Determined: Robert Sapolsky on Life without Free Will. A Conversation with HG Moeller
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 พ.ค. 2024
- Biology and Philosophy: A conversation with Robert Sapolsky on his new book “Determined: Life Without Free Will” now available at your local book store. #Sapolsky #Determined #Freewill
Thanks to University of Macau CTLE for letting us use their recording studio!
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Why Sam Harris is Wrong - A Critique of Sam Harris' "The Moral Landscape" (in 2020):
• Why Sam Harris is Wron...
Niklas Luhmann: A Super Theory of Society:
• Niklas Luhmann: A Supe...
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Time stamp:
0:00 Coming up..
0:53 Intro
2:21 Determined: The Main Song and Dance
6:36 Turtles All the Way Down
10:09 Emergent Complexity
12:45 Unpredictability
15:06 Change
19:18 Determined vs Contingent
23:15 Mutiplicity and Trees of Turtles (cause vs condition)
26:24 Autopoiesis and Emergent Complexity
28:53 It's not just biological
35:40 Psychological
39:26 Nexus, free will and its Western root
43:14 Changing people's minds with ideas
46:13 No Captain and No Self
48:56 An uphill battle against free will (Western tradition)
50:50 Sovereign Individual and English
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Outro Music:
Carsick Cars - You Can Listen You Can Talk:
• Carsick Cars - You Can...
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Dr Hans-Georg Moeller is a professor in the Philosophy and Religious Studies Program at the University of Macau. He wrote the book: "The Moral Fool: A Case for Amorality", which focuses on morality and amorality.
What a pleasant surprise to have Sapolsky on this channel !
People need to understand that determined does not mean "pre-destined".
yes this is the simplest and best answer for most people!
Tell that to Sapolsky who states that an abused person with a particular gene is _destined_ to behave in a predictable and specific way.
You fan-boys are giving up your humanity on the say-so of a Marxist. You get that, right?
You need to know that Marxists like Sapolsky despise intellectuals. Don't worry though; you're unlikely to get into his bad book in that regard.
It sure does.
@@MateuszMisztela I suppose it depends on whether or not you believe that the 'past' is the _only_ 'element' that is involved in the manifestation of the 'present'. The picture painted by 'determinism' suggests that 'reality' is like a sequence of falling dominoes, each domino falling onto the next creating moment after moment, each one creating a concrete 'past' and the 'present moment is carried forward on the wave produced as they fall ... and that _all_ the 'dominoes' were set to their starting configuration at the time of the big bang... or something, right? The 'future' is the path through which that wave has yet to travel; right? _And,_ the final state of the dominoes is 'encoded' within the initial conditions of 'the big bang'.
In _that_ case, 'pre-destiny' and 'determined' _are_ indeed synonyms for each other. But what if the 'past' wasn't the _only_ force contributing to the future?
I mean, if 'chaos' teaches us _anything,_ it teaches us that *_even if_* the 'dominoes' were set up at the time of the big bang, even _as_ they are falling, chaos is introducing cumulative errors, causing the paths along which they fall to deviate and there is _nothing_ in the laws of determinism that can account for predicted outcomes and _actual_ outcomes of otherwise 'deterministic mechanisms'.
I mean: what _formula_ could be conceived of that could accurately be applied to the initial conditions of the the big bang _and_ which can predict 'Star Wars', 'Superman, 'Jason and the Argonauts'? Right?
If anything is possible, 'pre-destiny' cannot be right.
This is how I think about it: the 'past' is like 'concrete that has set'; the 'future' is the concrete yet to be produced and subsequently laid and the 'present' is where the concrete is produced and subsequently laid. A changing vision of the future is modulating the path of the 'present moment' and so in a very real sense, the 'future' creates interference that changes any plans laid down by the 'past', right? In which case, 'destiny' cannot possibly be 'determined'. In _fact,_ it would be reasonable to say that even if God had initiated the big bang in order to create His vision of 'destiny', the 'destiny' He envisioned is _not_ precisely the one He'd end up with.
There is nothing in Relativity or Quantum fields that can account for what 'dreams' can achieve, right?
Mad, huh?
We all love Dr Sapolsky ,he is a Gem of our world !❤❤❤
Or an idiot.
What a breath of fresh air.
If you like to listen to prattle.
Carefree Wandering is such an extraordinary channel
absolutely one of the best, and definitely more legitimate, of the intellectual/philosophical channels on the youtubes
The great Marx granted.
@ssgdhgsdfff8887 with this style I would say no. There is some popular philosophy channels but not with this rigor, pedagogical outlook and quality.
@ssgdhgsdfff8887 Jonas Ceika - CCK Philosophy
@ssgdhgsdfff8887 Not as Well-known as this channel, but the Theory & Philosophy channel is also a very good channel. It mainly explains various terms by philosophers in a concise manner (and explains it correctly!)
"Just because a system isn't predictable that doesn't mean it isn't determined." That's a critical point I've been missing. I almost understand this now. 😃
I've been waiting for this crossover since the creation of the universe.
"The end result will be more humane interactions with each other." - Sapolsky. Glad to see this. Whole-heartedly agree :)
What I’m confused about is if we don’t have free will, why does it matter if anyone believes it or not?
Humane? What is that supposed to mean? It is a moral judgements, and moral judgements in a deterministic world have no meaning
@@myself171exactly 😂
@@myself171 It doesn't. But at least you know it.
I remember a professor of mine once saying: "the position that took me." Just to indicate the lack of autonomy in taking a stand on an issue.
What were they a professor of?
@@MrPDTaylor contemporary philosophy
The internet was determined to bring together two of my favourite braintwister youtubers from the past few years!
I just finished War & Peace for the first time last week and was caught off guard by the books ending with Tolstoy going on about Determinism. a) Best book ever & b) Awesome timing for this video for me! Though it really added a lot of fuel to the fire & makes me curious about this train of thought that will keep my mind turning for quite a while now.
His lectures on Human Behavioral Biology are much better. I loved every single one of them especially linking behavior to biology and biology to biochemistry. If you understand physical chemistry then you can see how life can start and evolve on earth to get us where we are.
@@winninymeanssweet1920can you expand on it? Seriously curios
Pretentious comment. War and Peace is the best book ever? 😂🙄
@@chutcentral Mean comment. I say every book I just finished is the best book ever .. except the bad ones haha.
@@chutcentral Why not?
Imagine having the social clout that whenever you read an interesting book, you can call the author up and say "hey I have some questions, can I interview you?" and get to do it.
This is easier than you think. A lot of academics are only too happy to discuss their works with anyone interested, regardless of social clout. This applies both to books and papers. In fact when it comes to the latter, they're often only too happy to send it to you for free if it's locked behind a paywall. The only barrier is whether the academic has the time to spare, so you might have to wait a bit.
he's promoting his new book, he appeared on several podcasts in the last weeks, after a hiatus of almost no appearances for several years, so it's not exceptional for him to appear here.
I don't think those turtles in their example like being grouped that way. ;)
You'd be surprised to be honest. Academics have a lot of flexibility with their time, a lot of passion, and are often super down to earth - particularly scientists. I've had multiple email conversations with top level academics I just messaged completely unsolicited while reading their work.
@@Cyrusislikeawsome The US state for stealing personal data and waging derangement campaigns against little children on social media, destroying their cognitive autonomy for profit. There is no pity for these terrorist scum.
One of the best interviews EVER! Thank you both!
What exactly was good about this interview? Seriously, I want to know.
I never understood the concept of free will. Now, after 54 years, Sapolsky has finally explained it to me.
He doesn't know .
No free will equals true freedom. Freedom from guilt, shame, and blame. Life is easier when we understand that nothing is up to us. We can relax and enjoy the ride, wondering what will happen next. Judgment is irrelevant. We show up, do what we have to do then go.
Exactly!
yea, except a life with ultimate freedom and no restrictions is not very desirable in a social case. Any social interaction limits freedom out of necessity. your freedom ends where the freedom of someone else begins. Therefore, true freedom is not something we should ever strive towards ...
What an amazing conversation. Thank you very much.
Just ordered a copy. Thank you Carefree Wandering for conducting this interview!
Wow, thanks for that, a big fan of Sapolsky here! And a fascinating conversation, this video.
Wonderful! Thank you very much for this.
I have never been more happy to have subscribed to you than right now, this is amazing, thank you.
I love Dr. Sapolsky, thank you so much for this wonderful video, his book might very well find itself on my list to give my family for gifts.
Like Sapolsky, I arrived at hard determinism in the philosophical ruminations of my early teens, but I never much struggled with it as an issue in regards to what supposedly happens once you realize choice is nothing more than a delusion and I mockingly call the answer to that anxiety, "Shrödinger's free will".
Like with quantum mechanics, we do not have the ability to perfectly calculate what seemingly variable outcomes will be prior to observing them.
Since I cannot know whether I'll end up doing A or B prior to doing either, the question of which, is open until I do. Hence, I don't have the luxury of acting as though one of them is true until the box is open and I observe which it is.
In this respect, all sentient creatures must ultimately behave as though choice is possible until the choice is made.
Acknowledging hard determinism is therefore not a type of fatalism in regards to future outcomes. Rather, it is a means to understand prior outcomes and come to(though that too is, inexplicably determined) more factually accurate appreciations of causal chains and how they produced current circumstances.
Hard determinism is lovely because it is a perspective that can generate empathy around unfortunate current events and inform us of how to avoid similar situations in the future. Free will is toxic, because it straddles people with an impossible to justify responsibility for situations that couldn’t possibly have been otherwise short of changing material circumstances of causal relationships. In other words, determinism is the basis for reformative justice and root-cause solutions. Free will, on the other hand, is the basis for punitive justice, spurious blame-making and simple-minded supernaturalism.
I wholeheartedly agree, although maybe "sentient creatures" is too broad a term. I think many would describe people in states such as flow state, enlightenment/moksha or psychedelics induced ego-death as "sentient" despite being free of the "illusion" of Free WIll. I would have used the term "(dualistically) self-conscious creatures" or "subjects" instead of "sentient creatures".
"all sentient creatures must ultimately behave as though choice is possible"
Sorry to be so nitpicky, but I feel like either "must" or "behave" are the wrong words to use here. If you mean "must" as a moral or rational imperative, doesn't that imply some capacity to make a choice? If you mean must in the sense of "a quantum system must behave as a superposition of all possible observable states until an observation is made," then that's just empirically not true since plenty of sentient creatures don't actually behave this way. How do you reconcile what seems subjectively to me and I imagine to you like a choice to accept or reject a particular framework with a belief in hard determinism?
@@alynames7171
I don't think you're nit-picking as much as you're merely confused about the language in a way I'd suggest is fairly contrived. All I meant was "must" as in "there is no other alternative". Not at all in moral sense, and absolutely not in the way you're applying this to quantum principles.
My analogy to quantum states was not a statement about affairs on the quantum level at all, but just that - an analogy to draw a parallel between how the state of small particles being indeterminate until observed is similar to how our future behavior appears indeterminate to us on a macro level from a first person point of view. Nothing more, nothing less.
"Acting as though your behavior is predetermined" is functionally a meaningless statement because unless you know what your behavior is predetermined to be, you are not acting according to the supposed predetermined outcome in any way.
This is distinct from saying your behavior isn't determined. What I am talking about is the fact that regardless of whether it is determined or not, what your future is determined to be is not obvious nor determinable to you - hence you cannot act as though it is in any meaningful sense.
Even if I were determined to pick A over B, I cannot act as though it was determined I was going to pick A if I do not have precognition of this fact. And, this problem is compounded further if I did have such precognition since we'd have to assume having such precognition would effect the outcome and demand a new causal calculus to reconfirm that proposed future outcome. This, of course, would require the precognition to be updated, which would result in a loop and eternal regress.
Hence it is not clear that any conscious creature can act in any meaningful sense on an assumption of determined outcomes. You can act determinalistically, but you cannot act ON determinism.
This is also why wasting time on the term "conscious creature" is pointless pedantry in relation to this argument as well. Clearly, there's a spectrum of cognitive complexity as far as consciousness goes. Clearly we can imagine some conscious creature that's entirely reactive, as the poster above yours postulated. Non of that bears any relevance to my argument though.
Any conscious creature without an illusion of deliberation isn't relevant to this conversation seeing as they'd be "even less able to act on determinism" than any sophisticated conscious creature to begin with.
Again, my argument here is fairly simple:
No being capable of considering future events and with a sense of choice, illusory or not, can act according to an appreciation of future determined event because there does not seem to be any coherent model for the antithesis of this claim. With that being the case, it seems we must(as in there are no viable, coherent alternatives) act under the labor of uncertain future outcomes, which is more or less indistinguishable from the illusion of choice-making.
Very well said! Nothing much do add here!
This is incorrect. All sentient creatures behavior would be completely determined. Under determinism no one would have the choice to behave as though choice is possible until the choice is made.
Fatalism and determinism are exactly the same thing. If you're fatalistic then it is 100 percent determined. You have absolutely no control over it. Every thing that happens to you was your fate. Trying to "Shrödinger's free will" your way around it is itself a delusion. Because that is also determined.
It's not true that free will "straddles people with an impossible to justify responsibility for situations that couldn’t possibly have been otherwise". If determinism / no free will is true then then it's_determinism_ that straddles people with responsibility for things that cannot be any other way. If you have a child then you are responsible for it even though you never chose to have it. If you deliberately kill someone then you still probably get locked up or killed even though you didn't chose to do it. Love becomes an illusion. Virtue is a joke because no one ever chooses to behave virtuously. If you can;t be "blamed" for any wrong doing then you can't also be credited for any right. Even having sex is not your choice. In determinism there is no such thing as justice. Something like the holocaust is simply the playing out of immutable physical laws; neither right or wrong.
Once you start to think about, determinism being true is an insane nightmare, over which you have no control and can only wake up from when you're dead.
As for blame making and super-naturalism, there's nothing about determinism that prevents people from engaging in these things. After all it would just be determined.
Thank you both for your passion, hard work and courage!
Thanks. That what great.
Enjoyed the comment about the different turtles. Food for thought.
Amazing interview, although a bit short....
Would love to see a deeper dive on this in the future!
Just recently I was talking with a friend about morality and free will and I ended up referencing Moeller a lot when talking about the former and Sapolsky about the latter. What a nice surprise to see them both in one video!
How brilliant to have a friend you can talk with about morality and free will ❤ *they’re rare gifts!
Thank you for having Robert Sapolsky on your podcast. Robert Sapolsky’s insight that we do not have free will and that we are determined is provocative and true. Question for Robert, have you read, studied, and understood Spinoza’s Ethics? I too understand that free will is an illusion. I have studied Spinoza’s philosophy communicated in his Ethics for over 50 years. Spinoza wrote his Ethics during the 17th century; however, his books were banned due to contrary religious beliefs. Spinoza understood that free will is an illusion and that we are determined by the laws of nature. Spinoza’s God is Nature, a non-anthropomorphic being.
Dope, was looking forward to this happening!
Proudhon also used the idea of external overlapping complexities in his sociological and psychological research. He called it "collective force" which could be used to on every level of analysis. That you were more than just what's between your hat and boots. He used it to also describe class antagonisms, that the capitalists profits come from bring able to collect the surplus of a collective effort but only pay people for their individual efforts. They capture the social collective power of the workers and turn it against them.
Wat?
@@shlockofgodAncap learn about Prodhoun for the first time
I always feel like that "the sovereign individual" consists of two interconnected dogma's: free will and an individual that can be analyzed without considering its environment. Not to sound like a spiritual hippy person, but my intuition is that determinism combined with the existance of the separated individual will always result in paradoxes. The way forward, for understanding determinism at least, is to think of the world as a living whole, where no separated individuals or objects exist, but everything is already connected.
I didn't watch the whole video yet. They probably are going to talk about that somewhere later haha
You make a good point: Theologically speaking, the notion of the "sovereign individual" is strongly connected to the dogma of a supposed God outside of time and space who is connected with said individual on a fundamental level, e.g. per eternal Soul . - While the ontological or metaphysical alternative would be the "All is One", where either the universe IS God, as in Pantheism ( the "religion" of science) , or where God ( at least) may have a free will, but is in the world; Panentheism.
I didn't expect to hear his name again! I remember watching his lectures..
Thank you for this enriching discussion.
My two favourite weird old dudes in one conversation, love it! Great talk - I've seen some interviews of Robert Sapolsky (cannot recommend his work enough), including some about his latest book, but It's great to have one by trained philosopher, especially dr. Moeller. Kudos to you, sir, great content as always!
I didn't get past 1:35. lol - can't get past his propaganda. I will catch prof. Sapolsky elsewhere.
@@winninymeanssweet1920 What propaganda?
@@wstewsteRepresenting his opinion as fact.
@@wstewsteIt is because he might have mentioned Jordan Peterson without signalling that he agrees with everything he says.
@@winninymeanssweet1920Saying you disagree isn't propaganda. If you think people shouldn't disagree with Peterson you're the one spewing propaganda
Yesss!!! Let’s popularize this. Understanding the impossibility of free will has made me a much better person
Your "understanding" first requires that the phenomenon itself is understood, which it isn't.
@@JohnnyTwoFingers I understand it! What’s not understood?
They're not talking about limitations. They saying it doesn't exist at all.
@@shlockofgod trueeee! I corrected it 😊
Is there a connection between the two? Idk i never found free will stuff all that interesting.
A second go around with this most fascinating discussion snd found it even more riveting. Thanks again.
I really appreciate your work. You are the one who understands what Robert Sapolsky tries to convey and explains his idea with different aspects so that listeners can be more clearly understand, compared to most podcasts I listen which only scratch the surface.
That was so epic, both the interviewer and the guest. I ended up buying not only the Sopolsky book, but the HG Moeller's book on Luhmann as well, because it sounded like the very thing I was interested in, and I hadn't heard of him before. Thanks for all the info presented in a clear, informative and very entertaining way. TH-cam rocks today, and you've slightly influenced my life with your presence he he.
I am determined to believe in free will.
Seeing you and Sapolsky connect is like a dream come true, lol.
What a great discussion with lots of food for thought, thanks!
But is it going to be hard to do if it's just determined anyway? Oh and absolutely epic interview, this is by far and away one of the best channels on TH-cam for modern, post-modern, I don't know, thought about current sociological issues in the context of current scientific and biological knowledge.
Whether something is hard or difficult is determined by the forces involved
It's 'hard' to get up at 5am everyday and run in the rain. But the perfectionistic athlete is compelled to do it. He has no choice.
It would be harder for him not to.
Whether or not the world snapping over to accepting determinism is "easy or hard" doesn't enter into it.
I also find Derk Pereboom's concept of hard incompatibilism interesting. Like hard determinists, hard incompatibilists argue that there is no free will if our choices are deterministic events. But they also believe that there would be no free will even if the universe were indeterministic.
No free will belongs only to robots. Not human beings
This is a great interview, I came to view this video determined by my body and this particular environment surrounding me.
Great conversation, thanks for bringing grammar and language to the discussion
I would have loved a deeper dive into that
I just feel like this is grounds for a government to start to lean into eugenics ala The Forever War, or Gataca or just genetic prejudices.
They are and they will so even more intensely. They call it transhumanism
If I cant explain it, it must be meaningless.
Narcissism.
Bingo. The root of Nihilism. Which is what all those neomarxists are
If i can explain if even though it has no inherent meaning ..
Copism ..
Amazing, sapolsky on this channel is like a birthday present in advance ❤️
Greatest crossover episode of all time!
Near the end of this interesting conversation a notion of language is raised, and how things get complicated or can be limited by linguistic constraints. I regret that schools don't teach about the metaphorical role of language, general semantics etc. I don't mean the metaphors as used in some poems, I mean: the totality of language as a mere representation of 'reality' which so many of us take as 'the reality.'
The correlation between grammar and culture is basically non-existent. Linguists have found very little evidence for the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. I don’t think that idea from Nietzsche makes much sense at all. It sounds reasonable on a superficial level, but if you know anything about grammar or linguistics, it actually doesn’t make much sense.
@@ludviglidstrom6924 What if I served you some decent tasting tea biscuits and after you've munched on them, I revealed they're my dog's biscuits? Wouldn't language change the way you felt about them? People build narratives from the very early age, tell themselves stories every day. Talk to themselves more often than not. Language is a carrier of culture, I think it's hard to deny it. It's not about grammar. See studies on e.g.: correlation vocabulary & creativity, vocabulary & IQ, vocabulary & ability to self regulate, build relationships etc. Brains of bilingual & multilingual persons differ functionally and structurally when compared to monolinguals. Everything you do affects your brain, you can silently talk yourself (literally) to do one thing or another. I disagree on the notion that language doesn't affect our perception of reality. Edit: corrected the autofill mistake.
17:32 Am I the only one a little confused by prof Sapolsky's answer to what we do with dangerous "criminals" without a criminal justice system or notion of free will? It sounds to me like he said we've been doing it and can just keep doing it, but what is that? Isn't that just the awful "justice" system we have now? Would we just start calling it "treatment" intsead or something?
What do you mean with "the awful justice system we have now"? Who is "we"?
@@madekekgrain this context pretty much every country on Earth. I really didn't expect THAT to be the controversial point, since I'm pretty sure Sapolsky implied determinism would mean it should be abolished anyway.
@@alynames7171 I think that the systems in somewhere like I've been hearing about in Norway would be a good model to replicate. The criminal justice system should be focused exclusively on reducing the amount of harm done to society - in other words, any response should be focused exclusively on rehabilitation. If an individual can be rehabilitated than it should be the goal to do so, and if they can't be rehabilitated then so be it, just keep them locked away to prevent damage to society.
@@DQABlack I agree with you. The system should not only be punitive, but protective of the general public. The penal system in North European countries focus on rehabilitation, but they neglect many times society. Child rapists that strike again after their release in Germany, for example. Mass murderers like Anders Behring Breivik that only get 30 years of "rehabilitation" for murdering 77 people, 69 of which he killed in cold blood. Is he going to be released after 21 years on parole?
@@DQABlack I guess my issue with that is who decides what the standards are? When we have a political and legal system ostensibly based on democratic decisions made with free will, that's always subject to debate and change. But eliminating those concepts, it would seem like what counts as someone in need of "rehabilitation" and who ought to be "locked away" from society will need to come from an objective, scientific determination. That seems to be building towards a permanent, unalterable legal framework based on the ostensibly objective (in retrospect) standards of whoever had sufficient political power to establish it in the first place.
I think the Nordic justice systems generally do a much better job than the present American justice system, for example, but trying to turn it into an objective standard seems frought with danger to me. Like to give a concrete if simplistic hypothetical, who under this line of thinking ought to be rehabilitated or locked away: a person who steals food they can't afford, or a store owner choosing to set prices beyond what many can afford? Whatever your answer, do you feel comfortable declaring it scientifically objective?
Now, that's quality. Cheers.
the elastic symmetry of biology is truly fascinating in the context of convergence, it is more apparent in biology than matter alone, but exists in matter formation as well. there are patterns more favorable for the reality of nature than others, and the order of favored patterns that emerge in living systems, and energy systems is a useful endeavor to research and refine. each pattern could be used in sequencing once the order is determined and discovered.
there is never a need to cite Peterson unless is to make fun of him
that would make you a science denialist even worse than Flat Earthers and Creationists. Since there is great overlap it would mean you're discrediting people like Sapolsky as well.
@@mistressfreezepeach Strange accusation to make given that Jordan Peterson is a climate science denier.
@@tomisaacson2762based Peterson
@@mistressfreezepeach peterson isn't a scientist ..
@@i2keepitrealInreseach ok, troll, muting you now
This is the most unexpected collaboration I’ve seen in a good time. Always wanted to hear Sapolski to talk to a philosopher I admire instead of fucking Daniel Dennett
Fascinating interview, thank you so much.
I wonder how this view on determinacy is (in)compatible with the concept of moral responsibility, or how one might account for determinacy when setting out an ethics framework.
"According to Sapolsky, we should not hold individuals accountable for their actions because they are not in control of them. However, he also acknowledges that we live in a society that requires moral responsibility and accountability. Therefore, he suggests that we should still hold individuals accountable for their actions, but we should do so in a way that is more humane and less punitive. This means that we should focus on rehabilitation and prevention rather than punishment. In other words, we should still hold individuals responsible for their actions, but we should do so in a way that is more compassionate and understanding of the factors that led to their behavior."
An example would be the few successful programs for juvenile delinquents with dissocial personality disorder: they don't learn by punishment, and that's neurological, so you have to give them a game of incentives for good behavior.
@@mistressfreezepeachdoes that not sound the teensiest bit dystopian to you? It seems to at least open the door to some unsettling possibilities.
@@mistressfreezepeach So he thinks we should not hold individuals accountable for their actions but he suggests that we should still hold individuals accountable for their actions?
@@shlockofgod He thinks that those actions were determined by various factors influencing them, and hence we should endeavour to countervail that by rehabilitating them. Rather than hating them for it, we ought to try healing them. They are, in a sense, held accountable for their actions as in they did those actions, but it's not truly their fault that they did them. So we respond to fix, not punish, them.
@@ArawnOfAnnwnwhat's the difference between fixing and punishing someone? And who decides? Under what circumstances is doing so allowed?
I've always thought that free will belongs in the domain of human experiences/concepts that can be immediately intuitively understood or experienced, but upon further inspection turn out to be philosophically nonsensical or linguistically self-referential concepts. Normative/moral claims and the idea of consciousness belong in this same category. I think the ideas of consciousness, free will and morality are linguistic concepts that arise from necessity in human experience, because it makes it possible to talk about certain issues. The ideas of consciousness and free will enable ethics/morality (morality necessitates consciousness and free will).
I think however that the biological descriptions of how medical science can prove that free will doesn't exist or that some kind of neurological experiment can supposedly locate when and where a "decision" is born is futile. Probes like that cannot be made without similarly self-referential claims or a premise of mind-matter dualism. In fact, medical science is full of language that accidentally makes these dualistic claims or otherwise self-referential claims.
All roads lead to transhumanism
this is the crossover i never knew i wanted
Fabulous again. ❤
When somebody, who does not belief in free will, talks about what he intends to do, it gives me the chills.
Good Point
That might be because you make no distinction between truly free will and simply having a will. Sapolsky's not denying we have a will and thus intentions.
@@bjorsam6979 Yes, maybe.I just find it hard to take a concept seriously, that does not change your behaviour and language at all. Wait ... I might take it seriously, but I guess I am not interested.
@@bjorsam6979absolute free will can only belong to an eternal, omnipotent, self sufficient God. We can never be absolutely free and that's not why we were made either
@@keylanoslokj1806 That might because you make no distinction between being free and having a free will.
Crazy, I've been down the Sapolsky rabbit hole for a few weeks now. What a collab!
Same same
I love Robert Sapolsky, I’ve listened to several interviews with him about his new book and this is the best yet. Fantastic.
I’ll check out the interview with Jordan Peterson even though the thought of him makes me gag.
seen a few of Roberts recent interviews so far but really enjoyed the questions and explanations outlined here, thank you. What amazes me is in all of this unfathomable complexity we have anything that approximates order whatsoever - how come its not just utter chaos - although it seems we are descending into world chaos one again of course. If we are made of exploded star dust then perhaps this chaos is baked into us.
We're not heading into chaos, but into catastrophy, things will still be flowing in order. Just not the kind of order that's good for society :)
makes sense to me@@krischanlive
"avengers endgame is the most ambitious crossover event ever". Sapolsky and Moeller: "Hold my beer, (and books)"
I have nothing against this scientist but his ideas have always sounded off to me. As someone who has some familiarity with medieval philosophers, even for the guys back then, the notion of free will was already seen as the decisions one would make precisely accompanied by the substrate of one's whole life conditionings, traumas and personal backgrounds. Even when the matter was more focused on theology, for example, Aquinas or any Muslim discussing this matter, they all would take into account the role that the past of a person plays when it comes to decision making. I have never seen anyone claiming that we are some kind of walking tabula rasas. I'm not necessarily a defendant of the spiritual notion of free will, and I'm pretty sure that we are all conditioned to behave in a certain way, but, it is not as if the ppl who defend that there's free will are ignoring these facts.
Wtf are you talking about? In his very first segment of the interview he makes it clear that he's engaging with precisely these moderate forms of Free Will. He's arguing from a hard determinist position that all these weak notions of Free Will are just as wrong as the hardest notion.
He compares the hard notion of Free WIll to that of the world resting on the back of a giant turtle and progressively softer notions of Free WIll to an increasing number of turtles serving as each other's ground. Admitting that there is external conditioning while clinging to any notion of Free Will is like putting another turtle beneath the bottom turtle: You're still believing in magic. But there is no bottom-most turtle and there is no Free Will, WHATSOEVER.
the problem still with those medieval thinkers is that they still assume that ultimately the choice can be freely made, and they don't go the extra step further and say that even the choosing itself (even when such a choice isn't affected by outside influences etc.) is still determined by mechanisms
Libertarian free will as a gift from god is one of the main apologetics used by theists to justify the existence evil under the power of an all powerful, perfectly benevolent god. Understanding the true nature of free will or the lack thereof is helpful for distancing one’s self from dogmatic thinking. My fiancé is an incredibly smart engineer (though not much of an intellectual) but I have been unsuccessful in convincing him that libertarian free will doesn’t exist and he’s an atheist so… I would have to disagree
There's no real need to deal with the moderates in this respect, because the moderate free will proponents ultimately have the exact same problem in making their view coherent as any extreme proponent of free will would have - exactly what part of the will is supposedly free from temporal causal relationships?
It's not at all clear what having "free will" means unless you think some part of the mind is atemporal and can exercise choice in blatant disregard to material facts about the brain and its physical environment.
Believing in "no free will" is like believing in aether. One cannot make claims like no free will if one has no idea how to solve the mind-body problem
That was fun!
Awesome discussion!
Thus must be recorded amidst the ¡Best phylosophical crossovers ever!
I think this whole discussion lack a definition of free will. One spectrum start with an impossible preposition, that your thoughts and decision have no connection to the world, the other end ends with an impossible proposition, that if we knew the state of all neurons in the brain, we could predetermine all decisions.
If you listened to the discussion, you'd realize that they mentioned multiple times that the context of the decisions is important. Social/cultural and environmental factors modulate how any given brain will react, given the same neuronal states.
But yes, in theory if we knew all the relevant factors, we could predict what the brain does next. What is so impossible about that? Logically I mean, I know we don't have the technology or knowledge to do that just yet
Please elaborate on how that second proposition is impossible. After that address the point made in the video that determinacy does not equal predictability.
@@TheJayman213Because it's practically impossible and theoretically too (quantum stuff). It's an "if" proposition and for my taste way too deistic.
@@ArnoWalter1. Its practical impossibility is qualified in the statement itself.
2. Determination does not equal predictability. The outcome of a quantum event is not predictable and may not even be determined in the strictest sense but it is determined in the sense that there is no room for Free Will. Any indeterminacy in the event must be fully random which precludes common notions of Free Will as the basis for "personal responsibility".
3. That "if" proposition is your circumscription of the claim that human behavior is fully determined. You are free to engage with the claim itself.
Great video and better convo!
Exceptional
I share the excitement of seeing the dialogue between Robert Sapolsky and Hans-Georg Moeller.
But that's not just about my personal excitement!
I would say that this dialogue is the 21st century version of the debate between Chomsky and Foucault.
Sapolsky and Moeller are not pop-stars in this moment as Chomsky and Foucault were at the moment of their debate, but this dialogue is of comparable importance -- and I would say it's more important -- because Sapolsky and Moeller represent the peak of the achievements of analytical and continental thoughts specifically in the areas in which each of the thoughts are the strongest: analytical thought in natural sciences, continental thought in humanities.
Debate between Chomsky and Foucault was not an equal one because Chomsky was not an equal partner, no matter his importance for computer science and political thought.
Chomsky is not even as significant for the thought of language as we used to think. Generative grammar is the peak of structuralism and it's significant as such. However, it's neither a categorical move in relation to structuralism nor it's been proven that it works: computers haven't come to the language description which allows generating sensible answers (LLMs, like ChatGPT is) thanks to Chomsky's theory, but the exact opposite, thanks to the stochastic models which roots are in the mathematical simulation of the networks of neurons in the human brain.
If Chomsky didn't reject poststructuralists easily, in a typical analytical fashion, he would probably come to the conclusion what are the problems with the peak of reductionism in the form of structuralism.
On the other hand, Sapolsky has independently come -- from an analytical perspective -- to the same conclusion as Derrida from the continental perspective: the world is complex and the reductionist approach doesn't allow us to describe such a phenomenon.
That's the reason why this dialogue is completely different from the dialogue between Chomsky and Foucault. Analytical and continental thoughts have come convergently to the same conclusion exactly with Sapolsky and Moeller.
I would also say that this should be just the first of the dialogues between Sapolsky and Moeller.
The question of free will is relevant exclusively because of how our legal systems work and they are just a part of our human world. There are a lot of other fields of knowledge which need to be discussed from these two perspectives.
And not only that! Keep in mind that Moeller's intellectual background is not just in (European) continental philosophy, but also in Chinese philosophy!
We definitely need this Dao of dialogue to last much longer 😎
He's sort of inventing dialectical materialism from scratch.
Modern version would be a more socially derived systems theory. Very similar to dialectical thinking.
As i said before. Just a glorified social marxist. Even the notion of dialectic materialism itself is an oxymoron contrivance. It's just Nihilism all over again dressed in a new package
Determinism v. free will seems like such an anachronistic debate and one beyond the means of empirical science to answer. One could speculate whether free will is an illusion, an emergent phenomenon or a divine gift, but what epistemological basis could that speculation have, given the irreducible complexity of the development of a human consciousness and it's interactions with the material world. Beneath your turtles, all I see is known unknowns on top of unknowable unknowns.
Yeah there is a lot of data to back his claims but people won’t understand because of their bias and stubborn
ego. therefore discussions like this become a matter of faith for most of the audience, unfortunately.
@@gking407
That was my point. Anyone attempting to use science to decide a determinism/free will debate will eventually run into the reductio ad absurdum of what lies beneath the science, which is why we have an absurd turtle metaphor for it. Those who believe in either free will or determinism can likely only do so on mystical or speculative grounds.
@@SuperSk1llz there’s nothing mystical or unknowable about determinism. It’s pretty clear that for every being on the planet there have been, and continue to be, a myriad of influences working on them at all times. To think that freewill is actually free of anything seems the more mystical belief to me.
@@gking407
They are both non-empirical so your belief in determinism is equivalent to a mystical belief in free will. Given the standard of proof, none of us can truly know.
@@SuperSk1llz if you pay closer attention it’s easy to see several reasons why your life is the way it is.
And there are reasons for those reasons. And so on..
Direct sight is not a mystery.
Choice is the one thing that is evident. Certainly my brain determines my response to seemingly random events. Determinism is this advanced form of avoiding choice.
There is no “I”, all is just happening, as per zen, per Alan Watts.
Nice reference.
Love this !
Omg, two favs together
Great video!
do you have discord?
Our boy MC Moeller looking like he's about to blow up the studio w the hottest rnb single and Sapolsky brought his beats w the rims to hear it. Absolute bangers.
Sooooooo ... we've a completely non-philosopher writing a book about the most philosophical of all matters (the sheer sense of Being itself, the fundamental nature of reality). Very nice! His conception surely won't be just a bunch of old-fashioned "because science, duh!"; it will surely account for the last 350 years of debate in ontology, metaphysics and such.
Well a lot of that stuff is garbage rationalism and obscuritism, so I'm cool with it.
Also.. if you don't have free will and others don't have free will, what's the point of arguing or debating?
@@MalAnders94 since you'll die anyway, what's the point of living?
@@MalAnders94because that’s what people do, same as all other behavior
@@MalAnders94
Well, there wouldn't be any debates about free will, because there wouldn't be any people siding with it 😅.
Aside jokes, If reality is deterministic, and I think it is, then point of those debates is, that you had to do them, you couldn't do otherwise. Even you making that point about lack of point is determined. We had to change reality and past in order for you to not leaving this comment.
So many "just so" stories here. Do you have Flavor Y of Gene X? Well that will make you act aggressively. But wait, only if you also have experience Z (or Z' + Z" + etc.). And is that certain? Well, no because some people with all the conditions become nonviolent great chess players. But wait, these play chess really *aggressively.*
I'm glad that you guys are there for other people that aren't me
Robert's video lectures helped filled a void where I had no knowledge
Kinda disappointing that they never defined free will and basically just took for granted that the only thing the term could possibly refer to is a magical interruption of causation (eg libertarian free will). Even when Sapolsky references compatibilism it doesn't seem like he's actually engaging with it as he only debunks libertarian conceptions of free will. Sorry if I'm not impressed by a debunk of Jordan Peterson-tier argument.
I thought the tie in with Luuhman's work was interesting though.
I'd like to see a discussion with Robert and Dan dennett 😊
@@jezah8142 dennett is a charlatan
@@jezah8142I imagine it'd be similar to discussions between Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett on the topic.
They have nothing to add. Much smarter and wiser philosophers studied it for millennias. Only the Godman and Saviour Jesus Christ saved us from the cardinal sin. Only in His image we can trascend the limitations of the "fallen beast" and the fallen world that comes along with it.
So under that light you got enough free will to save your soul in Christ. Which is the purpose of existence. Communing in the godhood and society of God
I just realized I’ve been waiting for this collaboration for my entire life, thank you both.
Sounds like you have freewill covering the entire life.
It's so relevant I'm doing subtitles al español.
@@Celestity hey, I can help you with that 😳, I’m currently working for a law firm and one of my main duties is translating documents
Good questions.
One aspect of having no free will is that we have no choice but to behave as if we do have free will.
How then would one distinguish the former from the latter? I could precisely the same thing about 'consciousness': there is no consciousness but we behave as if there is.
Sapolsky is a Marxist like Sam Harris and _both_ exhibit contempt for humanity.
When Robert Sapolsky says you have absolutely no free will, it’s like Jesus saying your sins are forgiven.
Not even remotely comparable. He is speaking biologically, neurologically and anthropologically. Jesus is made up with no evidence behind it.
@@shakeyj4523 Evidence? Free will is an imaginative concept.,
@@carlharmeling512 I see words are hard for you.
@@carlharmeling512no it’s a concept that can be tested with knowledge and objective reality.
Excellent analogy!
sure, but think one needs to be careful about chaos, in a deterministic system you always get the same evolution for exactly the same initial conditions, without exception. but the size of errors that give approximately the same results over an increasing time-frame shrinks at such a fast rate that its practically impossible to simulate or work out in detail for long times. it is not that the behavior itself is intrinsically unpredictable, that is not quite right, it is that for example for weather predictions after some time the error you can tolerate goes very fast towards 0 and keeps on getting smaller and smaller and smaller quite quickly, and its just hopeless to follow by means of an exact solution, not because such a thing would be incoherent but because if you want to predict the weather in 50 days you need such precise information that you for practical purposes need perfect information about the entire universe. more or less, depending on what you think is the final version of physics of course. however you can prove that under certain laws of physics it is impossible to ever gain enough knowledge to make it work practically. determinism can mean two things and does mean to things to people, 1 that we can predict something or write down a law that could in principle predict the future, and 2 that the ontology of the world is on rails, or is predetermined, 1 can be false without 2 being false but not the other way around. or 1 could be true in a theoretical sense, but be shown to be impossible to achieve within an ontology that satisfies 2. neither can be proven or refuted by science, but it can be shown that any set of possible observations are consistent with both.
Those statements about unpredictability in the interview caught me off-guard. Which version(s) of physics can have provably unpredictable systems? Does unpredictability of certain systems follow from the uncertainty principle?
Great conversation thanks for taking the time to put this together. I too adopted determinism at a young age it fits in well with the philosophical pessimism plaguing young men growing up. The definition I've cobbled together for myself goes something like this... Even though the universe is singularly deterministic the particle/wave dualism created at the moment the singularity dissolved into discrete particles provides the illusion of choice. The paradox remains but the point becomes moot because in real life there are no winners, those of us who are forced to play soon realize the truth… When you succeed and get what you want it ultimately produces boredom, and when you fail you suffer. The worse cut of all is at rest the most you can hope to gain is a moment of painless solace. Remember though, it’s all a mere illusion, however tenacious and persistent.
depends on your metaphysics
ultimate objectivity says time is happening all at once at the same time. Our experience of time is another thing (its relative) so therfore we could call it an illusion of free will, at the same time, its good to remember that we dont understand everything and there are some things we will never know, everything is just our best guess, non the less I love these converstations that make me think these things. thank you!
Brilliant stuff, thank you. I would like to know more of Robert Sapolsky's perspective on ethics. He argues there is still capacity for change within a determinist framework. Is there still the possibility for us to say that something is "right" or "wrong" even if there is no "soul" that might govern our decisions? If we can change, why should we?
Knowing my behavior is determined doesn't change the fact that I dislike pain and am conditioned to also dislike it when others experience pain. Therefore I argue for eco-socialism. I consider by political opponents to be wrong in the sense that I consider the consequences of their actions to be unethical from my own POV. But I don't need to morally judge my political opponents to argue or potentially even fight against them.
It's just like if there were a wild animal running amok killing people. I would consider the fact that people are dying unethical, more unethical than constraining the animal, therefore I would act accordingly, but with no need for morally judging the animal itself.
@@TheJayman213 I don't necessarily disagree with this view, but I'd like to hear his. I will say, though, that your own view seems a bit limited in terms of its metaethical implications. That you are "conditioned to dislike it when others experience pain" does not suggest that there is anything ethical at all, only that you experience emotional distress upon seeing pain. It's quite similar to emotivism, which sees all moral statements as expressions of preference "boo this, yay that".
Ethics in such a framework isn't about moral judgments, but harm reduction. In practice it's like a kinder version of what we already do - we still apprehend criminals, but try to rehabilitate them rather than punishing them cos they did 'evil'. You also try to change society so that such acts are less likely in future, such as by reducing poverty. You're trying to make the world a happier place, including the life of the criminal themselves. There's a field based on this idea known as restorative justice. The point is that you don't hate those who violate the law, you see their actions as a result of their determined circumstances - and so try to change that.
To give a concrete example of the difference in perspective, there was a UK documentary a decade ago on the search for a humane way to administer the death penalty. One striking thing that came up towards the end of it was that one of the objections raised against the idea proposed by the presenter (nitrogen hypoxia) was that they don't want the penalty to be painless. The pain is the point, or part of it. Consider that hell - the place for those who do wrong - is literally an eternity of torture. This is the mindset that not blaming people seeks to shift us from.
It's more like if you get sick - you don't just do nothing, you treat the illness. But there's no point blaming the bacteria for just doing their thing. There's no malice.
To have morality (right and wrong) you necessarily require choice and some degree of control over your actions. Under determinism, choice is an illusion and you have no control over your actions. So, within a deterministic framework there is no possibility of morality.
And changes that happen to you in the future will be determined and cannot be any other way.
@@TheJayman213Your "therefore" seems a bit magical.
30 minutes in and it all begins to sound a bit Gladwell. It seems to me a little reticent, like its avoiding getting into a postmodern mess and is reclining into scientific positivist boundaries
Beautiful
Speaking at the French Cultural Center in Rome in 1974 Jacques Lacan mentioned that he ‘happened to come across a short article by Henri Poincare regarding the evolution of laws. Emile Boutroux, who was a philosopher, raised the question whether it is unthinkable that the laws themselves evolve. Poincare, who was a mathematician, got all up in arms at the idea of such evolution, since what a scientist is seeking is precisely a law insofar as it does not evolve. It is exceedingly rare for a philosopher to be more intelligent than a mathematician, but here the philosopher happened to raise an important question. Why, in fact, wouldn’t laws evolve when we conceive of the world as having evolved? Poincare inflexibly maintains that the defining characteristic of a law is that, when it is Sunday, we can know not only what happened on Monday and Tuesday, but in addition what happened on Saturday and Friday. But it is not clear to me why the real would not allow for a law that changes.
It’s obvious that we get into a complete muddle here. As we are situated at a precise point in time, how can we say anything regarding a law which, according to Poincare, would no longer be a law? But, after all, why not also think that maybe someday we will be able to know a little bit more about the real? - thanks again to calculations. Auguste Comte said that we would never know anything about the chemistry of the stars and yet, curiously enough, now we have a thingamajig that teaches us very precise things regarding their chemical composition. Thus we must be wary - things get developed, thorough-fares open up that are completely insane, that we surely could not have imagined or in any way have foreseen. Things will perhaps be such that we will one day have a notion of the evolution of laws.
Since science hasn’t the foggiest idea what it is doing, apart from having a little anxiety attack, it will go on for a while.’😅
What _is_ a law, in this context?
@@shlockofgod natural laws
A little funny how an expert biologist never heard the term autopoiesis being used in biology.
Is it like parthenogenesis?
Now this is not the crossover I'd ever expect in my wildest imaginations
28:43 Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, who were both biologists, wrote a book called "Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living"
for someone with PTSD this is absolutely impoverishing. you don't even know how hard I have been working during all these months to get out of the habits that are destroying me. how much I had to overcome, how many days I spent with myself, talking and caring. maybe someone else is telling me it was a hallucination? Without my effort, I would just lie there.
I'm a determinist but for a different reason than what's outlined here and my view of this question leaves room for what we call "free choice." Basically I think all of time has already unfolded, but because of our limitations as human beings, we experience time as the present (moment by moment) and the future for us appears to be un-determined. So the choices we make in the moment appear to determine our futures when in reality what we decided throughout our lives has already happened-time has already unfolded-we just don't know it yet.
The trouble for defenders of the concept of "free will" is that neither scientists nor philosophers have been able to come to an agreement about what "free will" means and how to test whether it exists or not through experiments. By contrast, the scientific evidence for determinism (whether loose or strict) is pretty strong and compelling, but I would say it doesn't completely rule out the possibility of what we commonly call "free will" just quite yet either. Having a settled scientific definition of it would help us get closer to the truth on this question.
I don't think that an intellectual awareness of determinism necessarily needs to undermine our ability to struggle against self destruction. No matter how hard we try, it's impossible to experience an existence absent of choice. You can ask "how should I behave, now that I know that my choices are not real?" but that is of course a ridiculous question. Determinism says that your choice to make an effort to relieve your suffering is an illusion, but so is your suffering itself! So if your suffering is real to you (which I'm sure it is), then your efforts to better yourself are just as real.
The absence of free will doesnt mean your efforts to make better choices are meaningless
What it means is that you'll never really have complete understanding of how you really got to this point, what made you believe what you believe and why you feel the way you do. But you can still make a difference, like you made the decision to write this comment, its the ownership of that choice that is thrown into question. But _you_ still wrote it and posted it, it didn't just vanish into the abyss or appear as gibberish. Your actions had an effect- just like how you you have been trying with incredible braveness to find peace, whether it has been by challenging your cognitive disortions or vour daily routine, I bet your life has been changing a lot. Does it matter what or who made you make this choice to change it? Do you eat your favourite dessert and do you ask yourself why you like it and if you did do you think the answer to it would make it any less delicious? Id hazard to guess not. The changes you have made to your life are the result of your actions, who or what led you to this moment doesnt change how courageous and _willful_ your actions are.
Sending love ❤
Thank you, guys, so much. I feel much more safe🤍 x
Determinism doesn’t mean that the hard work you are doing is inconsequential. It only means that your current *ability* to realize the harmful capability of those habits, and to work towards limiting them, has been determined from a long line of factors, just the same as your PTSD came from a long line of factors. A way to not feel so hopeless may be to understand that the hard work you are doing, and the fact you have been able to make progress, is because you possess a determined quality to make this difference in your life right now. Some others may not even have the ability to recognize the habits and pull themselves out, but that is not their fault. Keep strong friend!
Ahh so he's doing all these interviews because of a book.
I concluded there is no free will a while ago and intrigued to read his logic on it.
I've been psychologically struggling with the life laid before me and wondering if it's gonna come together in the end or if it will lead me to make dramatic shifts in my goals.
The "I" that choses is constantly changing. Therefore when you say "I chose this", you are correct. That "I" is predictable and has reach a determined state. If you know all the inputs and functions, the "I" at that moment is predictable.
"I" chose to go to the bathroom normally when a biological event applied pressure that "I" have memories of how to releave, coupled with social conditioning on where to do this. "I" as a different time without those input will not decide to go the bathroom (unless thinking about this example and getting enjoyment out of being a contrarian).
The "I" at that time perceives within itself a decision and receives inputs to "chose" to vocalize that "choice". No freewill is required and you are truthful in describing "I" made a choice.