myself, instead". And you take the decision to ignore your previous "crazy idea" (according to the frontal cortex) and go and buy the croissant.
Now why would that be? Did you choose "freely" to not kill the guy but buy a croissant, instead? Well... yes. Yes, you did. Of course, this "choice" was "just neural firing patterns" that felt like thinking "This is completely crazy! No way I'm doing that! I will go buy a croissant myself, instead." - the patterns where such that it stimulated your auditory cortex in such a way to "hear these inner words in your head". But what about the freedom to act like that? Your brain's structure, genetic make-up and accumulated experience were the factors that determined this action - the causal factor are these things, that's what it means to be "you". There is no contradiction or paradox.
...and then one dies, and realizes they're still conscious, thinking and feeling, and that it was not their brain or body who was creating their consciousness.
@@markelbaslo7362 Lol okay bud
When someone asserts that free will exists, that also assumes that the self also exists, because there is an "I" making decisions. Why do we assume that the self exists? Is it possible to have an experience of not having a self (psychedelics & meditation) ? What is this feeling of "I"? If there is no "I" making decisions, then does that mean they're happening by themself?
I'm don't have free will. TH-cam algo controls me.!
What’s interesting is every single time we make a choice it’s based on judgement, aguments or instincts which means it depends on the past. But if we want to choose between two numbers 1 and 2 there is no reason why you would pick 1 over the other. In this case you simply pick it randomly so you don’t know where the choice is comming from as if you didn’t even made a choice. Then if you choose between instinct and logic it’s almost like the same thing you don’t know why you did it 😝
what if the option is robbing or working you can choose and you know why you choose it
@@rezzafer Some people's brain chemistry and environment leads them to working, and some to robbing. Some people do both at a basic level. A lot of people work their way to the top and start robbing people with sophisticated economic and political systems.
I just refuse to choose until I know what 1 means and what 2 means.
"Free will" is all about choices we make, but if the universe splits to parallel universes all the time everywhere, then we are constantly making all the possible choices that do not violate the laws of nature and logic, without being aware of that. I need to choose if to walk right or left in the crossroad, in the universe I went right I feel I choose right freely according to the best of my judgment, and in the universe I went left I feel I choose left freely according to the best of my judgment. If free will was true than what we do was more related to what we think we should do.
It is amazing to me how our subconscious brain is able to interpret and react at times before we, our conscious brain, is even aware of what's happening. I was sitting earlier watching TH-cam and I dosed off just barely- not really all the way asleep but totally unconscious of what was happening around me. All the sudden I wake myself up hollering "Hey, cut it out!" and then I realize- just as I finish saying this- why I'm saying it- my cats are underneath my chair fighting. Now I had no idea they were even in the house when I dozed off- so my brain had to have heard what was happening and reacted appropriately- totally on auto pilot.
The same thing happened when my mother who has congestive heart failure lost the ability to breathe- at 4 am. I was asleep- of course- and somehow, I heard her- she was unable to speak and could only whisper very weakly- all the way from the other end of the house- 30-40 feet away through 3 walls- and I reacted by getting up, getting half dressed, and going to her room- while asleep. I woke up standing in her room, trying to figure out what was wrong with her. Then I realize she can't breathe- call an ambulance- and she turned out to be ok. Thats how we found out she had congestive heart failure- we had no idea before this. So not only am I shocked I heard anything- but I'm also shocked it registered to me that it was that important, that I was able to get up and get dressed, navigate a dark house, etc.- all while unconscious. I remember being totally shocked after it was over and wondering how I ended up in there, what she had said or done- I couldn't remember anything but just waking up standing at her bedside.
Makes you wonder how many things your brain does this with, and you only notice when something goes wrong, and your attention is called to it. I think that's the brain being like "Wait- there's a new variable here- we don't know what to with this... " and so now it has to involve you- it makes a request for you to be present and conscious- and that's when you become aware.
The take away? Well it’s quite simple: when John Searle says his “daddy.” That’s all
It's simple, you have will power, and you are free to use that will power, hence you have free will. Free will is just something that rides along the stream of consciousness.
Your will is caused by causes outside of yourself at a full spectrum deterministic level and quantum mechanics does not add anything but a bit of randomness to the determinism which still leave no space for free will
@@jamespaternoster7354 Doubt, we are all free to doubt and since doubting is something willfully done we have free will to doubt.
@@williamburts5495 your not responsible for your doubt and the doubt is determined on every level so nope still no free will
@@jamespaternoster7354 Well, aren't I free to doubt everything you just said? Answer: Well, why yes I am, therefore free will exist.
@@williamburts5495 it’s not your fault your not persuaded, it will just be that in your life to date you have heard things or been taught beliefs (environmental determinism) that have led to you making a decision. As with all decisions they lead inevitably from preceding causes that are not within anyones control. Free will is a strong illusion but in the end it’s all neurobiological action that is caused by environmental determinism and biological determinism together forming you life and it’s outcome’s many of your traits are epigenetic meaning you have no choice or control over the traits that you have the rest is formed by environment which your not responsible for or able to control. I’d recommend you read the science of fate by Hannah Critchlow and behave by Robert Saplosky and free will by Sam Harris to gain an understanding of the truth and determinism
It's very difficult to determine if there's "free will" when you dont even bother to define what "free will" is in the first place.
The possibility to decide without any determining cause.
Because it can't be defined. The concept itself makes no sense. No one could even coherently describe what it is.
@@luamfernandez6031 Ok, so if that's the definition, "free will" is just a perfectly random effect. The only such events that I'm aware of are quantum effects. But, that's not how humans (or anything with a brain) make decisions. I dont think "what should I eat for lunch" and sometimes think "I'll eat a chair!". Never happens. Why? Because humans dont think based on purely random events in the brain, or elsewhere. So... free will in that case does not exist. Glad we settled that.
@@Nayr747 It's just freedom, nothing would be able to cause or control your actions but you.
@@luamfernandez6031 Now define "you".
no.
Quien decide no es el Ser, sino el mono que nos habita. Las neurociencias lo demostraron. La acción del Ser es la acción Consciente. Instantes antes de usar una palabra no tenemos consciencia de ella; el mono que nos habita selecciona las palabras que empleamos.
It's an illusion inside an illusion. When you play a 1 video game its seems you have free to drive a car, change clothes, choose a weapon, enter a room, pick up an item. It is free will but only within the limits of the program. If there was only 1 game you would never know what you were missing! Another game might have trains and shipping logistics. Tour options for freewill are just focused on different choices. Each game could be a universe unaware of each others physics. I would say we are in only 1 possible game/universe so we can't not tell. We have free will within the limits the wave function. The catch is we can't go back so its always guiding and limiting our possible choices. If someone is attacked by a bear a loses an arm. The next day your free will options would be different. The options appearing in your subconscious would change. You would have knowledgeof a bear attack and approach the differently. Also the lack of an arm would prevent your free will from working. Somethings you could not do anymore. This would just change your choice options in the program. Eventually your freewill free would drift towards things that were options. If everyone one only had 1 arm than you wouldn't know what you were missing. That would be a normal game. LOL I always comment an each time I can explain 0003% of what I actually think! Freewill is another one that's connected in a weird way :0
Could free will emerge or grow out of quantum randomness / indeterminacy?
They addressed that, freewill, isn’t randomness. That would be a crazy person.
i like the way sam harris explain it . Quantum indeterminacy introduces an idea of randmness so it is like if your decision was based in the flip of a coin if it is one face of the coin you perform one action if it is the other you perform another action. IT hipotetically introduces alternate possiblities but i isn´t free will because it would´t be you choosing one or the other like i said is like rolling a dice or flipping a coin, you didn´t choose to get a 6 the outcome was not in your control.
I believe that free will is nothing but an illusion. I had no free will saying that it was determined that I would.
Robert Kuhn muddles up all the good work he does with this series by bringing in "God" into the name of the series as well as conversations of the series. A clear indication of somebody confused with himself while being an apologist for religious hocus pocus that we've made up with the poorer part of our imagination and the weaker part of our emotions.
Sorry. I KNOW that God exists - without doubt. God should be the starting point, then EVERYTHING makes sense.
@@garychartrand7378 That's strange. I know the god doesn't exist. The prehistoric man just made it up during hallucinations.
@@garychartrand7378 What kind of clothing does he wear? It is a "he", right?
@@ddandrews6472 I am really interested in how you 'know' that God doesn't exist. I KNOW that God DOES exist because of the miracles He has performed through me with WITNESSES and many more without witnesses.I have also interacted with Him/Her/It EVERYDAY for the last 14 years. You non-believers are ignorant. You don't know what you don't know - the knowing of which would change EVERYTHING.
It's OK though. Thanks to God's Perfect System not one of His children will be left behind. Of this you have no choice - but He will NEVER force you. It's just that there's a faster way - if you wish. God Loves you, and I love you - of this you have no choice. I don't have to like you but it is necessary that I love you. Hint : what's slowing you up is Fear. This Fear is totally coming from Ego. The soul is fearless. Have a good journey. We are ALL heading to the same place. I'll see you there eventually.
@@garychartrand7378 One more religious lunatic watching "Closer to Truth". There is no shortage of you people here. This is supposed to be for people who employs critical thinking or at least some form it, yet this program attracts loonies like you. That's why I don't watch some programs of this religious apologist anymore. This is religion disguised as science.
Allow me to summarize this debate:
"There is no scientific or philosophical path to free will. All of our current understanding of the world points clearly to there being no such thing as free will. Moreover, the concept itself is unintelligible."
"Yeah but I really _feeeeel_ like I have it! And psychological feelings are obviously on par with everything we know about the universe somehow. It's not like our feelings are wrong all the time or anything."
Well put. And if we look at the societal impacts of us assuming we have free will, it becomes clear why people have so much trouble giving the idea up. Imagine a world where our judicial system, our meritocracy etc. are based on a false premise of free will. A society based on science that says there is no free will would look totally different. Yes we would still put murderers away so that they don't hurt others, but our understanding would be that they are not to blame, only their luck of getting a certain kind of brain chemistry and cultural/physical environment and history for their lives. On the other hand why should we give a superior position to people who have had good luck with their brain chemistry to be more intelligent or more hard working? Yes of course we want to be able to enjoy as much as we can of a "virtuoso" pianist, but we have to admit that it is not their own choice that brought them there but a predetermined set of conditions. Hurrah!
@@jusuzippol You're describing a better world.
Free will is a contradiction, impossible in principle, not because of determinism in itself, but because of identity, i.e. consistency of personality. In other words, will has to be determined, it is what defines a person, or otherwise, if not uniquely determined, it is equivalent to multiple personality disorder.
Semantics. Call it "Free Choices" or whatever.
Joseph I agree with you..it does end up the way it does but still our brains act and think like they were orchestrated to, like our bodies, and we can think good or bad, be intelligent or less intelligent, remember or not remember, and respond physically or not because the brain commands muscles to do so. ..so it is what we have coined free will and we use what we have been given in that brain to do the job..but I said given!!!! So we think it is free will, we have to...! But really deep down it was a gift, given to us to use, not all gifts being equal. I did not make my brain or body. Not guilty ever!
Information emerges from physical brain, that mean there's more information that what's in the system's state variables. Can the emergent concept affect future brain physical states? This concept is at the end of the video.
What would be the actual problem if we abandoned the idea of Free Will? The only practical problem I see, is how then to assign responsibility to certain actions. The reason we need to assign responsibility to actions is to determine how behavior can be influenced by sanctions. Punishing or rewarding someone for something he/she isn't responsible for seems unfair, as the sanction is ultimatively in vein.
Which offers a perfect workaround for the Free Will problem: If we assign responsibility to those, who can be most reliably influenced by sanctions, so that the outcome of a decision to act changes, we can restore the validity of sanctions even in a completely deterministic universe.
Well said and great to see a fellow person embrace logical science 👌😌
We don’t need to be very complicated on the subject. Individuals and societies have the right to protect themselves. So without freewill, we can still hold you responsible, “because you are” just not in the freewill sense, but moralizing and revenge etc, become stupid uncalled for responses.
Either you function well, as society requires or you don’t. Some people can respond to actions against them and learn, some can’t.
"Do human brains have free will?" The very question itself stem from the assumption of the exercise of a free will. It is not a machine that asks the question. Read John Eccles.
Yes, there is free will up to some extent which will help in deciding one's future . First of all we have to accept & understand that we are conscious beings or one can say immortal souls. So soul operates the body through mind .when we are going to do something good or bad our soul or conscious tells us by giving good or bad feeling that we are doing something bad, our soul or conscious will try to stop us but its our choice weather we listen to our soul or not. we knowingly do what we want to do, we are not innocents we ignore our conscious which tried to stop us to do wrong, this is the point at which we have free will & when we do something good our soul or conscious is very happy & we all know through that satisfaction level we feel. So i think our soul or conscious tells us before doing it that we are doing something good or bad, it means that we have free will up to some extent.
The brain uses energy to process spike trains that activate synapses between neurons, of which there are 86 billion. If there is a freestanding soul, how is the information thansferred back and forth between the brain and the soul? An invisible bluetooth connection? And from where does the soul get the energy to process the information? The soul is just an impossible concept, unless it's defined as a part of the brain.
@@heytomas1 try thinking of the physical brain as a very sophisticated computer/ transceiver.
How we define Free Will?
This is a good question. _Who_ is free? The consciousness? But is it fundamental or emergent? From what is it _free_ ? From the laws of physics? But then it's unphysical...
the underlying theme to this debate and many other conflicting theories of dimensional mechanisms is paradox, it already binds and gives relevance to free will and determinsim....Paradox is what actually matters, it already exists without doubt...
I think the problem of free will is deeper than anywhere discussed in this video. Even if there is some mysterious form of mental causation, it is clear that we cannot freely choose the circumstances that underlie our existence: to give some examples, we cannot choose our parents (and therefore we cannot choose our heredity), the place of our birth which for most people remains there place of citizenship, where history will unfold about them in a local sense, and have many causative impacts on them, the economic opportunity we do or do not have as children, or basic level of hereditary intelligence, (already mentioned but a specific element of heredity that is very determination, as for example, whether we would 'choose' to vote for Donald Trump or not), if there is other intelligent life in the Universe, what planet we exist on, or similarly, what universe we may exist in. These kinds of things, and infinitely many others, such as the state of our internal molecular biology at any given movement, form up the background of our existence, not just at the moment of our conception, birth, or early childhood, but throughout our lives, until the moment of of death, which we do not usually have control over either.
It is inconceivable that we can have a broader sort of 'free will' if such basic aspects of our existence so clearly do not come about as a result of free choices. So even if there is some agency located within ourselves, that agency's primary characteristics form completely outside of itself... and are not choices made by the agent.
I have of course made up my own definition of free will, but it seems to me that it is the only meaningful form of free will. Free will must truly be free, unconditioned, or at least not so significantly conditioned as it is by the background factors of our existence. This should be so clear as to not require explanation, but we seem to have a deep psychological need to believe we have something like free will; this need is almost certainly related to human biological evolution (of the sense of self)...
I want to believe we have no free will.
I am wondering if on determinism we should rename evolution to progressive deterministic development since there is no randomness and no survival of the fittest (who will be a prey and who will be a predator, their speed, their capacity to make "free choices" isn't really there etc.) but we could calculate all of those if we would know initial conditions and all the laws of the physics.
The only place where free will may exist, is in our inner life, where imagination creates new situations and ideas. We are gestating entities where our imagination and desires glimpse new possibilities: we need reincarnation where both our present life's distilled experiences and our inner dreams are reconciled. Free will has to be hidden for a new dawn of present experiences to emerge from the past. Philosophers have long warned us to live as if death is always present in order to create a better future: the future is now. Free will hides in the meaning of Time itself.
Brain not, brain is me! I can be free, depends on who I am, but freedom is never "in abstracto", you can not see freedom, you can only "be in" or "have" freedom, empiricly we can only recognize determined things, science can in principle only recognize determined things, nobody has ever seen freedom! Like Kant explained, freedom is proven in that moment I can think it!
I don’t understand why the randomness of quantum mechanics is such an anathema to free will. Isn’t this what we would expect from a fully independent being with free will? If not, what is the answer we are looking for to help us define (or constitutes) free will?
Yep, most physicists don't even understand what randomness is and how it and probabilities are RELATIVE to the observer.
@@A3Kr0n Sure, here's a concrete example: imagine you are playing Texas Holdem with two other players (call them A and B) and get dealt pocket aces (i.e. two aces). Also suppose you accidentally drop one of your cards (face-up) on the floor and player A sees it while player B doesn't..... Now note that the probability of you having pocket aces is different from each player's relative points of view (including your own).
If a coin is flipped randomly is the coin exercising free will? Randomness is clearly not a decision.
@@A3Kr0n Here's a bonus example for you: Imagine that a true free will being personally chooses one card of out of a deck and then displays it to some naive physicist who wants to predict the outcome. Now note that from the naive physicist's perspective, the outcome seems random, and the best he can ever do is give a probabilistic prediction. Hence for the physicist to then declare that the being displaying the card does not have free will due to "randomness" is not only naive, but just flat out wrong.
@@Nayr747 TERRIBLE coin example :) ... The exact internal processes by which quantum mechanical observations manifest is unknown. In other words, all physicists can observe in a quantum mechanical "coin flip" is the outcome (head's or tail's), and not the actual "flip". Therefore, extrapolating "no free will" on a quantum "flip" you basically know nothing about is fallacious and downright stupid.
To everyone that knows I didn't know the concept of a multi departments resulted in the dryer baby concept, thanks for the reminder, l would never had dreamed it unless she'd told me and the originals I'm sorry I didn't ask anything from you
“You can do what you decide to do, but you cannot decide what you will decide to do” -Sam Harris
You don’t need to think that much further past this quote to realize that you’re a slave to your neurons. As Homo sapiens, we only need to comprehend as far as our specie’s demands are satisfied so there’s no way we can compute all the traces of our urges which thus results in this illusion of free will. We’re just observing a movie at the end of the day.
Sam Harris can talk for hours, but his shpeel comes down to this. You can't choose "who you are" or "what you want" so you have no free will. How crazy would that be if you had to decide every morning who you were going to be that day, and even sillier that you would have to decide what to want. Free will is there so you can "get what you want." Harris's version of free will is pure sophistry and childish BS.
Free will: The idea that there is a "self" that makes choices that are not wholly determined by antecedent events.
Does it happen? I don't know.
Seems a good definition
The "self" is entirely determined by previous events. Free will doesn't exist.
@@rotorblade9508 the "self" is casually determined by previous events.
It cannot initiate events temporarily free from prior causal chains
@@Raging_Granny_Gamer So some people say *shrug*
@@madmax2976 free will is an incoherent idea with no scientific evidence to support it. Just like god.
How is it that humans possess this magical ability to initiate events partially free from prior causal chains?
Brain and mind are different entities.
Brain is just a seat for mind.
Memories can reside in heart also. Few heart transplant surgeries have proven it.
Mind is it's own realm and it's closer to our true self. But, mind has the tendency to believe in physical. If we turn our mind to inner reality, we realize the eternal truth.
'Memories can reside in heart also. Few heart transplant surgeries have proven it.'
WTF?
Can you please share the source?
Thanks so much
It’s self-refuting to deny freewill.
A hard determinist will tell you that you are totally controlled and powered by whatever state immediately precedes the choice you are making, but then, will tell you that you still have to do the mental work, come up with a plan and make it happen by your own initiative, or nothing will happen. Pretty useless determinism if you ask me.
Can help to focus on the past that is coming than to focus on the future that already happened.
Very interesting, thank you!
so at 21:10
he says determinism is not free
he also says randomness is not free
but we are looking for the answer to the 'free'
question is 'what is free will'
I think we can narrow the question to
"what is free"
so what is it ?
any ideas ?
no examples please
ideas
what is it exactly ?
The " gap " is the hard problem of consciousness and consciousness being an emergent property of the brain will always remain a mystery for science because awareness could not observe awareness as an objective object since that would be an experience within consciousness. Awareness could not observe awareness any more than fire could burn itself or water could moisten itself. Nor could any machine reveal to you your subjective existence because that existence is what gives you the knowing that you exist which is unique only to you. So, seeing consciousness as an emergent property of the brain is unfeasible.
Since free will flows along the stream of consciousness it will also always remain just a mystery that we can't see to be reducible to physic stuff. Do we have some freedom? I believe so, a native Indian saying says, " within a person are two wolves, one good, the other evil, and whatever wolf we feed the most we become. A human being is a lump of impulses and when we learn to control those impulses we can make our life peaceful for life.
Do past experiences affect us? Answer: Yes, because they condition our psyche as the saying goes violence begets violence but that is related to experience and not biology. So, as I see it, biology doesn't make you the person that you are, so it doesn't determine the type of person you are because people can change and cultivate themselves through spiritual practices.
Consider this. Our thought and behavior result from hierarchical neural networks. Lower level (deterministic) neuronal activity produces higher-level "emergent" activity that has additional characteristic than those of what produced it - the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. That is "self", "consciousness," and "free will." You can study each and never discover what produced it. These emergent phenomena do not strictly depend on antecedent events; they become new entities that can produce thought, behavior, and self-control, and decision-making. In this way, humans have free will (subject to genetics, early childhood development, life experiences, and any forces extant at the time of a decision that would bias the decision). Thus, humans have constrained free will; they have choice, and in most cases, humans are responsible for their words, behavior, and actions.
That’s a story. But there is no evidence. And we should be able to trace cause and effect within this emergent reality as we can with other emergent phenomenon.
@@ihatespam2 There is plenty of evidence. Complex, non-linear dynamical systems, emergence. Causation that goes up and down heirarchically such that causation is not linear and due to randomness, the past cannot be constructed from the present, not can the future.
@@georgegrubbs2966 you seem to have a very loose definition of evidence. Things that make you wonder, or allow you to connect dots with ideas are not evidence. Emergence is in no way contradictory to natural science, and is common.
If you have free will, prove it to yourself. Pick something you are not convinced of, then decide to be convinced of it. No pretending, be actually convinced. Use your magical free will to decide Zeus is real or whatever you want. But you can’t. No matter how hard you try. Just like every decision you’ve made, unless the conditions are different you will always make the same decision.
Still feel that free will somehow causes / determines things, not figure out yet, but have something to do with subconscious.
Answer: fat no
The brain is the operation center, spirit energy plays the call, the brain runs it. Stay on the bright side.
The brains, dont have Free will.
People do. The brain isn't a seperate personality.
If the brain is like a computer being controlled by software neurons than what that make us?
Along with John Searle, I agree that free will is nonsense but putting free will aside for a moment, I disagree with John's comment made at 6:15 where he said "Is there any part of the universe that we know is indeterministic and the only part we know FOR SURE is quantum mechanics.". I disagree with the "FOR SURE" part of his comment. This comment supports the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics which is fine but it's not fact and is still only a theory. Just because a human is unable to know the outcome of a quantum event doesn't prove that indeterminism or randomness exists. If the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics was fact, then no one would be talking about and supporting other theories of quantum mechanics such as Bohmian mechanics (a.k.a. pilot wave theory) or the many-worlds interpretation where both of these interpretations are deterministic and not random.
Seems pretty well established to me. Unless you want to play the nothing is for sure game.
Quantum Mechanics is the answer to free will. The observer modifies what he observes. When a person, driven by its desires or lack of something, makes the decision of visualizing what he wants in the future, for example, a trip or making a youtube channel to answer questions, by the same visualization that person materializes what he or she disired to become true. He or she out of infinite possibilities makes something become a material reality by observing it in advance.
So I watched that whole thing to learn that the answer is we do not know?
Oh well, it was still interesting. I love the mystery of it all. If we knew everything life would be boring.
Questions take us closer to truth, but answers lead us astray.
such is the nature of philosophy, we never really find solid answers.
I think that the idea of the physical, the biological, is linked with determinism. I don't know if this is something that can be changed. The consciousness within the body however, seems to be linked with free will, as in actually being able to make different things at any given time
Could the possibilites of quantum world present choices to people? The random quantum develop possibilites which the brain / mind sees as choices.
davidson had a good idea with free will in anomalous monism.
there are mental events and physical events. mental events are propositional dispositions. physical events are non mental events. physical events are strictly deterministic and mental events are not.
in that case, there is an asymmetrical supervenience relationship between the mental and physical.
to illustrate: we can be angry long after the physical events that caused us to be angry have dissipated, and, that anger has physical effects, but, we were never guaranteed to become angry in the first place.
how would that work?
in a heuristic system where every event is unique and temporary, a functional system (say, vision for recognizing kinds of objects) must represent through interpretation. there is no guarantee of how such a system will type inputs or that it will faithfully do so. having billions of such 'microrealizers' (shoemaker) under the same constraints where these interact and instantiate other mental events, that's a heck of a lot of deterministic activity going on but only where outcomes are probablistic.
so, when we further have functional systems that evaluate what to do with that kind of information via feelings first (propositional dispositions; belief, fear, hope, anger, anxiety, etc.), the causal nexus has to be seen in those terms.
such systems are themselves fully explainable in physical terms, but what those physical states of affairs realize are probablistic mental events that are not governed by the same laws as those of purely physical states of affairs.
in this way, yes, mental events are ultimately physical events but mental events are not strictly discrete physical events.
free will and determinism are compatible.
This subject is way over my understanding but to me, it seems; determinism provides parameters, quantum mechanics presents options, free will allows choice. Throw in nature/nurture, then free will outcomes reduce to opportunity/character/morality.
It’s a fascinating question. Does knowledge of it make anyone live their life differently?
I think understanding Free Will only affects our ability to sanction behavior. Punishing someone, who was not free in his decision would be futile and cruel.
@@stefanb6539 No you are still responsible for your actions. The punishment and fear of punishment hopefully become causes in the chain that hopefully encourage the right effect.
for me it makes a huge difference, for someone else it might not. there are many implications of that (just one) truth and each hears their own benefits or just dismisses it
@@praviplavokutnik That's an interesting reply. I have a question about what you said if you don't mind.
In what way does thinking you have free will/or not/ cause you to change the way you live your life?
@@danielpaulson8838 It keeps me humble. I know that people's behavior is influenced by something that would effect me in the same way so I try to understand them. I also don't bath in shame and guilt all the time if I do something wrong, instead I learn and go forward. There's much more peace if you stop wasting energy of judging someone else's apparent decisions, which were never their own. And also, ego is much less in control of you if you don't consider yourself the doer of your actions. Instead, seeing life as a movie you are witnessing makes you traveling light.
I'm not an expert. But the problem could be in the definition of causation.
Why not look at the 4 interpretations of aristotle?
Outdated.
What strikes me is if you take someone that is born into a cut off world from religion , technology and advances and was never brought up into Christianity. How is this person judged by God if they act upon their response to free Will. Do we have free will or act spontaneously on the environment in which we are grown into. For instance every second that we encounter we react based on that second We encounter free will or just survival.
“The shows are the best. ‘
There is a difference between expectation and anticipation. If I anticipate an act I can choose a response beforehand. But if I am not aware that the action is going to occur my response might be different. I'm more independent now than I was at the age of five, and I was more independent at the age of five than I was as an infant. Here, independence means that I can control my responses and modulate when they will occur. Finally, we are all going to hit the brick wall, but we get to decide how fast or slowly we approach it, more or less. Our nature (awareness) responds to what occurs to it and generates will in a way that is partly heritable and partly determined by our choices.
Using quantum physics to explain free will sounds a lot like the god of the gaps. Finding the area we dont understand and attribute that to god or in this case free will. Acceptance is the answer! We dont have free will!
Kudos -- 444 Gematria -- 🗽
There is no free will. Every choice has a price.
The answer is simple, we do not have freewill. We feel we have freewill, it's impossible for human to have freewill. There's no God.
Love it
We do not have absolute free will, but we DO have free agency.
Why ignore magic?
The universe is probabilistic not deterministic. The observer itself is an act of will as a natural consequence of conscious separation from the observed. Thought invents the duality between observer and observed. Thus the observer becomes a player in the inform
ation it relates with.
@@johnmalik7284 well said.
Free will is absolutely impossible, even for a God.
Our will is mostly subconscious, that's the strike one against it being free.
Strike two: to have a complete control of your will, you must have an awareness of every minute action you can possibly take at any micro-moment, and understanding of every possible implication of that action.
Since there is practically unlimited number of options, one's brain would be immediately overwhelmed and shut down. Instead, our will is randomly predetermined by a combination of many things: the state of our brain's chemistry at the moment, what we had for breakfast, did we get enough sleep, did we argue or make love, the weather outside, the political climate, cosmic rays causing damage to a particular part of our brain etc, etc, etc. The combination itself is practically unlimited. That's why some people believe in a Flat Earth, and others don't, some people put on a mask, while others refuse, some people take medication, others won't; that's why 30 years ago the current insanity in the White House would be prevented or fixed immediately, but today we can't/won't do anything about it, that's why some people study and understand Science, while others don't, that's why, while collectively we know exactly what causes a lot of problems in our life, and, collectively, we have all the information needed to fix many problems right now, we still won't do it, we can't even be certain when, how or if ever we will get to doing it.
free will is the possibility to chose - make mistakes or not
Wow!
Everyone just assumes, as an unargued philosophical bias, that, whenever we speak of ‘free will’, we all intuitively seem to know what we’re talking about…
If physicalism were true, then how is it possible for the physicalist to change his mind, explain the ‘problem of other minds’, avoid becoming a solipsist, engaging in intelligent discourse…
For the physicalist (like John Searle), it really IS a problem, not so much because it leads him to the absurd conclusion of a Boltzmann brain, but because the alternative, determinism, ineluctably and unavoidably leads him into the realm of the metaphysical where ‘consciousness’ could be synonymous with ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’, all of which raises the question of… God!
But… rather hold to the absurd than even considering the possibility of God having breathed life into the creature to give them their ‘elan vital’!
Is this a repost?
Might be that consciousness brings free will out of quantum randomness.
Maybe determinism and free will can be combined in some way, rather than opposed, perhaps even restricting determinism for free will.
It’s called compatibilism
Neither determinism or randomness (by themselves) leads to free will. But they may be aspects of it. Randomness has an element of "play" and "exploration" over a strict deterministic algorithm. In reinforcement learning (e.g. an AI algorithm such as AlphaGo), there is something known as a "exploration vs. exploitation" tradeoff. Say 10% of the time you try something random, try something different, to learn something new, some new options, on the chance that it maybe even better. It's basically a form of "random sampling" the solution space. The other 90% of the time is "exploitation", following a well worn path that maximizes some utility. This is how the AI algorithm becomes "creative", finds "novel solutions", given an optimization objective. The randomness breaks the stranglehold of some previously deterministic habit, which maybe a local minimum, and allows for the possibility of new and surprising solutions.
How does this relate to free will? I tend to agree with Roger Walsh, in that the issue really belongs in the psychological realm. (Physics is just too low level, for the discussion to have meaning.). We have freedom to choose amongst a finite set of options, based on some higher, more abstract goals, such as happiness, a sense of control. These common objectives seem largely invariant for human beings. Maslow's hierarchy describes some of these common factors. Free will is freedom over a lower layer of neurons, that maybe more simply animalistic (and instinctual). The human being is capable of a wider range of responses. The exploration vs. exploitation algorithm still applies when exploring one's options. It illustrates the point that it's not simplistically deterministic, rigidly robotic.
There is also a societal dimension. This leads to the libertarian notion of free will. As one guy said "my neurons vs. the other guy's neurons". Also, there are issues with split brain, mental illness, child abuse, there are also societal determinations of what consists of sufficient executive function to warrant determination of moral responsibility. So the whole notion of "free will" is not an abstract notion of what it feels like to make a choice, but embedded in a whole psychological and social context for it to have any real meaning.
Free Will is the capability of a system to modify its behavior in anticipation of sanctions. Actual lifecritical problems with "Free Will" only occur in institutions aimed at educating or modifying behaviors. Only an effective sanction can ever be a just sanction.
Are there any quantum neurologist?
The brain is part of the body, so the question should actually be: Does the human body have a will? He has that, and he lets it be felt permanently in all basic needs.
The world after is non-particle based like pure quantum and so this world is 'lego' and the 'other' world is 'free'
The speaker in blue has his right shoulder shaking while the left isn't shaking.
Parkinson’s disease possibly.
@@cam553 I see. Thanks.
Lol
Taste is very psychological. We must have experiences, or else we're stuck with just brains and nothing more.
there is taste but no taster.
@@robertjsmith You're just playing around with words while having a blank.🙂
@ There are thought's but no thinker.
the idea that quantum mechanics would not effect the brain is crazy (24:42) that is if they think that quantum mechanics can not work in the large world of wet brains, because we are learning that alot of our biological processes ARE effected by quantum mechanics.
It’s crazier to think you know how it would or be able to provide evidence for it.
In fact the activities at the quantum level are averaged out and have virtually no effect at our scale. If it did it would be pure randomness which would not provide any connection to free will, because freewill is not randomness. It’s the opposite.
@@ihatespam2 there is evidence that quantum physics is working on our level in biology. If you don't believe me TH-cam search the quantum robin..
Who decides is not the Being, but the monkey that inhabits us. The neurosciences proved it. The action of the Being is the Conscious action. Moments before using a word we are not aware of it; the monkey that inhabits us selects the words we use.
psychology is neurobiology. nothing comes out of thin air.
Does anyone know how good this guy is at maths?
Bell's experiment has now been done many times, and the answer is unequivocal: determinism at the quantum level is not true. Nature is not deterministic. The experiments showed that every quantum process entails some degree of “indeterminism”; that is, there are predictable probabilities but there is never certainty.
I am conscious of the fact that my brain is selfserving. Altruism and love are subordinate
to evolutionary necessity. Which is survival and the urge to spread my genes.
A piece from a new autobiography titled: Saved by the Light of the Buddha Within...
Myoho-Renge-Kyo represents the identity of what some scientists are now referring to as the unified field of consciousnesses. In other words, it’s the essence of all existence and non-existence - the ultimate creative force behind planets, stars, nebulae, people, animals, trees, fish, birds, and all phenomena, manifest or latent. All matter and intelligence are simply waves or ripples manifesting to and from this core source. Consciousness (enlightenment) is itself the actual creator of everything that exists now, ever existed in the past, or will exist in the future - right down to the minutest particles of dust - each being an individual ripple or wave. The big difference between chanting Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo and most other conventional prayers is that instead of depending on a ‘middleman’ to connect us to our state of inner enlightenment, we’re able to do it ourselves. That’s because chanting Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo allows us to tap directly into our enlightened state by way of this self-produced sound vibration.
‘Who or What Is God?’ If we compare the concept of God being a separate entity that is forever watching down on us, to the teachings of Nichiren, it makes more sense to me that the true omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence of what most people perceive to be God, is the fantastic state of enlightenment that exists within each of us. Some say that God is an entity that’s beyond physical matter - I think that the vast amount of information continuously being conveyed via electromagnetic waves in today’s world gives us proof of how an invisible state of God could indeed exist. For example, it’s now widely known that specific data relayed by way of electromagnetic waves has the potential to help bring about extraordinary and powerful effects - including an instant global awareness of something or a mass emotional reaction. It’s also common knowledge that these invisible waves can easily be used to detonate a bomb or to enable NASA to control the movements of a robot as far away as the Moon or Mars - none of which is possible without a receiver to decode the information that’s being transmitted. Without the receiver, the data would remain impotent. In a very similar way, we need to have our own ‘receiver’ switched on so that we can activate a clear and precise understanding of our own life, all other life and what everything else in existence is. Chanting Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo each day helps us to achieve this because it allows us to reach the core of our enlightenment and keep it switched on. That’s because Myoho-Renge-Kyo represents the identity of what scientists now refer to as the unified field of consciousnesses.
To break it down - Myoho represents the Law of manifestation and latency (Nature) and consists of two alternating states. For example, the state of Myo is where everything in life that’s not obvious to us exists - including our stored memories when we’re not thinking about them - our hidden potential and inner emotions whenever they’re dormant - our desires, our fears, our wisdom, happiness, karma - and more importantly, our enlightenment. The other state, ho, is where everything in Life exists whenever it becomes evident to us, such as when a thought pops up from within our memory - whenever we experience or express our emotions - or whenever a good or bad cause manifests as an effect from our karma. When anything becomes apparent, it merely means that it’s come out of the state of Myo (dormancy/latency) and into a state of ho (manifestation). It’s the difference between consciousness and unconsciousness, being awake or asleep, or knowing and not knowing.
The second law - Renge - Ren meaning cause and ge meaning effect, governs and controls the functions of Myoho - these two laws of Myoho and Renge, not only function together simultaneously but also underlie all spiritual and physical existence.
The final and third part of the tri-combination - Kyo, is the Law which allows Myoho to integrate with Renge - or vice versa. It’s the great, invisible thread of energy that fuses and connects all Life and matter - as well as the past, present and future. It’s also sometimes termed the Universal Law of Communication - perhaps it could even be compared with the string theory that many scientists now suspect exists.
Just as the cells in our body, our thoughts, feelings and everything else is continually fluctuating within us - all that exists in the world around us and beyond is also in a constant state of flux - constantly controlled by these three fundamental laws. In fact, more things are going back and forth between the two states of Myo and ho in a single moment of time than it would ever be possible to calculate or describe. And it doesn’t matter how big or small, famous or trivial anything or anyone may appear to be, everything that’s ever existed in the past, exists now or will exist in the future, exists only because of the workings of the Laws ‘Myoho-Renge-Kyo’ - the basis of the four fundamental forces, and if they didn’t function, neither we nor anything else could go on existing. That’s because all forms of existence, including the seasons, day, night, birth, death and so on, are moving forward in an ongoing flow of continuation - rhythmically reverting back and forth between the two fundamental states of Myo and ho in absolute accordance with Renge - and by way of Kyo. Even stars are dying and being reborn under the workings of what the combination ‘Myoho-Renge-Kyo’ represents.
Nam, or Namu - which mean the same thing, are vibrational passwords or keys that allow us to reach deep into our life and fuse with or become one with ‘Myoho-Renge-Kyo’. On a more personal level, nothing ever happens by chance or coincidence, it’s the causes that we’ve made in our past, or are presently making, that determine how these laws function uniquely in each of our lives - as well as the environment from moment to moment. By facing east, in harmony with the direction that the Earth is spinning, and chanting Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo for a minimum of, let’s say, ten minutes daily to start with, any of us can experience actual proof of its positive effects in our lives - even if it only makes us feel good on the inside, there will be a definite positive effect. That’s because we’re able to pierce through the thickest layers of our karma and activate our inherent Buddha Nature (our enlightened state). By so doing, we’re then able to bring forth the wisdom and good fortune that we need to challenge, overcome and change our adverse circumstances - turn them into positive ones - or manifest and gain even greater fulfilment in our daily lives from our accumulated good karma. This also allows us to bring forth the wisdom that can free us from the ignorance and stupidity that’s preventing us from accepting and being proud of the person that we indeed are - regardless of our race, colour, gender or sexuality. We’re also able to see and understand our circumstances and the environment far more clearly, as well as attract and connect with any needed external beneficial forces and situations. As I’ve already mentioned, everything is subject to the law of Cause and Effect - the ‘actual-proof-strength’ resulting from chanting Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo always depends on our determination, sincerity and dedication. For example, the levels of difference could be compared to making a sound on a piano, creating a melody, or producing a great song, and so on. Something else that’s very important to always to respect and acknowledge is that the Law (or if you prefer God) is in everyone and everything.
NB: There are frightening and disturbing sounds, and there are tranquil and relaxing sounds. It’s the emotional result from any noise or sound that can trigger off a mood or even instantly change one. When chanting Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo each day, we are producing a sound vibration that’s the password to our true inner-self - this soon becomes apparent when you start reassessing your views on various things - such as your fears and desires etc. The best way to get the desired result when chanting is not to view things in a conventional way - rather than reaching out to an external source, we need to reach into our own lives and bring our needs and desires to fruition from within - including the good fortune and strength to achieve any help that we may need.
Chanting Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo also reaches out externally and draws us towards, or draws towards us, what we need to make us happy from our environment. For example, it helps us to be in the right place at the right time - to make better choices and decisions and so forth. We need to think of it as a seed within us that we’re watering and bringing sunshine to for it to grow, blossom and bring forth fruit or flowers. It’s also important to understand that everything we need in life - including the answer to every question and the potential to achieve every dream - already exists within us.
PS2: For anyone who would like to know more about NAM-MYOHO-RENGE-KYO, I sincerely recommend that you read Tina Turner's brand-new book: HAPPINESS BECOMES YOU
Let go, and let God - Olivia Newton-John Nam Myoho Renge Kyo
Let go, and let God - Olivia Newton-John Nam Myoho Renge Kyo
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No one will read this.
Better ask this qurstion first: is freewill a subproduct of physical world? ...
Could we understand a car if we were born inside the cabin and never allowed out of it. Sure we could do all sorts of things and come to some sort of understanding how it functions but to know everything I believe that only comes from seeing the car from outside. Same problem with the universe and this problem of free will.
We do have free will as we think about it by using our brain but how it works and who made the brain work as it does in various ways is what I espouse! I didn't make my brain or body or free Will!
Free Will is not an illusion, it is real and has immense practical applications in our lives. It is something very profound than we think. The origin of free will is so primitive that it seems to precede creation.
So you say.
If you have free will, take something you are very very sure of, something you really believe. Now decide not to believe it.
If you are scared, right yourself a note to open later, so you can decide to start believing it again.
Then see if you can actually decide with your free will what you believe or whether it’s impossible and all you can do is pretend because you do not really have free will.
Free Will?! Free Brittney!!
Free will likely operates in the subconscious.
Have read all comments.. not that I think I am smarter than anyone else...lease understand what I have, I think, learned in 89 yrs of living,and I have rethought it all on over and over. All thoughts and replies are intelligent but they don't go much deeper. Think deep...that brain and so called free will is only as good as what you were blessed with. You cud have been born insane, bipolar, depressive only, low memory and learning ability ( remember school and the pupils, some at the top and some fairlures.) They only had what the inheritrp
ed
It depends on the government exerted by the souls that control the brain and how model a citizen of their republic the brain decides to be
The brain is a piece of furniture in the thick skull of some people.
Really thick in some cases...
@@ferdinandkraft857 : before we can define free will it’s important to decide whether we’re created or evolved,do you agree?
Imagine I have a card deck an lay the card on the table so that we can see all the card. You get the task to choose the 4 kings, so that it shall be a history of 4 kings, one after the other. First you can choose among four, then among 3, then 2 and at last 1. How many histories can you choose? It will be 4*3*2*1 = 24, it will be 24 histories. You can freely choose the 4 kings in 24 ways. This is mathematics. So then you have a free will, sure like mathematics. No problem. If they say something that is not in accordance with this mathematics, then it is wrong. So if anyone says I don’t have a free will, it is wrong.
So why do they discuss it, what’s the problem? My choice is I result of causality in my brain. Well, this is me, my body is me and so is my brain. I think with my own brain, I don’t try to think with another brain. Isn’t that OK???!!!
There might be another problem, for example that you chose to do something, but you are not able to do it. You want something but can`t get it. Maybe you are not strong enough, not wise enough, you lac information, you are not rich enough to pay for it.
If I shuffle the card deck and let you choose from four cards from it without let you see what card you choose and you still want to choose the 4 kings in the same order, you must be very lucky to succeed. The chance will be 1/(52*51*50*49) = 0,00000015.
Despite humans free will, God does just as he wants, he is mighty enough to implement it. In the Bible it was prophesied that should invade Juda (the rest of Israel) and bring them as slaves to Babylonia, but later the king of Persia, Kyros, would let them go home. While they were in Babylonia, God told Daniel that after Babylonia there would come tree great kingdoms, Media, Persia and the Greek-empire. It is told that Alexander the Great’s kingdom should be divided in four, one of them was the Greek-Syrian kingdom. Here should come a dictator, Antiochus 4. Epiphanes, that pursued the Jews.
How could he know? Why did he let it happen, why did he let his own people suffer that much?
He had a plan. He surely saw something valuable in the Greek culture and Alexander spread it with his empire. But there also was something bad.
When Isac Newton was old he wrote a book about Daniels Book and the revelation in the New Testament. The Revelation seems to be a continuation of Daniels book.
i fully accept determinism. you should too. liberating. read robert sapolsky
Define free will. A single cell has free will to wiggle right or left. Free will is what?
Is the cell really free or is it a nanorobot following an algorithm encoded in its DNA/RNA?
Only 8 dislikes lol, good ep.
Humans have Free Will, not Human Brains.
In summation: no. Impossible. Get Sam Harris on already... you have no other choice.
"I _feel_ I am free but I _know_ I am not." -- Cioran
"Free will" is a pre-scientific belief, and should not be an issue.
Let me help. In the simulated reality that we believe we exist in we absolutely do not have free will as is evidenced by the sensed deterministic nature of our sensed reality within the realm of what is only believed to be physical .
The problem then becomes what of this simulation is true. Since nothing in the sensed reality is actual physical it therefore can not be deterministic at all. In fact, our true and only reality is not sensed or physical at all and therefore everything is delivered by a Conscious Agent who is totally independent of this simulated reality and is absolutely free to manipulate its simulated reality through consciously creating the simulated reality of its choosing .
No.